General

First I will get to the results of the “subject line test” for one of the emails I sent out to my sports betting list.  Since making that post things have tightened up a little bit with more opens, but there is still an 8% difference from first to last.  If you had a 1000 email list that would result in 80 less people opening, and possibly hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars lost.

Votes on which subject line came LAST:

How You Can Crush The Sportsbooks – Knup, Bryan, Nick
Game Changing Sports Betting System Released To Public – Matt, Dealer Dan, Adam
Learn How I Instantly Doubled My Betting Profits – Gerry, Tom
1 Insane Sports Betting System -

(note MJ said “im with matt and gerry” but they were on different subjects haha.. so vote void I guess)

And the worst open rate was:

Learn How I Instantly Doubled My Betting Profits

Good job on Gerry and Tom picking that out…

From Best to worst…

How You Can Crush The Sportsbooks – 30%
1 Insane Sports Betting System – 28.8%
Game Changing Sports Betting System Released To Public – 25.8%
Learn How I Instantly Doubled My Betting Profits – 21.9%

To sum it up… 3 of 10 people who voted actually picked the subject line that did the best.  No one thought 1 Insane Sports Betting System would be the worst, and it actually was second best, so good job there.  The most votes came on the subject line that was second last.  And two people picked which was going to be the worst open rate.

Oh and Knup listed from worst to best and actually got the exact opposite order lol.

What I can take from this small split test experiment:

I will have to keep testing but I think using words like “crush, insane, game changing” will help open rates.

Does “How you can…” increase open rates?

Would using a more exciting word help, like…  “Learn How I Skyrocketed My Betting Profits” rather than “Learn How I Instantly Doubled My Betting Profits”?

Using numbers might help… 2 Crazy fat loss tips, 4 secret sports betting tips, 7 poker tournament strategies

Anyways, a cool little experiment and neat to see what people were guessing.

On to something else for a minute…

I had an interesting comment by Casino Answers man, Dealer Dan, on my night time productivity post about cold showers.  He suggested I tried cold showers to wake me up and clear my head in the morning so I could get more work done (I’ve been having troubles within the first few hours of waking).

It was weird because I actually started this yesterday and loved it.  And later in the night I was reading a blog post by Tim Ferris (author of Four Hour Work Week) about how cold showers can actually help with fat loss.  Exposing your body to cold will cause your body to try and heat itself up basically and will burn more calories.   I made a little post about using cold showers for fat loss on my very new workout tips blog.

So if cold showers are going to help me wake up in the morning, clear my head, and help me stay lean… why not.  These are added to my daily routine from now on out.  Oh and not to mention it is supposed to be good for stress, depression, and more.

Try it out!

Just a quick random post as I am interested to see other affiliates thoughts and guesses on a split test I did.  Please leave a comment with your guess at the bottom (hey free link why not)!

Basically I did a split test for an email I sent out to my sports betting list about a sports betting system.  I sent out the same email with 4 different email subjects using the Aweber split test for the broadcasts.

Which email subject do you think came last as far as open rates (listed in random order):

How You Can Crush The Sportsbooks
Game Changing Sports Betting System Released To Public
Learn How I Instantly Doubled My Betting Profits
1 Insane Sports Betting System

Leave your answer in the comments and I will let you know the winner after I get a few comments…

Almost every day I learn something new about email marketing, whether it be from my own tests or reading other online marketer’s blogs. Since starting with email marketing about a year ago I have come so far in what I’ve learnt, and I look back at laugh at my first couple go’s at it.

Email marketing is a very important tool for affiliates and online marketers, and I highly recommend reading the article below which lists what I think are the 7 most important factors for email marketing.

#1 – Your Incentive

Why should I enter my email to sign up for your newsletter (or whatever you are offering)? Getting someone to give you their email can actually be tough, but if you are giving them something in return (that they want) it becomes a lot easier.

You need to clearly state what your visitors will receive for entering their email, and you better make it something that your visitors actually want if you are looking for a good unique visitor to sign up rate.

If you are a poker affiliate don’t make your call to action something vague and boring like “Enter your email for poker tips”… try something that creates interest and suspense like “The 1 secret online poker players don’t want you to know”.

#2 – Quality of Form

This took me a while to actually implement, but the nicer looking the email capture form is the higher sign up rate you will get.

When I first started with Aweber I didn’t really realize you could customize your forms, and would end up just using the ugly and boring templates they provide you with.

After paying a designer $5 to whip up a quick graphic to put in the form my sign up rate instantly grew.

My sign up rate grew even further when I came across a great tool called “Popup Domination” that gives you very nice looking and conversion focused templates to use in Aweber (or whatever email marketing provider you are signed up with).

A small investment in making your form actually look nice will go a long way in helping your sign up rate… make sure your email capture form isn’t an eye sore.

#3 – Privacy Notice

I personally haven’t done a lot of testing with this, but I have heard of other internet marketers that have tested it and came to the conclusion that including some sort of privacy notice letting your users know that you won’t spam them or sell their email address will actually help your sign up rate.

It definitely can’t hurt including some sort of privacy notice, so I would suggest implementing it on your form.

