Category Archives: Internet Marketing

Looking for a profession that allows you to transform lives by helping people overcome challenges and achieve their personal goals? 

If so, you may already be considering a future as a life coach.

Pursuing a career that offers flexibility, autonomy, and the ability to work from anywhere is a dream shared by most self-starters, and life coaching delivers on every count.

But the often mysterious profession leaves many people with more questions than answers.

Do you have what it takes to become a successful coach? What skills are needed? Do life coaches have to meet certain requirements? Where do coaches get trained?

Life Coach Morgan Bullock on Instagram

In the guide below, we answer your most pressing questions on what it takes to become a life coach and how to build a successful future in the coaching industry.

Here’s what we’ll cover in this guide: 

What is a life coach?

How much money do life coaches earn?

What credentials do you need to become a life coach?

How quickly can you become a life coach?

Should you become a life coach? Take the quiz!

How to start a life coaching business step-by-step guide

Growing in your role as a life coach

What is a life coach?

A life coach is a wellness professional who aims to transform lives by helping clients define and achieve goals that improve their quality of life.

Life coaches typically help their clients identify goals and obstacles and then map out a plan to achieve them. Along the way, they coach them on overcoming the obstacles and challenges that stand in their way.

Certified life coach Dominic Johnson, who works with elite athletes, says that the most rewarding part of his job is seeing his clients’ progress and the shifts they go through along the way. 

Life coaching methods vary widely from one professional to the next. Most coaches develop a unique approach that aligns with their niche, philosophy, training, and perspective. 

Life coaches, unless otherwise stated, are not mental health professionals or therapists. They do not make decisions for their clients or provide advice on topics such as finance or law. 

The ideal life coach helps clients discover their own solutions by asking insightful questions, facilitating self-discovery, challenging limiting beliefs, and providing support and accountability.

How much money do life coaches make?

Coaching is a 1.5 billion dollar industry and growing. Yet, hourly coaching rates vary so much that one life coach may earn $40,000 a year while another pulls in a six- to seven-figure salary.

The significant earnings gap is partly due to varying levels of experience, skills, and credentials.

However, perhaps the most influential factor responsible for how much you earn as a coach has to do with how you approach the business of building your practice. 

For example:

A professional coach who works as an employee earns an average of $20 an hour.

A coach who opens their own business may earn anywhere from $35 – $300 an hour, depending on their experience, credentials, and what size audience they build online.

An experienced life coach who has authored books and regularly takes on speaking engagements may earn six or seven figures per year.

Life coaching can be a profitable business if you approach it with intention. 

There are several ways to set yourself up for financial success over time, including:

Obtain a life coaching certification from an accredited program.

Earn a degree that compliments your coaching specialty.

Write and publish books.

Take on speaking engagements.

Learn and implement current marketing techniques.

World-renowned life coach and bestselling author Marie Forleo is an excellent example of a coach who is skilled at life coaching, speaking, and building an audience. She has built an audience of more than 800,000 Instagram followers who regularly engage with her content.

What credentials do you need to become a successful life coach?

There are no legally mandated requirements you need to meet to work as a life coach. 

However, in an era where anyone can deem themselves a “life coach,” credentials, skills, and outcomes play a heavy role with potential clients.

What skills do you need to become a life coach?

The most important coaching skills don’t come from a classroom but instead are a combination of life experience and business acumen.  

Many (and maybe most) life coaches are motivated to help people after overcoming their own challenges and developing a strong drive to help other people overcome theirs.

Some personality traits of successful coaches include:

Deep empathy and the ability to connect with people on a genuine level.

Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written.

Exceptional listening skills to help clients discover what they want.

The ability to motivate and set goals to help clients map out actionable, achievable steps.

Outstanding problem-solving skills to help people discover solutions and overcome obstacles.

A keen sense of self-awareness that allows you to recognize your own shortcomings and necessary areas of improvement.

Successful life coaches also possess an entrepreneurial mindset. This includes a willingness to manage setbacks, adjust strategies, continually learn new skills, and take the initiative on things that need their attention.

Other important skills, such as business & marketing, finance, and sales, can be learned along the way.

Do you need a certification to become a life coach?

You do not need a certification to become a life coach since the industry is unregulated. 

But before you skip the certification, consider this: 

Most (85%) coaching clients say certification and credentials are important or “very important” when hiring a coach.

Earning a certification can help you generate a higher income more quickly and increase your ability to change lives for the better.

The best life coach certification programs help you develop the communication skills, coaching techniques, and business & marketing know-how you need to launch a successful coaching business.

Here are three of the best accredited online life coach training and certification programs:

Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (IPEC): Certified Professional Coach (CPC) program

Coach Training Alliance (CTA) Certified Life Coach 

Health Coach Institute (HCI) Dual life & health coaching certification

Not ready to fully commit your time and resources to achieving an accredited certification?  

Consider one of the following courses or programs to help jump-start your coaching career. 

IAP College life coaching certificate course

Kain Ramsey online life coaching certificate course (on Udemy)

Life Coach Training Institute’s free life coach certification mini-course

How quickly can you become a life coach?

If you’re committed to a future of life coaching, a coaching certification can give you a strong start. 

Most certification programs take between 6 – 12 months to complete, but there are a few that offer quicker certifications.

For example, The Certified Life Coach Institute offers an accredited, immersive 3-day certification program called the Certified Life Coach Class.

Most, if not all, life coach training certification programs are available online. Some allow you to work at your own pace.

Should you become a life coach? Take the quiz!

Below is a list of resources to help you determine whether life coaching is right for you. 

From YouTube videos to aptitude tests, these resources help you understand the qualities that make for a successful life coach.

7 signs you’re meant to be a life coach: YouTube video by Krista Kathleen

In her video “7 Signs You’re Meant To Be A Life Coach, Born To Coach Training Academy founder Krista Kathleen helps viewers understand whether coaching is their “next best path.” 

Three of Krista’s  “common signs you’re meant to be a life coach” include:

You love personal development work and you can’t get enough of it.

You’ve overcome a lot of challenging events in your life and want to turn your pain into purpose to help others.

People naturally come to you for advice and to share intimate details of their lives.

Coach Training Alliance Life Coach Quiz

The Coach Training Alliance quiz asks you to rate how strongly you agree with a handful of statements. It takes less than five minutes and produces an immediate percent-based score.

The quiz questions place more emphasis on your willingness to succeed than on your already-existing personality traits.

The quiz is free to take but does require you to enter your name and email.

Life Coach Career Quiz by NLP Academy

NLP’s Life Coach Career Quiz is a series of quick multiple-choice questions. It shows you a percent-based score immediately upon completion of the quiz.

The quiz is free to take and does not require you to fill in any personal information. 

Its questions are mostly based on your personality traits rather than what you’re willing to do to succeed. 

Lumia Coaching Career Assessment Quiz

Lumia’s career assessment is a fun quiz that asks thought-provoking, social-media-style questions.

The downside to Lumia’s assessment is that you must fill out a form that includes your phone number before you can receive your results by email. 

The resources above are fun to try, especially if you’ve ever considered a career in coaching. 

However, the quizzes above are mainly designed to gauge how well you’d fit into the classic description of a life coach. All three miss the mark when weighing the importance of entrepreneurial skills, such as your willingness to learn, adapt, and improve over time.

If the quizzes above didn’t encourage and motivate you toward a coaching career, try our unofficial life coach quiz below!

The unofficial “Are you ready to become a life coach” quiz

Are you a self-starter who is passionate about becoming a life coach? 

Are you willing to do what it takes to learn how to help people transform their lives for the better?

Are you willing to do what it takes to learn the business and marketing skills needed to build a successful coaching practice?

If you answered “yes” to all of the questions above, Congratulations! You already possess some of the most important traits needed to become a successful life coach.

How to start a life coaching business: step-by-step guide

Are you passionate about becoming a life coach but wondering where to begin? Some people like to ease into a coaching career while others jump in with both feet. 

Which one are you?

How to ease your way into a life coaching career: A 5-step guide

Step 1: Define your niche and coaching style.

Step 2: Learn how to market your coaching practice and begin building your reputation as a thought leader.

Step 3: Get more training and build your credentials along the way.

Step 4: Create a personal growth strategy.

Step 5: Develop a business and marketing strategy.

Step 6: Sign up your first clients.

How to jump into full-time life coaching: A 5-step guide with resources

Do you feel you have the skills and training you need to begin full-time life coaching right away?

If you’ve already completed the steps above and feel ready to launch your coaching practice, these steps will help you get there.

Develop a full business and marketing plan.

Set up your business infrastructure.

Choose a coaching platform and select the additional tools and resources you need to begin coaching.

Share some of your knowledge in the form of an ebook that provides genuine value to potential clients. You can use this book as part of your lead generation strategy, to encourage signups for your email newsletter.

Begin marketing your practice by building a social media audience and publishing a helpful email newsletter.

Email tips on Instagram

For step-by-step guidance on completing these steps and more, read our Coaching Business Blueprint for complete details on launching your practice.

Resources for people who want to become a life coach

If you’re serious about becoming a life coach, spend an afternoon gathering ideas and inspiration by learning how other coaches build successful businesses.

Follow some of the best life coaching blogs recommended by Life Coach Magazine.

Learn about the world’s top life coaches. Sign up for their newsletters and follow their social media accounts for ongoing ideas and inspiration. 

Check out life coaching success stories from industry and academic sources, to help keep you motivated and driven to pursue your goals.

View some of the best life coach accounts on Instagram.

Life Coach Sam Burgess on Instagram

Growing in your role as a life coach

As any effective life coach will tell you, personal and professional growth are key factors of long-term success.

As you move forward and begin life coaching, consider this lesser-known tip on building a lifetime social media audience.

How to insure against the loss of your social media audience

For many coaches, building a social media audience is a labor of love that can take years. The efforts are well worth it because an engaged audience can increase your reach (and profits) exponentially.

But what happens if you suddenly lose access to the audience you’ve built on a social platform such as Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube? 

This can, and has, happened to many businesses in the past.

To insure against the loss of your online audience, encourage your social media followers to sign up for your email newsletter. 

A reputable email marketing platform allows you to download all your email subscriber data so you always have access to your audience. 

At AWeber, we love coaches! You can use our easy, drag-and-drop interface and pre-built templates for coaches to quickly build and launch landing pages and personalized, automated email newsletter campaigns. 

Give AWeber a try and sign up for a free email marketing account (no credit card required!) today.

The post How to become a life coach: Step-by-step guide + resources to get started appeared first on AWeber.

Nine in 10 marketing leaders say they’re more focused on business objectives now than they were five years ago.

Despite this, only one in four identify their marketing objectives before starting the planning process. That’s a big problem: if you’re not crystal clear on your desired outcomes upfront, you risk missing the mark when your campaigns go live.

To help you out, we’ve categorized the 13 most important marketing goals across five key channels:

Email marketing

Social media

Content marketing

SEO

PPC

Let’s get into it…

Email marketing goals

1 – Grow your subscriber list

Even if you have a healthy list of contacts, continuing to gain subscribers is critical to maintaining an engaged audience – after all, the average email marketing list decreases by around 22.5% every year. So if you don’t expand your email list by over 22.5% a year, you’ll slowly watch as your subscribers shrink.

