Fishing for ezine subscribers

The Bible tells the tale of the fishermen who were just not catching a thing. Jesus came along and told them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat, which they did. Surprise! They caught so many fish their nets began to tear.

Jesus had a strategy. He thought outside the box. And he knew where to go. Of course, when you're God, you tend to know a lot of things.

What about fishing for ezine subscribers? Don't expect Jesus to tell you where to cast your subscription net. You will have to build some other strategy. In the meantime, here are the six steps I sued to grow my free online Happy Class ( http://thehappyguy.com/self-actualization-happy-class.html )
list by 27 last night, and my Daily Dose of Happiness (http://thehappyguy.com/daily-happiness-free-ezine.html
) by 10.

Step # 1: Sign up for Subscription Rocket ( http://thehappyguy.com/SR.html
) and install the code on every page of your web site. SR is a small pop-under offering your visitors free subscriptions to newsletters. Unlike some pop-ups, this pop-under is unobtrusive and nobody has ever complained. Every time the screen pops under your site, your ezine pops under four other similar sites. Most of my ezine subscribers had never even heard of me or visited my site before they signed up.

Step # 2: Get lots of traffic to your site. The Internet traffic gurus will tell you to attract only TARGETED traffic. But, with SR, any traffic will do. 1000 non-targeted visitors might be useless to you, but they will trigger 4000 appearances of your ezine notice to targeted visitors of other sites. Get the most targeted traffic possible, yes, but whatever you do, get traffic. More on this later.

Step# 3: Get sub-affiliates, and get lots of them. Every time web sites you referred get visitors to their sites, you earn three credits. So 1000 visitors to www.Looky-who-I-referred.com means YOUR ezine gets seen by 3000 targeted visitors at other sites.

Step # 4: Replace some of the SR codes with Subscriber Drive codes. What's the difference? Not much. They are almost identical. You can see how SD works at www.TheHappyGuy.com/self-actualization-articles.html . Why use both? Two reasons.

First, you don't want to run out of targeted subscribers. For instance, if you run an Internet marketing newsletter, you don't want one service to run out of similar sites on which to display your ezine and start showing it to visitors of vampire-slaying sites.

Second, if you can get multiple credits for each visitor to your site ... if you stagger the two services along the well-worn surfing routes. I have SR code on my home page, and SD code on my Self-actualization Resource Center, where the largest number of home page visitors tend to gravitate.

Let's start thinking way outside the box.

5. How do you get big traffic to your site? Suppose, for instance, your ezine and web site are about Internet marketing, competing with 4.5 million savvy entries on Google. Slim chance getting a top ten ranking, or even a top 100 ranking.

Consider your hobbies. Suppose you like horseback riding. Why not have a page on horseback riding, optimized for a couple juicy equestrian keywords, where you compete with just 700,000 not so savvy web sites? What does horseback riding have to do with Internet marketing? Everything, if it is about the publisher (you!). You might also post a page on Italian cuisine, where your keyword optimization competes with only 200,000 other Google entries. These could both be under "About the publisher".

In addition to the untargeted traffic who will bring you targeted subscribers from other sites by tripping the SR and SD codes, your visitors will get to know you better as a human being, a key factor in building trust with them. You can also add affiliate links for related products (want to sell a horse?) and actually make some money from these extra pages. (If you like happiness, why not use one of my happiness articles and sell my two happiness ebooks through affiliate links from http://thehappyguy.com/earn-money.html?)

6. Another way to boost traffic to your site is to keep sending your subscribers to your site. If there is a free ebook download (or software or puzzle or graphic or recipe) or a contest to enter, you can have subscribers visiting your web site each week. I set up a Daily Fun page http://thehappyguy.com/l/daily-happiness-fun-page.php for subscribers to Your Daily Dose of Happiness. Every time one of them visits, she earns me four views of my ezine notice to targeted traffic on other web sites. This page is getting an average of 100 hits a day, and that will increase as my ezine readership grows.

Jesus could help you catch way more subscribers than I can. But until he offers some alternatives, these are the steps you can take to turbo boost your subscriber catch.

David Leonhardt publishes Your Daily Dose of Happiness
http://thehappyguy.com/daily-happiness-free-ezine.html
Learn more about ezine publishing at:
http://thehappyguy.com/ezines.html

Did you realize that thousands of website operators use a simple technique to generate targeted visitors to their websites without paying a dime in advertising? It's true.

In fact, the technique works so well that many of them don't want you to discover how they get those thousands of website visitors and make so many sales on virtual "auto- pilot."

Their method?

Creating tightly focused articles other people publish in their ezines (online magazines and email newsletters) and post on their websites. This method rates so powerful that some even call it "the web's best kept traffic secret."

Now, you may ask, "Why would an ezine publisher or website owner publish my articles for their subscribers?"

The answer: Content!

Over a 100,000 ezines and newsletters operate on the web (along with millions of websites) covering everything from pets and cooking to investments and real estate. Many of them need tightly focused content and they simply can't produce all of it themselves.

Look at it this way... it's the same reason newspapers use the Associated Press. Individual newspapers often can't afford staff writers to cover every story, so they accept articles from outside their organization.

You can do the exact same thing for various ezines and websites catering to your niche audience!

You can get valuable publicity -- exposure you often couldn't even pay for if you wanted to -- by providing valuable, content-rich articles in exchange for a byline and a link to your website (called a "resource box")!

The following represent only a few of the enormous benefits of writing and distributing simple articles online:

** Attain "Expert" Status **

Let's face it! In the eyes of virtually everyone who reads your articles you rank as the "expert" on the subject.

Just look at people who write newspaper columns. You may disagree with their viewpoints, but they still have an elevated status in your mind compared to the "average Joe" off the street.

** Pre-sell Website Visitors **

If your article appeals to a niche audience hungry for more information on a very focused subject, you actually pre- sell them better than any sales pitch. In their minds, you've already delivered content they really want so when they click over to your site you already have a "reputation" in their minds.

** Traffic Lasts Longer **

Even though the Internet changes very quickly, webmasters are usually very slow to remove content from their sites. Once you get an article posted on another person's website, you have an excellent chance of that article staying there for weeks, months, even years.

** Increase Links To Your Site **

In a recent search I found just a dozen of my articles posted on over 813 different websites! Not only do those postings bring me traffic, but they also help my search engine positioning because of my increased "Link Popularity."

** Builds Your Affiliate Base **

Fact: Affiliates always take the path of least resistance.

If you provide excellent articles they can easily post on their sites or copy and paste into their ezines, your affiliates will promote you more often and more effectively compared to those who don't give them tools.

Plus, as you make more sales and publish articles, other people will see you providing excellent tools and will want to sign up as your affiliate so they can use them too!

** Build a Huge "Opt-In" Email List **

You can use articles to build up a huge list of subscribers by simply compiling several articles into a series and delivering them at preset intervals.

Often called a "mini-course," this technique allows you not only to prove to your subscribers that you deliver great information, but enables you to capture their name and email adress so you can send them articles and special offers in the future (with their permission).

** Requires No Special Skills **

People often think they need to be a "writer" in order to publish articles, but that's not true!

FACT: If you have a passion for a subject and can talk and explain things like you would to a friend over a cup of coffee, you can write articles people will love to read.

So if you operate a website selling virtually any type of product or service (whether your own or as an affiliate), publishing and promoting with articles should rank high on your list of traffic generation strategies.

No other method of generating targeted traffic to your website provides the quality, quantity and steadiness of traffic in such a simple, straightforward, and cost- effective manner.

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co- author of an amazing new ebook, "Turn Words Into Traffic," that will teach you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate link!
Click Here => http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com