Grow Your List Predictably

1,000 subscribers in 90 days—and another 1,000 every 30 days

If you want to grow an audience for your blog or business website, you can choose from a plethora of marketing tactics. But most produce unpredictable results.

Worse, if you rely on those tactics, you might spend months or years trying to get the results you want and wondering why your business isn’t taking off the way it should.

At best, most of the typical online marketing tactics just create traffic. But lots of traffic doesn’t equal lots of money (or any other tangible result).

For example, as I’m writing this, I checked my site statistics and found that over 40,000 people visited my site via Google in the last couple of months. Yet, only 22% of my new subscribers originated from that traffic.

About 90% of the rest joined my list thanks to guest posting. (And I can thank guest posting indirectly for the Google traffic, too.)

But I don’t suggest you start writing “great” guest posts. And I definitely don’t mean you should write spammy, low-quality guest posts in hopes of getting links to your site.

Instead, if you’re serious about growing your list, I suggest you write effective guest posts that result in getting more subscribers.

“Good” vs. effective guest posts

Blogging-related sites are filled with posts about “how to write great guest posts.”

But you’re more likely to run into the pope at the grocery store than you are to find decent information about what makes guest posts effective at growing your list.

And no, a great post is not even remotely guaranteed to create tangible results. That’s not even how people usually define what a “great post” is supposed to do.

Instead, they consider social shares and comments to be good measures of success.

Why?

Would you rather your guest post gets 100 tweets or attracts 100 new people to your email list?

At the same time—this is a little tricky—an effective guest post is also a great post by any standard. You can’t write a low-value post that will grow your list.

So you have to combine effective blog post elements with great guest post elements.

But when you get it right, you’ll see some great things happen to your blog or business.

1. More subscribers/leads to your list

Whether you’re growing a business or blog, the size of your email list has a direct connection to your results. The more people you can engage, the more people you can compel to buy your products and/or share your content.

But size isn’t everything. You need the “right” people on your list.

When you use the best techniques to lead readers to your site, you end up with a quickly growing list with the “best” subscribers. They’re the most engaged readers and most likely buyers.

Growing your list is the primary goal of smart guest blogging.

Here are the key techniques that make guest posts attract lots of people to your list:

• Copywriting structures: When your goal isn’t just to educate and entertain but also to attract readers to your site and list, you have to evaluate your post structure. The usual guest post structures just aren’t designed to lead people to your list; they’re written with the hope that readers share the post or leave a comment.
• Embedded calls to action: Just telling readers to join your list rarely works (and most high-quality sites don’t even let you ask for it directly). But you still have to make joining your list seem like the most natural next step to take. A call to action (CTA) that’s “embedded” within your post creates the desire to join your list without sounding sales-y or raising any red flags in your readers’ minds.
• Strong bylines: Most of the time, you rely on people clicking a link in your byline (the short author bio at the end of a post). If your byline is like most bylines, you’re practically pushing people away—or, to be exact, your byline makes clicking the link seem like a waste of time.

2. Predictable business results

Far too often people feel stuck with their businesses. Things aren’t going as well as they hoped, and the work is starting to feel like a stressful job.

That might happen after years of trying. For some people, a few months of failed attempts is enough.

By far the most common reason for spinning your wheels, as far as marketing goes, is using hit-and-miss tactics. Most marketing tactics are like that—including the oh-so-popular social media, blog commenting, writing frequently on your own blog, speaking, YouTube videos, you name it.

When you depend upon those tactics, list building won’t be easy. It’s true that some people swear by one or all of those tactics because they got lucky. They got results.

But unless you’re willing to rely on luck—spending your days working like a maniac in the hopes of some day striking gold—you have to start using marketing tactics that create predictable, consistent results.

Guest blogging isn’t the only such tactic. Strategic partnerships and advertising can also create consistent results, but getting to the point where you can rely on those tactics typically takes quite a bit of time and/or money.

Here are the three types of results that effective guest posts can generate:

1. Ideal clients: If you sell services—coaching, training, consulting—you’ll struggle to find another marketing tactic that leads to as many new ideal clients as guest blogging. In your posts, you get to showcase your expertise and ability to help your target customers. And if you build your sales funnel right, you don’t have to be surprised if prospects contact you only hours after a guest post went live (this has happened to me several times). The best part is that you don’t have to sell yourself. Instead, people come to you because they trust you thanks to your post.
2. Happy customers: If you sell products, whether physical or digital, guest posts let people see the value in them. Sure, you can’t usually mention your products specifically, but you can make people want the results your products create, so learning more about them is a natural next step after reading your post. And when you promote your products with guest posts, you attract the kinds of customers who will benefit from your products the most.
3. Surprising referrals: I’ve been surprised by how often this happens. People read a guest post and tell a friend about it. But they don’t just share it in social media. Rather, they tell someone they know that they “came across someone who could help them.” They give referrals almost as if you had worked with them personally.

3. Quick authority and credibility

When you start a business or a blog, or you want to start growing it significantly, one major hurdle is lack of authority and/or credibility that “allows” your business’s growth.

If you’re not an authority in your field, people don’t pay attention to you.

You know you’re an authority in your field if you answer “yes” to this question: Are you considered one of the top experts in your field/niche by your target audience? If not, you’re not yet an authority.

