I was not a big fan of building an email list until I got my Amazon KDP account suspended!

Yes, my kdp account was suspended and I went from making $800 — 1000/mo to $0/mo.

Luckily, I got my account reinstated however, it taught me a great lesson!

You can’t build a sustainable business on someone else’s platform.

In other words, you can’t rely on Amazon, Google, YouTube, Facebook, and similar platforms because you don’t own them.

That’s why I started to build my customer base via email marketing. At the time of writing this post, I have multiple email lists.

Today, I am going to share one of them which I built via my blog. But before that let’s have a look at different types of audiences.

Three Types of Audience

There are three types of audiences you build in the online world.

#1 — Rented Audience

The audience you build on social media platforms is known as a rented audience.

You don’t own it because the people who follow you or subscribe to your profiles belong to the platform itself.

You can’t fully rely on a rented audience because the owners of the platform can take away from you with or without letting you know.

# 2 — Owned Audience

This audience consists of people who subscribe to your list or newsletter.

You convert your rented audience into email subscribers by sharing a freebie (a free report, ebook, or video).

Next, you can stay in touch with your owned audience via daily or weekly emails. These emails must contain something valuable for them.

Whenever you send an email a portion of your subscribers open and read your emails.

# 3 — Monetized Audience

This is a list of your paying subscribers. Once you share a product service to your owned audience aka email subscribers a small portion of them make a purchase.

This could be your product or service or an affiliate offer (A product owned by a thirty party who pays you a percent of each sale).

With email marketing, you should aim to convert your followers into email subscribers and then subscribers into paying customers.

Now let’s talk about how I built an email list of over 1100 subscribers with $0 spent on ads.

Systeme.io — My One-Stop Shop for Building Email Lists and Funnels

Systeme.io is one of the best alternatives to clickfunnels. It comes with a built-in email auto-responder as well.

You can use systeme.io to create free funnels, a free email list of up to 2000 subscribers, and a free workflow for sending automated emails.

You can also send a newsletter for free…systeme.io is just insane in terms of providing free options!

My Systeme.io Funnel

I used systeme.io to create a very simple two-step funnel. Creating a funnel in systems.io is extremely easy.

You can use one of the premade funnel templates and costume it to make your own.

A funnel comes with more than 1 page or step, have a look at mine;

My systeme.io funnel includes the below steps/pages;

Funnel Step 1 (a): A landing page where I collect email addresses.

Funnel Step 1 (b): An inline form I embedded into my blog posts

Now I can either use the landing page as the first step of the inline form.

Mostly I use the inline form as I embed it to my blog.

Both squeeze page and inline form do three things;

1. Collect first name and email address
2. Subscribe the user to an email list
3. Send the user to a thank you page

Funnel Step 2: A thank page

My thank page does two things;

1. Confirms the subscription and thanks the subscribers
2. Shows the next steps to download the free resource

Get your free account with Systeme.io

My Systeme.io Workflow

Next comes the automation magic. I use a very simple workflow to send an automated email to new subscribers.

The email contains the link to the free resource. It also makes sure that the provided email address is valid.

As you can see, when someone subscribes to my systeme.io inline form, my workflow triggers the welcome email.

I have also added a couple of follow-up emails for new subscribers only which they receive during the first week or so.

My Traffic Sources

My main traffic sources include Google and my YouTube channel. Recently I have also started focusing on my Pinterest account after seeing a couple of my pins going viral.

Moving forward I will put more time and effort into building my Pinterest account as it can potentially give high-quality leads.

Conclusion!

In my opinion, your email subscribers are your best audience as you can contact them whenever you want.

You can nurture your email list by providing value and making money as a by-product. Most importantly one can not take away your audience from you.

It gives you more control over the business model you are doing.

Systeme.io is by far the best all-in-one funnel and email marketing program. It’s free and gives a good jump-start.

Even their paid plans are extremely affordable when compared to click funnels and similar alternatives. Checkout systeme.io here.

This story has affiliate links to products and resources I use in my online business, and I will earn a commission if you make a purchase (No Extra Cost To You!).