[Letter 8/365]

— Feb 01, 2024

— 03.44 pm

The Business of Writing: Full Email Course 🏴

- Everything I know about running a newsletter business -

Read on: Medium and Substack (I highly recommend reading this here)

Read time: 25 minutes

Promise: This is not an email but a full in-depth course of my newsletter business that took me over a week to finish writing

Promise 2: It's going to be a long read but this is the stuff people sell you money for that took me years to learn that I'm teaching you now for free

(And don't get me started with attention spans: I know you watch netflix, podcasts, youtube, and spend weeks reading 1 book, so you can read this too!)

What we will cover in today's ~~newsletter~~ course:

This is the internet

It's not what you think

What do I write about?

How do I get people to read my sh*t?

The outreach mindset, belief and math

My journey on how I've grown my newsletter to 2300+ subs

The evergreen LOPE framework for growing internet newsletters

The business of words - How to monetize your writing

Pick the right model

Pick the business strategy

Find The Niche

Create The Offer

Write how they buy (writing that sells)

Create The Lead magnet

Create The Sales letters

This is the internet

→ Morning routine: wake up at 3 am, run for 20 miles, work 18h a day.

→ Make 10 million dollars at age of 18 doing workout vlogs and brand sponsorships on YouTube.

→ Agency owners calling every business they see a “client” or, worse, partner.

→ AI will take your job.

→ Minorities being the most vocal, spreading hate speech.

→ Algorithms deciding which shows to watch, and which people to date.

→ Everyone has the same “24h”.

→ Influencer marketing: Perfectly curated lives.

→ Biased news and media.

→ Passive income, make money overnight.

→ Crypto gurus, NFT wizards, Funnel hackers, and the list goes on and on.

All of this fed to you on a silver plate.

But you never stopped to question.

Why is your feed is full of rushed entertainment and over-sensationalized content?

Why does your feed look something like this: Sex, Food, Money, News, Lifestyle, Travel, Sport, Ads.

And very rarely something like this: Health, Education, Religion, Philosophy, Wisdom, Wealth, Parenting.

And you think it's the “Algorithm” being trained on your preferences,

Think again.

What trains / codes / develops the algorithm to train on your preferences?

A human with biases and desires.

And since the internet is based on an alter-reality: A perfectly curated reality.

It must follow psychological triggers to tap into people's desires and expectations (lifestyle porn).

To create the perfect “product-to-consumer” experience:

Give them a product so good that they can't PHYSICALLY live without.

What do we call someone who can't live without something?

Addicted.

Addicted to a trillion-dollar industry.

You are the one paying for each and every penny.

And the internet currency you're paying with is called: Attention.

Every Attention Minute = Money Printed

This is not new to you.

You probably know this, we all are.

But we do it anyway.

Or worse,

We think we're “smarter than them”.

I used to say this all the time…

I'm going to be an active community member, a proactive citizen.

“I'm going to post content instead of consuming, that's how I fix this!”

Well, that's the next trillion-dollar industry:

The “Creator Economy”.

Whether you are on a social platform to consume, or to create:

“If it's free, you're the product.”

The more I dive deep into this, the more I realize how true that statement is.

So what's the alternative? What can we do about this?

Creating your own version of social media.

No, I'm not asking you to reinvent the wheel or create the next Facebook.

There is a whole category online that builds and owns private and owned media.

And it's not free. But you get to own it.

You pay to play. But it's affordable for 99% of business owners.

You are no longer a product, not just a regular customer, you are an owner.

It's not what you think

If you are still reading this so far, you have probably guessed it.

It's email.

It's building a community/audience with email.

But not the typical, salesy spam emails.

That kind has its place and time,

But Google is fighting so hard to shut down the cold emailing industry.

And if you're anything like me,

You want people to come to you.

You want people to be excited to open your email.

It's the whole analogy of a peacock vs. the salesman.

