A few weeks ago I had a coaching call with an entrepreneur named Ben who’d just launched his first digital product. He’d created an email course to sell the product and run a few dozen subscribers through the course with no sales. He was hoping to get my feedback on the email course and sales […]
Continue readingThis summer I finally got to take my two oldest sons fishing for the first time. There’s this 5-acre pond nestled in the woods behind our church, with a fountain that shoots a bloom of water 20 feet in the air. Very peaceful and picturesque. I decided to take them both individually for some “daddy […]
Continue readingYesterday I showed how teaching flips an “analytical switch” in your would-be customer’s brain that more often than not will kill your sales. When I first got into marketing, I really struggled with this. Teaching is fun—it comes natural to me and I really enjoy it. The idea of teaching *less* in my emails just […]
Continue readingOne of the best marketing books I’ve read in a while is Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. (It’s a bit ironic, because the Heath brothers take lots of potshots at marketing, including copywriting legend John Caples.) To me the most fascinating part of the whole book was the anecdote that starts on […]
Continue readingInquiring minds want to know: How long should my email course be? I have an easy rule of thumb that I usually follow. But before I just give you a rule to follow mindlessly, here’s the thought process behind it. Now I’m going to assume for this discussion that you’re creating your course because you […]
Continue readingWhen I was 11 our family moved from the suburbs to a 100-year-old farmhouse in rural northeastern Ohio. Since I was homeschooled and living a solid 30 minutes from civilization, I got into some pretty weird hobbies. This one year in late winter, I saw some sap oozing from a maple tree in our backyard, […]
Continue readingAsk 10 online entrepreneurs how they build a relationship with their email list and I’ll bet you a hundred bucks the answer is: “Give VALUE.” And I can’t quibble with that. Every email you send should leave your readers feeling like they’re coming away with something they can use. The trouble is, many entrepreneurs have […]
Continue readingWhen I was 26 I got hired as a writer for the PR department at a local university. The salary was great, I was excited, and I had NO idea that I was about to walk straight into a buzzsaw. For some reason my new manager—let’s call her Jezebel—hated my guts from the moment I […]
Continue readingLately I’ve been on a tear to boost the number of email signups we get at Simple Programmer. This all started about a month ago. I was feeling pretty frustrated with the slow pace of our email list growth at Simple Programmer. Most of our signups come from this full-screen popup: When I joined Simple […]
Continue reading“Uh, are you sure about this? This isn’t the kind of email we usually send out. I’m not sure how this is going to work…” The response made me chuckle—exactly what I’d expected. “Heh heh, trust me,” I thought, “this is gonna work juuuust fine.” The reluctant guy I was corresponding with was the owner […]
Continue readingWhen I was in college, we had this ritual during finals week: The students got to turn the tables and finally give the *professors* a grade for the semester. These performance reviews were kind of fun and sometimes quite therapeutic. You’d fill out little bubbles on a Scantron sheet and, optionally, write out any extra […]
Continue readingThe other day my business partner John said something that cracked me up. We were on a coaching call with a fellow programmer-turned-entrepreneur (aka “entreprogrammer”), and we were talking about the emails I write for our business. John said, “Josh’s job is to find out all the craziest, most embarrassing stuff I’ve ever done and […]
Continue readingSo this “build a relationship with your list” stuff is all well and good for B2C products like a learn to rock climb class or a Hollywood actor workout program… But what about so-called “boring” business-to-business products and services? That’s what subscriber Steve wants to know: Have been following you for a month, I am […]
Continue readingLong distance relationships are rough, aren’t they? When I was a senior in college I spent a semester down in Washington D.C., studying in a political science program and interning as a features writer for The Washington Times. I was excited about the program, but the timing was lousy: My future wife and I were […]
Continue readingFrom subscriber Jesus comes this excellent question: Do you do anything specific to keep your subscribers happy & your open rates high? Everyone talks about having a good relationship with your list, but I haven’t seen many examples on how to do that. Jesus is exactly right. Everyone does talk about how important it is […]
Continue readingSubscriber Rich has an unusual business—at least in my little corner of the marketing world. While most of the entrepreneurs I talk to are selling information products, like a course on how to write a killer resume or negotiate a better salary… Rich is building a site to sell murder mystery stories. Cool. Recently he asked […]
Continue readingBack when made my living writing code instead of copy, I had a dark secret: Sometimes I would “swipe” chunks of code from the Internet without fully understanding what the heck they did. Truth be told, most software devs do this from time to time. And in some cases, it works out just fine. More […]
Continue readingShould you try to connect all of the emails in an autoresponder sequence together? Or is it OK to build a “sequence” of one-off emails that don’t interrelate? That topic popped up a few days ago in a private forum I belong to. Both approaches *can* work, but in my experience one is clearly better. […]
Continue readingNew to email marketing? Or eager to sample a new service provider? Got you covered. Here is a growing list of email marketing tools, separated by category Table of Contents Email Service Providers List Building Email Service Providers MailChimp In one sentence: It’s free! (Initially, at least). Summary: MailChimp is the choice of most […]
Continue readingRegular reader Jennifer shows job hunters how to write a resume that will stand out. She’s in the middle of creating an email course for her online class, and she asks: I’d love to know how you studied up on creating such amazing course funnels? You mentioned in a previous post about how often […]
Continue readingA couple months back I attended MicroConf 2016 in Las Vegas, a get-together for information entrepreneurs and software startup founders. I met a lot of razor-sharp people there. One of those was a guy named Adrian. The thing that impressed me most about Adrian is the way he’s doing something that I wouldn’t have thought […]
Continue readingRecently I’ve experimented with promoting a couple of affiliate offers to the Simple Programmer email list. If you’re not familiar with how these deals work, the idea is I email my subscribers and get paid a commission on any sales (usually between 20-50%). It’s a common practice for the seller to provide “copy and paste” […]
Continue readingI have a friend named Chuck who’s writing a book. His target audience for this is software developers who are looking to land their very first job. When we discussed the project, I told Chuck that this seems like an EXCELLENT market to be getting into—but there’s a caveat. The reason I know there’s a […]
Continue readingThe other day my business partner John had this weird encounter while he was out jogging in the park. First, some quick background: In addition to our shared interests in software development and online business, John and I are both interested in fitness. While John is a serious fitness enthusiast and former body builder, I’m […]
Continue readingThe other week in the middle of The Great Spring Sales Slump of 2016, my business partner John Sonmez IMs me: “Ooof. Refund request—from last November.” Brilliant, as the Brits would say. So why are we entertaining refund requests from 6-month-old purchases, anyway? It’s all my fault, really. Last October when I was putting together […]
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