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:
- Twitter Advanced Search helps you find followers based on a combination of keywords and location.
- 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.
- Twitdom and Tweepi are also helpful for finding new followers. [Read: How to Quickly and Easily Get Hundreds of Twitter Followers Part I]
- 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.
- 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:Â Do You Need More Popular, Free Blogging Tools? Try Periscope]
- 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]
- Have landing pages offering your optin. These should be static pages on your site, not blog posts. [Read:Â Landing Pages: 10 Tips That Will Make You See People Subscribe Today]
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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] - 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.Â
How to Increase Your Email List with Free Optins
- An audio
- 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.
- Infographic
- Case study
- Checklist: [See This Is What You Should Do After Publishing Your Blog Post as an example.]
- Coaching session
- 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.
- 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.
- Curated newsletter
- 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!
- Facebook group access
- FAQs
- Goodie bag with a combination of optins
- A guide
- Ebook A downloadable ebook is one of the most common optins I’ve seen.
- Ebook excerpt
- A game
- Illustrations
- A list
- Live chat
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.]
- Podcast download
- PowerPoint presentation
- A post just for them
- A quote
- Recipe
- A report
- Research results
- Resource list [See: 123 of the Best Free Blogging Tools that Will Save You Time Blogging (2017 Update)Â as an example]
- A roundup post [Read: How to Write an Expert Roundup Even if You Don’t Know Any Experts]
- Slideshare [Read: 1 Popular Way to Be a Better Blogger with Slideshare]
- Timeline
- Video training
- Webinar
- Worksheet
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
