I have a friend who is a fiction writer. We were talking today about ideas for promoting a book she is writing. She writes in a variety of genres, but the book in question is in the ‘chick-lit’ category - at least that’s what she calls it. I came up with these suggestions:
Blog - This one is pretty obvious. She already bought her name as a domain and I’m setting her up with a WordPress blog. The focus of her blog will be on the world of a fiction writer, with news about her projects and signings, etc. I recommend she actively write about the book and drop hints and teasers about the story to build interest. Book Website - She is also buying the name of her main character as a domain. These types of books tend to result in a series of novels, with fans of the character becoming built-in audiences. For starters I recommended she make this a sales site and offer free advance chapters to people who sign-up for her mailing list. Later she can make it more of a fan site with a discussion forum and ancillary products and content. Forum and Group Recruiting - I recommended that she start looking for forums and discussion groups with fans of this genre as well as fans of similar books. I told her to offer a sample chapter for people who join her mailing list and to mine that list for possible advance readers who would help generate buzz for the official release.
Blog Recruiting - My suggestion here is to find a number of bloggers who write about the genre (or even specific book series that have a similar tone) and recruit them to become advance readers. Feeding them advance copies of chapters and checking out how often (and what) they write about the book. Following up with those who are vocal fans will help with generating buzz for the release.
Those were some strategies that came to me today. If you have done this type of marketing before, leave a comment and tell me what’s wrong or missing from my list.
Tired of Internet marketers promising a ’secret technique’ for making money online? How about marketing manuals that tell you to make marketing manuals to sell to people like you? It’s like a dog chasing its tail.
You won’t find any of that junk in “The One Month Magnate“*, by Tony Shepherd. The system he lays out is filled with gimmick-free practical techniques presented in a logical (and profitable) sequence. He chose a real world example to demonstrate his process and leads you through it from beginning until almost the end (he stops detailing his project at the 30 day mark giving an overview of what he planned to do next.)
The sales page for Shepherd’s e-book grabbed my interest and tempted me to risk $27US to find out more. He promised a blueprint for creating a profitable online business that puts money in the bank in 30 days - starting from nothing. I pulled out my Amex card, payed my money and downloaded the e-book. I got my money’s worth.
If you are a seasoned information marketer, or have already consumed as many e-books, websites, and podcasts on creating and marketing information products online as I have, you will find no surprises in Shepherd’s book. I had heard every technique before, but I also spent a lot of time gathering that information. Plus, I still learned something new.
What I found is exactly what Shepherd promised: a sound blueprint for applying reliable techniques to take you from nothing to profitability. He talks about market research techniques, techniques to establish yourself as an expert and build an audience using free reports, how to create an info product, how and where to set up the accounts required to collect orders and deliver products, and how to do it all in 30 days or less.
The book is arranged to take you day-by-day through the process as Shepherd relates what happened with his sample project. By the end of the story he claims to have earned more than $3000US. (You have to take Shepherd’s word on his earnings because he offers no evidence to support his claims. However, the earnings he states seem entirely reasonable.) By day 30 he hadn’t yet created a website or affiliate program (those cost a little money to start and he stuck to his promise of showing how to make money without spending it first.)
“The One Month Magnate“* isn’t likely to be the last e-book you ever buy on the subject, but the quality of the information it contains improves the odds that you will buy the next one with the profits from your new business. You will also know what you need to learn next.
On a scale of 1 to 10, “The One Month Magnate“* is a solid 7. I would have appreciated more samples of the sales letters he created and the free report he used to build his customer base. I also wanted to see some documentation for his earnings claims. However, I got my money’s worth and recommend the e-book to beginning information marketers looking for a clear path through the woods.
The Go-To Guy!
* This is an affiliate link. If you follow it and make a purchase, I will receive a commision. To visit “The One Month Magnate” website without using my affiliate link, click here.
The Nike Swoosh, the McDonald’s arches, the Apple. When you see these logos, instantly you identify the business behind them. You associate all of the feelings, attitudes, and experiences you have with these companies to whatever product carries the logo.
