Email Subscriber List Building With Your WordPress Blog

One of the things that every serious WordPress blogger should be doing is building an email subscriber list. Why?

Simple – to keep your fans, readers or audience engaged; to keep them aware of new information on your blog, upcoming events, etc. There are also other important reasons that I will address in a future blog post.

And I have mentioned this before — you DON’T want to manage your email subscriber list directly from YOUR webhosting account from which your blog is hosted because you run the risk being put on the “banned” list (I know this from first hand experience trying to save a buck on autoresponder services — which I will never do again).

So, how do you build an email subscriber list using your WordPress blog ?

Here’s how I do it on all my blogs (including this one)…

First of all I use the Aweber autoresponder service. This is a trusted third party email delivery service that costs about $20 per month (less if you get it by the year). I have used these folks for years and I am more than satisfied with the service. My email gets delivered and that’s the main thing.

The bigger issue for a lot of people is trying to figure out how to integrate an Aweber autoresponder into your WordPress blog. I use this free plugin to solve that issue:

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Once you have an autoresponder set-up in your Aweber account, you only need two pieces of data to integrate Aweber with your WordPress registration process. There is no need to go through the hassles of trying to figure out how to make the email capture form (produced from your Aweber account) into your blog.

In other words…

Using this plugin, registration for your blog AND signing up for your email subscriber list is a single, seamless event.

But there is one major glitch with this plugin…

As you are probably aware, WordPress plugins are delivered in a .zip file. If you try to install this plugin directly via your WordPress Dashboard, it won’t work because…

The authors of the plugin zipped the actual plugin files into a separate, unnecessary folder. It’s really unfortunate because this is a fantastic plugin.

But because of this extra folder deal, the plugin is poorly rated because many people can’t figure out what to do when the plugin won’t install automatically via the WordPress Dashboard.

So, in order for the plugin to work, you need to unzip the plugin files and FTP this folder into your WordPress plugins folder:

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Then, simply activate the plugin and configure it using the Settings link in your Dashboard.

So to recap…

• Get your Aweber autoresponder set-up
• Install the plugin mentioned above
• Activate and configure the plugin with the information required from your Aweber autoresponder that you set up for your blog.

One thing I will recommend is that if you have never worked with Aweber to set up an autoresponder…

Simply use the Set-up Wizard provided in your Aweber control panel. It will not only guide you step-by-step through the process, but there is also a video you can review for each step of the process as well.

NOTE: You WILL want to use the Sidebar Login plugin to make it easy for your blog visitors to sign up for your blog.

I will be talking more about building email subscriber lists in the future because it’s a big deal — for reasons you actually may not be aware of.

As always, your comments or questions are welcomed.

Cheers,
Steve Roye
Online Business Consultant

About the Author/Founder of the IMS Blog

This former Navy Senior Chief (ret.) and professional entertainer didn't stop when he retired from the military...

Steve Roye is also an author who has also been an online business owner and consultant for almost a decade.

Now Steve focuses on helping others start or expand their online businesses.

Please check out the Featured Articles page for direct links to articles on this blog.

Last 5 posts by Steve Roye

• Facebook Marketing For Newbies - March 14th, 2010
• Entertainers Have The Edge When Building An Online Fan Club - March 11th, 2010
• 7 Secrets For Getting More Hits And More Traffic To Your WordPress Blog Now - March 8th, 2010
• The Lies About Making Money Online With Google Adsense - March 5th, 2010
• The Social Network Business Plan: 18 Wealth Strategies - March 2nd, 2010

Tagged with: autoresponder • aweber • email list • list building • wordpress blog • wordpress plugins

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