[epub] Re: Contest for New Subscribers

["Michael" <admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Debbie,

> I'd like to encourage my readers to forward my ezine to their
>friends and family in a contest to get new readers.  Ideally
>what I'd like is to give a small prize to both a person who's
>gotten someone else to sign up and to a new subscriber who
>joined through someone's recommendation.

What kind of prize? If it is something physical that you must
ship, be very careful of doing this! I seem to remember a story
about a woman that offered something free to new subscribers and
her offer was posted at a popular freebie site. Well, she
received a huge amount of subscribers... over 10,000 I think.
Suffice it to say she couldn't ship widgets to over 10,000
people. She did clean up and reduce the list of prospects
through contacting them, but still had to send out quite a few
prizes and didn't resolve the issue easily. In other words, it
was a big waste of time and money!

Another thing to keep in mind is your subscriber worth. How much
is each subscriber worth to you each issue. How many issues do
subscribers usually stay subscribed? If the prize cost is $5 and
you give one to the referrer and the new subscriber, that's a
cost of $10 for each new subscriber. If the subscriber is worth
50 cents an issue, then it will take them being subscribed for
20 issues to be worth spending $10 to obtain their email
address. I understand your ezine is probably more a work of love
than for profit, so these figures may not matter as much.
However, for $10 you could get 250 pre-checked single opt-in
addresses from a co-reg page of which I know and they aren't
as bad as some might think. Yes, there will be bounces and
unsubs, but you will come with a better return on investment
in my opinion.

So, if you are using an intangible, such as an ebook, then
by all means continue on with your current idea, but, if you
must ship the prize, then you may want to change
your mind... or your strategy... Only offer the prize to
referrers. ( hopefully causing new subscribers to become
*referrers*! ); Only offer the prize to referrers once they
reach 5 referred subscribers; offer a prize drawing instead
of a prize to everyone and each referred subscriber is an
entry... there are numerous ways to rethink it.

> The problem is, with my limited time and lack of programming
>knowledge, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make
>something like this work practically without spending all of my
>time doing it.

You do not want to spend all your time doing this! It could
become very overwhelming very quickly. One of the keys to
success is to automate, automate, automate! This stands with any
aspect of your online business, but especially with time vacuums
such as a referral contest. You must use a script ( Perl, PHP,
etc)... the only other way is by hand and that would be a very
bad idea, unless you expect hardly any response... in which
case, why even do it! You see my point? You must expect a big
response and plan for it.

>I think having them send their list of recommended addies,
>sending invites and keeping track of who has joined might
>possibly work, but that sounds so incredibly time consuming.
>Anyone else know of an easier way or should I chunk this
>*brilliant* idea in the trash?

Okay, first of all, you said in your first sentence that this
was based on subscribers forwarding your newsletter. If that's
the case then you need to create a "forward contest"/"signup"
section and include a special link to a processing script
( subscribe script or contest script... it's really up to your
programmer or you ) embedded with the original subscribers id.
The id could be their email address if your list server allows
personalization such as including the subscribers email address
through including something like [email] within your message. If
your list server does not allow for that, then I don't see how
the forwarding thing would work... there would be no way to
track who the referrer was.

Perhaps you want a form that your subscriber can enter their
address, their friends' email addresses into and perhaps a
subject line and short note ( more likely to get new subscribers
with things such as these ) and hit send. The email could be
"from" the referrer ( more likely to be read ) and include a
special link encoded with the referrers email address. Of
course, there is a good bit a programming and coding to
implement the form and the processing, but that is up to your
programmer and you to decide how it will work together.

Look, this is not an easy idea to implement on your own. You
probably need an experienced programmer to tackle this for you
OR you need some time to do it yourself. :) Could be
frustrating, but it might be worth it to learn. That's happened
to me more than once... frustrating situations often turn into
learning experiences that I benefit from later.

Have you thought about refer-it? Last time I checked they offer
a contest for $10,000... that would get the contest part out of
your hands, but still allow for some incentive to refer your
publication. Just a thought.

Anyway, sorry I couldn't offer you the answers you wanted ( like
exactly how to do it... I would have to charge for that :) ),
but I hope this helps fill in the big picture a little more.
Good luck!

-Michael

P.S. I am looking for new users for an ezine joint venture
application. Your account would be free for a long time
( possibly forever ) as I am testing the unpaid version. Visit:
http://www.zaptacular.com/ Check out D.S.P. and use the
contact form if you are interested in helping me out.


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