Marc Guberti

6 Ways To Grow Your Audience Without Paying A Penny

September 14, 2015 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

Grow Audience On Shoestring Budget — These resources aren’t just for people on shoestring budgets.

We all want to grow our audiences. Before the web, growing an audience was a big concern for startups because of all of the money it would cost. Those startups had to promote their products and services without social media.

The only two possible options were putting in an enormous amount of time to reach some people or spending an enormous amount of money on advertising.

The online web has changed all of that. Now we can grow our audiences without paying a single penny. However, those changes don’t mean anything for you if you are not utilizing them. The only tools and strategies that currently provide you with results are the ones that you use.

There are several ways to grow your audience for free. While each method involves a time commitment on your part, these methods are all great for startups and entrepreneurs with audiences of all sizes.

Even the most successful entrepreneurs continue utilizing these five methods. Even though they are free, the methods are that good. Here they are:

#1: Use Social Media

Social media is the most powerful tool on the web. It allows you to grow your audience in a way like never before.

Why? Since so many people use social media, millions of people are bound to be people who would fit well into your targeted audience.

Not only do so many people use social media, but they use it daily. Millions of people log into their social networks every day.

All you have to do is post valuable content every day. Tweet, pin, schedule on Facebook, and constantly post on your other social media platforms. If you can’t do it, hire someone to schedule your social media posts for you. I’m actually doing that with Pinterest.

The way you use social media for your business depends on what your business is and which social network you use. Each social network presents a different ideal posting frequency.

On Facebook, many experts like myself believe that you shouldn’t send more than four Facebook posts on your page every day. On Twitter, you gotta tweet over 100 times per day (get this automated with HootSuite’s bulk scheduler. Don’t manually schedule that many tweets every day because then it’s not worth it).

To find an ideal posting frequency on a social network, you must constantly experiment with the content you send out. Some of the ways you can experiment are by sending out different content, using different pictures, using different hashtags, and changing your content frequency.

Social media allowed me to get over 60,000 people in my audience free of charge. At that point, I started paying because once you reach 60,000 Twitter followers, you must start paying tools like Tweepi to continue using them (this is because of the way Twitter’s API works).

At that point, I was more than breaking even so a small cost was easily manageable. By paying the same amount of money every year (under $100), I saw my social media audience grow from 60,000 people to over 275,000 people.

All of that for less than $100 per year.

Social media is the best place for getting more people to know about you. It gives you a platform where you can promote stuff. But what are you actually promoting on social media? Your free content!

#2: Start Your Own Blog

While I would recommend that every serious blogger gets his/her own domain and hosting—two very small fees—you can create a free blog using WordPress. Getting your own domain and hosting looks more professional, but all blogs have a special quality about them.

You get to provide free content which allows you to deepen the relationship with you and your audience. As people come to your blog more often—and they appreciate what they see—these people will come to respect you and your content more.

This respect is what results in people following you on social media and sharing your content with others. Some people who visit your blog enough times may decide to buy one of your products.

A blog has two main functions. Strengthen the relationship between you and the people in your audience and grow your email list. Out of all of the resources you can utilize, the email list is by far the most important resource for online success.

Your social networks, blog, and everything else you do should all point back to your email list. Having 100,000 email subscribers is very different and more significant than having 100,000 Twitter followers. However, having the 100,000 Twitter followers does help out with growing an email list.

And having a blog to build the relationship with your audience helps too.

#3: Build An Email List

I mentioned it when I discussed starting your own blog. It would be unfair if I didn’t discuss it in its own section.

The money is in the email list. While having a large social media audience helps you get more subscribers, don’t think that the money is in social media. Social media is a means of indirectly generating revenue by building relationships and getting people to subscribe.

While using WordPress.org opens you up to plugins that help get more subscribers, any blog can get more subscribers with a sidebar opt-in. They don’t convert very well, but it’s a start.

When you build your email list, you must commit to using a paid service like iContact or Aweber. However, many businesses are running on a shoestring budget. They don’t have much money to spend and aren’t sure about paying for an emailing service every month.

