The Creative Boss has been an advocate of LeadPages for a while now, and don’t get me wrong, they have great popup boxes and easy-to-design landing pages. However, it gets expensive. At $37 a month, it starts adding up. I studied my expenses for the year in hopes of finding some areas where I could cut costs. I immediately began looking for a more affordable alternative to LeadPages. The best part is eliminating the monthly expense and saving a whopping $400+ a year!

So, how do you make this happen?

If you’re already using the Divi theme for your WordPress site, then you just cut the expense down to $29! #winning

There are many reasons that you would want to use Divi on your WordPress site including the ease-of-use. Divi is a page builder theme that allows you to dive right in and customize your site with minimal knowledge of coding.

How freaking sweet is that?

It already comes loaded with page layout options, but you can beef it up even more by checking out The Creative Boss Shop.

Creating Opt-In Boxes

This is the fun part – actually setting up opt-in boxes. The plugin you’ll need is Easy Content Upgrades, and it allows you to add folks to your email list, set up a ton of content upgrades, and add the merge tag to keep them separated on your email list. Pretty nifty, huh?

This plugin also lets you quickly set up a resource library page which creates another great opt-in offer where you can give your audience the keys to the kingdom where they can access everything.

At this point, you’re probably thinking, “That’s lovely, but how does this amazeballs plugin vary from any other?”

Well, I’m glad you asked.

It works seamlessly with your email provider (we use MailChimp) to either send an automated email with the download link that works like a double opt-in offer, or it scans your list to see if they’re already on there in which case it gives them access to download right there on the spot.

Naturally, your next question is probably, “Why break up with LeadPages for this?”

The answer is simple: to cut out the middleman.

LeadPages is wonderful at letting you build opt-in boxes, and it has great layouts that are proven to convert. However, years of utilizing this service gets expensive, and it creates unnecessary steps in your workflow. This is where LeadPages acts as a middleman. The business world is flooded with them and brainwashes you into thinking you need them. In some cases, you do, but not near as much as they’d like you to think. LeadPages is one you can cut out, save some cash, and keep everything on your website. As a bonus, you can create a standard box template that you can save and reuse as opposed to creating a new one every single time with LeadPages.

If you’re a fan of growing your list with content upgrades, you’re probably no stranger to how messy it can get trying to keep everything separated. If you’re new to list building, you may still be taking advantage of your email provider’s free plan. By using Easy Content Upgrades, you don’t need the upgrade to paid features to get automated emails to send out tons of individual offers until you hit your limit. That’s one more way you can save some cash.

Just to recap why you should invest in Easy Content Upgrades and ditch LeadPages:

• Significantly cheaper!
• Easy to learn!
• Double opt-ins are utilized with “download offer” buttons which means more conversions!
• Superb customer service!
• Did we mention that it’s SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper?!

Creating Landing Pages with Divi

Let’s get real. What if you don’t even need to create landing pages yet?

That’s even more reason to ditch LeadPages and just use your Divi page builder. This was a feature with LeadPages that I used so rarely, I was left feeling like I was spending money on things I didn’t need. I could create a whole page right there on my site with every detail in place; I could make it look perfectly professional and call it a day.

The page builder comes into play when you need more customization which you can accomplish with just your Divi page builder – even if you don’t use the Divi theme! You can use a different page builder, like Visual Composer, if you prefer. I’ve personally used both, and each one is spectacular. I’m currently using Divi simply because the whole site is built around it, and it allowed me to cut out a whole plugin.

I think any online business owner – especially anyone just getting started – will tell you to simplify anything you can. Most things you’ll use will require the use of a whole new website (a middleman) complete with another set of usernames and passwords to remember, so if you can find a way to achieve the same results without the middleman, jump on it.

The Divi page builder makes it a breeze to drag and drop elements onto a page to fit the needs of your site. In fact, here at The Creative Boss, I’ve made it even easier by creating some ready-to-use page templates that are perfect for sales pages, webinar host pages, and hosting lead magnets – almost anything you would need in a single page for your website! You can find them in The Creative Boss Shop along with some landing page templates. You can purchase the template you like best, import it to your Divi builder, change the text, hit the publish button, and you’re done. It’s that simple.

There are even more page template options you’ll find in the shop that are designed for opt-in pages and thank you pages just to name a few. I’m always adding new templates when the need arises, and I’m always open to suggestions. After all, The Creative Boss was founded to help creative entrepreneurs make it in the online business world without the headaches that come with the ever-changing techy aspects of the internet.

So, don’t be shy! Feel free to drop me a line with suggestions for page templates or anything else.

The Investment

The Easy Content Upgrade plugin is a one-time purchase of $29 for a single use license. That is less than one month of LeadPages!

The investment for Divi is subscription-based for a single year on a single site and is $69. You will want to either upgrade to the lifetime license or continue paying the yearly fee to ensure you get regular updates for the theme. When you keep things on your site without regularly updating them, you leave your site vulnerable to attacks when hackers find “holes” in the code. Consistently updating everything you use eliminates these threats.

Now you’ve learned that for a total of $98, you can ditch the LeadPages subscription. That’s the same cost as only 2.5 months of the base service!