The one regret you hear a lot from effective bloggers who didn’t start building their email lists early is:

‘I should have started getting email subscribers early’.

It is more like advice to new bloggers than a regret, but you get the point.

But then this thing still continues. New blogs continue sprouting left and right without parts (at end or middle of posts, sidebars) dedicated in their design to allow visitors to sign up via email.

Well there are many reasons why this happens. We’ll take a look at them and then see various options that you can consider if you want to take your site to the next level.

Why aren’t site owners allowing their readers to subscribe via email

1. Overwhelm

It takes a lot of hard work to bring a new site online. There is time spent figuring out what the site will be about, doing keyword research and even more time dedicated to coming up with a great domain name, creating content, choosing a host, plugins and themes.

And that’s not all. One can get lost in people’s comment sections, in their bid to reach out to others and get others to come read their stuff.

By the time they remember to start getting email addresses from people who see the value in what they do, a few weeks may have gone by, and so may be the few people who could have signed up to their list.

Even if it was just one person, that matters – a lot.

2. Some people don’t want to go with free mailing list service providers like MailChimp, even when they still don’t have money to pay for say Aweber

If your reason for not doing email marketing is simply because, ‘I am waiting till I have money to go with Aweber (or any other email marketing software / service popular with the most successful marketers – like GetResponse (which I use for some of my email lists) or ConvertKit)’, I’ll tell you one thing: Why not give the other services a chance instead of doing nothing?

This problem is further compounded by the fact that there are many stories online of people who used some of the ‘free’ services I have mentioned. And what did they get? Pissed off! And they wrote a post, detailing every bit of their frustration, then fled – moved to another provider.

Don’t let this stop you. After all, not everybody who uses the ‘free’ services gets pissed off. Some are happy, even paying customers now.

You should also look at the dates of some of the posts that may discourage you from say trying MailChimp. Some of them were written several months or years ago. I believe the team working hard to make MailChimp awesome has done some great things during that duration to do away with some of the things that got some of their raving fans flying.

3. Some people ‘don’t’ have an awesome freebie to give away (to subscribers who opt into their email lists) just yet

This one is a major reason why you’ll visit a new and awesome blog and wonder why the owner is not asking you for your name and email address.

The thinking goes like this: if some of the best and more awesome blogs in my niche are offering numerous freebies to get emails from their visitors, who am I to start a new blog with less than fifteen posts and expect people to blast their way into my email list?

There may be some merit to that thinking. But you are not those other blogs. Plus you are new. And there are many people who sign up to various blogs not because of the freebies, but to get to learn more from the blogger through the emails they send, and start a conversation just by hitting the ‘Reply’ button at the end of the emails they receive.

Guess what. There are some bloggers, I thought were super busy and couldn’t reply to my emails (sent via contact form on their site) or comments, but they do at least make an effort to talk with their subscribers. You shoot an email, and they actually send you a reply. And there are many readers like that, not worried about freebies. They just love putting their opinions or thoughts out there and seeing what that attracts.

4. Some people haven’t prepared email autoresponder sequences to send after a visitor to their site signs up via email

When a site is new and there is so much to do, some may skip the email marketing part, because there are posts to be written. But every effective blogger needs well thought out autoresponders to send out to their subscribers.

That is more work. To some.

And it usually gets pushed back somewhere where it can easily be forgotten because most new sites attract little traffic – and getting more sometimes takes all the energy (or attention) in the new blogger that they get to keep postponing writing the emails to be sent out once people start signing up.

Sometimes this happens simply because of trying to do several things at the same time, that some crucial steps gets pushed further into the future, especially if procrastination is also a big issue.

5. Some people think the blog or website traffic they get is still too little to warrant adding email opt in forms

This shouldn’t stop you from allowing people to subscribe to receive your email updates. Every visit to your site is an opportunity to get someone to join your list.

If that’s the way they believe they can get the most help from you, give them a chance to give you their name and email address.

One person in your list, could also share your emails with their friends. They could help you get more people to your site and email list just by sharing your emails.

6. Some blog and website owners don’t know how valuable email subscribers can be

Most of the times when you hear people talk about email marketing, there is a high probability you’ll hear this:

‘The money is in the list’.

What does this do? It encourages some to get things in order early and get as many people as possible in their list. It also discourages others and makes it easier for them to push things in the future. When they hear, ‘the money is in the list’ thing, they may think to themselves: ‘But I am not after money just yet, so no harm.’ Or ‘I have other ways to make money. I’ll look into starting my list next month.’

If only they knew that there are a ton of reasons why one should allow people to subscribe via email and actually have a mission for their emails, just like we have missions for blogs, they wouldn’t hesitate allowing email subscriptions on their sites from launch day.

7. Some people haven’t taken the time to learn more about making the various autoresponder software work for them

Are words like email autoresponders, campaigns scaring you? Are you just afraid of integrating your service with your blog and ensuring everything works ok?

You are not alone.

You can either do your own research to see how to make things work the way you want them to, you can pay someone to help you and you can also get guidance by paying for an online course.

But don’t let the words or the many hoops stop you. Help is all around you.

8. Some just do it with their feed manager or by using subscribe function in plugins like Jetpack

Do you just collect email addresses with a plugin like Jetpack or via a service like Feedblitz? Well, some are ok with this. Are you? Or are you doing it because you think the other alternatives are complicated and will cause you a lot of frustration, and waste the little time you have?

Think about the pros and cons of the various alternatives and then settle on what you think is best for now and the future. And its better if you choose something that gives you more control over the emails you are given.

What are you going to do?

I hope you are going to give what we’ve discussed in this post serious thought and then give email marketing more attention.

Start with what you have. No money for the autoresponder software you love the most – like GetResponse, AWeber or ConvertKit?

Start with the ones within your reach. MailChimp. MadMimi.

Baby steps.

Got little traffic?

This shouldn’t stop you, even if you are still getting less than five people to your site every single day.

No freebie yet?

Who said you must give something to entice people to subscribe to your email list especially when you are just starting out? Get the emails as you work on your freebie. Or work on the freebie before you launch your site. You can also get the numerous freebies created by others and give them away on your site.

Yea, there are many people who have created great products they give away for free. And the good thing is they also allow others to host the products on their sites and give them away for free, as long as they don’t make any changes to the products. A best place to start checking is the various sites in your niche.

Feeling overwhelmed?

Why not take just a few days and dedicate it to only making the email subscription part of your blogging strategy work. Write a few posts and schedule them during the days you’ll be working on this, so you don’t have a voice telling you to stop what you are doing and update your site with new content.

You have a story related to this, I know. If you’d like to share it, do so in the comments section below.