The Smart Passive Income Blog » website design

Top 10 Things to Consider When Designing Your Blog

Pat — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 13:06:06 +0000

I’m taking a mini-vacation this weekend so I’m going to keep this kind of short, but I wanted to do a follow up post to Wednesday’s Blog Redesign Exercise.

In that post, I shared 3 different blog designs iterations that a fellow blogger, Vik Tantry, had done for a design overhaul he’s doing for his blog. The SPI community didn’t hesitate to share their opinions (yay for comments!) and I’m sure Vik and everyone else following along has learned a lot about what works, and what doesn’t.

Here are my top 10 takeaways from reading the comments. These are things to consider when designing or redesigning your own blog in the future:

Many people discount just how important design is. They say, “if the content is there, people will come to read it”. Not always true. A lot of commenters said that if they stumbled onto 1 or 2 of the designs they would have left immediately. Design matters folks!
Sometimes less is more. If something is too busy, it takes away from the overall effect of a design. I had this problem with Smart Passive Income in a previous blog redesign. It was a three column design and it just had too much going on.
Fonts play a big role. To be more specific – cheesy fonts in the header can give off the worst first impression, and we all know how important first impressions are on the Internet.
Colors give off different vibes. Here’s a good article that examines the colors of business and what they mean to an audience.
A picture of the blog author on the homepage, above the fold, is an easy way to help a design become personalized and unique. Also, readers like to know who is ‘speaking’ to them, and a face is far more memorable than anything else.
“Obvious designing” – or in other words, including imagery that is too literal, can sometimes have a negative effect. For example, Vik’s site is about money, and many people didn’t like the idea of actual dollar bills being spread across the header. This works sometimes, but not all of the time.
It surprised me that not one commenter mentioned the general layout of the designs, as each of the designs featured a standard two-column design. Is this the standard layout that people have finally settled into being “the norm”? If that’s the case, maybe it’s time to try something different. Maybe not. Just a thought.
Figure out what you want your readers to do, and make that a primary focal point on your page. For example, if you really want people to subscribe to your newsletter, create a nice looking graphic that stands out from the rest of the page. On my blog, I tried to do this by not only having a high-quality graphic next to my opt-in form, but I had the graphic also poke out of the edge a little.
A logo can be a great way to immediately define your brand and stand out from the crowd. A brandable logo was missing in all three designs, and I really think (especially for design #2), it could give the design some punch.
And most importantly, understand that you cannot please everybody. Everyone has their own opinions about what they like and no matter how much time you spend on your design or how many suggestions from others you incorporate, there will always be people who think something can be done better. Take the suggestions that you like and implement those. Then, just pull the trigger and go with it. The worst thing you can do is keep tweaking a design or just sitting on it wondering if it’s “the one”.

Thanks again to Vik for letting us comment and learn from his redesign process.

Enjoy your weekend everyone. Cheers!

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Top 10 Things to Consider When Designing Your Blog
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Blog Redesign Exercise: What Do You Think?

Pat — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 10:41:34 +0000

Designing a blog from scratch is very difficult, which is why we have things like WordPress’s theme library and WooThemes to help us start blogging right away.

Re-designing a blog, however, can be even more difficult – and scary too. Especially if you’ve been stuck with the same design since the beginning and have grown any kind of audience. More than likely, if you’re at this point with your blog you know that you need to change things to grow, but what exactly those things are can be sort of a mystery. Change the wrong thingsor take away a feature that a lot of people use, and you’re bound to fly with some turbulence.

Meet Vik.

Vik Tantry is not new to the SPI community – he wrote a guest post entitled How to Pick the Right Business Partners about 6 months ago and even came down to San Diego and invited me out to lunch, which was super cool. We chatted for a few hours about business, blogging and niche sites while eating some delish Greek food.

Over the course of our lunch I learned more about Vik and what he was up to and I became very inspired. You see, he authors a relatively new blog at TheresMoneyEverywhere.com, and even after publishing his guest post and visiting his blog in the past I didn’t quite understand what his purpose was online until we finally met.

I was fooled by the name of his site because “there’s money everywhere” could suggest different meanings, but Vik literally means there is money everywhere, and he’s out to prove it. He’s on a quest around the world to find, research and learn about all of the different, unique and wonderful ways that people make money as an entrepreneur – not just from the internet, but everything else in between, such as dive bars, call centers, etc – all as he works toward succeeding with his own ventures, which he is doing really well so far.

I thought that was really cool, so I offered to help.

All he asked for was some quick advice for his blog.

Among a number of little things (his content is there, so I wasn’t worried about that), the biggest issue that I brought up had to do with the design of his site.

For a lack of better words, it was a bit stale. All of the components were there, it just needed a little more pop, personality and character. Right now, it sort of just looks like a niche site, which makes sense because niche sites are a major part of how he makes a living. It’s what he knows.

