Comments on: Suzy: Week 12 Goals – Build a Subscriber List

By: Dave and Deb

Dave and Deb — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:36:47 +0000

Thanks for the info Trisha. That is very interesting. The things you learn at TWE. I was wondering in Mailchimp do you use the Rss-drivin campaign or the plain ole newsletter campaign. Also do you use a Mailchimp Template or have you created your own.

thanks for the info,

Dave

By: Trisha Miller

Trisha Miller — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:57:49 +0000

Don’t forget that the stats that you first see when you log into Feedburner are your RSS Feed stats, and they only measure who has read your RSS Feed for that day. Some folks read in the morning, some in the evenings, some a few days after you’ve published a post, so if you log in and look at stats in the morning, you won’t know about all those folks who wait until later to enjoy your posts with a glass of wine!

So with Feedburner, don’t pay too close attention to daily RSS numbers, just watch for trends over time.

The email subscriber list stats are counted separately and I believe are on a separate stats page…..but should be fairly accurate.

By: Trisha Miller

Trisha Miller — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:53:51 +0000

Thank you! I’m really glad that you actually enjoy them!

By: Trisha Miller

Trisha Miller — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:52:34 +0000

Thanks for stopping by, Andy! I do agree with that belief, but I know that some freelance travel writers have very limited budgets so I do try to let them know about the free tools that exist, even if they are not as good as the paid tools.

By: Dave and Deb

Dave and Deb — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:46:07 +0000

Just read Andy’s comment. You are right, you do get what you pay for. I think that we are going to give the free ones a go for a little while longer.
But I think that soon it will be time for us to start paying, now that we are starting to see some revenue.
You are right about Feedburner (which we are still using) it is pretty unreliable and we have found that doesn’t give true stats. Our subscribers can jump 30 people in a day and then fall 50+ the next.

By: Dave and Deb

Dave and Deb — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:41:35 +0000

So true about subscribers. We just added a newsletter subscription to our site after a company contacted us to advertise in our newsletter. We never thought about that before either.
It wasn’t until a few months ago that we even bothered to make our RSS subscribe noticeable. Now we have noticed that subscribers are being added every day.
We use MailChimp too!
I understand why you would wait until week 12 to make it a priority. I think waiting (for us) was a good thing too. If we had it up too early, people would have subscribed to us and we wouldn’t have had any content to give them. Now we know what we are going to send out in our newsletters and people will hopefully receive valuable information from us.
I am looking forward to your email subscriber post as well. I love your weekly updates when I receive them.

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:13:17 +0000

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by travelwriting: Oooh almost forgot – finally got my Friday Case Study post up: http://bit.ly/4g3YuX This wk it’s about opt-in list building – hope u enjoy!…

By: Cheryl Probst

Cheryl Probst — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:31:39 +0000

I’m looking forward to the next installment on email lists. That’s one of the marketing tools I’ve been considering for my books. Great series to date!

By: Andy Hayes

Andy Hayes — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:59:44 +0000

I use Aweber. I firmly am of the belief that if you’re in this as a business then you need to pay for the proper software. I’ve used Feedburner and the other free ones and, well, you get what you pay for.

By: Abbie

Abbie — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:43:50 +0000

I never considered an email list – great suggestion!