Sign Up for an Email Service Provider Now

Your email list and your website are among the only things you own online. Everything else (traffic, social media) belongs to someone else. The rules can change in a hurry, leaving you without the traffic you once had.

But your email list is yours.

The people on your list trust you and let you right into their inbox. You get the opportunity to build your relationship with them. You can ask them what they want from your brand or how you can help them and provide them value.

When you want to reach out to your subscribers, you can send an email and your message goes right into their inbox. This will be important for monetization later, but it’s important now to have a more intimate conversation via email than you would on a blog post.

Plus, writing an email scales beautifully.

The same amount of work is required to send an email to 14 subscribers as to 14,000 subscribers, so setting up your mailing list now helps you flex the “send emails” muscle so it’s not intimidating when your list grows.

Sign up for an Email Service Provider

If you’re not ready to spend money every month on email, sign up for MailerLite. It’s free until you have 1000 subscribers. What makes it stand out from other free options is the power to send automatic sequences of emails in the free version.

If you don’t want to use MailerLite, we love ConvertKit. It’s more than you need right now, though. Start with MailerLite and converting to ConvertKit when you grow.

“But I Don’t Want to Put My Mailing Address Out There!”

If you’re going to send email, then by law, you have to have a physical address. But what if you don’t want strangers from the internet knowing where you live?

You have options. Can you use your work address? If not, consider renting a post office box. You’re not likely to get any mail there, since it only goes out to your newsletter subscribers, but you still need to have it.

Create a Content Upgrade

A content upgrade is a piece of content that is so good, your website visitors will want to give you their email addresses in exchange for downloading something. Create your first one before you launch your site, so that even though you won’t have a lot of content on your site at first, you’ll have something more to offer your subscribers than signing up for your newsletter.

Create a PDF or a spreadsheet or something your target audience will find valuable. Then, create a form (you can do this using ConvertPlug, if you installed it in the plugin section), and link your content upgrade to that.

For a more detailed tutorial, read: 7 Simple Steps to Creating a Content Upgrade