Bloggers: Are You Making This BIG Mistake?

Blogs are all over the place. Take a look around you and you will know exactly what I mean. 5 years ago, the number of blogs is nowhere near the number today. In every market you go, there is always at least a blog covering that subject.

However, do you know that LOT of bloggers commit one BIG mistake that is drastically ruining their income? Though not every blogger is after the money (although a lot are), I’m sure anyone can surely appreciate the extra cash that blogging can bring in.

The big mistake I’m referring to is that a lot of bloggers do not build a list of subscribers. This is especially true in markets that are outside of internet marketing or make money online.

Yes, I’m talking about putting an opt-in form on your blog where you collect your visitors’ email.

No Leverage

NOT building a list of subscribers is a BIG mistake because you can’t LEVERAGE your previous hard work and effort.

You engage in marketing activities (seo, blog commenting, forum marketing, social media, ppc, etc.) and you drive 100 visitors to your blog today and you make a sale. In order to maintain your level of income, you need to do the SAME tiring and boring work the next day so that you can drive another 100 visitors to your blog and make another sale.

The cycle continues in a never-ending loop.

If you spent all your time doing blog commenting and forum marketing, when are you going to have the time to grow and manage your business?

Work ON Your Business

As cliché as it may sound, you want to work ON your business instead of IN your business. You want to have an aerial or bird’s eye view of your business so that you can see the big picture instead of immersing yourself in minuscule details.

By building a list of subscribers or leads, you can contact them whenever you want simply by emailing them. In other words, you can command traffic at will.

You might say: “But I have a RSS feed that readers can subscribe to.”

Not everyone uses RSS readers to read your feed, especially in markets where the audience is not tech-savvy.

Everyone (even those in non tech-savvy markets), however, has an email address.

Use An Email Autoresponder Service

By the way, when I said putting an opt-in form on your blog, I meant using an email autoresponder service like AWeber or GetResponse, not using a ‘subscribe to this blog by email’ feature from FeedBurner or some other similar applications.

Asking your audience to subscribe to your blog by email whenever a new post is made is different than putting up an opt-in form on your blog where you give them a valuable freebie in exchange for their email.

The former scenario (subscribe to blog by email) means you ONLY contact them via email whenever you create a new blog post. If there is no new post, you can’t contact them.

The latter (subscribing via an opt-in form where you give them a freebie) means you can contact them whenever you want.  Even if there is no new post, you can still contact them. Want opinions and suggestions from your subscribers? No problem. Just send an email to ask for their feedback. Want to sell them your latest product? You got it.

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Image Credit: Zack Clein