How to Start Your Own Podcast (Step by Step)

Are you looking to start a podcast? Want to know what does a perfect podcasting setup look like? In this guide, we will show you how to start your own podcast with WordPress – step by step. You will learn about how podcasts work, the best podcast equipments, the podcast WordPress plugin that you absolutely need, and more.

No matter your age or technical skill set, you can easily start your own podcast by following the step by step process outlined in this article.

Here is an outline of everything that we will cover:

• What is podcasting & how podcasts work?


• Things you need to setup your podcast


• Choosing the best web hosting and domain name


• Setting up a media hosting service


• Choosing the proper podcasting equipment


• Recording your first podcast


• Publishing your podcast with WordPress


• Uploading your media files to Blubrry


• Setting up Smart Podcast Player Plugin


• Adding your first podcast in WordPress


• Previewing your podcast with iTunes


• Submitting your podcast to iTunes


• Podcasting resources to help you grow

Ready? Let's get started.

What is Podcasting & How Podcasts Work?

A podcast is an episodic series of audio files which users can subscribe to download and listen.

In order for your podcast to work, you need to have an audio file and a RSS Feed that users can subscribe to stay updated and download new episodes when they come out.

Because WordPress comes with a built-in RSS feed system for blogs, many podcasters choose to use WordPress as their podcast website platform.

You can connect your podcast website with podcasting apps like iTunes to make it easier for millions of users to listen and subscribe. We will cover this later in the article.

Now that you know what is a podcast and how it works, let's take a look at how to setup a podcast.

Things You Need to Setup Your Podcast

For a professional podcasting setup there are few things that you will need to get started.

The first thing is a website or blog where people can find more about you and your podcast.

The second thing is the equipments to record your podcast.

Lastly, you need to have the right tools to publish your podcast on the internet, so you can get maximum subscribers and reach.

We will walk you through the whole process step-by-step.

Step 1. Website Setup: WordPress Hosting and Domain Name

The most important step in building a website is to choose the right platform. Thankfully you're here, so you won't be making any rookie mistakes.

We recommend using WordPress.org also known as self-hosted WordPress for setting up your podcasting website.

WordPress is free to use, you can install plugins, customize your site design, and most importantly make money from your site without any restrictions (see the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

We have already explained why WordPress is free? in our previous article.

There's no catch. It's free because you have to do the setup and host it yourself.

In other words, you need a domain name and web hosting.

A domain name is your website's address on the internet. This is what people type to get to your website. For example: google.com or wpbeginner.com.

Web hosting is your website's house on the internet. This is where all your files and images are stored. Every website needs web hosting.

The typical cost of web hosting is $7.99 per month and a domain name usually cost around $14.99 per year.

This is a lot for someone just starting out. Thankfully, Bluehost, has agreed to offer our users a free domain name and over 60% off on web hosting.

In real numbers, this mean you can start your podcasting website for $2.95 per month.

→ Click here to Claim this Exclusive Bluehost offer ←

We recommend using Bluehost because they are one of the official WordPress recommended hosting providers, and one of the largest web hosting service in the world.

After signing up with Bluehost, please refer to our step by step guide on how to start a WordPress blog. You will be up and running in no time.

For more hosting recommendations, see our guide on how to choose the best WordPress hosting.

If you choose a different hosting company than Bluehost, then you can follow the instructions in our complete step by step WordPress installation tutorial to get started.

Step 2. Setting up a Media Hosting Service

The next thing you will need is a good media hosting service. Your podcasts are large audio files.

Serving these large files from your web host will consume a lot of server resources. This will make your website slow and often unresponsive.

For best user experience, we recommend that you use a podcast specific media hosting platform like Blubrry.

Most smart podcasters use a separate podcast hosting service to serve their podcast files. It is the smartest and most efficient way to run a podcast.

Here are few reasons why we recommend Blubrry:

• Blubrry is optimized for podcasting using WordPress. They offer a powerful plugin called Blubrry PowerPress which makes it easy to manage your podcast from WordPress site.


• It comes with the a large user community consisting many successful podcasters behind it. If you need help, then join the forums to learn from others who are podcasting for a long time.


• Blubrry comes with great tools like ID3 tagging, iTunes optimization, automatic media artwork management, etc.


