List Building – Page 2

2 simplifying questions to ask yourself

November 17, 2025November 16, 2025 by John Bejakovic

I was waiting in the line at the coffee shop this morning. The barista was making a latte with oat milk for another customer, and she looked up at me.

“Coffee?” she asked.

I nodded and said yes.

“Well?” she said with a bit of frustration in her voice, waving her hand to indicate I should be a bit more specific than that.

I’m telling you this fascinating story because I want to set up something email-marketing related.

I’ve been running my revived Daily Email House group for a few weeks. I invited people to post about problems they are having, and see if the group can help. Came the following problem:

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How do I grow my list? That’s my biggest problem.

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“Well?” I said when I read this question, waving my hand to indicate that the question-asker should be a bit more specific than that.

If you’re reading this right now, odds are excellent that you already know two dozen perfectly good ways to grow an email newsletter. Maybe more.

The fact is, there are hundreds and possibly thousands of ways to grow an email list. Many of them can work great. What’s more, there’s a ton of good and free information online about how to put most of them into practice.

And I guess therein lies the trouble. There are simply too many choices, including too many good choices, when it comes to growing an email list.

It paralyzes people, the same way that a choice of two dozen sourced coffees from around the world… prepared with two dozen different techniques including V60s and aeropresses and pretentious pourovers… resulting in two dozen final products like lattes and batch brews and cortados and americanos… can paralyze people, if they don’t already know exactly what they want.

To help with that (not the coffee, but the list growth), let me propose two simplifying questions:

1. “Which platform do I believe in?”

A “platform” is any technology or site or organization that’s already got the attention of some humans. Here are few examples:

– Facebook

– YouTube

– Substack

– Google

– Amazon

– Pinterest

– Email newsletters

– Yellow Pages

– AM radio

– your local Chamber of Commerce

…

Pick a platform from the list above, or some other platform you believe in. You can believe in it because you believe it has staying power… because you feel some affinity for it… because you think that the kinds of people you want to attract are there… or ideally all three.

2. “Do I prefer to pay with money or time?”

You have to pay, unfortunately.

The question is whether you’d rather pay with a dozen hours a month spent creating content, or reaching out to people one-on-one, or building yourself up to be a more attractive and fascinating person…. or whether you’d rather spend a few hundred dollars a month to get the platform owners to push your message out for you.

There are pros and cons to both paying with money or time, including ones which are nonobvious.

For now, just go with your gut. You probably have a sense of which one is a less painful cost to you to pay each month — a dozen hours of your time, or a few hundred dollars from your wallet.

Once you have your two answers to the question above, the path will be clear. You will know what to do — again, most of the details are out there on the Internet, and it’s just a matter of committing to it and following through.

But what if you pick the wrong platform, or you start to pay with one currency and you realize you made a mistake, and you want to switch?

It’s not really a big problem. Anything you do will be infinitely better than doing nothing, and pivoting to a new platform, or switching from paid in time to paid in money, or vice versa, is pretty straightforward.

Did this help?

I hope so.

But if not, my Daily Email House community is still there, waiting to help people who want to use their email list to pay for a house.

Over the next few days, I will be releasing a Daily Email Habit Starter Pack, including a proven way to grow your email list, which is based on my own personal answers to the two questions above.

If you’d like to get inside Daily Email House in time to get this Starter Pack:

https://bejakovic.com/house

Free training on client acquisition by half-cow-selling copywriter

September 6, 2025 by John Bejakovic

Even in the small world of “dudes who write daily emails about writing daily emails,” you can sometimes miss good people.

And so it was that, a few weeks ago, while putting together a group of people who have email lists and sell stuff related to email marketing and copywriting and course creation, it was for the first time ever that I heard of a guy named Alin Dragu.

I’m telling you this because in the weeks that followed, Alin and I agreed to do a “list swap.” That’s a lurid term for a clean idea. Basically, Alin and I agreed to let our respective lists know the other guy exists, and to coax our readers into joining the other’s list as well.

Alin has a long-form optin page that does a thorough job boosting his status and making the case for why you might want to hear from him daily. In a few words, Alin’s got:

– Endorsements for his daily emails from people like Daniel Throssell and Brian Kurtz

– The title of Vice President of a $2.8M Advertising Agency

– A testimonial from a copywriting client who sold a half cow (yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like) thanks to Alin’s email copy

… and if authority is not enough, Alin also has a legit and exclusive bribe bundle to entice you to sign up to his list, good for only the next 48 hours, just because you happen to be a diligent reader of my newsletter.

