5pm today. Forsyth park. Savannah, Georgia.
I found a large oak tree. Rolled up my jacket. Put it on the ground. Lay down on it in the shade under the tree.
It’s been two-plus weeks of non-stop travel. Changing five cities along the way. Over 5k miles traveled. And more talking with people in real life than I have done in the past six months combined.
I’m tired. I had a chance to lay down today. Under a tree. So I took it.
Tomorrow, I head back from Savannah to New York. After an afternoon layover at JFK, I will have an overnight and most likely sleepless flight back to Barcelona, to the safety of my cave, the comfort of my own bed, the routine of my regular work day.
All that’s really just to prepare you for yet another Q&A email, the third this week. Came a question in reply to last night’s milk-themed email:
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I bought SME a few weeks ago. I’d love to hear more about how you grow your list or “add cream”. I’ve started daily emails and unsubscriber rates are up. I’m currently using FB ads. I was relying on SEO, but that’s proven volatile this year.
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After 10+ years of trying to grow various audiences online, I’ve come to believe there’s no magic to it beyond time and persistence.
Whatever you do consistently to grow your list will work in time. And almost nothing will work if you jump around too much too quick.
That said, I will tell you one specific cream-getting/list-building strategy I personally plan to focus on. And that’s books, either ones I put on Amazon or that I sell on my own site and drive paid traffic to.
Books in my mind are the highest-quality leads you can possible get.
They create customers right away.
If you tack on some upsells, it’s possible to use them to break even on paid ad spend on day zero or soon after.
Plus books are immensely shareable and influential. People will gladly and actively recommend or hype up your book, much more so than a course or a coaching program or even a community.
If you want to see how this works in action, take a look at my 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters.
It took me about a month of on-the-side work to complete this book. It has been driving subscribers to my list ever since.
The only real problem is this is my only book and I should have written more suc books. I’m working on fixing that.
Meanwhile, if you want to see how I organized this book, how I sold my email list within it, and even learn something valuable about copywriting and marketing in the process, the 10 Commandments is only $5 on Amazon.
Here’s the link: