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Most of the promo and marketing advice online advises you to build your mailing list as one of the most important things you can do.

My question is...how? I can tweet about it until the cows come home, but I have no audience there, either. So, I'm hoping someone has some practical strategies to get readers to sign up for their mailing list.

I tried a giveaway on instafreebie, because I'd heard that you can make people sign up to get the free book, but that option never appeared. Maybe it's just in the paid version?

I'm offering a free short story to anyone that signs up, but so far I've only had one signup I can attribute to that. Without an audience, it's hard to get the word out.

So, my question is, does anyone have a healthy mailing list? What magic did you use? Or anyone with suggestions to try?

Thanks!

It is quite tricky getting subscribers. Of course offering something for free is greatbuttheyhave to go to your site first, right? I gained a lot of subscribers by having a launch party on facebook. I also give away copies of mybook to very specific bloggers and influencers on twitter. I make sure that they have to provide their email address to download the items and of course I use subscription popups. I also use a double opt-in process so people have to manually confirm in an email that they want to join my list. Engagement is much more important than numbers so this approach feels right to me. I haven't really put a massive amount of effort in it yet but I am happy to report that my website is only three weeks old and I have 27 subscribers.

Sign up for the Aweber and Mailmunch newsletters - they are excellent resources for issues surrounding your mailing list.

I have a blog with over 1300 subscribers, and when I post I average 100 hits a day.
My advice to you, tag your stuff appropriately, get your site recognized by search engines, and tie it directly to your social media. Keep posting new content. Don't worry about audience, Don't worry about 'finding readers'.
Once I started doing those three things is when I started picking up readers and subscribers.

Unfortunately, Riley, I've been doing those things for about 6 months now and nothing. So, I am worrying about finding readers. :/

Wow that's an impressive readership :) I haven't done a whole lot with my website or in a quest to gain subscribers, but I did start putting a link to my website at the back of my book. I got 15 subscribers through this over 2 months, so not the fastest way to grow, but I figured it couldn't hurt :).

I have a link to my website in my bio, but it hasn't got me anywhere. I'm just so frustrated by the whole process.

Added to the fact that as a reader, I don't really look at fiction author's websites, except a select few that have amazing blogs. So, maybe it's not even worth having. *shrug*

If that's the case, then, I don't have any more options right now.

Aislinn wrote: "Most of the promo and marketing advice online advises you to build your mailing list as one of the most important things you can do.

My question is...how? I can tweet about it until the cows come ..."

Hi Aislinn,

You're right about the Instafreebie paid feature having the 'sign-up' for the free book option, yeah. I'm betting you've already got an incentive sign up in the back of your books? I'd offer the free short story/free second title there too, if you don't.

Hi all,
Interesting discussion here. I've wondered about getting subscribers to my website as well and have not had any success. Marie, getting 15 subscribers in short period seems great, to me. I've had more luck with FB followers and even that is nothing to shout about. Still, over time, if your readership increases I can't see worrying too much about how many followers you have.

Okay, I'm gonna share my personal "strategy" which isn't much of a strategy hahaha!

I originally serialized chapters of a story as I wrote it and gained a (really) small but fiercely loyal following of readers that way. When I finished they asked for an ebook version so of course, I whipped it up for em BUT I made it as a subscriber's exclusive download that was password protected. Pretty much everyone signed up in order to receive this free book. Which blew my mind cuz it was still free to read online, ya know?

Oh, and you know what's funny? When I ended up legit publishing the book anyway, they all bought the new version as well. And no, I'd never ever ask them to.

Hmm. I write weekly flash fic for my readers on my site too and I'll be up to 26 weeks this Monday. My next little gift to subbers is to compile all those into a mini-ebook for em.

So, yeah, I never really do things to gain new subbers. Kinda look at it as a way to reward existing subbers instead...? I think readers really appreciate when you give em a little special treatment and I dunno about y'all but it makes my heart super happy to do special little things for em. In any case, it always seems to get new peeps so it's win-win, eh?

Sorry, talked in a circle there a bit. Still half-asleep XD

Group hugs,
Ann

Here's an alternate take: I don't do a mailing list for several reasons, the biggest being that I don't like getting too much email myself and the anti-spam laws are a bit daunting. Instead, I use my blog for major announcements and blast that via social media. In my books, I link to said blog, Facebook, and Twitter.

My blog has zero subscribers, but every post gets an average of 100 views in the first day or two of posting and typically I see a boost to previous posts. I don't necessarily trust all of the analytics to be correct, but it appears Facebook is where I am getting the most click through. This makes sense. It's the most popular social media platform for the average user, so in a way, I consider Facebook to be my "subscriber base."