“A peacock, effortlessly draws attention with its vibrant display without lifting a wing. While the salesman persistently knock on doors, often facing rejection despite his great efforts.”

I'm talking about a specific type of email, called a newsletter.

Newsletter: The skill of “writing” letters in a form of a digital newspaper.

The newsletter model is a billion-dollar industry.

Just Google: How much money “Agora” make in profit per year?

(If you are interested in knowing more about the Agora business model, reply to this email and let me know. If I get at least 50 replies, I'll write that case study).

What do I write about?

Curate or Create

1) If you're a beginner, and you don't have experience in a field or an industry:

→ Curate your weekly/daily/monthly learnings into a newsletter.

→ Document emails that are slow pace, raw, unfiltered, journey of your own personal growth

2) If you have a subject-matter-expertise in a specific niche or category:

→ Write emails that change people's lives (health, wealth, mind, soul, relationships).

→ Write emails that build skills, solve problems, give value and make positive impact.

How do I get people to read my sh*t?

The skill and process of getting known (newsletter edition)

I will show you the good, fast, and cheap way of doing it.

A) The outreach mindset, belief and math it takes to hit the mark

If you truly believe that the thing you're promoting is going to change the life or business of the person you are reaching out to (without any cost on their end).

It's your obligation to get it in front of their face.

Most people spend so much time creating the thing and then spend almost zero time putting it in front of the right people, how does that math work ?

For example:

Let's say you're selling a workshop and you want 10 people to sign up.

And let's say your closing rate is 50% = 1/2 people who book a call with you, end up buying.

Do you konw how many people do you need to be in front of realistically to make those numbers work? 10? 20? 50?

Wrong.

You'd probably need at least 100 QUALIFIED and RIGHT FITTED people.

And to get 100 qualified and right fitted people,

You'd need like 500 to 1000 of unqualified ones to filter through.

I've heard Alex Hormozi on a podcast once saying that the ratio of how much he "tests" for a compaign is at least 3000 - 5000 tests.

I've also heard Steven Bartlett say we test 90+ facebook ads on 1 portion of the video before we launch it to YouTube. Guess how many videos they are posting?

So If I were to promote this workshop to get 10 sign ups,

→ I'd send 50 - 100 DMs a day for a week to all my LinkedIn connections.

→ I'd also export all my LinkedIn connections who have an email address.

And then email them individually or as a bulk and be honest on how I found their email, and that I'm only emailing you because I believe that my free thing is going to not just help you but completely change your life or business forever. While keeping the door open to "never hear back from me again" if they're not interested.

Click here to download the email to linkedin export.pdf

This is the outreach mindset:

“Maximize all your chances for luck to strike.”

And If I want a high-reply and sign-up rate,

I wouldn't use text, I'd use audio notes or videos instead.

Why?

To convey that belief in my tone as one that is helpful and caring. Not one that is salesy and spamming. While keeping that personalization factor high.

And If I wanted to go EVEN DEEPER,

I'd leverage this psychology hack that most humans have which is:

People like to help people in need, they like to feel important and feel like they can contribute into someones life in a positive way.

So another way to approach it in the DMs is instead of asking them to join my free thing, I'd change my ask.

And say something in the lines of:

“Hey, I just launched this free {thing},

And I would love to get your feedback on it.

Would you mind checking it out and letting me know if it is any good?

Here's the link: ____

Thanks in advance!”

You can even stretch this and ask for a feedback call.

I did it to sell one of my previous personal branding masterclasses (which might become available if you reply with I'm interested) and it worked like a charm.

BUT AMINE...

“I don't want to sound pushy or reach out to someone that I don't know, without at least seeing a sign of interest or a clue that they're interested in me or in what I have to offer.”

What I'm hearing is that you still lack the belief in you or in your thing (or both).

If you don't fix that, This is not going to work.

But let's say you do believe in your thing but it would be nice to have/see some signs of interest.

In that case, use POLLS.

It's a fast and easy way to get people to give you permission to reach out to them. I use it all the time.