The core piece of this is a video training called “Warm-Ish Client Acquisition,” in which Alin lays out a (coldish) outreach strategy that led to two copywriting retainers worth $6k. Alin previously only made this training available inside a $300 product, but it’s yours free.

Also, Alin’s bribe bundle contains a copy of his book, Meaningful Marketing, and Copywriting Catalyst, a collection of copywriting tips.

And it’s all free. Did I mention that? FREE.

But only if you act before the deadline, which, tick-tock, is waiting like the crocodile in Peter Pan to bite the arm off the careless and the tardy.

To get Alin’s bribes and to sign up to the man’s list in time:

https://alindragu.com/john/

Why I didn’t build a list in the copywriting/marketing space

April 12, 2025 by John Bejakovic

Yesterday I mentioned how a while back, I followed Travis Speegle’s MyPeeps program to build up a new email list of dog owners via paid ads. To which a long-time reader wrote in to ask:

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Just curious, John, how come you didn’t build a list in the copywriting/marketing space? I’m using a different process myself that will help me build a list with a combo of content + paid ads so curious to hear how come you don’t try to grow your existing list.

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Good question.

First off, I frankly don’t want to build a “copywriting” list.

I haven’t primarily been writing about copywriting for, I don’t know, the past two+ years, ever since I stopped working with copywriting clients, and maybe before then.

I have been writing about persuasion and influence and psychology on the one hand, and online businesses and marketing on the other hand, and random other stuff that I find funny or interesting on the third hand.

But the real question is why not build up this existing list, and why start a new list instead?

I thought about it. I came up with a few reasons, ranked here from most logical and therefore least likely to be true, to least logical and therefore most likely to be true:

#1. I wanted to do a demonstration for the people inside the implementation group I ran when I first promoted MyPeeps. I didn’t want people who were building up their own lists to throw up their arms and say, “Of course you can do it because you have all these assets I don’t have!” A new list would make the demonstration cleaner and more persuasive.

#2. I was genuinely thinking to do this dog list as a side business of its own (I still think it could be viable). The list building implementation group I ran seemed like a good moment to kick that off.

#3. My simple opportunity-seeking mindset, which lives at the core of my person, and which says it’s more exciting to start something new and risky than to toil away on something familiar and proven.

#4. Because it’s simpler to run ads for a new, impersonal list than an existing, personal list. About that:

Like I said, I ran a 4-week implementation group for the people who bought MyPeeps when I promoted it as an affiliate.

In that group, I could see people running ads to build up their own personal lists.

AND IT DID NOT WORK.

Not because paid ads are a scam, or because Travis Speegle’s MyPeeps course doesn’t deliver.

Travis lays out very simple and yet very proven process to make paid ads work for list building, whether it’s your own personal list or an anonymous list of dog owners.

The reason it didn’t work for many people is because they refused to follow a crucial step in Travis’s process.

In fact, even when I pointed out to people they were skipping this crucial step, they nodded at me, smiled in appreciation of my looking out for them, and then turned around and continued to do exactly what they had been doing, which was skipping this crucial step.

What is this step?

Travis’s MyPeeps course describes is very well in module 1 and again in module 5.

If you would like to build up a new list, or to grow your existing list, you can find full info on Travis’s MyPeeps below:

https://bejakovic.com/mypeeps

P.S. If you have bought MyPeeps, forward me your receipt. I’ll share with you the recordings of the calls and my own notes that I initially did inside the implementation group last year.

And if you’ve already sent me your receipt, check inside the bonuses area that I gave you access to.

I’ve added a “DO YOU MAKE THESE MISTAKES IN PAID ADS FOR YOUR PERSONAL LIST?” document in there (very subtle, I know). It highlights the crucial step so many list owners are skipping when creating ads to promote their existing personal list, and explains how you can maybe avoid doing the same.

My advice on actually building an email list

April 11, 2025 by John Bejakovic

A diligent reader writes in with a familiar question:

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Hi John,

From what I’ve seen, Daily Email Habit helps you with your already existing email list, right?

My question is, do you have any course or advice on actually building an email list first. Correct me if I’m wrong about the Daily Email Habit.

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The diligent reader above is absolutely right. Daily Email Habit is about emailing your existing list.

List building is not my forte or my focus, and therefore I don’t sell a course on it.

But last year, I did promote Travis Speegle’s MyPeeps course, all about how to build a large, engaged email list.

I bought Travis’s course myself before promoting it. I thought the content was great. I ended up promoting it to my list and even running an “implementation group” on the back of it over 4 weeks.

