Ritoban Chakrabarti's Blog

OptinLabs – Our Latest Software Venture

Anik and I were discussing on the possible ways to increase optin rates since we had noticed a steady drop from our own optin pages. We need a future-proof solution that would help us and others – hence OptinLabs was born.

OptinLabs is a suite of email tools, which in it’s current state consists of:

Quizzes
Browser Push Notifications
Split Testing

Our goal was to create a massively easy-to-use UI with only the most important bells-and-whistles.

And boy, are we proud of how we’ve started to grow not only our email lists, but of our users as well.

We’ve already got a bunch of people signing up every day and plans on how to scale.

In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be rolling out multiple Facebook ads, strike partnerships with influencers, host a lot of webinars, release tons of great content including videos, and even release neat features and free widgets.

Notably, I just finished developing our privacy policy generator for optin pages and we’ll be doing some content marketing around it to generate buzz.

Lots of things to do, and this project couldn’t have come at a better time.

There’s about a hundred items on my to-do list right now because I’m handling pretty much everything. The hustle is REAL!

There’s a lot of fresh learning going on due to my massive involvement in this project, and I’ll do my best to release some case studies from our results.

Currently, our Facebook ads are working really well – of course, cause Anik is a master of persuasion and also because we’ve done some super-awesome case studies for our first version of the webinar.

I’ve even experimented with Twitter Ads and Bing Ads – the results have been meh so far.

The biggest change for me will be creating value-oriented YouTube videos on our new channel.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this project. Leave a comment below

15 Minute Hack To Get Subscribers Via Your WordPress Blog

It’s better to have one email subscriber from a hundred visitors than zero.

I’ve long maintained that it’s important to keep increasing your email list. No matter what business you’re in, having a growing email list will always be an asset to drive customers, visitors, and future leads.

While there are a lot of ways to drive optins, and I’ve already talked about one of my favourites, solo ads, as well as other paid advertising. Today, I’ll talk about a not-so-unique method which literally guarantees success.

I ran this personal blog for several years. I didn’t have any optin form on my blog, hence none of my posts – no matter how engaging they were – weren’t adding to my bottom line. Sure, I could drive some sales by putting links to my products in my blog posts. But I wasn’t capturing any email addresses.

Essentially, I was losing out on all the visitors who found my site through the search engines or social media. Later I realized, I should squeeze every visitor’s real worth and the best way to do that was by embedding optin forms on this blog.

If you’re into blogging or even if you’ve just started blogging, there are several things you can do to build your optin list simply via your blog.

It doesn’t take much time to embed optin forms on your blog especially if you’re running WordPress, which pretty much powers about 75 million blogs online.

There are different places where you can strategically place optin forms, that are both non-intrusive yet visually appealing.

You have to make sure your content is always top priority. But no one’s stopping you from monetizing your blog any way you can. The following are my favourite locations for placing an optin form. So if you’re ready, set your countdown timer to 15 minutes and place optin forms on each of these locations on your WordPress blog.

Top bar – 2 Minutes

This has proven to be, by far, the highest converting optin widget on my blog. I’ve been using the ManyContacts bar and I split tested it with Hello Bar. ManyContacts won hands down primarily because it has a neat overlay text and arrow for new visitors that drives attention towards the optin form and drives leads my way.

Here are the stats of the optins I got after I published my Solo Ads post

I recommend trying out HelloBar as well as ManyContacts, and see what works better for you. There are other free WordPress plugins like WP Top Bar, and Icegram. BTW, Icegram also lets you publish notifications, footer bars, and messengers.

Here’s how to setup ManyContacts the right way.

Step 1: Go to ManyContacts.com and setup an account.

Step 2: Enter your website URL and click the Create a New Bar button.

Step 3: Pick a color, enter your headline text, enter your thank you text, optionally enter the URL where you want your visitors to go after opting in, and finally make sure you have the overlay checkbox checked.

Step 4: Download and install their WordPress plugin on your blog and voila!

You can also run split tests with ManyContacts to test out different headline texts. The only weird catch being you have to export the list of contacts saved with ManyContacts and upload them to your email marketing service regularly.

Sidebar – 5 Minutes

This is one of the most common locations for placing an optin box. There are several plugins out there that let you embed a neat optin form on your blog’s sidebar. The key part here is that it should stand out from your blog’s design. Use a color palette that matches with your blog but still ensures the box stands out.

Don’t worry. People are used to seeing optin forms on blogs and it’s not going to interfere with the readability of your content.

The easiest way to setup a sidebar optin box is to create a web form on your email marketing service and grab the HTML code from there and place it in a text/HTML widget on your WordPress sidebar.

I’m using the Genesis theme for my blog and it comes with a widget plugin called eNews Extended. I installed it and set it up with some minor CSS tweaks to match the color scheme of my blog.

Bottom of every post – 5 Minutes

I don’t like including the author bio at the bottom of every post. Especially because I’m the solo author on this blog. But for those visitors who have read my entire post and reached the bottom of it, there’s a neat little optin box that stands out and invites people to enter their email address.

If a person has taken the time and gone through your entire blog post, then there’s a high probability they would want to be connected with you.

There is an impressive free plugin that lets you do exactly that and it’s called Optin Forms. Here’s how to set it up:

Step 1: Download the plugin from WordPress and install it on your blog.

Step 2: The plugin is pre-configured to work with Aweber, GetResponse, Madmimi, Mailchimp, iContact, and Interspire. Enter the webform ID, list ID, form action URL (based on which provider you are using).

Step 3: You have 5 different form designs to choose from and make sure you choose a design that goes well with your blog. You can customize the box pretty easily by choosing the colors you want, the headline, subheadline, button text, disclaimer, fonts etc.

Step 4: Choose where you want the form to be displayed. You can have it shown after the first paragraph, or the second paragraph, or at the bottom of every post (like I did). And you can also choose to exclude it from specific posts and pages as you may desire.

All in all, a pretty straightforward and simple plugin that does what its supposed to and works very well to drive those optins to your list.

Popups – 3 Minutes

There are several ways to include optin popup boxes on your blog. I’ve used the Leadpages popup myself and it works wonderfully well on one of my blogs. You can set a delay of xx seconds and have the popup appear to only first time visitors.

You could also try using an exit alert box or an exit intent popup. I don’t particularly prefer the exit alert on my blogs. They’re better suited for sales funnels where I’m paying for traffic and I want to squeeze out every last cent.

Exit intent popups, on the other hand, are pretty damn effective because they pop up JUST as your mouse leaves the window. Quite eye-catching. While there are apps like Bounce Exchange that let you embed neat exit intent popups, if you want to save up some money then try out HelloBar and this WordPress plugin.

There’s another suite of conversion tools offered by the guys at Appsumo called SumoMe. After you install their code on your site, you can get a host of features like heatmaps, popup list builder, and share buttons.

Here’s how to setup a Leadpages popup on your blog:

Step 1: If you’re not on Leadpages already, then sign up because you open a world of stunning landing pages and conversion mania.

Step 2: Setup a Leadbox on their web based backend. It’s really easy. All you need to do it enter an image (optional, but recommended), enter a headline, enter a subheadline, change the button color and text to your liking and save it. You can even integrate it with your favourite email marketing service.

Step 3: Choose the publishing options that works best for you. You can choose WHEN and HOW the Leadbox will be shown. You can either choose a Popup version, a link/button version, or even an exit intent version. If you choose the popup version, then you can mention after how many seconds you want your Leadbox to be displayed, and also if it’s a regular visitor then you can choose to display the Leadbox after x number of days.

Step 4: Install the Leadpages WordPress plugin on your blog and choose the Leadbox you just created to be displayed on your site.

Interstitials (optional)

There’s another idea that I haven’t tried out yet, but I’ve seen several big blogging publishers use on their blogs. The homepage of your blog could be a squeeze page. Or place a summon heading interstitial on the top.

Sumome provides an interface for creating such interstitials that roll up to the top of the page and covers the entire viewport. If a person chooses to not optin, they can simply scroll down to your regular site.

Interstitials and Popups can be very effective for new visitors on your site but can be obtrusive for your regular readers. You could place a cookie whenever a visitor subscribes to your email list from any of the above mentioned locations so that you can choose to NOT show optin forms to them again and again.

Connect Optin Boxes to Sales Funnels

If you’re spending all this time and energy on creating the best content possible, then it’s imperative that you generate some revenue with it. Apart from banners and links on your blog leading to your products or affiliate promos, I suggest linking your optin forms to a sales funnel.

For example, the optin boxes on my blog are linked to my Email Instruments sales funnel. When you opt in, you’re taken to download my free book called the Email Lifestyle. There’s a link to proceed to my sales page right there. And that’s where the sales begin to flow.

Even my first few autoresponders talk about Email Instruments. Not only do you add subscribers to your email list, you also get to generate a direct revenue from your blog posts and content creation.

Little by Little, One by One

If you’re just starting out with blogging and don’t have much traffic, be patient. Embed optin forms on your blog and try to convert as many visitors to subscribers as possible. Slowly, the numbers keep improving.

In fact, when you write a new blog post, send an email to your list. They opted in your list, so they are definitely interested in reading what you post next. It’s important for new bloggers to see results and the best tool in your arsenal is your email list that you can blast out whenever you publish – resulting an initial eyeballs to your content.

Conclusion

I read a lot, A LOT of blogs and I’ve noticed optin forms on most of them. If you’re not doing it, then what’s stopping you?

Take out 15 minutes of your time today, install the plugins I’ve mentioned in this post and setup optin forms. Start raking in those leads from today. Make the most of your traffic.

If you are doing something awesome on your WordPress site to generate subscribers, I would love to hear about it. Let me know in the comments section below. I attempt to reply to every comment, so comment below if you have any questions.

