Welcome to day 10 of Start Your Own Blogging Business! By now you have set up your email capture form and created a template for your newsletter. You may already have some subscribers, but how do you grow your email list? How do you entice visitors to give up their email address? You offer them an incentive – or what we call a lead magnet or lead generator.

As always, if you have any questions please leave them in the comments or post your questions in the Facebook group. If you haven’t already joined the Facebook group, please do so you can participate in the community.

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**Disclaimer**

There may be links in this blog post, some of them might be affiliate links for which I earn a small amount if you click on them, a really small amount it turns out. Still, full disclosure and all that…

Lead Generators

Lead magnets or lead generators are things or activities that entice your readers to sign up for your newsletter. You can use the tactic to have people follow you on social media and share your content, too.

Freebies

These are digital downloads that you create and give to your readers in exchange for their email address. On the right sidebar of any blog post you’ll see a sign up form for my 21 Free Tips for a Better Blog. It’s a digital document they receive when they sign up using that form. It’s auto generated so once I have created the document and campaign I don’t have to do anything more. I have another form that pops up when you visit my blog for the first time with the same offer. Freebies can be anything – a list of the best restaurants in your town with links to all of their websites. It can be a how-to about braiding hair or opening a Roth IRA. If you have knowledge about something that you can pass on (and it related to your niche, hopefully) you can create a document and give it away in exchange for their email. Printables are popular right now. Printables can be coloring pages, planner pages, weight loss organizer, or whatever you can think of that can be turned into a digital document. You create it once and it can be downloaded over and over.

Giveaways

Another way to entice your readers to give up their email address to you is to have giveaways on your blog. If you review a book you can offer a copy as a giveaway. Readers enter your contest by subscribing to your newsletter. Often bloggers will give readers an opportunity for more chances to win by asking them to follow them on the various social media platforms, and even if they share the post. The better the giveaway, the more people you’ll get to sign up. I know bloggers who giveaway laptops to generate their lists. That’s a little to rich for my blood, but I’ve given away a camcorder, iPod, and lots and lots of books.

Homework

Come up with a list of digital downloads you can create to use as freebies for your blog.

If you have any questions about today’s lesson, please feel free to leave a comment in the comment section below, on the Facebook page or you can email me directly at jen { at } redheadranting.com (use the @ sign and no parentheses or spaces).