Coffee Break Blogging – Details, episodes & analysis

Sometimes we do have constraints that bump right up against our lack of skills.

Common for many in this business is lack of technical skills. And this is often coupled with the habit of comparing yourself to others where you see other good looking blogs and you try like hell to make your own look that good despite not having the skillset to do it.

You have two options here:

1. Do it by yourself.
2. Hire somebody to do it.

Now, going the “do it yourself” route is a viable option for some, but I see some people basically grinding their entire progress to a halt over it.

In the “real world”, you hire people all the time. You probably hire somebody to fix your car, or to do major repair work around the house. You hire them because they’re the expert and you want the result quickly.

So, WHY is it that we lose this perspective when it comes to the Internet?

In our last issue, we met Bob. Bob set out to start up his own online business, but ended up drowning in information and left himself overwhelmed and confused on what to do next.

And when we left Bob last time, I talked about how Bob needed structure and order… and he needed to implement “just in time learning”. He needed self-imposed tunnel vision in order to weed out any incoming information that took him off his goal or simply was talking about something which isn’t yet relevant to Bob.

Let me give you a classic example…

Let’s say our friend Bob here has a niche in mind. He’s even started his site up for it. He’s written a few blog posts, perhaps. But, his email list is still practically non-existent and he has yet to make his first buck online. So, Bob is still in the early phases here.

But, Bob is subscribed to some “guru” who is pretty big into podcasting. Bob listens to that podcast. Loves it, in fact. The host of that podcast even publishes income reports and Bob finds it motivational. So, the “guru” launches a course all about podcasting. And it sounds freakin’ awesome to Bob.

But, let’s back up here. And let’s talk a little sense into Bob, shall we?

A quiz is a unique type of lead magnet to grow your list.

Typically, creating an online quiz has been a real technical challenge. But, one of the more recent tools offered from Thrive Themes is the Thrive Quiz Builder.

With Quiz Builder, you can create different kinds of quizzes. And here’s the best part…

You can use them to create segmented email lists, offer them different lead magnets depending on their answers, and more.

One of the biggest challenges can simply be coming up with an idea for a quiz.

From a marketing perspective, the aim is to have a quiz which gets them to look at the problem that you solve with your business. It can help raise them on the customer awareness scale from being unaware to problem aware. Quizzes which give them a score on something they can improve can work well for this.

The fact that you can build a simple assessment or quiz using a drag-and-drop interface like this is just amazing to me. Thrive Quiz Builder really is an amazing tool for that.

As we near the end of our series on email marketing and building our email lists here at Coffee Break Blogging, I want to talk about a more advanced topic...

A marketing automation tool like Infusionsoft, Ontraport or ActiveCampaign.... when combined with your blog... makes a very powerful combination.

• How to make your tool and your blog "talk"
• How to make your blog proactively reach out to prospects
• How you can use lead scoring in combination with your blog
• How to rescue lost sales using your automation tool

We've talked a lot about using a traditional lead magnet to build your list. But, there is another way. And it could even be more effective.

And that's webinars. Webinars aren't just a way to make a sales presentation... they also work very well to build your list.

• The psychological reason why webinars (or live events) work so well to create a bond between you and your subscriber.
• GotoWebinar versus Google Hangouts
• How to get people to register for a webinar AND join your list at the same time
• The "no prep" webinar that you can do immediately without any prep work.

I encourage you to give a webinar a try. And record everything. You're gaining massive leverage by doing so! ;-)

Kevin Kelly said that it takes just 1000 true fans to totally make a living. 1000 true fans - who will all be on your email list - and you can make a living doing it. But, it also works as you build it up.

In this episode, we talk about how you can actually make money while you build your list. We talk about the very beginning of the blog profit funnel and how to structure it so that every new subscriber has the potential to turn into a customer.

We also talk about some basic metrics which will allow you to actually PAY to get people onto your list... and still make money as you do it.

This is the name of the game. :-)

We are now in Episode #82 of Coffee Break Blogging and once again, we are going to continue on our series to creating and growing a profitable blog-based information business online.

