I’ve been using Action Popup on this blog and several others for the past few months. Basically it’s a pop up plugin that allows you to display a lightbox for a newsletter service like the one I like to use – Aweber. However, I just got an email from my friend Michael over at IncomeDiary.com about his new product PopUp Domination and he sent me a review copy to check it out. I can cut to the chase right now and tell you that I made the switch to Popup Domination, but I want to tell you the main reason why I love this product (and why I wish I would have thought of making it myself):
Why I Love Popup Domination – Simplicity and Style:
The best part about this plugin is that it really does only takes a couple minutes to set up because you don’t have to create your own code (it took me about 3 – 4 hours to code and test my custom pop up within Action Popup’s plugin settings). When I switched over to Popup Domination it took 5 minutes. You simply pick one of 7 templates and then you select a color schemes and then pick additional settings. Here is a screen shot of the style I set up in a few minutes:
It’s so easy to set up a great looking pop up form and fills a need that has been hiding in plain sight I really wish I would have thought to design a product like his because I’m sure he’s going to sell a ton of these plugins.
Why Pay For An Email Opt In Pop Up Plugin?
I love Aweber for a lot of things, but one thing I don’t love about their service is their drop dead atrocious looking pop up templates – they are hideous. Yes you can use their template system to build a pop up for free, but it’s humorous to me that Aweber hasn’t done something like what Popup Domination can do especially when you look at just how huge of a company they are. Being an email marketing company you think they’d have people that actually knew what type of forms worked best at getting visitors to sign up for a newsletter and know their in house forms are terrible right? Well, they haven’t figured it out yet and before I continue on another rant, I wanted to show you why I switched away from Action Popup via this video comparison between the two plugins so you can see a better look at each one before you make a decision.
Popup Domination vs Action Popup Video Comparison:
Popup Domination Limited Time Offer $47:
Be sure to buy the plugin today if you want it because in less than a week the price will go up to $77:
Download Popup Domination Here
Update: Robert Plank (the creator of Action Popup) pointed out to me that I’m not using the latest version of Action Popup which now supports templates as well. It also comes with a plugin called Action Comments which I use on this blog to easily sign people up for my newsletter. With the new information I think they’re both pretty dang good now. I just need to go look at the other templates to see how they look.
Note: I’ll be sharing more of my own results from how well it converts on this blog and several other blogs I run in a future follow up post, but based on the results I’ve heard from some other top well known internet marketers I think it should do really well.
I don’t think that it would apply to my niche which is entertainment.
You could advertise people getting the latest entertainment news delivered straight to their inbox everyday (just a thought)
Ideally, this software might track page views with cookies, and wait to popup the form until the viewer has had a chance to read the site, and build some trust with the author.
If the very first thing that a user experiences is an interruption ad, it creates a poor first impression. Why would I subscribe before I know anything about the author?
Perhaps the software already has this feature?
Yes this is already built in. You can delay how long it takes for the pop up to be displayed in seconds. Then you can also determine how long it takes before it shows up again for a user.
You can also configure it to only display as a user moves their mouse outside of the browser window where it can appear then. So it’s pretty customizable.
To your point about the user experience – I think that’s why it’s important to test and track the results and constantly tweak your settings until you find something that works.
How about avoiding popups at all?
That’s true, but even in niches unrelated to internet marketing where I use them I do so because of how well it helps me to build the email list that I can then monetize by pitching some type of physical product related to my websites’ niche.
Just put it up on one of my sites…usually I hate popups of any kind but at least these look slick. We’ll see…
Feel free to let me know how it goes.
Hey Chris, I saw on your Twitter that you said you did a webinar where u found a domain in like 5 mins…just wondering if that webinar is available online anywhere?
Are you the person that was @ messaging me?
Haha nope, I was just curious when I saw it
Going to stick with Popup Domination, its just incredible, been providing great results also ๐
Did Michael paid you or giveaway any free copy of this pop domination thing to you?
I already had paid for Action Popup and set it up to work, but I was annoyed by how long it took to set up so Michael sent me a review copy of his product to check out (as mentioned in the blog post above).
Hey Chris,
I bought Action PopUp a long time ago, and it always takes hours to make nice looking pop-ups so I haven’t used it that much. This one looks like it has some really nice templates, and is probably alot easier to get something nice set up. So, I thought I’d show my support and finally pull the trigger by purchasing it through your aff link!
Hey Wes, thanks it’s always appreciated – surprisingly there haven’t been too many people that wanted to buy it. Oh well, it works well for me and I’m using it on a few other websites now. I just wanted to show people how easy it was to use with a video comparison.
In my experience, pop ups don’t work very well. They’re annoying to the consumer and get closed almost immediately. Even if it’s something free, it’s just the fact that you’re bombarding someone with a sell.
I think it’s just a matter of testing what your audience will accept. I personally use them on a wide variety of my websites to great success and the larger the email list I build the better.
Chris,
I’m not sure why your YouTube video is showing the old version of Action PopUp, but version 3.0 (released a month or two ago) has built in templates allowing you to make your popup look good in a few seconds.
I also noticed you are using Action Comments, the free bonus that comes with AP ๐
Hey Robert,
I never notice if there is a new version of a plugin unless it shows up in WordPress that there is (perhaps this is only possible for the free plugins). In either case it’s good to know you support templates now (I’ll update the blog post), but I know when Popup Domination was first released it supported templates before Action Popup did. Frankly it just took me way too long to set up my own form when I first bought it since I am not a coder (like 3 hours) and yah that’s due to my lack of coding skills but if it came with templates from the get go I wouldn’t even be talking about Popup Domination.
Updating the thread now…
I do like the Action Comments plugin though – you should consider selling that separately perhaps?
Hey again Chris,
Yes I do sell Action Comments separately.
Shoot me an email if you want the latest Action PopUp. The newest version notifies you when there are updates.
“When Popup Domination was first released it supported templates before Action Popup did.”
Yep, the template thing is something I added in 2009 with a WYSIWYG editor, but I quickly took it out in later versions. I’ve actually been debugging the templates in there now through all of 2010, a big part of it was adding the template functionality without it being confusing to setup.
There are tons of things AP has that PD doesn’t, including submitting in the background, different popups for different categories, support for membership sites, on-enter and on-exit capability, and more.
Anyway keep up the thoughtful posts on this blog, I’m enjoying it.
Hi bought this and set it up on my blog last week it’s easy as pie, like you said.
Loving it so far.
Carl