Here are a couple tips to help you nail one of the most important email marketing objectives:

Tip: Make it easy for people to subscribe

You can collect more new contacts with a signup form on the platforms where your company is already the most visible. Take AWeber for example, we have our newsletter signup at the top of every blog post, where we encourage readers to get the latest weekly tips:

Tip: Give people a reason to subscribe

Most people are protective about their personal information and require a compelling reason to give you their email address; it’s crucial that your audience understands the value of your emails from the get-go. Want to show value? Here are a few ways:

Explain what your audience will receive in your emails and how frequently they’ll get them.

Add positive feedback (social proof) from current subscribers.

Advertise a freebee, promo code, or other lead magnet in your sign up form and make sure it goes out automatically in your first welcome email.

E.g. When you land on The Honey Pot’s homepage, you’ll see a popup offering 15% off in exchange for handing over your email address. Even better, they gamify the experience by first asking you a quiz question about your personal care preferences:

👉 Learn more: 13 Ways to build your email list for free

2 – Increase your email open rates

The more people open your emails, the more opportunities you’ll have to turn them into loyal customers or brand advocates. And you won’t make many sales via email if no one opens your emails. Use these tips to boost your open rate:

Tip: Write clickable subject lines

Almost half of respondents decide to open an email based on the subject line alone. Follow our guidance to make your subject lines more clickable:

Keep it short and sweet. AWeber’s analysis of 1,000 subject lines from today’s top marketers showed the average subject line was 44 characters long.

Use actionable language like “get”, “claim”, and “shop” to persuade readers to click.

Create a sense of urgency with phrases like “limited-time only”, “hurry”, and “last chance”. You can also reference how much time is left on an offer (like “25% off sale ends in 24 hours!”). 

Use personalization and emojis to help make your emails pop, just like these examples:

👉 Learn more: 14 email subject line best practices to get more opens

Tip: Use double opt-ins

What’s the best way to ensure your subscribers are engaged? By getting permission from contacts before adding them to your list. After someone subscribes, send them an email that: 

Reminds them what they signed up for (and why)

Asks them to confirm their subscription

Here’s a great example of a double opt-in email from Stripo:

Nail your double opt-in emails and you’ll only be targeting truly engaged subscribers.

3 – Improve email click-through rates

Click-through rates (CTRs) measure the number of subscribers who click on the links in your emails. High click-through rates are a good indicator of a strong relationship with your subscribers. And we all know better relationships result in longtime customers, word-of-mouth referrals, loyalty, and other opportunities to bring in more business.

If improving your click-through rates is among your digital marketing objectives, focus on these email essentials:

Tip: Demonstrate value

Any time your subscribers read an email, they will always ask themselves, “What’s in it for me?”

If you can clearly identify what subscribers will get out of the email (whether it’s education, an exclusive offer, or something else), then it passes the test.

For example, Moment communicates the value of its online courses by referencing its: 

Low prices

Experienced coaches

Range of learning materials

Tip: Include a clear CTA

Every email should include a single call to action (CTA) that visually pops — whether it’s downloading an ebook, reading a blog post, or scheduling a free consultation. Each CTA should offer something valuable to subscribers and stand out from the rest of your email. Experiment with its placement, wording and design to determine what kind of CTA creates a higher click-through rate. 

In this email below, Candace Payne makes it easy for new subscribers to download the incentive offered on her signup form:

4 – Retain current customers

Customer retention is crucial to the success of any business. Emails have the unique ability to build relationships with past customers, prompting them to purchase from you again in the future. 

To boost engagement among your existing customers, here are some tactics to consider:

Tip: Send exclusive content and targeted offers

It’s critical to maintain relationships with them now that they’ve become customers. This can help establish a relationship that is based on trust, appreciation, and authenticity. 

One of the best ways to do this is to offer exclusive sales and discounts, courses, ebooks, and other content based on their interests. Segmenting customers in this way can help you send targeted content to people who want it most.

Consider sending emails based on: 

Past email engagement (if they clicked a link for a specific product, they may be interested in more content related to that topic)

Interests

Previous purchases

Pages viewed

Geographical location

For example, flower delivery service Bloom & Wild allows shoppers to save important dates (like birthdays and anniversaries) in their customer accounts. When one of those days approaches, they send you a reminder email with a discount code, encouraging you to buy again:

Tip: Feature user-generated content and customer testimonials

Highlighting customers by sharing feedback or social posts about their experiences with your brand proves that you value their support. It also incentivizes other customers to follow suit and share their own experiences, in the hopes of getting recognition from your business.

For instance, in our next example, Bite Toothpaste shared product reviews from existing customers — followed by a “shop now” CTA to incentivize purchases:

👉 Learn more: Increase repeat purchases with these 5 easy tips

5 – Reduce unsubscribes

Every business has unsubscribes. In fact, having people unsubscribe from your list is actually a good thing. Why would you want to continue emailing someone who clearly has no interest in your content?

However, if your unsubscribe rate is consistently above 0.5%, it’s time to take action. Consider these tactics to reduce your unsubscribe rate:

Tip: Use double opt-ins

Just as double opt-ins can help improve your email open rates, they can also decrease your unsubscribe rate. This confirmation will reduce the number of customers unsubscribing because they have taken that extra step to verify that they want your content.

Tip: Segment your list

The more relevant your emails, the less likely people are to unsubscribe. So it pays to segment your list by common interests, then send content or offers that are more valuable to a specific audience.

👉 Learn more: 20+ Ways to segment your emails to boost your marketing efforts

Social media goals

1 – Increase your follower count

Growing your follower count is one of the most common social media objectives — because the larger your social following, the more people will see your content. Which, in theory, means more clicks and sales). 

Here are a couple tips to boost your followers:

Tip: Optimize your social profiles

Make your profile more discoverable by researching keywords your target audience might be searching for, then adding those terms to your social media bio and/or description.

For example, Mikhail Gribov (AKA Insta Coach Mike) is one of the first profiles to show up in an Instagram search for “social media coach”, no doubt because his bio contains that exact phrase:

Tip: Collaborate with micro-influencers

Influencer marketing helps you reach new followers by teaming up with creators who already have an established audience.

Don’t worry if you don’t have the marketing budget to work with a Kardashian, because smaller accounts actually see higher engagement rates. For instance, on Instagram, micro-influencers (those with <15,000 followers) see three times the engagement of accounts with 1+ million followers.

👉 Learn more: How to increase brand awareness on social media: 25 tips with expert insights and stories 

2 – Boost your engagement rate

Your social media engagement rate is the proportion of your followers that likes, shares, and comments on your posts. A higher engagement rate proves you’re creating content that resonates with your target audience. Here are some tips to grow engagement:

Tip: Use the right content formats

If you’re striving for a higher engagement rate, it pays to prioritize the content formats that users find most engaging. Research suggests that the average social media user is most likely to engage with short-form video, images, and live video…

…but your followers might have different tastes, so be sure to experiment with different content types to see what plays best with your audience.

Tip: Post at the right times

You’re more likely to generate a ton of engagement if you post when your followers are online. Groundbreaking stuff, right?

The best time to post varies slightly between social platforms, but in general, peak engagement times are between 9 am and 2 pm from Tuesdays – Thursdays.

But, again, we’d recommend keeping close tabs on your social media analytics to understand when your specific audience is most likely to engage with your content.

👉 Learn more: Interactive Posts: Steal these ideas and say goodbye to boring social media

Content marketing goals

1 – Generate more conversions

Marketers are most likely to measure the effectiveness of their content programs based on the number of conversions they generate.

Of course, the word “conversion” means different things to different brands. For some, it might mean email signups and demo requests, while for others, it translates to sales and revenue. Whatever it means to you, here are a couple general tips to generate more conversions from your content:

Tip: Create actionable content

When people read your content, don’t make them guess their next move: tell them what you want them to do by adding clear CTAs. For instance, check out all the calls to action we added to one of our recent blog posts, prompting visitors to sign up for a free AWeber account and/or join our affiliate program:

Tip: Create lead magnets

Lead magnets are what they sound like: pieces of content that you give away to potential customers in exchange for some personal information (typically, their name and email address). As such, they play a key role in the lead generation process.

For example, we created a campaign targeting people who want to learn about using email marketing to grow a business:

👉 Learn more: 25 brilliant lead magnet ideas to grow your email list right now 

2 – Increase website engagement

Tip: Steer readers toward relevant content

If someone loves your content so much that they read all the way to the end of an article, encourage them to keep reading by sharing other relevant blogs (or other content) on your site:

That way, there’s a chance they’ll stick around longer, increasing your website engagement metrics.

Tip: Add internal links

In our opinion, effective internal linking is the simplest way to boost engagement with your website.

To be clear, an internal is one that points to a different page on your website. By encouraging readers to click through to additional content, you can improve your bounce rate and average session duration. For best results, the anchor text — that is, the words containing the hyperlink — should give the reader a clear idea about what they’re about to click:

❌ Bad: Click here for our latest guide

✅ Good: Learn more in our guide to landing page best practices

👉 Learn more: 5 SEO best practices to increase blog traffic and engagement 

SEO goals

1 – Increase organic traffic

Boosting organic traffic is one of the most important digital marketing objectives, given that organic search is the second most important source of website traffic across all industries:

SEO can be a tough nut to crack, especially for less-experienced marketers. But there are a couple steps you can take to give your organic traffic a shot in the arm:

Tip: Steal your competitors’ backlinks

We’ve already mentioned one important type of link: internal links.

But there’s another type that plays a key role in SEO — external links, otherwise known as backlinks. As the name suggests, these are links pointing to your site from other websites. 

Search engines treat this as a signal that your content is trustworthy, which can boost your search performance. Indeed, the average #1 search result has 3.8X more backlinks than those in positions #2 – #10.

Want a quick-and-dirty way to grow more backlinks? Follow this process:

Choose a primary keyword that’s relevant to your audience

Identify the page that currently ranks #1 for your target term

Create the best possible piece of content targeting your desired keyword

Find sites that link to the current #1 page using an SEO tool like Ahrefs or Semrush

Reach out to those sites and ask them to link to your content instead

Tip: Speed up your website

Consumers hate slow-loading web pages, with 32% saying they’d never visit a site again if it took too long to load. Brutal, huh?

Because search engines strive to deliver the best possible results to searchers, they’ll punish slow websites with lower rankings. So it’s clearly in your best interests to create a slick, speedy experience for searchers.

To do this, make sure you:

Use tools like TinyPNG and Freeconvert to compress onsite images and videos

Identify (and correct) issues slowing down your site using Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool 

👉 Learn more: Optimize your blog post for SEO & go from zero traffic to monthly growth

2 – Grow organic leads

Having lots of traffic is all well and good, but it doesn’t count for much if none of those visitors turn into leads (and, eventually, paying customers). For that reason, lead generation is one of the most common SEO marketing objectives.

Use these tips to generate more leads from your organic search strategy:

Tip: Target long-tail keywords

Long-tail keywords are extremely specific search queries. Their specificity means they generally have:

More words (typically 3+)

Lower search volume

Lower competition

Higher purchase intent

Let’s consider a few examples:

Targeting these sorts of long-tail terms might not drive a ton of traffic to your site. But, on the flip side, a much higher proportion of your visitors will be in the market for your product or service.