And if you’re not seen as credible, people scrutinize everything you say.

You know you’re seen as credible if you answer “yes” to this question: Besides your professional title and education, do you have a mountain of evidence suggesting you’re an expert? If not, people won’t easily see you as credible. (For example, people don’t believe everyone with an MBA is a “business expert.” It’s just not enough anymore.)

Many online business people (including me) plan to write a book. And of course, the goal is to make it such a success that it gives you authority status on a much broader scale.

But when will you, realistically, publish your book? And what if it doesn’t become a New York Times bestseller?

Using long-term, unreliable marketing tactics like writing a book is fine when you use them for the right reasons. But you should never rely on them.

Effective guest posts create authority and credibility for you in three ways:

1. Transferred credibility: You’ll write for sites people already believe are trustworthy. And when the site is trusted, you’re also seen as trustworthy because “If you aren’t trustworthy, why would this site publish your content?”
2. Transferred authority: Similar to gaining credibility by writing for trusted sites, you’ll be seen as an authority because of the sites and people you’re associated with. People subconsciously think, “People who write for this well-known site are at least somewhat authoritative on this topic.”
3. Influencer endorsements: With guest blogging, you’ll build relationships with the influencers in your field, and you will—sooner or later—get mentioned by them in their posts, social media updates, and other content. And there aren’t many ways you can gain that much authority and credibility so quickly.

4. Small time investment

Maybe you’re thinking, “Writing guest posts takes too much time.”

I doubt that’s true. Depending on how much time you have available, however, it’s possible. But I doubt guest posts would be an unreasonable time investment for you. Think about it.

First, what other marketing tactic can you use to get 100+ leads in about two hours? (Yep, that’s how long it takes to write effective guest posts when you know how to write them quickly.)

Second, how much time do you already spend on other marketing tactics? Are they creating consistently great results for you? Or do you often wonder what you need to change to see better results? For most people, guest blogging would be a better way to spend their marketing time.

Third, once you finish a post, you’re almost done. Unlike with advertising or partners (the other two marketing tactics I often recommend), you don’t have to monitor ad performance, you won’t worry about the mounting ad expenses, and you won’t need to keep in touch with partners, set up promotions, or handle payments.

I wouldn’t say marketing is a numbers game. However, you have a limited number of hours for marketing. And if you spend those hours on marketing tactics that don’t create consistent results, you’ll never reach your goals.

So, if your current marketing efforts aren’t already generating lots of leads and sales, you should do something different.

Three keys to writing guest posts fast (in two hours flat):

1. Follow a clear, effective structure: Lots of people don’t think they need to follow a structure when they write guest posts. They’d rather improvise the whole thing as they go. But that leads to minimal results, plus it takes much longer (more about effective structures a bit later).
2. Use a list of headlines for inspiration: Don’t copy a “proven” headline. That rarely works. Instead, use a list of proven headline “formulas” and modify them as needed. Just don’t fall for the usual trap: if you mix the wrong headline and post structure, you’ll struggle to write an effective guest post.
3. Write about topics you know: This may seem obvious, but you might not realize how much faster you can write about topics you know really well and have written about before. You don’t always need to come up with a brand new idea for every post. Instead, look for new angles on the topics you know best.

5. No financial risk

I’m not suggesting that guest blogging is the only worthwhile marketing method. But the other two tactics that consistently create great, predictable results have serious drawbacks.

One of those tactics is partnerships, but I’ll get into that in the next section.

Advertising is the other tactic, and it can create great results for almost any business. But the learning curve is steep, and even a small mistake can turn expensive very quickly.

Many top advertising experts readily admit they need $5,000 or even $20,000 to test if they can make an ad campaign profitable. Sure, you can get started with a lot less, but you get the idea—advertising is a risk that doesn’t necessarily pay off.

If you don’t have enough of a financial buffer to burn through thousands before making a profit, advertising is unlikely to be the best way to spend your time.

But what about sites that accept guest posts only if you pay them? Isn’t that a financial risk?

The answer to that is plain and simple: Don’t write for those sites. It’s just not worth it in most cases (I don’t know of any exceptions, but there may be some).

Instead, write for sites that publish great content. They’re the sites that attract major audiences anyway.

Best case, if money is exchanged with guest blogging, is that they pay you for your work. Actually, when you get to the level where you’re no longer considered a “blogger” but, rather, an expert in your field or a “journalist,” you’ll get paid for most articles you write.

6. Relationships with the influencers

The other marketing tactic that can create consistently great results is partnerships.

This tactic, however, presents a couple of issues:

1. You need connections to the big players in your industry. Or if you don’t have those existing connections, you need to know exactly how to find good people to partner with, how to approach them, and how to make the arrangement work out in the long term.
2. You need a proven sales funnel. You need to be able to make sales—quickly—when they send people to you.

If you make mistakes, most partners will get scared that you’ll hurt their business, so they run away before that happens.

In a similar way, people often think they need connections to the big players in their industry to use guest blogging effectively.

That’s. Not. True.

You can write for almost all major sites even if you don’t know them and they’ve never heard of you. And when you write for them, that’s how you start building relationships that can lead to partnerships down the road.

Plus, if you play your cards right, those relationships can turn into free publicity—they link to your content without expecting anything in return. And sooner or later, you can partner with them on promotions.

Later on, if things go well, they might even invite you to co-create content with them, which can lead to remarkable results.

The benefits of building those strong relationships with your industry’s influencers are just too numerous to list. But here are a few:

1. They promote your free content: Many people with whom I have good professional relationships have shared my content in social media, in blog posts, or even in emails. And I’ve never paid for it.
2. They promote your products/services: Partnerships are a great way to grow your business. People are happy to promote your products and services when they know  you’re a good match for their followers. Sure, you might pay them a commission for the sales. But you still come out a winner.
3. They give you referrals: When people know your expertise and have a working relationship with you, you’re likely to get referrals from them. And they don’t expect anything except a “thank you” in return. They recommend you to their contacts and you make them look good by delivering great products and services.

7. SEO benefits?

Yeah, yeah, I know, Google (or specifically Matt Cutts) said that guest blogging isn’t a good link-building tactic anymore.

Actually he said that guest blogging has become spammy (though he clarified what he meant later on). And yeah, that’s absolutely true; I get at least a couple of guest post pitches every day, and hardly any of them are even remotely relevant to my site.

If you try anything like that, you won’t see any SEO benefits.

But if you provide truly great content for a high-quality site, you can still benefit. As Matt Cutts points out on his blog, “There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.).”

But don’t use guest blogging as an SEO strategy. It’s far too risky with Google’s ever-changing algorithms.

Consider the possible SEO benefits an unlikely bonus: if you get it, great—if you don’t get it, fine.

All that said, I doubt I’d get tens of thousands of visitors from Google if I didn’t write guest posts. Just don’t rely on getting similar results; I got lucky and got great results thanks to guest blogging—your results might not follow suit especially given Google’s latest updates.

Can you write well enough?

Are you worried you’re not a good-enough writer to get great results with guest blogging?

You’re probably worried for no good reason.

Can you write well enough to get your point across? In other words, will readers understand what you want them to understand?

You don’t have to be a great writer to get great results. Think about it: English is my second (or technically third) language, and even before I got serious about studying writing and improving mine, I sometimes got hundreds of subscribers from just a single guest post.

If high-quality sites won’t consider publishing your posts unless you improve your grammar, you can get a native English speaker/writer to edit your posts for a few dollars. Just search Fiverr and you’ll find native English teachers editing 1,000 words for $5.

All that is to say, more generic advice on “how to write better” or even “how to write better blog posts” is unlikely to improve your results. Yet, that’s what people often try to sell.

Instead, if you’re already a decent writer who can craft a good blog post, you need to learn what makes guest posts attract readers to your site and list.

That happens when you know copywriting. Specifically, it’s when you know how to use copywriting techniques in your writing even though you can’t use normal sales techniques. (No serious site will publish guest posts that sound even remotely like sales pitches.)

Learn exactly what it takes to write effective guest posts

As far as I know, there is no training anywhere that teaches how to write effective guest posts.

Plenty of trainings exist—even extremely expensive trainings—that teach how to write “good” or high-quality guest posts that site owners and readers rave about. But based on what I’ve seen and what other people have said about those trainings, they teach little or nothing about how to lead readers to your site and list.

In my opinion—and there are people who have the opposite opinion—the number of social shares and comments a guest post gets shouldn’t be the primary metric for success.

Those social shares and comments are great for the site you wrote the post for because they provide “social proof.” They look good. And they help you a bit, too. But ultimately, your goal is to get people to your site and on your list.

With this focus and need in mind, I created Rapid List Building with Guest Blogging.

Simply put, it’s training for guest posts with a purpose. If you go through it and practice what it teaches, you’ll learn to write effective guest posts.

I’ll be more specific about the realistic results (not just some amazing results that 1% of people might get) a little later. But for now, let’s say it’s realistic to expect that you’ll get over 100 new subscribers per guest post.

The training is presented in seven parts to make the whole thing more manageable.

Here are the seven parts:

1. Find sites to write for.
2. Pick the right topic.
3. Get accepted.
4. Structure and write the post.
5. Improve your writing.
6. Make your post more effective.
7. Follow the etiquette and track results.

You’ll get more details on each section in a moment. But first I want to be very clear about something:

Just writing an effective guest post isn’t enough to grow your list. You need two more things to work for you.

What else do you need to grow your list?

An effective guest post will drive readers to your site wanting to know more about you and to  sign up for more information.

But no matter how effective your post is, it’s not enough to grow your list. You need two other pieces in place and working well: you need a freebie (also called an “opt-in incentive”) and a landing page for it.

Those are terms people use all the time. But few people have valuable freebies and solid landing pages.

When it comes to creating a great freebie, there’s very little helpful information available.

At the same time, the number and variety of landing-page ideas is confusing (unless you’re a conversion optimization expert).

However, when you know what to focus on, creating a great freebie shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.

And when you can just model a simple landing page template, getting great results doesn’t require endless testing or an expensive designer.

If all that sounds too simple to be true, I understand the feeling. But really, creating a freebie people want and a landing page that has a good conversion rate isn’t difficult when you have step-by-step instructions to follow.

