Yesterday, a copywriter who reads my email newsletter wrote me with a job offer.
The offer sounds great. I’m planning to get on a call with the copywriter and the COO of the company to talk about it, hopefully later today.
It took over two years of everyday mailing to get to this point.
For the longest time, nobody read my newsletter. But gradually, a few people found me, and then a few more.
And now, even though I still have a small list, opportunities are coming my way out of unexpected corners.
I’m telling you about this for two reasons:
First, if you’re getting started in any kind of service business, then writing daily emails is a great way to get in front of high-quality, high-paying clients, very slowly.
Maybe you can do it faster than I did, if you work hard on growing your list and if you push your services in your emails. Both things I never did much of.
Which brings me to the second reason I’m telling you about this, and the real point of today’s post.
Several copywriting influencers claim you should reach out to your email list whenever you’re looking for work. They advise saying something like:
“I just wrapped up a big project… I currently have an opening in my schedule… if you’re interested, reply and we can talk.”
I always had a bad feeling about this advice.
I’m sure it works, if you have a big enough reputation and a big enough list.
But if you have a small enough list or a small enough reputation… then the message above smells of need, at least to me.
I figured there must be a better way.
My suspicions were confirmed when I read Bob Cialdini’s book Pre-suasion. Cialdini cites laboratory research showing that constant scarcity is less motivating than recent scarcity. From the research:
If there are always a few cookies in a jar, you want them more than if there are a lot of cookies. But…
You don’t want them nearly as much as when there were always a lot of cookies… and now suddenly there are only a few.
“Pfff, lab persuasion!” you might say. “What does that have to do with the real world?”
I don’t know. Let’s find out.
As I mentioned at the start, I have a new job offer. That’s in addition to my ongoing clients in the ecommerce space… plus a real estate business I’ve recently joined… plus my own books and courses, which I’m building up and selling.
And like I said, new opportunities are popping up, more and more often, as my little newsletter picks up steam.
In other words, I’m really not looking for more work. But I am still open to it.
So if you would like to work with me in some form… before I get so entangled in other projects that it becomes impossible to say yes to anything new… then get on my newsletter, get in touch with me, and we can talk.