• They have a top-tier content delivery network which makes your content delivery faster and more reliable.

Step 3. Choosing Proper Podcasting Equipment

As your podcast grows, you will learn about new tools that you can use to produce higher quality podcasts. However as a beginner, the most important tool that you need is a good microphone.

Please do not use your computer's built-in microphone to record your podcast. Your users will instantly notice the terrible sound quality.

There are 3 popular mic choices among podcasters.

Samson C01U (USB) – Entry level Microphone

Rode Podcaster (USB) – Best USB mic that we found. We use it for our WPBeginner videos as well as our List25 Youtube videos.

Heil PR-40 (XLR connection, not USB) – This is what the Pro's use. You will need to buy an audio mixer as well.

Other equipment that you probably want to purchase: mic arm, shock mount, and a pop filter. We purchased the Rode Podcaster kit that came with a Mic Arm and shock mount.

You would also need a decent headphone. We're using Sony MDR7506.

Once you have the right podcasting equipment, you will be ready for the next step: recording your podcast.

Step 4. Recording Your First Podcast

To record your podcast, you will need an audio recording software. This software will help you record and edit your audio files.

The best podcast recording software which is used by most podcasters is Audacity. It is a free, cross-platform, and open source software capable of recording studio-quality professional podcasts.

After installing Audacity, you need to open it up and create a new project from the File menu.

To record your voice, simply click on the record button.

Now feel free to record your podcast. Don't worry about awkward pauses, breaks, coughing, or any glitches you might make while narrating.

You can edit the recording as many times as you want.

You can also import music files from File » Import and set them as background music.

Audacity is a very powerful tool, and it is not possible for us to even cover its basic features in this article. However, TeamAudacity has an extensive Wiki with detailed tutorials specifically written for new podcasters.

We will recommend you to go through these tutorials. It will take you some time to become familiar with the software, but it's totally worth your time and effort.

Once you have recorded your podcast, you need to export it.

Most podcasters export their audio files in MP3 format because it creates smaller file sizes with good quality.

You also need to be smart about naming your podcast files. Remember podcasts are episodic series, so it would be best to use a naming practise that uses episode or serial number in the file name.

Some suggestions would be WPB001.mp3 or WPBep001.mp3.

Save the final version of your podcast file to a separate folder on your computer.

Step 5. Publishing Your Podcast with WordPress

After you have created a few episodes, and you are satisfied with their quality, it's time to learn how to publish your podcast with WordPress.

You will need to login to the admin area of your WordPress site.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Blubrry PowerPress Podcasting plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you will see a PowerPress menu item in WordPress admin menu. Clicking on it will take you to plugin's settings page.

If you are using Blubrry to host your podcasting files, then you need to click on the button to configure Blubrry statistics and hosting services.

Clicking on the button will bring up a popup where you need to enter your Blubrry hosting account email and password.

Next, you will need to fill out rest of the information on the settings page. Provide a title for your podcast and fill out iTunes fields.

These iTunes fields for description, category, subtitle, artwork, etc will be used in your podcast's RSS feed, and iTunes will use them to place your podcast in their directory (more on this later).

Don't forget to click on the 'Save Changes' button to store your settings.

Your WordPress site is now ready to publish your podcast.

Step 6. Upload Media Files to Blubrry

Before you publish your podcast with WordPress, you first need to upload the podcast file to your media hosting service, Blubrry.

You need to login to your Blubrry hosting account and then click on Podcaster dashboard.

Next, you need to click on 'Upload New Media Files' link under podcast hosting section.

This will bring you to another page where you need to click on the Upload New Media button and start uploading your podcast files.

After you have uploaded your podcast media files, you will be able to use them on your WordPress site.

Step 7. Setting Up Smart Podcast Player

Most podcasters use WordPress plugins to display a podcast player on their website. This player allows users to listen to a podcast directly from your website.

The problem with most WordPress podcast player plugins is terrible user experience for your subscribers and listeners.

Patt Flynn, one of the well-known podcaster, realized the problem and decided to solve it by creating a solution for his website. That's how Smart Podcast Player came to life.

Smart Podcast Player adds a beautifully built podcast player which allows users to play, share, and download podcast episodes from the player itself.

It is mobile-ready out of the box which means your podcast player looks and works great on all devices.

