If you're an online creator, consultant or entrepreneur, building an audience is one of the best things you can do.

But building one solely on social media platforms can be a huge mistake.

When your audience is based only on platforms like Instagram, X, YouTube or Linkedin you're essentially renting those audiences.

You're at the mercy of the rules, regulations and algorithm changes of those platforms. Your audience building efforts can take a massive hit if these platforms decide to limit your growth or take your audience away altogether.

Thats why you should start building an audience you actually own as soon as possible.

How? By building an email list.

An email list is where your most interested audience members will go to find out more about you and get access to your best content.

They are the ones who are most likely to take action when you offer products and services.

And once they're on your list, you have far more control than on any social media platform.

Isn't Email Dead?

In a word: no.

Email is alive and kicking.

Email marketing consistently delivers one of the highest returns on investment (ROI) compared to other digital marketing strategies. 

According to various studies, for every dollar spent on email marketing, the average return is around $42! This makes email a very cost-effective way to reach your audience.

Email marketing even allows you to personalise and segment your campaigns. You can analyse your audience and deliver tailored campaigns to meet their demands.

And when it comes to relationship building, email is hard to beat.

You can nurture relationships with your audience over time, providing them with content, showing them offers, asking for feedback and engaging with them directly. 

What's not to love?

So How Do I Set Up An Opt-in Page?

If you've decided that building up your list is a good idea, then you're going to need an awesome opt-in page.

But don't worry, they are very easy to set up.

First, I'm going to give you a list of elements a high-converting opt-in page needs (along with plenty of examples). Then I'll give you some suggestions for tools you can use to build one.

I've built opt-in pages for creators with hundreds of thousands of followers.

In some cases, they were using generic, plain opt-in pages from well known marketing tools like ConvertKit (soon to be Kit) or Carrd.

And in every case I increased their opt-in rate drastically by building a conversion focussed, brand-building, unique opt-in page.

Here are the elements I usually include:

Here's the page design I used to increase Charlie Bennet's conversion rate by 40%...

As you can see, this design contained many of the elements I recommend above, and it converts very well.

It's never been easier to create a good opt-in page, but most creators still get it wrong.

Why? They naturally want to get up and running as quickly as possible to they those platforms with pre-designed pages that don't let you change anything.

Platforms like Carrd and ConvertKit are too good examples of this. Their templates are very limiting.

If you want to create something better, then any platform with a good page builder will be fine.

You've got tons of options here:

These are all good options, but the best option after trying nearly everything on the market is:

WordPress with OptimizePress.

WordPress is an open source content management system (originally designed for blogging) and OptimizePress is a set of marketing plugins that bolt on to WordPress.

Why is this the best option?

WordPress itself is easy to install, infinitely scalable and completely free. 

OptimizePress costs only $249 per year on their most expensive plan.

This includes one of the best page builders on the market, a self contained checkout system (so you don't need additional plugins like WooCommerce to take payments), tons of high quality templates you'll actually want to use, upselling and cross selling functionality, order bump ability, membership site creation, course creation and more.

This contains everything most marketers and content creators will ever need for a very low price compared to other options on the market.

There's also another huge advantage of using WordPress & OptimizePress:

You'll actually own your website and have full control of everything.

If you build on a self hosted platfom, you're limited by the restrictions of that platform. If they decide you're only aloud to have so much traffic, or they decide to charge you more, or their platform goes down altogether, you could be in trouble.

With WordPress and OptimizePress, you have far more control. Everything is installed on your own host.

Yes. The downside to choosing WordPress is that you will need to install it and maintain it (update plugins now and again etc).

For people who aren't tech-savvy, this can be daunting, but it's actually well worth the effort and even as a complete beginner you'll be able to do this within a few hours.

Most good hosts like Siteground (who I use) have one-click install options so all you need to do is click a button.

The sooner you start building your email list the better.

And it's better to take the time to choose the right platform to build it on early on in the process. This means you'd have a great opt-in page from the beginning and you'll be able to make the most of the traffic you receive.

Seriously - go and get WordPress installed today and then get a copy of OptimizePress. You won't regret it.

And I'm here to answer any questions you have along the way.

Find out how to make your website convert with my 5-day email course for solopreneurs, coaches, consultants and online business owners.

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