Why Should You Build an Email List? Free Excerpt | Introduction

As you may know, I have my very own list building ebook for sale on Amazon right now. Actually, you probably didn’t know that, but, hey, now you do! I have it up for $0.99 because I want people to be able to get this info without spending an arm and a leg.

 

Luckily Amazon no longer accepts human flesh as payment, but nevertheless I think beginners, amateurs, part-timers, and anybody without a lot of spending money should have access to all the tools they need to get started. What you do with it after that is up to you.

 

What I’ve decided to do then is publish parts of the ebook for free right here on my blog. I have no idea how this will turn out, or who cares about a freelance writer’s internet marketing tips, so what I want is some feedback from you guys.

 

If this post gets either 10 comments or 20 Facebook shares, I’ll publish the next chapter of the book. Same goes for that post, and so on until the entire book is available right here on the blog.

 

This is an excerpt from How to Build an Unstoppable Email List. If you want to go ahead and buy the whole thing, you can find the link on the right.

 

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Introduction

 

 

If there’s one thing that you’re going to hear from an internet marketer these days, it’s that you absolutely need to build a list if you want to increase your conversion rate and see a steady income from your business. If you have an eCommerce website, a product, or an idea that you want to market, a list will give you the opportunity to connect with thousands of people who actually want to hear about it.

 

Now, it may seem like an incredible amount of work to find interested people, get them to open your emails once you have them, and figure out new and interesting things to send them either weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly.

 

I’m not going to lie, it is a lot of work. If there’s one thing you can bank on though it’s that this is work that actually pays off in the end. You’ll need to invest a large amount of your time, but if you can do it right and follow all the steps, you’re going to be three steps ahead of most other internet marketers out there.

 

The brutal truth is that only the people who have a solid, unstoppable email list are successful. Go ask any marketer or salesman you know. If they’re making money consistently, they have a list. I always have the same piece of advice for budding marketers: Work on building a reputable list, and then worry about your sales.

 

Want some more proof? Consider these 4 reasons why a subscriber list can help your sales and marketing approach.

 

1. A list will let you squeeze the maximum amount of profit out of each and every customer.
2. You can use your subscribers as your very own test audience. If you have copy that you plan to launch on a large scale, test it on your subscriber list first to see the kind of responses you get, BEFORE you spend money on the launch.
3. Your cost for each new customer will decrease. It’s more efficient (and cheaper) to pitch a single person several times until they buy than it is to try to pitch multiple people into buying the first time.
4. If there’s a large launch from one of your affiliate providers, let thousands of people on your list know about it first, before they buy the product from somewhere else.

 

 

This ebook is meant to guide you through the process of building your first SUCCESSFUL list. Maybe it’s your first list altogether, or maybe you’ve attempted to build a list in the past with only a margin of success. Maybe you even got 500 subscribers on one list and felt good about it.

 

A successful list is one with thousands of subscribers, not hundreds.

 

If you want to learn these tried and true methods to building your unstoppable, unassailable, bulletproof list, please, continue reading.

 

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Well, not a whole lot of information there, huh? If you want to see more about how to build an email list, leave a comment or share this post on Facebook using the Share option below. Alternatively, you can just buy the whole ebook for only $0.99.

Using Inbound Marketing to Tailor Your Website to the Modern Buyer

It’s widely known these days that having a website is crucial to the success of your online marketing strategies. It doesn’t matter what type of business or commercial enterprise we’re talking about; your online presence largely determines the outcome of your efforts to reach new buyers.

Surprisingly, a lot of businesses still haven’t made that leap to get in on the digital action. 1&1 Internet recently conducted a survey of SME businesses and found that an incredible 40% of small businesses don’t even have a website. Some of these have at least established some sort of social media presence, but simply having a Facebook page isn’t enough to create a fully realized strategy for online marketing. As we get further along in 2012, it’s becoming more essential than ever to set up a virtual front for your business that allows real, engagable customer interaction.

