1 Thing Your Blog Can't Live Without

by Robb Sutton

I was having lunch with a friend of mine last week and we were talking about blog monetization. He has a killer idea, incredible design and fantastic content. He even sells t-shirts on site as a method of bringing in cash from his efforts. The problem…traffic is up and he is not making that much money. In search of an income generating answer, we took a look at his model and figured out that one missing key.

Active Newsletter: The 1 Thing Your Blog Can Not Live Without

It’s true. While we all like to think that enough traffic will gain you the blogging income of your dreams, that is still not the case. If you do not have an active newsletter at this point in time, you are already behind the 8 ball in creating an income generating blog. You can do everything you are supposed to on site, but…at the end of the day…your newsletter subscribers will be your ATM machine as you look to expand your money making opportunities.

Why Do You Need A Newsletter?

Let’s take a look at why your blog needs a newsletter.

  • It captures leads that would normally be lost – By getting that email address, you are able to stay in touch with readers through their email (the most read thing on the web) and bring them back to your blog and content. A vast majority of these readers may have never landed back on your pages, so you are insuring growth over time.
  • Conversions are much higher in newsletters than on site – Let’s put it this way…you released a new eBook or T-Shirt design. Once everything was complete, you wrote a blog post and put up the promotional materials on your site. New visitors and returning visitors see the materials and blog post as they hit up your corner of the web that day. However, their man focus is on new content and not your latest and greatest product. Now…you also have about 1,500 people signed up to your newsletter, so you send out an email announcing your new release. In your email, there is zero distraction. Which one do you think is going to convert better?
  • Newsletters create automated sales funnels – With any well performing newsletter, you are setting up broadcast emails that produce original quality content for your subscribers. This process is completely automated after setup, so once the subscriber signs up…you do not have to do a thing! Now…imagine you are providing quality content with related affiliate promotions. You have just put your money making machine on autopilot as new subscribers are receiving those emails on a daily basis.

Your goal as a site owner is to capture as many free leads as you possibly can, provide quality/original content to those leads and covert that into dollars you can live off of. Having a quality newsletter subscription is the #1 way to accomplish that goal, so you need to sign up with Aweber (I use Aweber for all of my sites and you can get started for $1) or another email service and get started today.

Tomorrow, I’ll show you some hooks I use to attract more subscribers and keep them subscribed to my newsletters. In today’s world, people protect their email addresses more than their own kids, so there are some tips and tricks you can use to insure greater success.

Newsletter Series Recap

Sign Up For Aweber By Clicking Here (get started for only $1!)

Image by Esparta

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9 comments

Maren Kate April 14, 2010 - 11:08 pm

Kick in the pants I needed – I’ve been halfing it lately, yes i have an auto responder but not the way I should. Thank you for this! I’ll get on it tonight 🙂

Reply
Robb Sutton April 15, 2010 - 8:08 am

Great Maren! I am doing more in this series today (already posted) and later this week.

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Your Biggest Weapon In Keeping New Newsletter Subscribers | Robb Sutton dot com April 16, 2010 - 6:54 am

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2 Emails That Transform Your Newsletter Email List Into Cash | Robb Sutton dot com April 19, 2010 - 7:17 am

[…] and transform that into a viable business that is generating income? I have already illustrated why an email list is important, how to get subscribers and how to keep those subscribers…so how do we monetize this thing […]

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alex April 20, 2010 - 11:40 pm

Amazing post!!! Seriously. I have an aweber account and a list that I started with when I first got into internet marketing, but I still have not placed an opt in on my blog!! The main thing that stops me is I am unsure as to what I should be using as content. I am busy enough creating content for the blog. Any tips on how I can leverage this, or what I should use as the content of my newsletter?
Thanks in advance Rob.

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Ileane @ The Podcast Blog May 4, 2010 - 9:09 am

Hi Robb,

Thanks for the encouragement. Do you know of any alternatives to Aweber? I have “unsubscribed” to some that I used to get because I feel like they all had the same look and I wanted to look for something different.

Thanks.

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Robb Sutton May 4, 2010 - 10:37 pm

Regardless of the service, they will all look the same unless you apply a html design. Otherwise, they are just test based. So…it really doesn’t depend on the service but the design you upload into that service.

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How I Increased My Newsletter Signups By 150% In 3 Minutes | Robb Sutton dot com July 19, 2010 - 8:37 am

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