Month: July 2008

It’s time to create the thank you pages for our autoresponder.

This isn’t strictly necessary, since Traffic Wave provides generic thank you pages for us. But, for the same reasons we hosted our own opt-in page when Traffic Wave would have provided one for us, it’s a good idea to host our own thank you pages. By hosting our own, we can use Google Analytics to measure drop outs down the sign up funnel, and we can provide more useful thank you pages than what Traffic Wave provides.

There are two thank you pages we’ll need to write. One will thank the user for filling out the opt-in form and pressing Submit, and the other will thank them for clicking the confirmation link they are then sent.

Basic Skeleton

Use the same basic page skeleton for each page, to maintain a consistent look. I recommend using a branded logo at the top, and the ebook or product cover on the left. See my own pages for Link Cloaking 101 for a simple example. These pages do not have to be fancy, they need to load quickly and provide the information the user needs.

Opt-in Thank You

You’ll hear a lot about how you should provide one-time-offers on your thank you pages. The opt-in thank you page is not that page!

The only purpose of the opt-in thank you page is to encourage the person to click the confirmation link they’ll be sent. They are not your subscriber yet, they’ve just expressed an interest in being your subscriber. Traffic Wave uses a double opt-in process, so they only become your subscriber when they click on the confirmation link. So the opt-in thank you page should give them instructions on what email address the email will be coming from, suggest they white list it, and give them a link back to the opt-in page in case they need to try again with a different email address.

Confirmation Thank You

This page thanks them for becoming a subscriber, and this is the one where you want to put a one-time offer if you choose to do so, or a link to a related site that you have a relationship with (or your own related site).

A one-time offer on this page must be laser targeted to the topic of your list. If you’ve just given away an ebook, don’t assume they’ve read it yet (after all, they just clicked on the confirmation link!) Personally, I don’t use or like one-time offers on thank you pages. But, they are a great place for a link or two to other sites that you’d like your subscribers to visit.

Upload Both Pages

Put both pages on your web server in whatever location you like. Make sure that you can type the URL for both into your web browser and see the correct pages come up. We’ll use those URLs in the next tutorial when we create our opt-in page.

Almost there!

I’ll use Thursday for this post to keep up with the momentum from yesterday.

We saw last time how to create our autoresponder. Now we need to upload our file that contains our free gift to our web space, and create an autoresponder message that provides a download link. You should also create a few more messages that are helpful, to start to build trust with your subscribers. I’ll leave that part up to you.

Uploading The File

You’ll upload this the same way you upload anything to your web host. You’re uploading a single file, so you could use the file manager on Cpanel pretty easily. A couple of things to watch for:

1) Don’t put the file someplace obvious. For example, at /gift/MyGiftName.zip. Otherwise people might be able to guess the location and get it without signing up for your list.

2) Put an index.html in the directory with the gift file. This prevents someone from seeing all the files in that directory. The index.html can just be blank, or can contain a link to your opt-in page, or whatever.

Creating The First Message

Make sure you know what the direct download link for your gift file is. If you put it in /gifts/MyGiftName.zip, it’d be http://www.example.com/gifts/MyGiftName.zip. Log into your Traffic Wave area and get back to the autoresponder you created, so that you’re viewing the Campaign Profile.

From the menu across the top of the profile, choose Letters and Create New Letter

You’ll get to the letter composition screen. The first bit to enter is the subject. Just beneath the subject edit field is a button that will allow you to add in the recipient’s name (at least, the name they entered when the opted in to your list) to the subject. I recommend using that to personalize this email a bit.

The body of the email is created using a typical WYSIWYG editor. One of the controls allows you to add in the recipient’s name, which I recommend doing for personalization. It’s the one that is labeled Custom Tokens.

When you click that you get a screen with various things you can add in. Most opt-in forms only ask for their first name and email, so Name is usually what you’ll want to add to personalize the message.

Type in a welcoming message to the new subscrber, and don’t forget to include the download link! Then click on Save This Letter, across the top of the editing window. You’ll end up on the screen that will eventually show all the letters you’ve written, but for now only shows the one. As the message across the top says, your new letter has been put into the Held area. These are letters that are not sent out as part of the normal autoresponder sequence (typically letters you broadcast to everyone at the same time, telling them about an offer, or new information, or whatever).

But you want this letter to be sent out immediately, so put a 0 in the # Days Delay edit field and click Submit Delay Changes.

Your letter is now all set to be automatically sent to subscribers as soon as they click the confirmation link!

