As John Chow discusses in his free Ultimate Blog Profit Model eBook, a lot (if not most) money made from a blog is in the "back end"... The back end consists of capturing leads and sending them a series of emails passing them through your sales funnel. He goes into quite a bit of deal about it (in plain English I might add). Now.. one method he discusses for capturing leads is by adding what's called a light box opt in form. In this post I will go through the steps of adding one to your site.
The AWeber light box newsletter opt in form "pops up" above your content when (or shortly after) a visitor arrives on your site (and on any page you want). They have the option to opt in to the newsletter or close the light box. The light box is very similar to a standard pop up opt in box except the background fades away placing focus on the light box. You probably seen the light box upon arriving to this blog.
I set mine to "fade-in" after a couple seconds and to only show once per visitor (unless they remove the cookie). All these settings are configurable.
1) First step is login to AWeber, or signup for an account if you don't have one. They offer a 30-day money back guarantee and I believe the $1 trial is still on anyways.
2) Choose the list you will be working with if you have more than one.
3) Click 'Web Forms' from the menu across the top.
4) Click the 'Create Web Form' button.
5) I won't discuss the steps here but at this stage you can customize your form. You can change colours, add text, edit the width etc. or pick an existing template from the list of new styles. You probably want to add text to perhaps the header explaining the incentive to opt in (get my eBook on such and such, win an iPod).
6) You will want to switch the 'Form Type' to 'Lightbox' here.
7) The default fields in the form should be "Name" and "Email". Most of the time that is sufficient but you can add more at this stage if you like. If you are happy with the 2 fields click the 'Go To Step 2' button.
8) Edit the 'Basic Settings'.
Name your form for easy reference later. Choose a "thank you page". If you haven't set up your own, the video page is a good choice. It plays a quick video showing what the email will look like (with your mailing list name even!) in the subscribers inbox and an audio snippet plays telling them what to do. This will increase the likelihood the subscriber follows through and "confirms" the opt in.
It's OK to leave the 3rd option as is. It is a page that the subscriber is redirected to if they are trying to optin to the list and they are already subscribed. You can point them to a custom URL on your site if you wish or just show a basic page with your logo (which was setup when you created your list). You can also just forward them off to your thank-you page if you created one.
The 'Show Advanced Settings' link will open up extra options below the Basic Settings. It might not be a bad idea to edit the 'Ad Tracking' (although it will use your 'Form Name' with underscores instead of spaces by default) field so you can keep track of how many opt ins used your light box as opposed to one of your other opt in forms (it doesn't hurt to have several ways setup for the subscriber to opt in as described in John's free eBook).
Now when you are done here, click the 'Go To Step 3' button.
8) Click the 'Save Web Form' button.
9) Now you can get the code to paste the form on your site. There's also an option to send the code to yourself (or your designer) by email to be installed later.
10) You can choose between JavaScript or HTML for your form. Both have their advantages. With the JavaScript code, you can make changes to your form on AWeber and those changes will automatically be reflected on your site whereas if you opt for HTML and make changes to the form on AWeber you will have to re-paste the code on your site. It's an extra step you may not want.
If you pick the raw HTML you have more customization options for the css, dynamic variables and so on. I always pick raw HTML so I can change things locally if need be. Also, I've had troubles with getting the JavaScript working on WordPress (BTW, AWeber can be used on any site, not just WP) in the past, but I'm sure AWeber has worked out those kinks since then.
Related posts:
- Using AWeber For Your Blog Newsletter
- phpBay Pro: The Extended Manual – Testing
- phpBay Pro: The Extended Manual – Configuration
- Create A Viral Facebook ‘Like’ Page
- phpOStock – A Simple Powerful WP Plugin
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Mon, Jun 14, 2010
Blogging, Make Money Online, Online Business