Benefits of building an email list



  • Once you earn a reader you don’t have to gain their attention again.
  • When you launch a new product you can email your list and drive a lot of eyeballs in a hurry.
  • Need to make some quick cash for a mini vacation or a big night on the town? Email your list with a discount offer on one of your products for some fast sales.
  • If you want to validate a new business idea, launch a new site, or publish a guest post on someone else’s blog, you can drive earned traffic to those pages rather than starting over from scratch.
  • Emails carry more weight and command more attention than facebook posts or tweets (plus the average person checks email 15+ times per day).

If you’re still not convinced, check out this awesome article by Daniel Decker for 8 more reasons why you MUST start building your list today.
Now on to my story.

How I got 160 subscribers in just a few days without a blog.

A few months ago I wrote an article on Medium.com about how I landed 5 dream jobs in one month by giving my best ideas away for free. As soon as I hit “publish” I tweeted it to some people I mentioned in the article and shared it with some online personalities that I thought would be interested.


That evening James Altucher retweeted the link which gave me a huge boost. It gave me such a big boost in fact that it made Medium’s Top 20 Most Recommended Articles of the Day list. This caught the attention of Medium staff who then added the article to the Medium front page. Within a couple days I had over 10k views.


It was my first article ever on Medium and I was absolutely elated. I was getting a flood of tweets and emails; I was literally hitting the refresh button like a woodpecker and watching the views and messages increase by the second.


For the first few days I was on top of the world, but on the fourth day I had a realization that caused a moment of panic: “What if I never write an article this popular again?” I thought. “It’s amazing experiencing this torrent of traffic, but I’m doing absolutely nothing to capture these readers and to be able to recreate this success in the future.” I realized that it was time (actually passed the time) to create a list.


So in an absolute frenzy, I started a Mailchimp account, put a signup box on my website, wrote an explanation of why people should sign up to my newsletter and what I would write about, and linked to it from my Medium article. On the post I said something like “Want to learn more tips like this? Sign up to my newsletter here (hyperlinked to my site) and I’ll teach you my lessons from building businesses.”


It wasn’t the most polished or thought-out strategy, but I immediately started getting notices in my inbox for new signups. Within just a few days I had 160 subscribers. I’ve since used that list to make sales for my newest business WebsiteBuildParties.com. Success! Daniel Decker was telling the truth!


Now that I stumbled into building a list without blogging, here’s how you can learn from my experience and do the same today:
How to build a list without a blog (or even a website)

Step 1: Go to Mailchimp.com and start a free account.
Once you have an account you’ll need to create a new list. It’s pretty straightforward to set up, but if you hit any snags check out this absolutely fantastic tutorial from CoffeeCup.com; it has pictures that show each step of the process.


Step 2: Find the URL
once you have your new list set up, copy the URL which you can find at lists>signup forms>general forms and save it for later. We’ll use it in just a moment.





Step 3: Go to Smore.com and start a free account.
Smore is a website that makes it super simple to make beautiful online flyers, but in our case we’re going to use it like a temporary website.


Step 4: Start a new flyer.
The whole point of this page is going to be to convince people to sign up for your newsletter, so start by giving it a catchy title like “[Your Name]’s Insider Newsletter: Biweekly Tips on How to Accomplish XYZ.” In the body of the page, explain why people should sign up.


Here’s a tip: don’t talk about you, talk about the reader. Talk about what they’re going to get out of it. Talk about what they’re going to learn and what they’re going to be capable of achieving after a few months of reading your newsletter. Focus on the value they’re going to receive. This is where solid copywriting skills come in.
For more ideas on creating a valuable offer, check out this post.


Also, Special bonus: click here to get my notes from the excellent copywriting book Web Copy That Sells by Maria Veloso (it gives a simple blueprint you can follow to quickly write great copy, along with tips for writing emails, the AIDA principle, and other stuff).


Step 5: Customizing your “flyer”
After you’ve written your copy and made a killer pitch for why people should subscribe, go to the “Add more stuff to your flyer” panel at the bottom of the page and add a button.
Change the button text to your call to action, something like “Sign me up right now!” or “I want to join the newsletter!” Then paste your mailchimp URL in the link box. (Smore tells me that you’ll be able to add custom code in the future so you can embed your signup form directly on the page, but this works just fine for the moment.)





Now you have a beautiful page that convinces people to sign up for your email list and links to your mailchimp account! But….how do you get people to see this page in the first place? (Hint: the answer isn’t blog for 6 months until you’ve built up a small audience.)
How to get people to see your signup form

Let me say something that is obvious but sounds mean: right now know one cares what you have to say.
You don’t have an audience.


Nobody knows who you are and no one is trying to find you.


