How to Grow Your Email List Without Ads (Don’t make the mistake I made)!

Grow Your Email List!

“You should be building your email list, even if you have no intention of selling anything right now. If you wait until you’re ready to sell, it’s too late.” — Derek Halpern

When I first started my online marketing journey, I never imagined I’d need to grow an email list — let alone figure out how to do it without ads.

Honestly, I didn’t even think about it.

I was busy promoting affiliate products directly. That meant I was linking straight to the merchant’s website, hoping people would click, buy, and I’d make a commission.

And I did make some sales.

But all the traffic I was generating, all the hard work I was putting in was going to someone else’s site.

If they bought, great. If they didn’t, that was it. I had no way of getting back in touch.

No list. No relationship. No second chance.

It took me 6–8 months of doing this before I had a realization: I was building other people’s businesses. Not mine.

That’s when I first started paying attention to email lists.

Building from zero (and having no clue)

Let me tell you, those first 500 subscribers?

They were the hardest.

Because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

I didn’t know what a lead magnet was. I didn’t know how to build an opt-in form. I didn’t know what a welcome or nurture sequence meant.

But I knew I had to start.

So I looked at what I already had.

Three blog posts that people had responded well to.

I took those posts, pulled out the most actionable tips, and created a checklist. Simple, no-fluff, value-packed.

That became my very first lead magnet.

I built a basic opt-in form, connected it to my email tool, and redirected all my traffic, from social, my blog, and anywhere else to that page.

Back then, I didn’t see email as a tool for audience building.
I thought it was just for big brands.

But if you want real traction online, especially as a solo creator or affiliate marketer, growing your list is non-negotiable.

So let me give you some subscriber tips I wish someone had handed me on day one.

But it wasn’t instant.

It took time and a lot of trial and error, before I saw any meaningful traction.

That checklist lead magnet? It didn’t convert well at first.

I had to tweak the copy, refine the headline, and test different placements on the blog. I played around with button colors, form length, even call-to-action wording.

And most of all, I needed traffic.

A lot of it.

Eventually, after enough refining and redirecting consistent traffic to the form, the numbers started to pick up.

That’s when subscribers actually started trickling in.

What made the difference

Hitting 500 subscribers didn’t happen overnight.

It took time. But more than that, it took persistence and a lot of learning the hard way.

I didn’t have a blueprint. I wasn’t following a guru or some polished YouTube tutorial. I was just experimenting, failing, learning, and repeating.

Here’s what actually made a real difference:

• Creating content that helped people do something – I stopped trying to impress and focused on being useful. My checklist worked not because it was fancy, but because it gave people something they could actually apply that same day.
• Promoting the lead magnet consistently (without being spammy) – I learned to share my free checklist through every content touchpoint. That single lead magnet played a huge role in my early newsletter growth.
• Showing up even when it felt pointless – Some weeks, I’d see open rates in the single digits. But I kept writing. Every email helped me refine my voice, build trust with my tiny audience, and signal to myself that I was serious about this.

Consistency wasn’t just a strategy. It was survival.

When no one was watching, it was the only thing keeping the dream alive.

What Lead Magnets Actually Worked (And Which Ones Flopped)

Let me save you some time: most of my early lead magnets were disasters.

What failed:

• Generic PDF guides – I created a 10-page “Ultimate Guide to [Topic]” that took me hours to write. Downloads? Maybe 12. People don’t want another PDF collecting dust in their downloads folder.
• Vague value propositions – “Sign up for tips on [topic]” is not compelling. It’s forgettable.
• Overly ambitious resources – A 30-day challenge sounded great in theory, but it was too much commitment for someone who didn’t know me yet.

What actually worked:

• A simple, specific checklist – I created a one-page checklist for [specific problem]. It was actionable, immediately useful, and didn’t require a big time investment. This became my highest-converting lead magnet.
• Templates people could use right away – A plug-and-play template for [specific use case] converted like crazy because it saved people hours of work.
• Behind-the-scenes access – When I offered a peek into [my process/system], people jumped at it. They didn’t want more theory; they wanted to see how it actually works.

The common thread? Specificity and immediate value. The tighter your lead magnet solves one painful problem, the better it performs.

If you are struggling to find out what lead magnet works, then I have a simple PDF with 50 lead magnet ideas across 10 different niches. You can download it for FREE here!

The Truth About Traffic (Then vs. Now)

Back when I started, nearly 17 years ago, driving traffic to your lead magnet was a completely different ball game.

