"Four Figure Income from The First Month"
10,400 Blog Subscribers Without Using RSS
At EasyWordpress.com, I’ve never intended to use an RSS subscription service like Feedburner to gather readership. Instead, from day one I preferred to build an optin email list using Aweber and it’s blog broadcast feature to build a pre-web2.0 styled ezine. To do this I offer a free Super Adsense Theme and 2 free chapters from Wordpress Adsense System.
To send our ezines automatically / semi-automatically, I use Aweber and their “Blog Broadcast” feature. Done properly, this works just as well as Feedburner or any other “subscribe to RSS by email” service.
Last week, the number of EasyWordpress Ezine Subscribers reached 10,200. Pure RSS feed subscribers via Feedburner measured only 303. These have to be users who know where to find and how to subscribe to our RSS feed, simply because we do not publish a “Subscribe by RSS” or “Subscribe by Feedburner” link anywhere on EasyWordpress.com
We collect leads and send out weekly / bi-weekly ezines to all our subscribers, and it’s been working really well fro this blog at least. We do not depend on search engine traffic, although we do get our fair share of it.
But why don’t we use RSS subscription solely on our blogs, like John Chow or Problogger.net? The answer is simple:
- This is not just a blog; we have a forum, a directory, and soon a subscription-based video tutorials site for beginners. We have a few RSS feeds, and I don’t want to scatter my traffic everywhere.
- We do not depend on advertising income (Adsense or banner ads). Since we do not do it the “John Chow way”, there’s really no reason to aim for a high PR 6 or to show off the number of RSS subscribers to would-be advertisers. We do not need to cramp 8 banners into our sidebar
- We no not do paid posts or reviews for example ReviewMe.com or PayPerPost.com. So again, there’s no need to impress advertisers. We do reviews to make money from affiliate products, not from the reviews themselves.
- We target a different market. Personally I was “thought” in the direct marketing field of Internet marketing. I believe in all sales pages and selling information products using direct Internet marketing, with affiliates, offline marketing and the whole shebang. My target market (blogging beginners) do not even know about RSS readers or how to use an RSS feed until they have at least bought the Wordpress Adsense System. So, I use the best medium to reach them - email!
We simply chose a different path by creating products, and getting traffic to those products. We get lesser traffic, but target that traffic to an income source which delivers over 2,000 constantly in product sales, and over 2,100 in affiliate sales.
Even the John Chow “gang” have recently started to offer free ebook downloads in return for a name and email, something which they themselves would have considered “old school” and “repulsive” a few months ago. Needless to say in the herd mentality when one high-profile person does it, everyone follows without thinking twice.
If you have a blog, and want to make money online, do it your way. It’s ok to test what others are doing, but don’t force yourself to use methods that may not work well for you.
Advantages of Using Ezines Instead of RSS:
- You get 100% control of your subscribers, and can send them other emails not intended for your blog
- You get to send out 5 or 8 or any amount of recent blog posts together instead of daily updates like Feedburner does
- You get to format your emails properly and even include other affiliate links or ads
Disadvantages of Using Ezines Instead of RSS:
- You cannot show off readership easily to would-be-advertisers
- You cannot command a higher price of paid review services like ReviewMe or PayPerPost (you can always sell reviews yourself with OIO Publisher)
- You cannot command a higher price for Text Link Ad sale (you can always sell links yourself with OIO Publisher or the WP Text Ads plugin)
I do not recommend that you try to get optin subscribers AND build RSS subscribers at the same time. Just focus on building one source of readership, and it will be more than enough.
Basically, if you want to make money from Google Adsense, Text Link Ads, and other forms of advertising, build a RSS readership base. If you want to make money from your own products or affiliate products, use Aweber and build an optin list instead.
11 Comments »
Gobala Krisnan is a direct-response marketer turned blogger who makes over $10,000 a month from his blog empire. If you want to make money online from blogs, he is the only person who can reveal the secret of merging time-tested direct marketing strategies with web 2.0 traffic. Read more about him >>
Very interesting and something I will consider for one of my sites.
Is it as reliable and viable of an option as RSS?
Really interesting!
I’m now in the way to compare Aweber with CampaignMonitor, do you know the last? What do you think about CM?
Stefano
Isn’t it just fascinating to see how diverse, and apparently contradictory, things can sometimes appear?
I’ve been doing email list building and marketing for over 10 years, and only lately decided to focus more on RSS subscriptions through my blog (indeed, am working on migrating more of my email list readers to become blog subscribers) - primarily because of the increasing unreliability of email delivery and over-crowded inboxes causing email responsiveness to drop radically from the past.
It’s one reason I mentioned ‘Death of Email Marketing’ as one of my 9 predictions for 2008… Dr.Mani’s Crystal Ball
All success
Dr.Mani
Interesting concept - i’ll have to consider this the next time I build a blog.
Very informative post. You have thought me what I didn’t know yet. thank you. Please visit my blog and tell me any positive or negative about it if this is not much with you.
Hi Gobala, i have read your posts through with a fine tooth comb, but i still can’t figure how you setup the aweber thingy. Can you please be a darling and show us how you can set this up for every website? Quite honestly, i would love to send out newsletters like you do and i see that your website started in 2004, so if you have gathered 10,000 readers in less than 4 years, that is no easy feat!
Regards,
Seeni
blogmiracle.com
Real knock out of a post Gobala. It’s really nice to hear of a blogger discuss RSS and optin email in this way.
Lots of food for thought!
Shocking words, “This is not just a blog”, “just” ?
This post is really going to get you some “fan” mail!
All The Best
Alex
Hi Gobala, I this is what I love about your blog–so much useful applicable information. This is great stuff!
Best Success,
Jason Finch
interesting point. gonna try it in my site too. thanks for the tip
Folks are so busy these days. And with the whole blogging arena changing day-to-day I like giving readers the power to choice witch method appeals to their needs best. Your article is good food for thought. Merry Christmas from FMCC Prayer Ministry Blog.