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In previous tutorials, we went through the steps of setting up an email list in Aweber and adding new messages to an autoresponder series.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a web form or signup box where your subscribers can join your email list. You will want to have a signup box on nearly every page of your website to get more of your site visitors to sign up. Here is what you need to know to start adding subscribers to your list today.

You will need:
• An AWeber account
• A website
• A mailing list set up
• Messages added to your autoresponder

Step 1: Create Web Forms
Log into your Aweber account, then click on the “Web Forms” tab. (Note: If you have more than one mailing list set up in your Aweber account, make sure you are in the correct list.)

Click on the “Create Web Form” button.

You will be taken to a page where you can design the form you want.

Step 2: Choose A Web Form
AWeber offers a large selection of pre-made templates so you can choose one that fits perfectly with the look and feel of your site. You may use the templates “as-is” or you may modify the text and other components. For this tutorial, we will be using the basic blue version, which is pre-loaded in the design area.

Step 3: Modify Form Width
The first thing you need to know is the width of the area where the form will be added. For example, if you are going to add the form to the sidebar of your blog, you need to know the width of the sidebar in pixels. If you are not sure, you might try “eyeballing” the sidebar and comparing it to the default size in Aweber. Sidebars may be any width, but common sizes range from 120 to 300 pixels wide. Once you know the width of the area, you may need to change the width of the form.

Step 4: Modify Form Sections
The forms consist of several basic parts. These are the header, name label, email label, submit button, privacy link, AWeber link, and footer. To edit or delete these areas, hover over each section and select the edit tab on the left or delete with the “X”. You can change any of these. For example, you may change the privacy link to the privacy policy on your site instead of the standard Aweber privacy policy page.

When you edit in this way, you will get a popup, where you can edit several features in the section. To edit without the popup and get more options, use the instructions in the next step.

Step 5: Advanced Modification Options
Want to modify more aspects? In the tool bar, a dropdown box says “Form Type.” Click the arrow to choose a section and then choose the “advanced arrows” on the right. You can see the form type box in the example below, where we edit the header.

When you use this method to edit, you can see all your options in one place, which makes editing much easier. If you are not sure what settings to change, leave them alone. You can always come back and adjust them later if you decide you do not like something about the form and how it appears on your site.

After editing, save your changes and click the button to “go to step two.”

Step 6: Edit Form’s Basic Settings
One of the changes you can make here is to name the form. This may not seem important when you are creating your first form but, as you add more lists and more forms for each list, having a descriptive name for each form will make it easier to keep track of which form is which.

This thank you page here is different from the one you added when you created the list. This thank you page is seen after people sign up but BEFORE they confirm. For this reason, many people use the page to tell people to watch for a confirmation email. Your choices for a thank you page include a basic page, a custom page on your own website, audio or video versions, or no thank you page, where visitors are kept on the same page after submitting the form instead of being taken to a thank you page.

If you choose to send visitors to a custom page, you will need to set up a thank you page on your website and enter the URL of that page into the Aweber form where it says, “Enter Your URL.”

Once you have selected all of your options on this page, click save and go to step three.

Step 7: Publish Form
Here you will select how you would like to publish your signup form. Most people self-install the code so click the “I will install my form” banner.

Highlight the java code, making sure to include the entire string of code, then copy and paste it into your webpage or sidebar where you want the subscription form to appear. Once the form is installed, test it by going through the sign-up process and making changes to the form and settings where needed.

If you don’t have an Aweber account, sign up for a free test drive here:

Try AWeber’s
Email Marketing
Tool Risk-Free

In an earlier Aweber tutorial, we showed you how to set up an email list in Aweber.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create the follow up (autoresponder) messages you will send to your list, as well as how to send a broadcast message to your list.

Before you begin, you need to know the basic difference between follow ups and broadcasts.

• Follow ups are usually a series of emails sent in the same sequence to all subscribers.
• Broadcasts are most often used for time sensitive announcements and are sent to all subscribers on the same day.