As part of this implementation group, I started a new list (dog owners, since I’d done a lot of client work in this space once upon a time)… I went through Travis’s training… and I followed what Travis advised to the letter.

The result for me personally were new, qualified email susbcribers at about $0.60 a name.

If you are looking to build a list, then MyPeeps is my recommendation for how to do it quickly, on a budget of $10-$20 a day, so you end up with subscribers who actually want to read what you have to write and buy what you have to offer.

If you’d like to find out the full details on MyPeeps, or start building an engaged email list today:

https://bejakovic.com/mypeeps

P.S. Within that implementation group, I did three live calls with the participants.

I also had an 8-page document of notes I personally took from Travis’s course.

If you do decide to sign up for MyPeeps, forward me your receipt, and I will hook you up with the recordings of those calls and my own notes, to help you get more out of this course and to do it more quickly.

Why I collect personalization data I never use

March 14, 2025 by John Bejakovic

Bridget Holland, a marketer out of Sydney, Australia, who runs a content marketing agency called NoBull Marketing, writes in with a question:

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I did a presentation for a business networking group yesterday about email marketing, and I used one of your emails as an example. (Frequency, formatting and results more than content. I was comparing it to a nicely formatted monthly email with stacks of articles, and arguing that either could work but you have to find out what was right for you and your market.)

For the first time ever – oops, embarrassing – I realised that you don’t use those first names you collect when people subscribed. (I had to go check that you collected them!) That you have no opening greeting at all.

So the question is:

* Why don’t you use greetings? Did you ever? If you did and you’ve stopped, has it made a difference? Either for the entire list, or for new subscriber behaviour?

* Why don’t you use personalisation? And since you don’t, why do you collect first names?

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I never used personalization in my emails because, like I wrote a few days ago in the context of calibration, it feels fake to me.

I don’t like it when people do it in emails I read, particularly in the body of the email. You know what I mean, [firstname]?

In the words of David Ogilvy, “The customer is not a moron. She’s your wife.” Or your mom, or your college roommate from UC Santa Cruz, or your ex-flatmate from Budapest, or an ex-girlfriend.

(The only person I’ve seen using personalization well is Daniel Throssell, who gets creative with it. However, in order to make that work, you have to police new subscribers to make sure they put in their real name when they sign up, which I don’t feel like doing.)

So like Bridget asks, why still ask for a name, if I’m never going to use it in an email?

Two reasons:

1. Most people do fill it out, and honestly. I make an occasional habit of doing a bit of detective work on new subscribers, and this bit of info can be helpful.

2. Filling in a first name is a commitment and give for those who choose to make it. It’s a tiny commitment, but I figure it’s important. The work of training strangers of the internet to become dedicated readers and customers starts early, with such baby steps.

With all that said:

I remember the early days of my own marketing education. I put a lot of time and thought into topics like “First name on optin form, or no first name???” I now largely feel it doesn’t matter much one way or the other. Really, it’s just personal preference, and then inertia.

I’m not sure if anybody will profit from this in-depth discussion. But Bridget wrote in to ask, and I figured others might be wondering the same. In any case, I’m grateful to Bridget for sending in her question, and I wanted to highlight it here.

And since I’m busy writing my upcoming and new and still highly unfinished book, and since my self-imposed March 24 deadline is nearing, I would like to invite further reader questions.

Because answering reader questions makes for particularly easy and yet engaging emails.

So if you got small questions, big questions, questions about influence, copywriting, or how to style your hair, then I invite you to hit reply and let me know.

There’s a fair a chance I will answer your question in one of these emails over the next week or so, and will be grateful to you in any case.

Grow your list with relevant people who will eventually buy from you

February 20, 2025 by John Bejakovic

I have a special, very time-limited offer for you today. But first, let me give you the background:

Last week, in my Daily Email House community, I ran a “JV Outreach Challenge.”

Basically, the goal was to open up a conversation with somebody who could turn into a potential business partner, however light and temporary.

As part of this, I asked House members to think about their own problems/wants/frustrations.

Not everybody shared publicly. But some did.

Among all the different problems/wants/frustrations, there was one common thread in everyone’s lists, always near the top. That was some variant of:

“Not enough subscribers/list is not growing fast enough/not enough of the right prospects who actually have money to spend”

… ie, the old problem of high-quality list building.

Of course, this problem came up with people who are just starting out. But it also came up even with people who are established and successful, and who already have lists of thousands of subscribers.

A fact that won’t shock you is that I’m no expert in list building.

In fact, I have been very casual about building my own list.

