In this article, I will share five free ways to grow a profitable email list.

According to Barillance.com, even if the open rates and click-through rates of the different types of emails you send have gone down since 2016, it stills averages from less than $5 up to $70+ for the best-performing email campaigns.

The best performing campaigns were found in the e-commerce-space, on cart-abandonment campaigns.

For affiliate marketing and email campaigns that sell information products, the average is around $38 per subscriber per month for every $1 spent on marketing, so forget all the “email is dead”-lies that you hear online.

However, you can increase your open rates (OR) and click-through rates (CTR) if you know how to segment your list.

The first important step is to give something away for FREE to build an email list that will help your future subscribers achieve a certain goal within a certain time. At least, that is what you should strive to do.

In this article, I will cover:

• How to set the expectations of your future subscribers before they join your list
• Your most important asset in building an email list
• The 5 best ways to build a profitable email list without spending anything on your marketing
• A summary of how you can grow a profitable email list for free

Set the Expectations Right from the Start

As I already covered in this article, you need to give something of value to people in exchange for their email addresses.

Here is where your trust-building process starts.

First, you have to give them a big promise that incentivizes them in exchange for their email list and make sure it is something that people in your industry would appreciate and value highly.

It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it is something free that provides value.

You can do some spying on your competitors by opting into their email lists, and see what they are providing, which won’t cost you anything, and you can opt out at any time.

For instance, I promise my subscribers that they can make $100 to $300 every day from the comfort of their own homes.

In my free report, I share the entire strategy that helped me get that result and how they might achieve the same results, even if I can not guarantee it, of course.

A ratio of 2-3 value-based emails per 1 promotional email is what I have found to work the best for me in my list-building.

By having this ratio, you are building up your trust, and your subscribers will start to view you as an expert, which will make it more likely that they will buy from you, even if they don’t buy from you immediately.

I already made you a big promise at the beginning of this article, didn’t I?

Now, let’s dive into the information here and share the five best strategies to grow a profitable email list without spending anything on solo ads, influencer marketing, or paid social media.

The 5 Best Ways to Grow a Profitable Email List without Any Advertising Budget

1. Your own Facebook-group
2. Email outreach to influencers/bloggers
3. Posting on forums
4. YouTube-channels
5. Guest blog posting

Growing Your List with Your Own Facebook Group

You can build a list to your own email list inside of your own Facebook group.

Most people don’t know it because they think it would be removed or blocked from Facebook and regarded as spamming.

In fact, I recently learned in a webinar that I was attending that nothing could be further from the truth and that you can post links inside your own link.

However, if you do affiliate marketing, I would still not post your raw affiliate links in that group.

Instead, I would recommend that you have your own domain name connected to at least a landing page where you collect people’s emails, or preferably a blog or some other place where you can share valuable content with your subscribers.

Share valuable information in your group, and encourage people to share your post in other groups.

A Facebook group can be a great start where you post once or twice every day and telling people to join your email list to get even more valuable information.

Best practices for a Facebook group to grow your email list organically:

• Make it private, so not everyone will join your email list
• Have people answering a couple of questions when they join your Facebook-group
• Make them give you their email to receive more information on the topic discussed in the group
• Copy their email addresses from their answers, and paste the email address into your autoresponder
• Send them an email that asks them a question, and wait 24 hours. This extra step will verify that they haven’t entered a bogus email, or an email they never use and increase the quality of your list

Email Outreach to Influencers or Bloggers

Do an email outreach to others who are already in your niche.

Don’t just send them a random message, but provide as much value to them as possible and give their audience something great.

The chances are that you might be reading this article because someone you trust has shared this article with you.

I am writing about the best ways to grow your email list in this article, but I am also sharing my own strategies for me and my audience.

Personally, I prefer Youtube influencers and other bloggers in the same niche that I am already in.

I have tried Instagram and some other social media platforms, but none of them has worked as great as Youtube, so I am biased when it comes to it.

If you want to reach out to bloggers, try reaching out to them on Facebook, or hit them up with an email and introduce yourself.

Remember that the ways to grow a profitable email list ideally should be a mix between organic (aka “free”) and investment (aka “paid”) strategies.

Since this article is about the ways to grow your email list for free, the only thing you will invest is your time.

Best practices to grow your email list organically with email outreach:

• Go and find people in your niche on social media, or do a google search with [your niche] + blogs to find your marketers.
• Start following them, and send an email or direct message (DM) to them quickly and let them know that you’re in the same niche as they are. Provide value to their subscribers/readers/followers.
• Keep the conversation going, and remember that time is all you have to invest.
• The time you invest in keeping that relationship might help you grow a profitable email list. They might give you a shoutout, or doing an interview with you.

