Nick Stephenson - Reader Magnets

This is EXACTLY what I do – and the book I give away free to my subscribers still brings in over $1,500 per month.

The number of people taking you up on your offer can add up really quickly if your first book (the Funnel Book) is free and shifting a few hundred downloads per day – which is not all that difficult to do.

How does an extra 20 – 30 new email addresses each day sound? Pretty good, right? And that’s at the low end of what you can achieve. When I pull out all the stops, I’ve been able to add over 1,000 new email addresses overnight.

And these readers are buyers.Not just freebie-seekers – bona fide book buyers who love trying out new authors.

I know this because I track EVERYTHING. Here are my open rates and click-through rates:

If you want a piece of that, read on...

STEP TWO

Drive Traffic

Okay – so you’ve got a ton of people checking out your free Funnel Book, and the really engaged readers and interested in getting hold of your Magnet Book in exchange for their email address.

You want them to take action.

How do you make this happen?

This is where your website comes in. Your webpage needs to cover the basics – like listing out your books and where they’re for sale, your contact details, yada yada yada – but more important than all that, you’ll be using your webpage to collect your readers’ contact details.

Here’s how it works.

You can configure Wordpress using a variety of free themes. In the dashboard under Appearance -> Themes go select “Responsive Theme” and activate it.

Next, set up a featured post slide and set it to only show one post.

Here, you’re going to advertise your free offer. If you get it right, you can end up with something like this:

Just click around in the Theme Options until it looks the way you want. Or, choose a different theme if you prefer – just make sure your offer is the first thing people see.

Now, everyone coming to your webpage is going to see your free book offer and be compelled to click the “find out more” button.

The next part is the most important...

Where do you send people next?

This is where your signup page (or “squeeze page” comes in). You see, when people visit a website with lots of links and pages (like a regular blog page) guess what they do?

Yup, you got it. They CLICK STUFF.

That’s not what we want here. We want people to enter their email address and get their free book – not go off exploring.

So, you need to set up a signup page that has ZERO links on it – except for the signup button.

Here’s what you’re aiming for:

Notice how I don’t put a signup box there right away? This is an interesting point on human psychology – and it’s immensely important.

This is what NOT to do:

Ugh. For starters, don’t ask for more than a name and email address. Many people advocate asking only for an email address, but see what works for you.

Secondly, when a person lands on a page and sees an email signup box glaring them in the face like that page above, what do you think their first thought is?

Usually, it’s a feeling of immediate distrust.

Don’t take it personally, it’s just the way our minds work. If you use a signup button and THEN take people through to a signup form, you’ll massively increase the number of people entering their details.

Sounds counter-intuitive, but numbers don’t lie. Using a signup button before asking anyone for their contact details works wonders. In fact, this tiny tweak DOUBLED my conversion rate.

So make sure you do the same! Set up your signup page with a little information about your book, then slap a big, bright “give me my book!” button at the top (above the fold) – and then again at the bottom of the page.

This button will then link to a second page where you ask for an email address. But not before.

Remember, on your signup page there should be no other links!Just the button. This signup page is what you should link to in all your books – especially the free one. Here’s how I do it – a simple graphic in the front AND back of my books. It looks like this:

I also mention the free book in my product description. As a result, I get dozens of signups every day.

But that’s only part of the story. Now, on to step three.

STEP THREE

Capture Leads

By now, you’ve got people checking out your free Funnel Book. A proportion of them see your offer to get the Magnet Book free and click through to your website or straight to your signup page.

They click the button to get the free book.

Then what?

This is where Mailchimp comes in. Mailchimp is an amazing service that can store all your readers’ email addresses and use them to send out email campaigns.

It also tracks the number of people opening and clicking your messages, to help you keep on top of things.

Most importantly, it comes with a variety of free tools to help you get signups – and will give you a signup form you can use. It can also automatically email everyone with their free book once they’ve entered their details and confirmed their subscription.

The best part? It’s totally free for up to 2,000 subscribers.

So, if you didn’t follow my advice earlier – go get an account set up now!

Once you’ve got your account set up, you need to create a new “List”. This is the heading under which all your email addresses will be stored.

During the List Setup phase, give your list a name – something like “New Book Releases” or “Readers Group”.

After you’ve set this up, in the List Options, click on “Signup Forms”, then “General Forms”.

This section will allow you to customize your signup form – I’d recommend putting in a header that shows off your branding.

Something like this:

Next, you need to configure the signup form to send all your subscribers an email once they’ve confirmed their details – this email will contain a link where they can download their free book.

To do this, select “welcome email” from the dropdown box here:

And change the text to let people know where to pick up their free book. Like this: