#88 - How to Get Your First 100 Email Subscribers in Just One Weekend

What if by Sunday night you could have 100 new subscribers on your list - real people who love your products and want to hear from you? In this episode, Steph walks you through her simple, no-tech, no-stress method to build your email list this weekend.

Forget funnels, websites, or overthinking every detail. You’ll learn:

✨ How to pick a freebie that your ideal customer actually wants

✨ The quickest way to create a landing page (even without a website)

✨ Where to share it so people actually sign up

✨ Why messy action beats perfect plans every time

If you’ve been stuck thinking “I’ll do it when I have time,” this episode will give you the nudge (and the plan) to finally start.

🎁 Want the step-by-step templates and walkthroughs mentioned in this episode?

Grab The Maker’s List-Building Kickstart Kit and get your first 100 subscribers in 2-3 days ➡ https://www.handmadebosses.com/offers/KM79eUH7/checkout

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Transcript

What if by Sunday night, you could have 100 email subscribers to your list? Like your list will be a fully fledged thing. It will exist. It will start working for you.

It'll be rocking and rolling. How good would that feel? How amazing would that feel? Doing all of this without a website, fancy software, pulling your hair out, just ease, simple effectiveness.

The problem that I see over and over again is that makers will overcomplicate the whole email list building process and they think that it will need like full branding, funnels, a freaking tech degree and honestly like by simplifying it all, one freebie, one page, one share, you can go live this weekend and actually start growing this thing that we can all agree, especially if you listen slash watch the last podcast episode, that we all need, especially right now. Now, by the end, you are going to know what to offer, how to design it, where to share it so that you can finally start building your list. I hope that sounds good.

Now before we get into it, if you're watching this on YouTube, listening to it on a podcast, software, wherever that is, please do not forget to subscribe. Because by doing that, it really helps the show get seen by more eyeballs and it's just really, really helpful. It's like a second long thing for you, really, really helpful for me. So I would love it if you could do that.

Now, the first step to this whole thing is you need a reason for people to join your list. Now, long gone are the days where you could rock up and say, join my newsletter list, that no longer works. In fact, if you're using the word newsletter in any capacity, you are turning thousands, hundreds, whatever, of people off because people do not want to join newsletter lists because they know that it's just gonna be like that weird flyer from like your local town that comes through the door, you're gonna look at it and put it straight in the recycling bin, do you know what I mean?

Especially with ours, because ours is not very good. But the thing that I'm really getting at here is that a newsletter, it doesn't really spark that inspiration to actually join the thing, right? So you need to choose something that buyers already want. And something that I like to use is what is a common question or concern, query or thing that your target audience wants or needs to know about when it comes to your product, your brand, your business, right?

So it could be like mini gift guide for dog lovers. That would be a really cool freebie that would encourage people to join your list. They join your list, you give them the freebie. That's it, it's a tit for tat thing, you know?

And this is otherwise known as a lead magnet. So if you hear me ever use the word lead magnet, that's basically what that is. You are attracting leads to your list, essentially. Another example could be 10 home fragrance tips.

It could be a 10% off voucher. It could be a birthstone guide. It could be how to measure your dog's neck. It could be, I don't know, home styling for cottagecore.

It has to be something that your target audience would just love to have, okay? Now, a quick filter for ideas is if you can explain it in a sentence or less, and it makes your customer's life easier, it's a clear winner. So an example here, we have a ceramic artist that offered a printable care card for handmade mugs. Every single mug buyer wanted it because they were like, okay cool, like I know how I'm gonna look after my mug now, you know?

Now, if you haven't heard already, the Makers List Building Course and Kit, which is literally going to show you how to set up your email list, get your freebie done, your landing page, and start getting 100 email subscribers in just 2-3 days or less, Inside that kit, I'm actually giving you the recipe, I'm actually giving you the templates, everything you need to create this freebie and create it well. So if you are like, oh God, okay, I don't exactly know what my freebie should be, should it be this, should it be that, I'm not really sure, everything's gonna be covered for you inside of that course. And it's literally like a fill in the blank kind of thing.

It really is not gonna take you very long at all, okay? So that's the first part of this. The first part is we need to create a freebie that sells itself to attract people to our list. Now step two of this is you want to create a landing page.

This is where a lot of people do get tripped up. And I understand when you say you need to create a webpage, people are like, But you don't need a website to do it. Canva is an amazing tool that allows you to do this. And to be honest, it's not just Canva.

Wherever you host your email list, they probably or they should have a landing page builder built in. But let's just say for argument's sake, you don't. Canva allows you to have web pages. Isn't that cool?

So you do not need a website. That is a complete and utter myth. The reality is you can create a working landing page with something like MailerLite or Canva in literally 20 minutes or less. And you've guessed it, within the Makers Lists building course and I've given you the templates and everything you need to do this as well.