Here's the framework for successful outreach:

Strong Belief + Polls + DMs + Feedback strategy + Audio/Video Personalization = Successful Outreach 🚀

Why do I prefer polls and DMs over just making content?

Your content isn't going to be seen by all of your followers.

My account has 10k followers and most times, my posts are only getting between 100 to 500 views.

Which is a tiny friction % of my actual audience.

But when you DM your followers, even your content views increase. Win-Win.

And when that happens,

You should be making content around the thing you're promoting with different formats based on the platform (text, visuals, videos, carousels, etc.) so that you reinfroce the message and the value it provides to not just your audience but to the people who do not follow you yet.

B) My journey on how I've grown my newsletter to 2300+ subs

In 2021,

I hated my newsletter, I hated opening my MailChimp account, I cringed from the UI and UX.

I grew 500 subscribers through manual labor:

Connections, friends, peers in the industry, etc.
I’ve met with 200+ people 1-1 through coffee chats (perfect COVID-19 story)

Then in 2022,

I started working on my branding and social media presence and got around another 400 or 500 subs:

Mentioning the newsletter everywhere (stories, comments, posts, CTA).
Obsessing over sending it over the DMs to as many of my followers as I possibly can (think of it like this: “People don’t like parties but they love to be invited”)
Giving away free value in exchange of emails aka lead magnets (this the best approach). The better the lead magnet, The more the leads.

Finally, in 2023,

Things started to kickoff, I got around 1500+ subs:

I hosted a workshop collaboration with another peer in the same industry,
we exchanged email lists and then we announced the partnership to our lists
(So that they don’t just unsubscribe after they get my emails).
I exported my LinkedIn connection list and I found a couple hundred emails,

I sent them a welcome email with complete transparency on how I got their emails with the option to unsubscribe if they don't want to hear from me.
I hosted events on LinkedIn using my company page as the event page host, and that has given me the option to grab people’s email when they sign-up directly/natively on LinkedIn (one event I got like 100+ emails in just 1h)

Final (advanced) experiment I'm planning to explore in 2024:

ADS, referral programs and brand sponsorships.

Meta / X
Beehiiv Boosts
ConvertKit SparkLoop
Newsletter Platforms (Refind)
Sponsorship brands

That’s it! I gave you everything I know on how to grow and promote your newsletters, hope this saves you some years down the line!

To recap everything above and beyond, I created the LOPE framework.

C) The evergreen LOPE framework for growing internet newsletters

Leverage: Social media to deplatform your audience every day.
Organic: Write every day for 365 days on platforms like Substack, Medium, Beehivv, and your own Blog (with SEO in mind).
Partner / Pay: Find similar creators and business owners writing in the same niche or category, pay for an ad slot or ask to promote your newsletter for free. You can even exchange each other's newsletter subscribers (But let them know about the partnership, be fully transparent).
Experiment: Download mass email databases from online email tools like Apollo, Instantly, or Lemlist.

But be careful, this is a very advanced and COSTLY method. You'd need to clean the list, warm the list, use a different domain name, create cold sequences, build expectations and much more, before you even bother to move that list to your email newsletter.

The business of words

The million-dollar question: How do I make money from my writing?

Assuming you put in the time & reps to:

→ Learn how to use the tools.

→ Learn how to write effectively.

→ Learn how to grow your list with the right reader in mind.

You are 3 steps closer to start MMO (making money online).

Step 1. Pick the model

How do you want to get paid?

1 → Monthly subscriptions (recurring)

2 → Selling (digital) products

3 → Selling services

4 → Selling ads and newsletter sponsorships

The trick here is not in picking which model suits you best,

It's in creating the customer journey for that specific model.

What do I mean by that?

The behavior/journey/roadmap from how 1 customer buys a monthly subscription is completely different from how that same customer would buy a group coaching service, for example.

