I feel sure that you have seen the gurus and their acolytes¹ trying to teach how to get more traffic. You will have been encouraged to buy training to help in battling with the panda, swimming like a penguin, or maybe pin/like/link/tweet etc to get more visitors.
In a post that was published here about 18 months ago I encouraged readers to get off the highway with its heavy, fast moving but basically passing traffic. The side roads have less traffic, but the drivers and passengers are much more likely to get out and visit you.
Should you forget about getting more traffic? Is it actually true that less traffic can give you more results? If you do things right then the answer to both questions is YES.
On the other hand, can more traffic can just give you less profits? If you have no way to slow that traffic down it’s not going to be any benefit for you.
Recently I added and used a plugin that I have built from an example that was provided for training purposes. That plugin has replaced a similar one, but uses the Less Is More principle.
A Simple Plugin:
The plugin for sharing posts in several social networks has been disabled at this blog. It has been replaced with a simple, single purpose button for sharing the post on Twitter.
Working on the principle that Less Is More, readers now have the opportunity to share this post (and others where the button is included) in just Twitter. The share on Facebook, Digg etc has been stopped for a short time while testing the new plugin. There are less ways for readers to share, but now the share button is much more prominent and the goal is to have the sharing done more often.
List building is spoken of as the way to make a success in Internet Marketing. As Isloooboy said in a comment on one of my earlier posts
What I have read regarding list building is, “Only look for those people who are interested in the subject which you are promoting” otherwise your list will be an extra burden because of there (sic) non responsive behavior.
There is not much point in building a list if it is just a list of names, and they do not have a strong reason or interest in belonging to that list. You may be putting in a lot of effort to market to that list, but if nobody is responding, that effort is wasted.
Much better to have a focus for the list, to attract people who share that interest and will respond to the newsletters and email that you send to them.
Your List Should Be Hungry For More.
Presuming that you, as the list owner, have some knowledge, interest and background in the focal point for your list, it is likely that you will want to share that. WordPress provides you with a comprehensive and powerful Content Management System. By creating and building content you will have a great resource to share with your list.
By running your site as a typical blog, (if there is such a thing) you will have content that can be copied or referred to in your emails to the list. Not every post, but just those that you know will create the greatest response.
Alternatively you could send to your list a summary of the latest posts, and direct your subscribers to the site for more details.
Do you review products and services that apply to your niche or list focus? Write those reviews in your site and then send your list to the reviews for more information.
By adding relevant content to your site you will also be enhancing your credibility in the subject of your niche and list. With a higher credibility rating your content will be sought after, your loyal subscribers will want more and they will also be more likely to act on your recommendations. The power and simplicity of a WordPress site can help with that.
Add More Mouths To Feed
By the way, makes sure that you have the Sign Up form for your list showing so that potential new subscribers can also sign up when they stumble upon your site in the search engines, or when one of their friends tells them about your site.
WordPress is the complete package for anyone wanting to create their own website. It can be used for almost any purpose, and is indeed being used extensively by high performing website owners.
It is a fully featured Content Management System backed by a huge community ready to offer support and advice. The addition of plugins to extend the functions of the basic installation adds tremendous power to WordPress.
Despite this great power, WordPress makes it easy for beginners to get up to speed and have a blog with new articles posted and added plugins in a very short space of time.
The Most Popular CMS
WordPress is the platform for countless types of websites such as personal blogs, community websites, stores, membership sites to fully featured eCommerce and fan sites.
Despite the popularity of the platform, the ability for each site to tweaked and setup differently means that they do not all look alike. A WordPress based site does not have to have that out-of-the-box appearance that makes it just like many others. There are hundreds of freely available templates (or themes) that can also be modified with a little knowledge of html and CSS code.
By following this site you will discover some of the ways in which you can make your own unique site, based on the WordPress platform. This site uses a free theme, with modifications that allow for the larger headlines with shadows, as a simple example. Stay tuned for more examples, with How To… instructions. Tweet
One of the few good things that I found at the dotcomsecretsX coaching course was the cool ribbon effect at the top of the Sign Up form on the squeeze page that is produced.
