Aweber

My First 3 Years of List Building

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I started building my list on June 30, 2007.

I know this because I just checked my Aweber account and searched for the date that my first lead was added.

I felt compelled to look this information up because I received an unexpected email from one of my subscribers tonight.  She was replying to one of the emails I had set to send from my autoresponder 3 years ago!

No, I am not crazy enough to try and write 3 years worth of emails.  I don’t even remember why I did it but for some reason I set the last message in my email series to be sent after 999 days.  The email simply said:

Just checking in to say hello.

How’s it going?

I never expected I would still be doing this 999 days later or that anybody would still be reading my emails after 3 years but sure enough I got a response back tonight:

[]Hi!
thank you for the message.

Have a Blessed new Week.
~ Becky

Thank you Becky!

Over the last few years I have started to gain some perspective on this whole make money from home thing.  I’ve noticed that there is always a handful programs that everybody is trying to promote claiming it’s the next big thing.  It usually lasts for about 3 or 4 months until the focus shifts to a new batch of programs.

For every hot new program you can name now I can name a dead one from a year ago that was just as popular.

I started building my list because I got involved with one of those dead programs which thankfully provided it’s members with lead capture pages to promote.  They had an in-house autoresponder but I chose to pay a little extra to use a 3rd party one.  That’s how I found Aweber.

The company I was promoting is long gone…

But after 3 years, I still have my list!

I’m not saying it’s wrong to promote the latest and greatest opportunity… just do it on the back end!

The only thing you should be promoting are things that build your brand and build your list.  Once people are on your list and have gotten to know you THEN you can introduce them to whatever you want.  If they aren’t interested… well, you’ve got at least 3 years to find something that they are interested in.

So thank you Becky for continuing to read my emails.  I’m going to keep building my list and I look forward to hearing how everyone else is doing for the next 999 days.

Taking the Plunge with Traffic Wave

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I’ve said many times before that a professional autoresponder is one of the most powerful weapons in any successful Internet marketer’s arsenal. Over the past few years Aweber has become accepted as the king of autoresponders based on their features and more importantly their excellent delivery rate. Until now Aweber was the only autoresponder I would personally recommend but it looks like now I will be making the switch to Traffic Wave.

I actually joined Traffic Wave once about 6 years ago. At the time I think it was an FFA site with an autoresponder feature and some kind of income opportunity that I didn’t really understand. I joined because I thought I could make money from it and of course I didn’t so I quit.

Over the years I have seen various programs pushing Traffic Wave as a way to make money.  Because of this I always assumed that’s what it was… an income opportunity with an autoresponder tacked on to make it appear legit. I even expressed this opinion at NMF a few months ago and was surprised when the owner of Traffic Wave, Brian Rooney, showed up to dispel this myth and prove that Traffic Wave is a real autoresponder with delivery rates that could compete with the best autoresponders out there.

I kinda forgot about it until a few weeks ago when Jerry Reeder and I got into a discussion about Aweber’s new form builder and the possibility of switching to Traffic Wave to offer a simpler solution for our readers. When Jon Olson decided to make the switch to Traffic Wave live on TrafficExchangeLive last week we both took the plunge with him.

I’ve spent the last few days playing with Traffic Wave and I am happy to say that it has improved from where it was 6 years ago.  Improved a lot!  Traffic Wave is the real deal.  From what I can see Traffic Wave offers all the features as Aweber along with a very accessible owner who understands the needs of Internet marketers like myself.

The price is a big factor too.  When I joined Aweber I must have locked in a monthly subscription price which is roughly the same as Traffic Wave.  At some point Aweber changed their pricing based on the size of your list.  I guess as a long-time member I was exempt from the price change because based on the size of my list I should be paying an extra $50/month at Aweber.  Traffic Wave on the other hand has a flat monthly fee no matter how big your list gets.

What makes my decision to switch to Traffic Wave really interesting is that Traffic Wave is also an mlm complete with a forced matrix and fast track bonuses.  A few years ago I stated that I was done promoting these kinds of programs because instead of trying to sell good products you always end up pushing the opportunity.  When people fail to make money with the opportunity they quit and the whole thing falls apart.

Traffic Wave on the other hand is a real competitive autoresponder service that I am happy to use and recommend with or without the income opportunity.  The fact that I can make a lot more money with it is just an added bonus.

I don’t personally have any problems with Aweber.  I still think it’s a great autoresponder.  But when it comes time to recommend an autoresponder based on price and features I will have to go with Traffic Wave now.

I haven’t started promoting Traffic Wave yet.  I’ll probably start by updating the links in some of my ebooks and adding it my downline builders.  Once I get a few referrals then i’ll probably start pushing it a little harder.

If you have been on the fence about getting an autoresponder now would be a good time to join Traffic Wave.  I can’t promise that you will make thousands of dollars a month just from being in my downline but if you choose to use Traffic Wave to build your list you can feel confident that you are getting a professional autoresponder service that will become the backbone of your business for years to come.

Sign up now to get a free 30-day trial.

Click here to visit Traffic Wave


Sending HTML Emails in Aweber

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This had been bugging me for a long time.  I finally figured it out and thought it was worthy of a blog post.

When sending emails with Aweber you are presented with two boxes where you can put your email… one for html and one for text.  For years I have been just been using the text email option figuring that text emails are going to be the most accessible to the most number of people.

Aweber has a neat feature for tracking the number of times the links in your emails are clicked.  The problem with this is that it turns all your links into these big ugly tracker links that nobody wants to click.  I also like to include a signature in my emails with links to this site and my Twitter so those end up getting converted too.  But if you send html emails you can fix this!

Here’s how you do it…

From within the Aweber html editor highlight your URLs and click the “link” icon at the top of the editor.  Then paste your URL in the “Link Text” and “URL” boxes and click “Apply”.  This will tell Aweber that your URL is a link and it will also display it correctly when you turn the link tracker on.

For about a week I switched and started sending html emails instead of text emails.  The stats were great.  I could even split test and find out which headlines got the most people to open my emails.  However, sending only html emails boosted the spam detector up to 2.7 because apparently spammers are known for sending a lot of html emails with just an image and a link.  Not horrible, but not great either.

I finally found the solution in of all places… on the Aweber site!

It seems that the trick is to create your email in the html editor first and then copy and paste that email into the text editor.  You don’t have to worry about people receiving the same email twice.  Aweber will send both the html and text emails but the end user will only see the version that their email program supports.

So there you go.  Now you can send out your Aweber emails with all the fancy tracking features, your links won’t look like crap, and you can assure that your emails are being delivered to the maximum number of people.