I was listening to a fantastic call from Jeff Walker about email list building. Jeff’s the guy behind Product Launch Formula, the system I followed when launching Blog Mastermind and in my opinion a must have home study course for any person who is planning on releasing a product online (you can read my PLF review here).
Jeff does bonus calls now and then for his paying clients and they are always great. This one was particularly cool because I love the topic of email list building, but also because Jeff went into detail about a simple formula he uses to start niche businesses using blogs.
Here’s how the formula works:
- Jeff uses the WordPress platform, like most good bloggers do, to run his blogs.
- You pick a niche topic and aim to produce one article per day. Jeff actually timed himself how long it took to write a short 250-500 or so word article – he got it down to 12 minutes, so clearly this is not too hard to do. You don’t need to write 1000+ word monster articles like I do if you are to use this system.
- Your goal with each article is to rank well in the search engines for one key phrase. That’s one article ranking well for one phrase. To make this work you have to do keyword research to find the keyword phrase and then use that phrase in the title of your blog post. Jeff suggested the WordTracker keyword service for keyword research (you can use the WordTracker free keyword tool too).
- With the help of pinging, which comes as a default in WordPress and by submitting your blog sitemap to Google Webmaster tools you can get your blog into the search engine within 24 hours or a few days at most.
- You must have an email opt-in form on the blog and your goal is to get at least a 10% conversion rate, which is fairly easy with a well incentivised and free email newsletter (offer a report or content of some kind in exchange for the opt-in).
After a month or two you should have at least 100 visitors a day coming to your blog from organic search results (bear in mind that’s only if you stick to the one article per day formula), which is 10 opt-ins to your email newsletter per day. That totals 300 email subscribers per month and 3000+ email opt-ins per year, and as Jeff states – that’s a business.
With an email list of 3,000+ you have the basis for product launches, or affiliate marketing, or a leverage tool for joint ventures or all kinds of things. Jeff explained you won’t get rich quickly with this method, but it’s good honest email list building and you can create a thriving niche business using this model. With 3000 prospects you should be able to get at least 100 customers (a 3% conversion rate) and if you are selling $20 products, that’s still $2000. Release one product a month and you have yourself a salary sized business.
Not bad for one 12-minute blog article per day!
Yaro Starak
12 Minute Article Writer