747: 17 Proven Tactics to Grow and Monetize Your Online Business

24:08And so she would personally send a video back to everybody who asked a question. And they were like, oh my gosh, you're a real person. You actually read this email. And so everyone who submitted that, 100 % of the people she replied to with the video showed up for the webinar. And I think over 50 % of those people who showed up bought the product. and it's like a$2 ,000 plus product. So I think people are craving that like actual human connection versus like getting lumped into the ether with 10 ,000 other people. So by doing that little personalization, I think she really hit on something there.

24:44Yeah, was it literally like a separate video ask for every person? And there might be hundreds of different videos. And so it wasn't AI, it wasn't anything tricky. It was like, hey, Chanel, thanks so much for signing up. Looking forward to hanging out live. If you have any questions, let me know, like times 100 or how many people. Yeah. So the initial video is the same for every person. It's like, hey, thanks for signing up. Let me know if you have any questions. But if somebody replied to that, she would then reply with a custom video. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So I think she said she sent like 300 plus custom videos back.

25:15And then there were still like 100 more on the last day. And she's like, I don't have time to do this. And she just sent like the same one to those 100. But yeah, she went through and did the work and it paid off for sure. Yeah. This is kind of reminiscent. I would not do videos, but would try and do a personalized email to probably the first 10 ,000 people who signed up for the Sign Hustle Nation newsletter. And it would just say like, look, where are you at? And if I could discern anything from the domain name of their URL, or sometimes like back in AWeber in the day, like you would guess what city you were at.

25:46Like, oh, I used to live in Atlanta. You know, what's going on? Just trying to get some level of response and maybe send positive signals to Gmail. other email platforms, but kind of doing that personalized heavy lifting early on. And it worked. And in Sam's case, it says this launch generated over half a million dollars in revenue. So Sam is an attorney who helps online entrepreneurs protect and legally set up their business in the right way. So definitely did something right there. Yeah. And I think she's now doing this for her podcast and her newsletter too. And so it's not just for a webinar.

26:22She's actually sending this out when people join the list and asking them to ask questions. And she's just getting like really good content ideas from this. And so you don't have to have a webinar to use this strategy. I think you can do it with pretty much anything. Oh, okay. I like that. So everybody who joins your typical strategy would be like, what's your number one struggle? Or what are you struggling with right now? And then you could use that to feed future content or start a conversation. But yeah, doing it in video, if you have the bandwidth, this is above and beyond. Yeah. Because I mean, a lot of, you know, oh, if somebody joins my paid product, sure, I'll send up a personalized video.

26:58And that was a common strategy is like a little extra unexpected bonus touch point. But just for an email, it's like, dang, she really cares. This is cool. It is cool. And she does, she does. She actually replies to a lot of her emails. And I think that just like adds to the extra excitement for people. So definitely standing out. In an AI world, what are the different ways you can use to break through the clutter? So good job, Sam. Yeah. All right, what's next? So the next one that I had was from Dan Cumberland, and he is a creator using AI to the max. I love seeing the examples of the things he's doing.

27:32But the one he shared that I think is super relevant for people is that he took all of his past six months of broadcast emails from his Kit account, and he dumped them into AI. Now you can use the kit MCP with Claude. And he just said, hey, give me like five rules for the best subject lines that have the most, like the best open rates that I've had in the last six months. And so it gave him, he thought it was going to be, oh, the ones with numbers or like extreme percentages or something like juicy like that. But it actually came out with like five different rules for him to use moving forward.

28:08So it pulled out the contrarian claim, like everyone's doing this. most people are doing it wrong, the unexpected comparison, specific number and parenthetical, and then questions that imply risk, like is your chat GPT memory working against you? And then a first person confession. But again, like these five things are just for what's working with Dan's email list. The overarching idea here is like put your information into Claude or whatever and see what's working for you and then take those and kind of use them moving forward. Okay. Have you done this yet? I have not done this yet. I started to, and then I got hung up and I stopped.

28:45Yeah, I'm really curious. I'll make a note to play around with it. Even just the MCP, I don't even know what that stands for, but the connection is cool in itself. It's like, because we're kind of drafting the first version of newsletters, and then it's kind of this copy and paste game. But it's like, could you just create that draft for it? Follow this template? And it's like, oh yeah, I can do that. So I'm just getting started over there, but this is kind of cool. And so going back to the well of what works, that's the takeaway from this one is improving your open rates by looking at what got good open rates in the past.

