Intro.
One of the biggest sayings in affiliate marketing is this, ‘the money is in the list’. Many new bloggers or affiliate marketers may not know what I’m talking about. It basically means the long term success of your affiliate marketing efforts will be secured should you build a list of subscribers. To build a subscriber list you’ll need to sign up to an autoresponder service. So, what is the best autoresponder for affiliate marketing?
The Benefits of Building an Email List
This List is Yours
When somebody signs up to your email list, they’ve effectively given you permission to email them. Having said that, you don’t want to abuse this privilege or they will just as quickly unsubscribe from your list.
The fact that they’ve passed their email address on to you should not be taken lightly, but they are part of your nurtured and crucial email list. This list is yours for you to use as an extra way to bring in revenue.
A List For Promoting
Once you begin to create a decent sized list, you can then start to promote offers or information that interests your list. It doesn’t mean you can send irrelevant information. For example, this website is to help beginners learn how to build a website and monetise it.
If I was to send an email promoting fishing gear, you’d be bemused wouldn’t you. On the other hand, I may have found a great deal about an online presentation maker that could help with adding images. This would be ideal to send to my list, especially if the program has an affiliate program.
A List to Communicate
Similarly, paid promotional material is not all you want to send to your list. It’s also important to email them useful information that can help with why they signed up in the first place. Things such as links to other great websites that can help or tips and tricks that have been learned along your own journey.
Communication is a great way to gain authority and authenticity in the niche you’ve chosen. The more informative content that comes from you, the more your readers will resonate with the messages you’re trying to get across.
Who Doesn’t Have Email
It’s the best way to contact anybody and will last for a long time to come. It’s one of the only private options people have to contact others and receive messages. Email will not go away, as it’s been a trusted source for a long time now.
Collecting a long list of emails of a particular targeted area (beginner bloggers in my case) will pay off big time once established. I say targeted, because an email address of somebody with no interest in what you have to say, is useless. If they are not interested in what you have to promote, you will never get a sale from them.
You also have the option to send a single email out for a one-on-one conversation, as opposed to a bulk email send. Although a bulk email campaign is the easiest and most extensive to capture the attention of your whole list, there may be times when a single email is required, possibly for one-on-one coaching.
How To Build an Email List For Marketing
Create Your Website and Rank It
Before building an email list, the general process to capture emails is to build a website. Having your own blog, like this site, is your starting point. Here’s my case study on how to begin building a website to make money.
You’ll then need to build this website up with a good amount of content. This should be done by learning SEO and using a keyword tool. That way your posts will get ranked in search engines such as Google and Bing. This is how you’ll get traffic to your website for free.
Without visitors to your website, there’s no point capturing emails. How can people view what you’re blogging about if they can’t get to your articles? SEO (search engine optimisation) is the way to do this.
Choose an Autoresponder Service
Once you have achieved this, it’s time to invest in an autoresponder. This is an email capture service that will cost you a few dollars each month. There are a few email autoresponder services that allow you to start for free. You need to be careful with these and make sure you know what you’re getting into.
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Years ago I signed up to MailChimp on the free plan. I didn’t understand that they don’t appreciate affiliate marketing. I started a campaign to promote an affiliate marketing company.
One week later, I was advised that my account had been deactivated. I was still able to login so I did this and removed the campaign in question. I also contacted them to say I had deleted the campaign. They never got back to me, as the free account does not included support.
My account remained deactivated for over 6 months, even though I could login. Finally it was shut down by them, without contacting me at all. Live and learn.
Tired of seeing Scams or endless fraud sites?
So, do some due diligence when deciding on an autoresponder. I have my favourite and will advise on this soon.
Capturing Your Visitors Email
There are multiple ways that you can capture a visitors email address but they’ll all be through an autoresponder. This is the platform that will work in the background for you, doing the majority of the work once you are setup.
However, you need to think about why a visitor will give you their email address. Usually this is by offering your audience something of value such as a newsletter, guide or tutorial. Maybe you can offer daily deals or specials which can be emailed straight to your list subscribers inbox.
