Stop emailing articles to your list!
September 13, 2006
If you're sending out articles to your email list, you need to stop right now, this instant, without delay! Yes, yes, I know everyone is telling you to email information to your list regularly, but let me show you why you need to change all that.
I used to do what everyone else does. I would research the latest happenings in my subject area, write up what I felt was a good informative article on the subject, and email it out to my list of opt-ins who like to get that kind of information from me.
But then I signed up to receive information from a search engine guru that I felt knew his stuff. The next day I received an email from him that didn't contain an article, but merely a short description of an article and a link to where I could read the whole thing on his web site.
So I clicked the link and landed on an article page with AdSense on it. That's when it hit me.
Why You Should Post Your Articles to Your Web Site Instead
You should never email a full article to your list. You should always send them a description of the article, or a short excerpt, along with a link to the web page where you have the full article. There are many benefits to doing this:
- You get additional AdSense revenue from your list.
This one is obvious. If you send your list to your web site, and you have AdSense on the site, you can generate more revenue from the clicks.
- You can link out to recommended products from the articles.
AdSense is really a tiny piece of the pie that you can earn by sending your readers to a web page. By having links to related products that you recommend inside the article itself, you are more likely to get your readers to click and buy.
Of course, you can also have a list of recommended products alongside every article as well.
- You're building a content site that search engines can find and people can link to.
If you're posting all of your articles onto a web site, then the search engines can find those articles and send you traffic, and people can link to the article from their own web sites, from forums and in emails. This generates more AdSense revenue and product sales.
- You can grow your email list.
If your articles are all on your site and you include an opt-in box on each page, then visitors who follow links or find your site through the search engines can join your email list and continue to earn you more money.
- Your list has a place to go to find all of the articles you've posted in the past.
Sometimes I wish I hadn't deleted that article from that guru that I just didn't have time to read at the moment. I wish I would have saved it so I could look back at it.
Have you ever thought that? I have! And chances are so have many people on your email list. By having all of your articles posted to your web site, they have a place they can go back and find that information. New subscribers have the benefit of being able to go back and read the articles they missed as well.
And again, these extra visits to your archives generate more AdSense revenue and more product sales.
- Short article description emails are less likely to trip SPAM filters.
Thanks to Jack Spirko's comment below this article, I've added this very powerful benefit. A long email article has a much greater chance of using words or phrases that trip email SPAM filters and cause your readers to never get your email in the first place. A short description with a link is far less likely to trip those filters. Fewer SPAM filters triggered, more readers, more clicks, etc. etc.
How well has this method worked for me?
As you may have figured out by now, this blog is exactly what I've been describing in this article. It's the place I send all of my readers to when I post new articles. I often link out to products I recommend from within the articles. I have a list of recommended products alongside the articles, and I have an opt-in box on every page.
How well have I been doing with this blog? Well it's only been up a month, but so far it's earned me over $200 in extra AdSense revenue, more than $2500 in affiliate product sales (that does not include sales of my own products, which have been at least as much), and has gotten me 70 new subscribers to my email list.
Keep in mind–it's only been a month. Word is just getting out about the blog, and already I've gotten 70 new subscribers and made thousands of extra dollars from the blog.
All this because I stopped emailing articles to my list.
P.S. When you're ready to start posting your articles to your site instead of emailing them to your list, I highly recommend using Semiologic Pro for building your site. It makes it easy to have a list of related products showing at all times, and makes it easy to have AdSense on every page. It makes my list building easy as well and optimizes the layout for the search engines. So when you get serious, get Semiologic Pro!
Comments
14 Responses to “Stop emailing articles to your list!”
-
Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
-
What I do is I always email my list with several quick
mouth watering topics of what I wrote on my blog, and therefore make people go directly to my blog at http://www.semmy.name because I use so many different topics. I use to use even single domains to group items on word press blogs. So for instance if you have categories like "helpful software" you could buy a domain and then redirect it to
http://www.semmy.name/index.php/category/helpful-software/
Now go and use the same strategy and make a category "articles" for example!