Tip: Build an SEO landing page

SEO landing pages are web pages that are built to:

Rank well in search

Drive lots of leads or sales

Whereas standard web pages might serve a wide range of audiences and marketing goals, SEO landing pages are designed to fulfill a single purpose — typically generating leads or sales. 

For instance, this simple landing page…

…previously ranked at #6 for the term “tequila lists”, which likely helped creator Jay Baer capture a bunch of email addresses for his newsletter.

👉 Learn more: Landing page SEO best practices: A step-by-step guide

PPC goals

1 – Improve your click-through rate

On a basic level, a higher CTR is a good thing because it means your PPC campaigns are generating more traffic. 

But there’s another big benefit: Google takes your click-through rate into account when calculating your Ad Rank, which determines how high up your ads will appear in relevant search results. The higher you rank, the more clicks you’ll win. Nice!

Here are some simple ways to boost your PPC CTR:

Tip: Set negative keywords

Setting negative keywords means your ads won’t appear in searches for those terms, helping you avoid audiences that just aren’t a good match for your product or service. 

For example, a SaaS company selling enterprise-grade budgeting and forecasting software likely wouldn’t want to target someone trying to plan their household budget. So the brand might set negative keywords like “household budgeting tool” and “personal budget tool”.

By effectively ruling out certain audiences, negative keywords ensure your ads are only seen by relevant searchers who are more likely to click through.

Tip: Add sitelink extensions

Sitelink extensions are additional links to key pages on your website that appear beneath high-ranking PPC ads. These links allow you you seize more “real estate” on search engines result pages…

…which helps your ads stand out more, thereby boosting your click-through rate.

Google lets you create up to 10 sitelink extensions for each ad. But, as with so many things, the search engine has total control over which (if any) links it displays.

2 – Drive more sales

For most brands, the ultimate goal of any PPC campaign is to sell more. Here are a couple tips to help you do exactly that:

Tip: Create unique landing pages for different audiences

Relying on a single post-click landing page is one of the most common PPC errors.

Even if your product or service is super specific, chances are you have several audiences. For example, GEICO runs PPC ads targeting “regular” consumers…

…and commercial truck insurance customers:

Those are totally different audiences with highly specific motivations and pain points. It’d be impossible to create a single landing page that speaks effectively to both.

There’s a simple lesson here: creating dedicated landing pages for each audience type gives you a far better chance of selling to them.

Tip: Align your ad copy and landing page

We’ve seen countless examples of brands building beautiful, high-converting PPC landing pages, only to write terrible ad copy that doesn’t match the landing page’s tone or content. This disconnect is a real conversion rate killer.

Zoho gets it right. At time of writing, it was targeting the keyword “social media management software”, with ad copy promising an “all-in-one” solution:

When you click through to the landing page, you’re presented with intro copy spelling out some of the platform’s key features, like:

Scheduling unlimited posts

Monitoring what matters

Creating custom reports

All the sort of stuff you’d expect an all-in-one social media management tool to offer, right?

👉 Learn more: How to create landing pages that convert (plus top examples & templates)

Smash your multichannel marketing goals with AWeber

Each channel has its own marketing objectives (and tactics for achieving them). But AWeber can help you reach many of those goals.

Our feature-rich platform can level up your email marketing results with our drag-and-drop builder, template library, and smart-but-simple automations. Plus our intuitive landing page builder supports your strategies across multiple other channels, from PPC to social media to SEO.

Give it a try by signing up for your free AWeber account today!

FAQs

What are marketing objectives?

Marketing objectives are specific goals for measuring the success of marketing campaigns. Aligning your marketing objectives with your overarching business goals helps to ensure your marketing activities have the biggest possible impact on your company’s growth.

What makes a good marketing objective?

Good marketing objectives should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). For example: increase email newsletter click-through rate by 10% in the next three months.

The post 13 Multichannel marketing objectives (plus tips to achieve them) appeared first on AWeber.

Getting more views on YouTube ultimately comes down to mastering the YouTube algorithm. When your videos show up in search results, it means more views, more clicks, and more revenue for you.

But how do you get your videos to rank in the first place? And how do you rank YouTube videos fast?

It’s all about mastering YouTube SEO.

In this post we’ll cover everything you need to know about YouTube SEO and the YouTube algorithm so you can focus on the right actions to get more views and better results from your channel.

Let’s get into it…

Does SEO really work for YouTube?

Yes! 

YouTube isn’t just a video streaming platform — it’s also the world’s second-largest search engine, processing billions of searches a month. So in the same way that you’d optimize your website content to rank better on Google, it makes sense to nail your YouTube SEO to get more eyes on your videos.

Just like Google, the YouTube algorithm considers multiple factors when deciding which videos should appear at the top of the results page for any given search.

But whereas Google reportedly has ~200 different ranking factors, improving your search performance on YouTube is mostly about nailing the following elements:

Title and description: These should accurately describe your video content, while featuring relevant keywords and engaging language that compels people to click through.

Tags and hashtags: Both of these elements help the YouTube algorithm to understand your content, which boosts your ranking potential. They also increase your videos’ reach through features like hashtag searches and the Suggested Video section.

Metadata: Contains a bunch of information — like the video’s upload date, length, and view count — that helps YouTube to understand and rank your content.

Watch time: When viewers watch your content in full, it tells YouTube that your videos are relevant and engaging. Which, in turn, encourages YouTube to show your content to more people.

Engagement: Similarly, when lots of people click, like, share, and comment on your videos, YouTube takes this as a sign that your content is worth watching. Which gives a major boost to your rankings.

10 ways to use YouTube SEO to rank videos fast

1 – Conduct keyword research
2 – Create attention-grabbing, search-optimized video titles
3 – Add popular and relevant tags
4 – Write optimized video descriptions
5 – Add closed captions
6 – Add a custom thumbnail image
7 – Use hashtags to increase reach
8 – Add chapters to your video
9 – Add cards and end screens to increase user engagement
10 – Drive immediate interaction with your videos

Now we’re clear that YouTube SEO is definitely an effective tactic for boosting video views growing your YouTube channel, let’s dive into 10 tried-and-trusted strategies to help your videos rank fast:

1 – Conduct keyword research

Here’s a fact that might surprise you: to rank your YouTube videos fast, you should always do keyword research first — before creating your video content.

Why? When you know which search terms you’re trying to rank for first, it’s much easier to create a video that ranks faster.

Here’s how to find keywords you actually want to rank for. (Don’t skip this step!)

Find popular keywords from YouTube search suggestions

Start with some ideas from your main topic and plug them into the search bar on YouTube. Then look at the suggested searches.

For example, let’s explore the suggestions for “piano”:

Start with as few words as possible, then choose the results that match the search intent you’re looking for.

If you’re a piano teacher, you probably aren’t interested in ranking for “piano man,” the name of a Billy Joel song. But you are looking to rank for “piano tutorial” or “piano lessons for beginners.”

Take your research a step further and search for a few of the phrases that appeared in your first search results. For example, “piano tutorial” offers these suggestions:

By showing you these suggestions, YouTube is actually telling you that these are popular search terms. So write them down (in a spreadsheet or somewhere else). This is the first draft of your keyword list.

You could do this with any number of keywords from the first search. “Piano lessons for beginners” and “piano easy” are likely good search terms to look into further for our piano teacher.

Hone in on popular keywords from TubeBuddy

Since it takes a lot of time to create effective YouTube videos, make sure it’s worth your effort to try to rank for a certain keyword. After all, you wouldn’t want to rank in search results for a keyword no one is searching for.

So here’s what we recommend as criteria for a keyword being “worth it”:

At least 800 monthly searches 

Low competition from other videos

YouTube doesn’t tell us how many people are searching for a given term or how competitive it is, so we’ll need another tool to find this out. Let’s use TubeBuddy, a popular tool YouTubers use for keyword research, and to manage and optimize their videos. 

Add TubeBuddy’s free plugin to your YouTube channel and you can start doing some research on the keywords you’ve collected.

When you search for a keyword in TubeBuddy, you’ll see a lot of information about your ability to rank for that keyword — plus suggestions for others:

TubeBuddy, for example, deems “piano tutorial” a poor keyword to target. Although the number of monthly searches for this keyword is fantastic (523K), the competition for this keyword would likely make it very difficult to rank for.

Check out the score for “piano lessons for kids”, however:

The search volume is still high, and there is less competition. So this is a much easier keyword to rank a video for.

Run all of your keywords through TubeBuddy’s keyword explorer and search for the new keywords TubeBuddy suggests. Gather information on search volume, competition score, and the overall score. Add this to your keyword list.

Pro tip: TubeBuddy’s “weighted” scores take into account your channel data. “Unweighted” scores are more generalized.

Get more keyword ranking opportunities from VidIQ and Keyword.io

To identify even more opportunities for keywords with good search volume and low competition, try two more tools — Keyword.io and VidIQ. Both are free.

When you plug your keywords into Keyword.io, you’ll see the number of monthly searches for that keyword, plus similar keywords, competition, and the search trend over the past year.

Pro tip: Keyword.io’s competition score is calculated based on ads for that keyword — not organic rankings.

VidIQ is another YouTube automation tool. It has AI-suggested keywords that you can rank for. Use the VidIQ web app or install the plugin for your YouTube channel and start getting keyword suggestions.

For example, VidIQ identified two keywords I didn’t see in the other tools that have high search volume and lower competition:

Add any additional high volume, low competition keywords you find to your list.

Here’s approximately what your keyword list should look like now:

KeywordCompetitionMonthly searchesHow to do skype piano lessonsVery low2KGolden hour piano tutorialLow125KPiano tutorial for beginnersLow5.4KPiano tutorial easy slow beginnerLow2KPiano lessons for kidsMedium70KPiano tutorialHigh523K

Once you have all of your keywords laid out next to each other with searches and competition, it’s time to choose which one to create a video for. This isn’t an exact science — it’s more of an art.

If you have a smaller channel and are looking to get established, choose keywords with very low competition and around 1-2K monthly search volume. Bigger, more established channels might find it more worth their time to compete for more competitive keywords with a lot of search volume.

2 – Create attention-grabbing, search-optimized video titles

Writing search-friendly YouTube video titles is about incorporating your target keyword. This does two things to help you rank quickly:

It lets YouTube know what your video is about, so the platform can start including your videos in search results and suggestions.

When people see your video in the YouTube search rankings, they feel confident that it’ll give them what they’re looking for, making them more likely to click.

So it’s no coincidence that the top two search results for the term “how to do Skype piano lessons” both include some variation on the phrase “Skype piano lessons”:

But keywords aren’t the be-all-and-end-all of optimizing your YouTube titles.

Remember, YouTube also pays close attention to how people interact with your content when calculating rankings. Your video titles play a key role in influencing one of the most important ranking factors: click-through rate (CTR).

Your CTR is the percentage of people who click through to your content from the YouTube search results page. A high CTR tells YouTube that your video is super-relevant to the search query in question — so it’ll reward you with higher rankings. Nice!

What does this have to do with YouTube titles?

Simple: the more engaging your title, the more likely people are to click through.

