Nervous about Selling to Your List? Get Over It with These Tips!
By Alice Seba
If I had a dime for every time I heard an online business owner say, “My subscribers get angry when I try to sell something,” I’d be a ridiculously wealthy woman. Unfortunately, I can’t make dimes that way and you can’t make money from your list with this type of mindset.
If you’ve ever held back out of worry of offending your subscribers, it’s time to cut that out. Here a few things for you to think about:
1. Your mailing list is a business building tool and should be treated as such.
It’s nice if you’ve promised to deliver good content to your subscribers, but if all you deliver is content, how are you going to convert those readers into customers? From the outset, tell your subscribers that you’ll be sending them information and offers…and do so.
2. If a subscriber complains that you tried to sell them something, there are two things to consider.
First, you probably haven’t trained your subscriber to receive promotions. Second, if someone gets ANGRY about being sold to, they probably aren’t a valuable subscriber anyway. Not everyone who is on your list will buy from you, but if they’re put off by the fact that you tried to sell something, it’s probably a good thing that they have removed themselves. You only want people who are open to your offers.
3. If you’re afraid to sell, email more often.
How often you should email your list will depend on your subject matter and your own testing, but one way to easily put in more offers is by giving them more emails with content. Keep the emails short and sweet – no need to publish a novel or full-on magazine each time, but get them used to opening your content rich emails and your offers too.
4. Don’t hide your offers in a mess of other content.
I am a big believer in informing while selling, but keep it on topic and weave your promotions into the content. A lot of people prefer try to mix their offers into an ezine-style email, but the offers just gets lost amongst all that content. If you have all kinds of links and sections, the attention given to your actual offer will be diminished.
5. Selling advertising isn’t really NOT selling.
A lot of publishers will opt to just sell advertising because then they can comfort themselves by saying, “I’m not really selling to my list.” Now, I agree that selling advertising might be a very viable option for an email publication, but consider this:
a. Your subscribers will respond much better to an offer made by you, the person they trust, rather than a typical advertisement, so make your own offers in addition to any advertising you accept. And in most cases, don’t put ads alongside your own offers.
b. Allowing advertising could mean a loss of ongoing revenue for you. If you allow someone to sell a product through your newsletter, they get the customers they can sell to over and over again. You have given your potential customers away. Even if you don’t have your own product, but make affiliate recommendations. When you choose a company that offers lifetime cookies or subscribers, you can make repeat sales. It doesn’t work that way with advertising.
c. Your reputation is on the line. When you investigate and sell your own products or make recommendations, you KNOW that you can stand behind a product. With advertising you lose some control over what is presented to your list. Of course, you can do your homework, but it’s not the same as selling a product you are very familiar with.
Recommended for Further Study:
For more tips for overcoming your fear of selling to your list, sign up for free access to Alice Seba’s Selling Confidently to Your List Audio & Transcripts. If it’s time to make more money from your subscriber list, grab your free access now.
About the Author
Alice Seba is a solo entrepreneur that thrives on helping people get ahead in their Internet businesses. Learn how you can make more money, just by being nice to people at Internet Marketing Sweetie – It’s FREE!
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