How A Content Upgrade Will Build Your List On Autopilot

Every online entrepreneur understands the importance of building their list of prospects and customers. Whether offering a free opt-in incentive, or selling a product or service, your customers should feel like they receive many times more value than they are expecting. This is true with list building content upgrades, just as it is with everything else you do.

What Is A Content Upgrade?

The name implies, a content upgrade is extra information that upgrades the content that someone has just read. For example, let's say your reader has just read your blog post about 'Cooking The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie'. If that web surfer has read your entire post, that means they are very inclined to receiving more information on that same topic.

Offering a checklist or report with '10 Quick and Tasty Cookie Recipes' would make sense as a content upgrade in this scenario. Improve on the information you offered in your blog post, 'upgrading' the knowledge, information and/or resources on that topic in exchange for that reader joining your email list.

More Value, Quickly Delivered

Checklists and other lists make great content upgrades. Your reader can digest the information quickly. Web surfers these days are highly distracted, and have short attention spans. They don't want to commit a lot of time towards consuming content, even if that content provides value. So make your content upgrade short and sweet.

You should also make your content actionable. Describe a 'simple win' scenario where your reader can notice some real improvement in his or her life because of the information contained in your upgrade. In the above example, a short checklist that offers 10 quick recipes is a high value resource by anyone who was reading your cookie blog post.

Build Your Email List

The quicker someone can experience and benefit from your content the better. That is why content upgrades for building email lists seem to work the best when they are short pieces of easily digested content. On your side of the equation, this means you can make multiple content upgrades quickly and easily.

Your reader gets a quick win. They don't have to spend all day reading a lengthy piece of content. They can realize value very quickly. You don't have to spend as much time in the production process as creating traditional opt-in bribes, your conversion rates soar, and you add one more happy follower to your email list.

Writing a content upgrade for an online audience is very different from writing for an offline audience. It's hard for some people to master because it means giving up old ways of thinking and embracing a new style. Throw out your traditional old-school writing rules and discover the easier and faster way to connect with your audience with this free download: 

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How to Get More Views on YouTube

Internet Marketing Success Is No Myth

Success as an internet marketer is not some mystic art. There is no magical incantation required; nor is it necessary to sell your soul to the devil to achieve it. Inevitably, it is about 'work'; about doing the right things in the right way. It is just good marketing practice. By following the route laid out by the marketers who have gone before (most of whom are still going strong) and by applying ourselves to the approach that has been proven over the years we will succeed.

My background is in the discipline of classical music. One question all musicians are regular asked is: "How do you get your fingers to move so quickly?" The answer is always the same: - "Practice!" Internet marketing is no different. Find out what you need to do and then practise until you can do it. In the world of music there have been many authoritative tomes written on the art of practising an instrument. One phrase which regularly crops up is - "intelligent repetition". The only way to solve a technical problem is to play it over and over again. This, of course, is boring! The way we get round it is to keep playing the problematic note sequence, but we mess around with it. We might change the rhythm, the articulation, the dynamic, the speed, etc. etc. which keeps the work interesting whilst applying ourselves to the problem. There are no shortcuts; the work must be done and the skills practised to get where we want to go. Bear that analogy in mind when approaching the various issues you will meet in running an online business.

There are strategies and tactics which have been developed since the marketing potential of the internet was first realised, aspects of the business which work just as effectively today as at any stage in the past.. In this article I will look at some of these key elements.

Websites obviously play a significant role in our online marketing. Always go for simplicity in any website. Each website should basically have one single purpose. Every product or service you offer should have its own website. Never confuse your visitors by presenting them with a visual explosion of colour, pictures and graphics with links splattered all over every page. Keep the design clear and relevant to the job in hand. If you are looking to attract subscribers, the opt-in form should be the most prominent thing on your page. Your webpage copy should direct your visitors to it and encourage them to sign up, which we usually do with a free offer of some kind. With a product page, the sales material should be emotive and crafted to make the sale.

When offering free reports or eBooks to encourage subscribers, always provide real quality. It is your initial contact with a potential customer so it is your first opportunity to make an impression. If your free gift is poor and of little value, your subscribers will not remain subscribers for long. They will certainly not come back to make a purchase. The ideal placement for your free offer and opt-in form is in the top right corner of your webpage where it is immediately apparent to any visitor.

Once a visitor has subscribed to your list you will need to have set up a sequence of autoresponder messages to begin the process of building a relationship with that subscriber. It is well known that it takes a number of contacts with a subscriber before they are likely to make a purchase; seven contacts is the figure often quoted. In addition to working with your list, continue to promote your products by any means with which you are comfortable. Writing and posting articles to direct people to your offers is always a good technique - and FREE.

So, to sum up:

Keep your websites simple and specific

Work to build your list and keep your subscribers happy

Get traffic to visit your web pages

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The "Sexiest" Thing About Free Traffic & the Best Times to Post

Introduction

As a blogger or Internet entrepreneur, you need traffic. If you are unfamiliar with the term, it simply means people going to your website or blog. Just like all of the people you encounter in their vehicles when you are driving to work constitute real world vehicular traffic, everyone surfing the web at any given time is a part of Internet traffic.