24 Awesome Ways To Monetize Your Email List

So you have an email list. What now?

There’s a lot of talk about list building and the five hundred ways to build your email list.

And I agree. You definitely need to have a big email list if you want a consistent revenue stream and a fan following. It starts of slowly and the more you get into it, the more your list grows.

Email Marketing is the future and there’s no denying that.

But I haven’t heard many people talk about list monetization and how to maximize your revenue with your existing email list.

I’m here to give you ideas that you can plug and play right away and increase the revenue you generate with your email list.

1. The Selling Mindset

Before you even begin building your email list, you need to ask yourself – am I willing to SELL stuff to the people who follow me?

If you can’t hear a resounding YES in your brain, then please stop reading right now.

I have come across a lot of people who have email lists but all they do is send their subscribers a weekly email with the latest content on their blog – which by the way does not have any monetization in place.

It’s perfectly fine to send an email about your latest and greatest blog post, but are you monetizing your blog properly? If all you have on your blog is a bunch of articles, then that’s not the right mindset.

When you’re marketing online, your mindset should always have one goal: What am I selling?

You have to get it deep in your mindset that the goal with your email list is to directly or indirectly generate revenue. That’s why you’re building that list in the first place.

I used to have the ‘generous’ mindset up until a few years ago. I thought that if I gave my subscribers valuable content, then they would trust me and buy whatever I recommended.

But what actually happened?

After weeks of sending awesome content, when I finally sent a promo email for an affiliate offer, I got a bunch of complaints and a lot of people unsubscribed. Needless to say, my EPC was hurting.

That happened because my subscribers thought of me as the guy who sends good content. That’s what I was known for. But what happens when that same guy tries to sell something? Kaboom.

Always be selling.

2. Email Regularly And Religiously

Doesn’t matter if you have a hundred subscribers or a hundred thousand. If you have an email list, you have got to be pro-active about emailing it regularly.

I know you won’t get much clicks when you have a few hundred subscribers. But if you build the habit about sending an email a few times a week, you will maintain that habit even when you have a large list.

I’ve discovered that discipline and habits are what determines a person’s success, and it’s the same with email marketing as well.

If you don’t send an email to your list regularly, then they will pretty much forget who you are and what you represent.

In this age of information overload, everyone’s subscribed to multiple email lists and they get a lot of emails from a lot of people.

You can’t stand out if you email your list once a month.

Now I’m not asking you to spam inboxes by sending emails three times a day. But you should make it a habit to at least email your list thrice a week. That keeps your name fresh in their mind and they respond much better over time – considering you send out good emails.

3. Create A Mailing Calendar

When you’re running an online business, things often get chaotic and it’s important to make sure you’re making the best use of your time.

Creating a mailing calendar is one of the easiest ways to stay organized and effective with your mailing schedule.

It works pretty much the same way you organize your posting schedule if you’re into blogging.

There are several calendar apps out there which help you bring order in your online chaos and one of the best one is Google Calendar. You can access it easily from your inbox and there’s also an app for that.

I recommend creating a mailing schedule of at least one week in advance.

You sit down on Sunday evening and plan out what you want to send to your email list the following week.

If I have good Subject ideas in mind, I will write them down. Or else, I’ll just make a one-liner note of what I’m going to be emailing about. That’s all you need to do.

You can go ahead and plan out your mailing schedule a month in advance if you know what your next month will be like. I prefer the weekly routine because it only takes like 5 minutes to plan out the entire week’s schedule.

4. When Should You Blast Out

There has been a lot of debate on the days and times to send out an email. Some will say Weekdays at 12 PM are the best. Some will say 8 AM on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the best.

There’s a very high probability that the demographic of your email list won’t entirely be located on a single time zone. That’s where advancements in technology comes handy.

Autoresponder services have the feature to schedule your blast to go out at a particular date and time based on the subscriber’s time zone.

So if you schedule the email for 1 PM on Monday – people in India will receive that email when it’s 1 PM Indian Standard Time and people in the UK will receive it at 1 PM GMT.

So when should you schedule your emails? Truth is, it depends.

I don’t plan to leave you stranded with an open ended question, so let me give the best advice possible.

TEST.

Every list is different and you need to find the best combination that works with your list.

Step 1: Decide on the number of days a week you will send an email. Let’s say you decide: Three.

Step 2: The first week, send an email on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at 8 AM.

Step 3: The second week, send an email on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday at 8 AM.

Step 4: The third week, send an email on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8 AM.

Step 5: Compare the nine emails you sent out and make a note of the ‘open rate’.  Once you have found out the best days – let’s say Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday work the best for you. The fourth week, send an email on these three days at 12 PM.

Step 6: The fifth week, send an email again on these three days; this time at 6 PM.

Within five weeks, you will have concrete proof as to which days work the best for you.

5. Increase Your Social Net Worth

One simple trick will help you rapidly increase your social following and ensure you get the best coverage possible with every mailing. All you need to do is place social icons at the end of each email and link them out to your social profiles along with a neat yet unobtrusive call to action.

Doing so won’t reduce the importance of the main call-to-action in your email and also make sure that the ones who read the entire email get an option to follow you on social networks.

Once a subscriber has liked your FB page and/or followed you on Twitter, then even if they miss your latest email, they still get to see what you’re upto on FB and/or Twitter. Increases your exposure like woah!

6. The Right Way To Write Subject Lines

There’s plenty of discussion among copywriters on the right way to write subject lines and I can understand why.

The Subject line in the most important part of your email because it will either force the reader to open your email or bury your email in the vast depths of your subscriber’s inbox.

Lousy subject lines can do more harm than just not getting your emails opened. ISP’s and autoresponder services track open rates and click rates for all their users and it helps them judge who’s account is in good standing and who’s is not.

An excellent open rate (of course low bounce rates and low unsubscribe rates also matter) will have an excellent account standing – and it will ensure that your emails hit your subscribers’ inbox and don’t go wandering into the dreaded Promotions tab or worse, the Spam folder.

Here are a few pointers to write good subject lines:

Step 1: Check your own inbox for the emails you’ve received in the last month. Make a note of the Subject lines of all the emails you opened.

Step 2: Try to notice the similarities and word structure on the emails you opened vs the ones you didn’t. What made you open those emails?

Step 3: Follow the three additional tips mentioned below along with your research in Step 1 and 2 to write killer subject lines.

Three additional tips:

Tip #1: I’ve noticed that subject lines with numbers tend to get opened more. It breaks up the monotony of plain words and makes your message stand out.

Tip #2: The ‘mystery’ subject line works great in some cases. For example, you could write a subject line that says: I really wish I hadn’t… 

If you sent me this email, then as a reader, I would suddenly stop casually browsing my inbox and wonder for a second why you wish you hadn’t. And since the mystery would be too much to handle, I would open your email.

The important part here is to make sure the email body copy is consistent with the subject line. So you could go and write why you wish you hadn’t.

Tip #3: A lot of people browse their email on their phone and most phones tend to show the first line or two of the email along with the subject line in the notifications area.

It’s important to make those first couple of lines consistent with the subject line, just like you would when writing a blog post. Get ’em hooked.

7. The Power Of P.S.

Ever seen the movie, P.S. I Love You? If not, then go watch it right now because it literally changed my email marketing perspective overnight.

A lot of marketers use a P.S. sentence after their sign-off and there’s a reason for that. People are accustomed to read into things that aren’t part of the main narrative.

Remember the old letters your grandpa used to send you? P.S. has been around for ages – so why not use it your emails?

Example: In a recent email newsletter, I tracked the number of clicks for the P.S. link as well as the other links in the email.

If I hadn’t put the P.S. sentence with the link inside, I would have lost out on 11.6% clicks.

8. How Many Links To Include In An Email?

The actual point of the email is to get as many clicks as possible to whatever you’re promoting. That’s why a good call to action is important.

While there’s no fixed rule to the number of links you need to have in an email, I typically tend to space it out on a need-to-need basis.

If you have a P.S. line, then there needs to be a link in there. There should definitely be a link right above your signoff. And of course, one link in the middle of the narrative (above the fold) with a strong CTA to break up the text and get the casual readers to click your link before their attention moves on to other things.

The onset of the digital age has resulted in monkey-like attention spans and it’s important to hook in your readers within seconds or lose out on potential dollars.

9. How Long Should Your Email Be?

The best suggestion I can give is to mix it up.

I send long emails sometimes when I’m describing a case study and want only highly engaged readers to follow through and click the one link in the email right before my signoff.

I send really short emails when I want to get the highest CTR possible and don’t care if the reader is pre-sold or not.

Email marketing is not SEO. Google favours detailed articles and gives you a slight ranking advantage if you write comprehensive articles. However, Google does not index email messages, nor does it rank them.

So the length of the email is purely based on qualification. You need to ask yourself while composing the email.

If I wanted to send an email about my newest blog post, then I would make it short and to the point with a couple of CTAs. I don’t need to qualify a subscriber to read my blog post. The more the merrier. This also works when the CTA landing page does a great job at selling so you don’t need to in your email.

If I was promoting a high ticket product or announcing the launch of my own product – I would write a detailed email to weed out the most attentive readers who are actually interested in the product. In this case, I want my subscriber to be pre-sold and ready to take action when they click the links in my email.

10. Test Your Email Before The Email Tests You

I know the easy option always seems the best one, especially with email. We all tend to write an email and try to send it as quickly as possible to our list.

But wait – are you doing it correctly? Have your open rates and click rates dropped substantially over the past few weeks/months? It’s important to test your email before sending out your promos because you may not be hitting your subscriber’s inboxes.