There were no fancy social media platforms, no short-form video virality, no LinkedIn carousel hacks.

If you wanted traffic, you had to earn it the hard way.

Search engine optimization was the only game in town. That meant researching keywords, optimizing every blog post for Google, and waiting weeks (sometimes months) to rank.

It was slow. Frustrating. And unpredictable.

Which made growing an email list feel like pulling teeth.

But today?

Traffic isn’t the problem.

You’ve got platforms like LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Instagram, YouTube, TikTok – all giving you access to thousands of eyeballs.

I see creators on LinkedIn today getting 500–600 impressions and 100–150 comments on a single post.

That’s traffic. That’s interest. That’s attention.

But here’s the problem.

If you don’t have a strategy to direct that traffic toward your lead magnet, you’re wasting it.

All those impressions, all those comments, all that energy?

It disappears after 48 hours.

Channel it. Own it. Leverage it.

Have a clear CTA. Drive people to a landing page. Capture the attention you’ve earned.

Because that’s the difference between growing a personal brand and building a business.

Tips if you’re just starting out

If today, I were to look at growing my email list without ads, here’s what I’d tell the earlier version of myself.

This advice would be the same that is applicable to you as well, if you are planning on building an email list.

• Don’t wait to start. Even if you’re not ready to sell, build the list.
• Use what you already have. Your best blog post could be your first lead magnet.
• Keep it simple. One form. One checklist. One page.
• Promote it consistently. Don’t be shy about sharing your lead magnet.
• Focus on connection. Ask for replies. Respond to every one.

And most importantly: keep going even when it feels like nobody’s listening.

Because they will.

Eventually.

Book recommendations to grow your list today

These aren’t the books I read when I started out because honestly, I didn’t know they existed.

But based on what I’ve been reading recently, these are absolute game-changers if you’re serious about growing your email list and building an audience:

• The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib — This one breaks down marketing into a simple, step-by-step approach. If you’re overwhelmed by funnels, sequences, and “strategies,” this book will clear the fog.
• Show Your Work by Austin Kleon — A brilliant nudge to stop hiding your process. It’ll help you share your journey, even before you feel like an expert.
• Everybody Writes by Ann Handley — If you’re emailing people, this is your bible. It’ll teach you how to write in a way that feels human, clear, and worth reading.

If you’re stuck or unsure where to start, pick up any of these. You’ll walk away with clarity, confidence, and practical next steps.

Over to you.

If you’re consistently creating content — blog posts, LinkedIn updates, short-form videos — and getting impressions, likes, or comments, you’re already doing the hard part.

You’re earning attention.

But without a list-building strategy in place, that attention vanishes in 24–48 hours.

That’s what I missed in the beginning. I assumed traffic was the end goal. It wasn’t. Traffic is just potential.

Your job is to capture it.

Every time someone engages with your post, they’re raising their hand. They’re saying, “This is interesting.” If you don’t direct that attention to something you own — like your email list — you’re letting them walk away.

Build a simple, specific lead magnet.

Put it in your profile bio, under your posts, in your DMs.

Don’t let another week of content go to waste.

Capture it. Nurture it. Build something you control.

Because your future business doesn’t just depend on traffic.

It depends on what you do with it.

Recommended Newsletters

Here are few newsletters that I would recommend that you sign up to if you are interested in learning the art of running a side-hustle:

• Write, Build, Scale
• Why we buy
• The Book Bub
• The Stacked Marketer
• The Growth Bulletin
• Unconventional Productivity for Online Business Owners
• Side Hustle Weekly
• The Affiliate Guy
• How Brands win
• For the Interested
• Send and Grow

Sign up to these and follow them. You will get a lot of information and content for your blog posts, podcasts and even social media posts.

I will share more such ideas in my future newsletters.

I put in about 18 hours every month to create this newsletter, starting from researching to writing and editing it.

So, If you enjoyed reading this Newsletter, I would sincerely appreciate it if you could recommend it to others. You can send them to https://thegrowthcreator.com to subscribe to it for FREE!

What am I reading?

I absolutely love books and I read a lot.

In fact, I don’t just read a lot, but I also take notes on every book that I read.

I have pages and pages of information in my Notion Second Brain, so that I can find them and use them when ever I need.

I have added some of the newest books that I have been reading, to the Amazon store, so you might want to check it out.

Want to know more about the books I read. You can check it out here!

That’s it for this week!

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