So rather than starting a blog and writing for crickets, go to where audiences are already congregating. By going to where people are already hanging out online, reading, and interacting, you’ll increase your chances of being found a millionfold.
This means places like Medium.com, Linkedin, YouTube, or other people’s blogs. (As a sidenote, I’ve been seeing lots of popular bloggers like James Altucher writing increasingly on Medium, and even facebook, and writing less and less on their own blogs.)


Step 6: Create Content for These Sites
Now it’s time to create content for these sites. This could be articles, videos, or audio – then we’ll link it back to your new Smore page.


(It would probably even be a good strategy to make awesome pictures to share in Instagram, hashtag the hell out of them, and link your profile back to your Smore page. Someone please do it and email me about how it works.)
Don’t limit yourself to just one platform; cast a broad net and bring viewers to your optin page from several communities. Try lots of different kinds of content on different outlets and see what gets the best response.
I’ve had the best success making long, extremely detailed content where I teach something (like the one you’re reading).


Make a list of ten things you’re good at, or ten skills you find yourself teaching your friends, or ten shortcuts you’ve developed through trial and error, and make in-depth tutorials where you walk people through each step of those skills. And before you start, do yourself a huge favor and read this excellent article from Noah Kagan about what makes content go viral.


Step 7: Search Twitter
Once your content is published, search in twitter for people who are talking about the same subject that you just wrote/vlogged about.
Buzzsumo and Topsy are also great tools to find the most influential people having relevant conversations.


Find ways to connect your message to their message, or ways that your knowledge can be valuable to them and their audience. Tweet them the link to your new content and say “Couldn’t agree more, here’s my two cents.” or “Here’s another perspective from a big fan.”


Preferably you’ve been following Sean’s Pamphlet Principle and you’ve already been interacting with influencers, in which case you already have a foot in the door which could lead to them retweeting your link. (And if you haven’t been doing The Pamphlet Principle, start now!) Essentially what you’re doing in this step is marketing your content (you didn’t think it was just going to blow up all by itself, did you?).


Step 8: Grow your Content
The beautiful thing about all of this, is that the more content you publish, the more tools you have in your toolbox.
Each piece of content is like a tool that drives people back to your mailchimp signup form, and you can dust them off whenever you need to use it. If you read a blog post and think “Hey, this is kind of like that Medium post I wrote!” you can share a short tip in the comment section and leave a link to the article where readers can go to learn more. Or if you’re having a conversation with someone on twitter and think “That one YouTube video I made would be really helpful for this person!” you can tweet them a link.

The easiest way to get people to sign up to your list

Now that you’re starting to create and plan out content, I want to share one last tip for increasing sign up conversions.

Most often you’ll see an email list with a signup incentive (also called a lead magnet or an opt-in bribe) like “Sign up to get my free ebook!” While this is a great idea, it should take a decent amount of time to create a high-value giveaway. And since you’re just starting out your time is uber valuable, so here’s an easy way to create an incentive in 3 minutes:


Step 9: Write out 10 headlines for articles or videos that you’re going to publish.
Write out 10 headlines for articles or videos that you’re going to publish.
Like I said before, make sure to come up with content for several different platforms. It allows you to cast a wide net, but it also allows you to do this: on your Smore optin page say “Here’s what I’m going to be teaching in the coming weeks. Rather than following me in 10 different places, join my newsletter to make sure you never miss a lesson!” Then list out each headline and the corresponding network where it will appear. (This technique is extra effective if you write enticing headlines; read this article from Sean’s friend John McIntyre about how to write killer headlines in two minutes without thinking.)
Scaling up

Once you have the ball rolling, you’re eventually going to want to take things to the next level.
This will probably include starting your own blog and creating a killer optin. There are a lot of reasons for doing this: to build a more intimate relationship with your audience, to track conversions and analytics, to increase opportunities to sell to your followers, and more.
In the context of building an email list though, a huge reason to launch your own site is to be able to use SumoMe. SumoMe is a wordpress plugin created by Noah Kagan (the guy who wrote the popular Location 180 article about workcations) and it absolutely crushes when it comes to increasing email signups.
I installed it and have seen my list shift into a whole new gear. Every day I get my mailchimp update email and my subscriber number steadily ticks upward with no extra effort on my part. Just install it, forget it, and Noah’s know-how does all the work. SumoMe will also let you follow Bryan Harris’s Content Upgrade strategy for free; combine these two things and your list will hit warp drive.
EasyMoney Reviewed by EasyMoney on . Build an Email List Without Having a Blog or Website Benefits of building an email list Once you earn a reader you don’t have to gain their attention again. When you launch a new product you can email your list and drive a lot of eyeballs in a hurry. Need to make some quick cash for a mini vacation or a big night on the town? Email your list with a discount offer on one of your products for some fast sales. If you want to validate a new business idea, launch a new site, or publish a guest post on someone else’s blog, you can drive earned Rating: 5