There are two ways to get traffic to your site.

• 1) You pay for traffic.
• 2) You get traffic for free.

Paid traffic is a smart part of a serious online entrepreneur's marketing plan. You control every aspect of traffic when you pay for it. Ad campaigns with Google, YouTube, Amazon and Facebook make it possible to laser-target your advertising to the exact demographics you want to reach.

However, paid traffic can cost you a lot of money, delivering little to no results, if you don't know what you are doing.  Even if you do eventually develop a successful paid traffic marketing plan, it doesn't happen overnight. You have to pump a lot of revenue into buying traffic each and every day, spend your time and testing and retesting, and there are no guarantees that you will get the results you're looking for.

The "Sexiest" Thing About Free Traffic  -  If you think the reference to free traffic as being "sexy" is a little overboard, you are incorrect. Free traffic is beautiful, sexy, attractive and desirable. Why is this so? The answer is simple... because it's FREE!

In many cases this doesn't just mean being free financially. A lot of methods you are about to learn require a little bit of your time on the front end, but then they just continue to deliver free, targeted traffic to your site or blog with little to no upkeep on your part.

Other methods will require regular input by you, but since your financial outlay is zero, and the Internet never sleeps, you can employ these free traffic methods anytime of the night or day, whenever you have a few minutes or hours of spare time.

Some of the free traffic sources are:

Start Building a List  -  You absolutely, positively must be building a list. This is true if your business is off-line or on, and technology makes it easy to do so when you have a blog or website. To build your list you need a freebie - Lists of resources work well here. A short PDF that answers one big problem your audience has is another winner.

Social Media  -  Social media can provide a lot of free traffic. However, there are so many worthwhile social media websites out there, you have to be careful not to spend the bulk of your time chasing this low-converting traffic. Regardless what social media "gurus" will tell you, the return on your time investment trying to get people from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn back to your website to join your list is not very high.

People go to social media sites to hang out. They are socializing. Make sure you approach them in a social manner. Don't ever attempt to sell on Facebook or the other social media sites. The Best Times to Post on Social Media  -  HubSpot studied tens of thousands of posts and updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media sites. They discovered the best possible times for you to engage your audience. Those times are listed below (as of June 2016).

Facebook:

• 3 o'clock to 4:00 PM on Wednesdays
• 1 o'clock to 4:00 PM on Thursdays and Fridays
• Noon to 1 o'clock PM on Saturdays and Sundays

Twitter:

• Noon to 3:00 PM on Mondays through Fridays
• 5 o'clock to 6:00 PM on Wednesdays

LinkedIn:

• 7:30 o'clock to 8:30 o'clock a.m., noon, and 5 o'clock to 6:00 PM on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays
• 10 o'clock to 11:00 o'clock AM on Tuesdays

Pinterest:

• Evening hours every day
• 2 o'clock to 4:00 o'clock AM every day
• 5:00 PM on Fridays
• 8 o'clock to 11:00 o'clock PM on Saturdays

Instagram:  Anytime between Monday and Thursday, avoiding 3:00 o'clock to 4:00 o'clock PM

* Understand that multiple factors will influence whether your content is shared, liked, commented on and develops engagement. However, if you stick to the times just mentioned, you give yourself the best possible chance of driving a lot of free traffic to your blog or website.

Mobile  -  In late 2015 mobile searches passed desktop searches on the Internet. Experts say that now (in 2017) more than 60% of all web searches are on mobile devices. This means several things. First off, most people are searching from their smart phones. This display is tiny compared to your laptop, your desktop and even your tablet

Build A Mobile Application: Don't worry; you don't need to be a web designer or app developer. You can head over to Fiverr.com or UpWork and have a freelancer create a mobile application for your business inexpensively. This can be as simple as a checklist or list of resources, or some other helpful piece of information.

On-Page SEO  -  You are probably groaning at the 3 letter acronym SEO. In case you don't know, that stands for search engine optimization. This means making your website, content and webpages attractive to Google and the other search engines. If you have fallen prey to so-called experts that promised to deliver search engine rankings by offering their SEO services, it is understood that search engine optimization is a topic you would like to avoid.

Blogging  -  Guest blogging doesn't provide the big traffic boost that it used to. However, it is still a great way to reach a large audience. Contact the owners of the biggest blogs relevant to your niche or market. Offer to write an original, high-value blog post for their site. In return you ask for a link back to your website.

Answer Questions on Q and A Websites  -  There are sites which allow web surfers to post questions about anything and everything. Online marketers like yourself answer those questions, and the question that gets the most positive feedback is chosen as the top answer.

Start a Podcast  -  This may seem daunting at first. However, all you really need to start a podcast is a decent microphone and a computer. Odds are you have a blog. There is a pretty good chance that your competitor has a website or blog as well. On the other hand, podcasts are few and far between, which makes them the perfect free traffic source that sets you apart from your competition.

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