29:21Yes. Yep, exactly. And I think the human would think it's one thing, but the AI is like, wait, no, it's actually this like pattern that I'm seeing. So I think AI is pretty good with pattern recognition. So it could be a useful tool. Very good. All right. Next one I have is theassist.com from Joanna, who runs a professional development newsletter, workplace tips, career advice, that kind of thing. And she did something to kind of reactivate subscribers who maybe hadn't opened anything in a while, yes? Yeah, exactly. So they set up a new re-engagement sequence. So if anybody hadn't opened an email in 30 days, they started going through these four emails that she set up.

30:02Yeah, after 30 days is kind of an interesting short, but I'm curious to hear the thinking behind that. Maybe she's sending more often than me. Yeah, I think she sends three times a week. I think that's probably more. Oh, okay. Yeah. Three, four times a week. Sure. Yeah. If it's weekly, you could do like 60 or 90 days. Yeah. 300 ,000 subscribers. Good work. Yeah. They're definitely building a good business over there. Okay. So 30 days, no opens. And so this is kind of automatically triggered. What does she send Yeah. So the first one is just assuming that the subscriber wants your emails but isn't seeing them.

30:36And so the subject line is like, I think it actually says, get me out of here. And so it's like a cheeky way to say, get me out of this bucket of people who aren't opening your emails. So the email just walks you through exactly how to whitelist the assist and actually get their emails moving forward. So that's just kind of the first email of catch their attention if they're actually wanting to stay. And then the second one is kind of like reintroducing what the assist writes about, because they might have forgotten who you are or never fully understood who you are. And so that email kind of gives them like the full picture of what you write about, who you are, and why they should keep listening.

31:12Oh, okay. So kind of like in case you forgot why you signed up for this in the first place. And if it's been 30 days and you haven't opened anything, yeah, you legit might have forgot. Totally. Especially with something like the assist, like it doesn't really have a good, yeah. Like yours, I feel like people would know it's about side hustles, but maybe not. But no, I do occasionally because it's like, well, there's so many lead magnets and it's been going on for so many years. People sometimes are like, who are you? Why am I getting this? And it's like, yeah, some kind of re-engagement, reintroduction would make sense.

31:43And maybe including like some of your past content that was people really resonated with or that kind of thing. And then the third one is the direct ask is what they called it. So it's kind of just like a, hey, we've noticed you haven't been opening. Do you still want to hear it from us? If not, we'll unsubscribe you. Kind of just like putting that instead of that being the first email, putting it third. So you get the other two first. And then the last one is like the final one, I guess. It's a last chance to just like, hey, in case you really missed everything above, we're going to unsubscribe you here soon.

32:12So heads up kind of thing. Okay. And so day three is requesting a click. Like, you can leave now. Like, that would be fine. or click here to stay. You're trying to send some signal to the software that, okay, yes, I'm a real person. I'm reading these. Yeah, exactly. And if they want to unsubscribe, that's great. Then you don't have to send them an email they don't want on day four or email four. Okay. I think it's good to get people to unsubscribe. I know that's kind of controversial, but it's really helping the health of your list and making sure you're actually getting through to the other people who want your emails.

32:43And so anything you can do to get the wrong people off and keep the right people there is good. Yeah. How much do you trust the open rate metrics? Like if somebody hasn't been opening for 30 days, sometimes you get replies be like, are you kidding? I read every email. Totally. It's not perfect. But if someone really wants to stay, I mean, they're probably going to click something if you ask them to. Okay. It's not perfect though. I think open rates are just like, I don't even use them that much anymore. But like the click rate is a little bit better. And then I've started tagging people who actually reply to my emails with Zapier.

33:19So that's like another signal to say like, hey, this person's actually engaged. Yeah, even better. Maybe that's the hierarchy. Open rate, sure. Clicking on something, hey, that's harder to imitate. And then actually replying. Yeah, that's really great if you can get somebody to do that. Maybe through a personalized video message. There you go. The other thing I did want to note on the assist when I clicked subscribe, it didn't even ask for a name. It just said enter your email and had the button to do it. the button did not say continue though. Join free is the button. Yeah. Maybe they should try continue.

