Do This Today If You Want to Start an Online Business

[00:06] If that's you, if you're a dreaming about someday starting a business of your own, then there is one thing that I think is very important that you take care of now. Whether you are going to start this business a month from now or

[00:20] a year from now, one thing that can really set you up for success more than really set you up for success more than anything else.

[00:34] new program where I'm helping online business owners start memberships. We're almost done with the program now. It has been phenomenal. But when we first got started, I noticed that there was one thing that really set some of the

[00:48] thing that some of the students have that others didn't that was going to make it a lot easier for some of the students to be successful with this whole membership launching process. And that thing was that some of them had

[01:03] an email list. And when I say an email list, I mean a few things. I mean they had an account with an email marketing software. They had some sort of form set up on the internet where people could sign up for their email list. And

[01:16] consequently, they had some email subscribers. And by the way, there was not a single person who had some of those things but not all of them. I mean, there was nobody who had set up their email list but didn't have at

[01:28] least a single subscriber. And I immediately realized that those people who had set up their email list and had at least a tiny list, they were leaps and bounds ahead of the people who didn't have any of those systems set up.

[01:42] So, I ended up making kind of an emergency last-minute addition lesson to the first module of my program telling the people who did not yet have an email list to immediately do at least that and we could work on building their email

[01:55] list over the subsequent weeks before they launched their membership site, but the most important thing was that right then and there they got it started so that they could start building. They could start gathering an audience. But

[02:07] what I ended up realizing was that this is so important that I needed to bring this to all of you, not just keep this for my paid students. So today, I'm bringing all of you a tutorial for how you can get your email list started up

[02:21] this week so that whenever you get around to finally starting your business, you will have this foundation laid. There are lots of great email marketing software options out there. Personally, I use and really love Kit,

[02:35] what I'm going to show you how to set up. So, join me over here in my computer and what we're going to do, go to kit.com or if you want to give me a there's a link down below you can use to do that. Once you're at kit.com, then

[02:49] cuz I want to show you that they have this great free plan that you can get started with and it's a really incredible free plan because you can have up to 10,000 subscribers on this plan and you can

[03:02] send as many emails as you want and you have most of Kit's incredible features as well, all totally for free. And so, if you haven't started your business yet, this is definitely where I would recommend that you start. Later on, once

[03:16] you are actually starting your business and you are making money with it, then there will be a time when it makes sense for you to upgrade to like the creator plan for $33 a month so that you can start building some more like complex

[03:29] automations and automated sequences and things like that. But for now, just go ahead and sign up for the free plan. Now, once you sign up for Kit, you can where you want to go is you click on grow and then click on landing pages and

[03:43] forms to show up right here so that you can set up a form to start gathering subscribers and building your list. So, there's the option to create a form, which is a form you'd put on your website, or a landing page that is a

[03:56] standalone page with a form on it. If you don't have a website yet, definitely use the landing page option. ConvertKit offers tons of great templates to give time. So, you can just scroll through these templates and then choose one that

[04:09] either has a layout you like, or else is like well suited to whatever you want to elements that you don't need or anything like that, cuz you can easily add things, remove things, all of that. So, for example, you could go ahead and

[04:23] choose this one right here. And then you can get in here and you can change the text to say anything that you like. Um obviously, you'll want to replace this form fields, I would recommend just using first name and email address, and

[04:39] that you don't include the last name field. So, I'm just going to go ahead because people are a little bit more likely to sign up if they only have to give you their first name, and that's really all you need. And then you can do

[04:51] button if you want to choose it to be a color that you like or that matches your branding or what you're imagining your branding might be like someday. You can also do things like change the fonts of these. So, for example, maybe I want it

[05:06] to look like this instead, right? So, you can just come in here and spend a few minutes to customize this. And here's what I would recommend you do so that you get this done, but also so that it becomes strategic. When you first set

[05:19] this up, like, let's just set it up for your email list. Just tell people what you're going to be writing about, give them the opportunity to sign up to get people are going to sign up for this, but as you are starting to plan your

[05:34] about your business, maybe as you're starting to post content on social media, to start to try to grow an audience, this is going to give you some place that you can, as soon as that happens, start directing people to,

[05:46] start building that list. But, what I would recommend you do as a next step, so maybe next week, is to put together some sort of free resource that will be helpful to the people you want to attract into your audience, that will be

[06:00] interesting to them. It can be a simple PDF at first, or you could record a short video, and make that your opt-in, but make something, some small resource interesting to those people, and then either come back to this page or set up

[06:15] a second landing page, cuz you can set up as many landing pages as you want free offer on the page. And let me just show you really quickly how to set that up. So, if you come into the settings for the form here, what you do is you

[06:28] click where it says incentive, and then you can just choose download, and you can add the file here, or if it is something more like a video, you can instead put the link to the video. Either way, totally works. And you want

[06:41] incentive email. You click edit the email contents, and you're going to edit like, you need to confirm your subscription, thanks for signing up for the list, and whatnot, instead, you want to change the subject line, so it says

[06:54] to change the subject line, so it says something more like, um, here's the, you know, whatever it is, the the blank that you signed up for. And then in the email, start by telling them about the resource they signed up for, and why you

[07:07] them. And then change this button so that instead of saying confirm your subscription, it says like, download the free guide, you know, or if

[07:19] it's a video, you can put watch the video now. Whatever it is, okay? So that people are clicking that button to get the thing that they asked for, and that it. But this also serves another purpose, and that it confirms when they

[07:34] click that button that they are a human, and that they did mean to sign up for your list, and that they do actually want that thing. And then, of course, here and I'd be like, you know, something like "Best, comma Gillian",

[07:48] changes, and then whenever somebody signs up for this form in your ConvertKit account, what's going to happen is they will automatically get the email to get that resource that you were offering them, and they will be

[08:02] added to your email list. Taking a few minutes to set up your email like this is honestly so quick and easy, and yet it can have a huge huge impact on how easy it is to grow your business down the road, and it really can help you to

[08:17] make your business be a lot more successful a lot more quickly. Like I said before, you can sign up for Kit at kit.com, or you can use my affiliate channel a kickback. And if you do so, make sure you shoot me an email to let

[08:30] thank you gift. All right, well, that is everything for today's video. It was a quick one, so if you're looking for something else to watch now, then check out this one right here, because it is all about how to transition out of your

[08:42] day job into months. So, if you've been thinking about starting your own business, then that video right there, that's the strategy you need.