Your email might be going to their spam folder or the dreaded ‘promotions’ tab in Gmail.

Email deliverability strongly determines your open rates, clicks rates, and engagement.

So how do you ensure you hit them inboxes? Here’s a simple process:

Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and AOL are the four largest email providers among the English speaking audience and most of your subscribers will be enrolled in these services.

So we will essentially test email deliverability.

Step 1: Create two new email accounts with each of these four providers. You will now have eight new email addresses.

Step 2: Create a brand new list/campaign in your autoresponder service/software and add these eight addresses to that list. The settings of that new campaign will be identical to the settings of your main email list.

Step 3: Once you have written the email you want to send to your main list, send it instead to the new list. Word for word. Link for link.

Step 4: Check all the eight email addresses and see if the email was hitting the inbox for all of them. If not, then there are three things you need to change: From email address, subject, links in the email.

Step 5: Create different versions of the original email with the modifications I’ve mentioned above and send them out to the new list yet again. Keep doing this until you have an email that hits the inboxes of all the new email addresses.

Step 6: Once you have that golden email, copy it word for word and send it exactly as it to your main email list. Chances are, you will have better open rates and click rates than ever before.

Don’t undermine Split Testing

Many major autoresponder services have the capability of handing split tests with your newsletters and email promos. Bare minimum, you should split test your subject line and see which version gets better open rates. There are other things you can split test, like body copy, length of email, and call to action.

11. Learn From Your Analytics

I cannot stress this enough. Rather than plain guesswork, it’s always better to let the numbers speak for themselves. Getresponse has a pretty sweet stats and analytics interface for every newsletter and autoresponder that you send out.

I tend to compare the stats of my latest email with the last three emails that I sent out and I mostly check for open rates and click rates. If I find an email did better than the others, then I open those two emails side by side and compare the difference between the two.

Granted, it requires a keen and learning eye to observe what makes one email better than the other. But when you start following this process on a regular basis – you will start to see some common traits of your best performing emails.

You see, all this jargon in this post is all nice and dandy. But the fact is, every list is different and what works for me might not work for you. How will you know what works for YOUR list? By closely watching your email analytics like a hawk.

12. Automate With Autoresponders

I get it. We are all lazy. But autoresponders are the best way I know to hook your new subscribers and ensure they never forget your name.

It doesn’t take much time. The minimum I recommend is setting up a week’s worth of autoresponders which include the free giveaway that you probably promised on your optin page along with some promo emails combined with good content so that your subscribers actually get to know that you will be adding value to their lives.

Autoresponders are easy to setup, take a few hours of your time, but once your funnel is up and running – they can prove to become an essential tool that not only helps you sell your products automatically, but also builds trust and value in just a few days.

Consider it as a means to get your name imprinted in your subscriber’s mind so that any future emails you send their way – they will be more responsive and waiting to read what you’ve sent their way.

13. Combine Content With Promotions

If all you do is send out product promotions to your email list, they will quickly lose interest and completely stop engaging with your emails.

Now I’m not saying that you keep sending awesome content day in day out with one promotion a month for good measure – because after all, this is an article on email list monetization.

Why should people read your emails? That’s the million dollar question. They became a part of your list for a reason (freebie bribe, most probably). They choose to read your emails for a different reason all together.

So how do you ensure that you’re enriching your subscribers’ lives on a daily basis and still generating revenue from that list?

If you were on my email list and all my emails were affiliate promos, would you be interested in reading my emails? But what if I sent you awesome content in the form of either blog posts, or videos, or webinars, or books, or case studies?

The best way to monetize your email list is by combining content with promotions. I’ve explained the pre-selling process in more detail below, but here’s a case study about a case study that explains to insert great content while still managing to sell effectively:

Whenever you’re promoting a product (either your own or as an affiliate), wrap up related content that your list will value around that promotion. A neat example is my Email Instruments case study email.

I wrote a neat little case study on email marketing along with screenshots and reasoning of why the case study was a success and at the bottom of the email, I put in a strong CTA to buy the Email Instruments product.

What I did essentially, was give my list some great content and added value to their lives. They got to see a recent case study and learn from it. And I got to sell some copies of my product. Win win you say?

14. Partner Up With Other Products

I received an email from Appsumo recently with a promotion for a writing software aimed at authors and content publishers, called Scrivener.

Now I use Scrivener almost daily for my writing needs because I’m always working on the next book. I’ve already published two books in the last 9 months. And I’m looking to publish yet another book this year.

Scrivener is extremely popular among authors and they almost never have a discount or promotion (At least none that I have heard of). Then suddenly, I get this email from Appsumo saying that they are running an exclusive promotion that will give me Scrivener at a big discount. The only catch being it was a limited time promotion and they had limited copies to give away at the discounted rate.

Now I had already purchased the product at a higher price so I started crying when I read the email (not really LOL), but imagine the happiness on those people’s faces who were waiting on the sidelines but never quite got around to buy that product.

Discounts and scarcity works wonders with email promos (more on that below) and when you partner up with a popular product in your niche and combine the power of email marketing with a discount – you get to see some pretty great results.

15. Discover Your Own Style

Don’t just copy paste email swipes to pass them as your own writing. You may find this hard to believe, but you develop a relationship with your list over time and they learn to recognize your writing.

We all have a unique personality and that personality is depicted extensively in our writing style. Your readers connect with your personality more than you can imagine. Especially if you regularly deliver great content to your email list.

Each list is different and there’s a different way to communicate with every niche. If you have an email list on stocks and investing, then the way you compose your emails will be very different, if say you had an email list on personal development.

The only way to really discover what ticks with your list is to subscribe to other lists in your niche and notice the subtleties in their writing style. Then combine that knowledge along with your writing prowess and create your own style.

And its not just about text. Graphics and email formatting also matters.

Some lists may respond well to simple text emails while some lists may respond better to newsletter style emails with heavy graphics and minimal text.

That’s why I recommend testing your emails and closely watching your analytics to figure out what works best with your list.

16. Promote Products As An Affiliate

When you’re solely relying on your own products and services to generate revenue, then you’re putting a lot of risk on the table. For one, your list will get bored by hearing about the same products and services being promoted every now and then.

But if you send out weekly promotions as an affiliate, then you keep your list active and looking forward to receiving your next email. Especially if you follow the mantra of combining content with promotions.

You can promote low ticket products (

You can promote high ticket products (>497 price point) by creating an awesome pre-selling campaign and attaching a killer bonus package.

And this is the best combination – promote high ticket products during the product launch period. If there’s a hot product that everyone in your industry is promoting, then you have hordes of drooling wallets-out customers waiting in line to buy the product. That’s where you swoop in with your review, bonus, and pre-selling campaign – and experience a landslide of revenue.

Your Review Matters

Your list respects your opinion. Even when you’re promoting products as an affiliate. Your honest and unbiased review of a product will go a long way in convincing your subscriber to consider buying the product you’re promoting.

Everybody Loves Free Bonuses

The thing with bonuses is that it only works when the bonuses are tightly related to the actual product they are buying. You need to put some thought into how to construct and present a nice bonus package – especially if the product is high ticket.

For my List Academy bonus, I’m giving away free one-on-one consultation with me, along with unlimited access to my head coach, and also all my popular products. I’ve sold consultation in the past and people wrapped up the limited seats like bubbles.

My list knows who I am and the results that I’ve achieved. They understand the value and importance of getting on a call with me personally. That’s why email lists are so important to build yourself up as an authority and someone people can rely on.

17. Effective Pre-Selling = Big Pay Days

Conversion rates sky-rocket when you set up an effective pre-selling campaign. I’ll let my example speak for itself.

For my List Academy promotion:

Step 1: I wrote a detailed guide on Solo Ads about a week ago and sent an email to my list asking them to read it and share it if possible. I attracted quite a few new subscribers with all the sharing involved, but more importantly – I showed my list how to build an email list using solo ads along with case studies and all the information they could possibly need. Best of all, it was all free.

Step 2: Now I’m publishing this post on list monetization, which is the same topic that Anik covers in great detail in his course. I’ll be emailing my list to read this post now and also start an outreach campaign to drive more shares and eyeballs – effectively adding more new subscribers to my list.

Step 3: I wrote a nice review on my blog and built up a nice bonus package. When the product will be launched on July 23rd, I’ll email my list to go check out my List Academy review and bonus. Which will be the final straw in the hay for the ones who were waiting on the sidelines to buy the product.

I’ve done elaborate pre-selling campaigns in the past by promoting pre-launches heavily and driving leads to the product owner’s list. They then take over and start warming up my leads and build up hype for launch day.

I did a huge pre-launch campaign for my Profit Instruments launch.

I created three awesome training videos explaining my strategy in brief along with a great case study. Then I got affiliates to promote my optin page and I released one video every alternate day to that new list building up hype for the product launch.

I even embedded some action points throughout the pre-launch process so that my visitors were engaged through out the launch period. People were leaving comments, sharing the videos, tweeting about it, participating in a small contest, and also registering for the early bird list.

Come launch day, I had a huge number of people who were pre-sold to such an extent that they didn’t even bother reading the sales page. Straight up buys for a $197 product.

18. Promote Your Own Products

This is a no-brainer. If you have an email list, you need to promote your own products. It’s like saying if you have a dog, then you have to feed it. (Sorry, I know that comparison was lame)

If you apply the pre-selling and bonus strategies while releasing a new product to your email list, then you’ll see amazing conversion rates. But that’s not all.

Promoting your own product gives you DATA. Data that you can use to improve your funnels and also to draw other affiliates to promote your product.

For my Email Instruments launch, I created an elaborate funnel with an optin page, a free book, a free training video, and a VSL along with some upsells.