By coincidence I found the code for making that ribbon effect in a magazine that I bought several months ago. So I have been experimenting with code, which uses CSS.
The experience was another of those frustrating, but when it all worked out fine, eventually, but rewarding things that I enjoy working on.
The process I followed went something like this:
1: Code a page that has containers to hold the elements that make up the a box to hold the contents, the ribbon to go around the top of the box, the text to write on the ribbon and position to hold the form. For that I used an editor that allows me to write up html code and CSS stylesheets, along with other code not used in this project, such as PHP etc. There are many editors available that can do this from the incredibly expensive Dreamweaver to many free software packages. See below for a part of the html code.
2. Prepare the CSS code for the various containers above. Again I used the editor as described above. A small part of the CSS stylesheet is shown in the image below.
3. Test the code. The result is shown below. It took several attempts at loading the page to get the end result as some of the settings needed to be adjusted to get the best result. The page displays well in FireFox and Chrome, but Internet Explorer ignores some of the code and produces a less than optimal result. Please note the form below is not active.
4. Combine elements from the html and CSS code with the html code from my AutoResponder to add to a text widget to show in the sidebar. Some tweaking of settings was also necessary to make it fit, and most of that was done on my test WordPress site where I play around with things like this so that I do not destroy this blog. When it is works on the test site, it is simply a matter of copying it to the real site. The result of that step can be seen in the sidebar of this site, and completing the form will subscribe you to my email marketing list and a sequence of messages that will have links to some resources for list-building.
Looking for something like that for your blog? Use the Contact Us page. That page can also be reached from a link hidden below the About link in the header menu. (I really must tweak the header to makes sure all links show!)
Normally I do not pay any attention to horoscopes that are published in the daily papers or magazines but today the reading for Pisces just seemed to fit.
The Pisces Horoscope May 5th 2012
Few things distress a Piscean more than an unhappy ending to a once promising tale. But you may have to acknowledge that one particular plan or project that seemed so worthwhile won’t work. The most difficult thing is to truly let it go. Not until you can you focus on other, as worthwhile, pursuits.
My posts here have been missing for a few days a I undertook some of the coaching in the dotcomsecretsX program. Whilst having some success at building a list, there are a few things about the course that are starting to cause me to question if I will continue.
These include the deceptive introduction that says you can do the coaching course for 30 days for $1. Yes, the course cost for 30 days is $1, but there are several things that you will be asked to do in that 30 days that will mean that you have to spend considerably than that. For example by day 3 you will be encouraged to pay for some solo ads to be sent out to attract people to your list.
You will also be encouraged to subscribe to a tracking service to monitor your activities, to outsource some link building (which with the latest Google Penguin update might be a waste of effort) and several other activities like web hosting and domain name purchases.
I also discovered that there appears to be no easy way to cancel ongoing payments as that initial $1 payment to Clickbank using PayPal does not appear to have begun a subscription that can be cancelled. It appears in PayPal as a one off payment, and Clickbank tells me that my next payment will be $100+. Hopefully I can then unsubscribe, and using the ClickBank 60 day guarantee, get my money back.
I seem to recollect that when I was listening to some podcasts by the fast-talking Russell Brunson several years ago, I was not impressed that he seemed to delight in get people to sign up for his sites and make it hard for them to unsubscribe or easy for them to forget they had done so, and encouraged potential students to do the same.
List-building will be an activity that I continue to work on, but not in the way that the 30 Day Challenge approaches it.
Oh well, I guess it’s time to move on. Lesson learned, I hope!
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Successful marketing in a niche involves many different aspects including product selection or building, content creation, traffic management and list building for email marketing.
Each of those requires a comprehensive understanding of how they can be best achieved, and some earlier posts have been focussed on a few of these activities. In this post we will scratch the surface with email marketing.
Rather than start from the beginning and re-invent the wheel, the post will feature a pre-existing program that has a strong record in coaching successful email marketers.
Building A List
The first step to email marketing is gathering a groups of leads, or potential customers for the products or services that are to be sold to these customers. No list:- No customers or client base.
