As I already said, having a high quality mailing list is key for every great online business.
To get a mailing list with lots of engaged subscribers, you need two things: engaging content and a prominent opt-in form.

When you know that your are delevoping great content from the beginning of your page, you need to implement an opt-in form. As mail service provider you can use MailChimp or Aweber. For both there are lot’s of WordPress plugins available. The first stel I made was to installed the MailChimp List Subscribe Form and include it into my sidebar. You’ll want to have the opt-in form in prominent spaces like the sidebar, at the bottom of posts and pages or as a popup, so that your audience notices it fast.

I was really happy that I successfully set up the mailing list integration in my WordPress and was excited about seeing the first subscription.

But nothing happened.

In the first month I got only one new subscription from a Twitter contact and one subscription from a good friend of mine. No new people subscribed. But why? And how can you prevent yourself from making the same experience?

Investigating the Internet Business Mastery Academy* and thinking about the situation I came to the following clue:

I need some kind of incentive!

People need a reason to give me their email address. Why should they sign in, when you give them nothing but your newsletter? I bet you wouldn’t do this either.

I developed a plan of various aspects, that you can use to increase your email opt-ins:

• Place the opt-in in prominent places
• Make the opt-in optically pleasing and easy to use
• Develop an incentive for your subscribers 

My very first mailing list plugins didn’t catch the attention that I suspected. So I decided to try a Popup Opt-In form and installed Popup Domination. This is a really great plugin, used by some of the greatest people in internet business. I’m driving an A/B campaign right now to see if my incentive is useful or not.

The first impression is, that my incentive will increase my subscriber count. In the first two hours after publishing the incentive I got my first new subscription to my mailing list. Since I’m ranking quite good in Google at the moment, I think there will be more subscriptions soon.

So keep this three lessons in your head, when you want to generate your mailing list:

• Use a prominent opt-in form
• Style the form matching to your site design
• Set up an autoresponder with an incentive that provides REAL VALUE!

To your success,

Jan

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