#4 – Personalization

Aweber gives you the option to include some personalization in your emails, which is a must for building relationships with your readers.

When you capture their email make sure that you have a field for their first name, and then you will easily be able to use a piece of Aweber code “{!name}” that will insert the persons first name anywhere you like (the title, the start of the email, etc).

It is very easy to implement and can do wonders building a relationship with individuals on your list. Think about it… would you feel better if an email was address to you with “Hi There,” or “Hi Kevin,”?

Start personalizing your emails a bit and act like you are talking one on one with the people on your list and whether or not they know you are sending the email to a mass amount of people at the same time, they will listen to what you have to say.

#5 – Autoresponder

Maybe the most important on the list is your autoresponder. An autoresponder is a series of emails that will be sent to someone who signs up for your list.

With Aweber you can choose when to send them, so for example the first one goes out right away, the next is the following day, the third is two days after that, the fourth is 4 days later, etc, etc.

You only set this up one time and then the autoresponder works its magic and markets to anyone who signs up all automatically with no work needed from you.

Don’t just hit them up with offer after offer. Build up a bit of a relationship in the first few emails providing them with quality content that you know they will enjoy, and they will start to like you more. Once you have built a small “relationship” with them you can hit them with an offer you will have a much better conversion rate.

#6 – Call To Actions

I actually had a fellow affiliate comment on my call to actions recently, letting me know that I can probably improve in this area (and I agree).

Within your emails you actually want to give your readers a call to action.

This isn’t just for making sales, but can also include your content articles. Mix things up a little bit and instead of just emailing content, how about putting the content on your blog and sending them a link to the post through email.

By using the above tip your readers will actually get used to sometimes clicking on a link you’ve provided for valuable content, so when you do hit them up with an offer (affiliate link to a sales page for example) they won’t think twice about clicking the link.

I have found using call to actions like “Click Here to read more about this…” work good, but get creative.

#7 – Testing

Ice, Ice, Icesicles…. Pop, Pop, Popsicles…. Test, Test, Testing 1-2-3!

Haha sorry I had to start this off with that…

Anyways TESTING IS HUGE for marketing, and it is no difference for email marketing!

Test everything you can when it comes to email marketing. Aweber gives you the option to easily implement split tests, allowing you to test 5, 10, 15 or however many forms you want. Test the headline, test the button color, test the button CTA, test everything to do with your form.

You will also be able to easily test different emails very easily with Aweber. Test the email subject line, try personalizing the email subject line, test the actual email body for clicks, and test everything to do with your email.

And don’t stop testing. Small tweaks can make a world of a difference, and that will result in more money in your pockets!

Click Here to get started with email marketing at Aweber…

Click Here to check out Popup Domination (a tool I HIGHLY recommend)…

Just wanted to get a quick blog post up to say Merry Christmas to all the affiliates that read my blog from time to time!  Hope you have a happy and safe holidays!

My Christmas will consist of going to my mom’s house later today for a big dinner that I am obviously looking forward to.  That is followed by gifts and drinks with the family.  Then on Christmas day I will have breakfast at mom’s and head on over to my Dad’s house (only a 10 minute drive – it’s nice to have split up parents that live in the same city… never really think about that!).  Gifts at my dad’s, usually followed by some board games and drinks and then a nice dinner.  Me and my buddies usually get together Christmas night and get pretty wasted, always resulting in a fun time.

This time of the year is awesome as an affiliate.  You can pretty much take off as much time as you want from work and spend time with family, friends and just relaxing. Enjoy it!

I felt like sharing one quick tip I’ve been doing lately that will surely help you increase your affiliate income.  I have been in a little rut lately, mostly due to my sports bettors winning money the past month and a bit, so I have decided to get back to the basics.  This one tip literally takes about 10-15 minutes per day and should boost your income almost instantly.

The Tip – Update your top trafficked pages throughout your affiliate site network.

For me this has started with my main sports betting tips site.  Day one I log into Google Analytics and check what my top 10 trafficked pages are on the site over the last 90 days (I exclude any news posts that won’t likely receive traffic in the future).  I then open dreamweaver and pull up all 10 of those pages.

Once the pages are up I simply go through each one and spend a few minutes trying to monetize the page more.  This includes more CTA’s, reading over the page to make sure everything sounds good, updating the content, and interlinking with other new pages.

This should take about 10-20 minutes and you are done for the day.  The next day you move on to pages 10-20, and so on, until you have completed the XX or XXX most trafficked pages on your site.  And then if you are like me and have a bunch of sites going you can move onto the next site.

If you are like me you will be amazed of some of the pages you have stale content on, don’t use a single CTA, or don’t interlink with other relevant content on your site.

I figure after completing doing this to just my main site I should increase my income by at least $500 per month… not bad for 20 minutes of work a day.

Are you like me and have lots of pages up on your sites that you didn’t work hard enough when first putting them up thinking you’ll go back and do it once they receive some traffic?

Hope this post helped a few of you boost your income! Oh and Merry Christmas if I don’t get another post up! Quick shout out to Dave or (Doovde on PAL)  who got a new Bingo Reviews website going that should be a hit sooner than later, good work man.