I recently decided to get serious about building my own email mailing list.
Here are the three steps I used to get my first 100 subscribers.
The first thing I did was write and publish a blog post.
I’ve been blogging for a long time. I write for myself first. My blog posts get some visitors but they don’t get much repeat traffic. I’m pretty sure anyone could accomplish the same thing with one good blog post, even if you’ve never done it before.
You’ll need a bit of luck. Not every post I write is popular. You can probably increase your likelihood of success by writing half a dozen posts.
My blog post was about a technical topic, so I posted a link to it on Hacker News. The post got a few upvotes but not a lot, I think it ranked well for a while on the “new” page, but it never got anywhere near the front page. That was enough to generate decent attention.
At the bottom of the blog post I put a section that pitched my course in a couple of sentences. Then I created a button that said, “Email Me the Crash Course”.
I delayed sharing the post for 24 hours while I wrote the sign-up form.
The next morning I set up a sales page for a free mini-course. It included my pitch, an outline of the course, a box for your email address, and a submit button. I created the form using my mailing list provider and embedded it on the sign-up page.
I didn’t have a free course to give away, so I made a 5-point outline for one I knew I could write.
At the bottom, to help set expectations, I put the note, “First lesson drops when I reach 50 sign-ups (ETA ~2 weeks)”.
As soon as I thought I would hit 25 subscribers, I started to write the email messages I would send in the mini-course. My note on the sign-up page bought me a couple weeks to write these, if I needed it.
I started with an introduction message that I sent the day the user signed up. I asked:
What would make this course a total win for you?
Not a lot of people responded to the email, but a few did. Their answers helped me confirm that the course I was building was doing what they expected. Some of them provided good ideas for additional content I could add to improve the course.
Next, I wrote the lessons. They were short, around 250 words each. Some even shorter.
Once I got all the messages written I enabled the automation in my mailing list tool and it started sending the messages.
The campaign was a success. Within two weeks I had 128 subscribers.
Now that I’ve built the list to over 100, I’ve set a goal of 500 active subscribers. “Active subscribers” is the main stat my mailing list displays on the dashboard. It shows how many subscribers have opened or clicked an email in the last 90 days.
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Written by Joel Dare on July 30, 2025.
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