What's your philosophy on popups & popovers?

I don't use them - i hate them. I don't like seeing them so I don't make anyone else suffer them.

My belief has been similar to yours I think damn near since the first popup was ever birthed, but recent requests from clients and discussions with some marketers have me thinking I've excised from a very viable list building strategy. I'm ready and willing to explore.

Those lightbox hover ads from Aweber will get you more subscribers if you install it on your squeeze page.

I never use them.

Some people say not to use them. And in my experience many of those are people who have tested it thoroughly for themselves.

Pop-up enthusiasts, on the other hand, in my experience, tend to be a mixture of (a) those promoting them, and (b) those using them who have noticed a short-term increase in opt-ins and made often-mistaken assumptions from that observation without going as far as split-testing for themselves in terms of their income over a reasonably significant time-period.

The point which many people miss is that there's an easy assumption that "a bigger list-size will necessarily earn more in the long run".

That assumption is often wrong.

As I found myself, to my surprise, when I split-tested it in each of four different niches, last year. In all four, I earned more (over a 6-month period) from the smaller list. At the time, I didn't quite understand why, but have now worked it out, and it's surprisingly simple: they're different people.

The easy mistake to make is to assume that "having a higher proportion of visitors opting in" can only be a good thing. If 20% more people opt in, the entirely mistaken assumption is that you still have all the "original" people, together with some additional people. This is typically wrong.

What you normally have, at least to some extent and sometimes to a great extent, is different people.

My experience, and the experience of others I know who have tested for themselves rather than repeating popular opinions which are often based on misunderstandings, is that buyers tend to be significantly among the people who'll opt in to a sidebar box, but be alienated by a pop-up and never return (which some of them would otherwise have done, so you need to monitor "returning visitors" carefully, too, and work out for yourself what proportion of them are lost by having a pop-up).

The people I know who have split-tested properly and carefully have abandoned their pop-ups. But that doesn't necessarily make that the right decision for everyone.

The one "constant factor", which anyone testing can reliably prove for themselves, is that there will always be people who, at the first sign of a pop-up, hit the "back" button and never return. Imagining that the increase in opt-ins is necessarily going to compensate for those people, in long-term financial terms, is simply an assumption. And pretty often a readily disprovable one by those willing to test, who think it through enough to appreciate that "numbers of people" and "long-term money earned" are not necessarily directly proportional, and that there are reasons for that.

Indirectly, this issue - like many of the Urban Myths of internet marketing - relates to the difference between quantitative and qualitative approaches to marketing.

Amateurs guess (and some propagate others' guesses as if they were factual); professionals test for themselves (and define the test-parameters adequately to take into account all the relevant variables). "Just saying" ...

I really do not think that they are useful at all.

Hugely annoying!

Very annoying, but they do increase my overall income. I tested this on a product I was selling for $24.99 and upon exit, offered the product for $12.99. I went from making 3 sales per day at $24.99 ($74.97) - to making 1 sale at $24.99 and 12 sales ($155.88). Traffic was roughly 200 unique visitors a day.

I appreciate all of your replies. Alexa, that was a beautifully thorough break down of "why not" to use pop ups. Thank you very much.

I don't like them for the most part but I DO think they can add some extra income IF done properly and in a subtle manner. Sadly though, a lot of people use them in an obnoxious and typical way.

My philosophy about them is that they are horrible.

thanks to ad-blocker plus, I never see them.

I'd like to hear from people who have found them profitable used alone. and if so, what general market.

Most people in the the tech type markets should know ways to prevent these annoyances from happening. That makes me think that wouldn't be a way to go for people who are average tech savvy. Which should be most of us here.

I tested this extensively for my one site that sells directly. I did a three month test with two different options, by that I mean each option ran for two months.

At first, I had just a static opt-in form on the right-hand side of site (this was how the site's opt-in had been for a long time). Second, I tested using a traditional pop-up, and I found that with the pop-up, opt-ins decreased, and sales decreased. Third, I tested using the Aweber hover ad, where the screen fades dark around the hover. I found that with the hover ad, opt-ins went way higher, and sales increased.

I have the hover ad set to only appear once per 24 hour period (I have lots of content on the site, so visitors tend to come back and move around on the site for a fair amount of time), and it comes in ten seconds after a visitor lands on the site.

The content of what you are offering and the headline you are using for your opt-in are still the most important points.

Used correctly (and smartly) they can be very benefitial. I use them myself.

I delete popups the second they pop up. This is because they are blocking the content I want to view. They might do well for getting emails for your cpa campaigns, but the people are just going to put in fake email addresses and do whatever it takes to get that popup out of their way. You are slowing down the user experience with popups.

me too. I hate those things. I really wonder how effective they are. Same goes with content locking....extremely annoying. But then again, we are internet marketers,not the average customer

Pop ups are very annoying, each time i see them on a website i just close them. I have never used it and it doesn't work that well because most people ignore them.

AdSense doesn't allow them. You can't put Amazon in a frame anymore. Best place to use them is your trash bin. Nobody likes them, except for the people that put them on their websites. If I visit a website with an pop scripts, I leave. Sure, they can increase conversions if your in the Internet Marketing niche, but thats because new marketers are stupid and think that everything they see is how things are supposed to be. Truth is, pop ups are a form of customer harassment, and it's a great way to lose trust.

By the way. For those that are new or don't know yet. Trust is the most powerful tool you have when it comes to Internet Marketing. Without trust, you might as well run PPC Campaigns and toss your money at google.