33:55What's your take on that too? Because I like to do some personalization here and there. And it's like, it's good to have at least a first name. And so sometimes, and I have some forms that don't include it. And so it can be frustrating when some people have that personalization and others don't, and it's like, it just shows up blank or there's like a default setting, but what works for you? I should go check out growth in reverse and see how you have it set up. I don't have first name on most of them, but for some of them I do. Like a lead magnet, I will. I don't think friction is a bad thing necessarily.

34:25And if someone's not willing to put their first name in, it's like, well, I don't know. Are you really that interested? But there is something about just getting them subscribed and having them love you later and just be excited about subscribing and figure out if they're actually going to stick around. So I don't know. I go back and forth with it and I think everyone can do their own thing, but I generally don't put first name. All right. We're learning how to keep our list more engaged, get more people to subscribe, get more of the right people to stay subscribed, opening our messages, replying to them, clicking on the stuff and ultimately buying our thing.

35:00The next one under this category of engagement is called the four hour email that boosted engagement 40%. This is from Jason at nurture kit.co. Yeah, this one is awesome. So essentially what Jason did was people would subscribe for a lead magnet or a resource. And after that, usually you don't send them another email. You just let them go into your regular broadcasts. But what Jason did is four hours after sending that lead magnet to the person, he would follow up and say, only to the people who didn't open or click that, he would follow up and say, hey, did you get the free thing? And then he would ask them, oh, by the way, I just wanted to know why you signed up.

35:41Just wanted to make sure you saw the resource. and just kind of start to open up a conversation with people. His whole thing is like consulting. So he's not trying to just get this huge list. He's trying to actually get a high quality of list who might end up buying from him later. So I really, really like this one because it's just like building conversation and getting to know his subscribers. Yeah, this is a really interesting one. Okay, so your lead magnet is your first 30 days blueprint and first name and email in this case, but click here to get the blueprint. And if I don't click on the blueprint in the first four hours, he's going to be like, bro, what's going on?

36:17Did you really want this thing? Yeah. Because we've always had that kind of engagement and click metric data for the lead magnet delivery emails, but never thought to really follow up with the people who didn't click on it. I think that's kind of just another touch point. And it almost seems, I don't know, maybe in a different world, you might perceive it as like, dude, why are you watching what I click on? And maybe it's a little bit creepy, but it's like, no, look, I'm here for you. And I want to make sure you got the thing that you needed, that you presumably needed, that you wanted enough to put in your email for.

36:50Totally. And I think the coolest part about this is he helps people set up their kit account. So he's an email guy. So by showing his potential clients these little tricks that he's doing, he's just making them like him more and be like, all right, just set it up for me. So I like that one. Yeah, I'm totally doing this. This is pretty cool. Do you have offhand some of the results that he got from this? Yeah. With this one, he called it 40 % more engagement. And so I think his engagement score increased like 48 % to 67%, which is like the people actually clicking through to the thing. Yeah. Yeah.

37:25And so more people actually downloaded the thing. And so it's like, cool, you signed up for it. Why wouldn't you want to engage with it? And then he was getting higher reply rates, which just helps with Gmail knowing that you're a real person. They're real people. So I think all around, it was just like a good exercise. Yeah, I'm into it. I think that's really cool. All right, next under the engagement category is the link that reduces unsubscribes. And this is one of your own. This is kind of a pause button. Yes. Sometimes you get this request as well. You're throwing too many side hustle ideas at me.

37:59I love it. But also like I'm in a different season of my life. So what's going on with this one? Yeah, so I actually found this from another newsletter. I think it was called Two Sigma. And I signed up for this on a whim. And I just found this in the footer of their email one day. And I was like, oh, this is so cool. I'm stealing this. So they essentially had an unsubscribe link. And then above that, they had a, hey, are you having email overwhelm? Just snooze our emails for 30 days. And so you would click a link, go to this other page, and put in your email. And it would stop sending you emails.