If you think that by just announcing that you have a “group coaching” program in the footer of your emails is going to make that 1 person buys just because that's how they bought the monthly newsletter membership,

You'd be wrong.

You'd be leaving shitloads of money on the table with that kind of thinking.

The only way you can understand how creating a customer journey for your specific model works is by doing two things:

A) Asking them directly — Aka conducting surveys and interviews

B) Learning from the best in your category who are making the money you want to make serving the customer you want to serve

(Or you can book a 15-min call with me, and I'll help you create that for your specific case study)

Step 2. Pick the business strategy

I'm going to make this simple for you (not easy).

You'd need to figure out a niche and an offer.

1) Niche

A category of people that you can actually help solve their problems

The rule of thumb is this:

“It's more important to whom you sell to than what you sell”

I'm going to save you time and give you the “Niche Bible”

Choose a niche that (is):

You understand (what they have and don't) (industry, skill, style, etc.)
In pain (actively looking to solve a problem)
Has purchasing power (affordability)
High client worth
Recession-proof
Big target market
Can handle volume
Easy to target (discoverability)
(High-level CEOs hard to get in contact with, detailing niches are very easy to get in contact with)
Market growing
(This works when selling product to a large scale but we only need 5 to 10 clients a month)
Has an evergreen offer
(It would be tough to work with Xmas decorations cause it would be tough to get clients in august)

Side note:

The perfect niche doesn't exist.

Your goal isn't perfection but to have as many of these checkmarks as possible.

BIG MINDSET shift right here:

“You are not marrying your niche!

Your niche today doesn't have to be your niche tomorrow.

Building in one niche is a skill.

Once you have that, you can build your success to any other niche you damn choose.”

As a niche hacker,

Aka niche penetrater,

Aka category dominator,

Here are 6 principles you should follow after selecting your niche:

Clear ⇒ what you do and who you do it for
Knowable ⇒ where can they find you
Credible ⇒ why should they trust you if others haven’t (Testimonials)
Valuable ⇒ Do you solve their problem
Irresistible ⇒ Give them no reason to say no
Offerable ⇒ Provide options and a way to say yes and move forward (Next steps should be clearly documented)

If you want to dive deeper into making money,

Check out the framework that prints cash, damn near automatic, on letter number 5

2) Offer

How you present your {solution} in a way that makes the customer more money in less time without pain ⇒ You making money as a result

Bad offer:

→ “I’ll ghostwrite for you for $3,000 a month.”

→ “I’ll coach you for 3 months for $4,000.”

Good offer:

→ “I’ll help you grow your following and increase your sales by $10k per month. If I don’t achieve these metrics, I’ll work for free until I do.”

→ “I’ll increase your sales by $5k per month. If I don’t achieve this, I’ll work for free until I do.”

Offer framework = Result + ROI on fee + Risk reversal

If you are selling 3 or 4 different offers, watch this:

Step 3. Write how they buy (writing that sells)

Now that you've spent the time researching your ideal customer and learning how to best serve them with your offer.

It's time to attract them to you.

Again, simple but not easy.

You will need 2 pieces for this to work.

Lead magnet(s) and sales letter(s).

1) Lead magnet creation

Value that captures leads' attention

The rule of thumb is this:

“Make your FREE lead magnet better than your competitor's paid service or product.”

Here is a 2-step process on how to create an irresistible lead magnet:

A) When building a lead magnet, put your customer shoes and ask yourself 3 questions:

1— What's the closet problem I can solve to connect them with my core offer?

2— What do they need in order for me to be able to help them?

3— How can I deliver that in a way that's enticing and effective?

B) Create an unscalable lead magnet (then scale it)

→ If you don't have a great offer to create a lead magnet for make one or borrow/affiliate one

→ Productize one paid solution to a problem that your service solves for free

→ Don’t think of the “newsletter” itself as the “main lead magnet” that’s not how people behave when it comes to giving up their email addresses.

Remember what I told you above where the higher the quality of the lead magnet, the more the subscribers?

