How I Quickly Got 200 Email Subscribers As a New Blogger
Believe it or not, even the most successful bloggers you know started as a newbie. Yes, their email list was at zero. They had to figure out how to grow their email list, build a following, and gain traffic to their website.
Everyone starts as a beginner. I just want to emphasize this because it’s so easy to fall into the trap of comparison in the blogging industry.
It is definitely possible to grow your email list from 0 and I’m going to walk you through how I got 200 email subscribers as a new blogger.
I started my blog just two months ago, but did not really start taking my email list seriously until October 2021. Literally the only subscriber I had was from two of my emails lol (I needed the moral support haha). So it’s kind of crazy that within 2 weeks, I had grown my list from 0 to 200 subscribers. And here’s proof of my email list growth within the past few weeks:
You might be wondering the million dollar question, how’d you do it?
If you’re stuck at 2 email subscribers, in this post, I’ll teach you what I did to build my email list quickly as a new blogger (and how you can too).
How I Quickly Got 200 Email Subscribers As a New Blogger
5 Best Tips that Grew My Email List
Tip 1: Focus on who your audience is
If you recently started your blogging journey, you’ve probably heard somewhere that understanding who your audience is essential to building a successful blog. That is true, but I can also know how paralyzing it can be to struggle finding your target audience.
I will say that it will take time, patience, and a lot of trial-and-error to find who your audience is. Usually the audience you want to target will change over time as you discover more of the content you enjoy creating as well as what your audience is receptive towards.
Some questions to ask yourself to find your target audience is:
- What am I good at? Your interests, skills, and desires are great starting points to create clarity and discover your niche!
- What can I write about possibly 5 years from now? Is your niche something you can write about 5 years down the line or will you get bored? Again, it’s totally okay to figure it out as you go. Even the most successful bloggers refined their niches, changed up their content, and narrowed down their topics, in their journey.
- Who do you want to reach? This helps you to get more specific and have clarity about who you want to direct your content towards. Do you want to help women who just graduated college and are struggling to navigate post-grad life? Do you want to help busy moms improve their time management and balance mom/home life?
If you want to know more about my niche and my mission behind this blog, you can check out this article about who SheBeThriving.com is for!
Tip 2: Target your audience’s desires and needs
The key to a great recipe is first understanding what ingredients you need. How can you make a successful recipe if you’re missing the key ingredients? Just like growing a successful email list, you need to figure out what your audience’s desires and needs are.
You can write as many blog posts, create hundreds of pins to promote, or try to sell your content on social media. However, if you don’t have a solid foundation of who your audience is, then you’re just wasting your precious time. I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer, but unfortunately, this is the truth.
So how do you understand more of who your audience is? It starts with your niche, which is a specific topic area that you write or create content about. For example, my niche is focused on mindset and wellbeing. So most of my sub-niches (categories) cover topics such as these: How To Make Friends As An Adult, How to Overcome Your Fear of Rejection, and Tips on Going to the Gym for the First Time.
If you’re not really sure who your target is, pick 1-3 niches that interest you. It could be fitness, personal development, finance, etc. Then, do some market research, meaning look up using Google what people could be searching for regarding those niches. Here’s an example:
Tip 3: Experiment with different freebies
Freebies are free small gifts that you create and give to your audience in exchange for their email. The goal of a freebie is to solve a problem for your reader and get them to sign up to your email list.
Examples of freebies include: a pdf, cheatsheet, a meal planner, a monthly schedule, a free consultation, etc. Anything that can provide great value for your reader will give them the incentive to sign up for your email list.
Below is an example of what could be a possible freebie. If your niche is budgeting and money management, you could create a chart that helps your target audience learn how to save money each month.
Remember, this is what people are actually searching for, so this is a perfect example of what you could create.
Freebies will take trial-and-error. You might have to create many freebies in order to find a high-converting one that gets people to sign up to your email list. Some freebies will be a flop, but some may exponentially grow your email list!
I’ve had so many freebies that flopped despite how many I’ve created, but this single freebie got me 250 subscribers in less than 2 weeks! I was surprised by how one freebie could literally grow my email list so quickly. To this day, people are still signing up to my email list because of it!
Don’t give up, friend! Let me leave you with one of my favorite quotes by the one and only, Thomas Edison:
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Thomas Edison
Tip 4: Create high quality freebies (deliver value)
I needed to add this tip in because this is what helped me gain traction to my email list. Yes, experiment with different freebies, but each freebie should be high quality.
You don’t want your reader to click on the freebie only to be disappointed and unimpressed by what was inside. You want them to get excited about what they could get from you and meet their expectations (possibly exceed them as well).
What helped me grow my email list was the content, visual presentation, and value of my freebie. I put a lot of thought into what my audience would want. The daily fitness planner consisted of tracking water intake, daily steps, hours slept, and meals.
I knew this would be valuable for my audience, who wants to get healthy and meet their nutrition/fitness goals.
Tip 5: Promote the heck out of your freebie on social media!
The hard truth is that you can create the most beautifully curated freebie that has high quality value, but no one will sign up for it unless you promote it right!
To be honest, I don’t exactly enjoy creating Pinterest pins (lol) since I find them a bit tedious. But I always remind myself of the 80-20 rule for marketing. The 20% that you promote on social media is what gets people to sign up for your email list. The 80% is the content you create but how you promote it creates the desired outcome.
So where did I promote my freebie that grew my email list? This is what grew my email list significantly. Here’s the secret tip that doubled my email subscribers: promote in Facebook groups where your target audience is.
Because my target audience was women who wanted to get fit and healthy, I promoted my freebie on a Facebook fitness group for women. Here was the post that changed the game for me:
And it was so encouraging to see positive feedback in the comments!
Pay attention toe the feedback you get from your audience! If you can get people commenting positive feedback on your freebie, then you know this is what works for your audience!
No one really talks about promoting on Facebook groups but this is what has helped me. Use social media to your advantage! Join a bunch of Facebook groups that you’re interested or your niche is related to (e.g. fitness groups, mental health, lifestyle, money management, productivity, etc).
I will say, as a heads up, be wary about some Facebook group rules. If you’re not allowed to promote in certain groups, then keep looking for groups that don’t have that rule!
Conclusion
This is exactly how I grew my email list from 0 to 200 as a new blogger! Just a quick summary: figure out who your target audience is, understand their needs, create high quality freebies, and promote the heck out of them.
Once you find out which is high-converting, continue to create content related to that successful freebie!
Most of the time, it will take trial-and-error to find what your audience likes. Be patient and keep creating because you never know what could happen. I’m cheering you, my friend!
Ready to create your successful, high-converting freebie and quickly grow your email list as new blogger?
Grab my freebie checklist to kickstart and grow your email list now!