After a short conversation about it we said our goodbyes, and right when I got home I saw an email from Vik saying he was already working with a VA on some blog redesign schemes.

Nice.

A Little Exercise

I contacted Vik later on and asked him for a favor, if he was willing.

I thought it would be a great idea to share a part of his blog re-design journey here with the SPI community. That way, his possible new designs could get critiqued by everyone and he’d come away with some good and honest suggestions to improve them – and everyone here can learn at the same time, both from treating this like an exercise and using your own eye to see what works and what doesn’t, and from hearing what everyone else thinks too.

So here it is.

Below are 3 possible designs for Vik’s newly designed blog.

Design 1:

Design 2:

Design 3:

I have my own feelings about each of these designs, but I’ll share them with you later. All I can say is that it’s definitely a huge step in the right direction, but it’s not completely there yet.

So – which design do you like and why? Also, what else would you add or like to see.

Remember to think about first impressions – how did you feel when you saw the mockups above?

What works and what doesn’t?

You can leave a comment below (compliments and constructive criticism are always welcome) for Vik and the rest of the SPI community, or you can visit his own blog and leave him an opinion there too.

Good luck Vik, and I suspect you’re be contacting your VA again very soon. Hehe.

Cheers!

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Blog Redesign Exercise: What Do You Think?
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An Underrated Skill That All Bloggers Should Have and I Would Like To Teach

Pat — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 10:05:58 +0000

I’m not even going to beat around the bush with this one. One skill that all bloggers should possess is Graphic Creation and Manipulation – or as some like to call it, “Photoshop skills” (although the term “Photoshop” is actually just the name of one piece of software where graphic creation and manipulation can be done).

It’s a very underrated skill in the blogging world and one that I’m lucky enough to have because I used to use Photoshop every single day when I was working my 9 to 5 job at an architecture firm. It’s probably the most important thing I learned while working 9 to 5 that I apply in almost all of my online businesses today. That and, of course, living the 9 to 5 lifestyle and understanding that I enjoy the lifestyle I live now much better.

The reason I bring up this topic now is because after posting my Facebook Landing Page tutorial last week, I was bombarded with emails from readers asking where they should go to get their graphics designed.

Yesterday, someone who read through eBooks the Smart Way said he completed his first eBook (yay!) but needed a resource to help him create a title page, and all he wanted was his picture on it.

There’s an apparent need for some really basic graphic creation and design skills that all bloggers and online entrepreneurs could use, and sure – you could hire someone to do graphics for you, but the thing is:

It will take time to find a graphic designer.
It will cost money.
It will take time to complete the job.

#3 will happen whether you hire someone or not, but if you know the basic skills you don’t have to worry about any of the back and forth – the iteration after iteration until your designer finally meets your needs. You can get graphics done yourself on demand.

Help Me Help You

I want to put together 2 separate webinars:

One for people who have Adobe Photoshop; and
One for people who don’t have Photoshop

I’m fluent in Photoshop, however I know it’s an expensive program that not everyone can get their hands on, which is why I want to do a tutorial with Gimp as well, for those of you who are looking for a free option.

I’ll go over all the basics – the tools (only the ones that you need to know about), layering, creating and manipulating shapes and text and those types of things. But besides that, I want to actually walk you through how to create specific types of images you will use. So for example, a banner advertisement or a Twitter background image.

I’ll take this beast of a program and break it down so it’s really easy for you to understand.

All I need from you are some suggestions on what types of things you’d like me to teach you how to do. I have an idea of what will be useful, but I want to make sure I meet everyone’s needs.

So in the comment section below, please give me an idea of what you wish you knew how to create on your own. Or, if you know how to use photoshop or similar programs, what are some things that you’ve designed for yourself in the past.

I’ll schedule something for those of you who want to learn these skills in the near future, so stay tuned.

Thanks, and have a great week! Cheers!

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Drive Like They’re Crazy. Blog Like They’re Lazy

Pat — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 18:30:22 +0000

When I first started learning how to drive, my Dad gave me a piece of advice to help me stay safe on the road and become a good driver:

“Drive like everyone else on the road is crazy”, he said.

Although I know there are mostly safe drivers on the road (unlike this guy), by adopting this mindset I learned how to stay alert and be aware of other vehicles on the road next to me.

Thanks Dad!

Now, here’s a piece of advice I’m going to give you to help you think about how to become a better blogger:

“Blog like everyone else is lazy.”

Please don’t take offense to this – in no way do I think you or anyone else reading my blog lazy. But, I do have this mindset when it comes to certain things I do on my blog that I know helps when it comes to the experience people have on my site, as well as with conversions.

The Design Of Your Site

Your site should be designed in such a way that the laziest of people can use it. This means:

It’s easy to access.
It’s easy to navigate.
It’s easy to subscribe.
It’s easy to find content.
It’s easy to share your content.

With the desire for speed and ease of use in today’s lifestyle, you’ve got to make the actions you want people to take on your site a speedy “no-brainer”. The harder it is to perform a certain action, the less chances there are of that particular action happening.

