List Building Archives - Page 3 of 5

The Golden Triangle of Success

August 25, 2024 by John Bejakovic

In software development, a field in which I spent the salad days of my life, there’s a meme known as the Iron Triangle. It’s about how software is developed, and it says:

“Fast, cheap, good — pick two”

Yesterday, I fielded interest in a new offer, “Work alongside me to launch or build up your list via paid traffic.”

In a nutshell, I’m about to start building up a new list via paid traffic. And if you like, you can work alongside me to launch or build up your own list… follow the same process I’m following… plus get my feedback and input on your ad copy and lead magnets etc.

I got a good number of people expressing interest in that.

But inevitably, I also had a few people write in, saying they are not sure if they have the money.

To which I thought up a kind of Golden Triangle of Success, similar but different to the Iron Triangle above. The Golden Triangle says:

“Time, effort, money — pick two”

This is similar to the Iron Triangle — because you pick any two for guaranteed success. One will not do.

But it’s also different to the Iron Triangle because this is about requirements on inputs, rather than constraints on outputs.

In other words, pick two — or three. You can have all three corners of the Golden Triangle.

But what if you don’t?

What if you don’t have the money corner, specifically?

No shame in that. Was a time when I was in the same situation. You can get up and out of it with enough effort and time.

On the other hand, if you’re simply not sure whether you have the money to invest in an asset like an email list, then the Golden Triangle of Success might give you a different way to look at your situation.

In any case, if you’re interested in the offer I made yesterday, to work alongside me to build up your list, write in and let me know. I want to hear your situation and get your feedback as I decide on the final form of how this will work.

The course I wish I had created

May 30, 2024 by John Bejakovic

Just a few moments ago, I sent an email to marketer Matt Giaro, telling him he’s free to use the following line and to attribute it to me:

“You took the information I gave you and ran with it much further than I did, and developed a complete system for it and got repeatable results from it, unlike me. I wish I had done what you did, but now that you’ve done it, there’s no need for me to do it on my own and duplicate the work.”

The background:

Some time last fall, Matt contacted me.

He saw that, earlier in the year, I had run a $300 classified ad in Josh Spector’s newsletter. He was thinking about doing the same, and he wanted to know my experiences.

So we did a quick little one-hour paid consult.

I told Matt how I ran a few successful newsletter ads (Josh Spector, Daniel Throssell), where I got hundreds of new subscribers who paid for themselves, usually on day zero.

I also told him about the unsuccessful newsletter ads I ran, which just cost me money and probably sender reputation (I’m looking at you, Udimi).

And that was that. Matt said thanks, and we went our separate ways.

Until this March. That’s when I saw that Matt was launching a new course, called Subscribers From Scratch. It was all about how he was getting high-quality newsletter subscribers by running little ads in other newsletters.

The fact is:

The way I was running newsletter ads required a good deal of work. It wasn’t something that I wanted to do every month, much less every week or two.

And since I have plenty of other shiny gewgaws to distract me, I never bothered to figure out how to run newsletter ads repeatably and to still get good results.

But Matt did figure it out.

He took what I told him and ran with it. He developed his own system that allowed him to get a few dozen or a few hundred subscribers each time he ran a newsletter ad.

But much more importantly, he figured out how to get quality subscribers, subscribers who ended up paying for the ad, often in a matter of days.

So like I said to Matt, his Subscribers From Scratch is the course I wish I had created.

I wish I had taken the trouble to figure out a repeatable, scalable system for running newsletter ads. I wish I had packaged it up and sold it.

But I didn’t. And now that he’s done it, I won’t have to.

Right about now, you might expect me to plop in an affiliate link for Matt’s Subscribers From Scratch.

That won’t happen.

Subscribers From Scratch normally sells for $397. But I got Matt to agree to give away a “lite” version of it — all the training and how-to information, minus the bonuses and templates — for free.

Well, for free if you’ve already bought my Simple Money Emails course. Or if you buy it before this Saturday, June 1, at 12 midnight PST.

If you’ve already bought Simple Money Emails, you should have gotten an email from me already with the instructions on how to claim Subscribers From Scratch Lite.

