Video Tutorial
That featured image is kinda confusing as it’s a screenshot of this site. Kinda like a hall of mirrors.
While I only use this method on Fat Stacks, it could definitely be a good addition for many niche sites, especially if building an email list is important.
A few years ago I had an option bolted to the top of every page and it was a good performer. I used a plugin back then. I can’t remember why I ditched it but I think it was some plugin conflict technical glitch.
Then last week I decided to move this site over to GeneratePress theme. The reason was MyThemeShop wasn’t playing nice with ElementorPro. I needed some landing pages and wanted to improve the home page. When ElementorPro wasn’t working, I slapped on GeneratePress and then Elementor Pro worked fine.
As I made those changes I wanted to tweak the email sign ups a bit and improve the home page.
I tried to integrate Elementor Pro with AWeber, and while it can be done, it was too much hassle. Instead, I decided to see what solution OptinMonster provided out of the box. Turns out, they had the perfect solution. It’s a full-width inline form which makes for a perfect home page above-the-fold feature. In fact, it makes for a terrific above-the-fold feature on every page.
The top image showcases what I’m talking about. I’ll save you the scroll up. Here it is again (be sure to input your email and click “Sign Up” just to see how well it works):
How did I do this?
Step 1: Get an OptinMonster Account
This is the easiest but most painful part. It only takes a couple clicks here but you have to fish out your credit card for a monthly payment which is never pleasant.
Once you have your account, click “Create new Campaign” as shown below.
Step 2: Select a new inline form campaign
Once you have an account, create a new campaign and select this inline form. I suspect other inline forms can do the job, but I liked this one. Play around with them.
Step 3: Select this form
Scroll down and find the “Transparent” form.
Step 4: Customize the design
At a minimum, you need to sync your email autoresponder and change the text. With OM you can customize pretty much every aspect of their forms. There are quite a few things to customize – go through them methodically.
Step 5: Get shortcode for the OptinMonster inline form
Once completed, return to OptinMonster on your site and get the shortcode.
Step 6: Insert shortcode where you want it bolted
Step 6 isn’t so easy with many themes, but it’s a piece of cake with GeneratePress’ paid plugin. The paid version offers an Elements feature where you can place code pretty much anywhere on your site. I guess Elements is another term for hooks except I think Elements can do more. I’m sure someone more technical than me will set me straight. I’m practically a layperson doing this stuff. If I can’t do something with the click of the mouse, I ain’t doing it (cause I can’t).
In this case, here’s the Element I created to bolt the form to the top of every page:
Create a new Element
That’s it.
Does the bolted optin form get good results?
Yes. Incredible actually. It’s still early but here are the results from Fat Stacks. I had equally good results when I did something similar years ago. Fat stacks gets 2.5 page views per visitor. That means those forms are viewed 2+ times per visitor on average. That’s good exposure which explains in part why they work so well.
Isn’t this super annoying for visitors?
You tell me. You’re here. You encountered the bolted form. Is it so annoying you wouldn’t use it if it worked really well.
IMO, it’s less annoying than a pop up.
What else could you do with this concept?
It could be great for affiliate marketing. If you have a high converting affiliate offer or affiliate promo page, you can bolt an OptinMonster form with a button linking to that page. That could be good in lieu of building a list.
But here’s the big problem
The big problem is OptinMonster is really expensive if you get a lot of page views. For Fat Stacks it’s a pittance because the email newsletter is very lucrative and Fat Stacks doesn’t get all that much traffic (37,000 monthly visitors generating nearly 100K monthly page views). This puts me in the $59 per month OptinMonster plan.
But for a site like my biggest niche site with 1.4 million monthly page views, it doesn’t pay. I’d have to pony up for some custom plan with OptinMonster that would cost far more than I’d ever recoup.
At the end of the day, if you use OptinMonster, you need to make it pay cause OM isn’t cheap.
Here’s one way to keep your OM cost reasonable
I still use OM on my biggest niche site but what I do is deploy it only on specific pages where it pays.
With OptinMonster, you can choose to have forms display by category and/or individual URL. This way, I restrict OM to 10K to 15K monthly page views which doesn’t cost much but yields a decent return.
Jon Dykstra is a six figure niche site creator with 10+ years of experience. His willingness to openly share his wins and losses in the email newsletter he publishes has made him a go-to source of guidance and motivation for many. His popular “Niche site profits” course has helped thousands follow his footsteps in creating simple niche sites that earn big.