Some questions to ask yourself:

Is your site cluttered and hard to understand?
Are your best and most useful posts highlighted somewhere on your blog?
Is sharing your information as easy as one click of a button?

Make things ridiculously easy, and you’ll get ridiculous results.

The Content That You Provide

Your content should be easily consumable, so much that the laziest of people can enjoy it. This means:

Sharing as much information as possible. The more you leave out, the more questions arise and people don’t want to go searching for those answers. If you give people all of the steps, they will appreciate it and you will be rewarded.
Writing your posts so that they are easy to understand. Check out an old archived gem entitled: It’s Dumb Not to Dumb It Down.
Structuring your posts so that they are extremely scanable. Most people don’t read every single word of a blog post. Instead, they scan, which means if you utilize things like headers, bullet points, numbered lists, bold and italic lettering, your content will be much easier on the eye and people won’t have to work as hard to read what you have to say.
Providing great value. If you can give people exactly what they are looking for – something valuable and easily consumable, your readers will have no problem remembering what you wrote and who wrote it.

Your Calls to Action

In general, if you have a specific action you want people to take on your site, the more steps that are involved, the less conversions you’ll have. In other words, keep your funnels small and get rid of any roadblocks.

The most extreme example I can think of as far as a “lazy funnel” is Amazon.com’s One-Click Purchase option. Just think – one click and the product is shipped to your house. No need to fill in any shipping information, billing information or confirmations.

Again, the less steps that are involved, the better.

Another example of a lazy funnel is when I promote my newsletter and my free eBook, eBooks the Smart Way, on my podcast.

In order to keep things simple, I purchased the domain name ebooksthesmartway.com which is something my listeners probably don’t have to write down to remember. That url forwards to a landing page that has information about my eBook and an opt-in form both in the sidebar of my blog and at the bottom of the page’s content. There are no extra steps involved to sign up.

And lastly, one of the most important things you can do while adopting this blog like they’re crazy mindset is just inserting calls to actions in the first place. As much as we would love to think people will do what we want them to do while on our blogs, chances are, they won’t. By telling them exactly what you want them to do, you’ll do the thinking for them and they’ll perform the actions that you want them to take.

Drive like they’re crazy. Blog like they’re lazy.

Can you think of any other examples of how we can apply this mindset on our sites?

Stay tuned for my November monthly income report this coming Monday! Click here to subscribe if you haven’t already, and enjoy your weekend. Cheers!

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Drive Like They’re Crazy. Blog Like They’re Lazy
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Are You Optimizing Your 404 Page? Yes, Your 404 Page.

Pat — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:25:15 +0000

When you visit a non-existent URL on a website, you’ll often come face to face with an error similar to the following:

“Oops! We couldn’t find what you were looking for.”

or…

“Page not found.”

What you’re actually seeing when you come across this error is the “404 Page”, which is a page that your browser goes to when the page you were looking for was – well – not found.

Common reasons for landing on a 404 page include:

A misplaced letter or misspelled word in the URL when typing manually into the browser’s address bar.
A misplaced letter or misspelled word in an existing link.
The link or URL is typed correctly, but the page just no longer exists (aka. broken link)
A redirection error.

Whatever the path may be, when people land on your 404 Page they will most likely exit your site.

It’s sad, but true. People are spoiled, especially when it comes to searching and surfing online, so when they don’t immediately find what they’re looking for – it’s on to the next thing like there’s no tomorrow.

However, there are things we can do as website owners, bloggers and internet entrepreneurs to decrease the chances of people leaving our sites when they do reach a 404 Page, which I’ll outline for you below.

How to Optimize Your 404 Page

Before anything, you should take all the necessary precautions to make sure your links are all typed in correctly and that you don’t have any broken links on your site. You can use a tool like Google Webmaster Tools to do help. Even after that, people can still land on your 404 page by mistyping a URL or clicking on a misspelled link from a site other than your own.

On your 404 Page Template itself, there are a number of things you can do:

Include friendly text that clearly mentions that the page they were looking for cannot be found, but that you’re also willing to help them find what they were looking for. Something other than “Page not Found” will really make a difference and get people to engage with you on your page, even though it wasn’t exactly what they were looking for. Then, you can keep them on your site reading content using the stuff below.
Include a search function for the content on your site. It’s always nice to give people an option to search, especially if they were looking for something specific and don’t know where else to go.
Insert your most popular posts. These posts are the most popular for a reason, so they’ll give you the best chance of keeping people on your site.
Insert your most recent posts.
Include the categories or tags of your blog.
Include an opt-in form for a newsletter.
Include an Advertisement or Promotional item – I wouldn’t recommend this, but it is an option. This might work because if the visitor was planning on leaving anyways (because they couldn’t find what they were looking for), you can try to get them to click on an ad or go somewhere else that may help you earn a little bit of cash. I want to keep readers on my site, so this technique is not for me, but I just wanted to throw it out there for you.