Don’t think of the “newsletter” itself as the “main lead magnet” that’s not how people behave when it comes to giving up their email addresses.

The newsletter should be the promise of a marriage but never (on) the first date.

As with all matters of first dates,

Your high-value lead magnet should be well dressed, in shape, seductive, irresistible, seen from a mile away… You know how this analogy goes.

Creating high-value lead magnets formula:

High value = Insane, fast, no-brainer, irresistible, personalized at scale, solves a problem.

Bad lead magnet:

Ebook
Article
Report
Case study

Good lead magnet:

Educational Email Course (video or email)
Productized Service (giveaway a coaching/consulting/audit/high-value-recording or live in xchange of @)
Personalized Roadmap/Plan
Access (to you, your community, your BTS insiders, etc.)

(Shameless plug)

If you’re reading this email and thinking to yourself:

“Wow, this is really helpful—I wish I had one of these for myself, attracting clients, building an email list, creating lead magnets, owning an asset that works as a sales rep 24/7, while building credibility, authority, and industry-recognition” I can help!

I specialize in ghostwriting premium educational email courses (EEC) for misfit executives™. Click here to book a 15 minute call to see if I can help you. Or, respond to this email and let me know what you’re looking for!

That's how you build a high-value lead magnet!

Now for the last piece of the puzzle.

2) Sales letters

The bridge that closes the gap between your offer and your niche

If you got this far,

You're serious about the business of words.

You are a true entrepreneur and I salut you.

You know have the skills to write,

The skills to know who to write to,

The skills to market your writing,

The skills to build a writing business (model).

You came this far but the money is still tight.

It still feels like you are wasting your time... Nothing is working.

But let me tell you, you are so wrong.

You are measuring success in the wrong way.

You are measuring your bank account instead of all the skills you acquired along the way.

Think about it like crossing a bridge full of rocks,

Every skill you learn is like moving one rock from the road.

You have moved 80% of the rocks but you still can't see the horizon.

And that's where the money is... On the other side of the road.

So let's fix that. Let's move the last 20% of rocks from your way forever.

All you need is 5 sales letter to bridge the gap between you (your offer) and your customer (niche).

1) Sales Letter : The Transition / Transformation

A transition between the learning and the action taking.

To position yourself as the guide who will help them:

→ Take the jump from konwledge to tangible and witnessed change in their business.

→ Transition from where they are to where they want to be.

→ To show them the path and how it feels to be on the path (other side).

2) Sales Letter : The Challenges & Benefits

This is education on the problem in a rational logical way,

Make them feel understood.

We know that you’re struggling with these things:

Pain 1
Pain 2
Pain 3

Here’s how we’re solving the challenges you’re facing and here’s the benefit of solving it

Pro tip: Take their words, say it back.

3) Sales Letter : The Price Anchor

This first sales letters serve as an emotional trigger.

And the price anchor should serve as a rational + FOMO trigger.

Show why you’re charging what you’re charging to give them more context on the price and how high value it (appears) is.

The price has to be an absurd amount of value with

a laughably low price

Detail every single thing that they are going to get next to a quote on how much it should cost:

To sell a 10k product, put it next to a 50k product
{X} should cost $10k but we’re only charging $1k

Only rise the price of your thing $100 when you've added an extra $1000 of value.

4) Sales Letter : Success Stories / In-depth Case Study (FAQs)

As much as you think what you're selling is amazing (which is a good thing, you need that belief in sales),

No one is going to buy it just because you said so.

You need to show real proof of your brand.

Aka:

What you say it is should be aligned with what they (your customers) say it is

(Especially if it's a high ticket thing!)

This is why you need a "success stories" email in place.

To show first-hand that people like you who took action have unlocked or started seeing all these things (ideally monetary results) that we told you in the emails before this.

Btw, this is also called "keeping your promise".

