These 9 Tactics Will Take Your Blog from 0 to 1000 Subscribers

So in part one of this MAKE MONEY BLOGGING series, we began to talk comprehensively about starting a blog that makes you money. We specifically discussed how you could pick a profitable niche, test your idea, choose an exact domain name, set up your blog, and why you should start a blog.

In this second part, we'll focus on the strategies and blogging techniques you can apply to go from nothing to your first set of email subscribers.
 

WHY BUILD AN EMAIL LIST?

Many beginner bloggers have yet to realise that building an email list is the most effective way to make money from a blog. Many established bloggers have repeatedly said that “THE MONEY IS IN THE LIST.” When asked what they would have done differently from the onset of their blog, most established bloggers have always said they wish they had started building an email list from day one.

List building is an essential long-term asset for any online business. Without a subscriber list, your site visitors will come, read your content and head back without you ever benefiting from them.

An industry study reveals that about 70% of people who visit any site won't be coming back to the site. If you don't have a conversion strategy for collecting their details, you’ve lost your visitors forever. 85% of retail professionals say email marketing is the most significant driver of customer retention.

Also, list building helps site owners build relationships and trust with their audience. These days, business is not just transactional but relational. This means that before people buy from you, they'll try to get to know you first.

Email is an evergreen strategy to grow a business online. When you collect your readers' email addresses, you'll get to reach out to them subsequently to establish a relationship. And soon, you present your product to them. So if you're ready to take your blog from rock bottom to your first 1000 subs, these are your strategies.
 

1. IDENTIFY YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

Before taking action on your blog, you must first know whom you want to attract to your subscriber list. Serious blogs that want to make money don't target everyone. They go for a specific target audience.

So, asking anyone to sign up for your email list won't get you your desired result of making money on your blog. Why? Because you need a well-defined, specific type of people to sell them a well-defined, particular kind of product or service.

Even as email subscribers have been confirmed to pull in the highest conversion rates for sales, you can only benefit from it if your email list is gathered from a select audience. You aren't starting a blog to talk about everything but a specific topic. So, it's crucial that you know whom you are trying to help or reach out to with your blog. Know their age, status, income level, location, interests, and most importantly, their problems.

This will also help you know the kind of content you'll create and how to promote your stuff to them. Let’s take, for instance, the health and fitness niche. It’s a broad niche with many sub-niches like weight loss, skin care and hair loss. It's best to focus on a sub-niche versus talking about everything health.

That way, you can identify and solve specific problems for your audience. In other words, this helps you deliver exactly what your audience needs. And once you nail it, different strategies for building your email list will fall into place.

2. CREATE *HIGH-QUALITY* CONTENT REGULARLY

Now that you know your target audience, you would want to create relevant content to draw them into your site. By now, you are most probably familiar with the marketing phrase "content is king.” It explains it all — your blog won't go anywhere without kingly content.

Why? Because not all content is king. Low-quality content and content irrelevant to your target audience can't work their way into becoming king. And they won’t generate your desired results. Creating high-quality, long-form content will attract your target audience and convert them to subscribers.

So what's the best content like?

Well, the most effective content is often high-quality and super-relevant. That type of content draws readers in, keeps them stuck to your website for a long, and eventually converts them into subs. Make this content available regularly if you want them to keep coming.

There are billions of blogs online. Since you are just starting your blog, you need great content to convince your target audience that you can provide the answers they want.

Go for long-form content versus short-form. The long-form range allows you to provide more thorough information on a topic that 300-word content does. Your readers will appreciate it and stay longer on your site rather than look elsewhere to get the complete report.

Long-form content is excellent for SEO, too. Backlinko reports that the top ten pages on Google all have an average range of about 1850 words.

Additionally, be sure to make your headlines catchy and attractive to grab your audience's attention. If you can, ADD IMAGES AND GRAPHICS IN YOUR POSTS. Blog posts with relevant images have been found to outperform posts without images. You can find image ideas for your blog posts through the help of reverse image search. This tool is capable of helping you explore visually similar images. You can also get images in better size or format with the assistance of an image finder.

3. PROMOTE YOUR CONTENT

When it comes to blogging, creating high-quality content is getting half of the job done. Put differently; successful blogging is not only about creating content. It is also about getting it into the hands of more audiences.

That's where content promotion comes in. You can create the best content on the Internet, yet no one will get to read it. But when you promote it, the readers (subscribers) start trooping in. First, find out your target readers' platforms and promote your content there. It could be emailed on LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, or Instagram.

Regarding content promotion, we often recommend following the 80/20 rule. That is, put 20 per cent of your blogging time into creating helpful content and 80 per cent of time into promotion. That's how serious you should take it!
 