If you find yourself on a shoestring budget or are just beginning, use MailChimp. You get to gain up to 2,000 subscribers and send 12,000 emails per month—free of charge. To communicate with more than 2,000 people, it costs $30 per month.

However, once you have 2,000 people on your list, you can easily break even. While you can utilize these tools for free, why not pay for them if you know you can break even and grow your audience at the same time?

If you send out an email blast of a $400/hr consultation session, and one person of your 2,000 pays the $300, then you just made enough money to pay $30/month for more than a year. You can easily make more money from your email list and grow it in a year.

#4: Write Guest Posts

Guest posts present an opportunity to put your content in front of someone else’s audience. Even though some have declared that guest blogging is dead, it is alive and well.

When your content is put in front of someone else’s audience, and that audience is a targeted one, more people will read your content and visit your blog. After I started reposting my past blog posts on Business2Community, this blog got dozens of daily visitors from my reposts alone.

If you have the money to get a landing page, then promote that landing page in your short bio. As you can see for Business2Community, I make it a point to promote my landing page within the short bio. It appears at the bottom of every blog posts.

Business2Community Bio

Writing guest posts also presents an opportunity to strengthen your relationships with other experts in your niche. You get to learn from them because they will share their best practices. They want you to write a superb guest post so their audiences get wowed.

When I wrote a guest post for Jeff Bullas, he gave me several tips that I use to this day. Write short sentences. Include more pictures in your blog posts. I applied those tips to the guest post and now apply those tips to my own blog.

#5: Interview Other Experts

Interviewing other experts lets you build relationships with those experts, boost your credibility, and grow your audience. If you interview a highly regarded expert in your niche, this will be the translation to your audience:

You are good and valuable enough to get this expert to take an interview with you.

There is a difference between interviewing the average person and interviewing Bill Gates. You may not have the power to interview Bill Gates, but you can interview the people who the people in your targeted audience admire.

Some people live by this tip. They interview other experts on podcasts and have become millionaires from their work. Pat Flynn and John Lee Dumas are two examples of people who interview successful experts and make a living out of it.

They make six figures. Every month.

#6: Get Interviewed By Other Experts

The other methods help you gain credibility and an audience. You can leverage your credibility and expertise so other experts start interviewing you. Each time you get an expert to interview you, your credibility grows.

One of the most important lessons for getting interviewed by other experts is to start small. Don’t start by asking the person who has 100,000 email subscribers.

Start by asking the people with smaller audiences. These people are more likely to say yes to you, and you get experience. If I had to redo my first interview and choose where I did that interview, I would never choose a blogger with over 100,000 email subscribers.

Getting interviewed by a blogger with over 100,000 email subscribers ensures that a lot of people will see the interview. Getting this much exposure for your first interview is a curse in disguise because chances are your first interview will show some inexperience.

When I got interviewed the first few times, I was nervous and not sure. I’d rather be nervous and not sure to an audience of 10 people than an audience of 100,000 people.

When I get on the podcast with the person who has over 100,000 email subscribers, I want to sound confident and feel comfortable with the process. After doing interview after interview, I now feel comfortable and confident with the process.

I am ready for the person with 100,000 email subscribers, but it takes time to reach that level of confidence and comfort in the process.

In Conclusion

The web has provided us with many tools to grow our audiences. While some of these tools have pay to play systems set up, other tools are free and very helpful. You can easily grow your audience to consist of tens of thousands of people without paying a penny.

You can also use temporarily free services like MailChimp and then promote products and services to those audiences so you can break even when you must pay for these tools.

You can’t grow a meaningful audience by going free forever, but starting off by not paying a single cent is a great way to start and build momentum.

How do you view growing an audience for free? Which methods do you use to grow your audience without paying a penny? Sound off in the comments section now!

Fighting Through

September 11, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Some business owners are challenged with small budgets, a massive workload, and a small amount of resources. Most business owners don’t face a challenge that some families face every day.

It is a challenge that makes the challenges of business look meaningless. Business owners want to figure out how they can get a good return on investment. On this day, thousands of families were wondering how they would survive without their loved ones. Lives were unfairly cut short.

We like to center our thoughts around our challenges and think they are bigger than the world. Those challenges don’t mean anything compared to the challenges that others face.