By promoting the first page of the funnel (the optin page) to my list – I had concrete numbers that helped me split test and setup the best converting optin page, the best CTA’s on the free book and training video, and the best version of my VSL.

Also, I had some great numbers to show to my JV’s and affiliates who then got excited and promoted my product.

19. Get More Eyeballs To Your Consultation/Services

I recently read a blog post by Neil Patel on his extremely popular Quicksprout blog where he regularly writes about internet marketing, blogging, conversion optimization, and scaling your business. He has a fluent writing style and whenever he publishes a blog post, I get a little email reminder to go check it out.

And I almost always read what he has to say. So the blog post I read was about consultation and how he had generated a lot of revenue by improving other people’s businesses. In that blog post, amidst great content, I noticed a link to a PDF sales letter inviting six and seven figure businesses to avail his consultancy service.

Now that’s the way to sell consultation. Selling products and selling a high end service or consultation are quite different. When you’re selling consultation, you need to build up trust, value, and proposition.

You build up trust by letting people know who you are and what you do and what you stand for. All of that can be achieved with a simple blog or even in the first few emails you send to your list.

You build up value by sending high quality content to your list regularly and build an authority status among your subscribers. It requires time, effort, and whole lot of great content to build value. But once your subscribers start seeing you as a force to reckon with, then it becomes extremely easy to sell services or consultation.

The final piece of the puzzle is bringing forth a proposition outlining the importance of your consultation, either by showing case studies of how you helped other businesses achieve their goals, or by creating a killer no-brainer deal, or both.

All of this requires regular correspondence with your audience and what’s the best way to regularly talk to people? Email.

20. Thank Your Subscribers With A Discount

A little gratitude goes a long way. Your subscribers open and read your emails, so they are essentially giving you several valuable minutes from their busy day. It’s always nice to be thanked. They won’t come back and say ‘Welcome’, but they might just buy the product you’re promoting.

Every few months, send a thank you email with the actual words ‘Thank You’ in the subject line and give your subscribers a good deal or a discount on one of your products.

You can also use this strategy for promoting product launches that are offering a limited time discount. Club this with the Countdown Timer strategy mentioned below to see a barrage of sales.

21. Leverage The Power of Freemium

Freemium is certainly here to stay and you can leverage that by offering your subscribers a free trial of your product for say 14 days, and then either charge a one-off payment or a recurring subscription plan.

Granted, this works if your product is positioned in a way that people would need it in their lives on a regular basis.

Every product and business model is different and you need to figure out if you can put the freemium business model on any existing product or an upcoming product.

We’ve already established that your list will respond the best to your own products. Now imagine you launch a brand new product and your subscribers are the first one to heard about it. So they are all excited. And then you drop the mic and announce that there’s a free trial. Expect a ton of people to get enrolled for that trial.

22. Webinars Are Rocking Right Now

God knows how many thousands I’ve earned by promoting webinars. I’ve done webinars where I’m the solo host, where I’ve expert panelists, and even affiliate webinars with recorded replays.

The LIVE angle of webinars where your subscribers can interact with you in real time makes it a highly effective sales tool. There are companies like GotoWebinar that let you run massive webinars along with telephone conferencing features.

Lately Google Hangouts has become an awesome tool for hosting live training sessions and sales pitches.

The way we pitch webinars is like follows:

Day 1: Pre-sell the webinar and grab registrations by driving email traffic to the webinar signup page.

Day 2: Pre-sell the webinar from a different angle and again, the goal is to drive registrations.

Day 3: Webinar day. Let’s say the webinar is at 8 PM EST. So you send an email at about 7 PM EST asking people to start joining the live call.

Day 4: Embed the webinar replay on a landing page along with a strong CTA (if you’re selling something on the webinar) and send an email about 12 hours after the webinar has ended.

You may send a couple more replay blasts if your list responds well to the previous emails.

23. Sell Clicks Via Solo Ads

I’ve covered everything you need to know about solo ads in a mega guide that was published a few days ago. There are several genuine marketplaces online that let you sell clicks and drive a stream of traffic buyers to you without you having to run after buyers.

It’s a win-win for everyone because the marketplace takes a percentage of the buyer’s budget as a fee and you get a consistent revenue stream.

If you want to get started quickly, then head over to Clickonomy and create a free account. Clickonomy is a solo ad/email media marketplace that Anik Singal and I created about a year ago. It’s getting great feedback and we’re building more features into it every day.

The coolest part is that both buyers and sellers are protected. Before you even start sending clicks to a buyer, we store the project’s funds in a secure internal wallet. As soon as you deliver clicks, the buyer releases funds to you. And you get a weekly payout.

We’re building a cool algorithm for displaying sellers in our marketplace which shows the most active and well-reviewed sellers on top. So, if you’re delivering good clicks consistently, you will be shown higher up in the seller listings which gets you more buyers. And BTW, we already have over 8000 active buyers hungry for clicks.

The average cost per click in Clickonomy is about 80 cents currently. So even if you manage to sell like 500 clicks a day, that gets you about $320 a day in pure profit (after we take our fees).

I’ve personally sold clicks on Clickonomy, and it’s worked great for me so far. But my business model has changed quite a lot in the last few months and I’m not currently selling there – but you can definitely get started right away.

This is a screenshot of a part of my profile page on Clickonomy with reviews from buyers who have bought clicks from me. We are adding more cool features to this profile page which will be live by the end of July.

24. Countdown Timers In Email

There’s a neat little tool I discovered a few days ago, called Timer Magic.

Here’s the thing: Scarcity sells.

There are quite a few situations in which scarcity comes in handy:

There are a limited number of copies/seats available
There’s a limited period discount
There’s a limited period free trial
The product is only available for a limited time
The price keeps increasing every hour/day.
The product is available for free for a limited time
The product upgrades are free if purchased within a time period

Everyone wants to get the best deal possible, and a countdown timer is one of the best ways to facilitate scarcity.

I’m not saying you put in a timer with everything you’re selling. But if there’s a genuine scarcity, then that tool I was talking about will let you embed countdown timers right inside the emails you send to your list.

Conclusion

If you apply only a few of the strategies that I’ve presented above, then you can easily expect your current revenues to at least double in the coming weeks.

As I’ve mentioned above, each email list is different and you need to understand how your list responds to your emails and then grow from there.

I would love to hear your thoughts and if you have any list monetization strategy that I may have missed out on. Please comment below and let me know.

Solo Ads – The Definitive Guide

When it comes to traffic, you need THREE things: Quality, Quantity, and Targeted

I’ve dabbled around with hundreds of traffic sources, which include but are not limited to Social Media, SEO, FB Ads, Adwords, BuySellAds, 7Search, PPV, CPA, Stumbleupon, Reddit… you get the point.

Not all traffic is equal. I have had hundreds of failed campaigns, hundreds of successful campaigns, and I’ve come to realize that some traffic sources are just not worth it.

Of course, it’s not just about the traffic. Your landing page matters. Your offer matters. Copywriting, trust, and proof matter.

But what happened is, over time, I’ve developed a taste of knowing what traffic source to use in which funnel.

As you might know, I’m big on email marketing and I truly believe it’s the one thing that ties up your marketing because it’s still got the highest ROI compared with every other marketing strategy.

So much so, that I created a full blown training course on how to build your list using solo ads a couple of months ago called Email Instruments.

Even on this blog, you’ll observe I have optin forms set up wherever possible without ruining the user experience. I have an optin form on the top, right sidebar, and below each post.

It’s extremely important to associate list building with every other digital marketing activity.

For me, Solo Ads have outperformed every other traffic source especially when I wanted to drive traffic to my optin/squeeze pages to build my list.

In this detailed guide, I hope to cover all your questions related to solo ads and give you enough knowledge to start buying and selling solo ads right away.

What Are Solo Ads

Solo Ads or Email Media or Solo Advertising is a way of driving traffic to your landing pages by buying clicks from people with email lists.

There are three roles in a solo ad transaction:

Buyer: When you’re buying clicks
Seller: When you’re selling clicks
Network: A Marketplace/Network for solo ad transactions

Here’s how the solo ad process works:

Let’s say I’m a solo ad seller and you want to buy traffic from me. I have a responsive list, with several buyers, and I can send hundreds of clicks with a promo to a portion of my list.

So you will get in touch with me and if I’m interesting in selling solo ad traffic (which BTW, I’m not currently), then I will let you know the number of clicks I can send your way and the CPC.

I will then look at your landing page and the offer you’re promoting in the backend. Once I’m happy that it’s something my list would like hearing about, I’ll ask you to make the payment upfront and give you a tracking link to track how many clicks you received.

I might also go in and recommend some suggestions for improving conversions on your optin page.

I will then ask for an email swipe from you (explained below), and then fine-tune the swipe to the conversational tone I use with my email list.

I will then schedule an email for you. Now see, my subscribers like to read my emails. So when they see an email from me recommending a giveaway, they click the link in the email and go through the tracking link to your optin page.

Whoever opts in, becomes a part of your email list and then its your time to build a relationship with them.

While most of this report has been written to guide buyers, solo ad sellers can also get a few ideas by reading it.

When solo ads started gaining traction a few years ago, some sellers got into the act of scamming other people because there was no buyer security. They would take money from the buyer and run away or arbitrage with cheap traffic from other sources netting a profit.

So buyers were pretty much screwed.

But then many big marketers started talking about solo ads, and slowly it became a mainstream way of driving traffic to your optin pages.

Hence, the advent of marketplaces and directories (I’ve covered all of that below), and now is the golden time to get into the solo ad game.

Step Zero: Get Everything Ready

There are a few things you need before you can start buying solo ads.

First, an optin page.