What can you do with autoresponders? Autoresponders give you the ability to drip content to new subscribers in sequence. When someone signs up for an email newsletter they typically get the same content as everyone else on the list at the same time. With sequential autoresponders, you can make sure that everyone who signs up to your list gets the same information in the same order, no matter when they sign up. When someone signs up to your autoresponder list they get the first message immediately. Subsequent messages are sent on the schedule you set. You might send message two on day three, message three on day five, message four on day ten, etc. You decide.

You can have an unlimited number of follow-up messages in your autoresponder series, but you don’t have to have all of your messages entered at once. You can start with just a few then add messages as you go. Every time you add a new message it will be added to the follow-up sequence, to be sent a number of days after the previous message in the sequence.

This is a great tool to use when you want to teach your subscribers how to do something and want them to get the steps in order. I use a sequential autoresponder through Aweber for my free mystery shopper course. People who sign up for the course get seven lessons about becoming a mystery shopper. They also get added to my mailing list to receive ongoing news and tips about mystery shopping, but their first messages take them through the basics of mystery shopping.

You will need:
• An AWeber account
• A website
• Mailing list set up

Step 1: Add Your First Follow Up Message
Log into your Aweber account and hover over the “Messages” tab. Select the “Follow Up” tab to add a new message. (Note: If you have more than one list set up in Aweber, make sure you are in the correct list.)

You’ll be taken to the follow up messages for this list. Since you are adding your first message, you’ll need to click the “Add New Follow Up” button to get started. You will need to do this each time you add a follow up message to this list.

Step 2: Add the Subject
Start at the beginning by adding a subject line and work your way through the form. To add the subject, click in the box. To personalize the subject with the reader’s name, click the personalize link at the point where you would like the info added in the subject.

Make your subject something that subscribers will recognize and that will make them want to open and read your message.

Step 3: Add the Message

Your messages may be sent in HTML, text or both. You should always have a text version, because some people can not read HTML emails. You may choose to also have an HTML version if you want to change the size or color of fonts or insert images into your messages.

Aweber offers a variety of templates you can use for HTML emails. If you would like to use HTML you may use one of the templates or format the email yourself, using the fonts and graphics you wish to use. It is a good idea to save your HTML template so you can use it to create a consistent look for all your email communications with your list.

To create the text message, insert your message in the next area. It is important to remember that when sending a text message, you should never copy and paste from anything except a text editor such as Notepad. Copying from Word or other software may leave hidden code that will cause problems. Curly quotes are a common problem, but certainly not the only one.

To make your message readable, keep line length short and consistent. Aweber makes it easy to format the lines of your message. If some of your lines extend into the blue section, just click the “wrap long lines” link.

Step 4: Preview And Save Messages
When you are finished writing or inserting your first message, click preview to get an idea of what your list subscribers will see. Click save message. Note, the first message will always be sent out immediately after a new subscriber confirms their subscription.

You have the option to track clicks. When you choose this, Aweber codes each link in the email so they know when someone clicks on it. Then you can view your statistics for the message to see how many people clicked on each link in an email.

Step 5: Creating The Second Message
For the second message, follow the same steps outlined above. This message will give you a few new options. For example, starting with the second message, you can specify the interval at which you’d like to send the messages. In this example, the subscriber would receive the second message four days after they subscribed and got the first message. If you also selected four days for message three, it would be sent four days after message two, which would be eight days after they subscribed.

You also have the option of allowing a message only to be sent on certain days or times. For example, if you only want messages sent Monday through Friday, you can specify that by clicking the box next to “Only deliver this message on certain days and times,” then selecting the days and times you want.

Step 6: Testing Messages
In the list of messages (Messages Tab), you will be able to click the test link, beside each message to receive a test copy of the chosen message. ALWAYS test your messages. Even if they look fine when you preview them, you may discover something unexpected when you receive the message in your email inbox.

When you click the test link, you will get a popup where you will add the email address where you want the test to go. If the email wasn’t ok, you may make changes to the message by clicking on the title link and then sending a second test.

You may edit your follow-up messages at any time, so if you discover a typo or want to change the content of a follow-up message, just log in to your account, select the message, edit it, then save the revised message.

Once you have finished working on your messages, log out of your Aweber account.

Watch for the next tutorial, where you will learn how to create a web form to add new subscribers to your list.

If you don’t have an Aweber account, sign up for a free test drive here:

No matter how good your email message is, if no one opens your emails they won’t do you or your customers any good.

So how can you get them to open your email newsletters?

Some email marketers resort to tacky gimmicks. They use subject lines such as “You have earned a commission,” or something else that is false just to get you to open the email. Well, that may work to get you to open it, but you are likely to read only far enough to discover that they have lied to you. And then you will look for the “unsubscribe” link to keep that unscrupulous huckster out of your email inbox.

People are becoming wise to stupid email tricks. Instead of trying to trick people into opening your emails, you will get much better results when you use ethical and effective methods of email marketing.

Here are a few tips to make your email marketing more successful::

1. Craft a good subject line. In fact, you may spend more time on your subject line (at least per word!) than you do on the rest of the email. This is your headline, and like any headline if must grab the reader’s attention. Be creative but not deceitful. Promise a benefit (on which you will deliver), provoke your reader’s curiosity, ask a question or make a bold statement.
2. Be consistent. This could mean always mailing on the same day, having the same format and style for all of your emails, or having starting each subject line with an identifier, such as your name or the name of your website or newsletter. For example, when I send out my IdeaLady Insider email newsletter, my name is in the “from” field and the subject is “IdeaLady Insider -“ followed by the title of that issue. Make sure that you are doing what you promised to do when subscribers joined your list.
3. Always provide great content. When people know that you always send emails that are interesting and useful, they will make it a point to open and read them.
4. Let your subscribers get to know you. Build a relationship by sharing yourself with them. That can mean sharing personal information (but watch out for over-sharing!) or it can mean having personal contact. You might make yourself available to them by answering questions via email or holding teleseminars where they can talk to you. When they feel that they know you they will want to read your messages.

As you see your email open rates increase, you will also see increased sales from your email newsletters. Use email wisely to build relationships with prospects and they will become your customers.

There are lots of email marketing companies where you can host your email list. I use Aweber because, in my opinion, they have the best features and benefits. You may think you do not need a lot of the bells-and-whistles offered by a service such as Aweber but, believe me, you do not want to outgrow your email list service. After you have built up a large list, moving to another, better provider is not something you want to do. That’s why you should start with the best and it is my opinion that Aweber is the best.

There is no reason to be intimidated by the idea of using a sophisticated system such as Aweber’s. They make it easy to use, and their online and telephone support is very helpful if you have questions. To show you how simple it can be (and some of the useful options available to you) in this tutorial you will see how to set up an email list on AWeber.

You will need:
• An AWeber account
• A website

Step 1: Create Your List
Once you log into your account, click on the “Create and Manage Lists” link. You will be taken to a list of your current mailing lists, if any.

In the right side, you will see a link to create a new list. Click the link. You will be taken to a page where you can fill out list info.

Step 2: Add Basic List Info
On this page, you will be asked to fill in information specific to this list such as the name of the list, a description, email info, and the contact info (for CAN-SPAM Act.) You have a few options here that you will want to pay attention to.

For starters, give the list a better name than  “default1499758.” When you have several different lists, having meaningful names makes it easier to manage them. For example, my mailing list for Blogger LinkUp, my list for bloggers and guest posters, is called guest-posts. The from name should be something that subscribers will recognize. That might mean your name, your website name or something else that will be familiar to them. You want them to know why they are getting this email, even before they open it.