4. DEVELOP AN EFFECTIVE CONVERSION STRATEGY

Most blogs make the mistake of not establishing a clear conversion channel. But hey, how do you convert visitors when they start trooping into your site from creating relevant content to promoting it?

The thing to do is to develop a strong strategy for converting them. It typically involves setting up an opt-in email form and placing it on strategic points on your website. To make it pop, you can create a valuable incentive and offer it as bait to entice potential subscribers to opt into your list.

When adding a signup form, make it short. Just their email address and maybe their first name will do. Don’t make it difficult for readers to sign up by requesting too much information like last name, phone number, country, etc., to avoid losing them.
 

5. HAVE A SUBSCRIBER LANDING PAGE

Apart from placing opt-in forms, we recommend creating a particular landing page dedicated to persuading visitors to subscribe to your email list.

It should explain the benefits visitors stand to gain when they sign up. Remember to add lead magnets such as a free eBook or free trial of your products to increase signups. When visitors fill out the form to access the freebie, they automatically opt into your list.
 

6. RUN GUEST POSTS ON RELEVANT BLOGS

Guest blogging is one of the best ways to drive traffic and grow your email list. It lets you become more visible to your target audience, helps to build your influence, and positions you as an authority in your niche. But beyond these, you also increase your revenue through guest posting.

Here's a great example:

Gregory Ciotti, the marketing strategist at Help Scout, got 36,733 subscribers on his email list with guest blogging. This is proof that guest blogging works for building an email list.

So, which blogs should you place your guest posts on?

Well, targeting blogs that already influence your niche is always better. That is, blogs with an established following so that you can tap into their connections and traffic. To quickly find established blogs, use Alltop or Feedspot. While Alltop collects headlines from top sites on critical topics, Feedspot lists the top 100 blogs in every niche possible.

Go to any of the sites and check out the blogs related to your niche. Then, select the ones with a massive following. Find out their guest posting guidelines or send a polite email to make your inquiry. And get ready to create compelling content as a way to get their readers into your email list.
 

7. DRIVE TRAFFIC WITH SEO

The more traffic that comes to your website, the more people will subscribe to your list. And one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to a website is through search engine optimisation (SEO). You need to pay special attention to your site's SEO. We have many beneficial SEO tools here on SmallSEOTools.com that you can use for free.

Additionally, you can read our blog, where we share helpful SEO tips and tricks so often. As a guide, here is an on-page SEO checklist you can start on already:

• Create good content. Content is the foundation of a successful SEO strategy. Without excellent content on your blog, Google won't bother ranking your pages on the first search engine results pages (SERPs).

• Make your URL SEO-friendly. Include your keywords and keep them short. Also, if you use WordPress, change the default permalink to post-name.

• Your title tag should contain your keywords. The title tag is an HTML element that describes the title of a web page. It is often displayed on SERPs as the blue clickable headline for a given result and is essential for usability, SEO, and social sharing.

• Use your keywords in the first paragraph. For your first 100 words, mention your keywords to help Google understand your content better.

• But don't overstuff your content with keywords. Make them come in naturally in the range.

• Structure your content correctly. Use the h1 tag for your title and h2 and h3 tags on subheadings to make your content easy to understand for users and search engines.

• Use meta descriptions effectively. Your meta description should summarise the content while including the keywords as well.

• Apply internal and external links. Link up to other pages on your blog and link out to other relevant authority sites.

• Optimise the images you used. Fill up the image alt appropriately.

• Use Schema markup. Structured data gives the search bots more details about your pages, making it easier to understand what your content is about and thereby increasing the chances of ranking higher.

8. PROVIDE A SOCIAL SHARING BUTTON ON YOUR EMAIL

Each email you send to your subscribers can help grow your email list if you include a sharing button on it. When you send valuable content to your subscriber list, they will likely want to share it with their friends, who may sign up after reading your content. Always make your content relevant and include a CTA, such as asking your subscribers to share your content.

9. ASK FOR THE SUBSCRIPTION

Many bloggers do not ask readers to subscribe to their email list. They don't include a call-to-action at the end of their blog post or ask for the sub on social media. And most times, visitors only end up reading valuable content and leaving your blog without taking action.

But only if you'd ask you'll be amazed at the results.
 

CONCLUSION

Growing your email list is the most critical and effective strategy to make money on your blog. With your email list, you'll be able to build relationships with your audience, promote your content, and launch and sell your products. So go ahead and create that opt-in form and ask for the sub. Remember, people naturally love subscribing to valuable lists. And talking about subscribing to helpful stuff, don't forget to join our newsletter to receive the best SEO tips, tricks, and the latest happenings. You'll also be the first to know it when we release new SEO tools.