asking all of you: h
[2023-07-22 09:30:01 AM] : asking all of you: how many blog posts did you have before you started seeing signups? what specific actions got people to come to your website?
1 Reply
[2023-07-22 09:31:09 AM] : i'm currently on 9 posts and been active on one watering hole, providing helpful comments and just generally engaging the community. 0 signups. just wondering if my expectations are off (that i should already have a few signups)
[2023-07-22 09:34:11 AM] : i am getting some traffic, even without engaging. like 13 people a month. and 5 returning apparently. should i make the signup a popup that i hate so much?
[2023-07-22 11:13:17 AM] : When I added a blog signup to the bottom of every post I saw a noticeable change in signups
[2023-07-22 11:36:41 AM] : My traffic and signups started to pick up when I started sharing my posts in more places
[2023-07-22 11:38:15 AM] : Another thing later on was switching from a simple “get my newsletter” CTA to something more immediately valuable like a PDF cheat sheet related to the post, or a short email course
[2023-07-22 11:41:33 AM] : Conversion rates for this stuff are all over the map, but a well-aligned good CTA has gotten 6-10% sometimes. But those are more rare and more often it was like 1-3%. And sitewide my conversion rate was around 0.5%. All that to say I wouldn't worry about adding popups at 13 visits/month, I'd try to get more visitors.
[2023-07-22 02:40:54 PM] : I think around 12 posts + (based on the first subscriber signed update), the action that got me sign up I think is a few times I replied (with full answer and a link to my blog at the bottom) on Facebook group and Shopify community forum
[2023-07-23 02:31:16 AM] : okay that's good data.
• signup at bottom (have this)
• CTA for free value
• conversion rate 1% is okay
• 12 posts can get a signup
• link in watering hole comment
[2023-07-23 02:32:26 AM] : dceddia and Oscar Baruffa was it your case too that what brings people in is a comment with a link? or do people also find your page with just a comment and link in profile?
[2023-07-24 01:46:54 PM] : Can you share a post or two?
[2023-07-26 10:09:14 AM] : yeah, comments with links, or direct posts on places like HN and Reddit
[2023-07-26 10:09:53 AM] : there’s a section in the course about dropping ebombs
[2023-07-26 10:10:57 AM] : and it’s good to do mostly purely helpful comments with no links, and occasional ones with links
[2023-07-31 04:06:30 AM] : mgentry here's the most popular post so far: https://kristerv.com/favorite-homeschooling-youtube-channels-to-follow-for-children/
[2023-08-01 11:59:55 AM] : krister viirsaar nice! I have three immediate thoughts: 1) When looking at this list I would expect a 1 or 2 paragraph summary for each channel. I have a toddler who is really into space, and when I see the channel ‘Minute Earth’ it peaks my interest and I would love to know more before clicking. Speaking for myself, I’m not going to click it to see what its about 2) Your email capture form is very tall, for a moment I thought I was the bottom of the page, but I was only halfway down. See what folks on Dribbble are doing with similar forms and mimic that. 3) Do you know how long the average user is on this page? If it’s only a couple seconds I bet you need to add more. As it stands now, without the paragraph summaries I wonder if you need to provide more value before asking for the email.
[2023-08-01 02:10:45 PM] : Hmm. Interesting thoughts. I'll think about it.
[2023-08-01 02:46:49 PM] : +1 on adding summaries and calling out why these channels are interesting. It could also help to add some visual flair to separate things a bit, or to organize them into categories with section headings - “Homeschooling Channels About Art” etc, or whatever dimension you want to categorize them by.
The signup form could do with more text. Some pain that resonates with this audience, why i’d want to sign up, how it would help me. Take a look at the PDF copywriting lessons for some ideas there. The largest text, “Sign up for KristerV”, doesn’t tell the reader much if they don’t already know who you are. It’s also making the ask before saying anything about what it is (see PDF copywriting lessons) - which is extremely common on the web, but not very convincing. e.g. compare “Sign Up for Homeschooling Tips! Homeschooling can be a struggle and there is a ton of info to sift through. I’ll help you find the best stuff.” vs “Homeschooling can be a struggle and there is a ton of info to sift through. I’ll help you find the best stuff. Sign Up for Homeschooling Tips”
[2023-08-04 01:36:27 AM] : krister viirsaar I've got a bit of an odd situation that a bit difficult to confirm until I get a bit more sophisticated with creating different signup forms, but I have one big ebomb (a big collection of data programming books) that I update occasionally, that overlaps 99% with the audience I write for (data analysts etc). My data blog posts hardly get any organic views/signups (to be fair, I havent properly applied safari techniques to many of them), whereas my big ebomb updates get about 10 subs every time I update it (as those blog posts get picked up by a very large newsletter that also embeds my signup form in their posts). Upon signup, I give the option for people to get just the big ebomb updates, just my data posts, or both. Most people choose both and then most see (and stay) for the data-related posts as well. So in my case, a realted ebomb is what gets the signups and then most people stay for the other posts as well.
[2023-08-04 01:40:33 AM] : That's interesting
[2023-08-15 02:42:46 AM] : Lol again my data seems to contradict my earlier assumptions. I've updated my site with two different signup forms, one for the data blogging and the other for the big ebomb updates, and in the last few days all the signups have come from the data posts, and not the ebomb like I had assumed. The data posts I mostly share on LinkedIn and for all my posts I have a newsletter signup at the bottom of the post.
[2023-08-15 02:43:49 AM] : But I still suspect most signups come from the big ebomb updates, because I get about 10 on the same day I post about an update.
[2023-08-15 02:53:25 AM] : Must be a useful data post
[2023-08-15 02:54:19 AM] : Could you link the stuff that gets you signups? Like both the post on your blog and post on linkedin?
[2023-08-17 01:26:30 AM] : Here's the latest data-related post, Its a review of a book that often gets recommended in a particular watering hole : https://oscarbaruffa.com/switch/ and the accompanying linkedin post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7094603991858180097/5
[2023-08-17 01:56:10 AM] : Okay, that's a nice overview
[2023-08-17 01:56:14 AM] : Thanks for coming back
[2023-08-17 08:20:10 AM] : :+1: