3 Ways to Grow Your Email List By Blogging
Blogging has become the new main way information, articles, and videos are being published online to view. People turn to the internet for information, and also want to read from a regular writer.
They want articles that inform, educate, and entertain. Since so many people receive these benefits from blogs, they’re also a great way to drive traffic to your site regularly. Creating a blog can take some work, but here’s a method I’ve used plenty of times that’s really simple.
Setting up WordPress
Before you can begin creating your blog, you’ll need a blogging platform. WordPress is easily the most popular option and with good reason. It’s powerful enough to run a big website, versatile enough to handle anything, and popular enough that there are countless themes and plugins for it.
Setting up WordPress is as simple as can be. Most hosting plans will have an option to automatically install it onto your server with just the click of a button (look for SimpleScripts).
If you need to install it yourself, simply download it for free. You then upload it to your server, create a new database for it, and follow the instructions. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Or, check out Fiverr.com for freelancers who can do it for $5.
If you plan on making money online, look at your blog as an additional way to attract new visitors and prospects to offer products and services to…NOT as a business model where you’re paid totally off ad revenue.
Placing ads in the sidebar
The look and layout of a blog is determined by the theme you use. Most themes will allow you to place image ads in the sidebar column. These ads will appear on nearly every page of your blog and can be a great way to promote your offers and get people clicking through to your squeeze and sales pages.
Since you’re creating this blog to either make money or generate leads, utilizing this ability to advertise on your blog is crucial. Some bloggers prefer to create their own ads that link to an offer. Others, however, will simply use Google Ads or a similar service and let them decide what ads to put up.
Placing ads in the article
The articles posted to your blog can also be a great place to advertise. It’s easy to add text links to the content of an article.
And, this is a very unobtrusive way to advertise. Since these are text-based links, they fit perfectly into the body of an article. Not everyone can read code, so you can add a link to your WordPress blog post simply by pressing the hyperlink button right above where you enter the article text.
Placing ads after the article
Blog articles are a perfect way to presell someone on an offer. Let’s say you run a blog about dating and you’re offering a product that helps someone plan the perfect date. Writing a blog post about how important it is to plan out a date will put your readers into a receptive state.
Placing an ad at the end of this article is the best way to capitalize on that.
Most ads like this will be horizontal banners and are often visually eye-catching, or use animation. Popup footers, on the other hand, are a new technology which I and many others have found to be very effective.
These are the three main ways to use a blog to attract visitors and then transport them to the page where you call them to action of some kind. Getting people to these “money pages” is absolutely key for success online.
If creating a website or writing regular posts sounds just a bit too complicated or time-consuming, here’s something else you may want to try. My “21 simple steps to making your first $1,200 online,“ even if you have no computer skills whatsoever may be perfect for you.