List building is at the heart of any successful online business. Even affiliates without products of their own can benefit from having lists and it allows you to keep in touch with your community. Opt-in forms are the gateway to that community.
Adding an opt-in form with Wordpress is very easy, the whole process only takes about 20 minutes. While there are many ways to add opt-ins: pop-ups, pop-unders, on the footer. Most of these plug-ins cost money are annoying to users, and exit pop-ups are hated by Google so avoid them if you are using PPC traffic or affiliates. In this case we’ll be using the widgets area, which is generally liked by users and by Google, and included in Wordpress.
Widgets are the elements you see on the side columns, e.g. categories, search and the like. Recent versions of Wordpress allow a freeform ‘text’ widget that you can place arbitrary html text into. This can be used for anything: videos, images, ads, or opt-ins. It doesn’t matter what theme (e.g. Thesis) you are using as it’s built into Wordpress.
What you need to add an Opt-In Widget to Wordpress
- A version of Wordpress that support widgets (all recent ones do).
- An email marketing provider (e.g. aWeber, and private labeled versions: profollow), these aren’t free, but if your serious about connecting with your users highly recommended. They offer sequenced auto responders, list segmentation, and tracking.
- If you want to be notified, an email account to send subscription notifications (e.g. new_subcriber@yourdomain.com).
- You should have a privacy policy on the site. Google will reward you for this in your PPC.
How to add an Opt-In with a Text Widget
- Most decent vendors have a web form creator, to make this easy. Just follow the steps they provide and you’ll get some raw code to cut and paste into the text widget.
- In your Wordpress Admin, you can see “Appearance” on the left, click on that, then click on “widgets”, then click “add” button, like so:
3 clicks to get a text widget added to Wordpress
At this point you’ll have a text widget in your widgets column.
4. Click on the new text widget and edit it like so:
Pasting the Code from Adwebber into the Wordpress Text Widget
8. Click save changes.
9. Check that it works by viewing the site, and testing the optin page with one of the emails you own.
10. That’s it!
Go do it!
Follow the steps in this. It only took me about 20 minutes to get this done and the rewards of having a list are huge!
If you have a suggestion on how to do it better please leave a comment below, also subscribe to stay in touch and get special reports.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
You made it sound so easy. Thanks for what you shared. It’s also good that your opt in form was simple and direct. The audio instructing me to check and confirm my subscription was a great add in. I don’t get this from most sites I sign up for. Excellent piece of work!
I look forward to getting those secret files.
Very helpful tip. I added an opt-in box with graphics in 5 minutes. This would normally take 30 minutes editing a traditional web page.
I followed the directions but all I got was the code (from AWeber) not the webform, is this maybe because I have the free version of Wordpress? Do I need to get it hosted separately?
This has been frustrating me for some time!
Thanks
Hi, any version of wordpress would work. The Aweber has a wizard that helps you see both the form and the code. You use the latter in the widget.
is there any free code for this that i can directly copy and paste to my text widget
Micheal, the code that is generated by email list tools are free, while using those services has modest monthly charges, if you are serious about using email with your lists and using autoresponders that’s the best way to go.
If you are running your own email list of your own servers, then it varies on how you have things setup, and I can’t help beyond this post (you might try elance, scriptlance). If you are using wordpresses built in optin then they have a user registration form, but I don’t use that so can’t tell you how to integrate it.
Good luck.
ah!ok..thanx for your concern..im getting tired of this. can you help me or give a code for optin page. a code for a form that you input your email, name, phone number and once you submit it will be send to your email account and then the page will redirect to another page.
Thank you.
Recently, there has been a great deal of litigation by the
US Federal trade comission against blogs and website promoters
for not stating advertising revenue, or potential
connections with advertising agencies.
What are your ideas concerning how this could potentially hurt
the blogging world?
Hi,
I covered that here.
http://www.troynotes.com/ftc-compliance-you-and-me.html