So, from your point of view, you have a problem (lack of business) and something that would help you out (people giving you their email address). Let's reframe

So, from your point of view, you have a problem (lack of business) and something that would help you out (people giving you their email address). Let's reframe this: your audience has a problem (fill this in for me), and you have something which would help them out (fill this in for me), which as a consequence results in you getting their email address and permission to contact them. You're presumably the expert on this subject, so just take this as an example: let's say your target audience spends a lot of time grant-writing. Aha! You, being the expert on their needs, might also know a lot about grant-writing, maybe specific with grant-writing-for-physical-goods-purchases. Why don't you collect your expertise about that subject in, say, a 15-page report? Then, instead of "Please give me your email address because that would help me a lot", you'd say "Do you have a problem grant-writing? Of course you do. I'll send you a free copy of my 15-page report on grant writing, including these 3 tips which will save you time/stress and make it more likely that your grant is successful. Where should I send your report? [email address] [Get My Free Report]" You make it clear on this page that, in addition to the report, you'll be sending them other stuff that they'll find valuable, and if they don't, they can stop receiving it at any time. Other stuff: 1) AppSumo will tell you that, for your first 1000 customers, your issue is less "How do I collect a large number of email addresses?" and more "How do I bang down the door of 1,000 people in this niche to have meaningful conversations with them?" You can literally justify putting your email signup on an iPad and going door-to-door or conference-to-conference getting signups at this point, just to have a better understanding of where your target customer is at. 2) In specific response to Q1, at this stage, any landing page template off the shelf is better than what you have now, and paying a developer is a poor use of your limited resources. You can hook together e.g. Unbounce or e.g. any landing page template on ThemeForest.net to e.g. Mailchimp in under 15 minutes, even with no special development skill. 3) In direct response to your Q2, this question is "How do I do marketing?", and that is outside the scope of an HN comment. Don't worry about that right now. Get the incentive written, get the landing page up, and get things to the point where you can take someone out to coffee and browbeat them into signing up on the spot. If you cannot convince someone to sign up for your mailing list while you're looking them in the eye you will never convince 10,000 people to sign up for your mailing list just from looking at your landing page.