A reader writes in reply to my announcement yesterday, about the price increase for my Daily Email Habit service:
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Hi,
I’m just starting my business and don’t have an email list yet. Does this make sense for me?
Thanks
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I don’t know this reader’s business or her circumstances or goals.
I can only tell you my personal experience, and how I wish it were different.
I started writing daily emails in 2018. At that point I had been working as a freelance copywriter for 3 full years.
I had tried and failed with various side projects.
I eventually started writing daily emails as a sandbox to practice ideas and possibly attract prospective clients, and show them that I can do what I claim I can do.
Three big questions now:
1. Would I be better off today had I started this daily email newsletter 3 years earlier?
2. Would I have been better off in 2018 had I already been writing this newsletter for 3 years?
3. Would I have been better off back in 2015, when I had nothing, knew nothing, and had done nothing, had I started writing a daily email newsletter in addition to trying to get copywriting clients?
Yes, to all three. There’s no doubt about it. Consider:
1. I would have been writing for three extra years
That would have translated into expertise, both in performing my job, and in selling myself to clients.
It also would mean three extra years of content — about 500,000 words — that I could repurpose into books, courses, trainings, talks given from the stage, lead magnets, bonuses.
2. I would have built my authority and status sooner and to higher levels
People treat you differently if you have a platform, even if it’s a platform anybody can create and assemble for free like an email newsletter.
The very fact of having something to say, and saying it publicly, gives you greater standing, status, and respect.
3. I would have had a side hustle to balance out ups and downs of client work
This would have made me less needy, more comfortable negotiating, and would have allowed me to turn away projects that I knew shouldn’t work on.
4. I would have organized my own experiences and thoughts about my business, the way I did only in 2021, and only because I had been writing daily emails
I made a lot of mistakes while working as a freelancer, including some that I estimate cost me hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of dollars.
Writing regularly, about what I am doing and learning, might have saved me from making some of those mistakes.
5. Writing to a dedicated audience would have eventually provided income
This would have balanced out what I was making with freelance work, and it only would have compounded in time.
6. Finally, I would have been building my list for an extra 3 years
For much of my time writing this email newsletter, the only thing I did to grow my list was to write my daily email and to post it on my website as a blog post.
It’s an incredibly inefficient and slow way to grow an email list. And yet, in time it still produced results and got me some subscribers, including people who then went on to promote me in various ways and who sped up the growth of my list.
In other words, just the very act of writing and making it available for people to find, is enough to build me the kernels of a list, which in turn became this “business,” though I still don’t even think of what I do as a business.
For all these reasons and more, I wish I had started my email list three years earlier.
It would have made the early days of my freelance career easier and faster.
It would have made the mid term of my copywriting career, around 2018, more profitable and more exciting.
And it would have made me richer and even more famous and beloved than I already am today (hard to believe, I know).
Again, this is all unique to me.
I don’t know your circumstances. I won’t try to persuade you that what makes perfect sense for me makes perfect sense for you.
If you wanna focus on the fact that I worked as freelance copywriter who specialized in writing sales emails… and therefore it was particularly beneficial to me to start writing sales emails for myself every day… you can focus on that.
But you can also focus on the other things I wrote above, which are relevant whether you’re a service provider doing something other than copywriting… or you sell courses or coaching… or you have handmade dog toys you want to get out into the world.
Whatever you decide to focus on:
The price for Daily Email Habit is going up this Thursday at 12 midnight PST, from a modest $30/month to the Martin Shkreli-like $50/month.
Daily Email Habit helps you start and stick with consistent daily emailing, and gives you, in a very condensed daily drip, a practical way to apply what I’ve learned over the past 8 years of writing this daily email newsletter.
I only wish I had started with it earlier.
If you wanna get started today, and take advantage of the still-reasonable monthly price: