I didn’t realize the importance of email lists until I was 10 years into creating content online. I remember taking courses online from several different worlds on the internet. And as I continue to observe what’s being taught then and NOW, top creators keep coming back to having an email list.
How will an email newsletter help you grow your podcast?
I worked on a show that grew to 20,000 downloads pretty quickly. One of the things that helped was an email list of 15,000+ subscribers at the time.
Imagine how many clicks we got to the Apple podcasts and how that appears to the algorithm. “Oh wow people seem to be interested in this. Let’s show it to more people!”
How to build your email list from scratch
- If you offer a product or service already, find a way to offer a freebie related to that. So as your list grows, it’s aligned with a proven monetization strategy. I’ve made the mistake of growing an email list that resulted in a totally different audience than the one who’d buy my service.
- Treat those names and emails as an equivalent of a phone number. As you know, phone numbers are very private, and you don’t just give it out to anybody. This isn’t just about following or subscribing to a Youtube channel. An email is a bit more personal. If somebody signs up for your stuff, it means they are interested.
- Each piece of content can lead back to this email list. Pasting your link to the descriptions is one of the many ways to build your subscribers. I made a YouTube video that had less than 500 views, but got 80 subscribers in the first month. That video was tied to the freebie I was offering. Alignment is beautiful.
Grow your asset
A lot of podcasters are interested in making ad money from sponsorships. Well there’s this software company that I reached out to see the process for submitting content for their newsletter. The email list is about 50,000 people. It has an open rate of 50%. Guess how much that slot costs? $400 for just ONE ad placement with your content submission.
So it’s totally worth building an email list even if it’s slow in the beginning. It can become an extra asset you can monetize. Whether it’s through an ad based revenue model or through a service you offer.
