If you want to make real money online you need to build your email list, this is going to be the best asset you can have, in this post, I am going to share with you how to turn your blog into a list building machine and how you can use that list to make more money online.
What is a list?
A list is a collection of personal information ( in our case will be an email and a name ) of the people who are interested in what you have to offer or say.
What is list building?
List building is the process of collecting personal information ( email, phone, location, etc) from people who are interested in your service or product.
What we do is that we offer something they need in exchange for their email address and sometimes a name and email address, and we will store that information into a software call and autoresponder.
What is an Autoresponder?
An autoresponder is a software that has two main functions, first, to store the contact you collect from your prospects, and the second function is to send these people automated emails, these emails will include tips and advice about our niche.
In those emails we can include links to products and services, these can be our own or affiliate products, and when those prospects buy we will make money.
Which autoresponder is the best?
There are a lot of good autoresponders out there, I tried most of them, for me ActiveCampaign is the best and it is what I use.Â
For bloggers, I will recommend ActiveCampaign or Covertkit, if you want to do pure affiliate marketing, then pick Aweber.
How does the list-building process work?
You create a video, a pdf, a course, or audio, when you teach people how to do something, for example, it could be how to build your email list in just 7 days for make money online blog, how to manifest money in 24 hours for manifestation niche, etc. You create an opt-in form where you offer them that information in exchange for their email.
When they opt-in you send them a download link to get the thing that they opted in for and introduce yourself, you can send them emails about yourself and your business.
Imagine this, you have 2000 people in your email list, you find something that you think the product will help them to solve their problem, you write an email and 300 of them open your email, and just 30 of them buy that product, you make $30 per sale, that is $900 for a single email.
I know people with a lot of subscribers and they make a lot of money, for those who are starting out you should aim for at least 1000 subscribers in the first 6 months. With 5000 subscribers you can make a full-time income.
If you do not want to send them emails about products or services, you can send them the latest blog post or a digest of them, you can send them to your youtube channel or a podcast if you have them, just do not abuse and try to sell them everything you find online or send them millions of emails per day, remember these are real people with real problems, never spam them.
How to turn your blog into a list building machine
Now we know what is list building let us dive into the process of turning your blog into a list-building machine.
Create more great content
You need to find out what type of content your readers enjoy the most and create more and better content of that type.
Find out what type of content gets more views, more social shares, and more engagements, these metrics will be your guide to creating great content.
Do your research and make sure that the information you provide is solid, practical, and actionable, people will start to see you as an authority in the niche and they will subscribe to your email list.
Offer them an ethical bribe
Find what is the problem most of your readers are facing, find a solution for it, and offer it to them by exchanging it with their email address.
I know most bloggers who just add a form that says join my mailing list, this is better than nothing but you can go one step further and say get this guide to solve your problem, just let me know where I can send you the download link, the second way is better.
Increase traffic to your blog
If you have a great blog with great content but no one visiting it, you will never get subscribers, if your blog is new and you’re not getting enough traffic, you can increase traffic by participating in social media, Facebook groups, forums, doing SEO, etc.
You can learn more about driving traffic for your new blog here.
Add sign-up forms to your blog
If you have great content on your blog, you advertise it and get a lot of traffic and you created great content to give away but you do not have a signup form in your blog, you won’t get any subscribers.
Where there are going to sign up? In the next section, I am going to explain where you can put your sign-up form in your blog to get subscribers.
Where to put your sign-up form on your blog in order to build your list
I am going to share with you five places you can put your option form in order to increase your email list subscribers.
On top of your blog before content
You can put your form on top of your blog, just below the logo and before the main content, for me, this is the highest converting spot, you will get more subscribers since this will be the first thing they will see when coming to your blog.
The negative aspect of this is that it will push your blog post further down the line and this might anger some of your visitors.
How to build this
I use Thrive themes to build this, as you can see on this blog.
You can have someone design it for you and add it to the code of your theme in Fiverr or you can buy a theme that supports these kinds of opt-in forms. With thrive themes, you can build an opt-in form like this.
Inside your blog post
You can put your sign-up form anywhere inside your blog post, you can decide where you need to put your form.
All you need to do is to create your form inside your autoresponder, after you finish they will provide you with a code and you can add that anywhere you want.
If you use ActiveCampaign you can read their guide on how to create forms here.
For me, I like to add a signup form at the end of a blog post. I use a plugin called post layout, I copy the code from my autoresponder, I post it on the layout and it will show at the end of every post.
This is an example of the form that I created inside ActiveCampaign and added to my blog.
You can also use thrive themes to create inside blog opt-in pages.
Or If you scroll down to this post you will find another form like this.
Add a form to the top right corner of your blog
Another great place to add an option form is the top right corner of your blog. I did this when I was starting but I do not do it anymore.
I know a lot of people who still have this, and they are having great success with this, you can create a form using your autoresponder and then add a code there, you can add a direct code or you can use a plugin to do this, most autoresponders nowadays have plugins that can help you to place sign up form in your blog.
Create a pop-up
Another great way to capture email subscribers is by using a non-intrusive pop-up, this is a small sign-up form that will show up when the visitors have been to your blog for a certain amount of time or they show an intention of leaving your blog.
I use a free plugin called Sumone, which you can find in the plugin inside your WordPress, all you need is to install it and activate the plugin.
Then go to forms, create one select your goal, and form type, put your headline, the content, and call to action, indicate where you want them to go after joining, connect to your autoresponder, and then click save.
Create a squeeze page
You can create a simple squeeze page, the main function of this page is just to collect emails, you can include the link to the squeeze pages inside your blog posts and when your readers click those links, they will go to the squeeze page and have a chance to opt-in.
There are many free WordPress plugins that you can use to create a squeeze page, if you can code you can create using HTML or PHP, or you can use a page builder.
I use Thrive themes to build all my squeeze pages, as I think they are the page builder in the market.
Here is an example of the page I built using Thrive themes.
Final words
That is it, this is how you turn your blog into a list building machine, list building is the most important task you need to do if you want to build a long-term online business.
Do not go overboard though build one or two types of these forms and use them to build your online empire.