Like I’ve written before, I spent the first couple years of this newsletter writing to fewer than 100 people.

These days, my list remains small by industry standards, though it’s much bigger than it was. It’s also big enough that I can make a 6-figure income from it. I’ve also made a public and definite choice not to focus on list growth, but rather on list profitability.

All that said, I have learned a few things about list growth over the years. And ever since I started Daily Email House, I have been writing a series of posts about 6 techniques that have actually grown my list.

I jokingly called these techniques, “Magic List-Growing Secrets That Big Email Doesn’t Want You To Know.”

That’s because they are no secrets at all. They’re not hacks. They’re not something that is working today because of a glitch on TikTok and will be gone tomorrow.

They’re certainly not something that worked just for me because I was the first to exploit it, and with each subsequent person who tries it after, the results turn more meager and meager.

Instead, these 6 techniques of list growth have worked for me, and will work for anyone else, if you only apply them consistently.

In fact, there’s a good chance they will work better and faster for you than they did for me.

That’s because, when I wrote up these 6 techniques, I didn’t just list them.

For each one, I also included my own case study, along with a few key takeaways based on my experience, so you can get results more quickly and consistently than I did, since you can learn from my mistakes and successes.

So here’s the special time-limited offer I’m making you:

I have put together a guide, which I’m calling “What’s Grown My List Over The Years, Vol. 1-6.”

I guess I could try to sell this guide for a million dollars a copy. I doubt anybody would buy at that price.

I believe I could sell it for $500 dollars, particularly if I delivered it on a live call or two. I can imagine I might get a few people to take me up on that.

I could certainly sell this guide for $100, as it is now, a shiny and platform-independent PDF of 27 pages (single-column). I bet I could get a good number of people to take me up on that.

But instead, I am making this guide free, as a time-limited bonus for my Daily Email Habit service.

A month of Daily Email Habit puzzles currently costs $30.

I figure $30 is a no-brainer price for 6 proven list growth ideas, which can shave months or possibly years off your climb up the list-growth mountain, so you can get to a place where you have a basic number of good customers and clients on your list.

Once you get to this basic number, it gives you room to decide what you want to do — focus more on list growth, like a lot of people, or like me, on building a business that suits you.

So that’s what you get for $30. Plus, of course, you get a month’s worth of daily email puzzles via Daily Email Habit, so you actually have a chance to convert the people on your email list into long-term customers or clients.

If you’re writing emails already, Daily Email habit can help you write them more consistently, and faster. Even one extra email you send over the next month can easily be worth 10x the $30 of the Daily Email Habit subscription.

And if you’re not writing daily emails already, then this might be your moment.

If you have been faced with the chicken-and-omelette problem of “Why should I write if I have nobody reading?” and “Why should anybody read since I never write?” then consider what would need to happen for you to change what you’re doing.

Maybe you’ll find it’s the opportunity I’m offering today.

As with all opportunities, this one won’t be around long.

I’m making this free bonus offer available only until this Saturday, February 22, at 12pm midnight PST.

Sign up for Daily Email Habit before then, and I’ll send you a copy of “What’s Grown My List Over The Years, Vol. 1-6.” (I’ll be as quick about it as I can be, but I’ll be sending it out personally and one-by-one, so bear with me.)

If you would like to get started now, and not allow this opportunity to pass you by:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

PS. If you’re signed up for Daily Email Habit but you’re not in Daily Email House, this free bonus offer applies to you as well. So does the deadline.

In other words, write me an email before Saturday at 12 midnight PST to say you want “What’s Grown My List Over The Years, Vol. 1-6,” and I’ll send it to you. Don’t write me after that, because I will have closed the offer, and I am strict with deadlines.

Free vs. low-ticket

January 3, 2025 by John Bejakovic

Comes a question from a long-time reader, Shakoor Chowdhury, about list building:

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OPINION: Free Offers are dead with how saturated and “information bloated” someone is, it’s like offering someone who is full of french fries and big macs another “free big mac”; sure he’ll take it but that’s the last you’ll see of him

+ I’ve noticed even on a GOOD DAY, with lead costs at less than 30 US cents, and 7% Link CTR, my email open rates are NEVER higher than 30%

VS: someone who buys a low ticket offer

I kind of haphazardly published my first book on amazon,

I’m not sure HOW, but this guy found it, bought it, messaged me on Telegram, followed me on instagram, and reads every single one of my emails…

any thoughts on this?

My sample size is too small to make any DEFINITIVE prediction, but it seems to me that I’ll be switching PERMANENTLY away from “free lead magnets” to low ticket PAID offers for listbuilding

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Shakoor’s food analogy is actually a good way to think about this.