Also, it’s important to make sure you design your 404 page to have a similar style and structure as the rest of your website, so visitors won’t feel like they’ve been kicked off of your site.

Lastly, if you’re slick, you can include a form on your 404 page to report broken links to you.

How Do You Design an Optimized 404 Page?

The easiest and most hassle-free way to optimize your 404 Page would be to outsource it to your web designer, or find someone on Elance or Odesk to do it for you. Simply tell them what you want on the page, and boom – done in less than an hour, if they know what they’re doing.

But, since I know a lot of your are curious or just don’t want to deal with outsourcing, I’m happy to share with you exactly what the code on my own 404 Page template looks like.

If you’re running a WordPress blog, every theme (I believe) has a 404 Template that you can edit, which can be viewed in the Appearance > Editor area, and then looking under Templates on the right hand side:

Typically, it will have code that looks something like this:

This is your plain jane 404 code and it definitely needs an update.

Instead of pasting my own, I’ve attached it here in a text file (in rich text format) so you can download it and use it as you wish. Note that it may or may not work perfectly with yours, because you may have different plugins installed or a different version of WordPress which may affect the code somehow, but whatever you do, if you plan to make changes yourself, please save what you had in a separate text file just in case.

If you want to see my 404 Page live, just add some random text to the end of this post’s url in your browser and press enter.

I won’t mention any specific sites, but I went ahead and tried adding random text onto the ends of other popular sites’ urls, and was surprised to see that not all of the top bloggers and top websites that I visit actually implement this strategy. Many are still using the plain ol’ 404 Page template.

I hope you found this “not-so-common” tip useful! As always, thank you for your support.

If this is your first time visiting this blog, please subscribe to my RSS Feed. Cheers!

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How to Not Be a Newbie Blogger When You’re a Newbie Blogger

Pat — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:05:34 +0000

Blogging = survival of the fittest.

It’s seriously a jungle out there, and for newly hatched blogs, it’s even harder to survive.

But, there are a number of things you can do right away as a “hatchling” to immediately gain ground “in the wild” and transform yourself from a newbie, to what may seem like a seasoned pro.

Below is a list of things (big and small) that you can do as a newbie, so you don’t stand out as a newbie.

1. A Professional Looking Domain Name

If you haven’t built your blog yet, I recommend grabbing a domain name and hosting package from a web hosting provider such as Bluehost. You can easily build your blog with their one-click WordPress install (in less than 4 minutes), and you’ll have the benefit of having a professional looking domain name.

So, instead of having something like:

yoursite.wordpress.com or yoursite.blogspot.com

…you’ll simply have:

www.yoursite.com

The free blogs you can setup on wordpress.com and blogspot.com aren’t bad. In fact, there are many successful ones out there – but if you’re planning to be a successful long-term blogger, then you might as well start on a self-hosted site.

2. Update the Favicon For Your Website

A favicon is the little 16×16 icon that appears next to your web address at the top of most browsers, and it sometimes shows up next to the tabs or in the bookmarks section too.

A new blog usually has what looks like a blank sheet of paper, or sometimes it’s your hosting provider’s logo. Either way, it screams “Newbie” to a lot of new visitors. Spend 5 minutes to update your favicon, and it can be a small detail that makes a big impact.

To update your favicon, you’ll need to place a 16×16 pixel icon (named favicon.ico) into your website’s root folder. For WordPress users, that’s directly into your public_html folder. You can create a picture file in Photoshop and simply rename it to favicon.ico, or you can create one easily for yourself on a website such as Favicon.cc.

3. Update Your Permalink Structure

The permalink is the URL that your blog creates when you publish new blog posts. By default, they usually come out looking ugly, like this:

http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/?p=123 (where p=123 simply means post #123)

Not cool, and it definitely doesn’t do any good for search engine optimization.

Before you write your first blog post, you should change the permalink settings to simply be the name of the post that you create. For WordPress users, it simply means doing exactly what the picture below shows:

Under Settings > Permalinks, click on Custom Structure, and insert the code below into the Custom Structure field:

/%postname%/

Your ugly URL problem solved, and now you look like you know what you’re doing.

4. Skip the Unnecessary Plugins and Widgets

What’s nice about WordPress is that there are tons of plugins and widgets to choose from that can do a wide variety of things for your blog, which makes customization really simple. The problem with this feature is that a lot of people tend to go overboard.

Not all plugins and widgets are useful. Be conscious about what plugins and widgets you’re placing on your site, and remember that sometimes less is more.

What good does a calendar on a blog do anyways?

5. Do Not Add an RSS Counter

New blogs should never include an RSS counter, because a counter with only 9 subscribers is basically a huge sign that says: “Hi! I’m new at this!”

Leave it out until you have over 100 subscribers (at least), and then you can incorporate it into your blog if you really want it on there. In the meantime, work on your content and making other parts of your blog awesome.

