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Following the advice of self-publishing author coach, Tim Grahl, I’m focusing on developing an email list. Tim advises authors to get one of those annoying pop-ups on their site where it asks people to sign up for the email newsletter. The theory is, that though these pop-ups are annoying, they are not annoying enough to make people leave your site or really be too bothered. And the upside is just too big. That upside is getting a healthy email list that allows you to stay in touch with your potential buyers. So, cool. I did it. I bought Popup Domination and set it all up.

I also set up MailChimp as the email list manager. Popup Domination  just gets people to sign up, but MailChimp manages the list and lets you actually communicate with your subscribers. I wanted the autoresponder, so I paid for it. $9 for a prepaid option did the trick. You can do it for free, but then you don’t get the autoresponder.

Then it’s time to configure these two tools and get them to work together. Not all that intuitive or easy, but there are lots of videos on how to do it on both sites. And, you just test stuff until it all seems to be going OK. I can’t say I’m 100% happy with it all, but it seems to be a good first step.