Happyshort

Last weekend, on a beautiful Saturday morning, I went fishing

with a friend on the Pecos River here in New Mexico. We had been
fishing for a couple of hours when my friend decided he would carefully
approach the subject of getting more opt-in subscribers for his
newsletter. He knew I had over 400,000 opt-in subscribers for T-Shirt
King?s newsletter and he wanted to know how I did it. He was afraid
that it was a trade secret and I would brush him off and continue to
fish. That was my reaction initially.

You see, I get this type of question all the time. When it
comes at a time when I?m fishing, a simple answer like that is the
easiest, and it keeps us fishing instead of talking. However, this
morning I was a softy and, after some prodding, I gave in.

To begin with, let me quickly explain that there are two
sales tools that all online retailers should use regardless of what you
sell. You should have a newsletter and an affiliate program. My friend
already had a newsletter and an affiliate program and I?m going to
assume you do too.

We put our poles down and sat on the edge of the river to
discuss how my friend could build an opt-in list of over 100,000 this
year. He had a lot bigger expectations for his opt-in list than he did
for this fishing trip. He never did get back to fishing.

His first question was about getting people on his site to
opt-in. He had an opt-in subscription box on his site already and it
was prominently placed. But, with over 5,000 daily visitors, he was
only getting about twenty subscribers. It was a real disappointment.

So, my first suggestion was to set up a contest. He could
give away just about anything he wanted to from a free t-shirt to a
free fishing trip. I use a free t-shirt a day on T-Shirt King. To join
the contest, you just have to join the newsletter (opt-in). Check it
out ?

The next suggestion was to use a pop-up to promote the contest
and the subscription offer. Of course, my friend immediately groaned at
the thought of adding a pop-up to his site (for a minute there, I
thought we might get back to fishing). However, I told him about using
a cookied pop-up that occurs only once a day for each user. This way it
minimizes the annoyance of pop-ups. Plus, anyone that really hates
pop-ups already has pop-up blocker software. But the proof is in the
results. When I added our contest and a pop-up, we did better than
quadrupling our subscriber rate. For my fishing buddy, it would take
him from 20 opt-in?s a day to over 80.

The investment for a contest can be minimal when compared to

the cost of gaining subscribers any other way. You know that you can
find companies that will sell you subscribers for fifteen cents a piece
or more ? right? Why pay such a high price for poor quality subscribers
when you can make a smaller investment and get more subscribers of much
higher quality?

At $.15 per subscriber, that?s $15,000 for 100,000
subscribers of questionable quality. Using these methods can cost you
less than a hundred bucks for 100,000 high quality, targeted
subscribers!

Alright ? now for the big guns. Uh, er, the ?heavy tackle? -
since we?re fishing. Let?s take your list building operation and put it
on hundreds, or even thousands, of other websites. There are two
methods. Building a newsletter co-op and arming your affiliates with a
secret weapon.

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