Okay, so a website is important, but what then? Just building a static site isn’t going to get you nearly as far these days as it may have back in 2003. The difference is that inbound marketing is playing a larger role in how sales are made, and a truly successful website needs to take advantage of that on all fronts.

What I mean is that websites today are much more interactive than they were in the past. Where we are right now, your website’s success depends on the network of connections surrounding it. Through strong social media interaction, efficient use of search engine marketing, blogging, and informative content you can more easily showcase your website to a more widespread audience, thereby increasing your sales and boosting your conversion rates. Do it right, and it’s more effective than most article marketing techniques.

Why has this arena changed so much? Most of it is due to a shift in the behavior of buyers on the web. Consumers need the freedom to make their own choices – they want to choose when, where, and how they buy something, and the last thing they want is a salesperson pushing them towards the checkout. This fundamental change can be summed up by saying that modern buyers don’t want to be sold to – they want to be given information. It’s a self-service psychology.

Interactive content like this – podcasts, social media, blog posts – are now bringing in the majority of online sales, proving that inbound marketing techniques are becoming more effective while outbound strategies – telemarketing, direct mailers, email marketing – are dropping in terms of conversion and ROI.

The bottom line is this: a virtual business optimized for inbound marketing allows the sales to come to you – not the other way around. It’s easier, cheaper, and all around more cost effective.

Why You Need to Stop Paying For Your Backlinks

When you own a business or a website, you can be tempted to use one of those services that offers “Cheap PR8 Backlinks!” or “Get on Page 1 of Google!” It’s an easy decision if you don’t know much about how these services work – What’s that? Get on page 1 of Google? Why sure, I’ll pay for that!

 

What these services do is spam a massive number of links to a whole bunch of non-relevant sites. That is bad for your business for 2 reasons:

 

1. Google doesn’t look very favorably on backlinks from sites that are not relevant to the destination page (although it’s still not a punishable offense, just stupid)
2. Depending on the methods that the service uses to get the links out there, it actually MIGHT be a punishable offense, in which case your entire site could get slammed and sent back to the hundredth page, or worse.

 

I actually had #2 done to me recently. I wasn’t using a paid backlink service (tried it once, never went back), but I was testing out some different techniques and theories that I had for getting my page ranked. I went from page 3 of Google for a certain keyword all the way back to page 92. You can guess that I was pretty bummed when I found out it happened. I lost a lot of revenue on that site as a result.

 

I’ve been able to build it back up to page 15 so far, but it has been a long, arduous process that could have been avoided if I had just stayed away from that one technique. Now, I know I didn’t pay for the backlinks that did this to me, but the point is that you never know what these services are actually doing to get the promised number of backlinks out there.

 

Google doesn’t tell you when it punishes you, and it doesn’t tell you what you did wrong. It just sends your page way back and leaves you to figure it out for yourself.

 

If you want to get onto the 1^st page of Google, put the effort in and do it yourself. Article directories don’t have the same sway they used to since the Google Panda updates, but they still hold some weight, so don’t count them out completely. Social networking sites like Facebook are apparently going to be given more weight, so make sure you use them as well. Ask other people to share your site on their pages to help get the word out.

 

If you are offering a quality service or have useful information on your site, people will have no problem linking to it and sharing it for you. If you want some quick backlinks, you can hire a freelance content writer to write some articles and then get them up on article directories quickly and painlessly, controlling the process so that you know exactly where your links are coming from.

A Few More Changes to HandleyNation

Well, as many of you may have noticed there have been a lot of changes going on around here at HandleyNation. I changed up the blog design again (for a good reason though!) and a few of the posts have disappeared. That’s because we finally got the handleynation.com site up and running!

 

From now on, this blog will continue to cover everything internet marketing related. The website is going to be the headquarters for my content writing services. Since I liked the theme that was on here so much, I decided to use it over on the main site, and I pulled a few of the blog posts that dealt with freelance writing and online writing to use as a starter for the HandleyNation.com blog. If you are interested in writing services, or if you’re a writer trying to get started in freelance writing, bookmark that blog because it’s going to be full of useful information.