The big companies spend thousands of dollars developing these logos because they are so valuable to their business. Your business probably does not have that sort of budget. But, the Internet has made it easier to find talented artists who can create a custom logo for you at very low prices. No more scavenging for cheap talent at your local art school and hoping they understand your business needs.
Top 5 Reasons to Get a Logo for Your Business
Look Bigger - One of the things that distinguishes big companies from small ones is that the big ones spend more time and energy packaging their business. Their business cards, letterhead, envelopes, and websites all carry a unified look. The foundation of this look is their logo. Use a professional logo to unify the look of your business publications and people will assume you are a big company.
Become More Memorable - A creative logo that truly fits your company will help people identify you. They will ‘read’ the logo and it will jog their memory. A picture is worth 1000 words and a logo is a picture of your company.
Explain Your Name - If your business has an unusual name your logo can help decipher who you are and what you do. A picture of a typewriter next to a name suggests that the person named is a writer.
Distinguish Yourself From Competitors - Are your competitor’s logos dull or confusing? Set yourself apart by creating an exiting logo for yourself. If you are not a professional designer, hire one. Cheap clip art and back design will not lift you above the crowd.
It Is Cheap! - There really is no excuse not to get a logo. There are hundreds of artists available on the web who can make you a fantastic logo for very low prices. Freelance directories, Craig’s List, and online forums are good places to start looking. Several online companies will take care of the hassle and sell you package design deals at very low prices.
Get a high quality professional logo for your company today and start lifting your business above the crowd.
Rapid Keyword
Target the right keywords and get the conversion rates you dream of.
My most recent failure cost me $4.46. I couldn’t be happier. For the price of a Venti Latte at Starbucks I was able to market test a book idea and drop the project before investing major time or money in its development. There just wasn’t enough interest in the product to turn a profit - I discovered this BEFORE I had even written one word.
Market Testing Before Product Development
Have you ever worked for a company that was trying to market solutions in search of a problem? These types of products are usually created by teams of people who brainstorm ideas, pick the one they like best and start creating it. They miss an important step: Finding out if anyone wants or needs their product! Welcome to the realm of market testing.
I’m full of ideas. A lot of them are brilliant - in my mind! Even if I can persuade a few people to agree with me, it’s still a shot in the dark trying to pick a project worth of investing time and money in without market testing.
I do not have a background in product development or marketing - I went to film school! My strengths are coming up with ideas and making stuff. But, I want to create successful projects. I want people to fund my film ideas. I want to be successful, not just busy. The big question, when assessing my book idea, was how to test the concept without going broke or earning a marketing degree first?
Market Testing With Google and a Little PHP
While scouring every book and website I could find on building online busnesses and making money online, I came across an e-book on making money building niche content websites with Adsense ads. It is not an earth shattering subject, the author explained a very practical process for identifying target niches and building sites to draw traffic. In the middle of explaining how the Google Adwords and Adsense programs work he mentioned, as an aside, that running and Adwords campaign would be an excellent and cost effective way to market test an idea! Bells started going off in my head. I made a note to use this idea.
Fast forward a few months and I found myself listening to a 2-part podcast by one of my favorite bloggers, Yaro Starak. The topic was developing and selling e-books for big profits. The guest, Daryl Grant, spoke in great detail about the system that she and her husband were using to develop and market profitable e-books. One of the steps was to conduct a market test using Google Adwords and what she called a ’survey site.’ The familiar sound of bells started ringing!
I examined Daryl’s sample survey site and set about designing a template for testing my own ideas using a similar process.
The Adwords Market Testing Process - 8 Steps to Success
The process itself is very straight forward:
Pick a product concept to test
Create a survey page that promotes your proposed product and has feedback mechanisms
Write several ads for your product idea
Start a new Adwords campaign
Select relevant keywords and set prices
Upload your ads
Run a 3 day test of your ad campaign
Evaluate your results
Picking your product. This is where your personal genius comes in. You have to think of some product (e-books are my initial target) that you think others would want. This is a whole seperate discussion. As an independant filmmaker I thought it would be great to have access to interviews with 10 filmmakers, like me, who had created profitable movies. I’m always interested in these types of interviews in magazines and thought that a book focussed on this topic would interest others. 10 filmmakers spilling all their secrets.
Creating a survey page. The survey page is version 1.0 of what will later become your product’s sale page (if it is successful, that is!) Let people know that the product is not available yet, but sell them on it. Write copy designed to excite them and motivate them to purchase. If you are grammer challenged, get someone to edit your copy for you (if you don’t know any editors, consider a service like OnlineProofReaders.com.) Now, make sure there is a feedback form for them to send you comments and suggestions, and a way for them to join a mailing list to get updates.
The first part is just copywriting and basic web design. The feedback form and email sign-up will require a bit more work. I used a basic HTML form on the survey page with a little Javascript to validate the email address. I then created a second PHP page that processed the form data, sent an email to me with the users name, email, and comments and, if they requested updates, submitted their information to my email list management software.
Now that I’ve created this survey site, I can just tweak the copy for each product I want to test. I’m not much of a programmer, but I got it all setup in about 2 days.
Write ads for your product. Sell your product. Write your ads as though the product is available today. Don’t say you are conducting a test, sell! visitors will find out about the test once they click over to your survey page. You want at least 2 or 3 different ads with slightly different editorial approaches. Adwords will tell you which ads generated the most response, so this is a way to start testing your ad campaign while testing your product. Knowing what people respond to may also help you shape the editorial slant of your product. Here is a sample of two of my ads:
Resist the temptation to just write something fast, but try not to over think things either. If the idea is viable, you will spend a lot of time later optimizing and testing your ads for maximum response rates. The goal here is only to get a fair assesment of the products viability.
Start a new Adwords campaign. If you don’t already have an Adwords account, now is the tie to sign up. It will cost a few dollars to get your account activated. Start a new campaign and follow the prompts to set all of the main parameters. Set the campaign to run for 3 days. This should be enough time to gauge performance. If your test is on the borderline of success, you might extend the test a few more days to get a larger sample of responses. But, remember, the goal is spend only as much as you need to to validate the concept.
Select keywords and prices for your campaign. There are several books on my free e-book page that discuss how to select and test lists of keywords. The Adsense Mint gives an excellent tutorial on the subject (it is focussed on finding high cost keywords for Adsense websites, but the techniques and tools discussed work for this purpose.) Coming up with a good list of keywords will improve your chances of success. You want to identify what topics your potential customers might be searching for and you do not always want to use the obvious approach. Sometimes a group tangential topics will connect with the right people, and cost you less money.
For my campaign I did not just try keywords focussed on things like “filmmaking book” or “interviews with successful filmmakers.” I looked for “film festival listings” and “independant film distribution.” Filmmakers trying to sell a film would be looking for those keywords and might be very interested to read how others found success.
Upload your ads. Enter your ads into your campaign. Google has hard limits to the number of characters per line, so you might have to make some adjustments if you have to much text. Once your ads are in the system, Google will take care of dividing up the visibility of each one.
Run your test. This step is the easiest. There is nothing to do but wait - and repeatedly check your campaign statistics every 5 seconds!!! Try to find something else to distract yourself (am I the only one with this problem?)
Evaluate your results. When your campaign ends, look at the number of clicks you got. Total up the number of email responses you received. Check them against your targets. If you are close, you might want to test a little longer (or wait a few days and conduct a second test.) If you exceeded your numbers, start creating that product now! If you missed, test the next idea and be grateful that you didn’t waste any time creating a product that isn’t profitable. Notice I didn’t say it was a bad idea - just not profitable. It might be the perfect hobby project to work on after you start raking in the money with your profitable projects.
What are good targets? Daryl Grant says that she looks for an overall response of 500 clicks per day. She also looks for 5% of the visitors to be motivated enough to leave feedback or sign up for more information. If you reach or exceed these numbers, you have a winner.