The format of your success stories should vary between:

→ Live conversations

→ YouTube videos

→ Testimonial links

→ Quotes and words

→ Read out loud: Quotes from ex-buyers surveying them on why they bought your thing

Pro tips:

The more you’re charging, the more you should point in some sort of a financial ROI.
Make this super relevant to the buyer: "This person is in your exact same shoes" -- Don't share caes studies from your mom.
The case studies should be outcome-based and should close the gap between the pain of now and the desire of tomorrow.
If you don't have case studies to show, offer your thing for free for the first 2 or 3 iterations.

The goal of the "case studies" email is to help the buyer self-select your service.

5) Sales Letter : Last Chance / Here's Everything You Get 1 More Time

Let me put it in this way,

If you hate sales, you will not make money

You don't need to be a sales expert to know that the urgency last-minute FOMO factor works.

It's everywhere.

Even in your mom-and-pap shop next door. They use it and you buy.

You need to include every type of buyer in your sales cycle.

Especially the "last-minute indecisive" buyer.

A consumer behavior study have shown that 15-20% of buyers likes to make a last-minute purchase. You do the math.

In this email you don't have to write anything new,

Just recap everything one more time.

Add a (1h - 24h left) timer (great Convertkit feature).

Wait and see the magic!

6) (Bonus) Letter : Survey and Loop

Obviously you will not get everybody on your list to buy.

That's okay. That's the game.

Some people will stay on your list for a year before they make a buying-decision.

So what do you do in that case? 4 things:

Track the click of those who shown interest in your thing but didn't buy
Ask them why they didn't buy and improve your service/product
Add them back to the newsletter and keep adding value
Add them to your next sales cycle

Your goal is not to keep everyone on your list forever.

You are running a writing "business", remember?

The goal/journey of a subscriber is simple:

P1 → Get value from you → Know you → Like you → Trust you → Buy from you

P2 → Don't get value from you → Don't like you → Unsubscribe

So don't hold your horses!

Keep adding value and keep selling them until they either buy or go somewhere else.

Selling is not selling when you add the "value" aspect to the equation.

It suddenly becomes "serving".

And you are fairly compensated for your service.

If you're interested in getting my sales letter templates at a laughly low price with examples of how I'm using them for my clients for a bargain of $50, Click here and I'll send them to you.

(If you're seeing this online, send me an email at amine@brandorchestrate.com with the subject line: Sales Letter Templates)

To Recap

There is no shortcut.

Acquiring all these skills is going to take time. A lot of it.

But once you master them,

You'll be able to make your own luck & write your own check,

Damn near automatic.

Here's your 2024 bulletproof plan from an eye-birds view:

What to write about?

Curate your learnings
Create in a niched-topic of expertise
Document everything. Document “you”.

How to get people to read your sh*t?

Leverage x Organic x Partner / Pay x Experiment

Social media content (polls, feedback strategy)
Outreach & DMs (personalization)
Partnerships and collaborations
Ask current subs to share
Ads and sponsorships
SEO

How to monetize your writing

1) Pick the right model:

Monthly recurring subcription
Selling digital products & services
Ads: Selling subscribers

2) Pick the business strategy

Find your niche (you understand, in pain, has money, volume, etc.)
Create an offer (result + ROI + risk reversal)

3) Write how they buy (writing that sells)

Create a high-value unscalable lead magnet (ideally an email course or productized service)
Create The 5 sales letters (transformation, challenges & benefits, price anchor, success stories, last chance)

That's it!

That's everything I know about building a writing business (so far!).

P.S. To walk my talk, everything I shared with you today was already tested and proven to work for one of my clients:

→ “I could not have done this without you!!!” — Jason Sayen, Process Architect

So, If you're interested in building your own premium educational email course,
get in touch.

Till next time,

Your brand conductor.

P.P.S. I'm not doing a good job promoting this newsletter, I'm losing subs every day. My commitment to you is to show up every day. Your commitment to me is If you liked what you read, you share with you saw.

I WANT TO CONNECT WITH YOU

COME AND FIND ME