For a long time now, I've heard many people say that you should build an email list. I've listened to podcasts about running online businesses and a common recommendation is to build an email list as soon as possible. But I've kept putting it off.

Well, yesterday, I've finally decided to spend a few minutes to put up a sign up box. The book "Launch" basically convinced me how valuable an email list can be.

Luckily, I've also found out that Drip has recently offered a free plan for their software for up to 100 subscribers. I like their solution as it's not intrusive to the reader. I hate when I go to a website to read an article and as soon as it loads a big box to sign up to their newsletter comes up right in the center of your screen before you even get a chance to read their article. Often times I actually just hit the back button unless it's a site I already know has good content.

With Drip, you just get a little tab on the bottom right of the screen that people can click to open up a small form to sign up. You can configure the location of the tab and also whether you want it to automatically pop up after x seconds. Either way, it's not that annoying to the user compared to those ones that block your entire page to get your attention. For my blog, I left it at the bottom right since my sidebar is there and won't get in the way of reading my blog posts.

While I don't expect many sign ups, it's still better than nothing and took about 15 minutes to set up. My blog is not really focused on a specific topic and I don't expect many people to sign up. But those who do and are interested in the different topics I write about I'd probably get along very well with and I may even make new friends. Since I move around a lot, maybe I can even meet some of them in person if I end up in their city.