Promoting a newsletter?

[webpositionexpert]

Hi all

I am farily new to being an online affiliate and have (in the last year) started a sportsbook / poker / casino review site - http://www.sportsbook-watch.com

I recently added a link to get prospective bettors to sign up to a free newsletter.

The idea of the newsletter was that people would receive a monthly short newsletter detainling the latest and best special offers and promotions from websites that I recommend.

I put the pink up a week ago and so far i have had not one sign up (which considering my traffic and sign-ups to recommended sites is unusual.

Does anyone have any ideas how I can better promote this (brilliant!) newsletter?

Thank you!
Regards
Simon Skinner
http://www.sportsbook-watch.com
simon@webpositionexpert.com

[Focalclick]

Hi Simon,

I would include a nice big link on every page of your site with a link to that newsletter. Also, let them know the value added that they will receive when signing up. Why should I ( a user) sign up with your newsletter as opposed to the 100 other ones?

Thanks,

Mark

[MichaelCorfman]

Simon:

I think it is hard to get people to sign-up for a newsletter if they cannot see examples of previous editions of the newsletter so they have a good understanding of what they are signing up to receive. In looking at your site, it did not look like you had previous newsletters visible to examine when making a sign-up decision.

Michael

[webpositionexpert]

Hi MC
I have not written any newsletters previously, kind of a chicken and egg scenario! I was hoping to get dign ups and as then going to write the first letter.....

Regards
Simon

[MichaelCorfman]

I have not written any newsletters previously, kind of a chicken and egg scenario! I was hoping to get dign ups and as then going to write the first letter.....

Simon:

Although I did not say that, I had sort of assumed that might be the case. In fact, when I read your post, I expected to go to the site and find no example newsletters for exactly that reason.

Newsletters are not actually easy things to do well. To get a significant subscriber base they take a lot of time. And it takes trust to get people to give out their e-mail address. And it takes a commitment of time to put them together. Personally, I think I would start the other way around and begin by building pages on your site that you viewed as worth mailing out. And then after doing that for long enough that you feel comfortable you understand the level of effort involved and felt ready to commit to keep doing it (might be just a few times) I'd let people sign up to receive it via e-mail and start publishing it that way also. That's the only way I know to get around the chicken and egg issue. Of course, after trying it a couple times, you might also decide that a newsletter is not the right investment of your time versus just adding content integrated into the body of your site.

Michael

[aksana]

I also offer to sign up for my newsletters on my site and even recently I added a function that will show my archives. But I also don't have a lot of sign ups. But it's not a big problem for me.

Regarding how to improve your sign ups I can recommend you to add some bonus, for example "Sign up to receive our monthly newsletters and get a special bonus of "your site"".
You may ask this special bonus from some affiliate programs, sometimes they can make a special promotion only for your visitors (for example, $10 or more no deposit bonus and etc.)


From my experience, I offer $500 free to play at Rewards Casinos(of course I didn't give them $500 free, it was such promotion at Rewards Casinos), and I had sign ups but recently I removed this feature because I think it's not right. Almost all subscribers wanted to get $500 free but not to read my newsletters.

[webpositionexpert]

Thanks for the advice guys. I will keep the 'sign up' link on my main pages but will add a special offers page in my navbar too. if no one signs up in a month I will continue to build the site but will remove the newsletter idea.

Seemed such a good idea in the beginning but thank you for sharing your experiences and ideas it has made the way somewhat clearer!

Regards
Simon
http://www.sportsbook-watch.com

[aksana]

I think you shouldn't remove your newsletter. if you really won't have sign ups in the next month it's not the reason to remove newsletter offer. Maybe later you will have a lot of subscribers, it needs time.

[MichaelCorfman]

I started a poll question based on this thread that explores the extent of the use of newsletters by GPWA members. Anyone following this thread might want to read that one also.

www.gpwa.org/forum/do-you-publish-e-mail-newsletter-how-often-172584.html.

Michael