Email List - How to Increase Your Subscribers Bigtime

“Wouldn’t it be nice to send out an email or two and pull in $10,000+ to pay your rent or mortgage payments for the year?”

BlogTyrant’s guest post on Problogger “How to Harness Your Email List to Help Pay Your Rent” opens with that exact line. Does it grab you like it did me? I want to pay my house payment from my writing...and so much more! Don't you?

But how do you get that valuable email list and make it work for you?

An email list is like any other mailing list -- it is your means of keeping touch with people who already share your interests and like your work.

This collection of people are a ready-made audience for repeat performances:

• more views
• more shares
• more clicks

In addition to the satisfaction of having avid fans, many online writers enjoy a healthy income from selling their own products -- most often self-authored books or videos -- or by selling others' products as affiliate marketers. You may not be interested in selling products now but don't wait to decide to, start building your list now. Your email list will be a quick-start to future sales.

Resource: one of the most successful online writers, Darren Rowse, shares a wealth of experience and knowledge on his site Problogger. Learn from the best. Take some time to read his posts and, by all means, subscribe to his blog!

How to build a healthy email list:

1. Set up your blog or website with an "opt in" feature* where people become subscribers by giving you their email address. Three possible venues are: Aweber, Constant Contact and Feedburner.
2. Create a "landing page" to your Facebook Fanpage that offers a free product for those who enter their email address. That product can be an ebook that you authored or someone else wrote (and you have permission to use). Make sure the content is excellent. If it falls short of the promise you make, you will lose the following that you are trying to create.
3. Make an offer. Similar to the landing-page set-up, give an offer right on your website for a free ebook or newsletter subscription. All the reader has to do is sign up using their email.
4. Create a giveaway or blog hop. Readers who want an entry in the giveaway or to add their web post to your blog hop are asked to subscribe to your site using their email address.

*opt-in= giving the reader the opportunity to connect with you, the writer, by joining or subscribing. Most often the only requirement is that the reader enters his/her email address.

Feedburner provides a powerful RSS feed system where your subscribers can sign up to receive your posts through feeds to their reader or as an email, their choice. Some people will do both.

Feedburner is a free service, owned and operated by Google. A very effective, easy to use, FREE tool, Feedburner lacks one important feature that opt-in email software like Aweber and Constant Contact provide. It does not have the ability for you, the writer, to send specific messages to your readers. It alerts your subscribers when new posts appear on your blog-very valuable but that's all. Recommendation? Do both! Provide opt-in for feeds and an email opt-in service, as well.

Sure it will! This has been said again and again but here it is once more: content is king! Your best tool to gaining happy subscribers is by giving them what they want--great content. Keep tuned to what your readers like and give it to them. They'll come back again and again.

Next, post faithfully. Whether it is two days, three days or seven days a week, be consistent. Let your readers know what to expect. Soon, they'll be looking for you!

Make it easy-easy for people to keep plugged in by using subscriber forms and RSS feed opt-ins so that they can get your posts soon as they're available.

Have fun! It takes patience and diligence. Be sure to have fun while you wait for the harvest to come it.

• How to Get Subscribers With E-books
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• How to Blog
• Read Aloud - A Key to Writing Success and Excellence
• Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon - Give the Gift of Click
• How to Make an Ebook Cover for Free

Sinea Pies is a freelance writer for a popular parenting magazine and professional blogger on Ducks 'n a Row. For more: Sinea's profile