There’s a piece of advice circling right now that I want to push back on hard: that new online business owners shouldn’t bother with an email list yet. Grow your following first, the thinking goes, then worry about email later.
I could not disagree more.
I’ve been building this version of my business for over five years, and making email list growth a priority from day one is the single decision I’d repeat if I started over tomorrow. My list sits at over 20,000 active subscribers and grows by 500+ every month. It’s the most reliable revenue layer I have, and it took less ongoing effort than almost anything else I do.
Below are the four reasons I’d tell any business owner to start collecting emails now, even if your audience is small, even if you’re not sure what you’d send yet.
LINKS MENTIONED:
- Download my 10 freebie ideas to start growing your email list
- Flodesk, the email service provider I use and love (50% off your first year)
- ManyChat for Instagram DM automations that add people to your list
- YouTube Video: Get 1,000+ on Your Email List WITHOUT Paid Ads or Posting More
Should You Start an Email List When You’re Just Starting Out?
Yes. Start your email list before you feel ready, because it’s the only audience you own outright and the emails you collect early cost you the least effort. You need one freebie and one email service provider to begin. Even a list you email once a month builds an asset no algorithm can take away from you.
The “wait until you’re bigger” advice sounds reasonable. It’s also backwards. The cost of starting a list at 200 followers is a couple of hours. The cost of starting one at 20,000 followers is every single person who found you and left before you gave them a place to go.
Why Does Owning Your Email List Matter More Than Follower Count?
You own your email list outright, which means you can export it and take it to any email provider at any time. Social platforms own your followers. If your account gets hacked, locked, or throttled by an algorithm change, that audience is gone. Your subscriber list survives all of it, and every person on it receives what you send.
I could give you a dozen other reasons to start a list (and I will), but this is the one underneath all of them.
Think about what happens if your Instagram gets hacked tomorrow. Or you get logged out and can’t get back in. Or the algorithm decides your content isn’t worth showing to the people who already chose to follow you. On every social platform, you’re renting access to your own audience, and the landlord changes the rent whenever it wants.
Email has no algorithm sitting between you and your people. You send the email, everyone on the list gets the email. That’s it. And if you ever want to switch tools, you export a CSV and take those subscribers with you.
That’s ownership. Nothing else in your marketing works that way.
How Hard Is It Actually to Start an Email List?
Starting an email list takes one freebie and one email service provider. Pick a single lead magnet your ideal client actually wants, set it up to deliver automatically, and add a signup link everywhere you show up online. Most people can finish the entire setup in an afternoon, and it only has to be built once.
I think a lot of people avoid this because they’re picturing something far more complicated than it is. Here’s the whole starting checklist:
- Choose one freebie. Not five. One really strong one that solves a specific problem for the person you want on your list. If you’re stuck on what to make, I put together 10 freebie ideas that work well for online business owners.
- Pick an email service provider. Mine is Flodesk and I recommend it constantly because it’s genuinely user friendly. You don’t need a marketing degree to build a form or an automation in it.
- Set up the delivery once. Signup form, welcome email, freebie attached. Done.
- Put the link everywhere. Bio, channel page, video descriptions, content.
That’s the build. After that, all you’re doing is sending emails here and there.
How Often Do You Have to Email Your List?
You don’t have to email every day or run promotions every week. One newsletter a month is a completely legitimate starting cadence, and it’s 12 emails a year. When you’re ready to grow, move to one a week and add a flash sale or launch every few months. Consistency matters more than volume.
This is the part that stops people, and it shouldn’t. I sent a couple of emails a week and ran a launch or flash sale every two to three months for literal years. That’s the whole strategy. It never pulled focus from the bigger things I was building, and it worked the entire time.
Start where you can actually sustain it. One email a month that you send for two years beats one email a day that you quit after three weeks.
How Do You Make Money From a Small Email List?
Email lists monetize faster than social audiences because subscribers expect to be sold to. You can make a direct pitch in an email that would feel pushy in a caption, and conversion rates tend to be higher. A flash sale, a product launch, or a simple offer to an engaged list can generate revenue within days, even on a list of a few hundred people.
At this point I know I could send a few emails and bring in $4,000 or $5,000 without much drama. That’s not because I’m doing anything clever. It’s because I have five years of people who raised their hand and said yes, send me things.
What that actually gives you is a lever. Cash flow gets tight, or you want to test a new offer, or you need a solid month, and you have a group of people already waiting who are excited to hear from you. Social media can’t do that on demand. Email can.
And when you launch something new? You’re not starting from zero and hoping the algorithm cooperates. You’re emailing people who already know you.
Why Should You Collect Emails Before Your Audience Grows?
Collect emails from day one because attention is hardest to recapture after the fact. When someone first discovers you, that’s the moment they’re most likely to join your list. If your platforms take off before you have signup paths in place, backtracking to convert existing followers into subscribers is significantly harder than capturing them on the way in.
I’ve watched this happen to my own students, and it’s painful every time. Their channel or account finally takes off, thousands of new people show up, and there was nowhere for those people to go. Now they’re trying to convince an audience that already followed them months ago to hand over an email address, and the enthusiasm just isn’t there anymore.
That first moment of discovery is when someone is most curious about you. They just watched something that helped them. They want more. If there’s an obvious next step, they take it. If there isn’t, they follow and drift.
So build the paths before you need them:
- On YouTube: put your email list link on your channel page and in every video description. Say it out loud in your videos.
- On Instagram: make the link in your bio a signup link, or make sure your link tree has at least a couple of ways to join. Bake the invitation into the content itself, not just the bio.
- Everywhere you can automate it: a ManyChat automation that adds people to your list when they comment a keyword is a tiny setup that runs forever.
None of these are big projects. They’re small tweaks that quietly grow your list in the background while you’re doing everything else.
And if your brand has an explosive growth moment? You’re ready for it. If it doesn’t happen for a while, you’ve still got the whole system in your back pocket.
What Do You Even Send to a New Email List?
Send what you’re already making. Your best social post, the answer to a question you keep getting asked, a behind the scenes look at something you’re building, or a short lesson on the thing you teach. New subscribers signed up because of your freebie, so more of that same help is exactly what they want. You don’t need original material for every send.
“I don’t know what to send” is the objection I hear most, and it’s usually a repurposing problem rather than an ideas problem.
You’ve already written captions. You’ve already answered the same DM eleven times. You’ve already recorded a video that explains something well. Any of those is a fine email. Pull it over, write it like you’re talking to one person, and hit send.
The bar for a good email is lower than you think. Helpful and human beats polished every time, and your list would rather hear from you imperfectly than not at all.
What to Do This Week
If you take one thing from this, make it this: your email list is the only audience you own, and starting it is easier and smaller than you think.
Here’s the order I’d go in:
- Pick your one freebie. Just one. Grab my 10 freebie ideas if you need a starting point.
- Set up an email service provider and build the signup form.
- Add the link to your Instagram bio and your YouTube channel page today.
- Send your first email. It doesn’t have to be brilliant, it just has to exist.
You don’t need a big following to make this worth it. You need a place for people to go when they find you.
Start now. Future you will be so glad you did.