6. Add a Video To Your Blog

A quick and easy way to establish yourself as someone who knows what their doing as a blogger is by adding a video onto your blog, preferably somewhere in your sidebar.

A nicely recorded welcome message, or even a quick tip to share with new visitors can definitely make you stand out from even the more experienced blogs in your niche.

7. Format Your Blog Posts

Newbie bloggers almost always write excellent material. It’s probably because they’re super excited about starting a new blog and the possibilities of what’s ahead.

However, the format of many newbie posts always end up looking the same: a long, undivided post that resembles an essay.

In other words, the posts are lacking headings, subheadings, bold keywords, italics, lists, white space, pictures, charts, diagrams, and even links!

Take a look at some of your favorite blogs, and you can see that most are made up of several different parts, which makes it far easier to read and consume.

It might take a little practice, but if you can start off by writing blog posts with an eye-pleasing format, you’ll be far ahead in the game.

Darren from Problogger.net wrote a fantastic post about how to polish your blog posts, which I definitely recommend you read before you even begin to write your first post.

Tips From SPI Readers

I know I’ve only begun to scratch the surface about how to not blog like a total newbie, so I’m going to pass the baton to many of the SPI readers out there who do have experience with blogging, to hopefully add their own tips too. So please, feel free to leave a comment below with 1 tip that you’d give anyone who wants to start blogging tomorrow.

Cheers!

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Content Without Design is Dumb

Pat — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 07:05:40 +0000

Content is King.

You’ve probably heard this statement before. If not, Wikipedia (yes, Wikipedia) illustrates the idea of “Content is King” as:

“…without original and desirable content…any media venture is likely to fail through lack of appealing content, regardless of other design factors.”

You can have the best-designed, coolest, most functional website around, but without good content, your website (or eBook, course, podcast, video production, etc.) is pretty much useless.

However, please don’t misunderstand the idea here. Design, or presentation is still absolutely necessary.

Design without content is useless, but content without design is dumb.

In other words: design matters.

Design Matters

Perry Belcher is an internet marketing guru. He even has an online button named after himself – The Belcher Button, which I’ve talked about before here on the blog. I’ve watched him, listened to his courses and have implemented a lot of his novel ideas into my own businesses.

There is one thing, however, that he always says in the beginning of many of his audio courses that I always disagree with. He always apologizes for the low quality recordings, and that it really doesn’t matter because it’s the content that counts.

Maybe the poor sound quality doesn’t matter to the people who have already paid for his courses to listen to his content, but in our world (you and me), the quality of our presentation is HUGE. The quality and design of how we present our content can mean the difference between:

A new visitor staying or bouncing.
A regular visitor reader getting excited or bored.
A potential customer buying from you, or instead buying from your competitor.
An existing customer being satisfied, or asking for their money back.

You can have the best content in the world, but without good design or an interesting presentation, your content will generally make little to no impact.

First Impressions

Design and presentation is vital for first impressions. Online, first impressions mean a lot more than you think.

The average person spends about 7 seconds on a single website, which means you have about 7 seconds to make a good first impression on your new visitors, or else they’re going to leave. If you’re got loads of great content, people won’t find it unless you give them a reason to stay.

For Your Website…

This means having a strong visual impact right from the pageload, especially when it comes to what your website is about and exactly what it can do for your visitors. Can you tell exactly what your site is about just from looking at the home page?

This means including something that makes you stand out from the other 200+ websites they visited that day. Why do things the same, when there are an unlimited number of things you can do to be different?

This means not including anything that would turn your new visitors off. What turns you off from websites? Do you do that on your own site?

For eBooks…

This means an awesome, non-generic looking cover.

This means a layout that’s inviting and unlike something like an essay or a report which would turn people off.

For Audio and Visual Media…

This means a strong intro (song or spoken introduction).

This means getting people excited about the show or broadcast by giving them ideas on what to look forward to.

This means high-quality audio recordings or video presentations.

The Higher the Quality, The Better

Any chance you have to make things look or sound better, you should.

A couple of months ago, I was speaking to Cliff from Podcast Answer Man, about some new podcasting equipment that I will be getting very very soon (for the SPI podcast, yay!). Anyways, he was telling me about just how important sound quality is in the podcasting arena. He even told me that The Grammar Girl, who hosts a very successful podcast on iTunes, won’t even give an audio file a 10 second listen if the sound quality is bad, no matter what it is.

I like to think of it like this: you put in the hard work to create the content that you’re about to present, so you’ll want to give it the best chance to succeed, right?

Learning Good Design

Design is a TOUGH thing to learn, and even presentation too. Luckily, I went to school for architecture, which is all about both design and presentation.

That being said, as tough as architecture may sound, it’s really all about common sense, and putting yourself in the shoes of those who you want to read, subscribe, or buy from you. And when common sense isn’t so clear, then it becomes all about trial and error – testing, and honing down on exactly what does work for you.

That’s why since the beginning of this blog, I’ve had 5 redesigns, although I’ve only publicly announced the last two. That’s why I’m still constantly learning, testing and tweaking to make sure that I give my content the best chance of getting noticed. So far, it seems to be working.

If Content is King, then Design is his beautiful Queen that’s there to make him look better.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Newsletter

Pat — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:34:57 +0000

At the beginning of the year, I started a newsletter here on SPI and used an eBook I wrote, eBooks the $mart Way, as a free gift to help generate more leads. Three months later, I now have over 2,250 people signed up for the newsletter and it averages about 30 new subscribers a day.

I have no previous email list to compare these numbers with, so I can’t say for sure whether those are stellar numbers, or just average – but either way I’m very happy with the results and would love to share with you how it’s all done, especially for you beginners out there who have been emailing me non-stop about it. I apologize I’ve waited this long to write this post.

What is a Newsletter, and Why Would You Want to Offer One?

Before I get deep into the how-to of building a newsletter, I’d first like to address what a newsletter is, and why you might want to think about offering one for your blog or online business.

For the sake of this post, I’ll be talking only about email newsletters. Many websites, especially those doing hardcore business in a specific niche, offer a print newsletter, which is a fantastic way to keep in contact with customers and subscribers through “snail mail” (mail that is sent to your home address), but that’s a whole different ballgame that I have yet to experience, and it’s probably better suited for a more advanced type of post for the future.

When you setup an email newsletter, you’re offering your audience a way to subscribe to get emails from you that contain informal news or broadcasts that you send out. This is usually in addition to the content that you already have on your blog or online business website, and totally separate from an RSS feed subscription.

Now, you might be wondering: “What’s the point of offering a newsletter subscription to my audience, if they can already subscribe to my blog’s RSS feed?”

Good question.

The short answer is: the email list.

By offering a subscription to your newsletter, you’re giving yourself the ability to capture email addresses, which is something that you cannot do with an RSS feed. It’s important to capture email addresses because:

It’s a great way to communicate with your audience on a more personal level. There’s just something about receiving an email from somebody that makes it extremely effective at getting a point across, or making people take some kind of action.
An email list will never die. In other words, if you have an email list, you will always have a way to communicate with your audience. Blogs and websites can die. RSS readers and feed subscription services could vanish. But, those email addresses will never change and you can always keep your audience informed of what you’re up to, even if you go completely off the radar.
It’s where the money is.

Regarding #3, you may or may not have heard this expression before: “The Money is in the List.”

It’s an expression that has been used in the internet marketing industry since the birth of email (or “snail mail” for that matter), because it’s true. However, you have to be careful if you’re going to try and use your email list to make money online.

Like with any platform that you use to communicate with people (blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), the moment that you start to become “all about the money” is the moment that you might will end up losing credibility (and the respect) of your followers. That’s why I make sure that in whatever I do online, helping and informing people come first. I’m speaking from experience when I sat that if you can make your primary goal helping others, the money will come your way.

Online karma does exist.

Does it Have to Be a Newsletter?

You can setup an opt-in form to capture email addresses on your website and only email your subscribers when you need to – but let me tell you why I think this is a bad idea.

Imagine signing up for my free eBook and never hearing from me again until months later, when you finally get an email from me promoting some kind of product. You will probably do one of the following:

Forget who I was and think my email is spam.
Unsubscribe from the list because you’d realize that there’s really no point of being on it.
All of the above.

What you write in your emails doesn’t have to be “news”- it can be anything really. But, it’s important that you consistently contact your subscribers and provide them with some kind of useful information in order to keep them around. All it takes is one click to unsubscribe from your list.

What’s the Difference Between RSS Email Subscription and the Newsletter Subscription?

This is actually the most common question that I get about newsletters and email subscriptions, so I’m happy to finally address here on the blog publicly.

The RSS Email Subscription (through services such as FeedBlitz, which is something you can setup within your FeedBurner account) is a way for your readers to get your blog posts (and only your blog posts) emailed to them. This is convenient for many people, especially those who work 9 to 5 who like to catch up with their favorite websites at work, who are unable to use a standard RSS feed reader. Here on the SPI blog, I have this option in a link at the upper right hand corner of the page.

The newsletter subscription is totally separate from the content of your blog. With it, you have the ability to email your subscribers whatever you want, whenever you want. Again, it’s a more personal way to communicate with your readers and you can utilize that ability for marketing your own products, affiliate products, or just simply driving traffic. The possibilities are endless.

Yes – people will have to sign up twice if they want your blog content and newsletter both sent to their email. And even though many email list services have the ability to send out broadcasts that contain your blog’s RSS feed, I’d much rather keep those things separate so that people can have the freedom to choose how exactly they want to receive your content.

