The concept of content upgrades started to become popular last year, and reading Brian Dean’s article on content upgrades finally sold me on the idea.
Using content upgrades, Brian Dean was able to increase his email opt in rate by 785% in one day.
What is a Content Upgrade?
A content upgrade is something you offer to people right after they finish reading your article if they take a certain action; this “upgrade” needs to be relevant to your article, possibly complementing the article. In exchange for getting this upgrade, readers need to give you an email address.
There are two ways to go about offering your content upgrade:
1. Create a special landing page that you direct people who want your content upgrade to. This is highly ineffective because i) conversion rates from traditional squeeze pages is slowly dying ii) introducing an extra step, in form of readers having to visit an additional page before being asked to sign up, won’t help your conversion rate; instead, it will bring it down.
2. Offer your content upgrade directly inside the article the reader just read. Immediately they click your download link, they will automatically trigger a popup asking them to enter their email address, on the same page, and they can opt in to download your content upgrade there and then.
The second option is most effective for two reasons:
1. It removes a step in the process; they do not have to visit another page, so conversions will automatically go up. Research has shown that the fewer steps involved in a sign up process, the higher the chances of the reader signing up.
2. The fact that a reader already clicked “Download Now” automatically reduces, or even removes, resistance in giving out their email address even if they didn’t initially know they will be asked to provide their email address. Clicking that download link is a positive step, and once the popup is triggered, they will most likely sign up.
This has been proven to be so powerful that experts now recommend that regular squeeze pages use a triggered popup effect so as to put readers in the right frame of mind to sign up.
OptinLinks Review; A Great LeadBoxes Alternative
You’re probably already excited about the concept of triggered popups and are looking for ways to implement it; the only caveat is that all the effective options are very expensive.
In the process of looking for a way to offer my content upgrades using triggered popups, I kept coming across the term “LeadBoxes”.
LeadBoxes is a feature that comes with top landing page software, LeadPages, that allows users to automatically insert triggered popups into their content/landing pages.
It is such a cool feature but the only downside is that it is a feature that comes with a main software; as a result, you have to pay for the whole LeadPages software to be able to use their LeadBoxes feature.
LeadPages isn’t cheap, and many people either do not have the need for the full landing page software or they can’t afford it; why pay $37 monthly for a whole package when what you need is a single feature? If you want the option to split test, you have to go for the $67 monthly package.
I also can’t convince myself to pay a monthly fee for a feature a simple plugin can handle, so I started looking for LeadBoxes alternatives.
Most of the alternatives I found were either very ugly and unsophisticated; I couldn’t stand them.
Eventually, I found OptinLinks and it has been a real pleasure using it.
I created my first content upgrade using OptinLinks and I gained 1,200+ EXTRA subscribers in 2 months from my implementation of it in 3 popular articles on my blog.
Not only was OptinLinks professional and easy to use, it also has a lot of customization and rich features that makes it way better. Most importantly, it is a one time payment and gives me full control since I can install it on my blog. I paid $47 for the multiple site license package.
Here’s a sample analytics screenshot from my OptinLinks Dashboard:
Pros of Using OptinLinks
So far, here are some of the advantages to using OptinLinks:
1. It costs a one time fee; the single site option costs $37, the multi-site option for personal sites cost $47, and the unlimited sites option costs $67.
2. You OWN the plugin; once you pay for the plugin, it belongs to you as soon as you install it on your WordPress blog. This is unlike LeadBoxes that is hosted on LeadPages’s server. If you want control, then you get it with OptinLinks.
3. You can use it in blog posts and on landing pages hosted on the same WordPress installation. [OptinLink id=1] Click here to see a demo of the triggered popup [/OptinLink].
4. It integrates with all major autoresponders, including custom autoresponders as long as you have an HTML code you can use with it.
5. There are several good looking form templates for you to choose from.
6. It is mobile responsive.
7. If provides rich analytics and split testing to help you keep track of every activity with your OptinLinks; this was a major feature that attracted me to it.
Cons of Using OptinLinks
1. The control it gives to you can also be a disadvantage; something I love about LeadBoxes, and an advantage to it being hosted on their server, is that you can use the triggered popups on any site, including sites you do not own; perhaps in a guest post on another blog or something?
This doesn’t seem to be possible with OptinLinks.
2. Their Support USED to be BAD: I’m placing an emphasis on “used” since they later sent an email to their users apologizing for this and promising that this issue has been fixed.
I sent them two support requests before their apology that weren’t replied to; the first was before I bought the plugin last year, still no reply. If a company can’t even respond to a pre-purchase question, then what’s to be said about their support?
Again, they said this has been fixed but I haven’t tried it since; I haven’t had a need to. That said, you might want to try their support before purchasing the plugin if you are very keen about customer support.
Would I Recommend OptinLinks?
Absolutely positively!
I use this plugin on all my sites, and I’ll recommend it to anyone who wants to significantly boost his/her email optin rate.
I’ll rate it 8/10 because of my negative experience with their customer support. If I get to try their support again and find it okay, I might increase my rating of it to 10/10, but for now they get 8/10!
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