If you’re stuffed with french fries and big macs, would you accept and eat another free big mac?

You might, or you might not.

But by the same token, would you accept and eat an extra big mac if you had to pay $1.99 for it?

You might, or you might not.

On the other hand, what if you were offered free ice cream… or a free beer… or better yet, a tour of 4 local microbreweries, which normally costs $200, where you get to be educated and entertained by the brewers, and you get to sample their beers, all for free?

Again, depending on your tastes, and the kind of guy or gal you are, you might accept or you might not.

In case you’re wondering what I’m getting at:

Free and low-ticket are both as old as the art of fishing. Neither method will be going away while humans continue to fish, or for that matter, to do business.

The way I see it, it’s not about price. It’s about perceived value.

Low-priced lead magnets force the prospect to put some value on what you’re offering, because it’s baked into the offer.

But zero-cost lead magnets don’t have to have zero perceived value. Free lead magnets can have great perceived value, if you take the time and trouble to make it so.

Which brings me to another of the unsung benefits of daily emails.

Daily emails increase the perceived value of your offers.

Because anybody can print out a price tag, stick it on the side of a cardboard box, and yell once or twice about how there’s $1,000 worth of value inside.

And yes — this will have some effect. It will make the cardboard box, and whatever is inside it, more valuable than a box without a price tag. It will make it easier to give it away for free, or even to charge a few dollars for it.

BUT.

Take the time over and over to reiterate the value of the stuff in the box… to highlight the attractive things inside… to explain how they can benefit the prospect… to quantify those benefits in as many ways as you can… to bring up previous buyers and their success stories and endorsements… to repeat and justify the price… and do this day after day, repeating your message until both the desire and the credibility pile up via simple persistence…

… and the perceived value of your cardboard box, and what’s in it, doesn’t just rise to a few dollars. Or even to a thousand dollars.

The perceived value can go to many thousands of dollars, so people happily give you $1k for your cardboard box, and feel like they are getting a steal in the process.

And if you ever decide to give that box away for free… suddenly there’s a stampede.

That is what happens when you send an interesting and yet self-promotional email every day.

And on that note:

I have a service that helps you you send daily emails consistently, called Daily Email Habit. Shakoor, who wrote the question above, actually subscribes to Daily Email Habit. He had this to say about it:

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Daily Email Habit is the best thing I ever purchased PERIOD.

It really gets past the first hurdle of “what to write”…

And I love the accountability that comes with it.

While snapchat uses “streaks” for pointless time-wasting, you actually used gamification for something awesome and beneficial

I’m starting to enjoy the habit of daily writing. And, I write more for MYSELF these days than my subscribers.

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If you would like my help consistently writing daily emails, so you can increase the perceived value of your offers, free or paid:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Build your list by… writing

December 2, 2024 by John Bejakovic

Last Wednesday, I got a message from Chavy Helfgott, who is a copywriter and brand strategies, and who also happens to subscribe to my Daily Email Habit service. Chavy wrote:

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At least for the beginning, I’m posting my emails on LinkedIn as well (as I have a large following there) and – I got 8 new subscribers from today’s post! This is after neglecting my LinkedIn account and rarely posting for quite a while.

Thank you for this. It feels amazing to have had a concrete result so fast.

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Yesterday, I wrote that I’ll one day have an official launch for Daily Email Habit, but that day is not today, or any time soon.

I also invited people to reply if they are interested in Daily Email Habit, so I can send them the full details. A good number of people did reply.

I sent the folks the details… and then I asked myself, what exactly am I doing? What is my purpose in creating this extra obstacle for others and work for myself?

And so I’ve decided to open up Daily Email Habit to my entire list, both to stop myself from fielding these one-on-one messages, and to make Daily Email Habit available to people who might benefit from it.

If you’re interested in Daily Email Habit, and how it might possibly help you, the full info is at the link below.

I can tell you that the core promise of Daily Email Habit is a daily nudge to write your own daily email.

The effect of consistent nudging is consistent daily emails. And the effect of consistent daily emails is that they grow your expertise and authority… create or deepen your relationship with your audience… build up a stockpile of interesting content can reuse as you see fit… and make you better at writing, in all formats.

Plus, you can do like Chavy is doing, and simply post your daily email to LinkedIn or wherever and get people to opt in for your list. And yes, it does work — she sent me a screenshot of 8 shiny new subscribers from last Wednesday to prove it.

For full info on Daily Email Habit:

https://bejakovic.com/deh