All Posts by Josh Earl

Copywriting Horror Story: Marketing “Guru” Mails It

“Ted” is a biz owner who shelled out big bucks to hire an established “copywriting guru.” The deal was for the copywriter to produce an entire marketing campaign for Ted’s business—a landing page and email autoresponder sequence, plus a 2-postcard campaign to drive traffic to the landing page. According to Ted, he followed the guru’s […]

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What Converts Better: “Clever” Copywriting or Boring Benefits?

Recently I tried something “clever,” and it totally went down in flames. Here’s what happened… My business partner John has this phrase that he uses a lot: “For a software developer, creating a blog is like building your own lightsaber.” In the Star Wars universe, every Jedi knight is required to create their own lightsaber […]

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Want to Grow Your Email List? Here’s the #1 Number to Track

A couple of weeks ago I ranted about conversion rates, and how it’s possible to “increase your conversion rate” while actually getting LESS subscribers overall. That’s because there are lots of ways to manipulate conversion rates. For example, let’s say you have a popup that displays instantly when someone lands on your site. Then you […]

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Is Double Optin Hurting Your Email List?

In response to my email last week that showed how double optin does NOT a better list make, subscriber Ian Brodie replies: Hey Josh – good email 🙂 There’s another reason the engagement stats look higher for double opted in emails, it’s to do with the samples used. If you look at the way mailchimp, […]

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Copy Critique: Mortified Jeweler Sends His First Email

Longtime subscriber Andy is a jeweler with his own store. He recently told me he’s going to start writing regular emails to his list of several thousand past customers. I warned him that I might have to critique some of his emails, but he went ahead anyway. After his first email went out, he confessed […]

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Why Double Optin Is A Big Fat Lie

The raging debate among email marketers is: Single or double optin? If you’re not familiar with the terms, double optin means that you send each would-be subscriber an extra email when they try to subscribe to your list. Then the new subscriber has to click a confirmation link in this double optin email before you’re […]

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Why “Creativity” Is A Total Myth

Yesterday one of my coaching students told me: “I’m stuck. I’m trying to come up with a lead magnet to grow my list, but I can’t seem to get inside their head and come up with something interesting.” I get stuck here too. Sometimes I’ll sit down to start an email or work on a […]

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When Conversion Rates Lie

Conversion rates are nasty, lying little devils. Especially the way many marketers talk about them. Case in point: A few days ago I was reading a post on Inbound.org about the growing popularity of “welcome gate” style optin forms. More and more sites are using tools like SumoMe and Thrive to create welcome gates because […]

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Email Copywriting Critique: This “Namby Pamby”

Yesterday my coaching student “Karen” sent me an email to critique. Karen sells “marriage bootcamp” weekends—intensive, full immersion couples therapy retreats for relationships that are on the rocks. The email had a great “hook”: She demolished 3 deadly myths about happy couples. Then she ended like this: For more great ideas to keep you in […]

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Mountain music, cowboy boots and the urge to tinker

When I was 12 I started learning the guitar. I’d order these learn-at-home tapes from a company out of New York and just work through the lessons. My favorite style was Bluegrass. Think old-timey country with banjos and mandolins. Mountain music. By the time I was 14, I was good enough to impress everyone in […]

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When Copywriter Hype Gets X-Treme

In college I had a roommate named Brad. Brad was a proud “meterosexual,” back before that was a thing. He had this elaborate hair care routine—he bought only the best salon-quality hair care products and scoffed at anything that cost less than $30 a bottle. Me? Just give me the cheapest shampoo/conditioner at Wal-Mart and […]

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2 Ways To Know Your Product Will Sell

Responding to my “starving sales funnel” email from a few days back, Ashley writes: Thanks Josh – this was actually just what I needed to be reminded of today. I think what I’ve built is great, the feedback on my free course/funnel has been really positive, but no ones bought my paid course yet and […]

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Why Every Entrepreneur Needs A Mastermind Group

A couple years back I ran a giveaway that surpassed my wildest expectations — 187,991 new email subscribers in 11 days. Insane. What I don’t talk much about is how I almost pulled the plug on the whole thing. I was totally stressed out. My server crashed. People were trying to hack into WordPress. The […]

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Write a book or build my audience—which should I do first?

Subscriber Claudio is a programmer who wants to make a name for himself by building a thriving blog and email list, and writing a book. He’s bouncing around in his own head, though, and can’t get traction: I run a personal blog since 2008. I haven’t posted consistently, there were periods where I posted 2 […]

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“Funemployment,” straight razors, and the backyard bunker

Unemployment really messes with your head. While some guys end up sitting on the couch and binge-watching TV in a depressive funk, geeks like me tend to focus their frustration into some weird obsession. Back in 2008-09 I spent 6 months “between jobs,” and I threw myself into… Bladesmithing. The art of forging steel to […]

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How to crush writer’s block by mapping out your email sequence

Yesterday I got pretty frustrated with this email sequence I’m writing for a client in the mortgage lead generation niche. This particular client has an ice cold list—nearly 1,000 leads and past customers that haven’t heard a peep from my client in months or years. I banged out the first email pretty fast, but when […]

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Stop the “bucket brigade”—and start building pipelines

Ever heard of the book, “The Richest Man in Babylon”? One of the key takeaways in that book is this: “Don’t carry buckets, build pipelines.” In other words, build a machine that generates results without your direct involvement. Most people hear that and jump right to the idea of creating products to generate “passive income” […]

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