Yes, there are issues with people not seeing posts thanks to Facebook's desperate bid to monetize all content, but I dont see that as being any different than the typically low open rate for newsletters. Facebook seems to be where readers are who don't want too much engagement. I'll see likes, get comments if I ask for opinions, or see shares if I'm running a promo, but for the most part, folks read, process, and move on. If they decide they dont like what they see, they can easily un-like, which is instant, unlike most mailing lists. This may not seem like a good thing, but really, it's better to be out of sight out of mind than to have some irate user leave a one star review because they got an email after unsubscribing. (Yes, people have done this to folks I know)

Aislinn wrote: "Added to the fact that as a reader, I don't really look at fiction author's websites, except a select few that have amazing blogs. So, maybe it's not even worth having. *shrug*"

I find that it's best to turn these questions around: how many author's lists do I join? Which ones and why? I think you maybe have answered that question, above. If you don't look at fiction authors' websites much, your readers probably don't either. If you ignore mailing lists, so do they.

Also, do you buy the books of those authors who have amazing blogs? Or do you go there for the blogs? Your readers will generally behave likewise.

So if you are doing this in hopes of selling books, my experience is that it won't pay much in the way of dividends. When it comes to "marketing", readers think the same way we do when strangers try to market to us. If we don't respond to it, they won't. If we get annoyed, they will get at least as annoyed.

We did set up a mailing list, because some of our readers asked us to. They wanted to get updates on book releases without having to visit the website. So we set one up. It has 87 subscribers after a year and 5 months. I think half a dozen of these were this year. It is a nice way to keep in touch with those readers (about half of whom open the emails were send), but as a marketing tool, it's useless.

Annie, I would love to be able to do things specifically for my subscribers, but I only have 25. I need to be very precious about my time, and doing something time consuming for so few people really isn't a good use of my time. That's why I tried the free short story for those that sign up instead. It was something I could do once and then hoped to use for a while. Unfortunately, it just seems like it was a waste of time. :(

Christina, I would love to do that. But unfortunately I have very few followers on Facebook, and many of them are friends. Twitter isn't much better. So, no matter how much I blog and post on those places, I don't get any response.

It's still the same question, really. How do I get people to like my Facebook page? Or follow me on Twitter? It's all about building an audience, regardless.

Owen, I don't blog in the hopes of selling books, no. I rarely even talk about my books when I blog. At the moment I use my mailing list for news (an alert for when a book is released, or when it is first on preorder, pretty much). I'd like to put more content on it, but I have no idea what. I'm time poor, so can't spend a lot of time crafting something, you know?

Do you have any suggestions on how I could possibly find more readers? You mention things that don't work, but I'm hoping that there are things that do!

Aislinn wrote: "It's still the same question, really. How do I get people to like my Facebook page? Or follow me on Twitter? It's all about building an audience, regardless."

The honest answer here is to have patience. My Facebook followers trickle in, usually after I've run a huge book promo. Back in the early days, I didn't get many new follows at all and if I told you the conversion rate of downloads to follows, you would be discouraged, but hey, it worked out in the end.

Aislinn wrote: "Do you have any suggestions on how I could possibly find more readers? You mention things that don't work, but I'm hoping that there are things that do! .."

First, I checked the current sales ranking of books 1 and 2 in your series, and you're doing much better than average. So it appears you are finding readers, or readers are finding you. The actions you've taken may not have been terribly effective, based in what you say, and may not be contributing to sales you are getting, but it does appear your books are being read.

As for what works, the only thing that has ever worked for us is to publish a book and then get to work on the next one. Time is a precious commodity to us, and we can't afford to spend nonproductively, and that means ignoring marketing, since that in nonproductive in our genre. That was made plain to us when we decided to go all in on the writing thing.

If you are having trouble getting facebook like and twitter followers, and your books have the sales ranking they currently do, then maybe facebook and twitter are not where it's at for your books? Those are secondary measures that don't necessarily represent readers.

In another context, I once had a client who was overjoyed at an ad they ran which garnered 75,000 clicks to their website in 36 hours. How many products did they sell as a result? None, as far as we could tell. They made the mistake of focusing on getting clicks, not sales (a common mistake back then). They also felt that even though they failed to get any sales, those clicks and got them "exposure" and having that many people "exposed" to their products must have been some kind of benefit, even though it wasn't reflected in the bottom line. One can guess how that turned out.

For us, it's all about focusing on the essentials, and that's writing. That's what has worked.