So don’t just focus on cramming in keywords. Make sure you write compelling titles that searchers can’t help but click by using actionable language, asking questions, and/or promising something unique. For example:

❌ Bad: 5 tips for Skype piano lessons

✅ Good: 5 things I learned running Skype piano lessons for a year

3 – Add popular and relevant tags

Tags are another way to help YouTube understand what your content is about, which can help boost your rankings. To be honest, they aren’t the most important ranking factor, with YouTube saying they “play a minimal role” in determining its search results…

…but “minimal” is still better than nothing, right?

There’s no limit to the number of tags you can include. Instead, YouTube lets you add up to 500 characters of tags to your videos.

Opinion is divided about the ideal number of tags, although one study found that the top-performing videos on a specific channel all had 8 – 12 tags.

But rather than looking for hard-and-fast numbers, we’d recommend using this simple process for tagging videos:

Start by tagging your target keyword (e.g. “how to do Skype piano lessons”)

Add a few likely variations of that term (e.g. “Skype piano lesson tips”)

Tag additional topics covered by your video (e.g. “online piano lesson software”)

For some videos, you’ll likely have dozens of tagging options, whereas others will be more limited. Either way is fine — just don’t spam a ton of irrelevant tags in the hope of gaming the YouTube algorithm. It’s not gonna happen.

Aside from helping you rank better, there’s another big benefit to YouTube tagging: when someone is watching a different video with the same tags as yours, there’s a chance your content will show up in the Suggested Video section:

For this reason, it’s worth using the same tags as other YouTubers in your niche.

Pro tip: Find which tags your competitors are using by following these simple steps:

Open a YouTube video page on your desktop in Chrome or Firefox

Right-click somewhere on the page (but not on the video) and click View Page Source

Press CTRL + F (or CMD + F on Mac) to bring up the search box, then type “keywords”

Hey presto! You’ve got yourself a full list of that video’s tags.

4 – Write optimized video descriptions

Your video description is the copy that appears below your YouTube videos and in truncated form on YouTube search results pages:

So it plays two key roles:

Most importantly, the description helps YouTube figure out what’s in your video, which improves your ranking potential.

It also has a small impact in convincing people to click through to your content from the search results page.

Don’t worry if writing isn’t your strongest suit, because creating video descriptions is a repeatable process:

Add your main keyword in the first ~25 words

Add 2 – 3 related keywords or variations on your main keyword

Write 250+ words for your description

Include your main keyword 2 – 4 times in total

Follow this approach to write YouTube algorithm-friendly descriptions that don’t sound like they’re stuffed full of keywords.

Here’s a decent example of a description from a video targeting the term “piano lessons for beginners”:

The target keyword is near the start of the description, and there’s a shorter variation a couple paragraphs later. But it’d be even stronger if the main keyword appeared a couple more times.

5 – Add closed captions

Closed captions are an on-screen transcript of your YouTube content:

As such, they can help your YouTube SEO in two main ways:

The YouTube algorithm can crawl your closed captions, helping it better understand your video content. As we’ve already noted, the more YouTube understands your videos, the better they’ll rank.

Nearly 20% of the global population live with hearing loss, while plenty of others simply prefer to watch videos on mute. Closed captions make your content accessible to both of these groups, boosting your engagement metrics (which, in turn, helps your rankings).

YouTube automatically adds captions to your videos whenever someone clicks the CC button…

…but the accuracy can be a little shaky, so we’d recommend uploading your own transcript. Failing that, you can review and edit YouTube’s machine learning-generated efforts by following these steps:

Sign in to YouTube Studio

Click Subtitles in the left menu and choose the video you want to edit

Click the More button (three dots in a vertical line) next to the subtitles you want to edit

Read through the captions and edit or remove any errors

Sure, it’s not the most fun task — but it’ll help your rankings.

6 – Add a custom thumbnail image

YouTube thumbnails are images that appear alongside your video on search results pages, suggested videos lists, and on your YouTube channel.

So you can think of them as a cover image for your video that entices would-be viewers to click through to your content. And, as we know, videos with higher click-through rates tend to rank better.

Whenever you create a video, YouTube will automatically generate a bunch of thumbnails for you to choose from. But if you really want to boost your rankings, you need to create a custom thumbnail that grabs your audience’s attention and compels them to click.

For best results, your thumbnails should:

Measure 1280 x 720 pixels

Have a file size of <2 MB

Incorporate a shortened version of your title (including your main keyword)

Use contrasting colors and negative space to draw the eye

Feature your logo for brand recognition

7 – Use hashtags to increase reach

As you might have guessed, hashtags give YouTube yet more valuable context about your videos. 

Adding them to your video descriptions can improve your rankings. Not only that, but your content will show up on a separate page dedicated to each hashtag you use… 

…thereby increasing the reach of your videos.

When you enter a hashtag (#) in the description box and start typing out your keywords, YouTube will auto-generate a bunch of popular existing hashtags.

Just like with regular YouTube tags, you should:

Start by hashtagging terms that are similar to your target keyword (e.g. #skypepianolessons)

Add a few likely variations of that term (e.g. #onlinepianolessons)

Tag additional topics covered by your video (e.g. #pianolessontips)

The more hashtags you add, the less relevant each becomes, so prioritize accuracy and quality over quantity.

Also, definitely don’t add more than 60 hashtags to a video or playlist — if you do, YouTube will ignore every hashtag on that video, and might even remove it from search results or delete it from your channel.

8 – Add chapters to your video

Timestamping your videos allows you to add chapters, which can help your engagement metrics by making it easy for viewers to jump to relevant sections of your content:

And remember: higher engagement = better YouTube rankings.

Not only that, but YouTube can use your chapter titles to better understand the broader themes of your video content, potentially helping you rank for more keywords.

You can add chapters to any video that lasts 10+ seconds. Start with a timestamp at 00:00, then add at least three total stamps in ascending order.

9 – Add cards and end screens to increase user engagement

Cards and end screens benefit your YouTube SEO by making your videos more engaging. But what the heck are they?

Let’s start with cards. Think of them as calls to action that you can set to pop up at key moments during your videos:

You can add up to five cards to a single video, and they come in four main flavors:

Video cards point viewers toward a public YouTube video of your choice.

Playlist cards let you link to a public YouTube playlist.

Channel cards are for linking to a specific YouTube channel (e.g. if you’ve collaborated with a different creator and want to thank them).

Link cards are only available to members of the YouTube Partner Program, allowing them to steer viewers toward an external website.

Then there are end screens, which are like a more detailed type of card that only shows up at the end of your video:

End screens are the perfect opportunity to hit viewers with a CTA, such as asking them to subscribe to your YouTube channel or click through to the next video in a series.

Considering they liked your content enough to stick around until the end, there’s a good chance they’ll say “yes”.

10 – Drive immediate interaction with your videos

Promotion is an often-overlooked piece in the YouTube SEO puzzle, but it’s super important. Because there’s no point in optimizing your videos for maximum engagement and retention if no one watches them.

Let’s look at a couple smart tactics to get your YouTube content in front of your audience:

Use RSS for automated email notifications

Wouldn’t it be great if you could automatically email your fans every time you drop a new YouTube video?

Turns out you can! And it’s all thanks to the wonder of the RSS feed — an XML file containing a list of content updated in real time, with the most recently published content at the top.

Don’t worry if you’re not sure where to start with RSS, because AWeber can do it all for you with our Auto Newsletter feature, available as standard with all AWeber accounts (yep — even with our free plan).

AJ Hoge, an online English teacher with 1.73 million subscribers to his podcast and YouTube channel, used AWeber to boost his YouTube views by creating a signup page…

…and setting up an automated email campaign to contact subscribers with his latest YouTube and podcast episodes every Wednesday:

After promoting the new newsletter to his existing subscribers (and on his YouTube channel), AJ immediately doubled his video views. Nice!

👉 Learn more: How this YouTuber doubled his views using Auto Newsletter in AWeber

Share YouTube videos on social media

Wherever you have an engaged audience, that’s where you should share your new video.

Publish a snippet of the video on Instagram Reels or TikTok. Post about it on LinkedIn and Twitter. Share it with your connections in Facebook groups or Nextdoor.

Encourage the people who know, like, and trust you to watch your video first. This will also help you attract new subscribers who are already searching on YouTube.

Embed videos in popular, relevant blog posts

Got one or more blog posts that regularly bring in a bunch of traffic? Adding your YouTube videos to those articles is a quick and easy way to boost your views.

For instance, at time of writing, this Pianote article ranks at #4 in the US for the term “online piano lessons”. Ahrefs estimates this page is getting 1,400 organic visits a month, so it’s pretty popular:

And what do we see when we first land on the article?

That’s right: an embedded YouTube video about the best ways to learn the piano online:

By adding this video to a popular post, Pianote could be racking up hundreds of additional monthly views.

Boost your YouTube views with AWeber

Want to follow AJ Hoge’s lead and sky-rocket your YouTube views with automatic emails?

You need AWeber!

We make it super simple to email your audience the moment you publish a new video, without adding another task to your to-do list. Here’s how it works:

Use a pre-built sign-up page to capture email addresses from your existing YouTube audience

Build your automated email campaign in just five minutes using our library of templates

Publish your latest video, let the automations take over, and watch your views go through the roof!

See how AWeber helps you generate more YouTube views (without the hard work).

FAQ

What is YouTube SEO?

YouTube SEO is a strategy for improving your YouTube search rankings by optimizing various elements of your video content. The higher your rankings, the more people will see (and, hopefully, watch) your videos.

How does YouTube rank videos?

YouTube uses various ranking factors to determine its search results. These include the keywords you target through video descriptions, tags, and closed captions, as well as engagement metrics like click-through rate, likes, dislikes, and average view durations.

How to rank YouTube videos fast

To improve your YouTube rankings fast, try using the following methods:

Add high-volume, low-competition keywords to your video titles and descriptions

Create custom video thumbnails to boost click-through rates

Optimize your videos with relevant tags and hashtags

Target more keywords by dividing videos into chapters 

Add cards and end screens to increase video engagement

The post YouTube SEO: 10 tactics to rank YouTube videos fast appeared first on AWeber.

Your confirmation email is an important first impression. It sets the tone for your relationship with subscribers and can improve engagement for future emails.

Picture this – you just booked your dream vacation online. But you never received an email confirmation. You may be wondering if your order was processed. Now you have to spend time contacting the travel agency to make sure your vacation was booked. That is not a good experience.

You wouldn’t want to do that to your customers. That’s why you need to set up a good confirmation email.

In this article, you’ll learn:

How to write a confirmation email

How to set up a confirmation email

Types of confirmation emails

8 awesome confirmation email examples

What is a confirmation email?

Why should you send a confirmation email

Difference between confirmation and welcome emails

How to write a confirmation email

At its core, a confirmation email is just that what it sounds like. Its purpose is to “confirm” that you received their information or order. But depending on the type of confirmation email, your email will be structured differently. 

A common element each email should have is a “thank you.” It’s important to let your customers know you appreciate them. This could be included as a headline or in the first sentence.

Here’s how to write the rest of your confirmation emails:

Order confirmation

Your order confirmation email should contain one or two sentences to include a thank you and information about when their order will ship. This could be as simple as “We will send you another email as soon as your order ships.”