38:32So it's kind of like subscribe again to unsubscribe for 30 days. Okay. You can just do it with a click trigger or a tag or something? So you can, and I did that for the first one, but I think there's, like, if you have a lot of people who work at school districts or big corporations, they have firewalls that click every single link. And so link triggers are not the most... More reliable to have them answer their email again. Yeah, more reliable. I actually did a twist on this. I started setting up a tally form, which is kind of technical, but it'll pull in. So Kit can pass the subscriber email address in the URL with a hashed thing.

39:16And so tally forms can read that. And so I just had the form say, do you want to snooze emails for 30 days? And people click yes, and it auto-adds a tag in Kit, and then I just snooze them. So they don't have to enter their email again. So that was my little workaround for this instead of making them do more work. Yeah, that would be. It's like, dude, I'm already on your list. What do I got to do this again? So that makes sense. It's a last ditch. If somebody is like hovering over the unsubscribe, like, no, I still kind of like it, but just let me take a break. I want to pause. Exactly. I've thought about doing this for years, but kind of always get hung up on the technical, like how to do it.

39:52The idea that I had in my head was like, just send me a monthly digest or something. And it's like, well, I don't want to create another email, but it's like, if it's just a legit pause button. Like that seems really relatively simple to set up one time. And then you can have an automation that says, you know, okay, dump them back into the newsletter list after the, whatever they chose 30, 60, 90, the power of many days, they can go back in and hopefully come back in and the water's warm. Totally. So I really liked this one essentially saved 400 something subscribers, which is kind of cool. Yeah.

40:22I always try and make a point to do it for product launches where it's like, look, if this isn't a fit, just click here, let me know and no hard feelings and I won't message you about it again. Yeah. But I've only ever done that with the click triggers. So who knows how accurate it is. Yeah. Maybe try the new Teleform situation instead next time. All right. Maybe somebody, we can set that up. We've got more with Chanel in just a moment, including building a seven-figure business with under 4 ,000 subscribers. Yes, we've got the monetization segment coming up right after this. You know that feeling when you finally finish a cleanup project you've been putting off That's what switching to our partner Gusto feels like.

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41:38Plus, you don't pay a cent until you run your first payroll. Try Gusto today at gusto.com slash side hustle and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash side hustle. One more time, It's Gusto, G-U-S-T-O dot com slash side hustle. All right, we're back with Chanel from Growth in Reverse, and we're moving on to the monetization segment of today's episode. After all, growing your email list is great, but at the end of the day, we got a business to run here, so we got to figure out how we're going to ring the cash register, and Chanel's got some great examples of people doing just that.

42:17And we'll go with the one that we teased, the seven-figure email list with under 4 ,000 subscribers. This is a dollar figure per subscriber that is off the charts just about from what I've seen. So this is Dustin Reekman, former guest of the show. We were talking about Fire Creek Snacks, a meat stick business back in the day. Today, Justin runs Seven Figure Leap. So what's going on with Dustin's business? Yeah, Dustin's business is awesome. He runs a essentially podcast guesting academy. So he's helping people do better podcast guests. And this is how he grew Fire Creek Snacks that you were referring to before.

42:55And so he's now bringing in around$285 per subscriber per year, which is like bonkers if you think about it. Yeah, the metric that gets thrown around a lot is like a dollar per subscriber per month. So there'll be like$12 per subscriber per year. And even that seems high in some cases. Yep. But I've never seen$285. So yeah, Dustin's business is pretty cool. So he's doing podcast casting, like I said, but he's kind of doing it a little differently. Instead of having people reach out to direct competitors, if you're a relationship coach, you shouldn't be pitching relationship coaches and those kinds of podcasts.

43:34You should pitch parenting podcasts for first-time parents or a personal finance show where couples are talking about money. And so that's his whole shtick, essentially. And he's able to kind of teach other people how to do this, but he's doing it for himself as well. And so he's not necessarily needing to grow his email list. He's just using podcast guesting to do this. And I think it is brilliant. So he's growing it by showing up on other shows, kind of like practicing what he preaches there. And then the monetization angle is membership and kind of handholding along like, look, we're going to help you land some high profile guest podcast spots.

44:12Exactly. And so he's he does it in a little different way. So like he's giving you criteria for which guests or which podcast to pitch. He's giving you pitch templates of how to do it. And then by doing this, he's just generating a crazy high number of revenue per subscriber because his product is thousands of dollars, I think. I'm not sure the actual number, but I'm sure it's up there. Yeah, sure. High ticket service. Yeah, yeah. So he's able to go on other shows, essentially showcase his expertise with podcast guesting while he's podcast guesting, and then get people into his program. and it's working and he gets great reviews, which is pretty cool to see.