And if you haven’t yet bought it, but you want to learn how to write effective daily emails that make sales, and get Matt’s Subscribers From Scratch Lite for free, and learn how to get readers who actually buy from the emails you write, then here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

10 minutes to get big Twitter accounts to follow you

March 4, 2024 by John Bejakovic

Once every 24 hours or so, I get asked a variant of the following question:

“How did you build up an email list without being on social media?”

My answer is always the same. I did it by being stubborn and stupid, by sending daily emails into the void, without anybody reading what I was writing. I did this for years before things slowly started to turn around.

The problem, by the way, was not that I was not on social media.

The problem was that I was and continue to be unsociable. Even in the world of email newsletters, even among people whose emails I read every day, I never thought to speak up, get introduced, put myself on the radar or sonar of a person with an audience bigger than mine.

Until the end of today, I am promoting Kieran Drew’s High Impact Writing. That’s Kieran’s course to teach you how to write for influence and growth on Twitter and LinkedIn.

But here’s the truth:

As with email, you can write for years on social media without anyone taking notice. The shortcut to success on social media, the royal road, is the same as in the world of email.

You gotta start making connections. You gotta start engaging with people who are more successful than you are. And you gotta do it in a way where they actually take notice and respond.

People often reply to my emails and write things like,

“Loved it!”

“”

“Great email!”

While I appreciate any and all reader feedback, there’s really nothing for me to reply to here. There’s nothing for me to grab onto, nothing to get curious about, nothing to make the reader stand out.

So what to do instead?

Back to Kieran’s High Impact Writing. Sure, he teaches you writing for social media. But he also teaches you the other stuff, the connecting and network building in a way that actually works.

In the one of the bonus modules (Social Media Made Simple), Kieran gives you an example of a twitter DM that got him to start following a smaller account. And then he gives you a step-by-step template that he’s since used to get his favorite accounts to start following him.

It takes all about 10 minutes to do this.

And I can tell you, it works in the world of email as well. I know, because people have written me similar things, and I’ve taken notice and then got on their list. (I still remain unsociable and I rarely reach out to anyone, even in email. And I’m paying a price for it. I don’t encourage anyone to do like I do.)

High Impact Writing goes offline today at 12 midnight PST. After that, when it does come back, the price will be explosively higher.

Also, if you act now and get High Impact Writing before the deadline via my affiliate link below, you get the recordings of my Age of Insight.

Age of Insight was a training I put on about a year ago and sold for $297. It shows you how to write in an insightful sounding way, even if you have nothing very insightful to say. Simply forward me your invoice for High Impact Writing and I will get you the recordings of Age of Insight.

Assuming, that is, that you decide High Impact Writing is right for you, and that you act before the deadline. In case you’re intrigued, go here for more details:

https://bejakovic.com/hiw

How to grow a newsletter by 15k subs in one day

February 26, 2024 by John Bejakovic

Today is the last day of my promotion of Newsletter XP, the star-studded course on how to build, grow, and monetize a successful newsletter.

So let me give you a case study from that course. It comes from one Jenny Rothenberg. Jenny was the head of growth at Morning Brew as Morning Brew’s audience scaled from 100k to 2.5M.

Jenny then started her own newsletter growth agency, Smooth Media. She now works with big creators brands. One of these are Colin and Samir. I’d never heard of them but apparently they are big on YouTube. Jenny worked with them to create a video that drove 15k subs to their newsletter in one day.

“Aw that’s just great!” you say. “They probably have millions of followers on YouTube! Come on!”

Sure.

But Colin and Samir didn’t simply create a video that said, “Hey we have a newsletter, come sign up.” Even with a big audience, that won’t drive 15k subscribers in one day.

Instead, they used fundamental human psychology, which you too can use, even if you don’t have a million YouTube subscribers.

There was scarcity (“We’re gonna delete this video in 24 hours”)… a giveaway… a partnership with another big creator… and a completely on-brand, value-prop match between their YouTube channel and what their newsletter was about.

You can do this too, even if you have a following of 99 people. But what if you have no other audience to tap into at all?

Inside the same module of Newsletter XP, you can hear Jenny talk about other ways to benefit from people who do have audiences — on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter.

This is part of a bigger discussion that happens inside the course between Jenny, Tyler Denk (CEO of Beehiiv), Alex Lieberman (former CEO of Morning Brew), and Dan Krenitsyn (previously BuzzFeed, now Facebook).

