When is a good time to invest on aweber or similar service? Advice needed.

It depends your goals. I invested in Aweber from days one, and didn't make any profit from it the first 6 months. Afterwards it has turned into great profit. I would get Aweber/MailChimp as soon as possible, as it is a great product ..

I would add it AS SOON AS POSSIBLE and start building a great list.

Also, about monetizing:
- Your own products is the best way. You know your niche, you should have an idea about what they want

Despite popular belief, you don't actually have to use that aweber mailing list to market directly to people (i.e. sending emails, with affiliate links, strait to their inbox). Instead, you can simply use it establish and maintain relationships by providing great, free, information....then directing them back to your blog, as a main hub, or individual posts.

Hey David,

Having an autoresponder is an essential part of your online business.

Even if you do not have any product to promote.

What you can do is build trust and a relationship with your list by offering good free content and helpful tips and advice, then when it comes to you actually having some product to promote, your list will certainly jump on it.

Hope this helps,
Jonny

Hi David,

I agree with what others say that you can initially work on building a relationship with your readers through an email list. Also getresponse is a free option if you don't want to get aweber. Icontact, now also has a free version. You can speak about your interest in photography and background within the newsletter and then in time as you focus on products introduce those.

I believe that the rss feed alerts people to a new post but it doesn't have the same function as an email newsletter itself.

Debbie

Wow, thanks for that lead. When they say 'no affiliate links' do you think I can move to a service that allows affiliate links without losing my mailing list in the future?

If I'm being honest to myself, I don't see my ebook being ready (optimistic) until December of this year, if my co-writers are cooperative hehe. Even then, I don't think I have the technical know-how to deliver this ebook 24/7 online without a service like ejunkie/clickbank.

I guess it'll be great to sign up to the free service first (I have less than 2K subscribers right now anyway) then migrate to a paid service when the time comes.

Oh, last (hopefully, don't quote me on this ) question... Can I manually transfer the collected email addresses on Feedburner to these mail responding services?

Thanks so much.

The sooner the better when it comes to building a list. This way when it comes to you building a product, you'll have a list of prospect to sell to straight away.

Oh one more thing. Don't forget to build a relationship with them, this way your list will like you and trust you and as a result... Make more sales when it comes to launching your products

Hope this helps

James

Noted James, already creating a list now... Thanks for the advice

Plain and simple, get a good autoresponder like Aweber from the start. You'll be glad that you did and it saves you time later on.

Hi Randy, my current site - David's Simple Photography (no opt-in or anything, obviously, i'm still asking right now haha) and I have quite a bit of content there already, so I do have a pretty decent 'relationship' so to speak but my site is still hasn't reached that 'critical mass' level yet.

As you can see, it's a free photography tips site. I'm planning to launch a series of ebooks for specific genres, targeting and featuring mainly Asian talents, but I'll also try to promote some quality affiliate products from time-to-time.

Looks like it's either Mailchimp or Aweber for me right now, I'll research more on those two and see whether or not my site's current adsense income can support the monthly fees.

Thanks again... I'd love to hear additional insights if you guys have any.

I constantly hear people drumming the old adage that "the money is in the list." IMHO, this is incorrect. The money is not in the list, it's in the RELATIONSHIP you have with those on your list.

You do, however NEED to have a list if you plan on ever expending your business. If you have no plans on ever growing then you don't need an autoresponder. If you want to grow, then an autoresponder is a critical as a set of wrenches is to a mechanic. You can't do your job without proper tools.

I also don't recommend trying to go on the cheap when it comes to your autoresponder. There are solutions cheaper than Aweber, but when it comes to delivering your messages and helping you out if there is ever a technical issue, you won't find a more dependable service. Trust me, I know first hand. I've tried out several autoresponder services and even had a script on my own server. For the money, Aweber can't be beat.

Noted and thanks for the advice.

You might also want to look at MadMimi as an inexpensive alternative. But Aweber is much more powerful.

Hey David,

I'm going to go against the mould here and say.............

Don't bother with an AR right now.

It is NOT essential to your business.

As someone already said - what IS important is your relationship with your people and right now you already have a way to deliver them the only thing you are planning to offer them.

They chose that method and have subscribed so that they can see what you post.

So - right now you're giving them exactly what they want and exactly what you have.

You don't actually have a problem to fix and you're looking at it like because everyone else is telling you that you DO have a problem that you're determined to find it.

For some people setting up an AR would be the right move, but since you're not planning on selling them anything and you can already get your content to them - You are not in need of an AR - unless you change your business model.

There are many ways to communicate with people and you don't need an autoresponder to do it.

Don't try to shoe-horn a solution onto a problem you don't have.

Instead focus on areas where you do have clear actions that will move your business forward in the way you already want and do those.

Andy

ImnicaMail has a free account for up to 1000 subscribers. even if you switch to paid account it's $3/1000 subs and $7/2500 subs.

Just write a new posting in your blog where you announce you now have a mailing list with free offer where your RSS followers can sign in. I've been in photography niche too, there are some lucrative affiliate products in it.

Update and help needed.

I've decided to give Imnica Mail a try since it's free to test.

Their help/knowledgebase is pretty horrendous, there's nothing useful there. While I'm confident that their service is good (as I've read here on WF and other sites), having poor support pages worry me.

Anyway, the reason why I ask is, how do you import a CSV list of emails I exported from my Feedburner into Imnica Mail?

Thanks.

The fact that you have a certain number of RSS followers does not mean that number will translate back to email followers if you put an opt-in form on your site.

You generally need to have something to entice readers to join your opt-in list (like a free eReport giveaway), and you really should follow-up with some sort of content on at least a weekly or bi-weekly basis. If you don't, they won't get used to seeing your name in their inbox and they won't open your emails when you do decide to start.

If you don't intend on following-up with it, don't waste your time.

i believe the best time to get an awebber account ius when you ahve some traffic to your sites so you can get a list togheter and then promote them something

Normally I would recommend using an autoresponder but in this case I'm not really convinced its needed. You make it clear that you're not trying to monetize out of your followers and it looks like the content you are blogging about is for very specific group of people in which case its likely that they are regular visitors coming and going for updates without a need of email notification. Whether you look at it from establishing a relationship point of view or profiting point of view, an auto-responder won't hurt but also won't add much more benefit at this time in my opinion.

People I have suggested some free options for you to test it out so I guess I would try it out and see as it can't hurt and possibly help out in the future if you do decide to profit from your followers

Hi Deborah,

Actually I do have new content every week and as I've mentioned, I'm not promoting anything paid until much later when my ebook offer comes out, but I won't have a problem providing free content on top of my site content.

What I was asking was, whether it's wise to start a list early before a product is available or do I only offer an opt-in when I finally have a product ready.

@icemusike: I average about 70-80,000 page views a month on my site, I have some traffic and a loyal bunch of followers for about 2 years now.

Thanks both for replying nonetheless.