And, sure enough, you’ll get those step-by-step instructions and examples in Rapid List Building with Guest Blogging training.

But before we get into the details of the training, I want to answer the question a lot of smart business people have.

How does guest blogging work with other marketing methods?

One of the best aspects of effective guest blogging for businesses is that it works well with almost all other marketing tactics. Period.

Let’s look at a few examples:

Guest blogging supports advertising: When guest blogging is used with advertising, you can typically use the same sales funnel, which makes getting started faster. The one difference you’ll probably see is that the traffic from guest posts converts far better than advertising traffic. But even though you’re likely to get more sales from guest posts than from ads, you can still test your sales funnels for advertising traffic with guest post traffic. This way you can cut away much of the expensive ad testing.

Guest blogging supports partnerships: Creating a strong relationship with potential partners is often the trickiest part in this marketing tactic. Writing guest posts for them (or for sites they know) is perhaps the simplest and most reliable way to get your foot in the door. You’d be surprised by how easily you can reach “hard-to-reach” people with guest blogging,and that’s especially true if you use the post structure that almost guarantees contact with the people you want to connect with.

Guest blogging supports “normal” blogging: The reason most blogs (99.9%) never gain significant readerships is that they don’t use effective methods for growing—blogging alone isn’t enough to grow your list no matter how great your posts are. Guest blogging is almost certainly the best way to grow your blog’s readership because you get your writing in front of huge audiences who like to follow blogs and read posts that are related to your blog’s topic.

Guest blogging supports social media marketing: Similar to writing your own blog posts, social media doesn’t work alone, or at least it takes a huge amount of work and luck to build your following. Guest posts mean hundreds or thousands of people may consider “following” or “liking” you in their favorite social media site. (But you shouldn’t mention your social media accounts in your posts. There’s a far better way to grow your following that simultaneously grows your email list.)

Guest blogging supports speaking: Speaking to a large group of your target customers can create remarkable results. But the typical barrier many people face is actually getting a speaking spot. How can you do it? Guest writing for their association journal or website is an almost guaranteed way to at least get considered as a speaker.

Guest blogging supports guest blogging: Yes, that sounds a bit weird. Here’s what I mean: First, the more guest posts you write, the more impact they typically have because people see you “everywhere” and feel like they need to know who you are. Second, when you write effective guest posts, the owners and editors of the most “exclusive” blogs contact you asking for a guest post. I’ve been contacted by a few sites I wanted to write for anyway. And in a few cases, instead of asking for a guest post, they’ve wanted to interview me instead.

Here’s what’s reasonable to expect—no hype

If you put in the effort to learn how to write effective guest posts and you’re in a big-enough field, you can realistically get 100+ subscribers from each guest post you write.

My average is around 180. Just keep in mind that my “field” is marketing, which is a really big field (my niche is smaller, but it’s not super-tight either). And that’s the average result—some posts generate far fewer subscribers while some generate far more.

So, what can you realistically expect?

Are you guaranteed to get hundreds and thousands of subscribers with guest posts?

I can’t guarantee it. Of course not. I don’t know your field and niche. I don’t know your dedication to practice. What else don’t I know about you?

In short, I probably don’t know you individually, so I can’t say what you should expect.

I can only say once again:

If you’re in a big field and you’re focused on a topic that interests lots of people, you can get 100+ subscribers with every guest post (on average).

If, however, you’re in a small field or focused on a very narrow topic, you probably won’t get 100+ subscribers with every guest post. But it doesn’t necessarily matter.

In a smaller field, there’s less competition. And typically you sell information or services that are scarce, so your prices reflect that. In short, you don’t need as many subscribers to be the big fish in a small field.

But the reality is that most people who write guest posts don’t get good results (because they don’t know what makes guest posts effective). But they also don’t know what their results are because they don’t track them.

You absolutely have to know the results you get from each guest post you write. If you don’t know what worked and what didn’t, you can’t make good business decisions.

With that in mind, the Rapid List Building with Guest Blogging training provides step-by-step instructions so you can track your results easily and accurately.

Some marketers don’t teach how to track the results people get from their trainings. You probably know why.

But if you don’t track your guest blogging results, you’ll never learn to write truly remarkable, effective guest posts.

So, what’s in the training?

The trend in the online marketing circles is to create “cool” video trainings.

Four reasons are typically given (and most marketers are quite open about these):

• People are more likely to buy video trainings because they seem “lighter” and easier to go through.
• People are willing to pay higher prices for them just because videos have a high perceived value regardless of the actual content’s value.
• You can build a video training far faster and with much less actual content than a written training because repetition isn’t so apparent in video format.
• People are less likely to actually apply the teachings, which means that fewer people ask for their money back since they didn’t even go through the training.

But most importantly, does it make any sense to learn writing skills from a video? I think not.

Imagine the moment you want to reread something—just a few sentences or a whole page worth of text—how easily will you find it in a video? Are you even going to try?

But if you’re reading a practical training book that takes you through everything one concept at a time with examples, you don’t need to backtrack so much. And when you want to reread something, it’s easy.

So, my goal was to build this training primarily in written format, and that’s what I”ve done. Believe me, I was a little tempted to just whip up a few quick videos in 10 hours or less because I knew that writing the entire course would require 50+ hours (I actually finished at around 150 hours).