There are hundreds of ‘experts’ who will tell you how to build a list and how to use that list for producing sales. The difficulty is choosing which one to use to coach you in the process and provide you with the skills and information that you need.
I am recommending that you take advantage of the coaching that is available from the same one that I have chosen to give a trial period. In that coaching program that will cost you $1, and there are 30 days to give it a go. By successfully working for those 30 days you will set up email marketing so that the extended training, which will cost an extra $97 per month, can be paid for from your efforts. Of course, there are no guarantees that you will cover that cost completely, but many of the people completing the 30 days find that they earn more than enough to cover the next payment.
To introduce you to that coaching program I ask you to complete the Sign Up form on the following link.
When you decide to take the 30 Day Challenge to Building a List there are several steps that will be suggested for you to follow. I believe that if you slavishly follow all of them there is a possibility that since lots of others will be doing the same thing, or worse still they will have beaten you off the mark, your efforts might be lost in the crowd.
For that reason I have chosen to take a different path on some of the suggestions in the coaching.
Squeeze Page:
Very early on you will be given instruction on how to set up a Squeeze page to use for advertising and getting traffic to your list sign up form. The coaching gives you a tool to do that, but that page will look almost identical to everyone else doing the training. The Squeeze page above is the one that I generated.
I also have another, self made Squeeze Page, and you may prefer to check out the coaching from that page. It’s not perfect, and will be edited later. But it is unique. The link below will take you to that Squeeze Page.
If no one visits the squeeze page that that you produce, there will be no one to sign up to the list.
The coaching recommends using Solo Ads, either in SafeLists or as Paid Solo Ads. The training will go into much more detail about these and where to find places to send you ads to. I chose not to use these sources of traffic, but to use similar services at APSense, the Business Social Network.
Specifically I chose to promote my Squeeze page in a TeamPromote campaign. the results I achieved matched the examples given in the coaching sessions. In just 5 days I gathered more than 300 clicks from more than 3500 visits to the page. From that approximately 40 people added themselves to the list and 1 sale was recorded.
Other options that have yet to be explored at APSense include
Campaigns: Use the Squeeze page as the landing page in a Credits Campaign.
Solo Ads: Fund a Solo Ad that goes to all of the membership that has agreed to receive them.
Talents: Select a talent provider who can send a Solo Ad to their subscribers, eZine etc.
Advertising:
Sponsored ads appear on the site.
Member Ads (Free) show on articles, Revpages etc submitted by the member.
At the time of writing this post I have progressed though less than half of the coaching for the first 30 days,and the results certainly look encouraging.
There are many places that you can search for products that are suitable for a niche market that you want to target.
You could be looking for physical products that can be shipped by the supplier. Amazon and Commission Junction are just two of the Affiliate management programs.
For digital products the go-to place is ClickBank. It has thousands of products to choose from, arranged into categories. You can choose the products to include in you site for promoting to your readers by going to ClickBank.
For example if you want to include Green Products as an affiliate here are some typical products to choose from.
Highest Converting Solar Product. New Video Sales Page!Best Product In The Niche Since July 2008. Sells To: Solar. Wind. Green. Renewable Energy. Tesla. Magnet. Hojo. Garden. Survive. Food. Crisis And More. Aff Material: . Also Check Out
You will be filling your site with content for visitors to read and view. Will they come back, knowing that you have provided them with a reason? Will your content be credible and will they want more?
You will want your visitors to see that you know something about the niche. They may even expect you to be an expert. For that reason I am suggesting that you choose a niche, at least in the early stages of niche marketing, that you are comfortable sharing your knowledge and experience.
The next big question is “Where will I find the content to fill my site?”
Closely followed by, “And how will I prepare that content?”
There are several possibilities including:
Write it.
Yes, that means starting with a blank screen, or a blank page and writing the content yourself. This is, in my opinion, the best way to show that you have credibility in the subject. If you know what you are writing or talking about. It is not simply a case of following a formula and churning out lots of things that look and sound the same. For this reason, writing (or composing) your own content is time consuming. But, done well, it is time well spent.