The families who lost loved ones had no choice. Persevering was the only option. In time, things got better for many families, but there was always a noticeable void.

It’s hard to fight through. But some things are worth it. Pray for the victims and the people affected by what happened today.

10 Ways To Get More Social Signals

September 9, 2015 by Marc Guberti 10 Comments

Social Media Shares — Who doesn’t want more traffic?

Social signals—retweets, likes, repins, and anything similar on social media—let Google know people are engaging with your blog. Social signals have grown in importance for search engine ranking.

If you don’t want to take SEO seriously yet but want to get search engine traffic anyway, becoming successful on social media is the best way to start. A little fact about my traffic: when my Twitter traffic increases, so does my SEO traffic.

Getting social signals helps your blog rank well on search engines, but social signals also help you get more engagement on social media. That translates to more followers, more social signals, and ultimately, more blog traffic.

How exactly do you get more social signals for your social media content? Here are 10 ways:

#1: Be Active On More Social Networks

The more active you are on a social network, the higher the probability of you picking up social signals. The main reason being active helps you pick up more social signals is because your followers will have an easier time remembering who you are.

Think about it this way. Would you remember the person who posted something on social media once every month or the person who posted something on social media every day? The person who posts every day has more chances to appear on your home feed.

Posting daily also gives someone the ability to consistently show up on other people’s home feeds. When people see you enough times—and value your social media posts—they will eventually go to your profile and scroll through your social media posts.

Imagine you had large audiences scrolling through your Facebook posts, tweets, and pins. You can be sure that those same people are liking, retweeting, repinning, and commenting on your social media posts.

#2: Engage With Your Audience

Getting mentioned counts as a social signal. Having conversations with our audiences allows us to build relationships with the people who build our success. Some conversations bring forth opportunities such as speaking events, TV appearances, and attention from big media outlets.

Why then do few people engage with their audiences.

It turns out most people who use social media are lurkers. Only 10% of social media users actually take the time to interact.The other 90% watch the interactions happen.

If you do not take the time to engage with your audience, then you don’t really know who your audience is. Engaging with your audience lets you know their problems. That helps you create better solutions.

I make it a point to engage with my audience every day. I thank people for sharing my content, spark conversations about my interests, and share my expertise. I can’t tell you how many conversations I have had about running, dogs, and the Red Sox.

Engaging with your audience helps you get more traffic. Engaging with your audience helps people remember who you are. Want more blog traffic and social media followers? Engage with your audience.

#3: Post Awesome Content

Okay, we’ve all heard this one a lot. We want to post awesome content so people come back for more.

But what is awesome content? Here’s a better question: What do your followers think awesome content is?

My followers and a sports analyst’s followers have two different definitions of awesome content. The sports analyst’s followers define awesome content as fascinating information about a sport or athlete.

I don’t like speaking for everyone in my audience. But based on what I know, digital marketing and audience growth are two things many of my followers define as awesome content. Once you know how your followers define awesome content, keep on posting that type of content.

Every month, I always look through the tweets that I sent. I look at what worked and what did not work. The tweets that got dozens of retweets and the tweets that didn’t lead to a single click. I stop tweeting what doesn’t work and continue tweeting what does work.

The result was a dramatic increase in traffic. The first time I implemented this strategy, my daily Twitter traffic increased by over 70% in just two weeks. Ever since the change, I have maintained that increase.

Remember that just because you think something is awesome does not mean your audience will think it is awesome. Before publishing a social media post, ask yourself whether your audience would appreciate the content in the same way that you do.

#4: Post Often Throughout The Day

I don’t get dozens of clicks from each of my tweets. In most cases, I am lucky if I get more than a dozen clicks per tweet. However, since I send over 100 tweets every day, it is easy to imagine why I get hundreds of daily blog visitors from Twitter.

Posting often throughout the day allows you to get consistent traffic and see a consistent rise in your social signals. If you wanted to get 50 retweets every day, would you feel more confident with sending one tweet per day or sending 50 tweets per day. If you send 50 tweets per day, then each tweet only needs one tweet to achieve your goal.