The final result is this: If you prefer to watch a few quick videos as somewhat interesting entertainment, sorry. I don’t have that to offer you right now.

But if you take marketing seriously enough to actually learn how to use guest blogging and get real results from it, then I think you’ll agree that you’ll get much more out of a written training.

Now that that’s out of the way, here are a few more details about each part of the training:

1. Find sites to write for

You’re probably already familiar with a bunch of sites in your field. But most of them aren’t likely the best choices for your guest blogging efforts.

The two most common reasons you shouldn’t write for a site in your field are that it doesn’t have enough readers or it doesn’t attract your specific target audience.

Figuring out whether a site is truly a good match is necessary. If you write for the wrong sites, you’ll never get good results (no matter how lucky you get).

You can, of course, just try writing for every site you can find in your field. But you’ll probably waste dozens or hundreds of hours doing that.

Figuring out if a site is a great fit isn’t too complicated when you know what to look for. (And you’ll learn exactly how to do that in the training.)

But something even more valuable is the ability to find “hidden” opportunities. These are sites you’d never think of as great guest blogging sites. They don’t have remarkably big audiences, nor do they advertise the chance to write for them.

For example, writing for niche-experts’ sites can create remarkable results because of their relationship with their audience; even if they don’t have a huge list, they can send large numbers of people to your site.

Once I got over 130 subscribers (and $25,000 worth of client work) from such a guest post.

So, don’t forget to look for those not-so-obvious opportunities. (And yes, you’ll learn how to do that in the training.)

2. Pick the right topic

If you write an amazing post about a topic people don’t want to read about, you won’t get any results. This may seem obvious, but it’s a common mistake.

And even if you pick a topic that gets lots of people to read your post, it might still be the wrong topic for you.

You have to consider more than just how much attention a topic will get.

For starters, you shouldn’t write about topics that don’t relate to your business focus (or what your blog is about). If you do, you might attract a few people to your site, but they’d be very unlikely to buy anything or come back for more.

In the Rapid List Building with Guest Blogging training, you’ll learn the nine qualifications for a great topic. As long as you follow the guidelines, you’ll almost always pick the topics that not only attract people to your site but also to your list.

One of the most important rules is to write only about topics people already think about and problems they’re trying to solve. It’s based on a crucially important copywriting concept, which amateur copywriters often don’t use well. Because of that, they usually get poor results (more about it in the training).

3. Get accepted

No point writing guest posts if you don’t get them published, right?

That’s not to say that getting accepted to the top blogs is somehow especially difficult. It’s really not when you know how to approach the decision makers.

But of course, you’ll learn the specifics of how to pitch your post so you’ll have the greatest chance of getting through.

As long as you get the key things right, you’ll almost always get your post accepted. If you don’t get through even when you get the key things right, then you’re dealing with the 1% of blogs that have so many posts lined up that they aren’t accepting any for a while no matter how good they are.

To avoid unnecessary confusion about how to get accepted, you’ll even get email templates that you can literally copy and paste (just fill in the blanks with your information, of course) when you pitch your posts. You’ll also get two different templates for the two different pitching situations (either you should contact the site before writing a post or they want you to send them the finished post to start with).

And there are a couple more templates you can use if (and when) you get a negative response and when you don’t get a reply at all. In both cases, you can often turn things around and write for the site anyway.

You’ll also get answers to common questions like, “How quickly do I need to write?” and “What can I do if it’s my first guest post for a major site, so I can’t list previous successes in my pitch?”

4. Structure and write the post

Honestly, this is the most interesting part of the training (or it is to me, and I think you’ll agree).

You’ll learn several specific guest post structures that will lead readers to your site ready to join your list. And yeah, there’s a huge difference between the usual blog post structures and effective ones.

Even the structures people teach as “guest post structures” are rarely effective, although they might help you write “good” posts. But that’s it.

Just to be clear, the “effective” structures (as opposed to just “good”) are also designed to make the post really valuable to the readers. That gives you a huge advantage over the other guest bloggers who pitch incomplete, low-value posts with poor logical flow to big sites.

Altogether, you’ll get eight effective guest post structures.

Each of them is explained section by section. And then you’ll see how the structure works as an actual guest post to make it as effective as possible (each section of the post is explained).

Of course, you’ll learn all the other necessary elements of writing effective guest posts as well.

For example, people often ask about “the ideal guest post length.” Well, you’ll learn how to choose it for all your posts in the training.

In this part, you’ll also learn how to create truly attention-grabbing headlines. You’ll learn the nine most important types of headlines for guest posts. And you get plenty of examples for each type (many of them with links to actual posts with the same headline).

The last important skill you’ll learn in this section is outlining. You’ll struggle to write good posts if you don’t know how to outline. And writing effective posts is almost impossible if you don’t know how to outline your posts first.

And to top it all off, learning how to outline will drastically reduce the time you spend on each post. If you can’t imagine writing an effective guest post in just a couple of hours, this is the key to unlocking that door.

5. Improve your writing

As I said before, you don’t have to be a literary genius or even a moderately great writer to get great results from guest posts.

