Hi friends,
I woke up to a full and noisy household today—Sam’s started a new job and has been on back-to-back calls all morning; Jude, my 9 year old, has been playing Roblox with friends (quite loudly, I might add); our dog, who we share with another family, is back for a while; and our cat, who really isn’t happy with this particular turn of events, is being quite vocal in his disapproval.
I’m about to head off to the park to finish edits on the last book of the series I’ll relaunch under my new name later this year, and as I sit here writing this, I’m reminded that this freedom—to work anywhere, at any time, in any way— is exactly what creating this audience and this business has allowed me to do.
– My hours and my schedule are my own.
– What I write, and how frequently, is always up to me.
– My income and my influence are only ever limited by my own thoughts and choices.
– I’m able to help thousands of other writers to create exactly this freedom in their own lives as well.
I’ve worked from park benches, from the back of cabs, at a five-year-old’s birthday party in a church hall, on a sidewalk in Delhi, in a rowdy pub in England, and of course beaches, lakes, ponds, swimming pools, and near any and all large bodies of water.
I love what I do and will sometimes do it at the expense of everything else. But, as I’ve been talking about recently, I don’t believe in hard work for the sake of hard work.
I want every bit of work I do to have the maximum amount of impact that it can possibly have.
This is especially true of audience building.
I decided, in 2017, that I needed to get serious about hitting 10,000 subscribers on my email list, and I started playing around with some strategies, some of which stuck and some of which didn’t. After a bit of trial and error, I struck gold, and immediately hit my target. I could have kept going but I wanted to focus my attention on the writing and so, for the last four years, I haven’t looked at audience building again.
My efforts from back then continue to bring in new subscribers even today, and so while my growth plateaued, I didn’t mind because I was too busy finishing novels, moving countries, changing names, changing the direction of this business (a few times!) and just figuring out what I wanted my life and work to be about.
I love growth, I love doubling my income, I love seeing the numbers rise.
But never at the expense of what I want to do.
This year, as I’ve been getting ready to relaunch my indie books under a new name and am seeing movement on the traditional publishing side of things, I’ve realized it’s time to push for audience growth again.
My new goal is to get to 20,000 subscribers in the next few months, and then to build up to 50,000 from there.
And I’m going to do it using the strategy I will share with you in this workshop.
How to Build an Email List Fast (And For Free)
The exact strategy I used to take my email list from 3,500 subscribers to 10,000 and beyond. In just two weeks.
Look, it doesn’t matter what I want or what I do in my business.
It matters what you want to do in yours.
I’ve been saying this for a good solid ten years now, but if you want choices as a creative professional, you’re going to need to start building up your readership directly.
When you have your own audience:
– Traditional publishers want you and give you bigger and better deals, especially for nonfiction.
– You can take full control, go indie, and publish on your own terms.
– You sell more books.
– You open up new avenues for income and growth, including but not limited to, courses, coaching, physical product lines, crowdfunding campaigns, Patreon, etc.
– You make more money.
– You create more impact.
– You no longer worry about launching books (or anything) to crickets.
– You get more (and better) opportunities—to speak, to appear on podcasts, to partner with other people in your space.
I could go on and on, but I don’t need to.
We all know the impact a large audience can have on our writing, our businesses, and our income.
What I’m saying is that it doesn’t have to take all your time, focus, and energy to build it.
I will be laying out my strategy this Wednesday in my workshop.
See you there!
Cheers,
Natasha