Now that I believe I’ve answered most of your questions, let’s get down to business…

How To Start Your Own Newsletter Subscription

Understanding the Process

First, it’s good to know exactly what happens once someone signs up through a form on your site. Here’s a diagram below that outlines everything that should happen:

As you can see, there’s quite a bit involved, but I’ll help you through the entire process below. Please note that rectangles represent webpages, and circles represent emails.

Step One: Signup For an Aweber Account

You have many options when it comes to signing up with an email marketing service, but Aweber is by far the best in my opinion. I use it and have been really impressed with the ease of use and quality of customer service. In fact, the other day I sent them an email about a small issue I was having, and they immediately solved the issue and 4 days letter I get a postcard in the mail thanking me for contacting them and being a customer.

Aweber is definitely the way to go.

Also, you have the ability to manage several lists from different websites under the same account, if you choose to do so.

Step 2: Setup Your First Email List

After you register for your account and sign in, you’ll be taken to your control panel. Now, we need to setup your list.

First, click on “create and manage” lists:

Second, fill in the settings for your list. The “From” Name:, and “Address” are all things that your newsletter subscribers will see when they get your emails. The “List Name” and the “List Description” are mainly for you for organizational purposes.

Lastly, the “Contact Address” is the address that is in your account settings. It will be shown at the bottom of each of your emails, as required by law (the CAN-SPAM Act). If you’re on my email list, you can see this address at the bottom of my emails, which is my business address. If you don’t have a business address, that’s okay – you can simply insert your home address, but just know that whenever you send an email to your subscribers, your address will show up – so you may want to use an address other than your home address if possible.

Step 3: Setup Your Confirmed Opt-In Email

A confirmed opt-in email is an email that gets sent to people immediately after they subscribe to your newsletter. This email contains a link that is used to confirm that the person is indeed a human and is someone who is interested in joining your list. Also, it helps you make sure that the email address that they entered is valid, and not a fake one that they used just to grab a hold of whatever freebie you might have to offer.

You are given the option to turn this feature off, but it is not recommended for the reasons mentioned above.

This email is usually already pre-written for you, but you can customize it a little if you wish, just to make it a little bit more personable. Here is a snapshot of mine below:

You may have noticed at the top of the email a piece of code that look like this:

{!name}

This is code that can be inserted into any of your emails (both in the subject line and in the body), which will automatically convert into the person’s name who you are sending an email to. In fact, there are several different types of codes that convert into various kinds of text. You can normally find a drop-down menu with all of your options next to the field where you are writing your emails, which look like this:

And here is a link that shows us all of the variables and what each piece of code converts to.

Moving on…

Step 4: Set Up Your Success Page

Below where you customize your confirmation message, you’ll see an area marked “Success Page”. This is where you insert a URL back to your website which is exactly where your subscribers will be taken after they click the confirmation link in the email (Thank You Page #2 in the Diagram):

On this page, which you’ll have to create on your own website/blog first, you can do a number of things:

Thank the person for their confirmation.
Welcome them to your newsletter, and announce that they will be shortly receiving an email from you.
If you’re giving away something like an eBook, for example, you can let them know that links to their gift will be included in the next email.
You can ask your new subscriber to “white list” your email address so it will not be blocked by spam filters.
You can provide a way to easily contact you in case they have any issues regarding your newsletter.
Advanced: This is also a great opportunity to add in an offer for either a product that you already have for sale, or an affiliate product related to your niche.

If you’re interested, here is my Success Page.

Note: The “pass subscriber info (for personalizing this page)” option you see is an advanced option that allows you to insert certain pieces of code on your own website that can convert into things like the subscriber’s name, for example.

Note #2: Thank You Page #1 as shown in the diagram is setup when you create a web form that you insert onto your webpage. I’ll talk more about this in a second.

Understanding “Follow Up” Messages

A followup message is a pre-written email that gets sent out to your subscribers. The first one is always a welcome email that is sent out immediately after they click the confirmation link in the first email that they receive. An unlimited amount of additional followup messages can be pre-written and setup to be sent out in certain time intervals that you can customize. This is where the term “autoresponder” comes from, because after new subscribers sign up for your list, they are automatically sent the series of followup emails that you create in the time interval that you set.

So for example, I have about 15 pre-written emails with killer content that are timed to be sent out every 7 days. It doesn’t matter when you sign up, you’ll be taken though the series of emails from the beginning. I add about 1 new followup message every week, just to keep content fresh and expand my “autoresponder series”.

To create your Welcome Email and any additional followup messages, you can simply hover over the “Messages” bar at the top, and click on “Follow Up”, and then click on “Add New Followup Message”:

Step 5: Writing Your Welcome Message (Follow Up #1)

Your first followup message is always sent out immediately after subscribing, so it’s always good to put some kind of welcome message within this email. In it, you might want to include:

A formal welcome and thank you for signing up for your newsletter.
Any links to any freebies that you might be giving away.
What to expect in the newsletter (i.e, what your subscribers have to look forward to).
Again asking your subscribers to “white list” your email address.
A way to contact you.