I had never written anything beyond a few school essays before I started writing blog posts. On top of that, I didn’t enjoy writing, and English isn’t my native language. And I still got hundreds of subscribers from some of my early guest posts.

So, the goal of this part of the training isn’t to turn you into a masterful wordsmith. Rather, you’ll learn practical techniques that help you improve your posts so more people read them to the end (and click through to your site).

Obviously, using these writing techniques will also improve your chances of getting your guest posts published; a very poorly written post migth not get through just because the site owners and editors don’t want to spend the time editing the post. But the main focus is to help you write better if you’re interested in learning how.

You can skip this part if you’re really not interested or don’t believe your writing needs to get any better. But you’ll probably want to go through and refer back to it when you’re finishing your posts. After all, a better post is more effective as well because more people want to read it to the end.

6. Make your post more effective

This is a crucial part of the training. You can’t not pay attention to it.

You’ll learn three important techniques for improving your results. You don’t have to use any of them. But each one makes a massive difference in how many people join your list.

The first technique is using three different kinds of calls to action (CTAs).

The basic CTA is not used that often in effective guest posts. The other two types, on the other hand, should be used in almost every effective guest post.

I’ve never seen any mention of either one elsewhere, not on any marketing site I follow nor in the stacks of marketing books I’ve read. (I’m sure they’re explained somehow somewhere, but I’ve never come across that information.)

That is to say, if you learn to use “weak” and “embedded” CTAs to your advantage, you’ll be miles ahead of your competition. You can even use those in your sales pages and landing pages.

The three types of CTAs are the main focus of the sixth part. But you’ll also learn how to include links leading to your site within your guest posts (and not just in your byline) and how to get several of your posts published at the same time.

7. Follow the etiquette and track results

Everything else you need to know about your responsibilities before and after your post appears is presented in this section.

You’ll also learn how to track your results so you’ll know exactly how many subscribers/leads you got from each guest post. You need that knowledge to make good decisions about which sites you should write for again and to figure out what made some posts work better than others.

But there are a couple more important lessons in this part: you’ll learn what makes a freebie compelling and how to build a simple landing page that converts visitors into subscribers.

If you get either of these wrong, you won’t see good results, no matter how effective your guest posts are.

You’ll learn seven qualifications for your freebie (the free incentive people get when they join your list). If your freebie doesn’t match all of them, it’s unlikely to help you. Instead, people will arrive at your site and then leave.

And similarly, your landing page has to keep people moving forward. They click the link in your post to come to your site. And your landing page has to compel them to take the next step: join your list.

You’ll get a template (and an example of where the template is used) that you can copy. Every page element is explained separately, so you don’t have to guess what goes where.

Workbook: 1,000 Subscribers in 90 Days

The problem with training products (even the few good ones) is that you might get bogged down by the amount of information.

So, to make sure you get through this training successfully and achieve great results, you’ll receive a workbook that details what you should do week by week.

You don’t need to go through more than three parts of the training in any one week. Instead, you get to start writing guest posts.

For example, during the first week, you’ll learn how to find the best sites to write for (including some “hidden” opportunities), how to pick the most attention-grabbing topics, and how to get your guest posts accepted (including pitch templates for the typical situations you’ll run into).

That takes care of the first three parts of the training. And then you get to work.

By the end of week one, you’ve already listed potential sites and come up with topic ideas for each site.

You can follow the workbook week by week. And if you do, you can expect to have 1,000+ new subscribers on your list by day 90.

And you’ll gain yet another 1,000+ subscribers each 30 days after that. That is, assuming you’re in a big field and your focus isn’t too narrow.

Or if you want to take things faster, just go through the workbook faster. But don’t blow through the training without absorbing the material and putting it into practice.

Are you growing a blog or a business?

Effective guest blogging is an excellent tactic for growing your business or blog. The same techniques apply in both cases.

However, if guest blogging will be used as a critical element in a business that supports you and your family, you’ll need to take a few more things into account.

For example, you’ll want to carefully consider your target sites and topics. If you skip any of the steps, you might grow your list with people who aren’t likely to buy from you.

But I don’t know whether you’re building a blog or a business (or maybe I do know you, but I don’t know everyone who reads this). If you’re just growing your blog’s readership for now, you don’t have to know about all the business-side considerations.

So, I don’t want to offer you extra training you don’t need; you’re much less likely to successfully complete a training that teaches “too much” for your needs (similarly, you’re less likely to get much out of a training that doesn’t give you all the pieces you need).

With that in mind, you can choose either the Blog Level or Business Level training.

Simply put, the Blog Level teaches you everything you need to know for quick, consistent email list growth.

The Business Level includes all the same techniques you’ll learn in the core training (Blog Level), but it also provides additional details on everything you must know for guest blogging to grow your business (even how to quickly convert the new readers into customers).

If guest blogging won’t be a way to grow a business (and you don’t intend to make money from your blog), just skip over the next couple of sections labeled “Business Level Training.”

Business Level Training:

Video: In-depth look into business considerations (live webinar)

The Rapid List Building with Guest Blogging training is divided into seven parts to make it easy to consume and refer back to for examples.

Each part features business-specific considerations. But none of them is about the writing; you should write the posts following the same exact structures and techniques you learn in the core part of the training.

But I want you to learn the business-specific elements too, so you can use guest blogging to grow your business with as few hiccups as possible.

