Instafreebie, anyone?

You may have gathered from last week's post that I'm on a mission to grow my mailing list subscriber base.

To that end, I've just discovered Instafreebie. It's pretty cool - as an author, I load my books, set up a giveaway, and share it with readers (Instafreebie does some of their own promotion, too).

Readers then enter their first name, last name, and e-mail address, and select their preferred book format - the site offers a choice between epub, mobi, or PDF. Instafreebie then sends them the book in the format they chose.

It seems really slick. I downloaded my own book, and now I'm on their mailing list, so every day they send me links to other giveaways I might be interested in.

When you set up your giveaway, you can choose whether or not readers are required to opt-in to your mailing list in order to get their free book. Then, they give you a list of the e-mail addresses of everyone who opted in, and you can also optionally integrate with Mailchimp.

But there's a catch... Isn't there always? You see, there free plan doesn't let you allow readers to opt-in, and therefore doesn't give you access to the e-mail addresses. For that, you have to pay at least $20 a month.

I signed up for a 30-day trial anyway, and added two of my books: Billy's Zombie and A Petition to Magic. Billy's Zombie doesn't require people to opt-in to my mailing list, but A Petition to Magic does.

I signed up on Friday, and I have to admit, I've been very impressed. Having done almost zero marketing of those giveaways so far, I've already picked up a few subscribers! What's more, some of those subscribers even came from Billy's Zombie, where you'll remember, readers don't even have to give me their e-mail addresses if they don't want to.

If it continues like this, with me getting a couple of sign-ups a day, I might even be tempted to continue with $20 a month after my trial expires.

Authors, Wanna Try?

If you're an author interested in growing your mailing list, are you on Instafreebie yet? If not, and you'd like to give it a try, click here.

That's an affiliate link, by the way. If you click through and sign up, and end up taking a paid plan, I get credit that I can use towards my own plans. So if you're considering it, please use that link instead of any other.