How To Get Your First 10,000 Email Subscribers For Free
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A walkthrough on how to get your first 10,000 email subscribers for free. This is the exact process I followed to get my first 10,000 subscribers.
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I could not live without email.
That's being a bit dramatic... but it really is the centerpiece of my business.
I love email because it's an owned asset that no one can take from you.
Think of it like your "house".
You can say what you want, do what you want, decorate it the way you want, and invite the people you want.
It's your house after all.
Now if you're someone famous like Brad Pitt?
It's pretty easy to get people over to your house because of your name alone.
But if you're like me? Just a regular dude no one knows?
You have to give people a damn good reason to come over to your house.
And that's what I'll share with you today.
Let's roll.
(P.S. - I'm going to assume you already have skills/experience worth creating an email list + audience around. If you don't, that's step #0 for you.)
1/ Determine WHO you want in your house.
Get clear on who you can help and want in your house.
If I'm hosting a BBQ with juicy steaks and burgers... do you think I'm gonna invite a bunch of vegans?
Nope.
I'm gonna invite a bunch of meat lovers.
I have a few different segments of my audience now... similar to how you might have different friend groups... but I started with one.
My main "who" now are people with expertise who want to start, grow, and make money from their email list.
Once you get clear on your who?
It's a lot easier to design your positioning, messaging, and offers to get them on your email list.
2/ Create a "bait".
If you're fishing for Marlin you can't expect to cast out a naked hook and catch one.
You'll need to put a squid on the hook and go to where they’re known to swim around.
Same thing with your email list.
What bait can you offer to get people HAPPY to join your list?
The delivery method doesn't matter as much as what the bait is.
I've done a one-page PDF, single video training, short ebook, and a 7-day email course.
What matters is you're offering a "bait" your ideal person wants.
I'm looking to attract experts and founders who want to start, grow, and make money from their email list
So I created this bait to attract them:
Do you think someone who wants to start and grow their email list would be interested in this?
Me thinks yes.
And there's a decent chance you've been seen this guide if you're here :-)
Once you have your bait?
Create a simple opt-in page like the below where folks can enter their first name and email in exchange for the bait.
This currently converts at 50%+
Onto the next step...
3/ Pretty up your social profiles.
Whether we admit or not... we as human beings automatically judge others.
If I go to your Facebook profile and you have a profile picture of Pikachu... I'm going to think/feel a certain way about you.
That's just how it is. I don't make the rules!
I used social media as the traffic channel to get my first 10,000 subscribers.
The steps are to:
Pick a platform where your ideal people are hanging out
Pretty up your social profile so it’s attractive to the right person
Publish consistently, 3x minimum per week
Let's run through my LinkedIn profile as an example:
If someone lands on my profile it's clear in a few seconds who I am, who I help, and how I can help them.
My cover photo has a clear message with a call-to-action.
My headline tells you what I do in 1-2 sentences.
There's a link that drives people to my opt-in.
And a featured section that also links to my opt-in.
When our ideal person lands on our profile?
We want them to be thinking, "how can I get MORE from this person?"
Once our profiles are pretty we need to...
4/ Generate attention.
At this point you should know your "who".
You also have some kind of "bait" to give people a reason to join your email list.
You should have an opt-in page to collect first name and email addresses.
And you should have optimized your active social profiles.
Now it's time to generate attention so people find you.
I use social media content to do this.
Social is a "borrowed asset".
Meaning it isn’t your house and you can be booted or cancelled at any time.
The upside is your "who" is already hanging out here.
So you generate attention by posting relevant, useful, entertaining, and valuable stuff.
As you make these posts you'll start to attract people.
They'll check out your profile and see a way to get your bait.
Once they do... congrats!
They're now on your list.
Currently I’m most active on LinkedIn and YouTube.
I do NOT recommend you try and tackle multiple platforms at once though.
Choose 1 and stick with it for 6-8 months before thinking about adding another.
I started with a YouTube channel and Facebook group.
My YouTube videos would send people over to my Facebook group.
Which would then send people over to my email list.
I added Twitter in Feb 2021. And LinkedIn in May 2022.
But the goal with all of them is the same.
Publish posts that generate attention and drive people to my email list.
If you’re doing this every day it’s totally viable to get to 10-50+ subscribers per day.
If you want to see a live case study of how I do this every day?
Follow me on LinkedIn.
Conclusion
You just learned about:
Choosing your Who
Creating a Bait
Prettying up your socials
Generating free traffic
This is exactly how I for my first 10,000 subscribers for free.
In a future post I’ll share the monetization strategy to convert subscribers into customers.
If you found this useful, please “Like” it. Share it with a friend. Comment below if you have any questions.
And make sure you subscribed so you don’t miss any future posts.
See you next time.
Your compadre,
Sean Anthony
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