How to Easily Get New Followers with Optins: an Update

By: | May 28, 2017 | Tags: , , , , , , , |

50 tips for #TrafficGeneration & #ListBuilding

You haven’t read how to get people to subscribe to your blog in a long time on Mostly Blogging.

I felt my post 7 Ways to Take Charge of Your Readership Problem: Optins had said it all.

You should give freebies, incentives for subscribing known as optins, to people in exchange for their email addresses.

I figured all was said and done. However, all wasn’t said, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Consider this an update to 7 Ways to Take Charge of Your Readership Problem: Optins.

You have many ways of getting new blog subscribers. This post explains 50 free tools, methods, and optins you can use to woo visitors and turn them into subscribers.

What are Optins?

An optin is a freebie, a free incentive to join your blog so enticing people would gladly give up an email address to get. It should be something so valuable to your reader that they’d gladly pay for it, but you will give it to them for free. This is one of the most effective ways to grow your email list.

In his guest post on this blog about how to get subscribers with types of blog posts, marketer Andrew Gazdecki commented, “Giving away stuff is the best way to get people through the door.”

Depending on what you offer your readers, optins have many synonyms. For example, they are also called “content upgrades,” “incentives,” and “CRO” (Conversion Rate Optimization).

Before you can offer people an optin for signing up, you need to get them to your blog.

How to Increase Blog Traffic Using Tools

There are many tools to help you attract visitors to your blog.

In his guest post for Mostly Blogging, Harsh Agrawal explained there are four apps that help you attract blog readership.

There are many additional tools that will help you engage like-minded bloggers in your niche:

For example:

  1. Twitter Advanced Search helps you find followers based on a combination of keywords and location.
  2. InboxQ is a Web app that allows you to find Twitter conversations in real-time based on certain keywords. You can join these conversations and contribute in meaningful ways to engage new followers.
  3. Twitdom and Tweepi are also helpful for finding new followers. [Read: How to Quickly and Easily Get Hundreds of Twitter Followers Part I]
  4. Click to Tweet will enable word of mouth to help you find followers. Sam Oh of Entrepreneur suggests having your readers “click to tweet” a memorable quote from your article.
  5. Use Live Streaming videos. People subscribe to bloggers they trust. That credibility is enhanced if visitors can see you. According to the Tech.co blog, Using Live Streaming will increase your conversion rate for this reason. [Read: Do You Need More Popular, Free Blogging Tools? Try Periscope]
  6. Use Sniply.Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could get traffic from the influencers in your niche who already have a well-established traffic pool? You can with Sniply. WeekHack recommends Sniply for growing your email list. [Read: How to Share Social Media Content & Get Traffic With Sniply]
  7. Have landing pages offering your optin. These should be static pages on your site, not blog posts. [Read: Landing Pages: 10 Tips That Will Make You See People Subscribe Today]
  8. Once your visitors are at your site, you need a tool to offer them the optin. Many sites allow you to make optin boxes and link the emails collected to your email service. I use Rapidology which is free.

How to Increase Blog Traffic with These 5 Methods

  1. Blog commenting Subscribe to the popular blogs in your niche. Try to be one of the first commenters. An insightful comment will interest subsequent readers. They will see your comments if you comment early. A popular blog ensures many people will scroll past your comments.
  2. Guest blogging Find a bigger blog than yours in your niche. Guest blogging is a common way to get new readers interested in your topic to learn about you.
  3. Promote your blog post on social media sites. My personal favorites are promoting on Facebook, Flipboard, and Twitter. When I promote on Facebook, I put my post in certain Facebook groups which allow self-promotion.
  4. Post at optimal times. Various ways exist to know the best time to post. This is the time most people will see your link to your article. You can check your analytics at social media sites to find when the majority of people will see your blog post link. These are called “impressions.” Click your avatar and the words “View Profile” to see the optimal times to post on Twitter.[Read: How You Can Know When It’s Time to Blog]
  5. Use a Call to Action. Tell people to sign up! [Read: 13 Ways a Call to Action Will Make You See Enormous Blog Stats]

Once people are on your blog, you need to offer them optins for subscribing. 