You can add other things if you’d like, but as far as a welcome email followup message goes, those things are pretty standard.

Now, when you write your first followup message, you’ll notice that you have the option of writing an email in html format, or plain text format:

Aweber recommends writing your emails in plain text, because plain text emails can be read by those who cannot receive html messages. However, I’ve ran split tests before and the open rate (the percentage of emails that you send out that get opened) are virtually the same. This is why I choose to write HTML Messages instead, because I have a lot more options to dazzle up my emails.

When I say “dazzle” up, I simply mean having the ability to make words bold or italic and underlined, which you cannot do in plain text format. You also have the ability to add color and even some fancy looking templates with html, but I don’t want my emails to look like a newsletter you’d subscribe to from a retail store.

It’s really up to you though.

Step 6: Send Yourself a Test Message

After you finish writing any email, you should always send yourself a test message first so you can see exactly what your subscribers are receiving from you, and so you can re-read your emails and check for any errors too.

After you save your messages, you’ll be shown a screen that lists all of the messages you have in your autoresponder series. To the right of each message, you’ll see the following options:

The “Spam?” number you see there is a rating that is given to each of your emails that show you how “spammy” your email is. It’s based on a number of things, including some of the words you write in your email, as well as the number of links you include (and what they link to), but if you write an honest email, even if it includes a few links, you should no problems at all. A high score will be a good indicator that your email may be blocked by some your subscribers’ email programs.

When you click on “Test”, you’ll have the ability to send a test email to any email address that you want. If after you receive your email you want to update or change a few things, you can always go back and click on your message to edit it. Make sure you save it for any changes to actually take place.

Step 7: Setting Up Your Opt-In / Web Form

The web form is the form that you will place on your blog or website to collect email addresses. The one you see here on SPI was custom built for me by my web designers, but you can actually customize really well using the built in web form builder within Aweber.

Click on “Web Form” at the top, and then “Create Web Form”:

This will load a “web form generator”, which gives you the ability to choose from several options, fonts, colors, etc. to create your own form. You can play around with this until you finally come up with a design that you like. Remember where you will be placing this opt-in form on your website, as this will have an impact on the size of the form that you create.

Many people, including myself, choose to place an opt-in form in the sidebar, mainly because it gets shown on every single page. However, you can create multiple web forms for several different pages of your site, like the one I created on the page where I explain more about my eBook.

Typically, people collect just the name and email address of the subscribers, although depending on what you do and what niche you’re in, you can add different fields, including phone number, address, or any customized field that you’d like. Some people don’t even grab the names, and simply ask for an email address, although if you do this you won’t have the ability to use the {!name} code for personalizing your emails, which we talked about earlier.

Additional Tip: The default text within the submit button is simply “submit”. I recommend changing this text to something better that either tells your potential subscribers what they are getting, or is an actual call to action. For example, on my own buttons I have “Free Instant Access”, because it’s describing the free access you get to my eBook.

The Settings

After you’re happy with your web form design, you’ll need to customize your settings. Under the settings tab, you’ll see the following screen:

The Form Name is a unique name for the specific form you just created. This is mainly to help you keep track of each of the forms you create.

The Thank You Page is the “Thank You Page #1″ that is in the diagram that I showed you earlier. This is the page that people arrive at immediately after clicking on the “submit button” while the confirmation email is being sent to them at the same time.

You have 5 options of what you want to happen to your subscribers at this point:

The first three options are pages on Aweber that they’ve created for our convenience. They each let the subscriber know that an email will be sent to them that contains a confirmation link that they must click in order to subscribe to the newsletter. The Audio and “Smart” Video Versions are cool because they tell the user exactly what to expect and what links to click, so there is no confusion. However, understand that many people may not be able to listen to audio, or may not have the ability to watch a video (i.e., people subscribing while at work who have restrictions on internet access).

I choose to use a Custom Page because it keeps the subscriber on my site. Here is what you should include on this page:

A short note that a confirmation email has been sent to them that contains a link that they must click.
You can include pictures of what the link will look like, just to avoid any confusion.
What to expect after they click the confirmation link in the email.
A notice to “white list” your email address so their spam filters will not block your emails.
Advanced: This is again a great opportunity to add in an offer for either a product that you already have for sale, or an affiliate product related to your niche.

What you decide to happen to your subscribers at this point is really up to you.

The Code

After you design your web form and finish with the settings, you’ll need to grab the piece of code that you insert onto your website that will show the form to your visitors. It’s not as hard as you probably think.

Under the Publish tab, in “I Will Install My Form”, you can either grab the Javascript Snippet, or the Raw HTML Version of the code. It’s much easier to copy the javascript snippet because if you go back into Aweber and change your form, it will automatically update on your website. Also, you can keep track of statistics like impressions and signups easier too.

Here is a screenshot of what this screen looks like:

You can see the code above which starts with “

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