How to build an email opt-in course for your blog

Careers, Writing

Last Monday, I released a new e-course, The Geek Blogger’s Guide to Your First $1000.

The main reason I put out this guide was because I think it’s extremely helpful, and I want to give my loyal readers helpful stuff for free. But I also have an (ah ha!) ulterior motive here, and that’s to grow my mailing list. My mailing list is the best tool I have to keep in touch with you. And unlike with social media, it’s a quiet place where I can be more personal with my readers.

If you have a blog, you’ve probably considered growing your mailing list, too. Let me tell you that an opt-in incentive is the best way to do that. It’s free, but it still involves effort on your readers’ part: they need to agree to sign up for your mailing list. The result is you have a built-in audience who is willing to meet you halfway in exchange for your authority on a particular topic.

Here’s how I picked a topic, built a course, and automated it for my blog.

Survey your audience

My story really begins back in 2016. Otaku Journalist is more than seven years old now, and I know the audience now wants different things than it did back then, just like I like to write about different stuff than I did then. So I conducted a survey.

Eighty people replied, out of an estimated 400 daily readers. What I found was that readers who are engaged enough to do my surveys when I put them out are most interested in two types of content: my personal fandom experiences, and geek career advice. That told me that the most effective way to communicate would be using examples from my own life. It was around then that I started formulating The Geek Blogger’s Guide to Your First $1000. I originally was going to call it How I Earned My First $1000 On Otaku Journalist, but I eventually decided that was too specific. These are techniques I think will work on a variety of blogs, not just mine.

Write the darn course

Then, I put off actually writing the course for almost a year. “Growing my mailing list” is not as high up on my list of motivators as “making actual money.” So it wasn’t until two weeks ago, when I had an unexpected lull in my workload, that I sat down to tackle this.

The survey gave me a blueprint for the outline (five chapters each with a section on my own experiences, followed by a section on how to emulate them) so it was a matter of filling in the blanks. I wrote the bulk of the work on International Women’s Day, because I didn’t feel bad devoting most of that day to a personal project. For the remainder of the week, I devoted my post-dinner work hour to finishing up.

The resulting course is about 5,500 words and includes a bunch of screenshots, photos, and links to outside resources. It’s a little long for an e-course. My first course, the Niche Reviewer Crash Course, was only 3,000 words and has inspired over 1,000 mailing list sign-ups.

Set up automation

I can’t think of anything more irritating or inconvenient than to have to send the Niche Reviewer Crash Course, which consists of seven parts, manually to 1,000+ subscribers. That’s why I use Mailchimp’s free automation software.

First I signed into my free Mailchimp account and clicked the Automation tab. Here’s my Automation page, which has two active course series going.

First, I clicked the “Add Automation” button in the upper right-hand corner. I selected an Education → Course Series setup. Here, I clicked on a brand new one to show you how this works. By default, it starts sending as soon as somebody signs up for your list.

Only, I have two courses, and I wanted to give my readers a choice. So I made use of Mailchimp’s free List Groups tool. I set up two new groups, each named after one of the courses. Now, on my subscription page, you can select one (or both) courses in order to receive the e-course of your choice.

So you’ll see at the top of The Geek Blogger’s Guide to Your First $1000 automation, the trigger for receiving the first email is “immediately after subscribers join the grouping” of the same name. That keeps me from spamming this course to people who didn’t ask for it, while also showing me exactly how many subscribers joined to get access to this particular course.

I fed the course from the Google Doc into a seven-part email series, adding in links and photos as I went. At the end, I attached a PDF to the final email with a Google Analytics event listener in the link—now I’ll see how many people actually clicked and downloaded that PDF. In other words, the modifications I made are designed to tune me in with what readers want.

Build the odds and ends

All set? Not quite. There were still a few things I had to do:

  • Add a new sign-up banner to the main Otaku Journalist page.
  • Write the wording for the course page.
  • Write a newsletter sending the course to existing subscribers.
  • Write the blog post announcing the new course.
  • Made a Facebook post, a tweet, and other small social things.

Finally, I finished all that, and activated the course automation on my Mailchimp dashboard early on Monday morning. I started getting subscribers right away, so it was worth it!

Setting up an ecourse definitely takes research and time. But the biggest plus in my opinion is that all the tools you use to launch it are free, so I don’t feel bad about giving it away. I hope this post inspires you to create an opt-in course of your own! Definitely let me know if it did, and I promise I’ll be among your first subscribers.

Otaku Links: Trans-Am Mode

Otaku Links

  • I’m openly envious of my Forbes colleague Ollie for living such a cool life. Recently, he sat down to chat with Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino like it was nothing, and they discussed his works from 1979 to 2017.
  • Kixkillradio creates breathtaking miniature settings for her many Nenderoid figures to play in. I was mesmerized by this sped-up video in which she creates a miniature sushi house with real working lights!
  • Who wants an anime studio tour? Sakugabooru takes us through Kyoto Animation’s surprisingly large number of studios and buildings.
  • Here’s an English version of the Anime Industry Report 2016, via r/anime. Some highlights: the US is the biggest overseas market for anime, online streaming distribution is growing a ton, and the genre with the biggest potential for overseas growth just might be “adult animation.”
  • Funimation decided to market yaoi anime Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi by inviting fans of yaoi and BL to tag their experiences with the hashtag #fujoshilife. Funimation’s own staff led the charge, but the movement quickly fizzled out when people got offended. But how offensive was it? Over at Anime Feminist, Amelia launched a discussion about this complicated issue.
  • I talk a lot about Get Bullish, the organization through which I’ve met most of my DC entrepreneur friends and through which I sell my affiliate earning guide. In this resource-packed blog post, my friend Eva explains what it’s done for her.

Screenshot via Gundam 00, just added in HD to Crunchyroll. I’m watching it now! 

Free e-course: The Geek Blogger’s Guide to Your First $1000

Careers

Freelance can be unpredictable. This week, I’m swamped with paid work. Last week, not so much. And since last Wednesday lined up with International Women’s Day, I decided to use my excess free time to build a new woman-created project I’ve been thinking about for months.

Now it’s here, it’s free, and it’s called The Geek Blogger’s Guide to Your First $1000. It’s part auto-bio, part how-to, of how I figured out how to get this blog to become profitable over the years, where profitable does not mean “wealthy” but does mean “gives back more than I put in.”

Get the course!

This guide is for you if you:

  • Have (or want to begin) a blog about a topic you totally geek out about. Passion is a huge part of my monetization process!
  • You want to make an income without being sleazy or alienating your audience. Look elsewhere if you want black hat or grey hat methods.
  • You’re open-minded and willing to do the work in order to get something back. Each of these methods involves effort up front, but I think they are worth it.

Mailing list members should already be well-acquainted with this course if they want to be, because I sent it out to my 500+ current newsletter subscribers last night.

If you’re not on the mailing list yet, you can get the Geek Blogger’s Guide to Your First $1000 as a six part e-mail course delivered to your inbox over a week if you sign up here.

Whither the old course, the Niche Reviewer Crash Course? You can still opt in for that. I’m using MailChimp to organize all this, so now, when you subscribe you the mailing list you can select one or both courses to receive when you sign up.

I put a lot of work into this course so whether you’re a current subscriber or new here, I want you to have it. And if you like it, be sure to let me know!

Get the course!

Otaku Links: Better blogging

Otaku Links

Screenshot of Kakariko Village in Breath of the Wild. I’m not playing, but I’ve been looking over John’s shoulder and the graphics are breathtaking. 

February 2017 Monthly Income Report

Income Reports

February is a dumb month. My income isn’t exactly routine to begin with, and the shortness of February messes it up even more. I expected that this month’s income report would look almost the same as January’s, until I realized I didn’t get some of my end-of-the-month payments until March 3.

As a result, February is distinctly less profitable than January, even though I worked the same amount. I received exactly $900 of my February freelance payments on March 3, and I’m still waiting for an additional $250 from Forbes. Generally, these are payments I expect to receive the final week of the month, but since that final week was so short, I’m just getting them now.

That means that writing income was a much smaller piece of the pie than usual. It also helps that I receive my Amazon payments on a delayed schedule. This month I got my December 2016 earnings—$1080.88! It took me a long time to start making this much with Amazon, and I am extremely proud of myself.

Of course, there’s no such thing as a risk-free business venture, especially when you base a big chunk of your business on top of another company’s platform. Starting March 1, Amazon has launched a different commission structure for affiliates like me. A lot of articles about it make it sound like we’re all “panicking” about the change, but it’s different for everybody. For me, a low-traffic seller, a flat rate over a high-commission structure might actually increase my earnings, but I’ll know for sure in a few months.

I also made less on web design in February than I did January, but because I charge my clients 100% up front, I’m still working on stuff I got paid for in January. Here are some sites I’ve managed to finish:

I’m finding the work to be variable. Sometimes the fee I charge covers the amount of work I do perfectly. Other times I spend hours and hours doing unpaid work because the project took way longer. Since it’s so uncertain, I’m devoting more of my time to pitching new writing gigs. I’m interviewing (yes, even freelancers have to!) with a new client this week.

I spent $168 on business expenditures this month, just the basics that I pay for every month (Bluehost hosting, time tracking software, Quickbooks Self Employed, theme licenses, etc). I’m not doing any interesting expansion right now and I don’t need any supplies. This month at Katsucon, for example, I still used the old flyers I designed to promote Gunpla 101 for Otakon 2016.

Speaking of stagnation, I didn’t meet a single one of my February goals! So I’m going to just roll them over to March and stop being lazy. What were they again?

  • Create a new web design sales page (or site!) using recent finished client projects.
  • Come up with ten keyword-heavy post ideas for my new affiliate blogging project.
  • Write a new mailing-list incentive course (to replace The Niche Reviewer Crash Course).

How was your month? I’m always excited to talk with other geek careerists.

See also:

January 2017 Monthly Income Report

All Previous Income Reports