Trying New Things and I Blame Richard
This is the very first email/newsletter that I've ever sent. How does this thing work?
You can thank Richard Patey for the existence of this entire newsletter. Here’s what happened.
A few weeks ago, I interviewed Richard for my YouTube channel. He has a lot of experience with operating websites, monetizing sites, buying and selling sites, valuing sites, and on and on.
I would interview him every week if I could.
As always happened, we ended up talking about almost nothing that I planned to, and the interview still went for more than two hours.
And, as always happened, I ended up leaving the Zoom virtual meeting room feeling grateful that we spoke of nothing I had prepared, because Richard opened up my eyes to the existence of this platform and business model.
What model, you ask?
Instead of trying to build a following (via YouTube or email or Facebook group) to which he could sell a course, ebook or other info product, Richard was trying to grow a following that he could serve with a newsletter (both free and paid).
Instead of the standard Lead Magnet + Autoresponder + Soap Opera Sequence + Offer, Richard created high quality content that people wanted to subscribe to receive. And then he just went on creating awesome content.
It was a win-win for everyone:
Richard could build a following that he could control in the event that the platform shut down or kicked him off;
The subscribers could get access to high quality content that they actually wanted to read/listen/watch/consume; and
Unlike when you just post content like a mouse on a wheel to Facebook pages/groups, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, to email lists, Richard could monetize the list with paid sponsorships or a premium version of his newsletter without having to create a course or other info product.
“Sounds like having an email list,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, “it does. But it’s better.”
Richard told me that he could just have had an email list (which he had done previously). But with a platform like Substack, he didn’t have to pay for a separate website, optin page or plugin, or autoresponder. He didn’t have to manually subscribe people to his paid newsletter, or take those payments, or remove people who terminated their subscriptions. Substack did all that.
He didn’t have to blast out affiliate offers to earn additional income or sell products if he didn’t want to. After all, he could just create premium content for those who were interested in paying for it. Not only that, but on this platform, it would be much, much easier to attract sponsors who were interested in paying to get in front of his audience.
The idea of a newsletter appealed to me right away.
I’ve never wanted to achieve guru status, and I have always planned to leave the high ticket course creation and sales to the experts. But I could see how someone could build a newsletter audience simply by delivering high quality content consistently.
And eventually, that audience could be monetized in reasonable ways, either via sponsored posts, ad banners, or premium content. No super huge or expensive info product required.
I was intrigued.
Yet.
As we spoke, it was abundantly clear to me why Richard had a newsletter, and why he had thousands of subscribers (many of whom are paying subscribers). After all, he knows so much about topics that people would and do pay a lot of money to learn about.
But it wasn’t so clear to me right away how I could start my own newsletter.
Richard told me several times in the conversation (and several times over messenger afterwards) that I needed to start an email newsletter.
I heard him, yet I doubted.
Why would people want to hear what I think about anything?
After all, I’m only two years into this whole make money online business thing. Sure, I pay all my bills with what I earn online, but it’s nothing special, right?
Richard, in his matter-of-fact way, pointed me to look at my small YouTube channel. As of writing this, I was just six subscribers short of crossing 1,700. In the previous 90 days, I had gained more than 850 new subscribers, and had accrued another 50,000 views and almost 4,000 hours of watch time.
Are those the numbers belonging to the channel of a person that no one is interested in?
Clearly, my doubts were being driven by imposter syndrome and self-confidence problems.
It was those numbers (numbers I looked at today, June 6, 2020) that inspired the logical side of my brain to step in and do the thinking for me (rather than the emotional, anxious side):
One doesn’t have to achieve guru status to start a YouTube channel.
If that is the case, it follows that one doesn’t have to achieve guru status to start an email newsletter.
End of inquiry.
Thus, Emilia Gardner Weekly was born.
I’m still working out what this is going to be and how it is going to work out. I’m not sure about the name, but I had to pick something. Otherwise it’ll be 2021 and I still won’t be launched.
And since it is all free, I don’t have to worry just yet about what people think about it.
As with anything, I learn the best while doing.
Sitting on the sidelines has never gotten me anywhere. I already know this about myself.
I know not many people at my level or stage of experience are doing this just yet.
But I’m not going to let either of those assumptions guide me or my journey.
I’m going to commit to doing 100 of these newsletters, whether I’m blasting them out to 5 people or 500. Just like my podcast (I’ve committed to 100 episodes there as well). Once I’ve got some reps I’ll know a lot more about how this works and what I need to get better at.
I look forward to working to produce the best possible product I can and to improve my product week on week.
What did I do this week?
If you missed it, I was pretty active. On YouTube, I posted three videos:
Over at the podcast, I didn’t post anything because I ran out of upload time for the month, so I won’t have anything new up until next week.
What’s coming up this week?
Coming up this week, I’m planning on doing my very first livestream interview with Passive Income Geek Morten Storgaard. I’m super excited about this (and nervous) because I’ve never done a livestreamed interview before. I’m less worried about the actual interview, and more worried about the performance of the technology. I’m testing Streamyard for the first time (the free version of it seems to have what I need), but in general I like to do a test run before race day.
This is Morten’s very first live video of any kind, so we are both a bit nervous about it I think. I’m expecting the usual suspects to show up, and I’m asking a few extra people specially to attend to help make it fun for Morten, so it should be a nice little party.
I’m also planning on publishing my interview with Richard on Monday, which has been chopped up into two parts, and I also have clips from my podcast interview with affiliate marketer Jacob Caris scheduled for Friday.
The podcast should have something new this week as well, so look for that.
Thanks again Richard, I blame you for this. :D
-E
Interesting idea for sure!
I like that the H2s tell the story ;)