Content Marketing

How To Build Your Email List For Free

Want to build your email list for free? Maybe you’re putting off building it because you just started blogging, or your website, online business or store isn’t making much money. You may have decided that building an email list can wait until you have some cash behind you, because those email providers aren’t free, are they?

Well, actually a few of them are, but even then, you’ll have a ton of ads or links in your email, and you’ll get a low quality service overall, won’t you? No, not necessarily. Read on to find out about how I managed to start, build and manage two email lists, for FREE.

How To Build Your Email List For Free

Disclosure: Links in this post (and anywhere on The Savvy Solopreneur) may be affiliate links. Find out exactly what that means here.

The Basics: The Only Two Tools You Need To Get Started

Mailerlite

Mailerlite is a popular email system that allows you to get your list started for free. Not only is it free to get started, but you won’t pay a cent until your list reaches 1000 subscribers. By the time you have 1000 readers interested in what you have to say, you should have no problem monetising that list and paying for your upgrade to a paid subscription (which is also very reasonable with this provider).

If your list stays small, you never pay, which is interesting, because if you work in a specialized niche, attract engaged subscribers, and get your email marketing right, you can still earn big from a very small list.

Unlike some other free providers, Mailerlite doesn’t put ads in your emails. There’s just a discreet link at the bottom of each email advertising the Mailerlite service itself.

Once you’ve signed up for free with Mailerlite you can build a very professional opt-in page in minutes, for free, using pre-made templates. Check out the one I made for this blog here. And the one I made for my freelance writing site here. This facility is one of the reasons I switched both my lists to Mailerlite. That and the fact that it’s much cheaper than most other providers.

A relevant opt-in product

Now you have the means to collect email addresses, you need a reason for your readers to sign up. Like a stellar free gift. I put together a list of things you can use as an opt-in freebie in this post.

The trick with an opt-in freebie is to provide your audience with something relevant, valuable, and easy-to-use. You can set up a welcome email in your Mailerlite account with a link for your readers to download your opt-in freebie. Again, there’s no need to pay to deliver your opt-in. I put mine on Google Drive or in Dropbox (both free).

You can create your own opt-in product easily for free. However, if you do want a really low-cost option, you can use PLR content to create a freebie with minimal effort. In this post, I explain how to make an opt-in freebie very quickly and easily (and cheaply) using PLR products.

Busy Blogger's Success Kit

Traffic driving tools

The other major thing you need to build your list is a steady flow of traffic to your site. These free tools will help you achieve that too.

Sumo

Many people use the Sumo plugin to build their lists, as it has a lot of options, from opt-in forms to pop-ups. I found the Sumo opt-in forms to be unnecessary given the beautiful opt-in pages you can make with Mailerlite. Sumo is, however, really useful in a few other ways. I use it to put those customisable floating share buttons on the side of every post. Making it super simple to share posts is a really easy way to drive traffic to your site.

Facebook Groups

Another place I get a lot of free traffic from is my Facebook groups. I’m a member of several groups where bloggers get together to collaborate and promote each other’s work. I show you how to use Facebook groups to drive traffic in this post.

Pinterest Group Boards

Pinterest is now one of my biggest traffic sources, especially since I joined around 20 relevant group boards and began pinning my blog posts regularly to all these boards. Not familiar with Pinterest? I share a lot of Pinterest strategies (including how to attract traffic from Pinterest) in my post 20 Quick Pinterest Marketing Tips.

Twitter

Twitter is another big traffic driver for me. Many people are using Twitter all wrong when it comes to online business and traffic generation. I give you all my top tips for using Twitter for business (and to bring traffic to your website) in this post.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is another free WordPress plugin that allows you to easily optimise all your posts for search engine traffic. SEO is complicated, and if you really want to dig into it I suggest you grab this book, but if you just want a simple tool that that will help you optimise each post quickly and easily, install Yoast SEO. Again, you can find it in your plugin area if you blog on WordPress.

These simple free tools will help you get started with building your list. Need more free tools and tips to help you with your online business? You might want to check out my ebook Free Tools for Writers, Bloggers and Solopreneurs.

If you’d like access to my free resource library full of  goodies for solopreneurs, just sign up here and I’ll send your password over. You’ll also get my monthly newsletter with tips, freebies, special offers and links to free tools and resources.

Featured image by Paul Hanaokaon Unsplash.

4 thoughts on “How To Build Your Email List For Free

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badge

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.