How I added 1947 new email subscribers in less than 30 days

I don't post here often but here I am. About to go to sleep but figured I'd post this in case it might help someone.

There is nothing sexy or difficult about how I got these subs. It was just long hours of tedium.

What I used:

- SumoMe Giveaways Plugin - Cost $100. I think it normally goes for $200 but you can Google it and find it for half price. You can set the length of the giveaway for whatever you want. For this particular giveaway I set it for 30 days.

- Wordpress site (I THINK the Giveaways plugin only works with Wordpress)

- An item to give away that's of high value to the target niche. The item should be as relevant to the target customer as possible, while being as irrelevant to those outside the niche as possible. This will discourage freebie seekers that don't do shit for you.

In my case I used Muay Thai Boxing gloves and a Gear Bag (My target niche is MMA Fighters who want to get sponsors) - Cost Gloves - $79 (but I bought them wholesale for $43 because I have a reseller permit) - Cost Gear Bag - $99 but I got free because the owner had heard of my site and decided to sponsor one of my giveaways by offering his gear bag for free. So total value of giveaway: about $178.

If that all sounds too difficult or you're poor, don't worry. You can give away something cheaper. I have given away $50 mma shorts before with good results. The giveaway just has to be highly valued by your target niche. And again, as irrelevant as possible to those outside the niche.

How I got the word out:

I've tried many different things in the past, forums, sponsoring podcasts, facebook groups, etc. But the two absolute best things for me have been Facebook messaging and Tweets on Twitter.

Forums gained me a lot of subscribers in prevous giveaways but it was pretty shitty. Reason being that there isn't a forum where ONLY MMA fighter hang out. Anywhere MMA fighters hang, they are outnumbered 100 to 1 by fans.

So even though some fighters would join I'd get a bunch of fans entering to get a freebie. Afterwards they'd opt out or simply mark my email as spam. Dickheads. haha

The takeaway is this, find out where YOUR target market hangs out and go there. Find the highest concentration possible and spread the word there.

Forget anywhere else, Your time is valuable. Look for places where you can apply the least amount of effort for the biggest amount of return.

Anyway, back to how got those 1947 new subs.

On Facebook I joined groups specifically for fighters. Then I clicked on the "Members" list which shows all the members. I didn't want to message non-fighters so I would just scroll through until I saw someone who was obviously a fighter. Usually easy to tell by their pose, nickname, etc. Then I'd send them a message that simply said:

"Hey xxx (their name), here's a fighter giveaway you may be interested in. You can get free Boon boxing gloves and a NuPak gear bag at this link:

(insert link)"

The only thing in the message I'd personalize was their name.

I'd send messages like that until Facebook would say I was doing too many. Then I'd stop and go to Twitter.

On Twitter I did a search for users with the phrase "Amateur Fighter" in the profile.

Then I went down the list and sent a Tweet to each one. Again, the only thing I personalized was their name.

I wanted to keep the tweet short enough that there was at least 20 characters left so they could retweet to their fighter buddies with their own message if they wanted.

Tweet said: "(their name), this Giveaway may interest you. Get free Boon boxing gloves, & NuPak. See: (insert link)

When I finished amateur fighters I went to pro fighters. The repeated with all other words or phrases that fighters would have. Things like "fighting out of" "Lightweight fighter" "Future champ" and so on.

When I exhausted all the possible words and phrases I then searched on Lists instead of people. That produced some gold mines. Longs lists of fighters that didn't have any obvious key words or phrases that I could otherwise search on.

When I exhausted those lists I then went to the profiles of amateur fighters to see if they kept a list of friends. Most didn't, some did. Again, those were goldmines. Fighters tend to have fighter friends so found lots more that way.

Next I went to the twitter profiles of Websites that I knew would have a lot of fighter followers. Sites such MMA Recruiter, Fund A Fighter, etc. Then I clicked on their followers list, and bang bang, huge list of fighters to message.

I'd eventually hit a tweet limit on Twitter, usually took a couple hours. Then I'd go BACK to Facebook and send messages there again.

I didn't want to send the same message to a fighter by accident so I opened two windows. One window was the Full version for the conversation message window, which allows you to do a search within your messages. The second window was open with the group members list.

I would type in the first few letters of their name into the search box in window 1. If "no results found" appeared, I knew I hadn't messaged them before. So I'd send them a message. If a result was found, then of course I'd skip it and go to the next.

Rinse repeat, rinse repeat, until my eyes felt like they would melt and I wanted to go crazy.

In total, within 30 days I sent over 6000 tweets. And over 1000 Facebook messages. At the end of the giveaway I had 1947 new subscribers.

I originally thought I'd get around 300. But once I hit 300 I pushed for 500. When I hit 500 I thought how crazy would it be to hit 800. I'd go for it but if I got 1200 that would be a pipe dream. Well, I just keep pushing and pushing and in the end I went so far above what I thought I could do I was amazed.

And the best part was that this was EXTREMELY TARGETED traffic. Oh yeah, this was in December as well, when most people are on vacation. Had I done this any other time than the holidays I expect I would have got many more subs.

In the past I had tried other methods, like I mentioned earlier and I got huge amounts of freebie seekers.

Anywaaaay, that's how I did it. I know my niche is ultra specific so many people will think ah, **** it. Won't work for me! haha. But there is a lot of stuff in there you can apply to your own niche. Just gotta tweak it.

Always keep in mind that you need to tweak it to fit YOUR niche.

For instance, I previously tried FB message and Tweets to accounts with huge amounts of followers 100k+ and asked them to share it with their followers. Some of them did and I got huge amounts of traffic and subs that way. But like I said, it was useless to me because it would mainly consist of fans, not fighters.

But maybe that's something you could use in your niche. If you're in a weight loss niche, and some health site with 100k+ followers shares your tweet, well that could actually be hugely valuable to you because the followers ARE who you market to.

Here's the tweet I sent to get it shared: (name), would luv ur audience 2 take part. Free boxing gloves & NuPak. See (link) Pls RT

Including their name is key. As is telling them you'd love their audience to participate and adding the "Pls Rt" at the end. So they actually retweet it!

And again, the message should have at least 20 characters left so they can easily retweet it. If they have to delete words and arrange it they're not gonna retweet shit.

Alright ****faces, haha, I'm going to bed now. No idea how this post will be received. But will see.

Love you.