If you don’t know the conversion rates on your optin page, then setup split testing. I recommend Leadpages for setting up your optin pages because they have built-in click tracking, A-B split testing, and they let you drive unlimited traffic. Of course, they have some beautiful optin page templates that you can edit very easily using their click-click interface.

Second, you need click tracking.

There are several tools out there that let you track clicks. You may use Bitly, or goo.gl or tinyurl or even install a plugin like Pretty Link inside WordPress for tracking your clicks.

If you are interested in a premium service, there’s a kick-ass tool called ClickMagick which is used by a lot of people who are into solo ads. It’s not that expensive and they have a lot of cool features like cloaking, rotating etc.

It’s important to use click tracking, because if you give a naked link to the solo ad seller, then you’re relying on their click tracking service to determine how many clicks they actually sent.

Third, set up your funnel.

I’ve covered some types of funnels that work great with solo ads later in this report. But the bare minimum funnel includes an optin page and a POP (Post Optin Page, also called a Thank You Page).

The POP is your most valuable page because a subscriber has just taken action and opted in to your list. They are ready to give you their attention and want to learn more about you.

It’s like meeting a stranger on the street. They say ‘Hi’, and shake your hand. Wouldn’t it be rude if you just nodded and went on your way? You need to SELL something on that POP.

It can either be an affiliate offer that’s converting well for you. It can be your own product. It can also be the actual giveaway for which they opted in.

Here’s an example of a POP that I used for my own launch funnel. This is what peeps saw after they opted in:

In the latter case, you have to make sure you have some CTA in the giveaway that helps you sell something.

The solo ad game is about ROI and how quickly you recuperate your initial investment will determine how successful you will be in this game.

Of course you will be sending promotional emails to your list later, but if you spend like $500 in acquiring 500 leads and make $0 upfront, then you will take at least a few days/weeks to recover the initial investment. Which makes it all the more difficult to scale.

Fourth, pre-schedule autoresponder emails.

The content of the autoresponder emails will vary with the funnel that you’ve built up. If you’re promoting an affiliate product, then the first email will have the giveaway and the next 2-3 emails scheduled to go out once a day will promote that affiliate product.

If you’re promoting your own product in the backend, then you can set up autoresponders that entice your subscribers to check out what you have to offer.

Here’s an example of an autoresponder series that I’ve set up for my ‘Email Instruments’ funnel:

I recommend at least a week’s worth of autoresponders and a consistent mailing schedule of sending out email blasts at least 5 times a week.

Fifth, you need an email swipe.

An email swipe is a sample email that you will give to the solo ad seller. They may or may not edit it because they have to send it to their list after all.

The swipe should have information about the giveaway and what they can expect to get after they click the link in that email along with a strong call to action.

Here’s a sample email swipe I sent to solo ad sellers to drive traffic to my ‘Email Lifestyle‘ optin page.

Steps To Buy A Solo Ad

1) First off, make sure you have everything that I’ve mentioned earlier. There’s no point hunting for solo ad sellers if you don’t have your funnel ready.

2) Once you have everything ready, it’s time to find solo ad sellers in your niche.

3) You get in touch with a solo ad seller who is willing to send you clicks within an allotted timeframe. Most sellers will require a payment upfront, mostly via Paypal.

Let’s say you want to buy 1000 clicks. The seller has several click packages, one of them being 1000 clicks at 45 cents a click. So the amount you have to pay is $450.

4) Most sellers will also ask for the optin page URL so that they can have a look at it before they take a payment from you. Maybe they don’t like it and don’t want to email their list about it? It’s better to be safe than sorry.

In fact, some sellers will also critique your optin page for free and give you suggestions for improvement. There are a lot of factors that determine conversion rate of an optin page like headline, CTA, colors, background, etc. You should always strive to improve your conversion rate.

5) After you’ve completed the payment, you will send the email swipe to the seller and start a conversation with them. It’s always good to talk to sellers. They are experienced and have been in the email marketing game for a while. Maybe you hit it off with a few of them and that could lead to other opportunities.

6) Most of them will give you a tracking URL to check the results in real time. That page will contain the stats of your solo ad.

Attributes Of The Best Solo Ad Providers

It would become a weird game indeed if everyone with an email list started selling clicks. And while there are quite a lot of solo ad sellers especially in the internet marketing niche, I want to make sure you have the knowledge necessary to weed out the cream.

Tier-I Traffic

This is one of the most important factors while buying a solo ad. You need sellers with at least 80% Tier-I clicks. The reason for that is simple: People in Tier-I countries are better qualified to buy your products and services.

Tier-I countries include these five countries: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Of course, this doesn’t matter if your target market is a different country altogether.

Delivery Time

You want your clicks delivered on time. Period. If you’re promoting a product launch that’s running from August 3rd to August 10th and you place an order for clicks on say, August 1st.

If the seller delivers clicks on August 12th, then it won’t do you any good, will it?

Sellers are human. Many of them maintain a strict mailing calendar and they will let you know if they can send you traffic in the requested timeframe or not.

Response Time

Let’s say you find a great solo ad provider on FB. You’re excited, running around the room, and then send them a FB message telling them you want to buy traffic.

And you get a reply in 10 days. What does that tell you?

Don’t buy from them. Solo ad providers who are serious about this business will be prompt in replying to questions and requests. That being said, a good time-frame to wait for a reply is 24 business hours.

If you get a reply within that time-frame, you can be sure that they are serious about their business.

Good Reviews

With the introduction of marketplaces and networks in the solo ad industry, I’ve noticed a spurt of verified customer reviews.

Reviews matter.

Most of the marketplaces will have reviews of solo ad sellers from several buyers. And it’s very important to skim through the reviews before placing an order.

If you’re visiting a website of an individual seller, then read through the testimonials. If they don’t have testimonials, close the page.

If you’re buying solo ads through FB groups, then look out for sellers who have multiple testimonials from buyers. Many buyers will also mention whether their ad purchase resulted in actual sales or not. You want sellers who can drive sales.

When Should You Use Solo Ads

Solo ads should only be used to drive traffic to optin pages. I’ve tried using it for my sales pages and blog posts etc, but the results weren’t the same.

In fact, I have bought solo ads from vendors asking them to promote a sales page of an affiliate offer and also to my own product’s sales page – but they refused.

Their reason was clear – Solo ads only work with optin pages.

The subscribers on the seller’s email list are used to receiving freebies and they don’t mind entering their email address for something they might value.

That results in a higher conversion rate for you and the recommendation from the seller himself in the email also helps.

Why Should You Bother With Solo Ads

Conversions matter. You need the best bang for your buck every single time. Rather than running around and experimenting with a bunch of traffic sources – stick to one source that works for you.

There are several reasons why Solo Ads convert better than every other traffic source

Recommendation from the seller

Email lists are like your inner circle of people. You have a relationship with them.

Your subscribers get excited when they receive an email from you. They know who you are and they are on your list for a reason.

They like you. They have give you their stamp of approval. If they wouldn’t have, they would have unsubscribed already.

When you send an email recommending an optin page to your list, your peeps get excited and when they click the link, they are already expecting to see an optin form on the other side.

Pre-Sold

The email swipe that you send to the seller will have some information about you and your offer. So the people reading that email will be pre-sold and ready to take action when they click the link in that email.

That’s why email swipes are very important. Of course, it’s at the discretion of the seller to modify the swipe because they have to blast it out to their list. If you wanted to buy a solo ad from me, I would check the messaging of the swipe, edit it because I have my own way of conversing with my list, and then send it out.

In any case, the email pre-sells your optin page to a crowd of hungry info seekers. Which brings me to the next point…

Take my email. I don’t mind.

Since the seller is used to sending out solo ad emails to his list and each solo ad email contains a giveaway, the seller’s email list is already accustomed to what they are going into.

Which means, when they visit your optin page, they will be more than happy to give you their email address. They have been doing so for a long time and they don’t mind.

Funnels That Work Great With Solo Ads

Solo ads only work well with specific types of funnels. And since there’s money involved, it’s important to get the basics right.

Even though I’ve played around with solo ads for about a year or so, I’ve realized that there are four types of funnels that work best with solo ads

Clicks to optin page -> POP with giveaway and pre-selling an affiliate offer -> Giveaway delivery in the first autoresponder and promoting the affiliate offer future autoresponders.
Clicks to optin page -> Direct through affiliate link to affiliate offer -> Giveaway delivery in the first autoresponder and promoting affiliate offer in future autoresponders.
Clicks to optin page -> Branding on POP with video and Giveaway delivery. The POP will only promote your own product/affiliate product via the Giveaway. -> Giveaway delivery in the first autoresponder and warming up to buy your own product in future autoresponder emails.
Clicks to optin page -> Your own product’s sales page -> Giveaway delivery in the first autoresponder and warming up to buy your own product in future autoresponder emails.

I always make sure I have an exit popup on my optin pages because this little trick helps add about 10% more leads to my list with no extra expense. Best bang for your buck, right?

The image above is from my Unlock Mind funnel in the personal development space. This landing page consistently converted over 50% with solo ad traffic. The exit popup helped take the conversion rate to 60%.

If a visitor clicked the ‘Stay on this Page’ button, they were shown another optin page. And that page converted at over 50% too.

The Unlock Mind funnel uses the first funnel that I’ve described above.

Solo Ad Directories and Marketplaces

The #1 question I get from my students and other marketers is where they can buy and sell solo ads. In the olden days, you had just one optin: Google search.

Fortunately, things have improved and there are hundreds of solo ads sellers in many niches out there. All you need to do, is find out where they hang out.

You can either visit a marketplace, or a FB group, or find out solo ad sellers individually. Below, I’ve mentioned of my favourite places to buy and sell solo ads.