Aislinn wrote: "Annie, I would love to be able to do things specifically for my subscribers, but I only have 25. I need to be very precious about my time, and doing something time consuming for so few people really isn't a good use of my time. That's why I tried the free short story for those that sign up instead. It was something I could do once and then hoped to use for a while. Unfortunately, it just seems like it was a waste of time. :("

When I put together the first ebook, I had fewer subbers than you do now. And it more than tripled my subbers in one day. Just food for thought. Yummm...food... ^_~

Anyhoo, I never did anything all that time-consuming. I'd already written the story. It was already online. Everyone had already read it. All I did was whip it into an ebook. I didn't even take the time to format it properly until later (when I decided to publish it) cuz 1) I didn't know what I was doing LOL and 2) they didn't really care, just appreciated the little gift.

When I had just ONE subscriber, I sent her a special excerpt, which no one else has ever read till this day. Maybe this could be considered a waste of time but I dunno. I legit value every single person who supports me. And yes, I make sure they know it. I mean, they're the ones who buy my shizz the second it releases, share for me, and forgive all my mistakes hahaha!!

Personally, I see your current 25 subbers as a special little unit of supporters. Like, the ones who believed in you when no one else knew who you were yet, ya know? Wow. Okay. Totally sappy LMAO!!

In any case, I reckon Miss Christina's right. Patience is key, especially if you don't wanna put lots of time into it, right? I mean, if it was easy peasey, we'd all be rolling moolah with fans knocking down our doors...

*smiles at thought*

Best of luck!! Hope you figure out what works best for ya!!

Hugs,
Ann

EDIT: Can't type. Sorry. Annnd how did you get those first 25 subbers? Truthfully, it's nothing ot look down upon. That's a really good start, imho.

I'm sorry I sound so whingey everyone. It's been a bad day :p

I'm not really unhappy at how my sales are going (though having a release last week has bumped them all up the charts a little). It's mostly that I'm trying to figure out how to move to the next level. I do want to be doing this full time eventually. And my life circumstances mean it would be hella convenient if that could happen soon. So it's hard to be patient. Particularly when you are trying things and nothing seems to work!

Annie, what I meant was that I would have to write a whole new book in order to do what you did. I wish I had the time! But I am working on book 3 of my series, so, alas, I do not.

I might send the short story I wrote to current subscribers, though. Just as a thank you. Then maybe someone will actually read it :p.

Honestly, Miss Aislinn? Romance readers are da bomb diggity (as I'm sure readers of other genres are as well)! They appreciate all the little things, ya know?

I've sent out quite a few random excerpts from WIP's and they really love that too. Doesn't take any extra effort seeing as how it's already written *shrugs* I've even sent out stuff I scrapped for kicks and giggles. Just get creative with it.

And no worries!! Everyone has bad days, eh? I just think that ppl thought you wanted help so they're trying their best to offer their insight XD Regardless, I hope your current subbers dig their new little present. Let us know how they respond!

Hugs.

I do want help! I did ask for it. It's just I've tried a lot of the things people are suggesting and it hasn't gone great. So, I just sound like I'm turning everyone's ideas down when it isn't that at all! I'm just frustrated with it all, since I never feel like anything I do has an impact. I want to keep growing my audience, but it's been almost the same since I started.

But we'll see! I'll let you know how it goes with the short story. ;)

There are other incentives to consider that do not require writing new content, like maybe an entry for an Amazon gift card raffle when someone subscribes :)

Aislinn wrote: "Most of the promo and marketing advice online advises you to build your mailing list as one of the most important things you can do.

My question is...how? I can tweet about it until the cows come ..."
I don't have a magic bullet for your dilemma, but here's an interesting article on approach to marketing:

I'm doing a giveaway right now on a major blog whose audience fits my ideal reader. I paid $150 for the giveaway, and she will collect sign ups' emails, and they can follow me on social media for extra chances to win. The giveaway runs for a week. In the first morning since she posted I've gotten over 150 entries already. Methinks my email newsletter list will be much bigger soon.

I'm considering starting a newsletter on a monthly basis not only highlighting my blogging and my writing, but me in general. I subscribe to only one or two newsletters and I get them one a month at most and they make the authors seems more human as opposed to a pure marketing machine, which is something I need to work on. Not that I'm a marketing machine or anything, but I'm not that personable online and I want to connect with people more.

While I personally don't read too many newsletters, I think I'm in the minority. Take a look at the commercially published authors in your genre and see if they have newsletters. If they do, it's probably for a reason. Not everyone ascribes to newsletters, but the authors I do follow I feel a little more connected to because of it.

I've been batting around the idea of extra content to offer in exchange for sign-up and you really don't have to write anything new. Offer a deleted scene from your book or a piece of writing from book 3. I think that's what I might do, just cull from what I have and offer it up.

Plus I'm about to do a book blitz and a blog tour and the rafflecopter giveaways I'm doing will offer following on social media for extra entries and I plan on utilizing that.

If you're looking for a fast fix, I don't think there is one. Patience and interacting with people seem to be the key, in my experience.