See how Cometeer starts off their confirmation emails.

People who place an order online will often save their confirmation email so they can reference it later. So make it easy for them to find the information they may be looking for, which should include:

an order number that can be referenced

a list of what they ordered

a summary of their contact details including the shipping address. 

a link to track their order status 

See the full Cometeer email. This very simple approach is all you need for an order confirmation email.

Booking confirmation

Provide the details of what was booked including:

the name of the person

confirmation number

the date(s) and time if relevant of the reservation

location

any other relevant information

You may also want to consider a message regarding changing their reservation or adding contact information.

Tock at Elske, a restaurant in Chicago, adds a section for their cancellation policy and questions at the bottom of their confirmation emails. 

Registration confirmation

Start your registration confirmation email off with the event name and date. You can also add a convenient “add to calendar” button. This makes it easy for people to add the event to their calendar, increasing the chances they attend the event.

See how VentureBeat structures their webinar confirmation email:

Subscription confirmation

It’s important to have customers verify their email address. It’s essentially having the customer say “yes, I want to receive an email from you,” twice. This helps you improve your delivery rate and get higher email engagement.

Your copy can be as simple as “Please confirm your email address”. And have a call to action with “Confirm your email”. That’s it, no need to overthink this email. More details about you can be provided in your welcome email.

This email from Zencastr leaves no doubt what action they want subscribers to take.

How to set up a confirmation email (in 5 easy steps)

Before you can set up your confirmation email, you’ll need to sign up with an email marketing service provider (ESP), such as AWeber. 

Step 1: Build your confirmation email 

You have two options for building your email – use a drag and drop builder to pull the elements you’d like to include in your emails, or you can begin with a pre-built template. Some email marketing services already have confirmation email templates you can use. 

Here’s what the setup page for AWeber’s confirmation template looks like. 

Step 2: Write your confirmation message

Your confirmation email should be short and direct. The email should also confirm their transaction.

Step 3: Create your confirmation landing page, aka your “thank you page”

Setting up a landing page is an important part of the confirmation email setup. Why? Because it lets people know that their information was received. It establishes a good first impression by thanking them for their order or for signing up to your email list. And it directs people to check their inbox for more information.

AWeber’s free and paid plans let you specify a custom confirmation landing page, or you can use AWeber’s default confirmation page. You specify your confirmation landing page within the signup form settings for the signup form that triggers the page.

Here’s what this looks like within an AWeber account.

Here’s the custom thank you page that you saw the link to in the image above. It’s very simple, but it lets new subscribers know their information was received and what they should do next.

Related: How to create a landing page in 8 steps

Step 4: Set up your confirmation success page

This is the page a new subscriber sees after they’ve confirmed their email. The success page is only needed with an email confirmation.

Here’s an example of what a success page looks like:

Your success page can look however you want it to look. It can be hosted on your website, or you can set it up so people go to your Facebook page or your TikTok profile after their email address is confirmed.

AWeber customers can also personalize their “success page” with each new subscriber’s information (like with the subscribers’ first name for example) or with whatever other information that was requested in the sign up form. 

Step 5: Set up your automation

By automating your email, you can connect with your subscribers immediately and automatically. (Plus, save your time!) And with the correct writing strategies, your emails will be compelling and sound human, instead of robotic.

Types of confirmation emails

There are four main types of email confirmation messages: 

Order confirmation – confirms the transaction of a product or service

Booking confirmation – informs a customer that hotel, flight, and other travel arrangements have been made

Registration confirmation – provides confirmation that customer is registered for upcoming event

Subscription confirmation – also called an opt-in email, requires customers to confirm their email address to complete opt-in process

8 awesome confirmation email examples

1 – Chipotle

Why it’s awesome:

Chipotle’s subscription confirmation email, also known as a confirmed opt-in, explains why subscribers are receiving this message and exactly what they should do. 

2 – AWeber

Why it’s awesome:

In the confirmed opt-in email for our AWeber Blog Newsletter below, we tell subscribers about the benefits of being on our list (free blog posts, courses, and ebooks!). This helps to improve the conversion rate of our confirmed opt-in email.

Once subscribers confirmed their email, it’s time to officially welcome them to your email list.

3 – American Airlines

Why it’s awesome:

American Airlines doesn’t overdo the email with text. They keep it simple by just providing the essential information.

4 – Allbirds

Why it’s awesome:

Feel free to keep your confirmation emails on brand, like Allbird with their unique way to thank “ewe” (clever).

5 – Codeverse

Why it’s awesome:

Your confirmation emails may be saved and referenced at a later time, so include any and all relevant information. Codeverse does this well by including the date, day, time, participant, and location.

6 – BEE

Why it’s awesome:

BEE is clear and upfront – your subscription will not be activated until you confirm your email. This will help make sure a high delivery rate and a more engaged audience.

7 – DoorDash

Why it’s awesome:

DoorDash sets the expectation up front with a countdown timer on when you can expect your order to arrive. They also provide a link to track your order along with a confirmation of what was ordered.

8 – Hipmunk

Why it’s awesome:

If you need more incentive to confirm your email address, Hipmunk includes a list of cool things you can do in your account.

What is a confirmation email?

A confirmation email is a transactional email that is set up to automatically go out to someone who just took a specific action, such as placing an order, subscribing to an email list, or registering for an event.

Why should you send a confirmation email

Sending a confirmation email is an email marketing best practice because it:

Reassures your customers that you received their information.

Gives customers peace of mind that their request was processed.

Establishes confidence and trust with your brand.

Prevents mistyped and fake email addresses from cluttering up your list.

Improves deliverability. Typically, when you send a subscription confirmation email, you require the subscriber to click a link to confirm their email address. This is referred to as a double opt-in, and it can often lead to more emails reaching your subscribers’ inboxes.

Difference between confirmation and welcome emails

A confirmation email is similar to a welcome email, but it serves a different purpose. The graphic below shows when a confirmation email is sent within a subscriber’s onboarding sequence. Welcome emails, as you can see below, happen after a new subscriber is confirmed (or after an order is confirmed if an order has been placed).

For more information about welcome emails, including how to write one, see our blog post, Welcome Email Campaigns: How to Onboard New Subscribers.

Help writing confirmation emails

Need a little help or inspiration figuring out how to write your emails. We’ve got you covered with our Free What to Write Guide. 

Get started with your confirmation emails! Create your FREE account with AWeber today, and change the way you send emails forever.

The post How to write and set up confirmation emails (plus top examples) appeared first on AWeber.

If you’re publishing a regular newsletter but not generating any money from it yet, it may be time to consider monetizing.

Can you generate high profits from a newsletter?

Yes, and probably more than you might imagine.

If you can crack the code on providing irresistible value to your niche audience, the sky’s the limit.

Morning Brew Newsletter was acquired by Business Insider for $75 million.

The Hustle newsletter is valued at an estimated $27 million.

Growth in Reverse newsletter generates $500,000 annually.

Letters from an American newsletter generates $12 million per year.

In this guide, we show you 21 ways to monetize your newsletter. No matter what type of readership niche you serve, you’ll find a way to begin earning money from your newsletter in the list below.

21 Ways to monetize a newsletter

The first step toward monetizing an email newsletter is to develop a captive audience by providing exceptionally valuable content. Once you meet that challenge, you’re ready to think about how you’ll generate income from your newsletter without compromising its quality. 

The monetization strategies below include 21 options to help you decide which path is best for you and your audience.

#1 – Paid subscription newsletters

Paid subscriptions newsletters, or premium subscriptions, are a popular monetization strategy. Successful newsletters typically begin by cultivating an engaged subscriber base, then adding an optional paid version down the line.

For example, Sudhir Khatwani, Director of The Money Mongers, Inc., created a premium paid subscription newsletter after cultivating a loyal subscriber base.

#2 – Sponsored newsletters

Sponsored newsletters involve a business paying you to have your newsletter dedicated to them. 

For example, The Superpath newsletter below opens with the line, “This issue is brought to you by our friends at Moz.”

#3 – Sponsored content

Sponsored content in newsletters is small chunks of content that are integrated within your newsletter. 

When you include sponsored content, it’s important to:

Clearly label it as sponsored content.

Ensure that the rest of the newsletter provides valuable content.

For example, when Matt Little started his Festoon House newsletter, he immediately focused on providing value and creating a loyal audience. 

“I made certain that my newsletters were more than just product promotions and that they also included valuable insights, tips, and even behind-the-scenes information,” Little explained.

Over time, Matt established trust and credibility with his subscribers and now monetizes the newsletter using sponsored content and several other strategies.

#4 – Affiliate advertising

Placing affiliate ads in your newsletter allows you to sell other people’s products and earn a commission on them. Affiliate advertising is a popular way to monetize newsletters. 

If you place affiliate ads in your newsletter, be sure to recommend products relevant to your audience. Additionally, be transparent with your readers about your affiliate relationship.

#5 – Direct sale ads

Direct sale ads are sold by you without going through an affiliate or network. 

If you have the time and sales skills to sell ads directly, you can earn more money and hand-pick advertisers whose products are a good fit for your readers.

For example, one issue of Business Insider’s newsletter includes a highlighted text ad from T-Mobile for Business.

#6 – Referral partnerships and advocacy programs 

Referral partnerships allow you to earn commissions by referring business.

For example, AWeber’s Advocate Program pays up to 50% recurring commission for the life of the subscription.

#7 – Partner networks

Partner networks help you connect with other newsletters for cross-promotion and potential subscriber growth or revenue share.

Sparkloop is a good example of a partner network that allows you to earn revenue by recommending other newsletters to your readers. 

#8 – Advertising networks

Advertising networks connect businesses that want to advertise with newsletter publishers who have space to sell in their newsletters. 

For example, Paved and BuySell Ads Newsletter Network are two popular advertising networks that help businesses monetize their newsletters.

#9 – Classified ads

Classified ads are less costly ads that sell or promote something in one or two lines of text. For example, job listings are a popular form of classified advertising.

Ben’s Bites newsletter features a modern take on the classified ad called “Unclassified ads.” In this example, the ad is one simple line that reads “Outlier Slim Dungarees – do AI’s need pants?” Tapping the link brings you to a full page on Outlier.

#10 – Product sales

Promote your company’s products to your readers, who already trust your knowledge and insights.

In the examples below, the Performing Arts Center and Atlantic Magazine promote their products in newsletters.

Hair and beauty specialist Kate Ross says that her team monetizes its newsletter in several ways, including sharing exclusive deals to boost product sales. 

“We started making money from our newsletter after about six months by sharing exclusive deals, beauty tips, and sponsored posts. 

Our secret? Really useful content that our readers can’t get enough of, like insider hair care advice and sneak peeks at new products.“ – Kate Ross, Hair and Beauty Specialist, Irresistible Me

#11 – Printable products

Creating and selling printable products directly within your newsletter works well if you can create printables that are a perfect fit for your readers.

Products such as planners, artwork, and calendars are popular printable products. 

Wondering what type of printable might be a good fit for your subscriber base? You can find countless successful downloadable product ideas by searching for printable products on Etsy.

For example, Lola Paper Center sells a printable Airbnb Host bundle that includes a welcome book, cleaning checklists, inventory checklist, signs, and more.