Next we’ll look at getting the thank you pages created. We do that before the opt-in page because Traffic Wave needs those pages to exist before it’ll create the skeleton of the opt-in page.

Last post I mentioned that I wrote an ebook for the Auto Pilot Cash Streams giveaway (as a reader, you can get it here without signing up for the giveaway: Link Cloaking 101).

As part of that whole process, I had to set up an autoresponder, opt-in page, custom thank you pages, the whole bit. After all, the whole point to giving the ebook away is to build a list of people interested in link cloaking. Capturing the names and emails in an autoresponder will allow me to send periodic emails to the list when new developments or products are available.

Since the whole process is fresh in my mind, I thought I’d do a series of tutorials covering it. That way those of you who haven’t been through it before can get involved in the giveaway with a minimum of fuss. This series does not cover writing the ebook, you’re on your own for that. If you want to get involved in the giveaway, and don’t feel like you can write anything, buy some PLR articles and make them chapters in an ebook.

Today’s tutorial will cover setting up the autoresponder itself.

I assume you already have an account at Traffic Wave. If you don’t have one, they have a 30-day free trial so you can follow along with the tutorial and get things set up before you decide if you want to pay for a membership. Personally, I see Traffic Wave and Aweber as being the two autoresponder services to choose from.

Note that the screenshots in the following are accurate as of today. Traffic Wave is continually upgrading its system and adding features, so the screenshots might not be accurate if you’re reading this in the future.

Create Your Autoresponder

Log into your Traffic Wave account, and select the Autoresponder Campaigns menu item (shown below):

That will take you to the list of autoresponders you already have, which presumably is empty (if it isn’t, you probably don’t need this tutorial). There’ll be a list of options on the left (shown below). Choose “Create New Campaign” from that list.

The next screen will ask you for the campaign nickname and campaign description. The campaign nickname cannot have spaces in it, while the campaign description may.

Fill out the fields and click the “Create New Campaign” button. You’ll get a confirmation screen that talks about an email address. You won’t be using that email address, so just ignore that confirmation (shown below), and click “Confirm”.

You’ll next get the campaign profile screen. These fields will be filled out already, but you’ll want to change some of them.

The return email name defaults to your complete name. If you’ve written the ebook under a pseudonym, change this field to the name you used. You may also decide you only want your first name to show here. If so, change the field to what you want to show in emails sent out to the subscribers.

The return email address defaults to whatever email you used when you signed up to Traffic Wave. I recommend changing this to an email address specific for the ebook itself. That way all replies go to that email address and don’t clutter up your main email.

The campaign title will show up in a few places, to change it to something that represents your actual ebook title. Do not click “Publish these letters”. Click “Submit Profile Changes”, and you’ll end up back at the Campaign Profile page.

Your autoresponder is now set up!

Of course, we still have some tasks to complete before we can use it. These include:

1) Upload the ebook to a directory on your domain, and create a first letter in your autoresponder with the download link
2) Create custom thank you pages to host on your domain
3) Create an opt-in page to host on your domain

Note that Traffic Wave does provide some default opt-in and thank you pages. I do not recommend that you use these! Not only do they look pretty generic, but you don’t get to put your analytics code into them, so you won’t get information about how many people sign up but fail to confirm, etc. Google Analytics in particular has goal tracking that will let you see at a glance the numbers for the funnel that starts at the opt-in page and ends up at the second thank you page.

The next in this series will cover uploading the ebook and creating that first autoresponder message.

I wrote an ebook for the Auto Pilot Cash Streams giveaway (as a reader of the blog, you can get it here without signing up for the giveaway: Link Cloaking 101).

It took a bit of research to figure out just how to create the PDF for the ebook, so I wanted to share the results of the research with you. That way, you won’t have to waste that time but can start writing your ebook quicker.

I decided to use Open Office rather than Microsoft Word, because Open Office has an export to PDF built into it. With Word, you have to install a printer driver, too. You can download Open Office and install it, or if you don’t want to install another program on your system, go to OpenOffice.org Portable to get a version that you just unzip and use.

The next step is to find a nice template to use. An ebook really should have some consistent graphics from page to page, not just be black text and white page. I used a template from the EZ Ebooks Template Package #5. It’s well worth the $4 for the templates so I didn’t have to fool with creating graphics myself (although I did end up needing to modify one of the images slightly, so it fit on the page better).

Note that the templates in the package are not templates in the Open Office sense. You don’t install them as templates and then create a new document using that template. Instead, you just open the template file like any other document, save it to a new file name, and then start typing in your contents. Each template has instructions in it if any of the images or anything needs to be modified before use. Pick a template you like the looks of, and get started writing!

When you’re all done with the ebook, use Open Office’s File->Export To PDF option to create a nice looking PDF from your document.

In later posts, I’ll go through the process of setting up your autoresponder, creating an opt-in form, and getting your PDF in the hands of your subscribers.

I’ve written before about giving away free stuff to build a list.

These days, it isn’t enough to just give away something free, you practically have to join one of the big giveaway events. These things have popped up like weeds lately, usually around some sort of holiday. Auto Pilot Cash Streams is a new one that will open its doors on August 1st. If you’ve ever thought about giving away something to build a list, this is a great opportunity to jump into the beginning of a major giveaway.

Auto Pilot Cash Streams works pretty much the same as the rest of the giveaways. Members sign up to each contributor’s list in order to download their product for free. Products do not have to be original, you can repackage a PLR product if you want. Remember that this is your reputation, so you do want something that’s useful, not just junk. But there are a lot of good PLR products out there, or you can write a short ebook as a way to get people interested in a product you want to sell.

Auto Pilot Cash Streams also sends out regular emails with offers in them to the members, two a week. Some of those members will purchase items through the offer, and if you referred them to the site then you’ll get a commission on the sale.

Build a list, and earn a bit, too.

Okay, so you’re thinking, how do I take advantage of this giveaway?

1) Join Auto Pilot Cash Streams as a contributor. This is free, but of course they’ll offer you an upgrade for a one-time fee. Read about the advantages and use your own judgment on the upgrade (for me, the ability to download all the gifts without opting in to any lists was worth the fee all by itself).

2) Set up an opt-in page to let people sign up to get your free gift.

3) Set up a one-time offer related to your free gift to earn a bit on these opt-ins right away.

4) Put your gift into Auto Pilot Cash Streams

5) Let people know about the site

Simple, right? Yeah, #2 and #3 are a bit tricky. The opt-in page can be done by anyone with a bit of HTML, or if you use a nice autoresponder service they might provide opt-in pages for you. The one-time offer is harder, and generally not something you’ll just throw together, since it involves payment processing. You could put something together with some of the free payment processing services I’ve reviewed recently, but the most convenient way of doing both #2 and #3 is using Rapid Action Profits. This tool not only builds your list and provides for one-time offers and payment processing, it also allows people to become your affiliates in exchange for a commission on the one-time offer.

If you cannot manage setting up a one-time offer, it’s still worth it to join and put an opt-in page together to build a list. Just remember that the list you build will be interested in the gift you are giving. If you provide a gift talking about affiliate marketing, don’t send offers to the list for golf ebooks. Keep your offers targeted, or you’ll lose the list as quickly as you built it.

Oh, and I do plan on trying to put together something to give away for this. Any topics you’re particularly interested in seeing my take on?

P.S. If you’re not interested in joining to give something away, you can still join as a contributor and promote the site to earn from any offers your referrals purchase. It isn’t necessary to actually contribute a gift to earn from referring others. If you go this route, sign up through this page, and then promote it in traffic exchanges. It won’t cost you anything, and might earn you a bit over time.

I’ve written before about the potential of local marketing.

Things like billboards, postcard mailers, advertising on downtown benches, that sort of thing. There are wonderful possibilities to get your message in front of different eyes, and perhaps find a whole new audience for what you’re selling.

I recently got a postcard mailer at home claiming, “Receive $1,000, $5,000, or $10,000 Daily By Inviting People To Your Website…”, and it went on to list all the things you wouldn’t be doing. Things like selling products, pushing ebooks, calling people, or pretty much anything. Supposedly it’s all automatic.

I give the person who sent this out credit for thinking outside the box. They did a pretty good job with the postcard, the purpose of which is to get someone to go to a website. It turns out that they’re using a domain redirect, so that on the postcard they have a catchy, easy to remember website address. When you go there, it takes you to a popular gifting system’s affiliate link.

While most people who’ve been around much at all won’t touch gifting systems, using a postcard mailer to get to a less savvy audience is a fine idea. Someone with a website who isn’t involved with online marketing might just bite, and gifting systems are such that a fairly low conversion rate would still turn a profit.

I don’t recommend any gifting program, but this particular example shows how you can match a particular opportunity to a less skeptical audience by using offline marketing. Think about how you might be able to do the same for whatever your primary business happens to be.