Step 3: Add Company Branding Info
The company branding info is not required by Aweber. But the more of this you provide, the better. That is because this is where you build your brand with customers. It is important to reinforce your branding with them, not only so they remember you and do business with you, but so they remember why they are getting your emails and do not report you as a spammer.

Simply click in each box to insert your company name, website URL and your email signature. Your signature could contain links to your main webpage as well as to a support or product page. You might also include a telephone number or other important information, but don’t make the signature longer than six or seven lines.

The Logo URL box is where you put the web address of your logo graphic, if you wish to include it in your email messages. If you don’t know your logo URL, go to your website, right-click on your logo and choose “Properties.” Copy the logo address/location and paste it in this box. It might be something like http://www.example.com/images/logo.jpg.

Step 4: Auto Post To Twitter And Facebook

With Aweber you have the ability to send autoresponder and broadcast messages. Autoresponder messages are sent in sequence to each person as they subscribe. For example, you may have a series of ten messages and you send the first on day one, the second two days later, the third four days after the second and so on. No matter when someone subscribes, they would receive those ten messages on the schedule you set up. Broadcast messages are sent to everyone on the list at once, no matter when they signed up.

You might use autoresponders to deliver content such as an email course and broadcasts for time-sensitive information such as announcements of events or new products as well as ongoing updates.

If you would like to post your broadcast messages to Twitter or Facebook, Aweber will do that for you automatically. Simply fill in the information about your Twitter and/or Facebook accounts in this section. You may want to set up a Twitter account especially for your list broadcasts. You can make this decision on a list-by-list basis. For example, if you have one list about recipes and another about Internet marketing, your followers may not be interested in both subjects.

Step 5: Subscriber Notifications
When you start your list, you may want to do a little “happy dance” every time you get a new subscriber. By setting up subscriber notifications, you will get an email whenever someone confirms their subscription and joins your list. (You can always turn it off later, when you are getting so many subscribers that the notices are overflowing your inbox.) To set up new subscriber notifications, just enter your name and email address in the notification area.

Then, click the “Save Settings” and “Go To Step 2” buttons to continue setting up your list.

Step 6: Personalize Your Confirmed Opt-in Message
Aweber generally requires what is known as “confirmed opt-in” or “double opt-in.” That means that after someone submits their email address, they need to confirm their subscription by clicking on a link in an email message they receive from Aweber. This is done to verify that the person really did choose to subscribe, and they were not added by someone else who entered their email address in a web form. It helps to protect you from spammers and spam complaints.

It is a good idea to modify or personalize the default text of the confirmation email. You may modify the subject, the introduction, and the signature. Notice that the actual confirmation message and link cannot be edited. Those are set by Aweber.

When editing the subject, you may choose to select one of the standard subject lines or write one of your own. If you write your own it will have to be approved by Aweber. However, in my experience, the approval comes quickly. In the other sections you can customize your message to remind subscribers where they signed up and what they will get when they confirm their subscription. You can also personalize the message by including custom fields, such as the subscriber’s name (if you asked for it on the subscription form).

Step 7: Add a Confirmation Success Page URL
Some people call this the ‘thank you’ page. This is a page on your website to which subscribers will be taken after they confirm their subscription. If you have promised them a free ebook for subscribing, you might want to put the download link on this page.

Do not neglect this opportunity provided here. You have the subscriber’s attention. They have just agreed to receive emails from you. They probably like you. ;o) They have made a small commitment to you, you may want to ask for another commitment. Include a call to action on this page such as following/friending you on social networks or, better  yet, making a purchase. This page is a good place to put a one-time offer, such as a collection of several of your products at a discount price. Or, if you do not want to discount your products, feature someone else’s product available through your affiliate link so that you receive a commission on any sales.

After entering the URL of your thank you page, click “Save List Settings.”

Now that you have successfully set up your mailing list, you are ready to start sending broadcasts or follow up messages. We will address setting up messages in the next Aweber tutorial.

Get your Aweber account now.