How to Increase Your Email List with Free Optins

  1. An audio
  2. Cheat sheet I offer cheat sheets to people who book my blog coaching service, but you could give them out in exchange for an email.
  3. Infographic
  4. Case study
  5. Checklist: [See This Is What You Should Do After Publishing Your Blog Post as an example.]
  6. Coaching session
  7. Contest entry: According to Andrew Gazdecki, “Participants’ activities within the confines of the contest will create new engagement as their friends and family see and feel enticed to join in as well, otherwise miss out on the experience entirely.” The Mar Tech blog agrees that you should host contests.
  8. A course Udemy is an example of a site where people pay to take blogging courses. If you give one out for free, you could get blog subscribers.
  9. Curated newsletter
  10. Entry in a giveaway: I am excited to reveal I’m participating in a giveaway with other bloggers! I’ll be giving away a free blog critique in exchange for an email. Stay tuned!
  11. Facebook group access
  12. FAQs
  13. Goodie bag with a combination of optins
  14. A guide
  15. Ebook A downloadable ebook is one of the most common optins I’ve seen.
  16. Ebook excerpt
  17. A game
  18. Illustrations
  19. A list
  20. Live chat
  21. Members-only area The Mostly Blogging subcommunities are all for members only. These include a Link Exchange, a StumbleUpon group, a Follow to Follow Directory, and a Blogging Collaboration group.
  22. PDF Offering readers a PDF of your post is a great list building strategy. This is called “a content upgrade.” According to Wishpond, “Content upgrades are one of the easiest and most effective lead generation tactics on the market today .”  Lilach Bulloch offers free instructions for turning a blog post into a PDF. When people subscribe to my blog through my optin box, they are redirected to a downloadable PDF of my 123 blogging tools post.
  23. Pinterest Board Access Mostly Blogging offers access to a Community Pinterest Board only for followers of this blog. [If you are a follower, and would like to be added to the board, let me know in the comments section.]
  24. Podcast download
  25. PowerPoint presentation
  26. A post just for them
  27. A quote
  28. Recipe
  29. A report
  30. Research results
  31. Resource list [See: 123 of the Best Free Blogging Tools that Will Save You Time Blogging (2017 Update) as an example]
  32. A roundup post [Read: How to Write an Expert Roundup Even if You Don’t Know Any Experts]
  33. Slideshare [Read: 1 Popular Way to Be a Better Blogger with Slideshare]
  34. Timeline
  35. Video training
  36. Webinar
  37. Worksheet

 

Optins will help you build your #EmailList

This infographic was published with the original post about optins.

Readers, please share, so other website creators have ideas for how to generate traffic to their blogs and optins they can offer in order to build their email lists.

Which optins do you offer your readers to sign up on your blog? Are there any not on the list you can suggest?

What about traffic generation? Can you suggest more tools or methods? I look forward to your answers in the comments section.

Related Posts:

How to Quickly Get 3,000 New Blog Followers

How to Immediately Increase Your Blog Subscribers

How to Get Loyal Visitors to Repeatedly Return to Your Blog

Source:

Copymonk.com

  1. Donna DeGuglielmo

    great stuff Needed to know more info thank you. I needed to fav on my computer, tweeted it. and copied for my reading time off comp. I am not sure if you say on another post or somewhere how to attach an optin to have subs get it? so much to learn 🙂 blessing you are me go to person. thank you so grateful.

    • Donna DeGuglielmo

      sorry Janice Subs are subscribers. Do you have a different subscriber box for give aways would you suggest or just one and send out when you have givaways . hey you all great peoople sign up and you will get give aways always… oh I do not know trying to find the words 🙂 blessings thank you so much

      • Janice Wald

        HI Donna,
        We use a plugin called Rapidology. My tech helper made it for me, but Rapidology is free and seems easy enough.
        Thank you for the compliments and for writing me.
        Janice

  2. John Doe

    I really like the updates on previous posts..there always so much quality information that some of it falls through the cracks..the updates re-enforces my memory and then adds new information..thanks for the help.

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Kim,
      Thanks so much. Thanks as well for the visit. I’m glad you enjoyed the article.
      Janice

  3. Pospi O Otuson

    Really great tips for increasing speedy blog Traffic as well as engagement.
    Above all i thing writing and commenting on other blogs is this most unigue way to make things work. Thanks for the share.

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Pospi,
      I need to try harder to make the time to blog comment. I like to get in early, but often I’m in class when people publish. Thanks for writing with your ideas.
      Janice

  4. Abid Masih

    I loved it, such a wonderful stuff to read. Blog traffic really matter and shared tools gonna be really helpful to increase it in better way. Thanks for the guide, have a good day.
    Regards
    Abid Masih

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Abid,
      Glad you enjoyed the post and specifically the tools. Thanks for writing to tell me.
      Janice

  5. Anonymous

    Great info, thanks! I’d love to be added to your shared Pinterest Board!