They all have war stories, and they all have unique answers to the question that this module is built around, which is:

“What is your playbook for taking a newsletter from 100→10,000 subscribers in a year?”

If you’d like to hear that discussion and profit from it, I suggest you act now.

I’ve managed to claw out a $200 discount for you from the usual price that Newsletter XP sells for. That discount is good until tonight, Monday Feb 26, at 12 midnight PST. If you’d like to take advantage of this, here’s what to do:

1. Go to the Newsletter XP sales page at https://bejakovic.com/nxp

2. If you decide you want to get Newsltter XP, then use coupon code JB20 at checkout.

3. Make sure the coupon code works — that you see the price drop by $200. This is not my funnel, and if you end up buying at full price, there’s nothing I can do about it.

So long, Sparkloop

January 13, 2024 by John Bejakovic

Last year, I wrote several emails in which I recommended Sparkloop, a paid newsletter-recommendation platform.

As you might know, the promise of Sparkloop is quality newsletter subscribers, who will actually engage with your newsletter, all in a completely hands-off manner.

That’s the promise. Here’s the reality:

Sparkloop did grow my list, with a bunch of previous newsletter subscribers, who in theory should have been a good match for my health newsletter.

Plus, Sparkloop allows you to screen for subscribers engage with your newsletter via either clicks or opens, and to get rid of everyone else. As a result, my open rates stayed consistently high.

Sounds good, right?

But around December, cracks started to appear.

I regularly ran in-newsletter polls in my health newsletter. They weren’t getting a lot of participation. I also ran a survey outside the newsletter, on my website. Exactly one person filled that out. I put out a relevant, low-ticket offer. I got no buyers.

Everything I just told you happened with my health newsletter. But it’s backed up by an experiment I ran with Sparkloop on this marketing newsletter.

That experiment was small but perhaps indicative.

It involved newsletter subscribers that I vetted even more closely than I was doing for my health newsletter, both for source and for engagement. And yet, none of those vetted Sparkloop subscribers have bought anything from me, in spite of being on my list for months. None of them has even opted in for the free training am putting on at the end of this month.

The point I want to make is something that’s easy to forget if you’re a marketer:

A name is not just a name. An email address is not just an email address.

It matters how people find you, first interact with you, with what intent, and in what frame of mind.

Of course, this matters for whether they choose to engage with you in the first place. But it also persists over time, even if they somehow decide to give you a bit of their attention to start with. That’s obvious as water in the real world, but it’s easy to forget in the marketing world.

Conclusion:

So long, Sparkloop. Like everything else in life that sounds too good to be true, you were in fact too good to be true.

You might wonder what I will do to grow my list now that I have axed Sparkloop.

I have special plans for my health newsletter.

But for this marketing newsletter, I plan on going back to the three warhorses that have gotten me probably 80% of my total subscribers, and probably 99% of my best subscribers.

If you would like to know what those three warhorses are, come join me for that free training at the end of this month. On the training, I will talk about how I write and even profit from this newsletter, and how you can do it too if you’d like to do something similar.

The training will happen on Monday January 22, 2024 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. I will send out a recording if you cannot make it live, but you will have to be signed up to my list first. Click here to sign up.

The unsexiest sales funnel Broadway has ever seen

November 19, 2023 by John Bejakovic

On November 29, 2018, I sent an email to this marketing list with the subject line, “The worst aromatherapy book Broadway has ever seen.”

The topic of that email was the launch of my new aromatherapy book, Essential Oil Quick Start Guide.

At that time, my marketing list had exactly 2 readers — me and some other dude who had somehow found me.

On the other hand, my aromatherapy list had a staggering 814 readers. But over the next 6 weeks, my aromatherapy would grow still more, to well over 2,000 readers. These were quality new readers, and getting them cost me nothing net.

How?

Well, I’ll tell ya. But I don’t think you will be happy. It’s nothing new, and nothing magical. Here’s what I did:

1. I “wrote” a second little ebook, titled “Little Black Book of Essential Oil Scams.” The title was a flat-out swipe of Gary Bencivenga’s Little Black Book of Secrets.

I put “wrote” in quotes because there was almost no writing involved. I basically repurposed a dozen “what never to” emails I had already written to my aromatherapy list — warnings about unsafe use, shady sellers, dangerous oils, etc.

I put those emails into a Pages document, exported as PDF, and tacked on a black-and-red cover I’d made in Canva.

