Here on the Fearless Social Blog, we talk a lot about getting new subscribers to grow your list so you have on demand traffic to your offers.

Traditional ways of growing a list through a blog are, well, traditional. They still work, but there are so many other secret places on your blog where you can grow a list and get new subscribers for all different valuable things you are providing. 

Sound like a lot of work? It’s not. It’s easier than you think AND this can all be built over time. You don’t have to build everything overnight.

In this post, I am going to be revealing 7 different areas on your blog where you can be growing a list all day, every day.  And no, it’s not about just sticking the same optin box in different places, it’s much more than that! 

If you are not utilizing all of these resources, you are leaving money on the table and you are missing out capturing new subscribers. Trust me.

We will be specifically discussing:

• 7 Secret Places On Your Blog To Grow Your List
• The tools you need to capture new subscribers

Let’s dive in…

7 Secret Places On Your Blog To Grow Your List

It’s now time to reveal the 7 different hidden places where you can grow all kinds of targeted lists on your blog. And Again…No, if you are just thinking we are putting the same optin boxes in different places, it’s not that at all. 

Stick with me and your mind will open up to all the possibilities.

1. The [Right] Sidebar

The sidebar optin is the optin that is probably most well known and the one that is used most often by even the newbiest of newbie marketers, AKA, beginners.

It looks like this:

This is the optin that we are all taught in the very first stages of learning list building. Millions of blogs around the web have the sidebar optin.

For the most part, these optins are usually placed on the right hand side of the screen as opposed to the left. I am not sure why but if anyone knows the answer – feel free to leave me a comment 🙂

If you look over to the right of the Fearless Social blog, we do have a sidebar optin but it’s not the traditional optin where it’s clearly asking for an email. If you click on the box, and optin pops up. Go check it out and see what happens 🙂

Your sidebar optin giveaway can be anything that is relevant to your market that you want to giveaway in exchange for an email address.

The only problem with making a specific giveaway is that over time, you will probably need to update this as times change and giveaways can get outdated.

Another option is to have an updates sidebar optin (like the Copyblogger example above). This just means that you are not giving anything specific away, you are simply just allowing people to put in their email address to get updates from you or to subscribe to your newsletters.

Does the “Get Updates” still work to get optins? It sure does! If you prove on your blog that you are worthy of people giving you their email for updates (and no immediate gift), then people will give you their email. This means you, of course, need to have awesome content on your blog. If you do, people will give you their email addresses to willingly receive emails from you.

So, although traditional, the sidebar optin should still be there in some form or fashion on your site.

2. Bottom or Top Bar

The next optin is a cool option because you can change it easily depending on what kind of promotion you have going on at the time. 

It looks like this:

Here’s an example from Lewis Howes’ Blog. It goes on the very top of the screen (some are on the bottom) and they are usually closable. This could either be an optin box, a 2-step optin or even a link that directs people to a sales page, another squeeze page or another offer all together.

These bars could be a different color than your blog so they stand out so your visitors see them.

3. Inside Post Optin

The inside post optin is one of my favorite ways to get optins and it’s the most underutilized among marketers….probably because it takes a bit more effort to put together.

The inside post optin is usually at the bottom of a high quality, well-written blog post.

It’s a simple button that looks like this:

Very simple red button. Nothing too crazy and very simple to create.

When you click this button, it opens up into an optin box:

The Inside Post Optin is usually a 2-step optin where it’s a button that opens up into an optin box. This is just a new way of making optin boxes where you are getting what is known as a micro-commitment, meaning the button was clicked and therefore, the person is more likely to subscribe as opposed to just seeing an optin box in plain site.

How To Use It

The inside post optin box is an additional subscriber giveaway that you are going to make. If you don’t know what a subscriber giveaway is, please go ahead and read this post all about subscriber giveaways.

The new giveaway you are creating is going to be relevant to that exact post you are placing the optin box in.

Most common giveaways are:

• Transcripts (PDF Format)
• Checklists
• More In Depth Training
• Video Tutorials

This is just another way you are creatively getting more subscribers. Again, writing great content that people want to get even more of will increase your subscribers with the inside post optin method. 

4. Home Splash Optin

The Home Splash Optin is an optin box that comes up after a couple minutes of a person being on your blog. The Home Splash could come up while someone is reading one of your posts.

On the Fearless Social Blog – It looks like this:

As you can see, the person can enter their email address or they can choose to press the blue button on the bottom to make the screen go away. Either way, no matter what action the person takes, they will be taken right back to the blog post they were reading. This method is non-intrusive and remember, we are always offering value to our target audience.

The kinds of people who are visiting the Fearless Social Blog are looking to grow their business and grow their income, so this optin matches what our visitors are looking for.

To give you another example of how a Home Splash Optin can work, let’s check out Neil Patel’s home page of Quick Sprout:

This is not anything that “pops up” while you are reading the blog. This is the actual home page of the website and if you want to read Neil’s awesome articles, you need to physically click Blog up at the top right. Now of course, what you are seeing above is not asking for an email, but the very next page does after it analyzes your website. Neil is collecting email addresses ALL OVER his website.

5. The New About Me Page

Do you have an About Me page on your blog? If not, you should. Well, scratch that…you should have the new version of the About Me Page.

The New About Me page is going to be a place you can QUADRUPLE your chance for optins. Yep, you read that right!

The Old About Me Pages are a static page that has some boring information about where you went to college and what you’ve been doing for the past 10 years (I say “boring” with all the love).

The New About Me Page is dynamic and it is a lead sucking hotspot with awesome content, and yes, it does include who you are and what you do.

It looks like this:

This is my About Me Page, but it is really my Birdsong Profile.

Birdsong is a software that allows you to grow your list while you share any piece of content around the web. So, if you click on any of these articles on my Birdsong Profile, it will lead to amazing content but it will also create an opportunity to grow my list by offering the reader something relevant to the topic they are currently reading about. I could also simply be asking folks if they would like to receive frequent updates on how I am growing my business. It’s a fabulous tool because you can post these links anywhere (like social media groups, pages and forums).

---

 

If You’d Like to Quadruple Your List Growing,

Click Here To See How Birdsong Can Help

---

The way you would incorporate this into your blog is in your navigation menu, instead of linking your About Me Page to an actual page on your blog, link it to an external link (which is your Birdsong Profile).

6. Exit Optin

Exit Optins are optin boxes that pop-up when the visitor is making a mouse movement to close out the page. It’s almost like magic.

It’s the last chance to get some kind of engagement from your visitor to take action and subscribe to your list. It usually looks like this where the optin comes up and the screen goes dark.

Keep in mind not all of these kinds of optins are necessarily “Exit”. These optins can show up at any given time the webpage owner wants it to show up. For example, like after 25 seconds of someone being on the blog.

These are also called Light Boxes and many autoresponders have these built in. (See autoresponders below in the next section if you are not sure what they are)

7. Products

The last way you can get people on your list is to SELL PRODUCTS on your blog!

Up until now, we’ve talked about all kinds of ways you can get people on your list without buying anything; however, when you actually sell your own product, you are now growing a buyers list!

The best kind of list to have is a list full of buyers, or people who are not afraid to pull out their credit card and buy something from you. Those are the people you want on your list because once someone buys something once from you, they are likely to buy something again in the future.

When someone buys a product from you, be sure you are collecting their email address so you can later associate that particular buyer with the product they bought. This way, you will be able to sell that person more products related to their topic of interest.

Now that we concluded the 7 places you could be growing your list on your blog, let’s talk about the tools you need to collect emails.

Tools You Need To Capture Subscribers

Now that you know the different ways to get email addresses on your blogs (and hopefully you learned some more strategies with the information provided thus far), let’s now talk about how to actually collect the email addresses and what you need.

1. Autoresponder

First, you are going to need an autoresponder, which is a service that is designed to collect email addresses and email people in bulk and automatically.

Services like this include:

• Aweber
• Get Response
• Active Campaign

There are some other ones out there, but these are the most reputable.

Most of these services start out at a very reasonable price and the more people you add to your list, the price goes up accordingly. By the time the price goes up, you should already be making money from your list.

Another great part about autoresponders is they come fully equipped with beautiful lead forms.

Look at some samples from Get Response:

With these you can have awesome forms integrated with your website and collect leads like a champ.

It’s as simple as plugging in the HTML Code and you’re all set.

Lastly, Get Response also has been adding all of these additional features to increase optin rates.

Many of these are features we’ve talked about already in this post and others are unique features that we could give or take, ie, the Shake Box.

2. Outside Services and Plugins

As you can see above, Get Response has incorporated more ways you can grow your list besides the traditional optin form. However, there are so many different services out there that offer things like:

• Exit Optins
• Top and Bottom Bar Optins
• 2 Step Optins

There are so many it would be impossible to list them all here. Some are free, some are a one-time fee, some are a moderate monthly fee, and some are a hefty yearly fee. Many of these services come with built in templates that are literally plug and play and you need no designing or programming skills. It’s truly amazing.

Be sure to put a lot of thought into who you will be using for this important service of collecting leads as it is the lifeline of most businesses.

For example, if you are using a hosted company to make your optin pages, make sure the company / service is reputable. Remember – if their pages go DOWN, that means your pages will be down and essentially, your business will be closed until the company gets their shit together. This is a serious matter that many people don’t take into consideration when they buy products like this. Go with a well-known name in the industry like:

• Lead Pages (Hosted Service)
• Click Funnels (Hosted Service)
• Instabuilder (Word Press Plugin, Self Hosted)
• Optimize Press 2.0 (Word Press Plugin, Self Hosted)

Many people use more than one service because there are so many, it’s hard to decide (and many of us are shiny object junkies). They each are different in their own way too, which also makes it hard to decide. My advice is to stick with the top companies and not some cheapy service. Even though it sucks to pay monthly, you will want to pay monthly because that’s a sign the business is sustainable, can make updates and enhancements, and can keep the lights on 🙂

---

Remember, you can build beautiful pages like this with Birdsong so you are constantly working to build your list everywhere in your marketing.

Here’s Ben’s Profile:

It’s all made possible with Birdsong