All these marketplaces are really easy to get started with. You simply create an account and then browse the listings for solo ad sellers, and place your order. If you’re a seller, then signup and create your listing.

Clickonomy

This is my baby. Anik and I launched the alpha version of Clickonomy in July 2014.  In a little over a year, we have 8000+ active users with hundreds of sellers and almost 800,000 clicks sold. That’s quite a lot considering we’re still in beta.

I’m still working daily on this marketplace and making it a whole lot better. We have some pretty neat features planned out for this year including solo ad swaps, a better calendar, and much much more security.

I’m currently working on a much better seller profile, and marketplace UI. We will be showing some neat stats like: Tier-I clicks, Response Time, Click Map, and Orders in Queue.

There will be a lot more filtering and sorting features in the revamped UI for the marketplace.

We wanted to embrace buyer and seller security with Clickonomy. Hence, we have a lot of cool features that make us one of the most secure traffic marketplaces out there.

You have genuine seller reviews from actual buyers, a secure wallet for storing funds, click fraud detection, and seller verifications. Both parties are completely protected and we are continually working on making it an even better marketplace.

Our goal with Clickonomy was to create a community of like minded people helping each other grow and facilitate list building. And boy, have we done well. Yes, I’m proud of what we’ve done with Clickonomy.

Udimi

I’ve used Udimi in the past, but the traffic quality wasn’t on par with Clickonomy. 80% of their network consists of sellers dealing in bizopp clicks.

While they do have a few good sellers in there, and I do like their interface a lot, they still need to work on getting a more variety of sellers in the network.

I especially like the amount of data they give you with each seller, like: Tier-I traffic, buyer reviews, Spam/Bot clicks, Verification status, and response time.

Buying clicks on Udimi is a breeze. You fund your account via Paypal, place an order with a seller, and then watch the cool click stats as the traffic rolls in.

During the buying process you also get to see the seller’s availability calendar which highlights the # of clicks available each day.

If you want bizopp leads, then definitely give Udimi a try because their click prices are quite low.

Safe Swaps

This network is great for solo ad swaps. If you don’t have a list already, then skip this. But if you’re interested in building your email list even further, then ad swaps might be your solution.

While we’re still working on building an ad swap feature in Clickonomy, you can get started with Safe Swaps right now.

Safe Swaps lets you connect with other people with email lists and you swap a promo. You send them clicks, and they send you clicks.

TrafficForMe

This network was created by Harris Fellman and they have the ability to deliver around 100,000 clicks per day.

They have an algorithm that checks optin rates, sales conversions, and delivery times – and on the basis of these criteria, they resell clicks to you.

I like their interface and they’ve done a great job with streamlining the buying process.

TheTrafficSource

This marketplace has quickly established itself to be one of the top dogs in the industry and they are also big on bizopp clicks like Udimi.

They also have a partner program that pays out 5% of the deposits made by your referrals. You can use those credits to buy clicks on their platform.

Again, I recommend this source if you want to buy bizopp clicks.

SoloAdsX

This network was created by Prashant Sharma – a fellow Indian who has made it big in the solo ads space. I really like the way they are transparent about the sellers on the network along with actual data like optin rate, sales, cost per click, cost per subscriber, and the contact information of each seller.

They also have some cool tools like deals and an email swipe tool.

I’ve been watching this network since its inception and it’s grown like crazy over the past few months. There’s no signup required. Either place an order directly, or contact a seller and place an order with them individually.

DedicatedEmails

This is yet another interesting network. They don’t have a proper listing of sellers in their marketplace and most of the dealings are done with the network owners themselves.

They have access to players in the bizopp, self help, political, and health niches. This is one of the very few networks that has access to clicks in other niches apart from bizopp.

The way it works is: You give them your ad. They mix and match with available inventory. Finally, they send you traffic, leads, and sales.

To be honest, I haven’t played around in their system much but if you have more information about them then I would love to hear about it in the comments below.

Igor Kheifets

I came across Igor while browsing the Warrior Forum and even though I was skeptical at first, I noticed he had made quite a big name for himself in the solo ad space.

He has built several pages on his website where you can go and buy traffic, or enter your information in a lead form and one of his executives will talk to you individually.

I took him up on one of his ‘guaranteed’ deals and had a word with his peeps. They are well informed and answer your questions well. Even though the price was a little too much for me at the time because I offer I had in a backend was low-ticket.

Buy/Sell Solo Ads via Facebook Groups

There are several solo ads Facebook groups out there. I’ve mentioned the two major ones below.

The cool part is that you can check out testimonials from real people with detailed stats like # of clicks bought, conversion rate, sales or not, Tier-I traffic percentage etc.

Solo Ads Testimonials FB Group

Solo Ads Sales Testimonials FB group

I’ve found out a few great sellers from these groups and bought clicks from them. The process is real easy.

Step 1: Join the FB group

Step 2: Browse through the testimonial posts and keep a close watch on the numbers.

Step 3: If you like a seller’s performance, then there will either be their website link posted there or the FB profile of the seller.

Step 4: Place an order on their website or send them a FB message telling them that you’re interested in buying clicks from them. Something like this:

Solo Ads on the Warrior Forum

I got into internet marketing with Warrior Forum way back in 2007. It’s a great resource for pretty much everything related to internet marketing – including solo ads.

If you’re a buyer, looking to build your email list, then you can browse the WSO section and the Classifieds for the latest solo ad deals.

Step 1: Create a Warrior Forum account if you haven’t already and log in.

Step 2: Go to ‘Search’ and then ‘Advanced Search’

Step 3: Enter ‘solo ads’ in the search box and select the WSO category and the Classifieds category. Hit search.

Step 4: Look through the results. Check out what the sellers have to offer and read reviews from people who have actually ordered from them.

If you’re a seller, looking to sell clicks, then create your own listing on WF in the WSO section and skyrocket your results.

People like Igor have built quite a name for themselves on the Warrior Forum by educating others about solo ads, releasing free training on list building, and also by releasing their latest solo ad deals time and again.

How To Get Free Solo Ads

Ad Swaps or Solo ad swap is a concept that’s gaining quite a lot of attention from email marketers. Here’s the thing though: it’s still in a nascent stage.

Although I’ve mentioned a swap network above, it’s still the only popular network that does ad swaps.

My hunch is that we will be ready to roll out ad swaps in Clickonomy sometime around August 2015. We already have the basics planned out. The rest of it will fall in place soon. I’ve already started working on the UI.

Anyways, here’s how an ad swap works:

Step 1: You get in touch with someone who’s willing to swap clicks. Of course, you want to make sure that the person you’re swapping with has a history of sending good clicks. Otherwise you’re just adding useless leads to your list.

Step 2: You get an agreement with the other party with the following things sorted out: # of clicks, delivery date, and tracking URL.

Step 3: Both of you start sending clicks based on the agreed upon delivery date and nobody pays any actual money.

Ad swaps are recommended with only trusted sellers with whom you have a personal relationship otherwise you might end up sending a bunch of quality traffic from your list and not get any leads from their traffic. Or worse, not get any traffic at all.

Conclusion

I hope this report will help you get started with solo ads. I’ve outlined the basics of the entire process here and even though some topics like optin page conversion rates, funnel optimization, and copywriting were not explained in great detail – it was done for a reason. I will cover these topics in detail in later posts.

I want to know what YOU thought about this and if you have had experience with solo ads, I want to hear from you. Also, if you feel I’ve missed out on some topics (I’m human after all), then please let me know in the comments section below.

Solo ads is the best way I know to built an email list quickly and even though it was a risky game, marketplaces like Clickonomy have started to even out the playing field and make it a much more viable source of traffic and leads. All the best

List Academy Review and Bonus by Anik’s Friend and Business Partner

If you’ve read Anik’s emails or followed him for the last few years, then you’ll probably have heard him mention my name about 167 times by now. There’s a reason for that.

Anik has mentored me for the last 5 years and we’ve worked on several million dollar projects together. In fact, we’re practically family now.

Anik and I had a BLAST in Maldives this June

We went on a couple’s vacation to Maldives this June and it was so much fun. We’ve hung out and talked for hours on every single topic under the sun and stars.

When Anik launched his Profit Academy course a few months ago, I was one of the people behind the scenes.

But here’s where things get real. Guess WHO suggested the name ‘List Academy’ for his current product launch? Yeap.

The List Academy name began with a Whatsapp conversation

So strap on to your chair, wear your reading glasses, and let me show you what List Academy is all about.

People don’t buy products. They buy if they TRUST the person behind the product.

Who exactly is Anik Singal?

Anik has been in the online marketing world for about 12 years now. For most of you, he’s a charismatic speaker, multi-millionaire philanthropist, hard worker, and basically a fascinating guy who has truly made it.

For me, he’s different. I have seen his ups and downs. You have heard about his story about losing everything and then building it all back up with email marketing. Well, I was THERE. I was there in Mumbai when his world was crashing. I have seen his best side and his worst. For me, he’s a teacher who helped shape my consciousness many times over. He showed me the ins and outs of business, friendship, trust, and of course – email marketing.

Of course he’s great on video. But he’s MUCH MUCH better in real life. I remember sitting in his balcony from evening till early morning chatting about life, love, business, and dreams. People often wonder why he’s so successful. Of course, he works hard and great at selling – but there’s a much deeper story.

He has a killer instinct along with a powerful law of attraction energy. He knows the future trends months in advance. He knows how to get in touch with the right people and how to teach. No wonder he has taught over 200,000 students. 

Just a few weeks ago, I told him I was about to send a promo email to a portion of my email list. He suggested an obscure subject line: ‘Hey – Photos from the beach’. I was skeptical, but the results spoke for itself.