2. I ran a FB ad campaign giving this EO scams ebook away if people signed up to my list. I know nothing about running FB ads, and I’m sure this ad campaign was far from optimal.

3. I sent daily emails to my aromatherapy list with a pitch to buy the $10 Quick Start ebook. Enough new people, who had signed up via the Little Black Book ad, bought the Quick Start book to offset all the costs I had from the FB ads.

And that’s it. That’s how I grew my list from 800 readers to over 2,000 qualified readers in about 45 days.

I know, about as sexy as a potato. But what to say?

If you want to grow your list quickly and even without cost, then consider doing the same. Run ads to some kind of attractive and relevant giveaway in exchange for people opting in to your list, and write daily emails that sell something to offset the ad cost.

At this point, it would make sense to try to sell you my Simple Money Emails course, which is all about writing simple daily emails that make sales. In that course, I even include some examples emails from the aromatherapy list I had years ago.

But with all the promotion of SME over the past few weeks, I believe everyone who was going to get this course during this lunar cycle now already owns it. So let me just remind you to go apply what I show you inside that course.

Meanwhile, I no longer write anything in the aromatherapy space and I no longer sell any offers there.

But I am proud of my little Quick Start Essential Oil Guide, and I still stand by it.

I put a lot of work into researching and writing it, and if you are interested in essential oils, I believe it’s the perfect introduction.

If by chance you want it, PayPal me $10 to john@bejakovic.com, and I’ll send you the PDF.

You don’t want to sell to a hobbit like me

October 22, 2023 by John Bejakovic

Last week, I, Bejako Baggins, was minding my own business, tanning my large and hairy hobbit feet by the fireside, when a wizard burst through the doors of my hobbit-hole and announced in his deep voice:

“Bejako Baggins — You are experiencing a huge deliverability problem my friend!”

Now we hobbits are peace-loving creatures. We shy away from noise and adventure.

Besides, only a week earlier I had sent another such wizard away from my doorstep.

I’d even written a little circular letter, which I sent to my readers all over Middle Earth, explaining how I take no thought for deliverability beyond writing interesting stuff that other hobbits and elves and men want to read.

But this wizard would not be denied. He towered over me, his peak hat reaching to the ceiling, his arms above his head. And he thundered:

===

Listen mate, I love your copywriting style!

I subscribed because of that, but this problem is stopping you from more envelope opens & a higher number of return letters

Therefore, wiping out thousands of silver coins to be made from your work

I discovered this deliverability problems out of curiosity as your intro circular letter got delayed

Now, I’m 100% confident I can fix this problem for you… and I will NOT be charging you! (FREE)

Instead, Once I fixed this issue for you, and you’re satisfied with my service. I would hope if you can refer me (at any time) to someone else who’s facing a deliverability problem

===

I have to admit that my little hobbit heart started pounding. Not because of the threat that my letters were not getting delivered or opened — I have reason to believe I’m doing well.

But I was intrigued by the wizard’s offer — free, fixed for me, no risk or effort required by my peace-loving hobbit body.

I thought for a moment. Then I smiled and I said, “Ok wizard, you are on. If you can improve my letter deliverability, I will happily promote you to anyone who comes asking for such services.”

The wizard immediately suggested we schedule a council meeting, tomorrow morning, down by the large oak tree, to discuss what our adventure will entail.

I frowned at this. It sounded like it would eat into second breakfast. “Just tell me what you have to tell me now,” I asked him.

So he tried. “First,” he said, “you will have to get a new address from which to send your circular letters. You can still live and write in this hobbit-house, but your letters will be sent as though they are coming from somewhere else.”

“That’s more trouble than I need,” I told him.

The wizard nodded and then stroked his beard. “Well, you can keep your address, but you can go and find a new letter-delivery fellowship.”

“Yeah that’s not gonna happen either,” I said.

The wizard was starting to get concerned. “Well, there’s one last thing you could do. You could pay for a dedicated letter-delivery satchel, to make sure your letters aren’t getting stuck to any other letters, or maybe getting thrown out with them.”

I got up from the fireside, and escorted the wizard to the door.

I appreciated the effort he had put in. But all of this sounded like work. It also sounded risky, and like it might create a problem where I really didn’t have one, or at least where I didn’t worry about one.

