A few weeks ago when I first heard of the blog challenge, I was intrigued but skeptical.  I figured that it would be a peer support group where we all did our own thing and encouraged each other.  Boy was I wrong!  Today’s the half way point in the challenge and I’ve learned a ton.  Natalie’s prompts have provided some great “food for thought” and helped to define a bit more clearly where I want to go and how I might go about getting there.

Today Natalie challenges us to think about how we’re going to “formally” connect with our audience.  While an e-mail list seems like a little thing, it’s actually HUGE.  I’ve read it a ton of places and Natalie repeated it today — “The Money Is In The List”:

• How are you building your email list?

Some of Natalie’s prompt’s challenge you to dig deep, assess your situation, figure out what makes sense, craft a plan, and do it.  For others the next steps are “obvious” and just kind of jump out at you.  Such is the case with today.  There’s three simple steps that I need to take.

• Choose a mail service.  Aweber and Mail Chimp seem to be the big players here.  From what I’ve read, they’re both solid.  Aweber seems to get the nod on robustness while Mail Chimp has the appeal of being free initially.  Public proclamation/decision made:  I’m going to use Mail Chimp and I’ll have my account set up by the end of the week (23 August).
• Modify my blog to include an “opt in” page.  I’ll need to do some research on WordPress plugins.  Public proclamation/decision made:  I’ll have an opt in page done by the end of the week (23 August).
• Provide a special motivation for folks to opt in.  It seems that having a free GREAT product available to folks when they sign up is critical.  Public proclamation / decision made:  I’ll have my free product created by 30 August.  I’ve already got the idea in mind and have about 40% of it written mentally.

Those of you who have been following the blog challenge will hopefully notice that I just listened to the two lessons from day 14:  always make forward progress and don’t let any excuses get in your way of making progress.

If you want some more information on the challenge, check out the post on day fifteen at:

http://suitcaseentrepreneur.com/blogchallenge/blog-challenge-day15