In the last post we looked at a free plugin to grow your mailing list.
But you also need an eye-catching opt-in form at the top of your sidebar on every page of your blog.
These are easy enough to create in Aweber, or most mailing list managers, but you may want something with a little more "pop".
Today we'll look at Sidebar Domination, which is a widget for WordPress that puts a nice opt-in form into your blog's sidebar - with literally just a couple of clicks, and NO design experience!
I'll also show you a before an after example where I switched my Aweber form to a Sidebar Domination form - and let you judge for yourself...
BEFORE: Aweber Form
AFTER: Sidebar Domination Widget
If you look at the top right sidebar, to the right of each video, you'll see the before and after opt-in boxes. The new red form really stands out in comparison.
This example is from my personal video blog. The sidebar width is rather small at only 200 pixels wide, so I really struggled to create a nice form with Aweber.
But with just a few clicks I had a really nice opt-in form using Sidebar Domination!
This is actually part of a larger package called Popup Domination, which you may remember caused a bit of a stir here awhile back when I recommended it. Everyone HATES pop-ups, right? 🙂 But I actually used the program to create nice in-line forms on squeeze pages, and in other places, which calmed the controversy (click that link to see examples of how I used it).
To be honest, it was a bit of a hassle to backward-engineer the pop-up code to create in-line forms on squeeze pages, below each post here on ClickNewz, and in the header of my forum. I ended up having to hire someone smarter than me to work out a few of the kinks. 😛
So I was THRILLED when they came out with this easy sidebar widget!
The Popup Domination lightboxes (fancy pop-ups) are very easy to configure and set up. Just like the Sidebar Domination widget, which is a bonus to Popup Domination, you just click through a few options pages and they are both literally set up and working in a matter of minutes.
And while most of us don't like pop-ups or light boxes, they are definitely worth testing. Some of my peers are reporting VERY good results with Popup Domination lightboxes, because they're so professional and well-made.
The new Popup Domination 3.0 comes with 15 lightbox themes, the new Sidebar Domination Plugin, and detailed course on getting & converting traffic - all for only $77.
That's a steal compared to hiring a designer. 😉 Not to mention you could have it up & working in a matter of minutes - versus days, or even weeks.
The Sidebar Widget alone is worth that. I was happy to have my ugly opt-in fixed in a matter of minutes this morning! I could definitely work on the copy/text still, to encourage more sign-ups, and have some good ideas brewing...
I look forward to hearing your thoughts!
Best,
About Lynn Terry
Lynn
I have pop up domination, and I absolutely love they have a great sidebar widget as well like you put it here
Videos really have helped proving Sidebar Domination Widget is better than Aweber. I like to keep things simple and it seems Sidebar Domination does that.
The widget works *with* Aweber, or your mailing list manager of choice. Just to be clear.
I love popup domination, but can't get the sidebar widget to work. I don't use a popular autoresponder service such as Aweber, but I know that has nothing to do with it. For some reason, most of my form code is getting stripped out. The code that my browser shows when I have the widget active is the action url and the form name fields. All of the necessary information my autoresponder service provider needs get s stripped out. I haven't received a response from support yet.
I also really like popup domination. I got to check out this software recently and I was really impressed. The customizable templates are fantastic, and sidebar domination is a great replacement to the horrible opt-in templates you get from most auto-responder form creators. Overall a really nice product in my opinion.
Hi Lynn,
I just tried to sugn up on your .tv site (in the domination widget) but get a message that the mailing list is not active!
Richard
Hi Richard,
Thanks so much for letting me know! I just replaced the form with one directly out of Aweber until I can troubleshoot the issue. Appreciate the heads up! 😉
Hi Lynn and Richard.
I should have mentioned this in my earlier post on this blog, but this is exactly why I had to take the sidebar domination widget down from my site.
I was contacted by support and they are aware that people are having issues with the sidebar domination widget. I was told the following:
"We are currently improving the Sidebar widget and hopefully you'll notice these improvements over the coming months."
Take care.
Excellent! 😀
unable to get the sidebar widget to accept icontact html code and work properly.
Contact support or look over their help/FAQ. They will be able to help you with this better than I can. 😉
Lynn,
I bought sidebar domination widget, but I do not know where to get HTML code that my widget will start working. No help for this widget is available at all, just for installation.
Thanks for reply, Primoz