44:49Yeah, good guy. He's been around in the online space for forever. And it was really surprising to me when he said that the Fire Creek episode that we did was like his first guesting spot. It's like, that can't be true. Because you feel like I've known his name for years, even prior to that. And it was cool to see him in person for the first time at Craft & Commerce. Oh, yeah, good. I'm glad you got to see him in person. That's great. He's a good guy. So going back to what you said, you said he's kind of on the, not going after the shows that are in your industry, but try to find like the shoulder industries where a segment of the audience is going to be relevant.

45:25Did I hear that right? Totally. Yep. He calls them shoulder topics. Okay. So finding the people who have the audience that you want, but aren't necessarily the exact same person as you. So like, yeah, that relationship coach one, I think is really good to hit home or like even a personal finance. I don't know. Maybe you're doing personal finance for couples and you want to go on a parenting show or something like that versus like an actual personal finance podcast. Got it. Well, here's I mean, this is a good example. It's like, you know, we're talking email marketing. We're not an email marketing focused podcast.

46:00It's an entrepreneurship podcast. But people on people, listeners are going to have email lists or they should if they don't already. And so it's a good fit there. And similar for me in the early days of the show, yes, it was great to get on entrepreneurship themed podcasts, but really some of the biggest spikes were from going on personal finance podcasts where the topics were saving and budgeting and investing and frugal living and stuff. It's like at a certain point, it's going to be a lot more fun to talk about the revenue side of the equation. And so I got to come on and be the side hustle guy and say, look, you don't have to have rice and beans all the time and ramen, there's another path.

46:37You could actually go out and earn more money. And so that was a pretty big growth lever, some good spikes from doing just that. But I got to figure out Dustin's$280 per subscriber per year thing. He's got the monetization dialed in over there. Totally. Cool. Well, Dustin is at Seven Figure Leap. Go check out his previous episode on the Side Hustle Show as well for an example of his guesting prowess. Let's move on to the next example. This is a consumer psychology newsletter called Why We Buy. It's learnwhywebuy.com. And this was a little tweak to the welcome sequence that ended up doubling sales.

47:20Tell me about this one. Yeah, this one is awesome. So Caitlin Burgoyne runs this and she ended up with a couple of different products that helped different people on her email list. And so she realized instead of doing one flash sale for everyone on her list at the same time, she started doing rotating flash sales. And so this is a little tricky, but stick with me here. So in her welcome email, she asks a single question that's like, what do you most need help with right now? I think it's retention, monetization, stuff like that. And so based on people's answers, she'll actually put them into a grouping and those people start getting pitched for one of her products a month later, I think it is, within the first 30 days.

48:03And so they get a flash sale for that product. If they don't buy three months later, they're going to get a flash sale for the next product and so on and so forth. And so people are getting the most relevant thing to them first versus just having everyone go through the same product offer. So you don't necessarily need the products part of it, but you can ask people what they need help with in their welcome sequence and customize it that way. So it's a little tricky, but it's a good one. And it's probably click triggered and not necessarily reply triggered. It would have to be automated. You got to vote.

48:37What are you struggling with? Yeah. So she uses kit polls to make sure people are actually clicking on that specific thing. And then they go into a sequence that way. Yeah, I think her digital product sales went up like 30 % the first three months. And then over time, they've doubled. Wow. It makes sense. meet people where they are. It's just kind of the technical challenge of one, having a product that is an actual fit for everybody in these different categories. And then kind of the technical setup of, well, how am I going to pitch that? But in my case, and this is more of an issue like years ago, but if somebody opted in for something related to e-commerce, I would like to send them a welcome sequence related to e-commerce and not just generic side hustle stuff.

49:21And if I had an e-commerce product, that would have been a great place to plug it because I knew they were at least interested in that. But kind of similar idea, taking somebody from a generic email opt-in in Caitlin's case to kind of try to figure out what really brought you here? What do you need the most help with? Yeah. And you could always do this with affiliate offers too. It doesn't have to be your own product. You could say, okay, somebody needs most help with growing their email list and you could promote an affiliate offer for something like that. So it doesn't have to be that you need three of your own products.

