Residual Income Web Blog

I’m blogging about my Wealthy Affiliate journey as I go, to share what I learn along the way and perhaps give you ideas to use as you build your residual income, whether or not you decide to take the course yourself.

The day after I joined the WAU affiliate training course, I completed the first lesson and was notified I had to wait another two days before having access to the next segment. There was a list of extra things to do in the meantime, and I soon found myself browsing the Training Center. It was there, under Intermediate Resources, that I found a short guide on “Building a Mailing List.”

I’ve long known that an opt-in subscriber list is like gold for internet marketers. If you have a website on dog training, and an email list of visitors who are interested in dog training tips and resources, you can better market your website articles as well as dog-related products and services, to an interested audience. This is true for any niche across the web. For those who wish to receive them, your subject-specific newsletters can be a helpful resource. For you, it can be an opportunity to build credibility with your audience, as well as increase online income.

Typically, you wouldn’t work on building an opt-in subscriber list on day 2 of an internet marketing course. Most students are still learning the basics of internet marketing, unless like me they’ve already had some experience before taking the course. But since I already have blogs, websites and articles going, and am simply waiting to delve deeper into the meat of the course, seeing that simple guide was the motivation I needed to get moving on my subscription list.

A free service,  MailChimp, which is really very robust and actually quite cool, handles my subscriber list. My initial list is less than 300 contacts, all of whom opted-in in the past six months to receive my ebook updates, and it’s a good start. I have also created a newsletter subscription form which will import subscribers to my MailChimp account to help grow my list.

On day 3 of my WA course, I sent my first subscriber list email. In reaching out to my subscribers, I want to make sure  that my newsletters are first and foremost helpful and useful resources. We all hate junk mail and sales pitches, and I respect my readers’ time. I intend to only send information I’d be glad to receive myself. In addition to good content, links to helpful resources — whether or not I may receive a commission on them — will also be included, but only if I have tried them and believe them to be good and worth MORE than the cost.

Any tips on what you as a subscriber want to receive in a newsletter? If you have a website, do you have a subscriber list? What kind of updates do you send to your list?