#12 – White label digital download products

White label digital products are materials created by someone else that you can resell under your own brand name.

For example, Your Secret Weapon creates “done-for-you” digital products you can resell as many times as you like. It’s an excellent service for coaches, content, and course creators who don’t have the time to build their own products. 

#13 – Digital courses

Creating and developing an in-depth course on a platform like Thinkific, Udemy, or Skillshare, has proven very lucrative for some.

You can promote your course in your newsletter by teasing content from it, sharing insider tips, or even giving your readers a peek behind the scenes when filming your class.

Developing and creating a course can be consuming, but when finished — you have a product that you can resell for years.

#14 – Courses delivered by email

Do you have an Information-based course idea that’s relevant to your audience, packed with valuable training, and doesn’t  require a heavy amount of video, audio or images?

Courses delivered by email are a less common, but often profitable, way to monetize a newsletter.

Embed AWeber how-to create email course (can be monetized):

#15 – Branded merchandise

Connect with your audience on a different level by selling branded merchandise (t-shirts, mugs, etc.) to email subscribers. Some companies also use branded merchandise as an incentive to share their newsletter.

For example, the Morning Brew/Marketing Brew newsletter gives away branded merchandise to subscribers who earn points by sharing its newsletter.

#16 – Events

Host paid webinars or live online events that provide a deep dive into your niche or expertise. 

In the example below, the AMA partners with a local performing arts center for a special event. Its newsletter promotes the $20 tickets.

#17 – Product follow-up sales

Boost your product sales with automated, personalized follow-up campaigns. Segmenting your newsletter allows you to send email nurture campaigns that increase follow-up sales, such as:

Upsell emails 

Cross-sell emails

Abandoned cart emails

Repeat purchase emails

In the example below, FabFitFun sends a special promotional offer aimed at encouraging former customers to reactivate their subscriptions.

#18 – Donations and crowdfunding

Whether you’re looking to fund your next new product or encouraging readers to pitch in and support your efforts, crowdfunding and donations can be an excellent way to finance projects or support your newsletter.

The ARD (Anti-Racism Daily) newsletter includes a donation, sponsor, and referral link in every newsletter.

#19 – Memberships and paid communities

Create exclusive online communities where members pay for access, discussion, mentorship,  or any other features that cater to your audience.

For example, the Creator Science newsletter is free to its 54,000+ subscribers. It operates a paid membership community called “The Lab” for creators. 

The Lab has generated more than $600,000 despite having a small (200-person) membership base.

#20 – Premium archives access

Provide premium access to archived newsletter content to subscribers who pay a fee. 

For example, AWeber’s newsletter hub is an editable collection of your broadcast emails. You can monetize it by charging a premium rate to access it.

#21 – Build and Sell

When you’ve built a large, engaged subscriber audience, it becomes highly valuable to other people in your industry. Selling your newsletter may be a good idea if it’s already generating high profits.

For example, Business Insider acquired the Morning Brew newsletter for $75 million in 2020. At the time, it had 4 million subscribers and generated $20 million per year. 

Morning Brew was started by two college kids who simply wanted to “make business news more enjoyable to read,” according to an interview by CNBC.

Beyond Clicks: Metrics That Matter

Metrics are the golden key to building a high-performing newsletter. 

Checking your metrics regularly will show you which of your emails are a win — and which ones were a flop.

Find out how many people are opening your emails, who’s clicking on the links inside them, whether they’re reading your emails or bouncing away, and much more by following your email marketing metrics.

Open rate lets you know how many people opened your email. 

Click-through-rate (CTR) lets you know if people are engaging with your emails by clicking on the links inside of them (like your CTA).

Conversion rate tells you how many readers completed a goal (such as purchased a product).

Bounce rate shows how many of your sent emails were bounced back due to a non-working email address. 

Delivery rate indicates how many emails were not bounced.

Unsubscribe rate reveals how many people unsubscribed from your newsletter.

Email ROI (return on income) shows how much profit your newsletter generates.

To ensure that your email readership continues to engage and grow, keep a steady eye on your key metrics to understand how well your email marketing campaigns are performing.

How to monetize your email newsletter

In this guide, we’ve covered 21 different ways to monetize an email newsletter. As you’ve seen in the stories above, there are no limits on what you can earn with a newsletter.

In most cases, though, success doesn’t happen overnight. Many people spend years building their subscriber list and cultivating readership. Yet others breeze right in and walk away with incredible profits.

If you’re interested in providing genuine value to your audience through email marketing, AWeber is the place to start. We’ve got everything you need to monetize your emails, including email templates and tutorials, plus product landing pages. Why not sign up for a free account today?

The post How to monetize your newsletter 21 different ways appeared first on AWeber.

Affiliate marketing has grown from a niche pursuit into one of the most popular ways for content creators to monetize their online audience. Indeed, one in three publishers say affiliate marketing is in their top three revenue sources, while one in 10 say it’s their #1 revenue stream.

But you’re not going to make any money as an affiliate if you can’t find an effective way to get your affiliate links in front of as many people as possible.

So what’s the best way to promote affiliate links?

To answer that question, we’re going to round up eight of our favorite promotional strategies, each backed by real-world examples from successful affiliate publishers.

Let’s get into it…

How affiliate links work

Before we start discussing where to post affiliate marketing links, it’s worth explaining how those links actually work.

When you join an affiliate program, your affiliate partner (i.e. the brand whose products or services you’re promoting) allows you to generate your own affiliate links — unique referral links that point toward key pages on the brand’s website.

When someone clicks your affiliate link and buys something, the information in the link proves that you played a key role in the path to purchase. So your affiliate partner will reward you with a commission. Nice!

Here’s a more detailed look at how it all works:

You share an affiliate link with your audience via a blog, email newsletter, social media post, or some other method.

A customer likes what they see and clicks your affiliate link to find out more.

The link takes the customer to your affiliate partner’s website.

Cookie tracking technology shows that the customer clicked one of your affiliate links.

The customer buys something from your affiliate partner.

Your affiliate partner attributes the sale to you and pays you a commission.

How to promote affiliate links

Now that we’ve discussed the theory behind affiliate links, let’s dive into our top strategies for promoting them:

1 – Send email newsletters

Given that email marketing delivers a return of $36 for every $1 spent, sending newsletters is arguably the single best way to promote affiliate links.

The biggest benefit of newsletter marketing is that it gives you total control over who sees your content and when. No relying on search or social media algorithms; you can land in your subscribers’ inboxes whenever you like.

Meanwhile, the only real downside is that it can take a little time to grow your email list. But you can accelerate that process with some smart marketing.

Tips for promoting affiliate links in product reviews

Golf Span is one of many affiliate sites that uses email marketing to promote its affiliate links.

Let’s take a look at some of the tactics they use:

Add a compelling hook to your email capture form to grow your marketing list fast. For instance, Golf Span promises to help people increase their drive distance — a common goal of anyone looking to improve their golf game.

Give people a reason to open your emails by crafting compelling subject lines promising some kind of value. Golf Span often uses its subject lines to promote the savings on offer, without giving away too much information.

No need to send readers to your website; you can add affiliate links within your email newsletters to streamline the path to purchase.

👉 Learn more: 13 Ways to Build Your Email List For Free 

2 – Create an online course

As we explained in our guide on how to be a successful affiliate marketer, there’s one affiliate link promotion strategy that we’d recommend time after time — and it’s surprisingly underutilized.

It involves creating your own online course.

At this point, you’re probably thinking: “How on earth does building a course help me promote affiliate links?”

Here’s the answer:

Start by finding a common pain point your audience is eager to overcome.

Create an online course designed to help people tackle that pain point.

Use the course to recommend specific products and services that relate to your target pain point (e.g. if you’re helping people to promote an online business, you might recommend a marketing tool like AWeber). 

Every time you mention a product or service, add an affiliate link so you get paid for any sales you generate.

Promote your online course far and wide!

This strategy works like a dream because the people who sign up for your course have come to you for answers. When you tell them a specific product can help them resolve their pain point, there’s a good chance they’ll listen.

Tips for promoting affiliate links in an online course

Marketing education brand Legendary Marketer is the absolute master of using a (paid) online course to promote a bunch of affiliate links. Let’s dig under the hood and see how they do it:

Identify a pain point with broad appeal, then build your course around it. For instance, Legendary Marketer has created a course to help people start a profitable online business, which is one of the biggest goals for its audience.

Funnel website visitors toward your course content using prominent CTAs. Even though Legendary Marketer sells a wide range of courses, its homepage CTAs are all about promoting the same course on starting an online business:

Charge a (small) fee for your online course. This step is optional — but if customers are prepared to hand over money for your content, that’s a good sign they trust you. Which, in turn, means they’re more likely to buy your recommended products.

3 – Write product reviews

Product reviews are one of the most effective ways to promote affiliate links.

Why? Because writing product reviews allows you to target audiences who are close to purchasing. 

Someone searching on Google for a term like “Stanley Cup review” is clearly already thinking about buying a Stanley Cup — they’re not reading reviews for fun. So if you can persuade them that a Stanley Cup is worth buying (or point them toward a cheaper and/or better alternative), you’re well on your way to driving affiliate link clicks and sales.

Tips for promoting affiliate links in product reviews

NBC News was one of countless publishers to latch onto the Stanley Cup trend by writing its own product review:

Here are some of the ways they use product review content to share affiliate links:

NBC adds prominent CTAs to product reviews, making it easy for readers to click straight through to the retailer of their choice and make a purchase. Of course, each of those CTAs incorporates an affiliate link: 

Share personal experiences of you actually using the product to demonstrate that your review is worth listening to. For example, NBC’s reviewer shares this scintillating anecdote about how she tested Stanley’s claim that it keeps drinks cold for up to 11 hours:

If you’re recommending a product, make sure you reference specific features and benefits so your words are more meaningful and persuasive, like NBC did here by discussing the Stanley Cup’s various lid positions:

4 – Compare 2+ different products

A twist on the classic product review is to create comparison content that pits two or more products against one another. They typically target users searching for phrases like “{product A} vs {product B}”.

These articles are aimed at people a little higher up the buyer funnel than a traditional product review, because the customer hasn’t yet singled out a single product.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because comparison articles allow you to recommend multiple products at the same time, potentially helping you convert a broader audience than with a product review.

Tips for promoting affiliate links in comparison articles

Stock Photo Secrets publishes a ton of affiliate content, much of which helps people choose the right graphic design tools for their needs. Just like this comparison piece that pitches Canva against Figma:

Here are some of the ways they use comparison content to promote affiliate links:

Explain who should use each product. This tactic is especially effective if you’re comparing products with slightly different value propositions, features, and audiences.

Comparison articles aren’t the place for in-depth reviews of the products you’re analyzing, so be sure to add links to supplementary content so readers can find out more about their preferred option:

What if the products you’re comparing aren’t a great fit for every potential buyer? In that case, be sure to recommend some relevant alternative products (and, if possible, add links to your reviews of those alternatives).

5 – Create buying guides

Whereas product reviews are all about sharing links to one specific product and comparison pieces tend to focus on 2-3 different options, buying guides give you the opportunity to link to multiple products within a specific category or use case.

Buying guides fall into two main categories:

Buying guide typePurposeExampleBest {product type}Target a broad audienceBest gaming chairBest {product type} for {use case/pain point}Reach a niche audience showing high buying intentBest gaming chair for back pain

As with any type of marketing content, focusing on a more niche target audience reduces your traffic potential. But anyone who does find your content is likely to be more qualified — and, therefore, more likely to buy.

Tips for promoting affiliate links in buying guides

PC Gamer regularly writes articles rounding up the best gaming peripherals, accessories, hardware and software in specific categories, like this one on the best gaming chairs of 2024…

Let’s break down some of the link promotion methods they use within buying guides:

The more your content speaks to specific audience pain points, the more readers will click your affiliate links (and hopefully buy something). So be sure to explain who should (and shouldn’t) buy each product, like PC Gamer does here:

Give users an at-a-glance view of your product picks — because not everyone wants to wade through thousands of words to reach a buying decision. PC Gamer does this by adding a brief synopsis of each product at the top of its buying guides (plus CTAs to buy the products on various e-commerce sites and marketplaces):

Let readers know why they should trust your product recommendations. To do this, you need to demonstrate your subject-matter expertise, like PC Gamer editor Jacob Ridley does here:

6 – Add affiliate links to YouTube captions

All the methods we’ve shared so far require you to have some sort of central “hub” (AKA a website or blog) to reach your audience.

But what if you want to know how to promote affiliate links without a website?

Of all the available options, we reckon your best bet is to start a YouTube channel. 

While most people think of it as a streaming platform and/or social media site, YouTube is also the world’s second largest search engine, with 2.5+ billion logged-in users accessing it every month. In other words, YouTube effectively gives you two different ways to reach your audience:

Through algorithmically generated content recommendations

By targeting the types of keywords people search for on YouTube

Tips for promoting affiliate links on YouTube

When it comes to leveraging the power of YouTube for promoting affiliate links, Garage Gym Reviews is up there with the very best. It’s built a community of 500,000+ followers on YouTube, and most of its content incorporates affiliate links within the video descriptions:

Here are some of the tactics they use to promote affiliate links on YouTube:

Perform YouTube keyword research to find the types of terms your audience are searching for. You can do this by entering a seed keyword (like “home gym”) in a YouTube-specific keyword tool like TubeRanker.

Showcase products in a way that resonates with your target audience. For instance, Garage Gym Reviews is specifically targeting people who want to build or improve a home gym, so it always demonstrates products in use in a household setting rather than a professional gym.

Add CTAs to subscribe to your YouTube channel and follow you on other social platforms at the end of your videos. The more often people see your content, the more likely they are to click your affiliate links!

7 – Share affiliate links on Pinterest

You might be surprised at the social media platforms we have (and haven’t) included in this article.

Sure, YouTube’s a huge deal. But why Pinterest? And why no Instagram or TikTok?

Well, firstly, Insta and TikTok didn’t make the grade because they make it too difficult to share affiliate links, with no links allowed in post descriptions or comments. 

And then there’s the fact that, while Pinterest certainly isn’t the biggest social network, it has excellent organic reach and comparatively low competition in many affiliate niches. Not only that, but almost half of weekly Pinterest users have discovered a new brand or product on the platform, so it’s also a popular source of shopping inspiration.

Tips for promoting affiliate links on Pinterest

Lantern Lane Designs generates almost five million monthly views on Pinterest. They put all that visibility to good use by linking from their Pinterest posts to affiliate content on their website:

Here are some of the affiliate link promotion tactics they use:

Like YouTube, Pinterest is part social media site and part search engine, so take the time to seek out relevant keywords using the platform’s autocomplete functionality, then add those terms to your post titles and descriptions.

While we generally recommend keeping the path to conversion as short and sweet as possible, Lantern Lane Designs adds links to blog posts rather than linking directly to affiliate products. This approach might lead to fewer initial conversions, but it also makes it easier to build a trusted brand — and higher trust leads to more sales down the line.

Don’t be afraid to promote the same content more than once. Sure, you can’t try to game the system by creating lots of Pinterest accounts, but you can absolutely create several pins to steer people toward a single blog post.

8 – Include affiliate links in podcast show notes

Podcast listenership has sky-rocketed in recent years, with 42% of Americans now listening to at least one podcast per month — triple the figure from a decade earlier.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: podcasts are, first and foremost, an audio medium. Which means they’re not the most obvious choice for sharing affiliate links. However, plenty of affiliates are seeing success by adding links to their podcast show notes. 

While this approach is unlikely to convert many (or any) people who just happen to stumble across your show notes, it’s a highly effective way to drive sales from existing podcast listeners. And the added benefit is that these people actively choose to listen to your content, which suggests they’re at least somewhat likely to respect your product recommendations.

Tips for promoting affiliate links in podcast notes

Sahara Rose, host of the Highest Self Podcast, often uses the show’s notes section to share relevant affiliate links and discount codes:

Here are some of the promotional strategies she uses:

Tell listeners that you’ll be adding product links to the show notes so they know where to look. You don’t necessarily have to explain that they’re affiliate links within the podcast, but you should definitely disclose it in the show notes.

Create a “resources” section within your show notes and use it to steer people toward your affiliate links (plus any other useful content you want to link to).

Share your latest episode on social media to get more ears and eyes on your podcast and show notes. Choose the most relevant platform(s) for your audience — for instance, Sahara Rose links to her latest podcast episode in her Instagram bio:

Get more eyes on your affiliate links with AWeber

We’ve shared eight different strategies for promoting affiliate links in this article.

But in reality, if you’re going to succeed as an affiliate marketer, you’ll likely have to combine several (or perhaps even all) of those strategies. Because you don’t want to rely on a single channel to generate all your traffic, clicks, and sales.

All of which means that you’ll definitely need an email marketing tool in your corner — and AWeber is hard to beat.

With our huge library of templates, our intuitive drag-and-drop email builder, and our AI writing assistant, we make it super simple to craft high-converting newsletters to house your affiliate links.

See for yourself by signing up for your free AWeber account today!

And when you’ve seen how great we are, why not get paid for recommending us to your audience by joining the AWeber affiliate program?

The post The 8 best ways to promote affiliate links in 2024 appeared first on AWeber.

Handmade products are big money, with the North American handicrafts market expected to be worth an astonishing $744.1 billion by 2032.

If you want to claim your slice of that delicious (homemade) pie, you need to choose the right ecommerce platform for your needs. One that’s:

Easy to use

Affordable

Trustworthy

Etsy has long been the go-to choice for selling handmade items. But in recent years, the platform has been beset by negative headlines over decisions to increase transaction fees and withhold sellers’ money…

…prompting many merchants to seek out alternatives to selling on Etsy.

To help you out, we’ve rounded up 13 of the best Etsy alternatives, from household names like Amazon and Shopify to lesser-known platforms like Finnalby and Art in the Heart.

Let’s get into it…

Finnalby

Who are they?

Finnalby is one of the newest kids on the handmade items block, having launched in September 2023. Billed as an independent marketplace for artisans and independent retailers, it specializes in handicrafts, wholesale products, online courses, and tutorials.

👍 Pros

Finnalby vets all products listed as “Strictly Handmade” to ensure authenticity, meaning you won’t be competing with cut-price bulk manufacturers.

As well as selling handmade items, you can make money from online courses and tutorials. Plus you can sell the products required to participate in your classes, giving you the potential to generate multiple sales from the same customer.

The platform offers a simple and affordable fee structure, charging a flat 5.5% commission on all sales.

👎 Cons

Finnalby is currently only available in the US, so if you (or your audience) are based elsewhere, you’ll need to look for different Etsy alternatives.

The platform is still relatively unknown; at time of writing, the term “Finnalby” only generated 90 global searches a month on Google, per Ahrefs. So you shouldn’t expect much passing traffic.

Its lack of brand awareness may put off potential customers who haven’t heard of the platform.

What do merchants say about them?

Unfortunately, we can’t tell you — they’re so new we couldn’t find any reviews!

Fees

Finnalby charges a flat 5.5% per sale commission, with no listing fees or monthly fees.

Shopify

Who are they?

Shopify is one of the world’s biggest ecommerce platforms, with Shopify merchants generating combined sales of $235.9 billion in 2023. Unlike marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy, Shopify gives you the tools to build and manage your own dedicated online store, with the flexibility to sell pretty much anything you want.

👍 Pros

Shopify lets you build your own handmade items store from scratch, giving you total control over your branding, products, and pricing.

Because you’re running an independent store, you’re not competing with hundreds (or thousands) of other merchants on the same platform.

With thousands of apps and hundreds of themes to choose from, Shopify lets you customize your store to your specific needs.

Shopify’s prebuilt themes allow you to launch and customize your store without requiring any coding skills.

👎 Cons

Building and maintaining an online store is more expensive than running an Etsy store.

Setting up an attractive, high-converting store can take days or weeks of work.

What do merchants say about them?

“Easy to set up, easy to use. Many integrated products to help me get things done. Easy-to-use integrated apps. Customer support is very good. I use it every day.”

– Jim E., G2 customer reviewer

Fees

Shopify charges a subscription of $9 – $2,300+ per month, depending on the features you require. It also has an online credit card processing fee, which varies depending on your price plan and location (e.g. merchants in the US pay 2.4% – 2.9%, plus $0.30 per transaction).

Artisans Cooperative

Who are they?

If you’re looking for alternatives to Etsy that are 100% dedicated to handmade items, Artisans Cooperative could be for you. The marketplace has a human-driven verification process to ensure all products are made by genuine artisans, so you won’t be competing with bulk producers. This helps merchants charge a fair price for their goods.

👍 Pros

All applications made through Artisans Cooperative’s voluntary verification process are manually checked by two human reviewers, so customers can be sure the products they’re buying are made by genuine artisans.

Merchants can access extensive marketing and promotional support, including a branding kit, marketing plan, and social media toolkit.

👎 Cons

The platform is still relatively unknown, with only a few hundred followers on Facebook and Instagram, and minimal search volume for its brand name.

Membership costs and transaction fees are higher than most other marketplaces.

What do merchants say about them?

“I love that my handmade work has a place among a community of other authentically handmade artisan products. I really appreciate that Artisans Cooperative puts its artisans first. And it’s exactly the marketplace I want to do my shopping in, too.”

– Artisan member

Fees

Artisans Cooperative charges sales commissions of 8% – 12%, depending on your membership level. To unlock the most attractive rates (and various other benefits), you’ll have to pay a buy-in fee of $100 – $1,000.

DeviantArt

Who are they?

DeviantArt is part-marketplace, part-social network, but wholly dedicated to showcasing artworks from independent creatives. Members upload tens of thousands of original pieces every day, from paintings to digital art to sculpture to films. The platform has 90+ million registered members and hosts over 550 million artworks.

👍 Pros

Sellers can tap into a huge, engaged community of art enthusiasts.

Membership and transaction fees are comparatively low, especially for original commissions.

Setting up a seller profile is quick and easy.

Groups and forums give you an easy way to engage with other members of the art community, get tips, and promote your work.

👎 Cons

With so many creatives using the platform, it can be hard to stand out.