 

I’ll be back to posting up internet marketing articles here again very soon once the waters settle down a bit. I’ve actually been in the trenches trying to figure out what sort of backlinking strategies are still useable after the Google Panda updates, and boy do I have a lot to report. I plan to have a long post up sometime soon about the subject of current backlinking strategies.

Spontaneous Human Combustion and Freelance Writing

When I’m not working for clients and practicing new internet marketing techniques, most of my time is devoted to writing for other sites around the web. It helps me stay focused and allows me to practice writing in different styles, which I think is a crucial skill for a freelancer to have. Different clients usually want different styles of writing, and while it’s possible to develop a unique writing style that’s identifiable as your own, you’re more likely to have success as a beginner if you can easily adapt the way you write to meet different needs. I can’t count the number of times a client has shown me a web page or blog and said, “I want it to sound like this.”

When I’m writing on HandleyNation I inevitably fall back into my own personal style, and if there’s a shortage of writing work it’s easy to lose track of that flexibility that comes from tailoring your writing to meet a wide variety of different needs.

Well anyway one of my favorite websites just bought one of my articles and published it on their front page. Toptenz.net is a top 10 list website that covers topics ranging from health to politics to bizarre and weird circumstances and everything in between. They work with a lot of great writers and I’m honored to have one of my pieces published on their site. The article is called Top 10 Unsolved Cases of Spontaneous Human Combustion. As you might guess, it talks about some of the most bizarre cases of spontaneous combustion in history, of which there have been over 200 documented since the 1400′s. The newest one occurred as recently as 2010 in Ireland, and despite the modern forensics technology we have it still remains a mystery.

 

You can check out the article here: Top 10 Cases of Spontaneous Human Combustion

 

-Andrew Handley

New Blog Design and New Page for Internet Marketing Articles

I’ve got a couple new updates happening with the blog right now that I wanted to talk about. First of all, as you’ve probably already noticed there’s a new design on the blog! Let me know if you like it or prefer the old one in the comments section below. I’m always open to feedback on how to best improve the user experience here at HandleyNation.

Second, if you look to the right of this post you’ll see a brand new picture advertising my free list building e-book How to Build an Unstoppable Email List. Previously I had a post asking my readers to leave a comment and request the free e-book, but all you have to do now is subscribe. Just enter your email address and I’ll send the e-book straight to your inbox. You’ll also be notified every time I make a new post, so there’s nothing to lose!

Finally, I made one more addition to the blog in the form of a new page for articles. This page is an index of internet marketing articles, work from home articles, and motivational articles around the internet that hopefully you’ll find informative and educational. There’s 38 articles on the list right now, but I’ll be updating it constantly so check back often for some helpful guides and tips. You can click the link there on “internet marketing articles” or you can access the page in the “Articles” tab at the top of the blog.

Oh and one more thing! There’s now a Facebook like box on the right side of the blog. If you like the posts just take a second and show your appreciation by liking us on Facebook. I also post some discounts for my freelance writing services on my Facebook page from time to time, so if you’re in the market for exceptional content writing at affordable rates, go ahead and take a look at the page. You can also contact me through this blog or on my email at andrew@handleynation.com.

That’s it!

-Andrew Handley

November 2011 Earnings Report

November was an incredibly busy month. It’s finally starting to clear up down here in Costa Rica after a long rainy season, so with the sun shining I’ve been trying to spend more time outside while keeping up with all the work. I missed a good friend’s wedding due to the fact that I couldn’t get away for a few weeks, and I’m actually pretty regretful about that. If you can’t be around for friends, what kind of a friend are you?

 

Nevertheless, my spirits are higher than ever thanks to the weather change; we’re going into one of the most beautiful times of the year down here.

 

As far as earnings, November was a pretty good month. Earnings are down a little on Triond, but I’ve been pursuing other writing outlets so that’s understandable. A few months ago we got the HandleyNation Facebook page up and running thanks to the help of my lovely graphic designer.

 

I’ve been seeing a lot of traffic here on my blog from people interested in learning how to make money online, so thank you to everybody who’s been reading even when the posts were few and far between. I also have a free list building e-book available (link goes to the post)

 

Now let’s take a look at my November 2011 earnings report:

 

Triond: $8.69 (down from $16.19 last month)

 

Amazon Associates: $0.36

 

Helium: $5.26

 

Misc. Affiliates: $18.34

 

Textbroker: $10.08

 

Freelance Writing: $1,201

 

Total earned in the month of November: $1,243.73

 

Like I mentioned, I haven’t been posting much on Triond so those numbers are going down. I’m kind of getting tired of Triond’s lack of quality control, but so far it’s been a convenient outlet for anything I feel like writing at any time.

 

Helium is starting to replace Triond. Their PPV earnings are higher and it’s just a more friendly and inviting community in general. I’ll probably be doing more with them in the future.

 

Earnings are still trickling in on Amazon Associates, even though I haven’t done anything with The Twitter Experiment in awhile. It’s been months actually, so if you read those posts and wondered where the rest of the updates went, well, there you go! I’m still getting residual sales even though I haven’t touched it since about June.

 

Freelance earnings are also down, but that’s because I’ve been taking more days off. It’s Costa Rican summertime; there’s no way I’m staying inside all day!

 

Subscribe using the button at the top right of this page to get email updates whenever a new post goes up, and don’t forget to claim your FREE list building e-book.

-Andrew Handley

March 2011 Earnings Report

It’s getting close to the middle of April now, and it’s time for me to post my earnings for March 2011.

March was a great month; I really got HandleyNation underway, we talked about getting more blog traffic, earning money with Linkshare, blog carnivals, earning money online, and I brought in my first guest blogger. Let’s not forget the Twitter Experiment either.

In addition to working on HandleyNation, I was also getting some content up at Triond and of course handling my own freelance writing business.

I want to thank everyone for coming here and reading my blog. I know it’s not the best blog about earning money online, but I really want to get my own experiences out there as I go through them, and hopefully someone else can learn from my mistakes as I go.

So let’s take a look at my March 2011 earnings report:

Triond: $0.79

Amazon Associates: $1.06 (thanks to the Twitter experiment)

Yahoo Associated Content: $4.00

Google Adsense: $7.95

Freelance writing: $1,525

Freelance writing made up a huge chunk of my earnings, as was to be expected. I worked 30 hours and 53 minutes for my clients throughout the month.

Triond earnings for April are already $0.77, so I’m expecting to make a bit more from that this month, but I don’t see Adsense doing too well.

I’m going to be refining my approach in the Twitter experiment, so hopefully I can start seeing some more conversions there. The clicks are high, but I’ve seen very few sales as of yet.

I also plan to be getting up a niche website by the end of this week. I’m recording the process step by step so keep a lookout for that series. Please subscribe by email or subscribe to my RSS feed to get updates from HandleyNation as I get all those delicious money making posts up.

Double Your Blog Traffic in One Day With One Simple Strategy (With Proof)

Is it possible to double your blog traffic in one day? And I’m not just talking about random traffic streams, I’m talking about focused, targeted visitors who are actually visiting because they’re interested in your blog. Before yesterday I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but with a few simple strategies I managed to do just that. And, I have proof.

Yesterday I experienced over 100% increase of not my average traffic, but my previous highest day of traffic to HandleyNation. How did I do it? I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what I did different, and only one thing comes to mind: starting arguments in the comments section of other blogs.

I wrote a post about getting blog traffic by starting arguments just a few days ago, and since then I’ve been putting that strategy into action every time it made sense to do so. Of course, if I liked the particular post and none of the other commentors were being idiots, I simply pointed out a few things that struck me and then posed a question to the blog owner. Surprisingly, most of the time there would be replies to the question and in a few cases we managed to get a small debate going.

I was surprised. That other post advocates arguing with people, but simple discussion worked nearly as well. The main thing you want to do when commenting to get blog traffic is actively engage other people. The beautiful part is, you don’t even have to answer anybody’s question, or be extremely knowledgeable yourself, just simply moderate the comments and keep them alive by posing follow-up questions or asking someone to explain.