    • Janice Wald

      Hi,
      If you’re a subscriber, I’d be happy to send you an invitation to the group Pinterest board. Unfortunately, you’re coming in as “Anonymous.” Who are you?
      Janice

  6. ashley

    Great tips!!
    I am a newbie in blogging world and I guess for bloggers like me this post is a great thing to read as traffic is considered to be the most important thing for any blog or website.
    Thanks for this post.

    Ashley. 🙂

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Ashley,
      Thanks for writing me. Congratulations on starting your blog recently. We help new bloggers here. I’d like to encourage you to become a permanent reader. I agree with what you wrote. Traffic is needed for any blog to be successful.
      Janice

    • Janice Wald

      Hi,
      Thanks for writing me. Once you implement the tips, let me know how it goes for you.
      Janice

      • Oyegoke Samuel

        Thanks Janice for your reply, i don’t know if you or any one here would kindly help me out, my site has been losing traffic for a while now, most if not all of my ranking keywords were all dropped, and last month witnessed the worst of it all.. from about 10k daily page view down to 1.2k daily page view in May,

        Pls any tips or will help check to give me tips on how to recover traffic back ??

        • Janice Wald

          Hi,
          May I ask what steps you take to optimize your posts for search engines? Then, I can give a better response. Thanks,
          Janice

          • oyegoke samuel dare

            – tried everything possible to optimize all post

            One of which is to use the keyword in post title, first paragraph, H2 Tag, last paragraph and also one other part of the post, aside this, I try to write more comprehensively, build backlinks and a few others..

            That being said, I was ranking 1st result on Google on some keywords since October last year, like fts 17, pes 17 iso, fts 2017, pes 17 apk, as a matter of fact any post I published on download ranks to mention a few

            But for the past 4 months I started noticing a drop in position

            Then I thought moving to https would solve it, I did moved to https, but then it went further down, then I reversed back to http, it never recovered

            I thought my theme was the problem, changed theme again it equally went further down, I was forced to revert back

            In the nut shell, each steps I have taken since I started noticing the drops has been making matter worst till date..

            Any help….

          • Janice Wald

            Hi Samuel,
            Thank you for answering my question and explaining how you optimize. I will respond by email.
            Janice

        • Julie S Pit Stop Crew

          Hey Janice, Cool posts. I hooe I can help in answering Samuel Dare.

          #1. There is what we call the quick win type of Posts, which are optimised for Keywords and for SEO, rather than for the Audience. Such a post may hit the top pages but the older more comprehensive 3k+ Word count well linked posts will always bounce back. Thus I imagine your drop in SEO rank Samuel.

          #2. Changing from http to https, will almost always automatically cause a drop in rank, a massive one because Search engines will for a few weeks 2-3 months even, they will think your blog is new…But with proper redirects and reduction on broken links and as the redirects drop your posts should start to recover. But then again you changed Themes twice…?

          #3 Same exact results with a change to https when you Change Theme. This can and will cause a drop in SEO. A new theme triggers confusion for the Search engines whihc have a different theme in their logs, and the robots have to crawl your site a few times like weeks before they recognise it. even if the name is the same. Our Online Assets faced same end of last year and earlier this year. But we were ready for it and know that we are slowly but surely climbing back up.

          We went the whole hog and changed Web Hosts so you are gonna be fine bro.

          The trick is to make one change, track your results for at least 3-4 months before you throw another change at your blog. 🙂

          Julie Syl

          • Janice Wald

            Hi Julie,
            Thank you for answering Samuel. Your advice was spot on. It’s true. When we put the “s” at the end of http, Google thinks we have a whole new blog. Thanks for all these reassurances.I have it set up so Samuel will be notified of your reply. It was generous of you to take your time and share your expertise. Thank you again.
            Janice

          • Samuel Oyegoke

            Thanks a lot for your reply, I really appreciate…

            I guess I wasn’t patient enough to wait few months for results,now there’s no traffic or earnings to protect… Now bro, what do you think can be done to get things back ??

  7. Betty

    These are awesome tools. I like updating and commenting. I will be trying many of the tools listed. Thanks Janice for stopping by anointedtoday.blogspot.com.

