Monetizing blog traffic and list building
Monetizing your blog and building your list are two of the biggest questions I get consistently every time I run a survey.There is a new plugin that was just released that can help you do both. I did a review of Optin Pop plugin on the WordPress blog yesterday. You can read the full review on how it works there.
I wanted to write today about some ways to use this especially for a marketing blog. I have been beta testing it for over a month so have had a chance to use it in a couple of ways. It has two versions a free and a paid. To both monetize your blog and build your list at the same time takes the paid version. That is what this discussion will be about.
First a couple examples.
Three Turtle Marketing blog despite being set up primarily for marketing information gets quite a bit of traffic from people looking for information on turtles. Primarily because the structure of the blog is to tell a story about the three turtles and relate that to a marketing lesson. It isn’t optimized for it but as it is set up properly and Google loves blogs it shows quite high in the rankings for a variety of turtle based keywords.
Aside – When I first started the blog I had looked at the niche and whether or not it would be worth the effort to work the topic as I was already interested in turtles it would be easy to start becoming an expert but the potential monetization and amount of traffic did not look worthwhile. I did while researching find a good product that could be sold but just one.
The plugin allows me to rotate an offer to sign up for updates to build my readership list once followed by an offer for the Turtle Guide for those people that had arrived looking for information on turtles. As the ad only shows once per day and only on exit it does not aggravate the readers and it has sold a couple of the products. Not a lot of money but considering the traffic on the blog I am quite happy with it.
This blog is the other example.
I do the same type of thing here.
The first time someone comes here they get an offer to sign up for the updates but every time after that they get an offer for a free site with an OTO or a squeeze page for a couple other lists I have to promote specific products. All of those offers are targeted to the audience here for products such as
and a few others. The pop just says “Before you go check this out”.
This has resulted in adding referrals to all of the various programs and adding additional subscribers to the update list.
By doing it the same way and setting it to only once a day and only on exit it is not intrusive but has proven to be very effective.
Check out Optin Pop plugin and use it to add extra subscribers and monetization to your blog.
Mike Paetzold
Disclaimer: Some of the links mentioned within this post or posts it may lead to are my affiliate links and in such case I will get compensated for recommending those products. However, I will never recommend something that I don't personally believe in and I welcome your questions and feedback.
April 3rd, 2009 at 8:00 am
Hey Mike,
I picked up the free version last night after your post, but your sure are making a great case for the paid version. Going to have to take a serious look at it now. Looks like a great product with a ton of potential.
Thanks,
April 3rd, 2009 at 8:35 am
Mike,
Thanks for the review.
I will have to check this out, looks like something that can be very useful for marketers.
Appreciate the help.
Ron
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:11 am
Ah, yesterday I was thinking its value was offering a two fer, now I see it have more potential. Thanks for clarifying.
April 3rd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Mike, This looks like a very useful plugin. I especially want to check out the ability to “rotate an offer to sign up for updates to build my readership…”
Looks like the plugin has several good features.
April 3rd, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Mike,
Good post. Actually a real good example of getting a lot of benefits out of one post: the exit pop-up, excellent series of related links…
Now I have to go back and read the upgrade offer…
Fred
April 3rd, 2009 at 3:53 pm
You sure do make a strong case for this plugin Mike – easy to see you really enjoy using it!
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:19 pm
I like the further explanation between the free and paid version. It does look like the paid version might be more beneficial for making some money. I thank you for the review and I will have to give it another look see.
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:03 pm
I like how the ad can rotate, since most pop up type of scripts don’t allow it and it ends up taking a lot of time to manually change and track them. This looks like something every marketer needs, a simple and easy to use ad system which is basically hands off.