autoresponder

May

2010

WordPress Plugin Nickel Sale – Subscribers Only

UPDATE: I’ve put the opening back to Tuesday 1st June at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) – see this post for details.

Following on from the very popular WordPress AutoResponder plugin (WPAR) I released last month, I now have another plugin that is both great as a standalone plugin but also complements WPAR perfectly.

It’s called “Subscribers Only”…

(BTW, there’s a new version of WPAR now available – v1.3.3 – which you can go download from your personal download page. We hope that we’ve now fixed the niggling little problems that a few people were having and that it’s stable for everybody. We’ve also added a couple of extra features too.)

While WPAR makes it possible for you to easily gather subscribers on your blog(s), this new plugin virtually forces people to become WordPress subscribers.

Note the subtle difference in terminology here.

WPAR subscribers are people which have requested to join your blog mailing list and will be sent email messages on a schedule you set and also allows you to send out broadcast emails.

WordPress subscribers are people who join your blog using the built in WordPress sign up page.

(You can tell WordPress to only allow people to comment on your blog if they’ve first joined up. You’ll find this under “Settings >> Discussion” in your WordPress admin panel.)

Okay? See the difference? WPAR subscribers and regular WP subscribers.

So what does this new plugin do?

Well, it’s called “Subscribers Only” and what it does is it hides parts of pages and posts and shows non-WP-subscribers a message that they need to subscribe in order to read the content.

This is DYNAMITE.

Imagine this.

You write a post or a page that explains how important it is to do something – the WHY – but then leave out the crucial bit that explains the method of doing it – the HOW.

All they see is a message saying something like “This content is for Subscribers Only”. Get it?

The only way that people can read that missing content is if they follow the link and join as WP subscribers, then once they’re logged in they can see it all.

Do you see the power of that?

How about making it a little bit more powerful and more persuasive?

Well, we’ve also made a change to WPAR so that you can now tick a box to say that any new WP subscribers also get automatically added to WPAR. (Any new WPAR subscribers already get automatically added as WP subscribers.)

So the moment a visitor to your blog reads a post with some missing content and subscribes to be able to read it, they also get added to your autoresponder sequence.

In fact you can just point people to your WPAR sign up page or sidebar box, and they will automatically get added to both WPAR and as regular WP subscribers.

Do you see why I say this is DYNAMITE?

Every single WordPress post you make can now be a source of new subscribers. You don’t really need to write an ebook to give away in return for a name and email address, you can just blog and hide some of the content.

You can even go through some of your older posts that you know get search traffic and amend them, removing key information that can only now be seen by subscribers.

Okay, that’s enough explanation I think. This will become part of the PluginGreat.com premium plugins, and will eventually be sold for $27.

But before that, I’m holding a nickel sale so you can get it at the lowest possible price.

UPDATE: On Tuesday 1st June at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST), I’ll be kicking off the nickel sale here on this blog.

***WARNING***

A nickel sale I did a few months ago went a bit pear shaped as the autoresponder service I was using failed to send out the email until nearly 2 hours after it was supposed to go out. Many people were left waiting for it but didn’t get it until many sales had already gone through, and so didn’t get as good a deal as they would have done.

So my advice is, if you want to be one of the first to grab it and get it at it’s lowest price, keep an eye on my blog.

Regardless of whether or not the email is sent out on time, if you hang around on my blog at start time, you’ll see a post appear with the location of the nickel sale. Okay?

That’s how lots of people got in early last time.

-Frank Haywood

Apr

2010

WordPress AutoResponder Plugin Now Live

Sorry, I’m late, I got stuck while out and only got back a few minutes ago.

The Nickel Sale for the WordPress AutoResponder Plugin is now live and the link you’re after is:-

NICKEL SALE CLOSED

Apr

2010

WordPress AutoResponder Nickel Sale

UPDATE: The Nickel Sale is over but you can purchase the WordPress AutoResponder using the payment button below.

***

As you might have guessed from the title, the plugin I’ll be launching is a WordPress autoresponder.

I’ve long thought about how nice it would be to have a simple autoresponder *plugin* rather than have to mess about with setting it all up in an autoresponder service. I don’t know about you but I’ve always thought it a bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut.

I have plenty of little niche blogs that I’d like to gather names and email addresses through, but because they’re niche sites, it’s never seemed worth the hassle of setting it up in the autoresponder service I use.

I mean, come on, how useful is it in my main niche to gather a list of people interested in petrol lawn mowers for instance? 😉

Even ignoring the niche aspect of the plugin, I figured that for lots of people just starting out that the last thing they’d purchase is a monthly autoresponder service.

If you stop and think about it, there are plenty of bloggers out there setting up their first sites who have read that they need to be gathering email addresses, but aren’t quite sure about it all, and don’t want to commit to a service.