Commenting on related blogs is a powerful tool for traffic, whether you’re arguing or engaging more politely. What you DON’T want to do is act like a wallflower, don’t stick your big toe in the water to make sure it won’t trouble your delicate skin before diving in. Comment with gusto, and make your presence known. That’s the only way to make this strategy work. Do a cannonball. Make a splash. Be strong and forceful in every opinion you have and people will go to your blog.

So where is this proof I mentioned? Right here:

The 2 bars farthest right are April 4^th and 5^th. My previous highest day was March 19^th. You can really see the massive difference. Additionally, I’ve been seeing pingbacks and visitors from blogs I’ve never even heard of, which means that people are linking back to me too.

Is it a fluke? Did I just get lucky with one high profile blog and will the traffic go back to normal tomorrow? It’s possible, but I don’t think it’s the case. WordPress analytics are some of the worst I’ve ever seen so I can’t do any in depth traffic analysis, but since I’ve only made one change I don’t see how this increased blog traffic could have come from anything but my recent surge in blog commenting.

Time will tell.

- Andrew

8 Simple Steps to Better Blog Traffic – Christopher Wise Guest Blogging

I’m proud to welcome Christopher Wise as a guest blogger this week. If you would like to become a guest blogger on HandleyNation, you need to sign up at My Blog Guest and contact me through my profile there (Andrew Handley).

My Guest Blog is a great site with professional bloggers and writers. It’s completely free and the level of quality is extremely high, so I know I’m giving you guys real, quality information when I invite a guest to write a blog post. Like this post for example. Read on as Christopher explains the 8 steps to increase your blog traffic.

1. Find similar blogs

You can start looking for related blogs by using the search engines. Search using relevant keywords + “blog”. Use the singular and plural form of the keywords for each search.

For example – “basketball blog”, “basketball blogs”, “basketball coaching blogs”, “NBA blogs”, “sports coaching blogs”, “high school basketball blog”, etc.

If you do these searches on multiple search engines (bing, google, ask.com, etc) you will come up with more options than if you were to only search on google.

Once you have found related, high quality blogs you should either bookmark them, put them in a spreadsheet, etc. Keeping track of everything can save headaches later on.

After finding and organizing your potential candidates you should subscribe to, or “follow” their blog. This normally involves submitting your email address and/or website with some simple personal information. After subscribing you will be updated (by email) of any new posts, & of replies to any of your own comments made on other people’s blog.

*Note-It might be a good idea to make a new email address dedicated entirely to following others’ blogs. This way you can separate your personal email and your blog related email.

2. Interact with the related blogs you have found

Most blog owners will post updates anywhere from 1-10 X per week. Considering the amount of related blogs you may have found, this can be an overwhelming amount of information to comment on or add to. As a result, it is wise to only interact with blog posts that you are either very knowledgeable on or feel strongly about. You have to be saying something important or enlightening to persuade other readers that you are an expert. After a few comments, regular readers of the related blogs will recognize your expertise, and in turn check out your own blog – this will lead to more followers for you.

*Note you don’t always have to disagree with a blog post to feel strongly about it. If a post is written particularly well and you find it informative, its not a bad idea to comment about why you enjoyed/agreed with the post and what specifically you liked about it. This can result in happy blog owners, who may eventually ask for you to write a guest blog post.

It is a good idea to mix-up the type of comments that you make. Some can be a debate if you disagree with something. Some can be made in agreement with a post. Others still may add on something that was stated. Its important to switch it up so that you don’t look negative or like a yes-man. You want to stimulate thought with your posts.

The goal of commenting on other blogs is to gain backlinks to your own blog, as well as establish credibility in your community. When commenting on others’ posts there is usually a spot for your own website, which will be hyperlinked through your name. It will look similar to this- Mauro Panaggio says: – The link should link to your blog (mauropanaggio.blogspot.com).

3. Comment on basketball related articles & news

The internet is filled with basketball articles and news. Start by doing a search for the different types of articles you would like to add to.