The site has seen a significant dropoff in popularity in recent years:

What do merchants say about them?

“DeviantArt is great! The layout is user friendly, the community is great and I have had an account on there for a few years now.”

– Aron, Trustpilot reviewer

Fees

DeviantArt charges a membership fee of $7.95 – $14.95 per month (although it often offers discounted rates on these prices). Transaction fees range from 0% – 20% per sale, depending on your membership tier and the product type you’re selling.

Handmade

Who are they?

Handmade is another marketplace specializing in handcrafted items, from fashion to home decor to jewelry. All sellers on the platform must take Handmade’s ethical pledge, under which they commit to take care of the environment, do business in a responsible way, and respect other artisans’ intellectual property.

👍 Pros

Handmade has a large audience, with customers in 100+ countries.

New sellers get free platform fees for the first 12 months and can list their first 50 products free of charge.

Active merchants can invite up to five other sellers, then earn bonuses on the sales they generate, giving you a whole other revenue stream.

Handmade is owned by Novica, which has partnerships with big global brands and organizations like the National Geographic Society and the Grassroots Business Fund.

👎 Cons

The transaction and credit card fees are more expensive than some other marketplaces.

What do merchants say about them?

“Thank you for the confidence and perseverance in being part of our growth process. You have shown us a new market with many opportunities to continue growing and showing the traditions that define us.”

– Delfina Ruiz, weaver and Handmade merchant

Fees

After the first year, Handmade charges a flat monthly fee of $3, while standard listing fees are $0.15 per item. Merchants also have to pay transaction fees of 9.9% plus $1.95 per sale, as well as credit card fees of 3% plus $0.49.

Amazon Marketplace

Who are they?

Let’s be honest: you know what Amazon is. Marketplace is the platform’s service for third-party sellers, allowing them to generate sales by reaching Amazon’s huge customer base. Shoppers on Amazon buy approximately 7,400 products a minute from sellers in the US.

👍 Pros

Amazon is one of the world’s most trusted ecommerce platforms. If someone finds your products on the platform, they can feel pretty confident they won’t get ripped off or have their card details stolen.

Tap into a global audience of 310+ million active customers.

You can start listing products on Amazon in a matter of minutes.

Take advantage of additional services like Fulfillment by Amazon.

👎 Cons

Competition from other sellers is huge, making it tough for your products to stand out.

Depending on the types of handmade items you’re selling, Amazon’s referral fees can eat up as much as 45% of your earnings.

What do merchants say about them?

“When we launched on Amazon, I had expectations that Amazon would be about 10% to 20% of our total business. Within the first six months, it was 50%. It just exploded. And it really changed the way I thought about the future of our business.”

– Dee Murthy, Co-Founder, New Republic

Fees

Amazon has two seller plans: 

Individual: $0.99 per item sold

Professional: $39.99 per month

You’ll pay referral fees of up to 45% per sale, depending on the product category. Plus there’s an extra cost for services like Amazon Ads and Fulfillment by Amazon, and additional fees for merchants with high listings volumes.

My Community Made

Who are they?

My Community Made (MCM) isn’t specifically dedicated to handmade items, but it is focused on supporting small businesses. Merchants on the platform sell everything from personalized gifts to vintage treasures to unique artworks across a wide range of categories, including fashion, jewelry, and interior design. All products on the marketplace are made in the US.

👍 Pros

Probably the cheapest of all the alternatives to selling on Etsy.

The MCM team ensures all products on the site are handmade, self-designed, or vintage — so you won’t be competing with bulk producers or dropshippers.

Sellers can add keywords to their product metadata to stand out in search results on the platform.

Customers can follow your store and get updates when you add new products, increasing your chances of driving repeat sales.

👎 Cons

Lacks the brand awareness of larger platforms like Amazon and Etsy.

Only for products made or designed in the US.

Upper limit of 50 product listings at a time limits scalability.

What do merchants say about them?

“I started selling on My Community Made early last year. I also have an Etsy shop. MCM is by far more user-friendly, and the fees, if any, are reasonable. I don’t feel lost on this platform as I do on Etsy. Vendor support is beyond amazing. There is always a quick response and a solution to any problem, even if you’re not that techy.”

– V. Chin, Trustpilot customer review

Fees

My Community Made doesn’t charge any transaction fees. You can list up to five items at a time with a totally free account, or upgrade to the Basic Package for $5 per month to list 10 times more products.

IndieMade

Who are they?

IndieMade launched in 2010 with the vision of providing creators with a user-friendly web presence to promote their products. Unlike platforms like Etsy and Amazon, IndieMade isn’t a marketplace. Instead, it’s an independent website builder that allows merchants to create their own online space.

👍 Pros

Use IndieMade to create your own, unique website, with full control over your store’s appearance and marketing.

Simple fee structure; you only pay for the features you need, with zero transaction fees.

If you already sell on Etsy, you can create a store through IndieMade and list your Etsy products in minutes.

👎 Cons

You’ll have to build your own audience rather than targeting visitors to an existing marketplace.

Far fewer themes and apps than other ecommerce website builders (like Shopify).

What do merchants say about them?

“I just can’t believe how great my experience has been. I have used Weebly, HostMonster, and HostGator — NO one has support like you guys do. I wish I had been with you 5 years ago! I’m sure my business would be much bigger if I had. I LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH! I have NEVER had such great tech support, EVER! IndieMade rocks.”

– Sierra, Dakotadesigns

Fees

IndieMade’s paid plans range in price from $4.95 – $19.95 per month.

Art in the Heart

Who are they?

Art in the Heart is a UK-based platform that supports merchants selling handcrafted gifts, artworks, and other unique items. It started out as a physical store, before transitioning into an online marketplace in 2018.

👍 Pros

Art in the Heart allows you to import your existing Etsy products to your new storefront.

The platform doesn’t have any monthly platform charges or listing fees.

Create a unique storefront with its own online address and leverage the easy-to-use seller dashboard to track sales.

👎 Cons

Art in the Heart takes 25% of every sale you generate.

It doesn’t have a ton of brand awareness (especially outside the UK), so you can’t rely solely on the platform’s own traffic.

What do merchants say about them?

“I am very proud to be a seller on the Art in the Heart online store. It is a truly unique eclectic mix of stores brought together by the inspiring CEO Dawn Birch-James. In a world full of stores that stock the same mundane work, Art in the Heart is a breath of fresh air.”

– Susie Lidstone, fine artist and Art in the Heart merchant

Fees

Art in the Heart doesn’t have monthly or per-listing fees — but it does charge a 25% commission on your sales, which is pretty steep.

Goimagine

Who are they?

Goimagine is a marketplace for US-based artisans to promote and sell handmade items, including physical products and digital c/reations like graphics and photography. As well as supporting independent creators, the platform is committed to social good, donating 100% of profits to children’s charities like Horizons for Homeless Children and Relief Nursery.

👍 Pros

Goimagine’s commitment to donating all profits to charity appeals to ethically conscious consumers.

The marketplace runs its own Maker Business Academy, offering tips to help makers sell online, build a brand, and achieve their growth targets.

Goimagine has better brand awareness than most independent Etsy alternatives, helping merchants reach a wider audience.

👎 Cons

Only for merchants who reside and make products in the US.

The guidelines on what constitutes a “handmade product” are pretty strict, which may exclude some potential merchants.

What do merchants say about them?

“I am a buyer/seller on goimagine, I love the fast responses from real people when I have a question. It’s easy to use and I am happy to be on a platform that donates profits to children’s charities.”

– Stephanie Stone, Trustpilot reviewer

Fees

Goimagine charges a monthly fee of $2.50 – $10, depending on the number of products you want to list and the platform features you want to use. It also has a 5% transaction fee and a payment processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30.

Making App

Who are they?

Making App is an Android and iOS app that allows individual creators to host and sell their own digital patterns and projects. However, the platform has plans to expand into additional online spaces and new product categories going forward.

👍 Pros

Tap into a ready-made community of 22,000+ members.

👎 Cons

Currently only for makers creating and selling digital patterns and projects.

You can only sell to people who download the app on Android or iOS.

What do merchants say about them?

“As a new-ish knitter, Making puts inspiration, project tracking and connecting with a knowledgeable and friendly community in the palm of my hand––can’t imagine creating without it!”

– MKE Maker, Making App merchant

Fees

Making App charges 8% per transaction. You’ll also have to pay Stripe’s payment processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction and 0.25% plus $0.25 per payout (although these fees will be waived for sellers who make <$50).

iCraft

Who are they?

iCraft is a Toronto-based platform for artists, craftspeople, and designers who create handmade, one-of-a-kind art, crafts, and fashion products. Merchants can use iCraft to showcase their ready-made products and accept commissions for custom orders.

👍 Pros

iCraft’s niche focus and commitment to handmade creators means you aren’t competing with bulk sellers.

The platform regularly promotes sellers through its “In the Spotlight” blog and monthly newsletters.

Sell your products to an engaged audience; iCraft attracts ~200,000 visitors a month, with an average visit time of four minutes.

👎 Cons

Requires a non-refundable upfront fee to join the platform.

The platform looks a little dated, which might put off some potential customers.

What do merchants say about them?

“I have found that my jewelry receives many more views on iCraft than on any other venues! Being a venue only for handmade, the shopping traffic that comes to iCraft is only looking for quality handmade goods and they are sure to find unique crafted items.”

– Linda, AKA GalleriaLinda, iCraft merchant

Fees

iCraft charges platform fees of $10 – $15 per month, depending on the length of your contract, plus a one-off upfront payment of $25. It doesn’t charge any other hidden fees.

Big Cartel

Who are they?

Big Cartel gives creators the tools to build their own sites selling T-shirts, art, merchandise, prints, and more. Launched in 2005, the platform has supported over three million stores and generated $2.5+ billion in global sales.

👍 Pros

Get started fast with a free Big Cartel template or code your own unique online store from scratch.

Choose from three simple plans, including a generous free-for-life plan.

Integrate with hundreds of third-party ecommerce apps, covering everything from marketing to store management to fulfillment.

👎 Cons

Offers fewer website templates and less customization than Shopify (although all its templates are free).

Limited scalability, with an upper limit of 500 product listings per store.

What do merchants say about them?

“What I love about selling my jewelry through Big Cartel is how easy each step, from designing my store front to listing products and managing orders, has been and continues to be. It takes all the hassle out of it, so I can spend more time doing the thing I like the most — making jewelry.”

– Anarres Metal, jewelry maker and Big Cartel merchant

Fees

Big Cartel doesn’t take a cut of any sales you generate. Instead, it offers a free-for-life plan that allows you to list up to five products, while its paid plans range in price from $15 – $30 per month (or less if you pay annually).

Turbocharge your ecommerce growth with AWeber

As you can see, there’s no shortage of alternatives to selling on Etsy.

But whichever you choose, one thing’s clear: you need a reliable way to reach and engage your audience so you can keep driving traffic and sales.

In short, you need AWeber. 

Our simple-yet-sophisticated marketing solutions let you build automated email campaigns quickly and easily using our stylish templates and intuitive drag-and-drop builder.

But don’t take our word for it — see for yourself by signing up for your free AWeber account today!

The post 13 best Etsy alternatives for selling handmade items appeared first on AWeber.