So I looked around to see what was available in the way of AR plugins for us marketers. I expected to find at least one half decent plugin, but to my surprise the one that really looked promising didn’t allow you to gather a name – all you could get was an email address.

Also, the interface was a bit clunky and it meant you had to go to different areas of the WP admin panel to do different things. I wanted it all in one menu area.

And then there was no widget so you could easily place the form in the sidebar like I do on my personal blog. I know that’s very effective, and is important to have in.

There were a couple of other plugins that sort of claimed to do the job, but it was clear they’d all been planned by developers not marketers. Many of them are just simple list mailers and have no kind of delayed autoresponder ability. It seemed that nobody really knew quite what it was that WE needed.

And that’s why I created this plugin.

I fully intend to turn it into a powerful tool that’s a first choice for bloggers, and my pledge is that all minor version releases up to v2 will be free upgrades. I have some great ideas for it as I really know what’s lacking from many autoresponder services – I’ve felt that pain.

So on Friday 30th April at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST), I’ll be kicking off this nickel sale.

***WARNING***

The last nickel sale I did a few months ago went a bit pear shaped as the autoresponder service I was using failed to send out the email until nearly 2 hours after it was supposed to go out. Many people were left waiting for it but didn’t get it until many sales had already gone through, and so didn’t get as good a deal as they would have done.

So my advice is, if you want to be one of the first to grab it and get it at it’s lowest price, keep an eye on my blog.

Regardless of whether or not the email is sent out on time, if you hang around on my blog at start time, you’ll see a post appear with the location of the nickel sale. Okay?

That’s how lots of people got in early last time, and that’s probably how it will happen this time too.

-Frank Haywood

Aug

2009

Automated List Building

How would you like to INCREASE the size of your current mailing list, or even just start building one if you’re new to all this?

For FREE (my favourite word).

Read on.

If you consider yourself a newbie, then you might be finding it difficult to get it all started and I understand that, I’ve been there too. If that’s the case I can tell you right now, the MOST worthwhile thing you can do for your business on a daily basis is to build a mailing list.

Even a few hundred subscribers can generate enough monthly income to enable you to buy a new car for instance, by enabling you to pay the monthly loan amount. Or maybe take a nice holiday somewhere, or get an extension on your house. The same principles apply, it doesn’t matter how you spend the money. 😉

You’d generate this income either by selling products you’ve created yourself, or by acting as an affiliate and promoting other people’s products and earning a commission from it. Many affiliate schemes in the internet marketing niche pay 50% or more, and some of them 100% paid instantly.

If this is really new to you, then you might wonder why anyone would offer 100% commissions on a product. That’s simple – they’re list building! You get the full payment for the product and they get a new subscriber courtesy of you.

I do that too, my latest product at WPAffiliatePages.com pays 100% and is one of my list builders. You email your own list or write a nice review, publish it on your blog and you get 100% commissions. I get new subscribers and we all win.

Don’t EVER worry about losing subscribers. Some people are a good “fit” for you and what you do, and some aren’t. If you’re telling them about truly useful products and also giving them good content too, then they likely won’t ever leave. Some will, but it’s never anything to get hung up about.

That aside, I know you’ll want to sign up to a new free service I’ve just found that will build a list for you on autopilot. I’m using it here on this blog now, and you may have already closed the box to read this. Refresh the page if you want to see it again – it will only show itself 5 times to you as long as you have cookies enabled in your browser.

But before I tell you about that, ask yourself if you have a useful product that you can offer to people to get them to sign up to your mailing list. You need a good bribe. 😉

You might also want to follow up with some useful content before you start promoting to your new subscribers. So think long and hard about that and jot down a plan right after you’ve signed up to this new service I’m telling you about – it’s what’s known as a co-registration service.

This kind of co-reg set up is used by many HUGE publishing companies so you’re in good company by doing this.

The way it works in this case is to present a javascript box on your web site that not only presents your own subscription offer, but also related and similar other mailing lists with a couple of them already ticked. All that your visitors have to do is enter their name and email address and not only do they sign up to your mailing list, they also sign up to any others they’ve selected too.

The GREAT thing about this is your own mailing list ads are showing up on other web sites too, so you’ll soon begin to pick up subscribers from other sites.

IF you’ve made a good enough offer.

Once you’ve set it up on your own site then your ads immediately become active on other peoples sites too.

I’ve just installed it on my own blog, and here’s a great tip and is the way I’ve implemented it myself. There’s a WordPress plugin called (strangely) “What Would Seth Godin Do?” and you can get it from here:-

http://richardkmiller.com/wordpress-plugin-what-would-seth-godin-do

What it’s supposed to do is to show a small RSS subscription box at the top of all your posts for a limited number of times per visitor (it’s fully configurable). So by default it shows the RSS message for 5 times when you activate it, and then disappears permanently for your regular visitors so it no longer annoys them by showing every time. Clever.

You can bend it to do other things too…

So rather than show a message, you can just paste the little bit of javascript into it which shows the co-reg box.

Aha!

So after 5 (or whatever) visits by your regulars, they will no longer see the co-reg box as by that time they’re either signed up or they’re never going to do it. Even if you decide not to sign up to the co-reg service, I’m sure this WordPress plugin will come in very handy for other things you might want to do on your blog.

The final bit of the puzzle is which autoresponder service to use with this free list building service, and that’s an easy one.

Even though there’s another autoresponder service surfaced recently, the smart money is on:-

http://www.frankhaywood.com/go/imail/

There are some great benefits to using this autoresponder, and I’ve spoken to the owner (someone I’ve known for a while now) and he’s got even more great stuff coming – new development seems to be happening every day. I’m 100% confident that this service will replace Aweber and GetResponse for many people, me included.

The big deals for me with this new service are the built in API, and the choices available as to how you configure it – you’re not locked into doing things the way Aweber forces you to for instance. Importantly, I’ll be building support for this service into all my products as we bring out new versions, so if you’re in the market for a new (or your first) autoresponder, this is without doubt the one to go for. It’s so flexible I plan to do some videos showing how to get the best out of it, so watch out for those.

So, what have we got?

#1 – WordPress Plugin
http://richardkmiller.com/wordpress-plugin-what-would-seth-godin-do

#2 – New (and extremely cool) Autoresponder Service
http://www.frankhaywood.com/go/imail/

…and finally…

#3 – Co-reg List Building Service

http://www.frankhaywood.com/go/lc/

That’s a 1-2-3 knockout. 😉

-Frank Haywood

Jul

2009

Buses Always Come In Threes

At least they do in the UK.

You spend ages waiting for one and then they all turn up together.

I’ve been waiting in what seems like a decent new product drought for months, and then along come not one, but FOUR new products I want to tell you about. They’re all great in different ways, and I don’t want to spoil it for any of them by promoting them all at the same time and causing any confusion.

Ironically, the other day I wrote about people complaining because I send out too many emails, when the truth is I hardly send out any at all when you compare it to most of the mailing lists I’m on.

Well, right now I feel like I want to send you 4 emails a day.

I can’t help but get excited when there’s good stuff arrives. It’s just such a rare occasion compared to the 98% of the time that I see drivel being promoted undeservedly.

So when I find something good, I get “all jumpy and downy” and I WANT to tell you about it. 😉

The most exciting at the moment (and sheer overwhelming value for money) is this:-

http://www.frankhaywood.com/go/npc2s/

or if you prefer videos to long sales copy, this:-

http://www.frankhaywood.com/go/npc2/

Personally I prefer long sales copy, but I know lots of people prefer videos, so why not have a choice?

On top of that there’s been an update to a nice little script I promoted a few weeks ago, and I really want to tell you about that too.

Next up is a really cool product about eBay affiliate marketing. Excellent stuff.

And maybe the cream of the crop (and something I grabbed access to yesterday at launch) is a new autoresponder service which I have NO DOUBT is going to firmly kick the butt of both A weber and Get Response.

The existing services have always harped on about deliverability and has been the one reason that many marketers have used them. Well this autoresponder service is set to offer just as high a deliverability rate as either of the other two. The owner has spent the last 12 months making sure that ISPs know about him and it and ensuring that emails get through their network filters.

This new service is so good I’ll be:-

#1 – Flipping all my mailing lists over to it.
#2 – Building tight integration into it through all my products (where appropriate).

In fact I spent about 3 hours yesterday chatting with the owner and also with Paul about both the “Web Service Integration” it offers and the built in API.

YES!

An API. Woohoo!

API means “Application Programmers Interface”. What *that* means is that developers will be able to write their own code to do things *like* remotely move subscribers from one list to another without the subscriber having to do anything or even being aware.

So for instance, you might start with a prospect on a prospects mailing list, and then when they buy you can automatically move them to the customers mailing list. Or at least the script can do it for you automatically if the developer has programmed it in.

That is incredibly useful to be able to do.

We intend to make sure the next version of SmartDD will have the integration built in, and also our upcoming Content Management System (CMSA). (By the way – we may rename SDD and release it as a completely new product, yeah I know, lots of changes though and it really deserves a new product name so we can give it a proper launch.)

And if you use a bit of imagination, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to offer free content on a membership site to people as long as they stay on your mailing list? The deal would be that in return you get to promote various offers to them. If they unsusbcribe, they automatically lose access.

Well you can do that with this new service. You can’t do that with Aweber because there’s no API.

Well, I’ll be playing with the autoresponder over the next few days, and when I know my way round it, I’ll tell you all about it.

What I’ll likely do is create new mailing lists and slowly replace my existing sign up forms with the new one. It’ll be a bit fiddly for a while, but well worth it in the long run.