A few days ago I wrote about a Polish entrepreneur who started a business helping people who need a safe place to “hulk out” and smash things. And I said that the genius of his idea is how it taps into an existing mass desire. Which prompts a question from Felix: +++ I love this […]
Continue readingComes a question from subscriber Aadeeti: “I really enjoy the way you write. I have always wanted to be a compelling writer but I can’t bring myself to write long prose. I can write poetry but prose does not come easily to me. What do you suggest to improve my content writing skills.” Ask a […]
Continue readingMy youngest son is a beast. He’s just hitting 7 months old now, and he’s already wearing 18-month clothes. (No idea where he gets it—my build is… let’s just call it slight and leave it at that.) A few weeks ago he figured out how to haul his huge frame up into a standing position, […]
Continue readingMy all-time favorite Internet meme is: “You had ONE job!” If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, check out http://imgur.com/gallery/TbagF I could spend all day looking at those photos. A few that made me laugh this morning include: A hunk of beef labeled “USDA inspected”… and marked on the package as “chicken.” An ad […]
Continue readingA few days ago Naomi Dunford from IttyBiz got me all riled up with a quote from Stephen Pressfield’s “War of Art.” Says Pressfield: +++ I learned this from Robert McKee. A hack, he says, is a writer who second-guesses his audience. When the hack sits down to work, he doesn’t ask himself what’s in […]
Continue readingMy #1 goal for 2016 is growing my email list to 10,000 subscribers. That’s a 7X increase—pretty ambitious. And my new “weapon of choice” that’s going to help me get there is a suite email marketing powertools from a startup called Thrive. Here’s the problem I’ve always had in the past: There are TONS of […]
Continue readingEver feel like you just need to SMASH something? I’m usually a pretty mild mannered guy, but I’ll confess that I can come pretty close to “hulking out” sometimes. My last job as a programmer brought this side of me out. I’d spend all day developing an iPhone app, and let me tell you… After […]
Continue readingReader Yurii writes: +++ I’m only starting with email marketing and the most frustrating question for me at the moment is “Why people don’t answer my emails?” I’ve got only about 30 people on my mailing list, but all of them seem absolutely unresponsive and not even willing to respond with a simple yes or […]
Continue readingIn college my dream was to be a journalist. Specifically, I wanted to write the kind of brilliant, “long-form” feature stories published by magazines like The New Yorker and Harper’s Weekly. My heroes were the old-school “gonzo” journalists like George Plimpton and Tom Wolfe. (Plimpton once spent months training as a football player with the […]
Continue readingTwenty years ago, the Internet was a very different place. If you wanted to “go online,” you’d plug a phone cable into your computer, then sit there listening to the busy signal as you dialed up your local AOL number over and over… (I’d get giddy when I finally heard R2D2 pick up on the […]
Continue readingMy story last week about donnie smacked a raw nerve with subscriber Spencer Goldade of Monkeyslunch: +++ Totally understand this. I get way too many Donnies. 🙁 I’ve been sharing many of your daily newsletter pieces with the office and convincing them that when we’re ready we should ask and see if you’ll help us […]
Continue readingThe other day we got this coupon book in the mail. You’ve probably seen something similar: It’s formatted like a magazine, but every page is an offer from a different company. My wife was flipping through it while I sorted through my junk mail, and I glanced over when I heard her say “Oh!” She […]
Continue readingAround this time last year, I decided I to get a portrait taken. I was getting ready to launch my copywriting biz at the time, and I wanted to look professional. The photographer I chose was a guy named Kevin. I met Kevin when I was working my first job as a writer and graphic […]
Continue readingI belong to a couple of paid forums for marketers and copywriters. There’s this one topic that seems to set everyone off. It’s weird, because this concept is covered in almost every course or book on direct marketing, and it’s one most of the “gurus” seem to agree on. But bring this up in the […]
Continue readingBack in college, I caught a lot of flak from my “underlings” on the student newspaper. It was my job as editor to sniff around campus and come up with a list of stories for the little weekly tabloid I oversaw. The same scene would play out every week. The staff would gather around the […]
Continue readingRight now I’m climbing the steep learning curve of Facebook advertising. Now personally I hate Facebook. I’ve managed to avoid it for almost entirely for the past 7-8 years. But there’s no denying that Facebook is the best platform in the world for reaching new customers (at least for my business and a lot of […]
Continue readingOne question I get asked a lot is like this one from Srdjan in Toronto: === Hey Josh, just wanted to say I really enjoy your style of writing. I see that you’ve put a lot of work into honing your craft and I’d love to know what you would consider the one or two […]
Continue readingA couple of months back I put up a “squeeze page.” (You already know what that is, even if you don’t know the term. It’s an email opt-in page that teases a giveaway, like a free report, but “squeezes” the reader to surrender their email address first.) My squeeze page offers my “Email Marketing Cheatsheet,” […]
Continue readingHilarious email came in the other day: === Subject: i might wanna hire you i read your twitter description, i’m interested. book a time with me to pitch me your service/consulting [link to calendar] donnie === What a charmer! I don’t even know him yet, and he’s already playing games. Trying to gain the upper […]
Continue readingBefore I hung out my shingle and started taking my own clients, I spent 9 long months as a “copy grunt.” Well technically the term is “copy cub.” Or “apprentice,” or “intern.” Basically I found a seasoned pro copywriter and agreed to do his dirty work. In exchange I got Fiverr wages for cranking out […]
Continue readingYesterday I had some fun shredding a new client’s sale page. Tearing the copy apart, piece by piece, showing him where it worked and where it failed miserably. (Having your copy critiqued is murder on the ego but it’s the fastest way to improve.) When we got to his offer, here’s what I told him: “You’re […]
Continue readingDoes it matter what time of day you send your emails? And what about days of the week—are some better than others? I have 2 answers for this. One is the tried and true response of all consultants: “It depends.” And truthfully it does. Different markets have very different habits and patterns. For example, if […]
Continue readingSo how long should you keep people on your email list? And if you’re building out an autoresponder sequence, how long should it run? 14 days? 30 days? 60? Marketing wizard Dean Jackson likes to talk about a study done by a company called The Inquiry Handling Service. These guys process business reply cards for […]
Continue readingThis past weekend I finally watched “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” (Yeah, I know, I know… I’ve been living under a cultural rock for the past 3 years to get my business launched, and I have a lot of catching up to do.) One of the best lines in the whole movie comes when arch-villian Ultron […]
Continue readingI hear from a lot of would-be email marketers who know that it’s important offer a mind-blowing “lead magnet” to attract new subscribers to their email list… But they have NO idea what they should create. Should I write an ebook? Or do an info graphic? Maybe an email course would be better… Most of […]
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