It is a paid WordPress plugin and pricing starts from $8 per month. This price entitles you to premium support and access to tutorials and videos.

First, you will need to install and activate the Smart Podcast Player plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » Smart Podcast Player page and enter your license key.

You can get this license key from your account on Smart Podcast Player website.

Next, you need to click on the 'Player Defaults' tab to setup plugin settings.

You will need to provide your podcast feed URL. Since you are using PowerPress, your podcast feed URL will be like this:

http://example.com/feed/podcast/

Don't forget to replace example.com with your own domain name.

Next, you need to provide your iTunes subscription link. Since you haven't submitted your podcast to iTunes yet, you will need to come back here and fill this when your podcast is available on iTunes.

After that you need to enter your show name and artist name.

Smart Podcast Player comes with beautiful design options and allows you to match your podcast player with your WordPress theme. Under player design settings, you can choose theme and color for your podcast player.

Don't forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.

Now that Smart Podcast Player is ready, you need to disable the podcast player that comes with PowerPress.

Since you are using Smart Podcast Player, you don't need PowerPress to add a media player into your posts.

You can do this by visiting PowerPress » Settings page and scroll down to the 'Blog posts and pages' section. Click on 'Disable' under 'Display Media & Links' option.

Don't forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.

Step 8. Adding Your First Podcast in WordPress

Everything is now in order, and you are ready to add your first podcast in WordPress.

To publish your first podcast, you need to go to Posts » Add New page.

It is highly recommended that you create a separate category for your podcast episodes. This will allow you to keep your podcast episodes separate from rest of your content. You will also be able to easily publicize your podcast feed later on.

After that you need scroll down to the bottom of the page, and there you will see 'Podcast Episode' box.

Blubrry hosting users need to click on the folder icon and select the file they uploaded to Blubrry media.

Other users need to paste their media file URL in here. Click the verify button to make sure that your have pasted the correct URL.

Now you need to scroll back up to the post editor section. Give your blog post a suitable title and add description of this podcast episode in the visual editor.

You will notice two buttons in the visual editor labeled SPP and STP. These buttons are added by Smart Podcast Player plugin.

The SPP button allows you to add the full Smart Podcast Player which contains all your podcast episodes. Users can play them one by one.

However, since you are creating a blog post for a specific podcast episode, you need to click on the STP or Smart Track Player button.

Select 'Play a specific episode of your podcast' and then provide the URL of the Media file you want to be played.

You can get the URL of the media file from 'Podcast Episode' meta box where you just added the episode.

After adding the media file URL, click on the build shortcode button.

You will see a shortcode appear in the post editor area.

That's all, you can now publish and preview your blog post and you will see your podcast episode live with a beautiful player.

Congratulations, your WordPress podcasting site is ready to go live.

Step 9. Previewing Your Podcast with iTunes

Now that you have set up your podcast website with WordPress, it is time to submit it to iTunes and getting more subscribers.

Before submitting it to iTunes, you might want to check how your podcast will look in iTunes. To do this, launch iTunes and go to File » Subscribe to Podcast and enter your feed URL. Your feed url will look like:

http://www.example.com/feed/podcast

Don't forget to replace example.com with your own domain name.

Once you enter the URL in iTunes, it will fetch the feed and display it. As you can see in the screenshot below, it fetched the artwork, description, subtitle, etc.

If everything looks good, this means you are ready to submit your podcast to iTunes.

Step 10. Submitting your Podcast to iTunes

To submit your podcast to iTunes, you need to download and install the latest version of iTunes on your computer. Next, Launch the iTunes and click on the iTunes Store button on the top right corner of the screen.

iTunes will now access iTunes Store. Click on the Podcasts menu, and then scroll a little to find the Podcasts Quick Links section. There you will see a link to Submit a podcast.

This will open the Podcast submit process. You will need an Apple ID to submit your podcast to iTunes directory. If you are not already signed in, iTunes will prompt you to login.

The first thing you will need is your podcast feed URL. Your podcast feed URL will be like this:

http://example.com/feed/podcast

Don't forget to replace example.com with your own domain name.

Since you are using PowerPress, your feed will already include tags required by iTunes Store for podcasts.

Upon submission, your podcast feed will be submitted to iTunes review queue. After approval by iTunes review staff, it will be added to iTunes directory, and you will be notified via email.

Podcasting Resources to Help You Grow

Congratulations on starting your podcast with WordPress. If you want to make your Podcast successful, then we recommend you join:

Podcaster's Paradise by John Lee Dumas

John is a good friend of ours, and he is an inspiration for most new podcasters. In just a few years, he has taken his podcast from $0 to 7 figure annual income. If you're thinking of starting a podcast, then you want to learn from him.

Your podcast's website is built with WordPress. Here are some actionable tips to drive traffic to your new WordPress site.

We hope this article helped you start a podcast with WordPress. You may also want to see our list of 24 must have WordPress plugins for business websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Start Your Own Podcast (Step by Step) appeared first on WPBeginner.

How to Remove the Powered by WordPress Footer Links

Do you want to remove the powered by WordPress footer links on your site? Recently one of our readers asked if it was possible to remove footer credits in WordPress themes. In this article, we will show you how to remove the powered by WordPress footer links in your themes.

The default WordPress themes use the footer area to display the “Proudly powered by WordPress” link. Many theme developers take this further and add their own credits, so it looks something like “Powered by WordPress. Theme by Company Z”.

But if you're running a business website, then it doesn't make any sense to display these credits. Some even think that it makes your website look unprofessional.

Is it legal to remove WordPress footer credit links?

We get this question a lot. Yes, it is absolutely legal to remove footer credits link on your WordPress site.

WordPress is free, and it is released under the GPL license.

In short, that license gives you the freedom to use, modify, and even redistribute WordPress. Any WordPress theme or plugin that you download from the official WordPress.org directory, and even most commercial WordPress themes are also released under the same license.

So you have full rights to do what you please with your website including removing the footer credit links.

Let's take a look at how to customize your WordPress footer and remove these credit links.

Removing WordPress Powered by Links

There are many ways to remove the WordPress footer credit links, but we only recommend the following 2 ways of doing this.

The Theme Settings Page

Most good theme authors know that their users want to have the option to remove footer credit links. That's why they make it available in their theme settings area.

Different themes have this setting available under different sections. But the first place to start looking is inside the WordPress theme customizer (Appearance » Customize).

For example, the GetNoticed theme by Michael Hyatt give users the option to customize the footer text as well as disable the credit links.

Other places that you can look are individual theme's options pages or inside the Widgets section.

Footer.php Code Method

If your theme does not have the option to remove or modify footer credits from WordPress admin, then your only option is to edit the footer.php code.

You can find this file in your /wp-content/themes/yourtheme/footer.php

Simply open this file in a text editor and search for the footer credit text like “Powered by”, and it will show you the section that you need to remove.

In the default Twenty Sixteen theme for WordPress, the code looks like this:

				
					/**

					 * Fires before the twentysixteen footer text for footer customization.

					 *

					 * @since Twenty Sixteen 1.0

					 */

					do_action( 'twentysixteen_credits' );

				?>

				

				

			

You can either remove this text entirely or customize it to suit your needs.

Avoid the CSS Method at All Cost

Now some WordPress tutorial sites may show you a CSS method that uses display: none to hide the footer credit links.

However doing so will put your site's SEO at risk. Google does not like hiding links with display:none because that's a technique that spammers use to hide the links from users while still showing it to Google (in hopes of higher rankings).

Your site might get flagged, and it will cause you to lose your search engine rankings.

So whatever you do, do not use the CSS method like this:

#site-info {display:none}

While it looks simple, it's not good for SEO.

We strongly recommend using the two methods that we showed above. If you cannot do either of those, then we recommend hiring a professional to help you remove your footer credit links or even consider changing your WordPress theme.

We hope this article helped you remove the powered by WordPress footer links. You may also want to check out our guide on how to improve your WordPress security.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Remove the Powered by WordPress Footer Links appeared first on WPBeginner.

How to Build a Successful Website: The 5 Core Factors You Need

This isn't one of those dime-a-dozen list posts that tells you which must-have plugins you need to have installed on your WordPress website if you want it to be successful. No, because building a successful website actually takes a lot more forethought than that.

