How to Build an Email List Fast and for Free — My Secrets to Reaching 5,000+ Subscribers in 100 days

An email list can be the difference between you making or breaking in your quest to make money in your writing career.

A list gives you a choice to sell to your subscribers when you launch a new book or run an offer on existing or when you create a course and want your subscribers to have it or for any number of reasons.

Not only that, an email list gives you more reasons to engage with your readers by bringing them back to your website, but the real problem isn’t that you don’t know all this. In fact, if you are reading this, then you know all these and more benefits of a handy list of subscribers.

Everyone knows that the money is in the list, and they’re talking about an email list and not a grocery list, of course.

The real question is, how do you build one?

And how do you build one fast and free?

Hello, I’m Chase Austin, and today I’m going to teach you how to build an email list fast and for free, my secrets to reaching over 5,000+ active email subscribers.

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First Tip

The first tip, also my favorite, that I have for you to collect the email give away a free ebook that delves deeper into actions your readers can take rather than theories.

So if you are someone who has written a book on Keto Diet Recipes, then instead of talking about why Keto is good than other diet plans, it’s best to give them 10 keto recipes that your readers can cook. Add an extra layer by using diets that take only 30 minutes or so for people above the age of 30 and so on.

So your book title could be — 10 Keto recipes that can be cooked in just 30 minutes.

Tip #2

The next thing that we used to do in the companies where I’ve worked, which has worked really well over the years to collect a ton of emails, is run evergreen webinars.

People love webinars. They want to interact with you.

So you can use tools like WebinarJam to interact with people and make it evergreen.

Evergreen means you record a webinar once, and you can keep displaying it as a replay, but it also seems like a live version even though it’s a replay.

It’s super actionable. People love it.

If anyone engages with you for 20–30 minutes, they’re much more likely to buy what you’re selling.

You can also use Podia and host your webinars there. Podia also allows you to sell your online courses and books so you’ll have everything on one platform, and you can easily upsell people who are watching your webinars.

Tip Number 3

The third thing that you can do is exit-intent popups.

So you can do this through tools like OptinMonster.

Exit-intent popups are the ones that appear when someone’s about to leave your site. You either give them an ebook or ask them a yes or no question and then collect their email information.

Questions can be like do you want to increase your sales? If they click yes, you capture their email address.

If they click no, I’ll say congratulations! Thanks for having massive sales. Now put in your email address if you want to double your revenue, right? Because they said no, that means they already have a ton of sales, but now they can use your help to double that number.

Exit popups are one of the best ways.

Keep this in mind, if someone’s going to leave your website, what harm do you have just asking for their email?

And with tools like OptinMonster, you can do a cookie base so if someone leaves your website; they see that exit popup, whether they put in their email or they don’t, the next time they come back to your site, and they leave, it won’t bother them for the email address because the last thing you want to do is keep bombarding people, it’s very user friendly and also works on mobile devices.

Fourth Awesome Tip

The next tip I have for you is content upgrades.

Someone’s reading an article on 12 ways to double your subscriber’s growth or 5 ways to increase your book sales, I can have a cheat sheet within the exact blog text saying, hey, download the cheat sheet, just let me know your email and I’ll mail it off to you. When you do that, you’ll get a ton of emails addresses. It’s one of the best strategies that I’ve ever used. A lot of people don’t do it, it requires a little bit of work because you have to create a cheat sheet or PDF, but that’s why it works so well because most people aren’t willing to put in the effort.

And, of course, you don’t want to overdo it. If you overdo it and you have too many popups, too many triggers, too many opt-ins, people will get irritated. So two or three are max.

Again you can use Hello Bar or similar tools that do a lot of this, so if it shows someone one, it won’t show them the other two because the last thing you want to do is continually bombard people.

So those are the four tips that will get you more love when it comes from email.

What Next?

Next, make sure you communicate with your audience at least once a week.

It may be beneficial for you to examine your email list at least once a month because if you keep sending emails to people who are not opening them, you’re not going to see your emails get in the inbox; instead, your email or newsletter will most likely get trapped in the spam filter or the trash folder.

And sell to your audience at least once a month. There’s no point in having a list if you’re not generating income from it.

If you enjoyed this blog, then like it, share it, tell other people about it, and subscribe.

If you just have a question on getting started or are confused about something, leave a comment, and I’ll answer it.

About Chase Austin

I have spent 10+ years writing stories and marketing them. I’ve failed and succeeded over the years, and these are some of my tidbits on how I started my author business, perfected marketing, and more.​

Here you’ll find resources to help you kick more ass with your words. No fluff, only actionable tips, and tricks if you are looking to make a living through writing, or just use it as a side hustle.​

Things I like: Long walks, Reading about anything and everything, Telling stories and chess.

Visit me at www.thechaseaustin.com. Want to say hi, email me at contact@thechaseaustin.com.​