Guess which email’s subject line was recommended by Anik?

While I was struggling with a 8.91% open rate and 1.26% click through rate, Anik’s simple recommendation boosted the open rate to 12.35% and a whopping 3.99% CTR. That’s a 38.6% improvement in open rate and 216% improvement in CTR.

This is the side of Anik I’m talking about. He knows his stuff and knows how to teach it to others.

Heck, I got my first break online after struggling for 2 years after I implemented his course: PPC Classroom way back in 2009.

And it’s not just me. I keep talking to other big names in the IM industry – and I was surprised to know a LOT of them got started after going through Anik’s courses.

He has revolutionized the industry and continues to do so with List Academy. And there’s a specific reason why I say that.

Anik has several email lists and he has hundreds of thousands of people subscribed to his lists. He has been sending emails and monetizing his list for over a decade now. Not just in the internet marketing niche, but also in the personal development space.

Whenever he promotes a product launch, he’s almost certain to be Top 3 in the JV leaderboards, if not first place (which has happened more times than I can remember). He’s one of the few people in the world who can drive six figures with a single email. 

So when Anik Singal says he wants to teach you about list monetization – you LISTEN.

What Is List Academy

If you’ve been in the online marketing space for a while, then there’s a very high probability that you have an email list. If you don’t, then it’s time you start building one. I’m serious. Stop everything and focus your energy on building your email list.

What most people don’t get is how to monetize their list. I know you’ve heard about the usual jargon: promote launches, build a relationship with your list, and what not.

But has anyone ever drilled down into the science of marketing to an email list. Everyone talks about BUILDING an email list. Heck, I talked about it in my Email Instruments course.

But what do you do once you have an email list?

I struggled with list monetization for years till Anik came into the picture. He showed me dozens of ways to make money from my email list – which were both innovative yet simple to execute.

There are several key elements in List Academy and I want to touch briefly on those topics.

Interaction: How exactly are you supposed to talk to your email list? An email list is a one-to-many interaction. But how do you personalize and segment your messages so that they seem like a one-to-one interaction? Long emails or short emails? What about subject lines? Anik dives deep into the messaging that’s supposed to go in your emails.

Timing: What time of day should you send an email blast? How often should you email your subscribers. There are a lot of questions about ‘timing’ that’s still unclear. Especially because everyone says a different thing. And believe me, I’ve tried his timing technique and it’s worked much better than my previous mailing schedule.

Promotion: What products should you promote and how often should you promote to your list? There are several types of promotional emails that go out. Hypey. Non-hypey. Webinar promos. High ticket products. Low ticket products. You get the idea. List Academy goes real deep into product promotions and the best way to do them.

Monetization: This is where it all comes together and you learn how to actually make (read: mint) money from your email list.

Optimization: All said and done, how do you ensure you have a high open and click rate? Because all of that factors into email deliverability and eventually – YOUR success. Anik will show you how to optimize your campaigns, messages, and landing pages for the best results possible.

My List Academy Review

I’m waiting for an early access to the members area of List Academy and as soon as I get it, I’ll publish my video review right here. 

My List Academy Bonus (Total Value: $6991)
One-on-One Call with Me (Value: $2997)

How do you feel about getting one-on-one with Anik’s colleague, friend, and business partner. Yeah, I’m talking about myself. After you’ve completed the course, and started implementing List Academy’s strategies – I’ll come in the picture and manually take a look at what you’re doing. I’ll give you my suggestions and help you accelerate your business. And all of that over a live one-on-one video call.

I’ve charged people $2997 for a one hour consultation in the past and they went back and created five and six figure businesses with my suggestions. So don’t be surprised if I turn your business around 180 degrees after that call.

Access To My Head Coach (Value: $1997)

Nisha Garg has been in my company for over 5 years and she’s literally been my right-hand since the beginning. She knows everything about my business and how I run it. She knows all my strategies, and has taught hundreds of people one-on-one in our elite coaching programs.

YOU get access to Nisha’s expertise for a month. I’ll give you her personal email. She will guide you through every step of the List Academy course and make you the Email Ninja you deserve to become. You can ask her an unlimited number of questions – day or night – and she will be glad to help you with them.

Profit Instruments, CPA Instruments, and Email Instruments (Value: $1997)

You get lifetime access to my premium courses that have sold over 10,000 units and combined, they are actually valued at $1997. If you’ve been in the online marketing space for a while, then you’ve probably heard about these courses. Just recently, I went to Singapore for my bachelor’s party (yes, Anik also came) and we met up people (who we were meeting for the first time) who told me Profit Instruments was the reason they got started with affiliate marketing. In fact, just do a search for any IM product in Google – and you’ll see several profit instruments sites pop up.

CPA Instruments will teach you everything you need to make money with CPA marketing and Email Instruments is my ultimate course on how to build an email list. You get all the upgrades and lifetime access to all the tools and softwares included in these programs.

I’ll be adding more bonuses and a detailed review as the launch date of List Academy gets closer.

Till then, comment below and ask away any questions you might have regarding Anik or List Academy.

What ‘Unique’ Thing Have You Created Today?

Its mind boggling to think that we are a species that’s 7.2 BILLION strong and growing – and yet each and every one of us has a unique DNA.

We all have a different brain and no one’s thinking is 100% identical to another’s. We are all unique.

On a side note, the next time you have self doubts, just take a few deep breaths and tell yourself: “I am UNIQUE. I am the only person like me on the entire planet.”

Ever since I was a little kid, I had the craving to keep doing unique things. Keep making unique things. Act differently. Talk differently. Behave differently. Work differently.

Rather than follow traditional norms on what I SHOULD be doing, I tend to stray away to a thought process more on the lines of: What I WANT to be doing.

While everyone around me wrote with their right hand, I had a weird angle of the wrist while holding my pen – that too with the left hand. People laughed, mimicked, made fun, and some even advised to change my writing hand. But my mom dissed everyone, and encouraged me to write the way I did.

In school, while most people would nod their heads accepting every piece of information the ‘book-cribbing’ teacher would impart – I used to be the one who questioned those irrefutable facts. Yes, I was that kid in class. The teachers weren’t happy.

Self learning is, in my opinion, the ultimate way of learning. I have had the pleasure of interacting with some amazing teachers during school and college, but they were all bound by the rules of the institution and the syllabus – which let’s face it – was the SAME that they taught our parents as well.

When you walk the path of self-learning, you make plenty of mistakes, but you learn from many different sources. And eventually your learning is unique. And the way you will implement that learning will be unique.

When the first computer came to our home – a Windows 96 edition – I self-taught myself Paint and started drawing stuff.

When I first saw Yahoo Geocities, I started making websites. Same with Joomla, and WordPress.

When people had just discovered torrents, while everyone downloaded movies and music – I downloaded PHP scripts and plugins.

Just recently, I had the choice to use an HTML template to make my wedding website, but I chose to draw a comic strip instead.

In India, as they say, our parents control most of our lives. Which is true in many cases, but we sure as hell have evolved over time. I believe that if we are true to our parents and we train them slowly to accept our uniqueness, they let us be. They let us follow our unique path. They may not be happy about it at first, but they adjust and adapt.

I am blessed to have parents who’ve let me do my own thing for the last ten years, and I have used that freedom to do unique things.

I self-taught myself programming, entrepreneurship, designing, marketing, product development, sales, HR, operations, management, singing, writing, publishing.

I believe that sharing our knowledge is the best way to leave a legacy behind. And the best way to share knowledge is by doing creative and unique stuff.

Create new things. Writing, painting, blogging, photography, designing, programming, directing – there are SO many ways your can create your own unique thing.

So what ‘unique’ thing will you be creating today?

14 Reasons Why I’m Fed Up Of The “XX Things/ Signs/ Reasons” Articles

My Facebook newsfeed greets me with posts like these on a daily basis:

21 Things That Your Mom Never Told You. Ask Her And She Will Tell You…
126 Places You NEED To Visit Before You Die. Really. Pack Your Bags. Go!
30 Reasons Why Kittens Are The Best Pets… Like Ever. Choooo CUTE.
89 Signs That Prove You’re An Indian. I Almost Died Reading #74. LOLOLOL.

… and I’m fed up of this sh*@.

F!@# you and your “signs”.

There are probably thousands of things my mom never told me, because she probably didn’t care about those things enough to tell me, or they were insignificant things that didn’t really affect me, or because she simply forgot. Just because  you wrote this article, I’m supposed to introspect on my entire childhood and see if she never told me all those things you’re telling me she didn’t tell me.

Will you be paying for my travel expenses? The 126 scenic pictures you just posted makes me want to quit my job and go on a world tour. But I can’t really travel the world without any money, can I?

I don’t need your “reasons” to prove I’m an Indian. I have my home, family, friends, job, life, passport, PAN card, tax records, and pretty much everything here. But I just forgot one day that I was an Indian. Thank you for reminding me.

I don’t like kittens. I’m allergic to them. Have YOU, the author, ever held a kitten before? Before presenting a highly shareable GIF-filled article about cute kittens doing weird stuff, did you consider to think how many minutes of my day you’ve wasted wishing I had a kitten.

And because you don’t understand how regular articles are written, here’s presenting 14 reasons why I’m fed up your articles…

1) They are stupid

2) They add no value to my life… whatsoever

3) They are everywhere I go

4) How do you even come up with all this sh*@

5) People keep tagging me while sharing your posts

6) I have to keep going to ‘Timeline Review’ to HIDE those tags

7) People actually leave comments and discuss those points

8) GIF’s make me crazy. I hate anything with an Infinite loop

9) My girlfriend thinks I don’t love her after she reads “23 signs that proves your boyfriend loves you” because I don’t do #19

10) The article titles are so click-worthy, that I hate ’em

11) I can’t fathom how you even come up with so many points

12) Because I’m already running out of points and I need to go till 14

13) Here’s another point because I’m already exhausted

14) And we have made it to 14. Happy?