There’s also placement to think about. As you can see, I have mine in the right sidebar which works well for me. Many others have a pop-up opt-in, which some people find obtrusive.
It’s also possible to setup a competition where you can offer a prize of value. These are all known as lead opt-in’s. You create a lead magnet that will trigger your reader into giving their email address for something of value in return.
Another way you can get emails is via social media. Many autoresponder services can provide you with an email opt-in form to add to a Facebook fan page or other social platforms.
What is the Best Autoresponder for Affiliate Marketing
Okay, now I’m going to announce my top autoresponder for affiliate marketing which is also the most popular by the majority of internet gurus. It’s called Aweber and after using multiple other services, I’ll never change again.
Why is Aweber the Best Autoresponder for Marketing
I’m not going to show you how to use Aweber in this article but I will show you why I think it’s the best autoresponder around.
Unfortunately, there is no free membership at Aweber. However, this also explains why it’s such a great program. You get what you pay for, and Aweber know they have the best resources and service.
For me, the layout is more simple to navigate than the other autoresponder services I’ve used in the past. Previously I’ve used Campaign Monitor, SendinBlue and Mailchimp. Whilst these services offered either cheaper or free initial setup, they also had me running around in circles attempting to find where all the features are stored.
The free and/or cheaper models are also limited in terms of customisation of their sign-up forms. Aweber offers hundreds of templates to easily get started.
You’ll also find, that integrating the forms into WordPress is simple, by copying a piece of code and pasting it into your HTML section on WP.
When it comes to building a campaign, the drag & drop method is easy to implement and allows you to build follow-up sequences. I really like the interface of Aweber which just makes using the service that much more pleasant.
But the reason Aweber is the best service for affiliate marketing, is that they are not going to ban you for promoting affiliate marketing services. In fact they are very internet marketing friendly and encourage the practice of affiliate marketing. Which only makes sense as they have their own affiliate program.
How Much Will Aweber Set You Back
Aweber offer a 30 day trial, which is ideal because you want to know what your getting for the cost. Sign up and navigate around the interface and check out all the services on offer. You can either opt out after this time or pay the $19 per month as the lowest category membership.
This membership will offer you every feature available at Aweber. The limitation comes in the number of subscribers you have. Once you reach 500 subscribers, you’ll be asked to up the ante to $29 per month. This will take you up to 2,500 subscribers and the cost continues to rise with more and more subscribers to your lists.
Having said this, I’d imaging you should be creating campaigns that would be bringing in enough money to cover this extra cost.
Wrapping Up
You can get by in affiliate marketing without an autoresponder, but you’ll be leaving a lot of money on the table. Building an email list is future proofing your business for if and/or when your website rankings take a hit. Business doesn’t always go to plan.
Choosing a great email responder program such as Aweber will give you all the tools you require, and if you’re getting started in the affiliate marketing space, you’ll also find it easy to use. There’s so much else to learn, don’t make it any harder than it needs to be.
Like many people, I struggled in my early attempts to make money online. It's really frustrating when you try product after product, searching for that elusive opportunity that is really genuine.
Eventually though, I learned how to achieve success in the online world with my own website. This website was created to show others how to do it. I direct people away from the poor opportunities and advise the good ones.
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Disclosure: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links will not cost you any more. More info at my disclaimer page
The opinions in this article are solely mine, are are not intended to offend or discriminate. All information in this review has been researched on the public domain of the internet.
I’m looking for a decent autoresponder and my first thought was to check out Mailchimp, as you hear lots of things about them. I didn’t know that they don’t appreciate affiliate marketers, so I guess you’ve saved me a lot of time finding that out the hard way.
So I will now check out Aweber. Thanks for saving me valuable time!
Your welcome Jurgen.
If you are an affiliate marketer, or intending to learn the craft of affiliate marketing, I’d advise against MailChimp.
