How To Build An Email List For Free

Lets face it, blogging isn’t free. You have to have hosting and a domain name that cost you right out of the gate. Then you find you need other services if you want to make life easier on yourself as a blogger. Now you want to build your email list but you don’t want to have to pay out even more money on top of everything you have already bought. The you’re in luck! In this post I show you how you can build your email list for free, up to 1,000 subscribers.

Why Do You Need An Email List?

Having an email list is important so you can stay in touch with your readers and customers.

If you use Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, or any other social media platform to stay in touch with your subscribers it’s not a good idea to depend only on those platforms.

Why you ask?

Because you are at the mercy of those other companies. At any point those companies could decide to permanently suspend your account, or just close up shop. And POOF! There goes your way to stay in touch with everyone on a consistent basis.

With an email list, you always are able to have your list of customers.

Even though you use an email service provider, you own your email list.

You are able to keep a backup of your list when you have an email list. So if anything were to happen, you can go on your merry way with your list in hand and not have to worry how you are going to get it all back.

What You Will Need to Build Your Email List For Free

Free Email Service Provider

First you will need an email service provider.

What is an Email Service Provider?

This is where you will be sending emails to your list from.

The email service provider will give you tools to make sign up forms and to make emails. This is where your email list will be stored and all emails will go out to your list from the email service provider.

Get a Free Email Service Provider

You can start using certain email service providers for free and others will charge you a fee.

So how do you get a free one?

Sign up here for MailerLite and you can use their platform for free up to 1,000 subscribers or 12,000 emails per month.

By using MailerLite you won’t have to pay anything until you get 1,000 subscribers or are sending over 12,000 emails each month, whichever comes first. So this will give you plenty of opportunity to be making a profit with your blog before you have to spend more money on an email service.

Get An Opt-In For Your Email List

Now the fastest way to build your email list is to use opt-ins aka content upgrades.

What is an Email Opt-in?

Email opt-ins are freebies that you offer to someone for them to sign up for your email list.

Using email opt-ins as a email sign up offer is one of the easiest ways to grow your email list fast.

Opt-Ins can be anything from a PDF version of your blog post, printables, to a step-by-step tutorial, checklists, or worksheets.

For a more inclusive list of email opt-in ideas check out this post: Opt-In Freebie Ideas to Help Grow Your Mailing List.

Do You Have To Use Email Opt-Ins?

No you don’t have to use email opt-ins, but you won’t get very much in the way of subscribers on your email list if you just have a sign up form sitting there asking for your readers to sign up. Sure some will sign up, but there is a much better and faster way to grow an email list than this.

Look at it this way. If you are walking down the street and just stop everyone you see and ask for their email address, how many do you think you’ll get? Not that much.

But! If you had something that each person could use to make a part of their life easier in exchange for their email address, you are going to get many many more email addresses.

And those things that make their lives easier are opt-in freebies you can give them for signing up.

Where to Get Free Opt-In Ideas

So if you are anything like me, there are going to be times where you are just sitting there staring at the computer screen and just can’t come up with anything to use for an opt-in. So what do you do in cases like this?

This is where free PLR content comes in to the rescue.

What is PLR?

PLR stands for private label rights. It also goes by the name white label content sometimes.

All this content is, is articles, ebooks, social media posts, checklists, worksheets, and reports that authors have put together for content creators to purchase and use as their own.

You are allowed to use it as is, but it is 100% recommended that you change it up some.

Much of the PLR content is just the basics of the topic, so bloggers and content creators can expand on it to make it fit their voice and their brand. And you can also add you expertise on the subject to it.

How to Get Free PLR to Use for Opt-ins to Build Your Email List for Free

Go to PLR.me and sign up for an account using this link to get 10 free credits. Use these credits to get some checklists, reports, worksheets, guides, and even ebooks.

Once you pick out a few downloads to use for your opt-ins, edit the PLR content to match your brand.

If you don’t find anything at PLR.me check out this post for more places to get free PLR: Where To Get Free PLR Downloads and Deals

Also be sure to read it over and make sure you edit some of the content. Make the content work for your brand and your voice.

If you see something needs to be added, you can do that too! You are allowed to edit PLR content. That means you can add to it, change the wording, graphics, whatever you need.

You can also use some of the PLR content that you get for free to create content for your blog. You can use PLR to create articles for your blog easily, check out How to Use PLR Articles to Get Content for Your Blog to find out how.

TL;DR on How to Grow Your Email List for Free

• Get a free account with MailerLite ( sign up here for your free MailerLite account )
• Get an opt-in to attract subscribers ( sign up here with PLR.me for free PLR to use for opt-ins )
• Set up your signup form and start getting sign ups for your email list.