Why Creators Should Avoid Paid Ads Until Trying 5 List-Building Strategies

If your list is under 10,000 subscribers, try these free methods first

As creators we all know that the money is in the list. No amount of paid ads in the world will convert as well as a targeted, loyal list of email customers. Email is a pull medium, while ads are a push. We push our content onto unsuspecting prospects. They didn’t request the ad, we forced it into their lives by paying for the privilege.

I’m not saying ads don’t work. They do.

But if your email list is less than 10,000 subscribers, there are better uses of your money than testing ads which might not work. Cash is king in any business. The creator who can spend the most money to acquire a lead (and remain cash flow-positive), wins.

So, why not conserve that cash as much as possible and use an arsenal of powerful list-building methods that don’t cost a penny? We’ll do exactly that today.

Depending on the price of your product, you may be able to make a great living with less than 10,000 subscribers. Some creators never need to pay for ads, which puts them in a very powerful position.

When you use ads, your competition can see what you’re doing. Especially with Facebook, there’s a tab where anyone can see your ad campaigns. Once you run a successful campaign your competition can copy it, raising the cost of your own ads, while making them less useful.

When you stay away from advertising’s radar-sweep, you’re harder to spy on.

No matter which method you choose, pick one and stick with it until it works. There’s nothing that will waste your time more than chasing the latest, shiny, list-building technique.

If you can get email subscribers from a method you’re using now, don’t ever stop using that method. Add more proven methods to the original once you’ve proven what works, but never stop the original. Otherwise, you’re throwing valuable subscriber opportunities away.

Five ways to grow your email list without paying for advertising:

1. Become an advocate

Find a software company or service with a much bigger list, who caters to the same customers you wish to serve. Maybe this is a service you already use, a system you wish to implement in your business, a course you want to take, or a piece of software you wanted to buy anyway.

Put the software/course/system into practice and track your results. Do they deliver as promised? Did they provide you extraordinary value? If so, create a video testimonial as a long case-study about how you used the company’s product and how it helped you achieve a certain type of result.

Submit your well-crafted case study to the company with all your contact information (aimed towards your email landing page). Companies know that testimonials are some of the best word of mouth advertising they can get. If you went to all the trouble to send them a full case study and video, you’re almost guaranteed they’ll share it with their customers. They may post your video and link on their homepage or send it to their giant email list. Maybe you’ll get interviewed on their podcast.

Although it takes time to build the case-study, this free traffic method can bring you thousands of new customers overnight, once implemented. If you don’t hear anything from the company, make sure you follow-up on a periodic basis.

2. Avoid low fruit on social media, but DO use free posts

Your free social media posts can be a great place to pull new readers over to your email list, but make sure your Easy Invite (your free offer) is specific to the people you wish to serve.

It’s tempting to make a broad, viral-like offer that will entice as many people as possible, but I caution against that practice. You’ll end up with a big list of freebie-seekers, not buyers. We’re not trying to build a big list. We want a list of customers who’ll stick with us for a lifetime and buy our offerings repeatedly.

When you post your Easy Invite on your social channels, make sure you’ve created a highly-targeted offer. For example, I’m a writer. I serve writers and creators with my non-fiction content. My Easy Invite is a free, seven-day email masterclass for indies who want their first 1,000 subscribers.

I don’t want affiliate marketers or financial planners on my email list, because those aren’t the people I serve. I don’t want freebie-seekers, and since I’m not offering a quick-fix, free pamphlet or five-page paper, I weed-out all the digital hoarders who like to collect that kind of stuff and never implement it.

3. Write articles where your customers already hang-out.

Blogging isn’t worth your time if you don’t already have a large stream of traffic coming to your site. You could spend the next three years blogging and never make a dent in your list. There’s too much competition for traffic. It’s not worth the wheel-spinning.

Instead, take your ideas to the platforms with huge customer bases already in place. Such as Medium, Reddit, Tumbler, and thousands of other niche sites that will allow you to write articles of your choosing.

Create valuable, non-spammy, targeted content for the people you wish to serve. Offer a call to action at the bottom of each article and entice the reader to grab your free, Easy Invite. Write at least one of these articles per day.

4. Go audio

Become a guest on as many podcasts as you can. Audio is a huge. This is the only medium that allows us to do one other thing while we consume it. You can make dinner and listen to a radio show. You can drive and read a book.

Start with smaller shows first. Get on any show that will take you. If published, the interview is permanent, forever.

At the end of the interview offer the listeners a special gift if they go to your site. Here you’ll pitch your Easy Invite. Make sure you seek podcasts that cater to the same audience you wish to serve. This is true multiplication of your efforts. If you schedule your interviews right, you can do multiple spots in a day.

5. Ask for help

Once you’ve got customers on your list who love your content and believe in the work you create, ask them for help. Part of my email process is offering an additional bonus to my readers if they’re willing to share my masterclass with a friend.

Word of mouth is a lot more powerful than me, some no-name guy, asking customers for their email.

If you can get your customers to share a quick email with friends in the same niche, you’re likely to get some valuable leads this way, without doing any additional work, but asking for help. Be careful not to take their help for granted. I wouldn’t make this ask more than twice in the lifetime of a subscriber.

Every subscriber counts

We want our customers to stick with us for life. Well-done email marketing isn’t about a quick sale. This is about a lifetime of growing, steady income. We treat each subscriber as we wish to be treated.

We don’t waste their time. We provide more value than they expect.

We entertain and teach, simultaneously. We don’t try to sell our subscriber anything they don’t want. Each person who joins your list is a real human being on the other side of that keyboard. They’re not a number. Not a stat for a spreadsheet. Not some notch on your digital bedpost.

These are real people who joined their list, because they have a personal problem they want solved.

Subscribers don’t want to hear about what you want. They want transformation for their own problems. There is a lot of negativity about email, and how email doesn’t work. This is because those folks are using email the wrong way.

It’s time to use email the way it was intended.

We communicate with our subscribers as a welcomed guest in their in-box. We never take that attention for granted. If we write every email from the subscriber’s perspective, we’ll have a lot more engagement and many more sales over a customer’s lifetime (than we would if we tried to vacuum all their cash from their wallets on the first visit).

We’re waiting for you.

(Enroll in My Free Email Masterclass: Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers)

August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. A self-proclaimed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indie authors how to write books that sell and how to sell more of those books once they’re written. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.