Watch discussions on forums, blogs, and social networking sites to see what people are talking about. What common questions or comments do people have and how can you turn that into an article your readers can use?

Check your stats. Which past email newsletter issues have the highest open rates? What pages on your website get the most traffic? Which blog posts have the most comments? Do your most popular articles have anything in common? You may discover that your audience responds to some topics more than others, or that they like list articles, product reviews or other types of content best.

Jump in to a controversy. No matter what industry or audience you write for, there is always some sort of controversy brewing. Take sides in the controversy and continue the conversation on your blog to get readers involved and commenting. Or just lay out both sides of a controversial issue so readers can decide where they stand. You report, they decide. ;o)

Use lists. People love lists. They are easy to read and comprehend, and can be a valuable resource readers will save for reference.

Review products or services. Reviews give your readers information about products or services they may need. You can help direct them to a good buy, and if you’re an affiliate of the product or services you’re reviewing, you may be able to make a commission on any sales that result. Always be honest in your reviews (never recommend something only in the hopes of earning commissions) and disclose that you are using an affiliate link.

Ask your subscribers what they want to read about. Ask them for questions, what they want to learn and how you can help them. Do a survey, add a question-submission form to your website, or just watch for questions in your email. I sometimes use a question and answer format, where I publish the question a reader asked, followed by my answer. Get permission before using a reader’s name or other identifiable information.

Interesting and unique content doesn’t have to be hard to create. Just look around. What does your audience care about? How can you better help them solve their problems and reach their goals? Give them content they can use and they will be loyal readers for a very long time.

The information-marketing world suddenly took notice in 2004 when John Reese publicly credited Jeff’s teachings after he launched a new home-study course and sold over $1 million in the first 24 hours.

Since then Jeff has helped other famous marketers such as Yanik Silver, Brian Sacks and Frank Kern, and multi-million dollar launches have become almost common. However, many not-so-famous students of Jeff’s Product Launch Formula have had great success in all kinds of niches from massage therapy to software training to baseball coaching.

The following is an excerpt from an interview I did with Jeff where we talked about how to build an email list, create products and generate profits with your content.

Cathy Stucker: Jeff, tell us a little about how you got started.

Jeff Walker: I started publishing about the stock market. I had very humble, humble, humble beginnings. I think the first time I published was for 19 email addresses. One of them was my second email address and one was my wife’s email address, one was my in-laws and my parents. If you really got down to it I probably had about four or five subscribers for that first email. And that was back in 1996, the summer of ’96.

But I just started publishing. And I published high quality stuff and I didn’t charge for it. I didn’t have advertisements, I just started publishing it. With no money, no income, no revenue at all. But I just had this inkling that if I started publishing then good things would happen.

And sure enough, word started to spread through word of mouth and in fairly short order I had hundreds of subscribers and then thousands of subscribers and then tens of thousands of subscribers. And then from there it’s almost like the revenue started to just show up. It’s almost magical how that happened.

Once I had built up this audience of people, they had been following my stuff, then I started to create products for them. I took that newsletter that had been free and I added stuff to it and I made it a paid newsletter. Then I published paid newsletters about different aspects of the market.

I think I published, I am going to guess, about four or five different paid publications, paid newsletters. And these were all email based newsletters so my cost was like virtually nothing. And then I also started to create home study courses. I created membership areas. I started to put ads in my free newsletters. And often the newsletters would track people back to the website. And that would drive more advertising on the website and all of a sudden it became a nice little business.

Cathy Stucker: And I think that’s important too that all these different things that you do kind of fit together and generate different revenue streams. It’s not doing one thing and expecting that one thing to provide all of the income.

Jeff Walker: Well, you know, I am a big believer in growing a group of fans. I think, we are talking about content, and there’s lots and lots of ways you can use content. It’s unbelievable, I am a huge fan of what I call information marketing. And that’s using information to market. It’s not necessarily just selling information. There’s so many ways you can use it, but one of the things that I’ve always focused on is growing a list. If you do it right, it becomes a list of fans, hopefully a list of raving fans.

