As I said, I don't know this Cardinal Mason guy, but if I did, I'd shake his hand.
This is such an interesting thread to pull on.
A lot of copywriters start off doing writing for themselves if they have no experience.
I started a blog on Medium that I no longer tend to. It's dead now.
But I wrote a couple of articles on there that I was pretty proud of at the time.
I believe that this is a solid way for people to get some time in the trenches and learn how to write long form.
But, as the creator, you don't get much out of it.
Sending emails can be very similar to writing blogs.
The only difference is that blogs are on someone else's platform, and emails are on your platform.
In the first instance, some random company is making money off you, and you make nothing.
That doesn't sound like a fair trade.
If you want to flex your writing muscle, you should start an email list.
It's one of the greatest investments you can make in yourself.
Here's why.
- You get a lot of practice writing. If you're sending 3-5 emails a week, you're allowing your brain to get into the habit of writing. It's great.
- You get to own your audience. I can't tell you how insane it is that you basically have your own social media platform that you're the King (or Queen) of. Having 10,000 engaged people on an email list is so valuable. We'll talk more about this later.
- You can make bank from it. Real money. You can use those impressions to sell ad spots to big companies in your niche, or you can sell a product. I know a guy who launched a product to a list of 300 people and made 6 figures in a week. He's a wicked marketer, but it proves my point. A year's worth of income in a week on a list of 300 people.
There's a catch to this, though.
You have to be somebody worth reading.
There is absolutely no room in the market for someone who has no interesting things happening in their life, no stories, no money, no value, etc.
You NEED to be somebody that people want to pay attention to.
If you're fatally uncreative and you can't take the time to make your newsletter compelling, you deserve to be poor and unknown. No hard feelings.
But if you can muster up the courage to be interesting somehow, this is what you need to do to create an email list from scratch.
- Try to grow on a social media platform.
Everyone's probably gonna stop reading on this point, because they think it's hard.
This Cardinal Mason guy I mentioned before (again, never heard of him) has built a following on 3 separate platforms independent from one another.
Almost 50k on Twitter, almost 400k on TikTok, and almost 20k on Instagram.
I'm sure that this Cardinal guy could do it again if he wanted to. He might become a Pinterest influencer next year if he wants to.
It's really not that hard to grow on social media, ESPECIALLY with video.
IG and TikTok are still goldmines right now. No matter if you think they're saturated, or if they get banned (not gonna happen, don't worry about it).
Create a niche for yourself, be EXTREMELY interesting, and you will grow an audience.
- Give people a reason to join.
Now that you have an audience, give them a CTA.
People love joining email lists because they're free. It's not a course. It costs nothing. Just free value.
You can offer a lead magnet where they receive a free resource in exchange for joining. If you plug that in the comments of your videos, or during the video, or under a tweet, you'll be able to get 50-100 subscribers a week if done properly.
If you have something go viral, you could get 1000 new subscribers in a day.
Sometimes, if you're interesting enough, people will join just because they think you're interesting.
This Cardinal guy (no clue who he is) built a list of 1000 people in the early days of Twitter when he had 3000 followers. And he had NO lead magnet. The CTA was "if you want more, subscribe here".
It worked.
Get creative and experiment with stuff.
- Keep them engaged CONSTANTLY.
The reason we all love Drake is because that man has never missed. Ever.
Every single song he releases or even features on is a BANGER.
You need to be the same.
Never get lazy.
Have BANGER subject lines, and keep providing value.
Remember: email is a social media platform just like anything else. The way you capture someone's attention on TikTok is the way you capture someone's attention via email.
Big personality, and have a lot of fun with it.
LAST POINT, VERY IMPORTANT:
We honestly don't know what'll happen with social media.
It's a mystery.
Algorithms change, people get banned, random stuff happens all the time.
There's no regulation. It's the wild west.
If you don't control your audience, you don't control anything.
Having an email list is the BEST way to reach the people you want to reach. Hands down. No question.
If you have 10k on Twitter, you could get shadow-banned or FULLY banned tomorrow.
Suddenly, you don't exist.
That doesn't happen when you have people's names and email addresses.
You can keep it backed up in a spreadsheet, and it's never going anywhere. Keep the spreadsheet on a floppy drive on your bedside table for God's sake, I don't care.
That is the best asset you can have. The bigger, the better.
Keep this in mind when things start going south.
I warned you.
I hope I don't sound too crazy, Chase. But I know you agree with me.
You have 50,000 people reading this email to back it up.
Yours truly,
Alex.
Sent from my Floppy Disc in the safe under my toilet where my email list data lies.
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