3 Ways to Grow Your Email List Now

Bloggers: You NEED an email list. I have been blogging almost three years and am just now realizing the importance of an email list. Here I’m sharing how to grow your email list now.

Did you know that every person on your email list is worth $1-$2 in revenue per month? If you have 2,000 subscribers, that means you can expect to make $2,000-$4,000/month just from your list.

I hovered below 1,000 subscribers for a while. Then, I made a few changes two months ago and am now nearing 2,500 subscribers! My traffic is the exact same, too.

How to Grow Your Email List Now

Use a User-Friendly Email Provider

I used MailChimp up until a few months ago when I switched to MailerLite. You guys, I cannot rave about MailerLite enough. It is especially ideal for people who are not tech-savvy (:::raises hand:::).

MailerLite is free for the first 1,000 subscribers, so don’t worry about having to pay for a plan now if you’re just starting out. Once you have over 1,000 subscribers, the plans range from $10-$35/month. Compared to other providers who charge well over $100/month, this is a fantastic deal.

MailerLite makes it so easy to create landing pages and popups to get more subscribers. My blog is proof that this is working. I’m offering the exact same products for free (I’ll explain more on the below), but because my popups and landing pages are more appealing, I’m getting more people to sign up.

You can view my landing page on my free guide to start a blog here >>

That landing page required absolutely no tech skills. I uploaded a photo, chose font colors and sizes, and voila!

But What About ConvertKit?

I’ve never used ConvertKit, but I’ve heard it’s also a really good service! A blogging friend of mine uses it though and it IS more expensive (it’s $79/month for 3K-5K subscribers and goes up from there) and she did say she had to do some coding to get the forms how she wanted them.

MailerLite took me a solid day to learn the ins and outs and get all my forms set up, but I don’t consider that much time at all! Overall, I would absolutely recommend this service.

Offer Free Products to Gain Subscribers

When I first started a newsletter/email list, I simply created a popup that said “Sign up to get exclusive blogging tips delivered straight to your inbox!” While that did get a few subscribers, it wasn’t enticing enough to get more.

Now, I offer two free products to get readers to subscribe to my newsletter.

The first is my free guide on how to start a blog. I offer it as a popup when new readers come to my blog and on my landing page that I inserted the link to in many posts.

My second product is geared to helping bloggers make money on their blogs. It’s a guide called “5 Blog Posts That Will Make You Money” (you can access it below). This guide consists of five specific blog post ideas that will hopefully make you some money! If nothing else, it will get you thinking of ways to monetize your blog 🙂 I created the opt in form you see below to get people to sign up and have inserted it across all of my posts on blogging.

Also, you should know that these products did NOT take me forever and a day to create. They are free and are designed to get people on my email list! Of course I want to help the reader in the process, but there’s no way I’m going to spend months on a free product. Figure out what your audience wants, create a product or printable you think they’d be interested in, and start marketing it!

Promote Your Pages and Blog

If you want to get subscribers, you have to market your blog and, more specifically, the pages that offer your free product / opt in. I’ve been spending a good amount of time promoting my pages on Pinterest through various group boards. Feel free to follow me here and join some of the group boards I am apart of!

I’ve also been dabbling in Facebook ads. Has anyone tried those yet?! It’s sort of confusing, but I won’t learn if I don’t try. I did one ad that promoted my landing page and that got decent results; but I do still find Pinterest to be the best source of traffic for me. Right now, I’m spending about $100-$200 per month on ads. I hope to provide some insight on this in the future, so stay tuned!!

What Should I Email My List?

Back to my point above about how studies show your list is worth $1-$2/month in revenue per subscriber. That’s fantastic, but how do you generate income from your list?!

Ok, this is still something I’m working on, but here’s what I do:

First, I email my list as if I’m emailing a friend (which really is what I’m doing!!). So many people respond and we chat back and forth for a bit; I love this part of my list!! I get more personal in my emails than I ever would on my blog and I find my emails to be much more relatable. You should do the same!! If you think your email would better serve as a blog post, do that instead. You can always email your list later with a link to that blog post in addition to other things.

I recommend products I think they would be interested in. Since most of my subscribers are either new bloggers or they’re interested in blogging, I look for blogging-related products that I can promote (both my own products and products I am an affiliate for). A recent example was Ultimate Bundles Genius Blogger’s Toolkit (I wrote a post on this too which you can see here). This kit was only available for two days, so I emailed my list twice in that time period discussing the bundle and showcasing what my readers could get out of it. Just as I suspected, my readers were interested in this and I made quite a few sales!

But, for the most part, I’m not emailing my list with a specific affiliate sale or product sale in mind. Instead, I’m emailing as a friend and letting them know what’s going on in my life and providing some information that I think would be useful to them.

After this post is published, for example, I’m going to send my list a link to this post plus some additional tips on getting subscribers. I’ll also share a link to my start a blog page in case any subscribers haven’t taken the plunge yet and started their own blog.

How Often Should I Email My List?

I aim for once a week! If a flash sale is going on (like the Ultimate Bundles one above), I might email 2-3 times over the course of a few days, but I try not to do that too often. I definitely do not want people getting sick of my emails and unsubscribing!

Also, I didn’t start sending emails regularly until I had been blogging for TWO YEARS. So, if you just started a blog, don’t feel obligated to send emails immediately (though you certainly can!). You can always just focus on growing your list and then sending out emails when the desire strikes! This is what I love most about blogging – you can do it exactly how you want. No two bloggers are successful in the exact same ways, so take time to figure out what works for you and go from there!

What questions do you have about email lists?! Again, I’m by no means an “expert,” but I’ve learned a lot recently and am happy to share!!