14 Reasons Why I’m Fed Up Of The “XX Things/Signs/Reasons” Articles

My Facebook newsfeed greets me with posts like these on a daily basis:

21 Things That Your Mom Never Told You. Ask Her And She Will Tell You…
126 Places You NEED To Visit Before You Die. Really. Pack Your Bags. Go!
30 Reasons Why Kittens Are The Best Pets… Like Ever. Choooo CUTE.
89 Signs That Prove You’re An Indian. I Almost Died Reading #74. LOLOLOL.

… and I’m fed up of this sh*@.

F!@# you and your “signs”.

There are probably thousands of things my mom never told me, because she probably didn’t care about those things enough to tell me, or they were insignificant things that didn’t really affect me, or because she simply forgot. Just because  you wrote this article, I’m supposed to introspect on my entire childhood and see if she never told me all those things you’re telling me she didn’t tell me.

Will you be paying for my travel expenses? The 126 scenic pictures you just posted makes me want to quit my job and go on a world tour. But I can’t really travel the world without any money, can I?

I don’t need your “reasons” to prove I’m an Indian. I have my home, family, friends, job, life, passport, PAN card, tax records, and pretty much everything here. But I just forgot one day that I was an Indian. Thank you for reminding me.

I don’t like kittens. I’m allergic to them. Have YOU, the author, ever held a kitten before? Before presenting a highly shareable GIF-filled article about cute kittens doing weird stuff, did you consider to think how many minutes of my day you’ve wasted wishing I had a kitten.

And because you don’t understand how regular articles are written, here’s presenting 14 reasons why I’m fed up your articles…

1) They are stupid

2) They add no value to my life… whatsoever

3) They are everywhere I go

4) How do you even come up with all this sh*@

5) People keep tagging me while sharing your posts

6) I have to keep going to ‘Timeline Review’ to HIDE those tags

7) People actually leave comments and discuss those points

8) GIF’s make me crazy. I hate anything with an Infinite loop

9) My girlfriend thinks I don’t love her after she reads “23 signs that proves your boyfriend loves you” because I don’t do #19

10) The article titles are so click-worthy, that I hate ‘em

11) I can’t fathom how you even come up with so many points

12) Because I’m already running out of points and I need to go till 14

13) Here’s another point because I’m already exhausted

14) And we have made it to 14. Happy?

 

About The Author

Ritoban Chakrabarti is an entrepreneur, author, internet marketer, and bathroom singer. His debut novel, When She Smiled, was released in December 2014 and is an Amazon Bestseller. He is a freedom fanatic and an avid traveller. 

I’m embarrassed of being a man

Lately, I’ve been feeling more and more embarrassed of being a man.

No, I didn’t pee my pants in public, nor did I randomly hug a stranger on the street mistakenly thinking he was my childhood friend.

I’m simply embarrassed of my existence. And the world makes sure to drill this fact in my brain every single day. Morning, evening, and mostly in the night.

I think I did everything right. I studied in a co-ed and sat with guys all decade long. I went to college, fell in love, and pampered my girl like any reasonably minded guy would do. I’ll get married, be responsible for my family, work my bottom off to provide for my children, and eventually die in peace knowing that I never groped or raped anyone.

But unfortunately that won’t be possible. That’s a long lost dream. Because I’ve been labelled a rapist by millions of women over the years to a point where I try to look back and wonder if I actually did commit any such crime.

I’m part of a social media generation. The middle class Indian who spent most of the last decade obsessed with what’s being talked about on Facebook and Twitter.

For me, the most shared article on ScoopWhoop held more importance than the front page news in the Times of India. And twice more importance than whatever Arnab thought India wanted to know that day.

Posts, videos, tweets, comments, and images that I read every single day reveal some interesting facts about me.

Men are…

Rapists
Gropers
Murderers
Misogynistic
Chauvinistic
Useless
Crap
Molesters

Honestly speaking, I had to Google the meanings of Misogyny and Chauvinism after I had seen hundreds of comments about me being one. Yay, for better vocabulary. Nay, for making me wonder if I actually was those things.

I was as shocked as the dear old grannie next door when I heard about the Delhi bus rape. That started the wave of women safety online. I admire all the articles and videos and tweets and comments that stand up for women safety. I admire the courage of people to fight the administration for the rights of women. I admire Shenaz for calling out the influential people in our country to develop stricter laws. I truly do.

I don’t admire you for calling ME a rapist.

0.1% of the men on this planet could be labelled as molesters and sexual offenders. Why label the other 99.9% of us the same?

And those 0.1% are the Criminal Men or CMen. So if you want to talk about them, you explicitly state you’re talking about the CMen. (no pun intended)

It makes me feel like all the honesty, respect, kindness, silly jokes, and puppy eyes, that I’ve bestowed upon females all my life… ’twas all for nothing.

An article gets shared on Facebook that raises an important point about women safety, and I start reading it. Somewhere in the article, or in the comments, a line of similar stature would come up:

“Shame on you men. Why do you rape us? You are disgusting.”

(This is not quoted from an actual source, but you understand what I’m trying to say)

After reading that line, all my positive energy just drains away and I become a slobbering pile of mess beating my head trying to remember when I committed such a heinous crime.

 

I’ll be honest with you. I like girls. They are the most beautiful thing I’ll ever see in my lifetime. Without them, us men would be a stinking pile of mess. No, really. You should visit a boys hostel dorm-room sometime.

What many people don’t realize is that the articles, videos, and comments being shared online won’t ever be read by the actual CMen. They don’t have Facebook accounts nor do they take selfies and post it to Instagram after applying the ‘Toaster’ filter.

Most of the horrid crimes committed in this lovely country are the courtesy of uneducated twerps who have nothing better to do in their lives. Who don’t have access to porn to let out their frustrations. Who don’t read/speak the language that you and I are so comfortable with. So why the outrage on social networks? Why these Youtube videos telling me that I’m a rapist?

I’m the man who will open the door for you, cover you with my jacket when its cold, ask you out on a date, hold your hand when you’re afraid, make you laugh when you’re least expecting it, look you in the eye and tell you you’re the prettiest thing I’ve seen in my life, give you a ring and commitment to spend a lifetime with you.

I’m the man who will father your children, go out of my way to give you a comfortable life, guide you and console you when you’re down, be the logical one when you’re being the emotional one, help you with cooking, and protect you when the time comes.

I’m the man who will do everything you wanted your man to do for you. And them some. So, am I the same man who raped you?

I’m a man, and I’m embarrassed of being one.

 

About The Author

Ritoban Chakrabarti is an entrepreneur, author, internet marketer, and bathroom singer. His debut novel, When She Smiled, was released in December 2014 and is an Amazon Bestseller. He is a freedom fanatic and an avid traveller. 

When She Smiled – released on Kindle

When She Smiled – front cover

Yesterday was remarkable. My debut novel – When She Smiled finally got out its incubator and got out in the world – like a raindrop falling into a lake.

It’s been an interesting year. I coded  an entire marketplace from scratch which is now performing incredibly well. I shifted my life from Delhi to Bangalore and settled the dust. I slowly started dipping my hands in the affiliate marketing batter. I announced my wedding which is coming faster than I anticipated. And I checked off ‘Publish a novel’ from my dream board.

This novel business has really impacted my life and future goals in a big way. When I first decided to write the book, I had no clue how much it would end up affecting my future. But along the way, I discovered how important writing meant to me and I resolved recently to keep writing more books.

I want to share my journey with you.

It was May 2014, and I had just finished reading Catcher in the Rye. It was a simple story. Much like yours or mine. I decided to write a book that day. No flying bullets or international spies. A plain ol’ teenage love story. I had stayed in Shimla for a decade and I decided to set the story in Shimla.

Within a month, I had a few sleepless nights when I took audio recordings of all the plot ideas my incessant mind kept bringing up. Soon, I had a list of characters and a basic plot ready. That’s all I needed to start writing – a mistake I won’t make in the future. Its imperative to have a scene by scene description of your entire plot panned out along with detailed character sketches BEFORE you start writing. I didn’t know all that then. So I wrote. I took a long time to write. But I didn’t quit. I focused on writing and kept my mind off the business, marketing, management, programming,… everything.

By the middle of October, the first draft was ready. And that’s when it all changed.

I started to dive into the publishing world and discovered nineteen bucketloads of information along the way. The image I had in my mind of the publishing world was very 90’s. A lot has changed since then.

A lot of self-published authors are more successful than their traditionally published counterparts. I had initially thought about getting When She Smiled published by a big-name publisher. But my research revealed some important points.

Traditional publishers (Penguin, Random House, Harper Collins, Rupa etc.) take about 4-6 months to simply EVALUATE a manuscript.
Then they take another month to finalize the contract and complete formalities.
Then its upto the AUTHOR to do most of the marketing for the book.
Getting published by a big-name publisher does not mean you’ll get full on media publicity and become a bestseller.

I checked Flipkart reviews for several big-name publisher books published in the last year or two. VERY few had more than five reviews in total. I mean, WHAT?

So after writing the manuscript, these publishers want me to wait around for eight months, let go of my copyrights, sign a contract that nets me less than ten percent royalty, and in return I get crap?

If I’m getting crap, I’m getting it on my own terms. So I decided to embark upon the challenging, yet intriguing world of Self-Publishing.

I believe the knowledge that I’m gaining every single day in this niche should be shared. Therefore, I’ll be posting my When She Smiled journey on this blog.