How to Build a List from Scratch for Under $5 a Month becomes a pressing issue when you’re hoping to compete as an online entrepreneur. You know the power you’ll have with a list of targeted subscribers you can communicate with about your offers and recommendations on a regular basis.
But as you begin looking to see how other marketers are list building, using paid ad campaigns and solo mailers to reach new people, you might feel disheartened if you don’t have the same steep budget.
List building doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. In fact, with just under $5 a month, you can generate the same top tier leads as your competitors and often solicit more loyalty from them than what the other marketers are capable of garnering.
You need to learn how to build a list from scratch for under $5 a month. Below, you’ll discover how anyone with the desire to learn and do the work for their list building success can begin the process starting today!
You’ll take care of some preliminary steps and then launch an organic subscriber-pulling campaign that can rival the deepest pockets of other entrepreneurs.
Here’s How to Spend Your $5 Monthly Budget
If you only have $5 a month to spend, you’re going to spend it wisely. The first thing you’re going to do is choose a domain name that you can get for approximately $12 per year, which equals $1 per month.
There are even coupon codes that you can find online for certain domain registrars that will allow you to purchase a dot com domain for just $0.99 for the first year. Make sure you look for any and all available coupon codes before purchasing your domain.
The domain is where you are going to be building your list with your opt in forms and also publishing content that will attract the right audience of subscribers. Make sure you buy a keyword-laden dot com domain, and not something vague or with a different extension like dot net or dot info.
The next place you’re going to spend money is with a very inexpensive hosting account. All you need is enough hosting for a single domain name. You don’t need any of the fancy bells and whistles that the company is going to try to entice you with.
By the time you check out, you should have enough hosting for one domain for approximately $4 per month or less. You can always level up with your hosting plans at any time in the future.
Don’t believe any domain or hosting company that says you need to buy emails or page builders. Just get the bare minimum purchased and the rest will be handled in the sections following this one.
Get Started With the Free Promotional Offer Available From Most Autoresponders
Now when it comes to list building, you’re also going to need an email autoresponder system. Many people think you have to pay for this upfront, but even the top tier auto responder companies have plans that allow you to begin list building at no cost.
You’ll find that most of them have a the plan that allows you to add up to 500 subscribers without paying a single penny. Others may give you some sort of trial like 30 days before you have to begin paying.
Whenever you make your decision on which company to sign up with, don’t make it with the intention of having to transfer your list from one company to another later. You want to build your list on the company that you will be staying with so that you don’t have to export your subscribers elsewhere later.
List-Building Niche and Demographic Research Done for Free
Before you can begin building a list, you need to conduct a lot of research about your niche and the demographics you’ll want to bring on as subscribers. Never go by what you just think you know.
There’s a lot of information online about the needs, goals, and behaviors of your target audience that can open your list up to a wider range of people who will be interested in hearing from you as a niche leader.
One of the easiest free ways to do this is to use free keyword tools. You can start with a broad keyword and drill down into more targeted long-tail phrases that tell you more about the prospective customer and what they want to know.
You can also pay attention to news sites to see what’s emerging as topics people are interested in. Google even has an Alerts system where you can have it notify you directly whenever there’s something new publishing about your niche topic.
Some niches have both consumer and industry publications that are released as magazines – either online or offline. If they’re online, you can sign up to their newsletters for free.
When Was the Last Time You Visited a Library?
If they’re offline, you can find copies at libraries to read if you need to. Some libraries also have programs where you can check out digital publications at no cost, too. So whether it’s an industry magazine detailing everything hot that month in your niche – or a book on the topic, you can increase your knowledge to share with your soon-to-be subscribers.
You can learn a lot about your niche and demographics by watching the competition. You’ll be able to see their social media content and gauge interest based on views, comments and shares.
Forums and social media groups are also good places to gather ideas and information from. Whether it’s a standalone forum on your niche topic, where you can read through the threads and comments – or a Facebook group where people are participating, it can give you tons of free insight.
