We’ve all been there… staring at the number “0” and wondering how you’re ever going to get people to actually subscribe to your blog.
It doesn’t have to be zero. It could also be 50 or 100 or even 500.
In the early days, it’s difficult to fathom how you will crack the 1,000 subscriber mark.
I started my very first professional blog at age 21 with 0 subscribers and grew it to more than 20,000.
Had I known then what I know now, I could have gotten there SO MUCH faster and with so many less headaches.
With this blog post, I’m going to share with you two proven strategies for getting more email subscribers for your blog.
Don’t just read about these strategies. You gotta go out there an implement them right away.
Otherwise, months and years will pass by with little progress. When you finally do execute on these strategies, you’ll wonder why the heck you didn’t do it earlier.
1. Install OptinMonster To Quickly Boost Subscribers
Actually, it doesn’t have to be OptinMonster. It could be any plugin that enables popup functionality on your website.
You might think that popups will annoy your visitors, but actually, I saw a MASSIVE increase in email subscribers when I installed OptinMonster.
Before I installed the plugin, people were coming to my website and I’d see a trickle of email subscribers. After I did, I started to see a regular stream of subscribers.
This means that while I was getting traffic to my website, it wasn’t converting as well as it could have.
Popups serve to:
- Capture attention
- Present an offer to your visitor
- Track opt-in rates and split test your offers.
You can easily see how one offer converts better than another when your opt-in rate goes up.
To give you an example, I split tested two different simple messages with the plugin and showed you the results below.
It’s important that you test two messages that get relatively the same amount of traffic. This way, you’ll eliminate sample size bias.
This test tells me that readers of THIS blog prefer the message “Make Passive Income Online” to “Make Passive Income From Home.”
Now… I’m not sure why that is, but in marketing, I’ve always learned to follow the numbers.
2. Create an Account on LeadPages to Get More Subscribers
The second thing that I did that had a powerful effect on the growth of my email subscribers was to begin to use a landing page software tool like Leadpages.
You don’t have to use Leadpages, but it’s what I use. You could also use one of these.
The reason that landing pages will boost your subscriber count is threefold:
- You’ll be able to optimize for a conversion. There is only one thing someone can do who comes to the landing page, subscribe to your email list. You can see how wording and image changes affect this goal.
- You’ll gain access to simple, but professional-looking design tools. We tend to judge the quality of businesses online based on their design. If you have crappy design, people assume you’re an amateur.
- You can present an “offer” more effectively. This offer could be an ebook, a webinar training session, a free online course, a checklist, and more. You can list out the benefits of the offer and use other tools like count-down timers to persuade visitors to subscribe.
Below, you can see a very simple example of a webinar registration page that I created. It’s not super fancy, but there is only one thing that my visitors can do… sign up for the webinar.
Keep in mind that visitors that I send to this page already know what I look like, because of my YouTube videos. They also know that I’m an expert in my space, so they don’t need much convincing.
The count-down timer helped to create a sense of urgency.
Looks pretty dumb and boring, right?
Don’t hate!
Haha, but actually, let’s take a look at the results. Numbers speak for themselves.
This simple webinar had a sign up conversion rate of about 75%! Can you IMAGINE how big your email list would be if 75% of the people who came to your website signed up for your email list?
I made a decent amount from this webinar too. Your ultimate goal should be to monetize your email list, not just inform them of your new content.
What else can you do to grow your list?
There are many more ways to get more subscribers for your blog. I invite you to subscribe to THIS blog so that you’ll be notified when I come out with new content.
In addition, if you’re more of a visual learner, I’ve put together a YouTube video that goes a bit deeper into the topics I discussed on this post.
You can watch the training video below.
Hope you enjoy it!
Let me know by leaving a comment on the video. I’d also appreciate a thumbs up!
This post contains affiliate links.