Outsource It.
Not sure if you have the time or the knowledge to write your own material. Then pay someone else to do it for you. Sounds good, but there are traps. How do you know that the person writing the content for you knows the subject, or if they are just grabbing content from somewhere and claiming that they wrote it? You will also probably have to proofread and edit the content provided, so you will still need to spend significant time on that if you truly want to know that the content will enhance your credibility.
Copy and paste it.
A simple process. Just find someone else who has written about in your niche. Copy that content and paste it on your site. This method, however, is full of hazards. Do you have permission? Will you give credit to the original author? If not, when you get caught out your reputation is in tatters. If you do, you are telling your readers that you simply an expert at locating content, but not showing them that you have credibility in that niche.
Spin it.
Take an article, preferably one that you have rights to, and rewrite it. Either by yourself, which takes time, or put it through some Spinning software. I am yet to be convinced that any software can produce quality spun content, and it usually has to be heavily edited. So much so that it would perhaps have been quicker to write the article yourself.
Feeds.
Some sites provide you with a feed, so that you can simply take their article and republish it on your site. There is software that can automatically grab articles that relate to certain keywords that you provide, and reproduce them on your site. You may have to edit the posts a little. This method really only shows that you can locate feeds, and not really show how credible you are.
Curation:
This takes a couple of the methods above and combine them. It is what some serious and respected news and review sites do, and it has not hurt their reputations. In this content production method, a feed or other content is found and published on your site, but with you providing an introduction or discussion starter for the post. In that way you have shown your readers that you have some opinion or knowledge about the content of the article.
Whatever method or methods that you choose for writing or composing your content, the main focus should be on what the readers will want to see, that will encourage them to engage with you and return to find out more.
There are no “secrets”. The concept and process Niche Marketing is really quite simple.
In an earlier post the 3 Pillars for successful marketing in a niche were explained. Those 3 Pillars are still the same. But this time I want to suggest that the 3 key factors are actually the sides of a triangle.
We all know that the triangle is a very strong shape that features in many structures, where maximum strength but minimum weight is needed. Just think of bridges and towers. There are strong triangles everywhere.
So now the 3 Pillars become the sides of the Niche Marketing Triangle.
Once again, they are
Market Demand: Do people want what I am offering?
Competition: Is it too hard to compete, or do I have a new angle?
Buyer Propensity: Do people buy in the niche?
Make sure that each side of the triangle you build is strong. Do the research. Test the market. But remember there are 3 sides to consider. Do not neglect one or the triangle you are building to support your niche will not be strong, and likely to collapse.
The concept and process are quite simple. The application and development are however going to be challenging.
Be the First to Comment 
I feel sure that you have seen the gurus and their acolytes¹ trying to teach how to get more traffic. You will have been encouraged to buy training to help in battling with the panda, swimming like a penguin, or maybe pin/like/link/tweet etc to get more visitors.
Presuming that you, as the list owner, have some knowledge, interest and background in the focal point for your list, it is likely that you will want to share that. WordPress provides you with a comprehensive and powerful Content Management System. By creating and building content you will have a great resource to share with your list.
WordPress is the complete package for anyone wanting to create their own website. It can be used for almost any purpose, and is indeed being used extensively by high performing website owners.
2. Prepare the CSS code for the various containers above. Again I used the editor as described above. A small part of the CSS stylesheet is shown in the image below.
3. Test the code. The result is shown below. It took several attempts at loading the page to get the end result as some of the settings needed to be adjusted to get the best result. The page displays well in FireFox and Chrome, but Internet Explorer ignores some of the code and produces a less than optimal result. Please note the form below is not active.
These include the deceptive introduction that says you can do the coaching course for 30 days for $1. Yes, the course cost for 30 days is $1, but there are several things that you will be asked to do in that 30 days that will mean that you have to spend considerably than that. For example by day 3 you will be encouraged to pay for some solo ads to be sent out to attract people to your list.
There are many places that you can search for products that are suitable for a niche market that you want to target.
Write it.
In an earlier post the 
