In my opinion, running a blog and creating content is not as difficult attempting to engage with your audience. There are a lot of factors that prevent you from having great engagement. From inconsistency of posts to not providing value to your readers, your blog can fail really fast. One of the best ways to foster a relationship with your reader (and what I've learned is one of the most important things to have) is through an email list.

So when I decided to write a book, I knew I wanted to give my faithful subscribers first dibs at purchasing a copy.

But getting people to subscribe correctly has been a challenge. What I thought were pretty clear instructions are obviously not as clear since several people and and a dozen or more haven't completed the steps. That causes them to miss out on valuable information without them even realizing it.

Because so many people have been struggling, I've taken the time to go through the process step by step (with screenshots) to show you how to subscribe to a MailChimp newsletter. What is MailChimp? It is an email marketing service open to anyone with a message to send to their audience, clients or customers. There are so many benefits to incorporating email marketing into your business plan but laying out the details of that is not the purpose of this post. Let's continue, shall we?

Go to the site you want to subscribe to and search for their button. Most sites make a subscribe button easy to find. They are in headers, sidebars, footers, within a post and even pop ups. You'll only miss it if you're trying to. Fill in the required information.

Once you click subscribe, you'll be redirected to the newsletter page. This is important. Fill in what they ask you to fill in. If it says first name, don't put first and last name. Hit enter, send or whatever the button says to do to process the request.

WHERE MOST PEOPLE STOP PAYING ATTENTION. It does not say finished, it says ALMOST finished. You still need to go to your email and confirm that you are the owner of that email. That is called a double opt-in. The reason a double opt-in is a good thing to have is that no one can sign you up for authorize a request but you. By going into your emailing and confirming your identity again, you are essentially saying, "Yes, this is me and yes I want to subscribe." If you don't see this email (it will come from whoever you're subscribing to), check your spam folders or any other folders.

IF YOU DO NOT COMPLETE THIS STEP, YOU WILL NOT BE ON THE NEWSLETTER LIST.

Ok.

"Well I did that but I still don't see a confirmation email." Understood. I'm doing it now and the same thing is happening to me with my business email. There are a few reasons why this may have happened:

• Your server might be slow. Might take a few hours.

• You didn't type your email address correctly.

• You didn't check all of your folders (If you use Gmail, check that Promotions folder! Check spam and junk folders as well.)

Once you locate the confirmation email, all you do is click to accept. I did this for my gmail email early this morning.

It will open up a new tab to confirm that you are not a robot.

Your final email will be an acknowledgement of success. Now, you're in there like swimwear.

I know it seems like a lot of steps but it literally takes two minutes of your time.

On that note, subscribe to my newsletter and subject yourselves to my rambling. Just kidding. I drop gems on a weekly basis. Get into it.  Added: Hope this was helpful!