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Warlord Optin Review

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This started out as a review of the "Warlord Optin" plugin ... but quickly turned into a (hopefully;-) useful case-study on providing value.

The big take-away: the old model of getting optins (first get the optin, then lead subscribers through a 'nurturing' campaign that shows them how 'valuable' your content is) is pretty much doomed.

End-result: you get a lot of fake email addresses, and low engagement along with it.

A much better way is to lead with value so people end up giving you their REAL email address in the first place, and look forward to engaging with your emails/content.

Meaning: if you do know how to provide value, but you're not getting subscribers (who could then check out your great content, and the fact that you are trustworthy), then the Warlord Optin plugin is definitely worth testing.

But, if you do NOT know how to provide value (yet;-), then don't bother with the optin plugin ... it would simply be an attempt to 'trick' people into signing up to your list ... and the moment they're on that list, they'll realize they've been tricked, and unsubscribe/ignore/hit the spam button.

As I mention in the video, if you are trying to figure out how/in what niche to provide value, then check out this FB-post here.

Either way, watch this video which has a nice lil' case-study illustrating the points above

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OnInbox Performance Test

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[UPDATE May 2018: I’m no longer 100% happy with Oninbox, see here why: http://www.noyuckmarketing.com/the-future-of-oninbox)

so I wanted to know how OnInbox compares to the Awebers, Sendgrids, Amazon SES of this world.

For this, I ran an experiment where I sent a ‘normal’ email as I normally would through the following services:

  1. Drip (my standard ‘go-to’ solution for my higher end emailing needs. Sadly, also a little bit on the pricey side)
  2. Amazon SES through InboxingPro. Cheap but a pain in the backside to set up, and ‘warm up’.
  3. OnInbox – basically the same software as InboxingPro (and the same as MailWhizz), but all ready installed for you. Log in, and start sending. (as I’m no longer recommending it, I’m also not linking to it, google it if you really want to go with it)
  4. Aweber. Used to be my standard, now after 11+ years with them, I won’t be renewing. See the video why.
  5. Sendgrid using one of their shared IP-addresses. This is also something you can/could use with e.g. InboxingPro … but watch the video first;-)

Here’s the “how does OnInbox compare?”-test:

WP Leads Machine Review

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UPDATE (IMPORTANT!)

Before you go through the post, here’s an update:

Miles just told me about another plugin that according to him does the same job as WP Leads Machine, but even better.

So, thanks for the heads-up to Miles.

either way, the functionality is the same, I guess the other one is a bit more ‘mature’ – so you can read the review below, and how/why to use it, and then choose between WP Leads Machine or the other one by Miles

END UPDATE

had one look at WP Leads Machine …

… and was instantly in love.

(I’m lovin’ it … McD-style – recently watched “The Founder” – a movie about Ray Kroc – absolutely full of life & business lessons! Especially about “persistence”)

It’s a WP plugin that lets the site-visitors download any page as a nicely formatted PDF.

here’s my review video-overview of WP Leads Machine:

Now, very important:

if you want to integrate with a proper autoresponder you need the upsell to the PRO-version ($37)

The PRO version also has a whole bunch of other nice features (more configurability, as as you know, I’m a control-freak when it comes to plugins;-)

The reason for that is what I mention in the video: emails sent from a shared server have a high chance of getting flagged as spam.

Now, there’s a way around that – there are plugins for WP that let you configure the system email using some other SMTP service (like Amazon SES) – so if you are going with the base-version, make sure you do that!

(e.g. this one: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-mail-smtp/)

Personally, I like having subscribers straight on my email list (instead of having to export them, as you have to in the basic version, so for me, it’s the PRO)

Summary, my take:

if you have a blog, get it.

if you have an old blog with lots of content, absolutely get it.

(and then do what I’m suggesting towards the end of the video)

And I say “get it” not because of whatever income claims may be on the sales-page, but because it provides a lovely lil’ unobtrusive way for providing value to your site visitors, whilst building your email list.

“unobtrusive, value-providing list-building” … who’s going to argue with that?

And with the good ol’ industry-average of $1/subscriber/month, that plugin is paying for itself very quickly;-)

Get the Leads Machine here

Cheers

Veit

PS: why am I NOT using WP Leads Machine on this post? Watch the video above to see why – then it should be obvious;-) (I’m waiting for Raul to implement that YT-thing….)