49:55You can also do it that way. Is there a growth and reverse email program or affiliate program I should be plugging? I'll make one for you if you want. I have what's called the growth vault, which is where I put a bunch of these really cool ways to grow and monetize and keep your subscribers happy. So that is the place that people generally go for that. Very cool. No, that makes sense too. Like if you don't have the thing, hey, you still want to be of service to your audience, so point them where they need to go, whether or not that's an affiliate offer. And I think that will endear you to your subscribers, like, look, this person is trying to help me.

50:27100%. Okay, next up is another welcome sequence tweak that at least the headline tripled sales, not just doubled, but tripled sales. This was Matt Ragland from Good People Digital, his email marketing and course launch agency. What's going on with Matt? Yeah, so Matt started doing kind of like a low-ticket version of this. So he's worked with some of the bigger email lists, like Ryan Holiday and some other folks, Amanda Getz. And he started, in the first seven days, started pitching a lower-ticket product, like a$9,$29 offer, instead of just hoping that people will buy in three months and saying, hey, let's wait it out.

51:07You're hitting people where they're excited to be on your list instead of later on. And you can also do this on the thank you page for your email list if it's relevant for that person. So he just started pitching those lower ticket products right in the first seven days. And if you bought that, then later on he'd pitch the next thing. And so he's just trying to get a list of buyers versus just freebie people. That's the main message here is like, can you get your people paying and see if they'll actually buy from you? Yeah, we did an episode with Brian Feraldi and it was kind of his same thing.

51:43Like, how do I get people to pay me in a way that's beneficial to them as fast as possible? Like, I would much rather have a list of buyers than a list of random people who maybe read my studies. Like, I'm not in the media game for the sake of producing media. Like, I'm in the media game to run a business. and it was this interesting shift and we can link up his like funnel sequence episode and everything that he did and does matt do anything to the people who don't buy because we've seen from other people kind of like a buy or unsubscribe ultimatum which is like well that seems a little bit harsh but i don't know if there's anything here yeah if they didn't buy i think he just like gently like repitches them a couple weeks later and then maybe a month later too and just saying like hey if you're not going to buy the nine dollar thing like maybe you're not a good fit for this.

52:32There is also a world where you just separate the buyers from the non-buyers and just send them different messages, but keep the people who aren't necessarily buying on to get sponsorships or that kind of thing. So I don't know. It's an interesting choice you have to make there, but I think it's a smart one to start off with. And think of Amy Porterfield. She actually shut down her course business and is now not doing free lead magnets. She's only doing paid lead magnets. So there's something about that that I think is working for people. Yeah. Do you think it's just PDF fatigue or lead magnet fatigue?

53:06Probably. Or targeting a higher income person who's like, look, if this is going to solve my problem, $9 is fine. $29 is fine. I don't know. It's just a different world. I think it depends on what your ultimate goal is. I think Amy is now trying to get people to buy her like multiple thousand dollar product. And so if that's the case and you don't want the freebie people who are just going to stay on your list and not do anything, then maybe it makes sense to have everything be paid. It's kind of like doing a paid newsletter backwards. Like instead of calling it a paid newsletter, you just have to buy the lead magnets to get on the list.

53:40I don't know. I never thought about it that way. It's very counter to like how I've done anything for the last 30s. Like more, more free stuff, more content out into the world. But to the point of, look, if the ultimate goal is to get somebody to buy the$1 ,000 thing, if they're not going to buy the $9 thing, the odds are probably pretty low. They're going to convert on the other thing. And it's like, do I really need to be continually paying the email service provider for to have this person on my list if they're not my ideal client? Right, exactly. And I don't think that they're necessarily turning people away if they're not going to pay, but it's just like a good signal to say like, okay, this person is probably my person or they're not.

54:17Yeah. And the way Brian phrased it was like, look, it's an offer. Because I think I asked him something like, well, doesn't that feel salesy? He's like, look, it's an offer. Take it or leave it. I put it out there in the world. If you want it, great. If you don't, that's also fine. 97 % of the people say no. And that is okay. That was helpful for me. It's just like, oh, you know, how dare you try and sell me something? Like, look, do you ever walk into the grocery store and be like, how dare you try and sell me something? So that was helpful for me. Can you imagine? Yeah. The next one on our list is the self-monetizing lead magnet.