Today we are going to talk about how you can actually build your list and make money while you do it. And also, you could do it dependably because the other thing is that a lot of bloggers they try to build their list; they have got the opt-in on their sidebars, stuff like that, but just they do not have many people actually joining.

There's lots of talk about how to get people onto your email list. But, then what? What do you SEND them? How do you find good material to send to your email subscribers? That is what we are going to be talking about in this episode; Episode 81 of Coffee Break Blogging.

There's no greater tragedy in this business than an email list which isn't being used. So in this episode, I will show you how not to make that mistake and also, we will talk about where to draw material from, to send to your email subscribers - both using your autoresponder and your broadcast emails.

• The important mindset to bear in mind here, especially if you've been blogging for awhile.
• The simple tactic to use right after they subscribe.
• How to cross-promote different lead magnets
• The biggest mistake people make when sending a new lead magnet to their EXISTING subscribers
• How to identify "money posts" to send to your list

See, there's a lot of talk out there, including by yours truly, on how to get people to opt-in to your list. And that is certainly an important topic. I mean, really, your email list is the life boat of your entire business. So it is important to get people onto our list. And a lot of the last many episodes here on Coffee Break Blogging have talked about that in one way, shape or form. The question is, then what?

Well, hello there! Welcome to Episode 80 of Coffee Break Blogging.

Today we are going to be discussing a little bit more about the whole idea of our email list. We are in Stage 3 of the overall 7-phase system to building up our online business. And what we are going to be talking about today is the one blog - one list strategy that most bloggers are using.

Most bloggers who are building an email list have one list for their one blog. And this is certainly better than nothing... but it could be a LOT more effective.

Today, we discuss the use of multiple lists for one blog and why it is so much more powerful.

• Why list segmentation is so important
• The most effective (and simplest) way to begin segmenting your list
• How you should structure multiple lists for your blog
• How to get people onto your "general list"

This episode is important for your success with email marketing, moving forward.

Hello there! Welcome to Episode 79 of Coffee Break Blogging!

Hollywood makes lots of multi-million dollar productions for us to enjoy - and we spend billions every year to be entertained by them. They must know a thing or two, right? Yes, they do.

So in this episode of our series, we're going to apply the lessons of Hollywood to our emails. We are going to be looking at writing emails and how to write better emails for your list.

• How we can use an email as an "episode"
• How you can build in "open loops"
• The usual storyline maps (like the hero's journey) and how you can use it in your marketing campaigns
• What comic books have in common with writing email campaigns

Hello there! Welcome to another episode of Coffee Break Blogging where we are going to talk about your email list some more. We are on Stage 3 of the overall cycle of building our online business; that we are talking about in Coffee Break Blogging and Stage 3 is all about building and using our email list effectively.

Your autoresponder sequence is what allows you to put a large part of your business on automatic. At the very least, it saves you a lot of work. But, what do you put in your autoresponder?

So in this episode, we discuss 7 different strategies you can include in your automatic email followups. These strategies will allow you to provide lots of value to your subscribers, make sales on auto, AND get an ongoing flow of feedback from your subscribers which you can use to make better content for them.

When we started Stage 3; this is going back to Episode 70 or so, we talked the one about how to get people on to your list, we talked about lead magnets, we talked about putting together opt-in forms; things like that. In the last episode we talked about the perfect opt-in confirmation page. That is going to be the first page that they see right after they opt-in.

Today, we are going to talk all about what do you send them after they have subscribed. Obviously, putting people on to your list is useless unless you send them things.  That part should be pretty obvious. Now the good thing about an autoresponder is that you can put a lot of this on automatic. Obviously you can email people, email your list on a one-off fashion. So you type something, you hit send and it is real time. And there is definitely a place for that. You will be doing that with your list. However, you also want to be using your autoresponder; your follow up sequence capability so you do not have to do everything manually. Because I have seen people make a mistake of doing this list and then they are like, "I don't know what to send them" and then they just don't send anything and that is such a waste of an asset when you do that.

So let us jump right in to what to do with this autoresponder sequence. And we are going to talk about 7 specific things to do.