In addition to the core training, you’ll get a video in which I go through each part of the training and explain all the business considerations you have to know.

NOTE: If you sign up as part of the initial group, you get to attend a live webinar, which will be recorded and used in the training video later on.

You get to ask any questions you might have (even if you can’t make it live) and get personal answers during the webinar. I have no plans to do the webinar again, and the chance to get detailed, personal answers to your questions is unlikely to be available either.

The video (live webinar on May 20) teaches you how to:

• Pick the sites your target customers are most likely to read
• Find influencers who can send near referral-quality leads to your list from posts
• Figure out what topics will lead readers to quickly buy something from you
• Convince people that you can help them without sounding sales-y
• Position yourself as a ground-breaking expert (someone who fundamentally changes the way your subject matter is viewed)
• Use your own customer case studies in your guest posts to build up your products’ and services’ perceived value
• Position yourself as an expert to the experts—someone the recognized experts look up to
• Position your product as the best solution to an important need in your guest posts without sounding sales-y
• Pick a freebie topic that directs people toward buying your products and services
• Create your freebie as quickly as reasonably possible without losing its effectiveness
• Set up a landing page that can provide a very high conversion rate specifically for guest post traffic
• Set up tracking that allows you to track what guest posts create the most sales
• Strengthen your relationships with influencers quickly so you can partner with them
• Use your “thank you” page to move people closer to buying your products and/or hiring you

If you can’t attend the webinar live, you can send your questions in before May 20, and I’ll bring them up during the webinar. And of course you’ll get access to the recording as soon as it’s uploaded (most likely a couple of hours after the webinar ends).

In addition to going through the seven parts of the training, you’ll learn how to quickly convert your new leads into customers in a separate video.

Business Level Training:

Workshop: How to convert your guest post leads into customers—quickly

If you’re growing a business, you need to convert your leads into customers.

You don’t have to do it quickly (unless you actually need the money right now). But the leads that guest blogging will create for you can be turned into customers and clients relatively easily.

And if you do things right, they’ll thank you for it (I hate pushy and manipulative marketing just as much as you do), so no need to worry about bending your ethical rules at all.

As a part of the business level training, you’ll get a video of a workshop in which you’re guided—step-by-step—through the process of building the sales funnel that your guest blogging leads should go through.

You’ll get plenty of examples of different kinds of conversion paths for different types of products and services. (With more than one conversion path for each situation, you can pick what fits your specific situation best.)

You’ll also learn different ways to combine guest blogging with other marketing tactics.

NOTE: If you sign up as part of the initial group, you get to attend the live webinar (May 27), which will be recorded and used in the sales-funnel training video later on. This is in addition to the live business considerations webinar on May 20.

You can ask any questions you might have about your individual situation. If you can’t make it live, just send in your questions beforehand, and I’ll answer them during the webinar. At the moment, I have no plans to redo this webinar—but if I do, it will almost certainly be a separately sold workshop.

You’ll learn how to:

• Build 20+ different kinds of sales funnels that all start with a guest post
• Convert leads immediately after they join your list without sounding sales-y
• Customize your marketing messages for different audiences to significantly improve conversion rates

Most importantly, though, you’ll build your sales funnel that starts with your guest posts. And you’ll have it ready by the time the workshop ends.

This training is meant for people who want real results.

And having your sales funnel ready is a crucial part of getting those results.

In case you’re wondering, it’s not necessary to have a product or service ready to get this part done. If you don’t have anything to sell yet, you’ll actually figure out what could be your first offer during the workshop (two birds, one stone, right?).

Bonuses to the training

If you ever consider buying a training product, look at the bonuses.

But don’t just look at them. Decide whether they’re valuable additional resources or attempts to fill gaping holes in the actual training.

Bonuses are often attempts to make an incomplete training seem more complete. So, instead of building a truly valuable training, which takes a lot of time, marketers just slap some intriguing bonuses on top of their trainings to make the offers more compelling.

The four bonuses you get with Rapid List Building with Guest Blogging aren’t trying to fill gaps. The bonuses are supplements or additional help so you get even better results depending on your individual needs.

#1 How to make your blog’s topic help you succeed

If you have a blog—even as a part of your business—its topic (also called a focus or niche) either helps you succeed with guest blogging or makes it harder.

The impact your blog’s topic has is especially important if you’re not building a business but just want to grow a readership for your blog.

If you haven’t already chosen your blog topic or you’re open to refining it, this workbook walks you through a detailed five-step process for figuring out what topic(s) give you an advantage instead of hindering your success.

And if you’re worried you’ll have to start from scratch, don’t sweat it. Some refining is usually enough to give you an edge.

However, if you need to change your blog topic altogether, it’s better to do it as soon as possible. But really, that’s rarely necessary.

#2 Pro editor’s tips: 38 ways to improve your writing

I’m not a professional writer. At least I don’t call myself one, though my typical workday includes at least a couple of hours of writing.

So, since I have a great editor (who helps me with some important projects), I asked if she could list out practical ways to improve writing that really make a difference.

The end result is a document worth its weight in gold. Well, it’s a digital document, but you get the idea.

You’ll learn to write so the editors who guard the gates at the big sites are glad to see your post—instead of cringing.

Here’s a small sample of what you’ll learn:

• Use “transitional devices” to guide the reader smoothly from one idea to the next
• Edit and proofread your posts (like the pros do) and improve your chances of catching mistakes that lower your chances of getting your guest post accepted
• Avoid the most common mistakes that make your posts look amateurish

Business Level Training:

#3 How to write a guest post in two hours flat

If you’re building a business, one of the fastest ways to improve your results is becoming more efficient.

Writing a guest post (or any blog article) doesn’t have to take more than a couple of hours. If you spend much more time than that, you know you could be spending the rest of the time finishing tasks and projects that have a bigger impact on your results.

This workbook walks you through how to take a guest post from an idea to a finished product you send to a site owner/editor. And specifically, how to do it fast.

And more importantly, you’ll learn the most likely reasons that each step in the process takes too long and how to “fix” them.

I don’t know about you personally, but writing a blog post used to take me at least four hours. Sometimes I wasted more than six (maybe seven) hours on a single post.

Going from that to getting most posts ready in two hours was a huge time saver. With that time, I can write more guest posts, do other marketing, build products, do client work, and just generally keep my business going forward. (And I spend more time with my family, too.)

As I said, maybe it’s not a big thing for you. But if you spend a lot of time writing, then just cutting the time by half (or even just by 20%) can be a pretty exciting step forward.

Business Level Training:

#4 In-depth analyses of my most successful guest posts

I think examples are underrated in business training. I mean, what’s a better way to learn a new concept than to see it in use?

The training is already filled with examples. But I also dug down deep into a couple of my most successful guest posts to explain each section (and even paragraphs) separately.

The first of the posts generated over 800 subscribers. And even though the post was published a long time ago, it still generates several subscribers each week.

The other post generated over 450 subscribers. What makes it interesting is that it relies on a video. But it’s not a fancy video at all—just a simple slideshow. (The post also got me in contact with some people you just can’t easily get in touch with.) I also wanted to give a detailed example of one of the most effective guest post structures you can use if you have a business because it positions you as an expert (without ever calling yourself an expert).

Both of these posts are especially good for growing a business because they both position you (the author) as an expert in your field. And you do it without sounding sales-y, pushy, or high on yourself.

You can practically copy the structures from these posts and use them to write about your expertise.

Guarantee

I don’t want to attract people who don’t take growing their businesses and/or blogs seriously with flashy money-back badges and long-winded promises.

If you’re not interested in learning how to write effective guest posts, this training isn’t for you.

But if you feel like the training wasn’t worth your money, of course I’ll refund your payment.

So, there’s a money-back guarantee—it’s just not the usual “buy this product and decide later…and hopefully you’ll forget the whole thing before the guarantee period ends” type of guarantee.

Instead, I want to guarantee something more important: Your learning.

If you don’t understand something, let me know, and I’ll help you out personally.

If you feel like something’s missing from the training, let me know, and I’ll help (and probably add whatever is missing into the training for everyone to see).

If you write a bunch of posts but don’t get results, and you can’t figure out what went wrong, let me know. I’ll help you out personally.

In other words, I won’t sleep soundly if someone (you) isn’t getting good results because the training didn’t teach something clearly.

As a disclaimer (in case someone wants to purposefully misunderstand what I’m saying here): there are limits to what I can do—for example, I won’t fly to your location to give you a week of intensive coaching if something about the training isn’t crystal clear. Instead, I’ll answer like you would expect a normal teacher to answer a question. Okay?

If you want to read the exhaustive details about the guarantees (500+ words), check out the terms and conditions. The terms are there in case someone tries to abuse my good intentions.

Grow Your List—Quickly and Predictably

If you want to grow your list predictably, guest blogging is likely the best marketing tactic for you.

But if you don’t know how to write effective guest posts, you won’t get results. Instead, you’ll waste dozens or hundreds of hours creating free content for other businesses.

Get the only training that teaches how to grow your list with guest blogging today.

In 90 days you’ll have grown your list by 1,000 new subscribers. And after that, you can get another 1,000 subscribers every 30 days. That is, of course, assuming you work in a big field—not some super-tight niche.

Start the Blog Level training today if your goal is to grow your blog’s readership. You’ll learn everything you need to know about writing guest posts that grow your list quickly and predictably.

Start the Business Level training today if your goal is to use guest blogging to grow your business. You’ll learn everything you need to know about writing effective guest posts, plus you’ll learn how to turn the subscribers you get from guest posts into customers and clients.

Terms (=the legalese stuff)

PS

The training covers all aspects of writing effective guest posts and everything else you need to grow your list quickly with guest posts.

But if there’s a way I can make the training more valuable, I’m happy to do it.

So, if you ever have a question, let me know. I’ll answer. And if some question comes up often, I’ll update the training to include the answer.

This is the only training (as far as I know) about effective guest blogging—not “how to write great guest posts” or “how to get traffic.” If your goal is to get real results with guest blogging (grow your list), this is the best training for you as far as I know.

Even if you’ve studied guest blogging before, you haven’t learned the techniques you’ll learn in this training.

Start the training today, and in 90 days you could have 1,000+ new people on your list. And another 1,000 every 30 days from then on.