Pay careful attention to how much it costs you to get clicks. You should plan for 1% of your visitors to make a purchase. That means you have to pay for 100 visitors before you find 1 customer. If it costs more reach those 100 people that you expect to earn on each sale, you have a problem. Daryl recommends that your costs for each customer should not exceed 1/3 of the income from your sale. For an e-book selling for $34.95 that means the total marketing cost should not exceed $11.65. Divide that number by 100 clicks and your top cost-per-click comes to $0.11.
$0.11 is not a lot of money, so you need to check your keywords carefully and study the market to determine how much you can charge for your product. You may need to bundle in other items to increase the value of the package and get your income per sale high enough to make the numbers work. Throw in plenty of bonuses too so your customer feels they’ve truly gotten their money’s worth.
Bonus Tip Always try to capture the email address of the people who click through to your sales page. Give them a free taste of your product or offer them a special report in exchange for their email.
Every time you get permission to add someone’s name to your list, you reduce the cost to market to them again. Over time you will have a large collection of people who will grow to trust your advice and recommendations and who you will not have to buy access too.
My Test Results - A Hidden Bonus
My idea is a big dud! I got a dismal response of 25 clicks and 0 comments over the run of my ad. There does not seem to be much pent-up demand for my filmmaker interview book (and I really wanted to do this project!) But, the price of my failure reveals a hidden bonus in this product market testing strategy.
The beauty of the Adwords pay-per-click system is you only pay when people click on your ad - no clicks, no charge! I only had to pay $4.46 to find out that this idea wasn’t going to work. The worse your failure, the less money it costs you. (Conversely, if you spend a lot of money on the test you have got a moneymaking idea on your hands.)
Traditionally, if you took an ad out in a magazine or newspaper it would cost you the same regardless of your results. Joseph Sugerman, direct response genius and author of the book Triggers: 30 Sales Tools you can use to Control the Mind of your Prospect to Motivate, Influence and Persuade, writes about how he used to roll out his ads in regional publications first before buying space in more expensive ones. He would even run 2 or 3 different versions to test refinements in the ad copy. The concept explained here is exactly the same, but much faster and more affordable.
Even if you are planning to market products in the offline world, use this system to run preliminary tests to weed out the lowest performing ideas before you put big money behind them.
I might go back to do some keyword research and see if I can find another angle on this book idea that might test a little better - maybe I should just let it go!
Success is a process of planting, tending and growing. It can be discouraging to plug away at tasks that do not show any immediate results. But, if you are patient and continue to cultivate the seeds you plant, they can produce some amazing fruits.
This topic comes up because I have a great example that just happened today which illustrates the point. I want to share it with you.
Pinned to the wall, just off to the right of my office computer monitor, is a resume. It was a resume I didn’t want and was resentful for getting. I was the one stuck responding to it. It is the resume of a person who I now count among my friends.
Back in 2002 I received an envelope from the vice president of my department. In the envelope was the resume and a note saying, “Call this guy. I got his resume from a board member.”
We weren’t hiring. I didn’t have any projects to hire the man for or even any recommendations of others for him to talk with. But this was a request I was not allowed to dismiss. So, after much delay, I called the man in question and arranged a meeting.
From the beginning I was clear that I had no work to offer, but he came anyway. As things turned out, we got along well and had similar ambitions and interests. By the time our meeting was over we were friends, and I began looking for opportunities to work with my new friend and to help him find work. He had hired a ‘free agent.’
Over the next year or two we kept in touch. I had a project that needed his skills, but had no budget - he volunteered two days of his time to help me. I kept his resume pinned to my wall for easy reference.
This past year I’ve had several occasions to recommend my friend for projects and also to hire him for one or two days worth of work. He’s becoming a regular backup person for me and, by extension, is becoming well known and liked by my colleagues. In addition to having his resume pinned to my wall I have his number on my cellphone and his email address in my address book.
Today, I was approached by a colleague who has employed my friend on a couple of occasions. She wants to hire him for a fulltime staff position.
It may have taken almost four years, but that two page resume did its job. The vice president who forwarded it to me doesn’t work here anymore. I can’t say whether the board member who gave it to him is still around. But, my friend may very well end up working in the same office with me.
That seed he planted has taken root and now seems ready to bear some fruit!
I recently wrote about a podcast I had heard that discussed a method for developing and selling e-books. This was not the ‘download my e-book, rebrand it, and sell it’ get rich quick approach. They focussed on identifying potential products, evaluating the potential market, market testing, and then producing and selling. It is a very systematic process.
Product evaluation and market testing has been high on my mind since I heard that podcast, so I started doing some research on the subject. I found a few very interesting resources. Links to them are at the end of this article.
They also have a free newsletter and magazine. I signed up for both on the basis of these two articles - they were both features in an earlier edition of the magazine.
The other resources I found were mostly from college course materials posted online. Some deal with traditional physical product design and some with the conceptual framework for doing analysis. They all looked interesting to me and I plan to go back and spend more time studying them. They are:
If you know of other resources for devising a method of evaluating the profitability of a potential new product, let me know. I will be testing a few ideas for online information products soon and will be writing about the different methods I used.
The Go-To Guy
When was the last time you had to join a new group? Maybe you started a new job or school. Maybe you joined a club or church. If you are anything like me, the process of getting to know people probably went something like this:
You showed up and talked with a small number of people at first - the boss, a greeter, the person sitting next to you. You talked about common interests and started the process of getting to know more about each other. At the same time, you started to listen to what the people around you were talking about. You gravitated toward the people you found interesting and eventually found an opportunity to contribute to the group conversations.
As people got to know more about you, they began to see the unique insights, experiences, and skills you had to offer and started to come to you with questions. Eventually, people started to refer others to you because they thought you could help them.
Over time you became an established part of the group with a history of involvement and a level of respect earned by the quality of that involvement.
This is a very common path to establishing yourself in a community. It is also an excellent process to model for generating website traffic on the Internet. The Internet is really just a great big community and you have to establish yourself there just like anywhere else.
So, How Do You Establish Yourself On The Internet?
The short answer - Join the Conversation! Seek out the places and people who are talking about things that interest you. Over time you will learn who the trusted voices are and discover where they hang out. When you feel like you have something to say that will add to the discussion, make comments. Blogs, user forums, and newsgroups are designed to encourage this. When you add value to the conversation, people will want to know more about you and what else you have to say.
Make sure people can find you. Whenever allowed, include a link back to your website or blog so that people can find you. Then, make sure you have good stuff waiting for them when they do.
Impress people with the quality of your comments and they will come find you. Impress them with what they find and they will bookmark your site or feed. Eventually, they will start recommending you to others.
Before you know it, a community will develop around your conversations.
How Powerful Is This Approach?
I will give you one quick example to show you the power of joining the conversation. On June 20, 2006 (3 days ago as I’m writing this) I left a short comment on an interesting article at Brad Isaac’s website. The article is called Work for Yourself First. I felt that my experiences with the subject were relevant and that others might find them interesting. Read the article and see what I had to say in response (it’s also a great article - so read it for that reason too!)
I was a little surprised today when I checked my site’s traffic stats and discovered that 21 people had already visited by following the link to homepage that is included in the comment. They came from all around the world. That is more traffic referrals than from any other single source over the same 3 days. And, these visitors also spent more time exploring my site and reading my articles than most others.
The same thing happens when you include trackback links to relevant articles in your own blog posts. An exerpt from your article will show up as a comment attached to the article you are referencing. This comment will link back to your blog entry. As you add to the conversation the community grows around it. It is powerful stuff.
Don’t Pee in the Pool
Before you run out and start flooding the Internet with comments, remember that your reputation is at stake.
Do not post scores of ‘me too’ comments, or worse, irrelevant comments intended only to get a link back to your site (this heinous practice is called comment spamming. Many website resources have been created whose sole task is weeding this junk out and throwing it away.) You will not get traffic to your site if you are known as a ‘comment spammer.’ What you are likely to get are piles of angry comments on your own site from people who are upset about what you are doing.