I am not advising you to send hundreds upon hundreds of social media posts every day just to achieve your goal. And while I do send over 100 tweets per day, I would never send over 100 Facebook posts per day. The way Twitter users engage with the platform makes it possible for me to send over 100 tweets per day without annoying my followers.

You should make it a point to send out at least 10 social media posts every day. That way, you will get more engagement, and it will be easier for people to remember who you are.

#5: Outsource Some Of The Work

Remember the time when a scheduled pin got published on my account? I do. While I don’t remember scheduling that pin, I remember outsourcing it to someone else.

I can easily send 100 tweets every day because of HootSuite’s game changing bulk scheduler which lets me schedule a day’s worth of tweets (over 100) in just six clicks. Pinterest on the other hand isn’t nearly as easy. Some pins that I scheduled on my own took more than five minutes for me to schedule.

Then I outsourced, and now I can schedule one pin for every hour without putting in the work. It is okay to trade money for time even if you know how to do something. I know how to schedule pins, but I choose not to.

Since I have someone scheduling pins to tens of thousands of my Pinterest followers throughout the day, I get more engagement and social signals from Pinterest.

#6: Use Keywords and Hashtags In Your Posts

Utilizing keywords and hashtags within your posts makes it easier for people to find your social media posts within the social media search engines. Most people are so caught up with ranking well on Google that they forget about ranking well on Facebook, Twitter, and the other social networks.

Facebook, Twitter, and every other social network are search engines in the same way that Google is. You search information and then get a bunch of results.

Using the right keywords and hashtags in your posts will lead to more visibility and social signals. To find the right keywords and hashtags in your social media strategy, take a look at what keywords and hashtags similar people in your niche use.

#7: Include Pictures In Your Posts

The human mind understands an image 60,000 times faster than text. It’s no wonder that social media posts with pictures get more engagement than social media posts without pictures. Some people report that their social media posts with pictures get five times as much engagement as social media posts without pictures.

Want to double, triple, or even quadruple the amount of retweets and Facebook likes you get? Taking the extra minute to add a picture in your social media post can make all of the difference.

#8: Cross-Promotion

One reason new businesses have been staying away from Facebook lately is because of Facebook’s algorithm changes. These changes have enforced a pay-to-play atmosphere that favors the big guy at the expense of the little guy.

I created a Facebook Page and largely forgot about it. When I started to use that Facebook Page more often, it had a little over 100 likes. On Facebook, I was the little guy.

Since Facebook wasn’t bringing in any blog traffic yet, I held off on Facebook ads. I wanted to see what I could do to grow an audience on my own without spending money. So I went to my other social networks to promote my Facebook Page.

I included the link to the Facebook Page in YouTube video descriptions and made sure I tweeted about the Facebook Page every day. The result was that the page quickly went from getting no likes per day to getting several likes per day. What I post on the Facebook Page also got more attention, likes, and comments.

There are some days when I get as many as seven Facebook likes every day. It’s not game changing, and at that rate, it will take me a while to reach my first 1,000 Facebook Page likes. However, it’s a start. At one point, I gained no more than 10 Twitter followers per day. Now I always find myself in the 300-500 range for daily Twitter followers.

#9: Host Contests and Giveaways

You can give away almost anything—Amazon Gift cards, consultation sessions, or vacations to Bermuda—and your followers will engage. When you host a giveaway, make it clear that someone only gains entry by giving you certain social signals.

On Twitter, I would ask for retweets, and retweets only. On Facebook, I would ask for likes and shares. On Pinterest, I would ask for repins and likes.

You want to ask for the social signals that would put your content in front of other people’s audiences. A favorite on Twitter does not do that type of justice.

#10: ADVANCED TIP—BE CAUTIOUS

Approach this tip with caution. If used at the right time, it can skyrocket your social media growth. If used at the wrong time, your social media results will fall flat.

Create multiple social media accounts on the same social network.

On Twitter, I have multiple Twitter accounts, not just @MarcGuberti. My accounts have thousands of followers, and I use these accounts to promote my blog posts. One of my accounts is @Tips4Tweeting, and I promote my blog with tweets like these:

Those links lead to some of the blog posts on my blog. These tweets count as social signals for Google, and the tweets themselves also get some engagement.