I could hear the wizard muttering into his beard as he stepped outside into the night. “Fool of a hobbit…”

But what to do? That’s how my race is.

That’s why I say you don’t want to sell to a hobbit like me. Even if you have a solid sales message (“HUGE deliverability issue, costing you many silver coins!”) and a great offer (“free and fixed for you”), you will most probably just end up wasting your time.

In the Shire we like to sing an old hobbit tune:

“First is the list, then comes the offer,
Last good copy, and then a full coffer”

So if you don’t yet have a good list and offer handled, then my advice is to focus on those first, in that order.

But if you have both a good list and a good offer… then you know what else we hobbits like, besides peace and comfort?

The only kind of excitement and challenge we are ever really after?

Maybe you guessed it. And if not, well, you can get the answer at the following page:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

The good, the coulda been better, the ugly of my Josh Spector promotion

August 7, 2023 by John Bejakovic

Last night, I finished the promotion I was running over the past week, which started when I ran a classified ad in Josh Spector’s newsletter last Sunday.

I had a free offer in the actual ad, Simple Money Emails, and a paid upsell, 9 Deadly Email Sins, for people who opted in.

I turned off both offers last night, as I said I would, once the deadline passed.

For my own benefit, I wrote up my conclusions about this experience.

If you like, you can read some of my conclusions below. It might be interesting to you if you’re looking to grow your list, monetize your list, run classified ads, or put on quick and simple offers that your readers appreciate and buy.

But as FBI negotiator Chris Voss likes to say, the last impression is the lasting impression. So let’s leave the good for last, and let’s start with the ugly first.

THE UGLY:

I haven’t made back my money on the Josh Spector ad.

I mean, I made a bunch of sales over the past week, but not enough from new subscribers, who came via the classified ad, to cover the $350 I gave to Josh to run the ad.

There’s a fair chance I will make back my money in time. But of course, there’s also a chance I won’t.

I have various hypotheses as to why it hasn’t happened yet. I might write about those down the line, but some include options in the next, coulda been better section.

THE COULDA BEEN BETTER:

I made a nice number of sales of the paid upsell last week — but at only $100 per sale.

The promotion I did last month, for Steve Raju’s ClientRaker, ended up with a comparable number of sales, but at 3x the price.

Had I raised the price higher, I prolly woulda made more money — there’s a lot of elasticity in info products. Maybe that way I would have already recouped my money on the Josh Spector ad.

But maybe it wasn’t the price. Maybe it was the copy, the core appeal.

Simple Money Emails is something I thought about carefully. I planned out that name, and the core appeal. The number of people who took me up on that offer confirms it’s something attractive.

On the other hand, as I’ve written already, the upsell, 9 Deadly Email Sins, wasn’t something I carefully planned or thought about — at least as far as the packaging goes, because the content is thought-through and very valuable.

I might have packaged up that same valuable content into a different-patterned box with a different-colored bow, and sold 50% or 80% or maybe 100% more.

THE GOOD:

One good thing was that I got a buncha new subscribers.

In fact, I grew my list 7% list over past week. From what I can see from new subscribers who have custom domains, these are high-quality prospects. Whether I manage to convert them in time is probably up to me.

The other good thing was I made a buncha sales to existing readers.

One of those sales came from somebody who joined my list back in 2019 (my guess is I had ~80 subscribers at the time). Several sales came from people who joined my list in 2020… and lots came from people who joined 2021, in 2022, and earlier this year.

Most people who bought 9 Deadly Email Sins bought multiple offers from me before.

The fact they are still with me is encouraging. It means I’m doing something right both with the products I’m selling, and with this marketing, the email that you’re reading right now. It must be engaging enough to keep people around, and reading, and buying, years down the line.

THE AMAZING:

I tell myself I have to have an offer at the end of each email. My offer at the end of this email is my Most Valuable Email course, which is amazing. But don’t take it from me. Reader James Harrison bought MVE last month, and wrote me about it last week to say:

===

Also, a few days ago I finished going through your MVE course. I thought it was amazing. I especially loved what you did at the end, with the MVE Riddles. Not enough courses get their students actively using their brains.

Thank you for all that you do.

===

Maybe actively using your brain isn’t something you’re into. But maybe it is. In that case, if you’d like an amazing way to do it, and to win bigly in the process:

https://bejakovic.com/mve