Everyone knows that email lists are an essential extension to a blog. They can give you a new medium to communicate with your readers, a way to share content that you only want a select group of people to see, or a way to share your affiliate links so that you can hopefully make some money.
Bloggers everywhere are constantly stressing about how important it is to start working on your list right when you start your blog or website, but it’s not as simple as that. Just because you can manage to bring in a few email subscribers with your fancy opt-ins doesn’t mean that they are going to stick around for long. If you don’t do things properly, that UN-subscribe button might be used more than you actually want.
Here are a few tips that you should be following to make sure that your email subscribers actually want to stay subscribed:
Drop most of the affiliate links:
I’ve signed up to mailing lists that have spammed me over and over, weeks on end, trying to get me to purchase some new product. I bet that if you drop all of your affiliate links on your mailing list for about 4 months and then put up one affiliate link to a product that you seriously, seriously, seriously recommend, you will make many more sales.
I would much more trust buying a product through an affiliate link by someone that genuinely was trying to offer something of quality and is not just something new every week with the sole intention of making money from it.
Work on a cycle:
People become obsessed with simply spamming things such as new blog posts, affiliate links, and tips, all through people’s email. If I get more than 1 email from a mailing list a week, I WILL unsubscribe to it. Make sure to work on a cycle, only show your new blog posts in an email at a certain time; and do the same for your tips and affiliate links.
Provide regular tips:
Email lists that don’t offer anything of value and are only there to promote affiliate links will not last long in someone’s email inbox. Make sure to continue providing regular content that people do actually want.
Interview your subscribers:
This is a great way to keep subscribers coming back for more. If you set up a policy where you will regularly interview your subscribers and give them the opportunity to be featured on your email list, then they will want to keep on subscribing in the hope that they will also be featured.