I interact with my @Tips4Tweeting audience in the same way I interact with the people who follow my main account. While this is a great strategy for some people, it can eat up too much time for other people.

You shouldn’t approach this method until you have at least 10,000 followers on a social network and have discovered a way to use that social network in the most time efficient way possible—either using time efficient tools or by outsourcing.

I am not alone. Some businesses have more than a dozen different accounts on the same social networks, and chances are you’ve heard of some of them.

Mashable
The Huffington Post
Twitter
MLB
NFL

Two things to note is that powerful businesses implement this method and that they all outsource the work. They have ridiculously deep pockets which makes it possible for them. That is why it is important for you to master one social network in a time efficient manner before you approach this advanced tip.

In Conclusion

Social signals are important for search engines. They result in search engines ranking your content higher. The result is more traffic from search engines but also more traffic from your social networks.

How do you get social signals? Do you think SEO is overrated? Which tips will you be implementing first? Have any other tips for us? Sound off in the comments section now!

Three Great Places To Republish Your Blog Posts

September 7, 2015 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

Republishing Blog Posts

A while ago, Google made a change to their algorithms. Google makes many changes such as the notorious panda updates that put half of the web out of whack. While Google makes panda updates that change the entire landscape, Google occasionally makes necessary changes that address different issues with content creation.

One problem with the web is that copying, pasting, and putting someone else’s blog post on your own blog is too easy. Some people decided to plagiarise content on other people’s blogs. Then, both websites would suffer because Google couldn’t distinguish the difference.

Now, Google can recognize the difference. If a blog post is published on your blog first, Google knows that your blog is the original source of the content. To be sure, give Google two weeks to index the blog post as your content.

What does that mean for us? First off, original content wins more than ever before. Even when people copy and paste your content onto their blogs, you still get the search engine traffic.

It also means you can copy and paste your own blog posts to different places on the web—and not get a search engine penalty. It’s your content. You can put it anywhere you want.

With this in mind, I look at my older blog posts that once got traffic but now get a small amount of visitors. While keeping those blog posts on my blog, I can also breath new life into those blog posts by publishing them elsewhere.

Are you looking for some ideas? Here are some places to publish your older content.

#1: LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the best place to publish your older content. Publishing an old blog post on LinkedIn only takes a few minutes, and you can get a good amount of engagement from this strategy.

One of my LinkedIn posts was viewed 19 times. I’ll admit the number isn’t big, but I was just starting out.

That same LinkedIn post—the one that only got 19 views—got seven likes and one comment. Let’s add some zeroes to show the impact of a highly successful LinkedIn post.

190 views —> 70 likes and 10 comments

1900 views —> 700 likes and 100 comments

It doesn’t take long to see the benefits associated with posting your content on LinkedIn. After my third LinkedIn post, I was getting more than a dozen daily visitors from LinkedIn. Not bad for a little over 500 connections—and a completely new part of my strategy.

#2: Tumblr

I won’t lie. Tumblr hasn’t brought in incredible results for me yet. The main reason that’s the case is because I have a little less than 10 Tumblr followers. Tumblr is on the list of social networks for me to optimize, but it’s deep down on the list.

If you have an audience on Tumblr, then Tumblr would be a good place for you to republish your content. More people would see it.

LinkedIn happened to work well for me because I already had over 500 connections. If Tumblr works well for you, then go for it.

#3: Guest Blogs That Let You Republish Content

Most guest blogs only want original, unpublished content. However, there are some guest blogs that make the exception and allow you to copy and paste published content.

One of the first blogs I started writing guest posts for was Business2Community. While the guest posts in the beginning were unique, I decided to use Business2Community as a platform to breath new life into my old content.

The idea sparked in my mind when I wrote a guest post for Jeff Bullas. For anyone interested, the guest post is called 5 Ways To Flood Your Blog Traffic Using Pinterest. A few days after Jeff Bullas published my guest post, I found it under my Business2Community author page.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that people were using Business2Community to breath new life into their old content and also spread their new content.

Thus I began copying and pasting some of my blog posts into Business2Community. I published over a dozen blog posts on Business2Community in just three days. The best part is that I didn’t do any additional work.

