Yesterday, I ran a poll, both in my Daily Email House community and to my list, asking readers if they would bid $2 (two whole dollars) to have me endorse them to my list.
People voted.
After discounting those who voted for multiple options (most likely just email software clicking on links), I got the following fairly clean results:
24 people said they would bid $2
14 said they would bid $200
7 said they would bid $2,000
6 said they would bid whatever it takes to win
What will happen in reality? I have no idea. But I’m willing to give it a try, at the risk of making a fool of myself publicly and of burdening myself with big obligations that will take time and effort to pay off.
I’m willing to do this because I’m curious about the potential of AUCTIONS.
AUCTIONS (a word which happens to have 8 letters, the same as the number of X’s in my subject line today) is an invention by Travis Sago.
Well, maybe “invention” is a little strong. Let’s just say Travis adapted the traditional idea of an auction, and brought it into spaces where auctions were never even considered.
For example, Travis himself got started with auctions back in 2020, when he auctioned off 3 email templates (along with licensing rights and some bonuses).
The winning bid for that ended up being “$8,000 + $2,000 to a charity of Travis’s choice.”
(The winning bidder, by the way, was a certain Justin Goff, who used to be an influential email marketer.)
Travis has since been running more auctions, and encouraging others to run them as a fun and new way of selling. He’s even making the prediction that auctions will be the new webinars (there, I spelled it out completely, I hope you’re happy).
I didn’t understand that at first. How could an auction possibly be a replacement for a webinar?
After all, in an auction it seems there’s only one thing being sold to one bidder.
Of course, Travis is a clever guy, who gets a lot of use out of everything he’s got, including stuff that seems worthless to other people.
That’s why the winning bid is not really where the money is made in one of Travis’s auctions.
When I finally figured that out, the “auctions will be the new webinars” prediction made more sense. I could understand how some of Travis’s students were bringing a hundred thousand dollars, or even a quarter million, with a big and successful auction.
Based on my numbers above, I’m not expecting anything close to those results. But again, I’m willing to run my first auction and see where it could possibly go.
At best, I will make some money and deliver something of value to people who actually value it.
At worst, I will provide some entertainment for everyone participating or just observing.
If you wanna observe my first auction, or better yet, participate, it will be happening soon, inside my Daily Email House community. You can find that here: