“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 […]
Continue readingRecently 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 […]
Continue readingYesterday I got an email from a customer that really chapped my hide. This moron bought a digital product from one of my websites, scanned through it, and decided it wasn’t worth the $199 he paid for it. (He’s wrong—there are single SENTENCES in this product that are easily worth 10X that much when you […]
Continue readingGot a question from a business owner I’ll call “Ted”: I hired a pretty well known – and highly paid – copywriter to put together a campaign for me and the campaign was a complete flop. When I say complete flop, I mean a test of a series of 2 postcards sent to a list […]
Continue readingA 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 […]
Continue readingIn 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, […]
Continue readingYesterday I did a consultation with a writer named Sue. Sue runs a weekly webinar about “3 blogging myths” where she sells her high end “how to blog” course. During our discussion she asked what she should say in her emails to get more people on the webinar. My reply: “Use the ‘blind tease.’” The […]
Continue readingYesterday my partner in crime John recorded an “upsell” video for one of the products we’re selling. And he instinctively did something that will make the video MUCH more effective in terms of sales. The video will live on the “thank you” page for our main funnel, which is an email course about building a […]
Continue readingMy inner loss aversion monkey is screeching and rattling the bars of his cage right now. The little guy is a furry ball of poo-flinging rage, all because of my trip to the UPS Store yesterday. What’s a “loss aversion monkey”? It comes from a study that some scientists did a few years back. They […]
Continue readingLongtime 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 […]
Continue readingRight now I’m working on 2 different free email courses. These are both for Simple Programmer, which is a business my buddy John started up. In January he brought me in as a partner to run his marketing. The first email course is one that John put together about 18 months ago. It’s called, “How […]
Continue readingThe 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 […]
Continue readingA few weeks back, my wife clued me in to the hilarious “nailed it” meme on Pinterest. This meme is a collection of crafts and baking attempts that went horribly off the rails. You post a photo of something you were *trying* to make, alongside the actual results. Like rolls that are supposed to look […]
Continue readingYesterday 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 […]
Continue readingConversion 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 […]
Continue readingYesterday 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 […]
Continue readingLongtime subscriber “Alex” is hustling to quit his day job and start a business in an unrelated niche. He has a successful podcast and growing email list of around 3,000 subscribers. He’s been pursing gigs as a freelancer, but then a new opportunity popped up. Alex writes: My plans are starting to diverge off the […]
Continue readingWhen 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 […]
Continue readingIn 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 […]
Continue readingResponding 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 […]
Continue readingA 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 […]
Continue readingSubscriber 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 […]
Continue readingUnemployment 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 […]
Continue readingYesterday 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 […]
Continue readingEver 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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