Success!
Careful Jon,
Your getting very close to the edge on "calling direct attention to your ads". The technique though is very sound and imageine the Guru in question was Brad? If so same way I got the idea myself.
One additional advantage is that a few words of text and one link won't trip most spam filters where as long articles (specificly about emarketing) will often get flagged and blocked as spam.
That was the biggest reason I went to doing it this way, the ads on the pages just seemed like a no brainer,
Jack
Its funny - I've been directing people, sometimes ot my website - say to download products, sometimes just putting the info in the email, and sometimes sending people to my blog - the internet marketing one is here:
http://internet-marketing-info.blogspot.com/
Why do you send them to the ARTICLE page instead of the main entry page for the blog? At least you did in this email.
And do you think there is a lessening of response from people needing to read the email, click on a link, THEN read the post, click on Adsense, etc?
I DO agree it is the best way - but it goes counter to my way of writing - pull up the email program, bang out a message, hit send - NOW I've got to post it to my blog first!
LOL
Making me change my work habits
But if its THAT successful……
Thanks!
Andrew Larder
MarketingSharks.com
Jonathan,
Great post as usual although I'm not sure about the AdSense - it's just peanuts - and it could alienate some of your readers.
Just my $o.o2 worth
Peter
Johnathan,
I have been a customer of yours for awhile and find great value in your products. This comment is simply a thank you. You give us usable info on your blog and I really appreciate it. Yours are the first emails I open everyday and believe me I get a lot. I am so tired of people pushing product down my throat without any useful info on their sites. You don't do this, you have a gentle way of recommending products that are good. Some of the so called marketing gurus could learn a thing are two from you. So when all is said and done you have built a loyal reader and customer in me. Thanks again
My site is not working yet, and I am still in the early stages of learning but I agree completely with Veida's comment above!
best wishes and thank you for your very open and worthwhile information,
Miranda
Jonathan,
Your post is useful, precise and honest, as always.
I think you are talking about… intelligent blogging, when you post your article on your blog, and then you promote your article, through the promotion of the whole blog!
Thank you for extending this to the web sites approach, too.
It's true that blogging is changing the whole web.
Giovanni
http://bloggingleads.blogspot.com
Jonathan,
Your right! I switched to send an email for my subscribers to then go to a one page article website. Then I put my article into a website where all my articles are.
The reason I use a one page website for an article is because i can target my keywords and get google ads for those keywords. I found when I put my article onto my website, the google adsense does not track as good on my key words because of the other article titles on the side bar.
My one page article looks like this,
http://www.natural-remedies-thatwork.com/nl-147.html
and my article website looks like this,
http://www.naturalremediesnewsletter.com
rudys
Hello Jon,
I often wondered about this. In some places, I read that putting articles on the website reduces the chance of readers actually reading the full articles. They just may not bother with clicking through. I've yet to do some testing on this, though.
Why do you send them to the ARTICLE page instead of the main entry page for the blog?
Hi Jonathan,
Remember me, thanks for your advice. I think you are good and honest mentor for me.
Fred Chen:
Mostly to make sure the AdSense ads are on-topic. Sending them to the home page, which has a lot of posts on various topics, isn't good for ad targeting.
Jonathan
Again I find this article of your very useful. Like everyone else had said, your articles are honest, truthful, informative and comes with substance that other IM or newbies can learn from. No or few Back-End sales from you too!
Bravo!
P/S: I post full articles on my links under Article catergory. I guess I would have to change that strategy to capture more Adsense $$.
May Ong
OnlineInternetMarketingTip.com
I agree with sending a short email, as I truly hate reading through long emails.
Being directed to the ARTICLE site is preferred, because I am then reading that particular article. I don't have to go from a main page and then search for the article mentioned in the email. If I want to explore the site further, then I am free to do so. If I find interest in any of the ads, then there is that option to explore off the site as well.
Doug
a newbie adsense learner