When I got the first two guest posts published on Business2Community, I got four extra visitors to my blog. While all bloggers look for more traffic, four extra visitors isn’t exactly life changing. However, new life was breathed into those older posts. Take a look at this one:

Three days later, traffic to my blog from Business2Community tripled to 12 visitors for the day. Again, these numbers aren’t large…yet. The very next day, the amount of visitors I got from Business2Community more than doubled.

That number continues to grow as I put more content on Business2Community. Even if I never reach more than 100 daily visitors to my blog from Business2Community, the impact cannot be questioned.

The first 10 guest posts I put on Business2Community got a combined total of over 2,000 shares. That’s over 2,000 people promoting my content on their social networks. All I did was copy and paste 10 of my blog posts into Business2Community.

Ever since I started guest posting like this on Business2Community, my Twitter engagement has also skyrocketed. More people are sharing the blog posts and mentioning me.

All of that from one guest blog. If I find three guest blogs like Business2Community, these would be the numbers:

Over 6,000 shares for 10 guest posts

Over 100 daily visitors to my blog from those guest blogs

Hundreds of extra mentions on Twitter every day

Those are some big numbers. When I publish enough of my blog posts onto Business2Community—20 more—I’ll get those same numbers.

In Conclusion

Publishing your content elsewhere should form a core part of your content marketing strategy. By publishing your content elsewhere, you get to tap into a new audience while connecting with people in your current audience.

Publishing my blog posts on LinkedIn allows me to build stronger relationships with my LinkedIn connections. Publishing my blog posts on Business2Community allows me to tap into a larger audience.

Your blog is not the only place where your blog posts can go. They can be put on other sites, and that will result in more traffic and credibility for you.

Which guest blogs will you implement this strategy with? Do you see yourself publishing anything to LinkedIn or Tumblr? Sound off in the comments section below!

How To Get Your First 1,000 Blog Subscribers

September 4, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Get More Blog Subscribers — It’s all about the approach (and a few other things)

It’s a warm day in August 2014. I am in Cape May—a true paradise in its own right. I have over 100,000 Twitter followers. Over 150,000 people have visited my blog ever since I first launched it. I am approaching 20,000 Pinterest followers.

I have written over 1,000 blog posts for this blog alone. It would be unfair to not mention the hundreds of thousands of words I wrote for Squidoo webpages (now on HubPages) and my other blogs.

I made just as much money as when I had less than 10,000 Twitter followers, less than 500 blog posts, only a few hundred monthly visitors, and no Pinterest account.

Everyone wants a large social media audience these days for the ROI, but even with my social media audience, I wasn’t generating any ROI. I felt frustrated. Luckily, I was in Cape May, so the frustration left quickly.

During that vacation, I made the most important decision for my growth. I finally created an email list, and I couldn’t be happier.

The good thing about having 100,000 Twitter followers was that it was easy for me to gain subscribers. I immediately went from gaining zero subscribers to gaining over a dozen subscribers every day. It was an overnight change that was made possible by years spent growing my Twitter audience.

More and more often, I woke up to making more money online. Now, I make money every day. It’s a great thing to see my products bringing in revenue.

I started taking my email list seriously when I got my first 1,000 subscribers. With a little under 2,000 subscribers, I made over $200 from my first promotional email. It was a starting point, and I now get more results from my promotional emails.

I want to help you reach your first 1,000 subscribers so you can establish a strong base for yourself. Here are five methods you can implement to get more subscribers.

Create A Landing Page

A landing page is a page on your blog that is dedicated to getting more subscribers. There is no menu or navigation other than having the person enter an email address. Here is an example of one of my landing pages that I created with Optimize Press:

Optimize Press Landing Page

This landing page gets numerous people from Twitter every day. My landing pages are responsible for a majority of my subscribers.

Promote Your Landing Pages On Your Social Networks

The only way to get subscribers from a landing page is if you promote that landing page. The reason my landing pages get conversions is because I promote them on my social networks often. I use Twitter to promote my landing pages every 1-2 hours. Here was my most successful tweet

Although Twitter is my top social network, the promotion doesn’t end there. I also promote my landing pages on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, and my podcast. I am always exploring other options to promote my landing pages.