So I give you what blocks are needed, where things need to be, this, this and this. A little side note here, it should literally take you 20 minutes to build this thing. I promise you, it's so, so simple. So you really, really, really want to make it so quick and easy for people to decide in probably eight seconds or less if they want this thing or not.

It doesn't have to be any longer than that. It is such a short page and basically you are just needing a headline. So something like join my VIP list for this new guide or this new thing or whatever your freebie is from step one. And then it's just an image of that thing, a mock-up if you will, a button, and that's it.

And just like the actual bit where they put their email address, the first name, all that kind of stuff, but that should be provided by wherever you host your email list. It's so super easy, you have the headline, you have an image, you have the sign-up thing, you have the button, that's it, that is all you need. Now, step three is all about sharing it in the right places. Now, by the way, you might have been like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you've whizzed through steps one and two, but that's all you need.

Please don't let anyone tell you otherwise, it is not an overcomplicated thing. that you need to worry about. I promise you, you just need to go through it as quickly as I've just said. Like, you really, really, really do not need to worry about it.

And, you know, a side note here is that if you're like looking at building a lead magnet and you can't decide between one or two or three, you can do all three and test and trial it, you know? You don't have to stick with one and go, oh, well, that's it now, I've made my lead magnet, you know? All right, so getting back to step three is you need to share your freebie and therefore your page where they can sign up for that freebie in the right places. So you can put it in your Instagram bio, you can put it in your stories with a link sticker thing, you can put it in your Etsy announcement bar, you can put it on a thank you card, you can put it in a Facebook group, you can put

it in your email signature, you can put it in your order confirmations. You don't really have to worry about how you phrase this. You could say like, grab my free guide or 87 people already loving this free thing that I've got, join them here. It doesn't, again, have to be this overcomplicated thing.

And the fourth thing here is that a mindset shift that I want you all to have is that you do not need to have a lot of subscribers to your list. We already talked about in the last episode last week, which was actually, let me find out, I think it was episode 87, I believe. Let me just find my, yeah, so episode 87. If you haven't listened to that yet, go and do so, because I'm literally walking you through the maths of this to work out, okay, is it worth me doing it, all that kind of stuff.

But you literally only need 100 people who genuinely care about your emails, who genuinely want to hear from you. So please don't ever feel bad that your email list only got to like 20 people or 50 or 100 or whatever. It honestly matters more about the quality rather than the quantity. And that is the same on social media as well.

But let's be honest, most people do get impressed by a big number. So it's very easy to feel like you do need those massive amounts of people on your social media. I promise you, you don't. But like the way they proudly display it can be a bit annoying at times.

And I think one thing that I really want to leave you with is, would you rather speak to a stadium of absolute strangers who don't give two hoots about your brand or what you do, or for a small room of loyal fans? And that is basically the main core difference here. Now, two comparative characters, like we did before, have a little think about, as I'm reading these out, and really see which one you resonate with the most. So Sam, Sam opens MailChimp, she panics at the dashboard and gives up, basically.

I mean, that might be spread out over the course of like a week, two weeks, a few days, but she signs up, she's like, oh my God, what do I do here? What do I do that? And she just goes, and just gives up. She tells herself she'll do it properly once she's rebranded, redesigned her logo, listed more stuff, whatever.

Months, months, months go by and what happens? It doesn't get revisited, it just kind of like sits there gathering dust. Now Lydia, on the other hand, she watches one walkthrough in the Makers List building course and kit, and she's like, I'm going to go with my freebie will be printable gift tags for Makers, and that will be her lead magnet. She hits publish on that Friday night.

She shares it across as many places as she possibly can. By Sunday night, she has 97 subscribers. How cool is that? She sends her first welcome and thank you email Monday morning.

From that, she gets two sales. How crazy? The same weekend, the same amount of time that she has to give to her business, completely different result. Now, the big, big, big picture view of all of this, because right now you might be hearing this and thinking, oh God, this is like another thing, I know what she's saying, it makes sense, but tech is just so...

But let's just zoom out for a hot minute and look at the big picture thing. Every single maker starts with zero, they start with nothing. What matters is pressing publish and pressing publish messy. It's better to be out there and messy than not to exist at all.

And when you do take that first messy action, you build momentum that social media just straight up cannot give you in that same amount of time. Inside the Makers List Building Kickstart kit and course, I've packaged everything you need truly. the templates, the walkthroughs, the nudges, everything you need to get this ish done in two to three days, if not less, all right? And if you're ready to finally grow your list, grow something, a customer base that you own, you definitely want to get on this.

So guys, thank you so, so much for joining me. I do hope you have a little look at the list building kit and course, it's just gonna be so, so handy for you. to actually get that nudge, get that thing, get you off the fence and actually start growing your business and start owning a piece of it for yourself. And I will see you same time, same place next week for another episode of the How To Be A Handmade Boss Show.

Bye everyone.