I’ve now achieved unbelievable success. When I first got that product in 1994, one of the things that you need to do is sit down and write down all your goals, like really big wild dreams. I actually have that still sitting around. I look at that list. Those goals that seemed unattainable to me then, are humble to me now. I had this number, $100,000. To me, the thought of making $100,000 a year was — people couldn’t possibly make more money than that. That was as big as I could think. Last October, I made $100,000 in one hour. I don’t mean to brag here.

Cathy Stucker: No. I think it’s important that people understand what the possibilities are. There is a tendency, sometimes, to think very small. I know my dreams keep getting bigger the more I achieve. I want to do more because I want to reach more people. I want to have more personal success. I want to do more. Your dreams do get bigger.

Jeff Walker: Basically, if you start publishing and you publish good content, this is how I’ve always driven traffic to my website. I’ve put good content on my website. Then, all of a sudden, I get people passing it around. I get word of mouth. I would put together a really good study about the stock market. I would put up my website. Then I would send an email to my list telling people about that.

Those people, they would be like my army. They would go out and they would tell all their friends. They would post about it on bulletin boards. Then all of a sudden I’d have a ton of new traffic coming in. I’d add 1,000 new subscribers to my newsletter in just a couple days.

Then, the next time I did that, I just had that much bigger list. I put out another study, and boom! All of a sudden, I’d get more traffic to the website, more subscribers. I’m just building this list. That list got up to 80,000 people at one point in pretty much every country in the world.

———-

The complete, one-hour interview with Jeff Walker is one of twelve expert interviews that are part of the Cash Content Formula course. Learn more, and get a free one-hour audio about making money with your content, at http://www.CashContentFormula.com/.

My interview of Jeff is also available at ExpertTeleseminars.com, on CD or as a downloadable PDF transcript.

If they buy something, you have their name and contact information so you could reach them again. However, you do not have their explicit permission to do so.Worse, the people who came to your site and didn’t buy are gone. Perhaps forever. Oh, they may come back some day, but it is more likely that they will forget all about you.

Now imagine that they have at least a third option. In addition to buying or not buying, they can sign up for your mailing list. Perhaps they are interested, but not interested enough to buy today. Now they will continue to hear from you, learn from you and remember you. Ultimately, they may buy from you. Even if they don’t, they may forward something they receive from you to a friend who may buy from you, or sign up for your mailing list, or…

Having a list is a way to develop relationships with possible customers. It creates trust and showcases what you can do for them.

So, how do you build a list? One easy way is with a form on your web site. When you use a service like Aweber (the list service I use), you can easily create a subscription box (like the one at IdeaLady.com) or boxes that slide onto the page, etc. Visitors simply enter their email addresses to subscribe, just as you did.

Put subscription boxes at multiple locations on your site. Much of your search engine traffic does not come in via the front page.

Offer a bonus to subscribers, such as a free course or ebook.

When you speak or present a workshop, ask attendees to subscribe by checking a box on the roster, or entering an email address on a form.

Make subscribing to your newsletter a call to action in your email signature, in the resource box of your articles, and elsewhere. Keep in touch with prospects to turn them into fans and customers.

Google, the folks who are always looking out for us, have come up with a solution to stop drunk emailing. No, it’s not a breathalyzer to keep you from sending email when your blood alcohol level exceeds the legal limit. Instead, it is a CAPTCHA-style feature that requires you to solve a series of simple math problems before you can send an email.

OK, I know what you are thinking. Those guys in Mountain View come up with some pretty wacky hoaxes. But it’s not April Fool’s Day. Log in to your Gmail account and click on ‘Settings’ then ‘Labs.’ Enable ‘Email Goggles’ then go to ‘Settings’ then ‘General’ to customize your settings. You can choose the days of the week and times of day to activate the feature.

The dignity you save may be your own.