Another downside to comment spam is that it fills the Internet with so much garbage that nobody wants to wade through it to find the good stuff. The people who create good content must spend their time taking out the trash and are not generating new content.
Once somebody pees in the pool, nobody wants to go swimming and somebody has to clean it up!
Go Out and Join the Conversation
Go, be sociable. Talk to others and add your insights to the conversation. Build your reputation on the Internet and before long, people will come looking for you. The traffic you get will not be subject to the whims of any search engine’s latest algorithms, and the visitors you get will be more likely to become regulars.
I got a great email today from web marketing consultant Dr. Ralph F. Wilson about getting non-reciprocal links onto your website. (If you are not famililar with Dr. Wilson, I recommend checking out his website and signing up for his newsletter.) He mentioned three ways to get folks linking in:
Write Great Content
Write ‘Give Away Articles’
Use Search Engines To Find Sites and Directories To Submit a Link
I’ve written about the first two topics before, but I have not written about the last one. So, how do you use search engines to find places to submit your site links?
The Value of Inbound Links
First, let’s back up a little and talk about the value of links to your web traffic. Search engines (Google in particular) view the links to your website as an indicator of how valuable the content is. This helps them to prioritized which search results to place on the top of the page (each engine has a complex formula for deciding which results are most relevant - links are one factor.) If other people think your content is great and link to it, it creates the equivalent to a community endorsement. Plus, if you have relevant links coming from substantive websites, the visitors from those sites might come to yours too.
All endorsements are not the same. Who would you trust: the crazy lady who argues with the pigeons in the park or your best friend from childhood who has never steered you wrong? Search engines like Google think the same way. A link from a spam Free For All (FFA) links page is a ‘pigeon lady’ recommendation in their eyes. It will actually hurt your rankings if links to your site show up in these places. (Who trusts a person who spends all their time hanging out with crazy people - unless you are a psychiatrist!)
How do you get good links?
Writing great content and releasing some ‘give away articles’ are great techniques. You can also trade links with other relevant sites.
In this article we will discuss the technique of using search engines to help you find relevant websites that will accept link submissions and don’t require reciprocal links. The technique will take a few hours, but you will end up with a good new collection of links to your site.
What is the technique?
Use boolean searches. These are you search for combinations of things - sites containing ‘A and B’ (the and is called a boolean operator.) A search might look like this:
“Add a link” + “Relevant Keyword Phrase”
Using quotes around a phrase will force the search engine to look for pages with that exact phrase not just those words scattered around the page. The + sign is the symbol used be search engines to indicate the boolean and operator. So this search will return results that contain both the phrase “Add a link” and “Relevant Keyword Phrase”.
Now the work begins. Identify the keyword phrases that are most relevant for your site and begin searching for valuable websites to submit your links to. Protect your reputation. Take the time to explore the sites you find before deciding whether a link from them would be valuable. Don’t submit links to places you wouldn’t visit. Also, try a number of phrases: add a link, submit a link, add a site, submit a URL, favorites, suggest a site, directory, cool places, etc.
They discuss how she sets up her sites, how the books are produced (she doesn’t write them herself), how she generates traffic, and how she writes the sales page copy to convert visits to sales. Her website also gives a thorough breakdown of her process: www.AndrewandDaryl.com. The site includes links to sample survey pages, a spreadsheet for calculating the profitability of an idea, and active e-book sales pages (surprise - not one of them is about online marketing!)
This is a great bit of educational material. Listening to it inspired me to test a new product idea I had. I wrote about how I did the market test and my results.
Email autoreponder software is a powerful lever to move your online business ahead.
Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.
-Archimedes
Leverage. Using a tool to magnify a small effort into a large result. The Internet is a powerful leveraging tool. One person can spend a few hours creating a webpage and find hundreds or thousands of people around the world to read it and be influenced by it. And, as long as the page is online, it can continue to be discovered and read by new audiences - month after month, year after year.