Use A Pop-up

Pop-Ups work, and based on my experience, they have an insignificant impact on bounce rate and the amount of time people spend on your blog. In other words, people will either click the x button and continue reading, or they will subscribe. It’s hard to go wrong there.

When I started using a pop-up for my blog, I quickly doubled the amount of daily subscribers I gained. I use the pop-up to promote my free eBooks that I would otherwise use my landing pages to promote.

I recommend timing your pop-up to show up within 20-30 seconds. That way, your visitor has enough time to look at your blog and get a feel for it. You want your visitor to feel comfortable on your blog so that visitor feels comfortable with giving you his/her email address.

Opt-In Box Above The Fold

I recently bought PlugMatter, a brilliant plugin that lets you put an opt-in box at the top of every blog post you write. It even goes on top of your blog’s homepage. If you didn’t notice it when you visited my blog, here’s what it looks like

Plugmatter Optin Form

This opt-in box allowed me to more than double my daily subscribers in a few days. This plugin essentially turns all of your blog posts into opportunities for you to get more emails.

The most important thing about PlugMatter is that it appears above the fold. Anyone who visits my blog will immediately see the opt-in box. People who are interested immediately enter their email address. People who aren’t interested simply scroll down and then see my blog posts.

While PlugMatter has resulted in a big increase in subscribers, it also leads to an indirect increase in subscribers. As people visit my blog again and again, they will constantly seeing my opt-in box. Seeing the same thing over and over again results in familiarity which results in that person eventually subscribing.

Host A Webinar—The Cool Way

A webinar is a live event on the web in which you empower others with knowledge. Webinars are basically seminars on the web. To some people, it may sound complicated to host a webinar, and hosting a webinar can get quite expensive.

It costs around $49 per month for an entire year just to get 100 people on the webinar. If your webinar already has 100 people, and person #101 tries to join in, that person gets blocked out.

What if I told you there was a free way to host a webinar? What if I told you the free way to host a webinar is better than most paid options?

That option does exist, and it’s called Periscope.

I know what most people are thinking: Wait, Periscope is a social network. Since when did it before a place to host webinars?

Periscope is a social network with many capabilities. Hosting a webinar with a Periscope is just one of the options. Just get a stand for your iPhone or iPad, position it right by your computer, and deliver the presentation just like any other person with a webinar would do.

Want to see what a webinar on Periscope looks like. Contact me marc@marcguberti.com and ask me when my next webinar goes live.

Promote sign-up for the webinar with a landing page. Don’t forget to promote a product or landing page during the webinar.

In Conclusion

When you get your first 1,000 subscribers, you will be more motivated to surpass 2,000 subscribers. As you accomplish each milestone, you will be moving closer to an email list that can generate a full-time income.

What are your thoughts about using an email list to generate revenue? Which of these methods do you use to get more subscribers? Is email marketing in your strategy? What tips do you have for us? Sound off in the comments section now!

5 Ideas For Your First Podcast Show

September 2, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

You’ve heard from people that you need a podcast. However, you don’t know where to begin. You wonder what type of podcast you should create. You wonder what you will talk about during your episodes. You wonder the format of each episode.

All of this wondering does not necessarily lead to stuff getting done. Identifying what your episodes in your podcast show will revolve around is the critical piece that makes finding the other puzzle pieces much easier.

Now, you may wonder what you can do for your first podcast show. Here are some ideas:

#1: Your Thoughts

You can create an entire podcast revolving around your thoughts. As long as your thoughts are interesting, people who watch some of the episodes on your podcast may decide to stick around.

When creating a podcast show based on your thoughts, make sure your thoughts from each episode follow a common theme. Do you talk all politics? Do you only talk about animals? Make sure your thoughts follow a common theme.

#2: Interview The Experts

One of the best ways to leverage your podcast is by using it to connect with other experts in your niche. Having an expert on your show means more exposure for that expert (the people in your audience sees the podcast episode) and you (the expert will share the podcast episode with their audience).

If you get hundreds of experts who promote your podcast to their large audiences, we’re talking about a big stream of traffic. That big stream of traffic can potentially be life changing for your online credibility—which would skyrocket if you get well-known experts on your podcast.

