Yesterday, I invited you to play a little game called Daily Email Battleship.
It was supposed to be a fun way to exchange recommendations for daily email newsletters.
What I didn’t realize is I was getting myself into an unfair fight.
After all, there is only one of me. And my opponents were many.
So last night, after my email went out, alarm sirens started blaring on the HMS Bejako. My sonar system, warning me of incoming torpedos, started beeping faster and faster.
A muffled explosion went off underneath my inbox, and then a second, and then a third.
I looked out towards the horizon. It was dark with opposing battleships. I readied myself for a desperate fight.
But in spite of my valiant defenses and best evasive maneuvers, in the end my flotilla was torpedoed, overwhelmed, and finally sunk by the sheer onslaught of daily email recommendations from readers.
I’m being a tad dramatic.
If you joined me for Daily Email Battleship yesterday, thanks for playing. I will get back to you in person as soon as I get from under water a little.
And I will also be checking out the many interesting recommendations I got. I will share any standouts with you in the coming days and weeks.
Still, I gotta admit I was surprised.
Because in spite of getting something like 80+ different newsletter recommendations, there were plenty of successful people and businesses, sending out interesting daily emails, which were not named by anybody who played Daily Email Battleship with me.
Some of these were email lists I have mentioned in this very newsletter.
Others are one-man bands which have been featured as testimonials in big guru emails.
Perhaps the fact that nobody mentioned any of these newsletters is chance or omission.
But more likely, it’s just an inspiring reminder about the modern world.
Most people — myself included, and perhaps you too — can’t really fathom how many human beings there are on the planet right now.
And the fact is, you can have a business today, and do very, very well, with a tiny audience of just a few thousand people, or even fewer.
A few thousand people is like an eye dropper’s worth of humans in the great ocean of humanity.
But if you can somehow collect that eye dropper’s worth of people… and if you can create something of value and interest for them… and then sell it to them, in a way that’s enjoyable enough that they even look forward your selling, day after day… then you can do very well, while staying under the radar and above the sonar of almost everybody out there.
So that’s my possibly inspiring reminder.
Here’s another:
I have an email newsletter. And if you’d like to learn some hard-won email marketing lessons I learned on board the HMS Bejako, and while serving as a sailor in various other business’s marketing navies, you can sign up for my newsletter here.