I believe if you were to run a store (like Shopify) and your wanted to promote products to your subscribers, MailChimp would be fine. Then again, Aweber will allow any type of email campaigns so there’s no need to worry there.
Hope I did save you the trouble.
Cheers
Thanks for this very useful information on AWeber. At present I am on MailChimp but quite honestly I can’t pass comment on it as I haven’t tried it out properly. Will definitely keep AWeber in mind when I begin to build up an email following.
All this is very new to me and as I am still finding my feet, will have to wait a bit before going forward with this step.
No problem Jill.
As MailChimp is free to start with, I totally understand your using them. I also used them until the banned me for promoting affiliate marketing services. I still don’t understand why this disallowed!
Anyway, if you have any further questions, just let me know.
Hi Nudge,
Very much in agreement with the expression “money is in the lists”. All of us who are dedicated to affiliate marketing need to create our list of subscribers. The autoresponder is a tool that we must use if we want to work effectively. There are many autoresponder companies, some you can start for free, others are paid. It seems to me the best, the one that you are pointing to, I will take it into account. Thank you!
Claudio
Appreciate your thoughts Claudio
Although the money is in the list, you still need to nurture your list wisely. These are your dedicated subscribers. That’s why I’ll only email relative information that can possibly help, or advise. The money won’t be in the list if they unsubscribe.
Cheers
I’m so glad I read this today!
I’m looking for a new autoresponder company since Mail Chimp and I just don’t get on (for various reasons). I’ve used them for my first website, but now for my second one, I’ll go with another company.
Aweber sounds just like what I need. I thought they were more expensive than $19pm. What great news! I can actually afford it.
All that is left to do now is to get some (thousands hopefully) visitors to my site…but that’s a theme for another blog post. Please!
Best,
A
Hi there Alenka
I’m also glad you came across my post. Even though some people have the opinion that Aweber costs more, it’s $19 per month! Others options are still $10-$15 per month so it’s not that much more. The extra you’re paying for, is the convenience and user friendliness of the program. And the fact you can promote anything. (I wonder if this was your problem with MainChimp!).
If you’re after visitors to your website, learn from the best. Read this article on my No.1 recommendation.
Thanks
I don’t use a autoresponder anymore, I know I maybe losing out but email marketing is really not my thing and found it too time consuming. However, when I was using an autoresponder it was Aweber and I found it very easy to use, I also tried out Getresponse and I must admit, despite it having more marketing features, it was very difficult to navigate your way through their system.How many times do you email your list? This was one of the reasons I gave up, It became so boring mailing my list, sometimes I had no idea what to write.
Thanks for your comment Minhaj
I understand your frustration with using an autoresponder, as it’s just one more thing to get your head around. Which is why I use Aweber, it’s the easiest to get use to, and as you say, navigate.
There are many guru’s out there who’s opinions differ on an emailing schedule. It really depends on what your promoting. I believe that if you have no useful information to offer, don’t email at all. I’d rather get my readers trust by not bombarding them with junk. So I only email when I have something relevant to share.
Cheers Minhaj
I used aweber several years ago when I tried to build a list and I absolutely loved it.
However I didn’t know how to get traffic to my site, so I was basically throwing money away.
I agree though the best way to start building a list even before you get an auto responder is to build a blog and start getting organic traffic.
Couldn’t agree more Michael.
Creating a website or blog and allowing it to mature and rank in the search engines, is the first part of the process, This could take anywhere from 3-6 months. You will have had some visitors within that time, but nothing substantial. This can all be learnt, including how to get traffic, at Wealthy Affiliate.
It’s when you’re gathering over 30-40 visits per day that you’ll want to start searching for an autoresponder. Aweber is the industry leader of choice for most bloggers. I’m my opinion, this is due to the ease of use, allowable promotion of affiliate marketing and their navigation.
For anyone else reading this, having tried a few other autoresponders, let me save you the time by recommending Aweber.
Thanks for the comment Michael, hope your now achieving the traffic needed for success.