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4 Free & Easy Ways To Get More Opt-In Subscribers For Your Newsletter

by Tanner Larsson

E-mail newsletters and e-zines can be extremely profitable for their owners, providing that their newsletter has subscribers, the more the better.

Without a large number of subscribers your going to have a tough time making money when the only recipient of your e-zine is.you.

To prevent this from happening to you, I am going to share with you 4 free and easy ways you can start generating more opt-in subscribers for your e-zine mailing list.

1. Ad Swap

Another great way to get more subscribers is to participate in an ad swap with another newsletter.

An ad swap is when two newsletter publishers each create a short advertisement (usually 5 lines with 60 characters per line) which they then swap and publish each others ad in their next newsletter.

Most newsletter publishers are very willing to participate in ad swaps. However, many newsletters will only participate in ad swaps with other newsletters that are of equal size and/or target a similar audience.

The best thing to do after finding a newsletter you'd like to do an ad swap with, is to send that newsletter's publisher an e-mail with a proposal for an ad swap.

It is also a good idea to include the ad you want to swap, so they can make an informed decision. If they say no, that's fine, there are thousands of other newsletters out there, so go find another one and try again.

2. Submit your newsletter to e-zine directories

This is something that every newsletter or e-zine owner should do, but many do not.

Why? Because people are lazy and it takes time to submit your newsletter to a bunch of different directories.At the time I'm writing this article there are over 110,000 matches for "e-zine directiories" on Google.

I highly recommend that you set aside a day or two and submit your newsletter to as many different directories as you can. This can help you in several different ways.

For example, most e-zine directories allow you to post your newsletters name, subscription info, a short description of your newsletter, a link to your website, your advertising rates (if you accept advertising), article submission details, ect.

Now when someone searches that directory and finds your newsletter, they will have a wealth of information available to them to help convince them to subscribe.

Also other newsletter owners and product owners can see your e-zine and then send you offers for joint ventures, advertising, ad swaps and more.

Many of the directories will also post a clickable link to your website on their site. This will help improve your search engine rankings, by having other sites link to you.

So you see there are several other benefits of listing your newsletter in the e-zine directories besides just gaining additional subscribers.

3. Write e-zine articles

If you own your own newsletter or e-zine, then there is a very good chance that you write articles and create content for your newsletter.

But why stop with just your newsletter, why not ad a "resource box" and share it with other newsletter publishers and allow them to publish your articles in their e-zines?

What is a resource box? A resource box is basicly a short 3–4 line paragraph that is located at the end of an article and introduces you to the author of the article and usually includes a link back to the author's website. For an example, look at the resource box at the end of this article.

If you allow others to use your articles in their newsletters, they must use the article in its entirety including the resource box. What this does is spread the word about your website and it also helps to build up your credibility as an expert in your particular field.

The more you share your articles, the more people will know about you, and the more people will visit your website or subscribe to your newsletter, and that means more money in your pocket.

5. Add an exit popup to your website

Many people think that pop-ups actually reduce the amount of sales you will make on your website. Now that is true in many cases, but in the case of gaining new subscribers for your newsletter, the opposite is in fact true. I will give you an example of my own experience.

One of the websites I run is a content-rich site built around online auctions, also on that website I had web forms that allowed people to sign up for my free newsletter. Now I was consistently gaining 5 to 6 new subscribers every day, not bad right? a little over 1800 new subscribers a year.

But then I added an pop-up that opened when a visitor exited my website and reminded them to sign up for my free newsletter. Overnight my daily subscription rate more than doubled, I started getting 14–20 new subscribers every day, that's more than 5000 new subscribers year, with just one little exit popup.

Why did my subscription rate double? Its called information overload, and it happens on many websites that offer their visitors a lot of content. The visitor gets engrossed in reading through all the information on the website and then they leave and forget to sign up for the newsletter.

By adding an exit pop-up that contains a newsletter sign up form and only opens when they leave your site, you will remind the visitor to sign up for your newsletter, and chances are they will.

I have just shown you 4 different ways you can gain more opt-in subscribers for free. Now all you have to do is go out there and apply these 4 ideas to your own business and watch your e-mail list start to grow.

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