Organic List-Building
This is the shortest “lesson” in the whole class, because you all know what organic list-building is: putting out good books and selling those books to people who will then go on to join your list.
The most important strategy to get people to sign up organically for your list, apart from writing a rip-roaring good book, is getting visible. That will never change.
But once you have actual readers, your work isn’t done. You have to direct eyeballs to your signup if you want to get anywhere. You need to make sure your readers see that signup link every damn time they turn around.
But how do you do it? That is to say, what tactics do you use? Here are a few that work currently:
- Put it in your FaceBook header
- Pin it to your Twitter feed
- Put it in your email signature
- Calls to action in the back of your books
- Facebook group takeovers, blog tours, etc
- Your website (header, footer, sidebar, embedded on the page, or popups)
These are all designed to appeal to someone who has heard of you or your books, and comes looking for more—the organic subscribers.
There is no “one neat trick” to gain organic subscribers. You have to write books people enjoy enough to sign up for more, and put your signup in front of them. These are generally good subscribers, but they come in slowly. A beginner author might only get a few a week—or fewer!
So how do you build a list bigger than the number of people who have bought your books thus far? By bribing them, of course. So we move onward, to reader magnets.