Another powerful tool of the Internet age is the email auto-responder (also known as a sequential emailer.) With one, you can leverage the direct communication power of email with the set-it-and-forget-it cababilities of a webpage. You can use auto-responders to deliver a carefully constructed sequence of emails at precisely controlled intervals, with no human intervention.
Why Would You Want to Send Automated Sequential Emails?
There are a number of reasons to send out emails in this fashion.
Auto-Responders for Sales and Marketing
If you are marketing a product or service, you may already be aware that it can take 6 or 7 contacts with a potential customer before they make a purchase. It’s not easy to get someone to visit your website 6 or 7 times and you never know what pages they’ll choose to look at.
What if you could persuade this same visitor to sign-up for your 5 part email course or a series of special reports? These emails would teach them a little information aimed at answering the need that brought them to your site. But, in this case, you decide what messages they receive, what order they are delivered in, and how much time will pass between each email.
Step-by-step you will be demonstrating your expertise, building a relationship with your visitor, and creating the trust required to convert them from lookers to buyers. It’s like having an automated salesperson greeting everyone who expresses an interest in what you have to offer.
One well written sequence of emails can be leveraged, using an auto-responder, into hundreds or thousands of sales.
Auto-Responders for Content Delivery
Selling is not the only use for an auto-responder. It can also be the delivery mechanism for content you sell or give away. If you offer your visitors a daily inspirational message, or a reminder service, your auto-responder will deliver the goods. It is also an excellent way to deliver an educational course.
Other Uses for Auto-Responders
Another creative use that occurred to me is using your auto-responder to send blog updates when you are on vacation. Instead of posting the usual ‘on vacation’ message, letting the site go idle, or finding a guest blogger to fill in, write a special series of posts and load them into your auto-responder. Set the responder to deliver messages every day and then, when you get ready to leave, add your blog’s email posting address into the subscriber list. (Many blog software packages, like Wordpress, allow you to submit posts via email.) Everyday a new entry will be posted to the site and your readers (and the search engines) will keep checking in for the latest updates.
You might also set one up to email your mother every year on her birthday, anniversary, and Mother’s Day! (Or at least email yourself a reminder to buy a card.) The Journal of Medical Internet Research even has the results posted about a study to “assess the feasibility of using sequential email messages to promote physical activity and increase fruit and vegetable intake among employed adults.”
I’m sure there are other creative ways to use an auto-responder. If you’ve got a clever one, leave a comment and share it.
Where Can You Get an Auto-Responder?
There are 3 ways to get an auto-responder. You can pay to use an auto responder service provided by a 3rd party, you can license a commercial software package and load it (or have it loaded) onto your server, or you can scour the open source community looking for free stuff and then tweak and customize it - guess which route I’ve chosen?
There are a number of companies who provide subscription based auto-responder services. They usually have a very rich set of features and are simple to use. GetResponse is one such company. Aweber and Intellicontact are 2 others. These companies often offer extended features like list splitting, campaign tracking, and click-through tracking. If you are looking to do sophisticated online marketing, the extra features and reduced technical maintenance requirements may be worth the monthly fees. GetResponse and Aweber both offer a free 30 day trial to let you test out the service before subscribing. My Autoresponder Pro, SendStudio, and Follow-Up Mailing List Processor, all offer commercially licensed software that you can load onto your server and run yourself. Most of these packages offer plenty of features and are reasonably priced. If you have trouble with the installation, you can expect some level of technical support. The costs are usually pretty low and, if you know your way around your server, installation isn’t usually very tough.
Being the Go-To Guy, I like to hunt down open source solutions and customize them to my needs and whims (I’m even thinking about making my own software as a PHP/MySQL learning project!)
Open source means no fees, but also no guarantees and no tech support. I’ve found an open source package that I like called Infinite Responder! The interface isn’t beautiful to look at (it was designed by a programmer!!!) but it handles double opt-in sign-ups and unsubscribes, HTML and plain text email options, and multiple lists.
Installation was pretty simple (the developer will install it for you cheap if you need help.) I’m working on customizing the look of the interface to my liking and will post an video installation tutorial soon to guide folks through the installation process.