    • Janice Wald

      Hi Betty,
      I’m glad you enjoyed my article and found the tips valuable. You are so supportive when it comes to commenting. I need to make more time to do that as well.
      Janice

  8. Teresa

    Hi Janice,
    You consistently provide fantastic information to help other bloggers. Thank you! I read, then printed so I can dig deeper, then printed some of the links you shared! One of my problems is time; it seems I can’t be consistent because of other things in my life. Any suggestions? Pinned and tweeted! Thank you for linking up at #BloggingGrandmothersLinkParty!

  9. Donna

    Hi, Janis – Thank you for including this post and being part of the Blogging Grandmother Community. I have shared this post on my social media.

  10. Sharon T McLaughlin MD FACS

    Thank you for all of this information, I will be sure to share it.

  11. Gentle Joy Homemaker

    What a great list… although I haven’t even HEARD of some of what you listed! 🙂 I appreciate the thoroughness of your posts and the help to those of us who are not as familiar with such things. Thank you.

  12. Edward Thorpe

    Hi Janice,

    Excellent list of ways to increase subscriber opt-ins. I’ve used some of them in the past. Presently I’m still trying to decide if I want the bother of cultivating another list. The way I see it, it’s a big responsibility, as all opportunities are. Good post, well-written, thank you Janice, keep on ‘crusin’…Edward

  13. Lexie

    Thanks for the tips! As a new blogger it can be really hard to get your work in front of readers.

  14. Chery Schmidt

    Hey Janice! You did a wonderful job with this post my friend! So many awesome tips for us to get more Blog subscribers!
    Great Share..
    Thank You
    Chery :))

  15. Sue from Sizzling Towards 60 & Beyond

    This is such a useful post Janice full of great ideas to increase readership. Thanks for linking up with us at #BloggingGrandmothersLinkParty I’ll be sharing on social media. Hope to see you at the next link up.

  16. Clearissa Coward

    Great article. I will put some of these tips to use. Thank you for linking up at #BloggingGrandmothersLinkParty! I have shared on social media.

  17. Ikechi

    Hi Janice

    What a great resource and this is sure going to make any blogger get more readers. This is just an awesome work.

    Thanks for sharing. Take care

  18. Mandy Allen

    That’s a great list. I use some of the methods already and totally agree. I mainly use blog visiting/commenting and freebies though. The others are something I do only once in a while. Maybe I should implement them more often!

    Enjoy the journey!

  19. Victoria

    Reading this has reminded me how much I need to work on my optins for email. I have a love-hate with emailing my list and, with already limited time to blog, having something awesome for readers is like last. But you have great (easy) suggestions that I need to study and just do! Visiting from Saturday Sharefest.

  20. Lori Hill-Smith

    So many excellent ideas!
    Thank you for sharing at #BloggingGrandmothersLinkParty

  21. Kathryn Maclean

    Hi Janice,
    You did a GREAT job with this article. So much information, as always. So many awesome tips for optins. Something I am working on at the moment. Keeping this for reference and will share on my social media for you.

  22. Nicole

    WOW this is so helpful! I’m saving this on Pinterest to come back to it because I KNOW I’ll want to use a whole bunch of these. I use Tweepi and find it helpful, but I haven’t even heard of most of the other ones! Thanks for a ton of great info

  23. Dr. Erica Goodstone

    Janice,

    What a comprehensive list of freebies to offer. And so much good info on how to use these amazing tools to get more blog traffic. My only concern is that there are not enough hours in the day to write blogs posts, see clients, create products and events, and focus on using these tools. Never heard of Sniply and WeekHack. If I have a few moments, those are the two I will try.

    Thanks,

    Dr. Erica

  24. Gaurav Heera

    Thank you for this Amazing information. I have been reading many of the articles and posts Belongs to on the website, Carry on the battery work and I wish to read some more Great content in the future.

  25. Elise Cohen Ho

    I am back again… I just love this list and want to thoroughly research everything.

    • Janice Wald

      Please do. Come back as many times as you like. Thank you for your interest in my article.
      Janice

        • Janice Wald

          Hi lis,
          I was serious about the link to your Linky party. I would like to participate again. Can you send it please?
          Janice

  26. Alena Sham

    In my opinion, guest posting in niche specific sites can be really effective in driving traffic for your website or blog.
    Do you think we should buy traffic from different sites that provide paid traffic?

  27. Grammy Dee

    Good ideas here! Thanks Janice for linking up at the #BloggingGrandmothersLinkParty. I shared this post.

  28. Pingback: 15 Secrets of Success Shared by a Professional Blogger

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