First, the shameless plug to see Instafreebie by showing you mine:

www.instafreebie.com/author/sylviahubbard

What is Instafreebie:

A way to accelerate increase to your mailing list. You offer stories (partial, whole, short, it’s up to you) and in return, readers have the option to join or not to join. In some cases, you can give them the option that they have to join in order to start reading.

I’m not new to offering something for free, but Instafreebie makes it possible to integrate your MailChimp and recently Mailerlite to your Instafreebie account so you can get people to sign up for your newsletter while giving them a taste of your writing.

Ready to sign up? Click here: https://www.instafreebie.com/authors?invite_code=UC5YYHJ3fw

When is it a good time to ask to join a mailing list?

For authors, we have a hard time getting people to sign up for our very much needed mailing list and making them open up the e-newsletter we send them. So if you use Instafreebie you can keep them coming back.

Well, I have devised a way.

I’ve been doing a short story a month and instead of putting it on the website where of course I’ll get the visitors, I wanted more. With Instafreebie I’m able to get the visitors and the sign ups.

How do you do this:

1. You can direct them directly there with your blog, your social media activity and just guiding them to your author’s page on Instafreebie.
2. Sometimes Instafreebie will highlight new and interesting giveaways. To do this you can use #Instafreebie or @Instafreebie in your promos to get attention. A well-sent email to them will also do as well, but remember they have a lot of requests so like I said: sometimes.
3. Join Group promos. Lots of authors put together group promos in the genre you could write in and Instafreebie loves these, plus they promote you like crazy – or at least more than what you’re promoting.

How do I sign up for Instafreebie? What do I do first?

Sign up: https://www.instafreebie.com/authors?invite_code=UC5YYHJ3fw

It’s free to join, but if you want to integrate with your mailing list, there’s a fee. I would suggest you do the paid because it’s very worth it in the end. (And tax deductible.) Simply go for the 30 day trial and after the 30 days you can start to pay. In my first 30 days I had at least one sign up a day to my mailing list.

I had over 50 people look at my story that was for free and 40 people to look at my must sign up story. That’s pretty good.

Since then I’d say my subscribers have grown and I have been fortunate to give another story exclusively to Instafreebie that was received well.

Ready to sign up? Click here: https://www.instafreebie.com/authors?invite_code=UC5YYHJ3fw

After you click the link to sign up, complete your profile immediately. You want to finish it all at once so have your MailChimp password ready to go.

I took a short story from my site initially called The Mystery Healer. I made it exclusive to Instafreebie and you can read below as to why.

I still make a page over on my blog with a good link to the story to find it easy on the blog because Instafreebie gives a complicated URL for each story. For instance, the last one I did Let Me Love You has the link:

www.sylviahubbard.com/letmeloveyou

But when you go there, you have to click the Instafreebie link, get over to the site and then be able to download the link.

This way, I can still promote all my short stories on my blog and they’re filed away “neatly” without a complicated link.

Plus, using the bit.ly thing becomes hard to remember.

How do you put your stories there?

When uploading, Instafreebies requires you upload as ePub. They do have an option to assist you in that process, but I’ll let you know how I do this?

I design the story in Word. That includes all the links and pictures in the files. I set it up just like a story I’m going to publish on Amazon, except without the cover inside of the file.

I save the Word file as a PDF. (Mostly all Word documents can do this). If you don’t have Word, you can use Google Docs and then save the file as a PDF.

I then go to my downloaded Calibre software where I could turn the file into an ePub. Here, I could add my meta tags and the cover of the story. (I get the covers over at fiverr.com) Afterward, I uploaded this file to Instafreebie.

Yah me.

Do I make my stories exclusive on Instafreebie?

That’s up to you, but I was worried about people take my story and just doing whatever they wanted to with it.

Why do I use Instafreebie?

Like I said before I get the benefit of giving a story away all the while keeping track of who sees it, grow my mailing list and protect my work so it’s not copied.

There are so many reasons why an author needs a mailing list and needs to grow a mailing list. I’ve included resources below for more ways to use Instafreebie and other steps to work it.

My new Instafreebie: www.sylviahubbard.com/innocentvengeance was just released for June and I hope you download it

Ready to sign up? Click here: https://www.instafreebie.com/authors?invite_code=UC5YYHJ3fw

Edited using Grammarly.

Resources about Instafreebies

http://www.bookbusinessmag.com/post/instafreebie-grows-publishers-email-lists-with-ebook-giveaways/

http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/blog/how-does-instafreebie-work/

http://www.indiesunlimited.com/2016/10/24/instafreebie-offers-authors-a-chance-to-build-mailing-lists-find-fans/

Ready to sign up? Click here: https://www.instafreebie.com/authors?invite_code=UC5YYHJ3fw