There are different, free artificial intelligence (AI) tools that you can use in a variety of ways to increase your knowledge about your niche and demographic. For example, you can use some AI tools to give you an analysis of a competitors’ website that tells you what their most popular content is and how users behave on their site.
You can also simply ask AI to give you a rundown of the most popular subtopics within your niche, along with demographic information that ranges from basic things like age, gender, income level, etc. to more in depth information about buyer behavior and details about their goals and needs.
Lead Magnet Ideas That Won’t Cost You a Penny
In order to get people to hand over their contact information in exchange for a free gift, it has to have value. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend money creating the gifts that you give to your subscribers.
For example, you can write a full eBook or report to give to your prospective subscribers without having to pay for a ghostwriter or even for private label rights, readymade content.
If you don’t have the talent to do this yourself, there are also free AI tools that you can use to come up with this content on your own. It can brainstorm ideas, outline for you and write it in full.
Checklists and cheat sheets are also always appreciated by potential subscribers when the item has the ability to help them shortcut a process or ensure that they won’t miss a step.
You can record a simple video course instead of creating an eBook as your free gift. If you use a free tool like CamStudio, you can make a screen capture recording of an over-the-shoulder tutorial where you’re teaching your audience how to do something online.
You can also create a case study of something you’ve done that you want to share with your readers. This can be detailed in videos, an eBook or even as a series of password-protected blog posts.
If you’re networking with other online entrepreneurs, you can come up with a list of questions to ask another expert, like one of your competitors, and invite them to record an interview with you that you give away as a list-building gift.
You can even use free stock photo sites and free graphic design tools like Canva to create product images like eCovers or other items to showcase your free gift on your landing page.
You Don’t Need Expensive Page Builders to Build a List
Now that you excel at How to Build a List from Scratch for Under $5 a Month, you realize that you don’t need costly page builders.
The purpose of your landing page is to host the copy that will convince people to get on your list and the form that allows them to do so. You may see top marketers using the latest page building tools.
You don’t have to do that. In fact, once you have your domain and hosting set up, all you need to do is install WordPress for free and you can build as many pages as you want at no additional cost.
Another thing you can do is use the built in landing page creators that Aweber and other email autoresponder systems allow you to use. You can even customize the URL to your landing page.
Aweber, for example, has a ton of premade landing page templates that are already designed in a professional manner to allow you to build a list with. But they also offer an option to build it from scratch.
Once you have a landing page created, you can add the form to it. Aweber and other systems have premade templates for those, too. They have a template gallery where you can choose different layouts, designs, and more.
For example, in the home category, they have 104 options to choose from. If you’re in the make money online niche, they have 44 options. The travel niche has 75 – and so on.
Learn to Customize
Then you can customize these landing pages and opt in forms with whatever wording, colors and options you prefer. What you have to do is create the landing page copy. This is something you want to take your time creating.
AI tools can help you with every aspect of this if you want, from the main headlines to the bullet point lists and call to action (CTA) statement. It can even help with the image or video that you use above the fold to represent the gift to the audience.
Another good thing about using free tools to build your list with is that you can also adopt a split testing strategy where you are pitting two different landing pages against one another to get them to optimal performance.
You might be swapping out headlines, bullet points, or even the form itself with a different template that you were able to use without having to pay someone to design it for you.
How to Build a List from Scratch for Under $5 a Month
If you are on a tight budget you need to be creative to build your list. This may seem like an unfair burden, but the big plus is that it will teach you how to run your online business with minimum expense.
This is a discipline that will pay off big time as your business grows. Many entrepreneurs both online and off line become careless and wasteful as the business grows, and the cash pours in.
But you won’t have this problem because you learned how to build a list from scratch for under $5 a month by necessity, and you also learned how to make every dollar count.
This is now how you think about your operating expenses. You minimize expenses to maximize profits.
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