#3: Answer Audience’s Questions

Some people may feel afraid of interviewing the top experts in their niche right away. In my case, I wasn’t afraid of people saying no. I was afraid of something going wrong with the audio.

My podcast was one of the few areas where I had a close-to-perfectionist mindset. I had to eliminate pops and sound as crisp as possible. The last thing I wanted to do when interviewing an expert—especially someone like Seth Godin—would be this:

Hello everyone [LOUD POP] I am Marc Guberti, the teenager entrepreneur [WEIRD BACKGROUND NOISE]…

I wanted to master the audio before I approached the experts. I am doing that by launching my own podcast episode where I didn’t interview anyone. However, I didn’t want to launch episodes for the sake of launching episodes.

I wanted to provide a valuable experience for my audience.

I did that by listening to my audience’s questions. I asked people what they were struggling with and got some fascinating questions.

I have written over 1,000 blog posts. Some questions were never addressed in any of those blog posts. Does that mean I’m a bad writer. NO (#Bias). That just means I now know other issues people have with growing their audiences—issues that I didn’t write solutions for.

My podcast lets me answer more questions and provide more value to my audience. By the way, if you have any questions about growing your audience, email me marc@marcguberti.com and your question may end up on the podcast!

#4: Your Blog Posts

If you feel uncomfortable with talking off-the-cusp, you can start your podcast off by reading your blog posts word for word while providing small tidbits. While your podcast in the long-run should have a better strategy for content creation, this is a good short-term strategy to gaining confidence.

You need to have confidence and comfort when doing podcasts before you can successfully go off-the-cusp. I did YouTube videos and training course videos for over three years before I started my podcast, so the transition to off-the-cusp podcast episodes went smoothly.

However, you will see in some of my first YouTube videos that I was not as sharp as I am now. Practice allowed me to get to where I am now.

You may stumble in the beginning. Stumbling is an uncomfortable but vital and unavoidable part of the process. Better to stumble now than later. Just get it over with.

#5: Something You Enjoy Talking About

Regardless of what you choose to talk about on your podcast, you must choose to talk about something that you enjoy. If you dread doing your next podcast episode, then don’t be surprised if your podcast doesn’t take off.

The most successful podcasters are the people who show passion for what they do in each of their episodes. They provide a meaningful conversation that touches upon certain points that most people skip over or don’t even think about.

That’s all for the list. Here are some other things you need to know about podcasting:

Audio Matters

We all know the value of a podcast episode impacts how long people continue listening. However, not as many people think about the audio as the second biggest factor. That’s because most of us take good audio for granted.

Take this for instance. Would you rather listen to someone with a crisp voice (crisp with the help of a microphone) or to someone with a low voice and loud static in the background. To top it all off, the person with the low voice drops a glass of water right on the ground and the glass shatters—and you hear the sound the glass makes.

The person with the low voice may have great things to say. However, the loud static and the noise the glass makes would result in fewer people sticking around. Your content matters, but your audio matters just as much.

If you are wondering what I use, the Blue Yeti Microphone works best for me. I also have a pop filter on the Blue Yeti microphone which prevents those pops I was fearful of earlier. I edit the audio on Audacity.

Promote Your Landing Page In Each Podcast Episode

I will always promote my landing page at the end of my podcast. Why? People who subscribe from my landing page then get emails from me—and the email list is how I make most of my money.

All of my efforts online now revolve around this one question, “Will it grow my email list or help me make more money?”

The email list is vital for success. My friend Steve Scott said on his Self-Publishing Questions podcast that everything you do must promote your email list. Those activities that lead to more subscribers are like the spokes of a wheel. Your email list is the center of the wheel.

Get Started Now

The advice here is simple to understand. The audio for your first video or podcast doesn’t matter right now. The audio for my first few YouTube videos were horrible in comparison to my new stuff. What matters is you starting.

If you do not know how to start a podcast, join us in the free 5 Day Podcast Launch mini course.

In Conclusion

Podcasting has been consistently growing in popularity year after year. More people are creating their own podcasts and more people with podcasts are reaping the rewards. If you don’t have a podcast now, this is the time to get started.