How I Grew My Email List From 100 to 1,000 Subscribers in Less Than a Year

1. Craft a Mission Statement

Technically, I started posting on nicolebianchi.com back in August 2015. At the time, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to blog about. I tried writing movie reviews and self-improvement articles and sharing NYC travel tips.

But even though I’d given myself free reign to write about anything I wanted, I found it difficult to come up with new blog post ideas and find an audience. Ultimately, my blog lacked direction. There was no unifying theme tying my posts together, no larger story that they fit into.

Finally, in late December, I realized that I needed to figure out who I wanted my target audience to be. I decided to turn my blog into a website for writers. More specifically, I wanted to write articles about famous authors and the writing and productivity tips I was learning from them.

Defining your target audience is essential to building your email list. Once you’ve defined your target audience, you will know what content to create to attract your tribe (as Seth Godin calls it) who will be eager to sign up to your list.

If you’re not sure how to determine your target audience, Jeff Goins says you should flesh out a worldview for your site. He gives this formula for pinpointing your worldview:

“Every [BLANK] can/should [BLANK]”

Mine, for example, would be something like “Every writer should study the greats.”

All of my posts relate to that theme in some way, even when I’m not writing about a famous writer and am just sharing my writing journey.

After determining your worldview and target audience, you need to craft a mission statement. Think about how you can help your target audience. Try using this formula:

“I help [TARGET AUDIENCE] to [BLANK]”

Just like an essay needs a thesis statement, so does your blog. Your one-sentence mission statement will help you create content that will resonate with your audience and add value to their lives.

Spend some time on this first step. Crafting a mission statement is very important because it’s going to help you with step 2.

2. Create an Opt-in Gift

In this step, you’re going to think about the biggest struggle your target audience is facing. What resource can you create to help them solve that problem?

(This doesn’t have to be a long, in-depth resource. It can be something you put together in a few hours.)

Once you’ve created that resource, you’re going to give it away as a gift to your readers when they subscribe to your email list. It will act as an incentive to make them want to subscribe to your site. I like to call this resource an “opt-in gift” (Internet marketers also refer to it as a “freebie” or “lead magnet”).

For example, when you subscribe to my site, you’ll get my free eBook Famous Writers’ Productivity Hacks. I created this book to solve one of my readers’ biggest struggles: optimizing their time.

Another struggle that my readers face is finding a supportive writing community to help them reach their writing goals. I created a private Facebook group and use that as an opt-in gift too.

An opt-in gift gives your readers a reason to subscribe to your site. After all, even if someone enjoyed reading your articles, they could just bookmark your site and come by to read it occasionally. With an opt-in gift, you prove to them that it’s worth taking their time to type their email into the signup form. (Your email marketing service should have free signup forms you can use on your site.)

What can you create as an opt-in gift? If you’re a fiction writer, you might give away a short story or a book excerpt or even an entire novel. Or maybe you put together a guide like “10 Essential Steps to Writing Science Fiction”. Sometimes you have to experiment before you land on an opt-in gift that is right for your community.

3. Write Compelling Blog Posts with Content Upgrades

After nailing down the focus of my blog in January 2016, I finally put an email signup form on the site and set out to write blog posts that would inspire and help fellow writers. But after spending days crafting a post, I would only receive a handful of comments.

Most of those comments were positive, though, and they encouraged me to keep going. Still, I felt a little discouraged. I wanted my posts to reach more readers.

After a while, it occurred to me that maybe the problem wasn’t with my content but with the way I was presenting it. So I decided to study the rules of copywriting and read every article I could get my hands on about how to write powerful blog posts.

As I started implementing what I was learning, my posts began receiving more and more comments and shares (and more people started subscribing to the website!). I boiled down everything I learned about writing compelling blog posts in this 5-step guide.

Now, not every single one of your posts has to follow that 5-step formula to the letter. But my posts that receive the most shares and comments are almost always the ones that do follow those five steps.

The bottom line is that people will be more likely to subscribe to your site if your blog posts add value to their lives. The 5-step guide shows you how to do just that.

Here’s a bonus tip: Along with your blog’s main opt-in gift, you can also create resources to accompany your individual blog posts that readers have to sign up for in order to download. These resources are called “content upgrades”. For example, with my article about crafting compelling blog posts, I put together a blog post checklist that readers can access by subscribing to the email list.

4. Share Your Website & Blog Posts

Imagine you’ve just opened a new store. However, instead of being located on a busy thoroughfare, your store is way out in the middle of an empty field.

That’s kind of what it’s like when you start a blog. You might get a trickle of traffic from Google search. Usually, though, no one will know your blog exists unless you tell them.

You need to figure out where your target audience is hanging out online and share your blog with them.

One of my favorite ways to do this is by joining Facebook groups. There are many Facebook groups for writers that have designated days when you can share links to your blog posts. You might also be able to share a direct link to a landing page for your opt-in gift.

Of course, you don’t want to just use these groups for self-promotion. It’s best to become an active member of the community. Comment on other member’s blog posts. Help out other members and answer questions. They’ll be much more likely to want to help you out too.

5. Guest Post the Smart Way

Guest posting means writing an article for another person’s website. (For example, I recently wrote a guest post for Jeff Goins’ blog here.) If you’re a fiction writer, you could look for websites that publish short stories.

Like posting in Facebook groups, this is another fantastic way to let your target audience know about your writing. It’s also an excellent way to build relationships with other bloggers. And if you get published on a big authoritative website, it will enhance your credibility as a writer.

However, guest posting can be tricky and time-consuming. Sometimes, you might write an amazing guest post but still not attract very many new subscribers. In order for guest posting to be worth your time, look for blogs with an active community. Often, this will mean that the most recent blog posts receive lots of comments or social media shares.

Additionally, be sure to make the most of your guest post bio and include a link to the landing page for your opt-in gift.

I actually did not guest post on other blogs during the time that I grew my email list to 1,000 subscribers. But I did guest post frequently in publications on a website called Medium. In fact, over the space of three months, I added more than 550 subscribers to my email list just from guest posting there.

And here’s what I really love about Medium. You can republish posts you’ve already written on your blog. This means that you can guest post even if you don’t have time to write new blog posts.

Check out my complete guide on how to use Medium to share your writing and grow your email list.

Growing an online audience can feel intimidating and time-consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. With these five strategies, you can build your email list quickly and still have time left to devote to your writing projects.

Best of all, I’ve compiled all of these strategies into a super easy to follow 5-Step Checklist that you can get by signing up to my email newsletter to access to the members-only content library.

Have you used any of these list building strategies or have any questions about them? Let me know in the comments.

And if you found this post helpful, please share it with a friend. You can use the picture below to share it on Pinterest.