Thanks to Wix, Squarespace and all of the other site builders that are popping up all over the interwebs, anyone can build a website. The only problem with using these sites compared to WordPress is that you don't get the fine-grained control you need to optimize and maintain your site (and ensure Google looks favorably on you).

We all know WordPress is the world's dominant content management system, laying claim to 60% of market share and a far-reaching community of developers, designers and volunteers.

Obviously, it's the clear platform-of-choice on which to build a successful website. So that's one less thing you need to worry about.

But there are other core factors you can't ignore if you want to ensure your site is a cut above the rest in this dog-eat-dog world.

Let me explain.

What it Takes to Build a Successful Website

Whether you work for a web development agency or make your living as a freelancer, the key to building a great website is to start with a solid foundation.

Get the foundation right and your website will purr. Get the foundation wrong and you'll spend much of your time dealing with bugs and other fixes rather than, you know, actually building the websites and other products and services that you're paid to build.

So, what goes into a solid foundation for a WordPress website? I'm glad you asked.

I'm convinced that a solid WordPress website takes into account five core factors:

• Performance: Slow websites kill businesses and careers. You need your WordPress website to fly.


• Monitoring: You need to keep a constant eye on the health of your WordPress sites. The minute something goes wrong and needs your attention, you need to know it.


• Security: The only thing worse than a site that is down down is a site that's been hacked. You need WordPress security.


• Backups: You need an automated backup process that ensures you have a recent backup on hand when you need it.


• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): You need your WordPress website to be optimized for search engines and you need granular control over the way your sites look when they show up in search results.

Every web developer must find a way to take care of these five core needs in a way that is robust, affordable, and requires as little effort as possible. That way, you can stop thinking about WordPress and focus on building your business.

Let's look at each factor briefly so you can begin formulating a cohesive strategy for building a solid WordPress website foundation.

Lightweight and fast, Hummingbird caches, minifies, combines, defers and compresses, making optimizations in line with Google PageSpeed, and turning your site into a lean, mean, speed machine.

1. Performance

When it comes to the performance of a website, web page load time is arguably just as important as web design and website features. This is because a site that loads slowly will have a direct and pronounced negative impact on conversions.

If you're a freelancer or a development agency, potential customers may form an opinion of your expertise and services based on the performance of your website. And as a WordPress products company, your ability to convert customers will be directly impacted by the performance of your site.

It's clear that every web developer must optimize websites for performance, and if you're a WPMU DEV member, Hummingbird and WP Smush Pro work together to make your WordPress website fly.

2. Monitoring

There are two parts to the monitoring equation that every web developer must answer:

• How will you keep on top of updates to plugins, themes, and WordPress core?


• How will you keep an eye on the performance of your websites over time?

You know how critical it is to update plugins, themes, and the core software. However, if you manage more than just one or two sites, or if you just don't log into your site every day, there may be times when days or weeks pass between the time an update is made available and the time when you install it.

In addition, if a frustrated visitor is the first to let you know that your site is down, you haven't solved the second part of the monitoring equation.

Every web developer must find a way to keep on top of WordPress updates and keep an eye on website performance and uptime. There are lots of tools available to take care of this need and it's also something we've spent a lot of time thinking about.

WPMU DEV members can set up automated scans with Defender. That way, you'll know when any updates are ready for installation. Add in uptime monitoring via Hummingbird and all your needs for WordPress monitoring will be fully met.

Defender protects you against evil bots and hackers with automated security scans, vulnerability reports, safety recommendations, blacklist monitoring and customized hardening in just a few clicks.

3. Security

The WordPress core really is secure. Keep everything updated and use secure passwords, and your site will be trending toward the upper end of the website security bell curve.

However, upper end isn't good enough. You need to harden your WordPress sites against common attacks and scan them on a regular basis to catch and fix security risks before the bad guys find and exploit them.

Every web developer needs to come up with a plan for hardening websites and scanning every site on an ongoing basis to check for security risks. This is the only way to secure WordPress and keep it secure over time.

There are several quality security plugins available, but if you're a WPMU DEV member, WordPress hardening and automated security scans are a cinch with Defender.

4. Backups

Servers crash, sites are hacked, and code hits the fan. When your site comes crumbling down around you, you better hope and pray you have a recent backup on hand.

Some web developers attempt to keep track of backups manually. This sounds OK in theory but the truth is that most developers aren't disciplined enough to count on a manual backup process. This is a task better left to automation.

The ideal backup system will include three components:

• Automatic backup creation,


• Backup storage in the cloud away from your site's server, and


• Automatic management of stored backups.

There are several services you can use to set up automatic backups, there are lots of cloud platforms to use for storage, and some backup services will even manage your backups for you. If you're a WPMU DEV member, you get all three components in one simple package when you install Snapshot, configure automatic backups, and use the free 10GB of cloud storage included with your account.

Snapshot is standing by, ready to backup your WordPress site.

5. Search Engine Optimization

If you don't optimize your WordPress website for search engines a few things can go wrong:

• Your site may not look the way you want it to look when it shows up in search results.


• It may take longer than necessary for Google and other search engines to index new content.

The answer to this problem is to use a good SEO plugin.

With a good SEO plugin you can manually control the text displayed when your site shows up in search engines results. In addition, with a properly formatted sitemap that gets pushed to search engines after every update to your site, your content will be added to search engines as quickly as possible.

There are many good SEO plugins available for your WordPress business. Pick one and become a pro at setting up and using it. WPMU DEV members can get all the benefits of a good SEO plugin plus automatic internal link building by using SmartCrawl.

Setting Up Simple A/B Testing With Google Analytics Experiments and WordPress

If you're anything like me, you obsess over driving more traffic to our websites, which makes complete sense. I mean, what's the point of spending time and money on your site if nobody sees it?

But what about once people have actually reached your site? Are you giving enough thought to what visitors actually do on-site other than having a contact button or other call-to-action (CTA).

What you should be doing is CRO. And testing with Google Experiments, which is what we'll be walking through in this article.

CRO, or conversion rate optimization, is exactly that, optimizing for increased conversions. What is a conversion? A conversion can be any action that you desire a visitor take on-site. For example, a conversion could be a visitor registering for an account, purchasing a product or signing up for an email newsletter. It could also simply be sharing an article on Facebook or watching an embedded YouTube video.

Carrying out CRO generally involves a number of stages:

• Discovery: Gathering relevant data and creating hypotheses


• Testing: Design and implementation of tests, such as A/B or multivariate testing


• Review: Analysis of the data gathered during testing

CRO is often a cyclical process. Once the review stage has been completed the process begins again, now taking advantage of the data gathered during the previous round of testing and analysis.

Revealed: Why Building Your Email List is so Important Today!

Are you thinking about building an email list, but not sure why it is so important? Many bloggers and business owners don't see the importance of building an email list right away until they see the impact email lists can have on website traffic and revenue. In this article, we will show you the top reasons why building your email list is important (with real case studies). We will also show you how to start building your email list – step by step.

By the end of this article, you will have answers to all your questions about building an email list.

What is an Email List and Why is it so Important?

An email list is a list of names and email addresses of people who gave you permission to send them updates and promotions from your business via email.

Why is this so important?

Because these subscribers joined your email list from your website and verified their identity by clicking on a link (double-optin). They are extremely interested in what you have to offer.

According to Direct Marketing Association, email marketing on average sees a 4300 percent return on investment (ROI) for businesses in USA.

In our business, email lists get 10 times higher conversions than social media campaigns. This makes sense if you think about these five advantages of email as a communication channel:

Email is Personal – Email allows you to land into a user's inbox. There is no ranking system limiting your reach. It is very direct, personal, and casual.

Email is Purposeful – To get your email a user needs to signup for your email list and confirm their email address. Someone doing this much work is obviously interested in hearing from you, and they are much more receptive to your message.

Email is Targeted – As we mentioned earlier the user has already shown interest in your products / content. Since you already know what they like, you can deliver them highly relevant content and offers to get better results. This is called segmentation, and we will cover that later in the article.

You Own Your Email List – You do not own Facebook, Twitter, or Google. Your social media campaigns and SEO efforts can go to waste when these platform change their policies. On the other hand, you own your email list, and it is not influenced by decisions of other businesses.

Email is One-on-One – People read email in the privacy of their inbox. The message is not on a public timeline or newsfeed. They can ask you questions directly in private with confidence. This helps build trust and connection.

This is precisely why every smart business in the world has an email list.

Big name brands learned this lesson a long time ago, and that's why they spend thousands of dollars on social media campaigns to get people to sign up for their email lists.

They understand that email marketing is the best long term investment with a much higher return. Because people will continue to get their message at a very low cost for a longer period of time.

Social Media vs Email Marketing

Now you're probably thinking, wait a minute. What about social media?

A lot of social media experts and consultants, in an attempt to sell their services, downplay the importance of an email list.

In fact, we have even been asked isn't email marketing kind of dead with social media taking over everything?

The best way to answer this question is to look at the information Twitter and Facebook ask you before you create an account:

Yup, it's an email address. Because these companies know that emails are the most direct and reliable way of getting in touch.

All social media platforms are building an email list because they are smart business owners. This helps their valuation when selling their business.

While social media is a great way to reach your audience, it's important to keep in perspective the timely nature of social media platforms.

They come and go.

Not too long ago we had MySpace, FriendFeed, Google Buzz, Plurk and countless others. Most of them are either dead now or irrelevant.

Today we have Facebook and Twitter, but not everyone is as hooked up on these sites. Some prefer other places like Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, Snapchat, etc.

But studies show that at least 91% of consumers check their email on a daily basis.

We are not saying that social media is not important. It is, and you should explore every opportunity to reach out to your audiences.

However you should spend more time and effort into something that guarantees much higher results.

What You Need to Start Building an Email List?

Hopefully by now, you should know why building an email list is so important, and why ignoring it would be a HUGE mistake.

So let's take a look at what you need to start building your email list.

3 Things You Need to Build an Email List:

1. A website or blog.


2. An email marketing service.


3. High-converting opt-in forms

All three of these are fairly easy to setup, and none of them require you to know how to code.

For the sake of this article, we will only be focusing on the last two items in the list. If you don't have a website or blog yet, then see our step by step guide on how to start a blog.

Choosing the Best Email Marketing Service

There are tons of email marketing services online. Often beginners use the free options to save cost, which is understandable. However, some of those free platforms are not the best option. Why?

Services like FeedBurner or Jetpack Subscriptions offer blog subscription via email. This allows your users to receive an email update every time you publish a new blog post.

The downside to a blog notification service like this are:

• You will have to create a blog post to send an email. This means that information you want to share will have to be publicly available first. You can't send out private email newsletters.


• You can't personalize the email message. It will be delivered in the same format often with no branding or personalization.


• You can't categorize subscribers by interests, demographics, or content type.


• There is no reporting. You don't know how many people got email, what percentage of users opened it, and how many of them clicked on links.


• If you later tried to move to a paid service, your users will have to re-confirm their subscription. Many of them will not do it, and you will end up losing subscribers.

This is why we ALWAYS recommend using a professional email marketing service. Yes, they cost a little bit of money, but they are an investment in your business which pays huge returns.

The benefit of professional email marketing services are:

• You can send private mass emails to your subscribers.


• You can see subscriber activity and group your subscribers based on actions they take.


• You can run A/B split tests to see which email subject line, content, and offers work best with your subscribers.


• With reporting tools, you can see which country you have the most subscribers from. You can adjust your timezone preferences, and send emails at the right time.


• Last, but definitely the most important, you can see the email addresses of all your subscribers.

There are hundreds of professional email marketing services available, but we have compiled a list of the best email marketing services.

For small businesses, we recommend using Constant Contact because they are one of the largest and fastest growing email marketing services in the world.

They offer a 60 day free trial. This gives you plenty of time to setup and start seeing the results. At the end of 60 days, your email list would likely be paying for itself (cost $20 / month). Start your free trial.

Because we know people often like to see options before they make a decision, we also recommend AWeber. They are another popular email marketing service provider, and they offer our users a 30-day free trial.

Once you have signed up with an email marketing service, the next step is to add opt-in forms to your website to allow your users to subscribe.

Growing Your Email List and Getting More Subscribers

While choosing the right email marketing service is important, getting more subscribers is even more important because this is how you make money.

The biggest mistake beginners make is not strategically placing high-converting opt-in forms.

While some WordPress themes come with built-in sidebar widgets, they don't convert as well. Your email marketing service may also provide you with codes to embed in your theme, but that requires you to know how to code.

This is why we recommend our users to use OptinMonster. It is the most powerful conversion optimization software that helps you convert abandoning website visitors into subscribers and customers.

You can easily create high-converting optin forms such as lightbox popups, floating header and footer bars, slide-in scroll boxes, fullscreen welcome mat, after post and inline forms, and more.

But what makes OptinMonster really powerful is the behavior automation and personalization features. OptinMonster allows you to automatically show different opt-in forms based on where the user is coming from, which page they are visiting, and what they are doing on your website.

For example, the Exit-Intent® feature track your users mouse behavior and show them a targeted opt-in form at the precise moment they are about to leave. This helps you convert abandoning visitors into subscribers.

This is important because over 70% of people leaving your website will never return.

That's why influencers like Michael Hyatt, Neil Patel, and Social Media Examiner use exit-intent on their websites. It helped Social Media Examiner add over 95,000 new subscribers in 7 months.

But for smaller businesses, this is even more crucial. Nicolas Gagne, a small business owner, combined Constant Contact with a single exit-intent optin to grow his email list by 500%. This helped him triple his revenue from his online store (see the full case study).

There are tons more case studies and OptinMonster reviews that you can read as well.

Get started with OptinMonster today - Use the coupon WPB10 to get 10% off.

Note: OptinMonster was started by WPBeginner's founder, Syed Balkhi, because he wanted to get more email subscribers, faster. It helped us increase our email signups by 600%. Due to popular request, we released this tool for public, and now it's the most recommended lead generation software in the market.

List Building Strategies and Resources

Having the right tools is crucial, but knowing how to use them properly is what makes the most difference.

In your email marketing strategy, the most important thing you should plan out is segmentation. This is the process of grouping your subscribers, so you can better personalize your emails based on interest. It helps you get higher open rates and click-through rates. This definitive guide to email marketing has all the information you need to segment your email list like a pro.

Content Upgrades are the highest converting opt-in forms. It's a technique where you give your users bonus content at the end of your popular blog posts. These usually convert 5 times higher than a regular opt-in. Here are some content upgrade ideas that you should check out. We have written a guide on how to add content upgrades in WordPress.

If you're not sure how to create an opt-in form, then use this 63-point checklist for creating a high-converting optin form.

You may want to check out Kevin Duncan's article on 16 ridiculously simple ways to get more email subscribers in less than 5 minutes.

In case you want more ideas, Mary Fernandez also shared 73 proven and simple ways to grow your email list that should get you going.

Conclusion

It does not matter what kind of business you run, what kind of website you have, or what industry you are in.

If you have a website, and you want to turn your visitors into returning customers, then you need to get them in your email list.

We hope this article helped you understand why building an email list is important and helped you get started on the right foot.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Revealed: Why Building Your Email List is so Important Today! appeared first on WPBeginner.

10 Ways To Make Ecommerce Holiday Sales Jingle [Ebook]

Ready to attain maximum ecommerce holiday sales? Holiday shoppers start searching the “Christmas gift ideas” before the turn of fall. Therefore, don't let Santa get stuck in the chimney this winter due to unforeseen issues with your site.

Rather, get ahead of the game by optimizing your ecommerce store with some of these essential tips to make this holiday season the best one yet!

To dramatically improve your bottom line year-round, we've written this ebook containing 10 useful bits of advice to enhance your store's checkout process, site design, marketing campaigns, and more! Get the free ebook here:

EBOOK: 10 WAYS TO MAKE HOLIDAY SALES JINGLE

This ebook goes into detail on several important ways to make your ecommerce holiday sales sparkle and not turn into charcoal, including:

• Refining product pages and photography


• Ways to harden your site's security against Grinches


• Site speed and page performance tricks


• How to encourage online impulse purchases


• And more!

Download the ebook now for some insightful advice on how to boost the quality and performance of your ecommerce site this holiday season, and ultimately make it jingle year-round.

Of course, there's always more to learn about ecommerce holiday sales. Check out this infographic and webinar for more on the topic. 

The post 10 Ways To Make Ecommerce Holiday Sales Jingle [Ebook] appeared first on WP Engine.

15 Best eCommerce Plugins for WordPress

WordPress has come a long way over the past couple of years. Let's see which 15 e-commerce plugins are the best and that you should add to your WordPress website right now!