Autopilot Traffic: How To Generate Consistent Traffic For Your Blogs
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I started adding a mailing list opt-in form to all of my new blogs. Recently, one of my friends asked me why I still continue with mailing lists and newsletters when blogs and RSS feeds are better? Here is my answer to him:
Mailing Lists Are Still Relevant
1. Even today, close to 50% of the people won’t subscribe to RSS feeds. This number is higher for non-technical mass-market blogs.
2. You can set up a series of automatic emails that people receive on subscribing. So mailing lists can be awesome set it and forget it systems. And they go a long way in building trust.
3. Mailing lists help in creating a traffic loop.
Whats a Traffic Loop?
Traffic loops are systems that you build that keep on getting traffic to your blog consistently and automatically. Here is my traffic loop strategy that you can use for your blogs too:
1. Use various tactics to bring traffic to your blog. Tactics like guest posting, press releases, joint ventures, SEO, article submission etc.
2. Once people visit your blog, ask them to subscribe for your newsletter.
3. As soon as they subscribe, show them a one-time-offer. 1-10% of your subscribers will end up buying the product based on how good the offer is and how powerful your sales letter is. Pump the profits you earn from this product into buying ads to promote your blog. PPC advertising. Banner ads. Ads on other blogs.
4. When people confirm their subscription, forward them to a page where they can see links to other blogs. And enter into joint ventures with these other blogs so that they send traffic to your blog too. (You could also show refer-5-friends form on this page too.)
Bullet points #3 & #4 creates the traffic loop for you. As people who visit your blog result into more people visiting your blog!
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I tend to agree with your friend. One among many reasons is that spam filters are often based upon foolish right-clickers. These are the people who don’t unsubscribe but never hesitate to get you blacklisted by reporting your mail as “spam”… When three or four people do that within an hour, guess what happens to the 200,000+ other mail recipients who use similar filters. They will automatically get your mail in their SPAM folder, thus earning you absolutely nothing.
Likewise, people may not read their mails but they are often far more curious when doing an RSS-check. Here, Thunderbird handles both mails and RSS, and I can vouch for the fact that the minute I spot a marketer who writes f.ree to get through spam systems I lose all faith in them, and unsubscribe.
I am highly selective because time is the only thing we can’t get any extra of….
I think many users are the same so I would agree on the subject of mail lists vs. RSS… 
Posted 28 Aug 2008 #
Good analysis dude.
Thanks for sharing.
Posted 28 Sep 2008 #
Ankesh,
I find your approach to blogging and the way your share stories to make a point innovative and exciting.
Do you have any advice on the technicalities of creating an email list?
David
Posted 05 Oct 2008 #