Use searches like “basketball articles”, “basketball coaching articles”, “basketball defense articles”, “basketball offense articles”, “free-throw articles”, etc

Use any relevant keywords with the word “articles” or “article” at the end and you will know doubt find thousands of possible places to comment and add a link back to your blog. Get creative with your searches. You can be as specific or broad as you like. Things like “Orlando Magic articles” and “Orlando Magic strategy articles” will all yield different results. Focus on the highest ranking articles, as these will be seen more and result in more people reading your comments. The only exception is with broad searches like “basketball articles”. In this case it is possible that the first 5-10 pages could all get enough traffic to justify a comment.

The second part of this step is to stay up with current basketball news. These get the most traffic, however there are usually many comments. This can make it easy for yours to get lost and overlooked. It is important to pay attention to the regulars commenting on these types of articles. They are usually leads to find new blogs and possible interaction/networking. When commenting on news articles, it is important to keep your responses shorter and to the point. Don’t forget to add your website’s hyperlink.

4. Submitting to relevant blog directories

In order to make it so that your blog is easily found, it can help to submit to multiple blog directories. This involves doing a number of searches. Use keywords followed by the word “blog(s)” + the words “directory” or “directories”

“Basketball blog directory”, “Coaching bog directory”, and “Sports blog directory” are all good starts. These may not return very many relevant results, though.

After this, try searching for and submitting to general blog directories.

“blog directory”, “blog directories”, and “free blog directory” are good searches to start with.

*Note do not spend too much time on this step It is much less important then the other steps and can be implemented when the others have already been done for the day. This process can be frustrating and time consuming.

5. Look for guest blogging opportunities

There are many websites dedicated to bringing together bloggers and people looking for guest blog spots. Start with some simple searches and elaborate as needed.

“Basketball guest blogging” “Guest blogging opportunities” etc

In most cases you will have to sign up as a member at these sites (its usually free). This step can help gain a lot of exposure for your blog as well as provide relevant backlinks.

6. Turn your blogs into articles

Many informative blog posts can be “spun” into articles and submitted to numerous article sites. If done correctly this can result in increased exposure and useful backlinks. Some of the most effective article websites are: EzineArticles, ArticlesBase, GoArticles, and ArticleDashboard.

Spinning your blog posts into articles is an art. The key is to develop content that sounds very interesting (good title) and targets keywords with high search density.

7. Writing effective blog posts

While you should provide lots of fundamental and skill related content for your blog, it is important to spread this out among more light hearted blog posts. For example, in one week you may do a posts about “Motivating your team when they are losing”, “5 coaches who should be fired”, and “Why ____ could have helped the Magic beat the Jazz”.

Some posts should be strictly informative, others opinions, some made as commentary about recent games or events, and others a combination of all 3.

It is important to keep the blog posts at a reasonable length, as attention spans are short nowadays. Also be aware of others who may be commenting on your posts, and be sure to respond if the situation requires it. Constructive interaction may lead more word of mouth followers. Just be sure to keep an open mind when dealing with others’ opinions. You always get the occasional jerks or idiots who don’t know what they are talking about.

Be sure to include any relevant pictures, links, or audio/video that may help your readers. This can make the difference between a good or bad post.

Remember to determine who your readers are (or who you want them to be) and cater to them.

8. Utilize existing channels and contacts

This one is a no brainer. After you have made a few posts and your blog is looking good, reach out to anyone you already know and that might be interested. Ex players, coaches, and anyone else who might pass along the word. Use emails, Facebook, and even phone calls to inform others about your blog and encourage them to tell their friends.

This step will help you gain a good base of followers and is a great starting point. It is much harder to gain followers you don’t know, especially if you currently have little no none to begin with. People tend to follow blogs that already have a lot of followers, so starting with the low hanging fruit is key.

C. Wise – Father of 2 Currently Living in FL. Dedicated This Guide To his Grandfather. Best Coach In The World (on and off the court). Designs Bar Mitzvah invitations and custom wrapping paper for Expressionables

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