Growing a Profitable Email List by Posting on Forums

Here’s a secret and sneaky way that I have used myself to grow my email list myself that most marketers claim deadly because they use the same strategy themselves and don’t want you to compete with them.

Before we had social media, forums were the latest craze of the Internet.

I remember when I first started study internet marketing, back in 2008, and was pretty clueless. I used to join different make money online forums, and I hope that I will learn something, which I still do.

The only thing that has changed is that I understand how to give value to my posts and include a link to my opt-in page.

Best practices to grow your email list organically through forums in your niche:

• Do a google search for [your niche] + forum to find the best forums inside of your niche
• Join two or three, and start to post valuable content. If you are allowed to put a link in your bio, make sure that it goes to your opt-in page. Read the forum’s rules before you start to post anything. Some will never allow you to put a link in your bio, and those you should stay away from, while others will allow you to have multiple links. If you’re not sure, ask in the forum.
• Give value, and never pitch. It will help establishing you as an expert in your niche, and will help you grow a profitable email list quickly.

Grow Your List by Reaching Out to Youtube Channels in Your Niche

As I mentioned, I follow many people on Youtube, and I am very strategic in my Youtube strategy.

I only comment when I can provide some insights or information to help the YouTuber’s subscribers and follow.

Another strategy is to create a Youtube channel yourself.

By doing so, you can start growing a subscriber base on Youtube, and by providing value to your subscribers and following the best strategies that I share below, you can grow your own list.

If you decide to start your own channel, I recommend getting an extension like “TubeBuddy” or “vidIQ.”

Both of them are free, and they also help your channel be found when people type in similar words related to your niche, and as a result, your videos will be shown in the search results.

Best practices to grow your email list through Youtube organically:

• Follow and comment on other Youtuber’s videos and provide as much value as profitable.
• Start your own Youtube-channel and at the end of all of your own videos, tell people to click the link in the description of the video.
• Make sure that the link goes to your opt-in page.
• Use free Chrome-extensions like TubeBuddy or VidIQ to get ideas to help your videos getting ranked and shown in the search results.
• Never leave links to your Youtube videos or even your email list on other Youtuber’s video. It might get you banned from commenting, and you don’t want to lose that person’s trust. Mentioning your own Youtube-channel usually works better as long as you provide a lot of value. At least, that’s my own experience when I am doing this strategy myself.

Ways to Grow an Email List with Guest Blog Posting

If you are like me and have one or several blogs, guest blog posting is still around and works very well.

Even if you don’t have a blog, you can still reach out to blogs and asking them to write a post yourself where you link to your opt-in page.

Most blogs will allow you to do it in the bio.

I have both been writing guest blog posts myself and accepting guest blog posts on all my blogs, and I will never charge someone who wants to write a guest blog post on one of my blogs.

In fact, if you want to write a guest post on this blog, send me an email by clicking here and tell me about your ideas.

You can probably find people by hitting up the “Contact Us”-page or the “Write for Us”-page on the blog. The words they use may vary, but you might be able to contact them there and ask for their rules.

Another great tool is Hunter.io which contains a huge database of contact information for different bloggers/influencers.

Best practices to grow your email list organically with guest blogging:

• Reach out to bloggers in your niche. Do a google search of [niche] + blog.
• Find blogger’s email addresses using tools like Hunter.io or on social media.
• Always focus on their readers first, not on growing your email list.
• You are most likely allowed to share a link to your opt-in page in the bio. Ask the blogger when you reach out to them.

Here is my in-depth article about how you can start a blog yourself today, which you might appreciate too.

Summary

When growing a profitable email list, which will become your greatest marketing asset, you need to be consistent and provide value.

Your email list will only be a true asset if your list trusts you.

How do you make people trust you, you might ask yourself right now? The answer is that to provide a lot of valuable information. You see, when you provide people with useful, as well as actionable content, people will begin to trust you.

Email marketing relies more on trust than anything else.

When you continuously provide people with valuable information consistently, they will innately begin to trust you.

As i always say:

“Trust is something you have to earn but something you can never buy.”

Think of providing a lot of value to your list, and by sending them useful content, preferably to your own content, they will begin to trust you more and more.

I think of it as depositing into my list’s trust account.

Now and then, I do pitch people, which you have already noticed if you’re a subscriber to my email list, but not as often as other marketers in this niche, I can tell you.

If you’re not a subscriber to my email list already, which I think you should be since I have collected some of the best information about digital marketing, and how to make money as an affiliate, I don’t understand what stops you. ‘

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I hope that you have enjoyed the information I shared in this article, which is more than 2,000 words long, and that you are a subscriber to my email list already.

Remember that trust is something you have to earn but can’t buy, and trust is the true value of your email list.