Reinventing the Entrepreneur: Turning Your Dream Business into a Reality

Chapter 17

Your First 1,000: It’s a Numbers Game

Once you’ve got your web page set up and all three subscription methods in place (your home page opt-in, your pop-up opt-in, and your stand-alone squeeze pages), you’ll need to test and see what works best. When you’ve got your lead magnets in place, you’re ready to start taking on traffic and building your subscriber list.

Ideally, you want to get your first 1,000 subscribers without having to spend a penny. Getting your first 1,000 subscribers will be the most difficult mission of your entire inbox magazine, especially when it’s brand new. But the good news is that once you have the first 1,000 subscribers, going from 1,000 to 5,000 and then to 10,000 is much easier and usually happens even faster. That’s because once you have that first 1,000, you’ll have useful data that tells you what worked and what didn’t work. Plus, you should also have money coming in from those first 1,000 that you can spend on advertising to help you build your list.

There are six easy steps to get you started:

Step 1: Social media marketing

Step 2: Article marketing

Step 3: Active content syndication

Step 4: Press releases

Step 5: Viral PDFs/infographics

Step 6: Ad and resource swaps

All of these are really good methods for publicizing your inbox magazine and getting subscribers to opt in with their name and e-mail address. Of course, some of these methods will be easier for you than others, depending on the market you’re in and the assets you already ...