54:48This one comes from Terry Rice. So what is Terry up to? Yeah. So Terry kept getting asked by people on LinkedIn, like, how do you run two businesses, speak professionally, have four kids and not burn out? And that was just one of the questions that kept coming up over and over again. And so instead of just continuously replying to emails and answering that question, he was like, let me build you a tool and show you my dashboard of how I stay on track of every day and what I'm doing. And so he vibe coded something with Lovable. That's like this full dashboard showcasing his daily streaks for going to the gym and how many keynotes he's pitched to get and all of that stuff.

55:27And people can now use this for themselves too. But I think the cool part about this is you don't actually have to buy it. And so on the bottom of this tool are all of his affiliate links. So if somebody wants to start using Lovable or start using some of the tools that he's using to run his business, he gets paid if they click on it and if they buy something. So I think it's just an interesting reframe of like, instead of building something and just asking everyone for money for it or that kind of thing, it's like, well, you can give it away and get some affiliate revenue from it. He's gotten coaching clients from this because people want to live his life because obviously the tool is not going to really be the thing that gets you there, but people think it is.

56:09Okay. And in Terry's case, it was something that really resonated with the audience. It says it went from less than a subscriber a day to now I'm getting 50 subscribers a week. So kind of a significant bump in the trajectory there. This next one is a good one. This is the FOMO approach to getting sponsors to buy. We've talked a lot about monetizing with your own products and services. Here's a way to monetize if you're monetizing with sponsors. This comes from the Bay Area Times, kind of a local newsletter covering pretty broad area, Silicon Valley, San Francisco Bay Area, pretty broad in terms of a local newsletter from what we usually see in that space.

56:45But this is a pretty cool one because they have the little advertise with us link in the bottom of every newsletter. And then what happens after that? Yeah. So if you click to advertise with them, you sign up for essentially another email list from them. They get a welcome email that says like, it's coming from a different sending address. So it comes from the CEO or one of the C-suite people. And it's essentially a media kit for their sponsorships. And so you can sign up to book a call with them and talk to someone right away. But if you don't, you just stay on this separate email list. And every month or so, they're sending you an update like, hey, we just hit 215 ,000 subscribers.

57:25Sign up now and get yourself in front of all these people before we keep growing. And so every month, you're essentially just showcasing, it's almost like an investor letter of like, we've grown this much, you want to join now and lock in your pricing before we keep growing and it gets more expensive? Book a call here. Interesting. I never thought about having a separate email. People put together their media kit or even a media kit page on their website that occasionally you remember to update. Some people are like, are these numbers still accurate? You're like, no, thank you for mentioning that we haven't done Pinterest in years or so, you know, whatever it's on there.

58:01And, but maintaining a full separate email list for would-be sponsors is pretty next level. Yeah. And they're seemingly selling out their sponsorship. So it's working. You don't have to have a huge list that's like growing super fast to take advantage of this. You can also like showcase a case study of a past sponsor that had a good result or do something like that and just keep them engaged like once a month, once every 90 days or 60 days or whatever. It doesn't have to be this big lift on your end. Yeah. You don't have to do it every day. Totally. Yeah. It's a good way to keep people engaged and like, oh yeah, maybe I should buy that sponsorship spot now.

58:35Yeah. And you kind of see, well, I guess you can kind of give an update of upcoming inventory too. Oh, for the month of July, you know, we're 90 % sold. Like if you want to secure your spot, this is now's the time to do it. Yep, exactly. So I think one of the cool things of this too, is like, when you think about it, like a marketing manager, or maybe even the CEO of a company might click on a sponsorship link to see how much something is. And then they are getting these emails that they're probably then forwarding to their team to be like, hey, we probably should sponsor this newsletter. They have their stuff together.

59:06So it's kind of a cool approach. Yeah. Yeah. It makes you look like you're on top of it. Exactly. Well, Chanel, this has been awesome. What's next for you? What's got you excited this year? Just writing more deep dives and getting more nerdy about newsletters and reverse engineering how they grow. So that's pretty much my main thing and what I like doing. So I'm going to doing that. Well, you're the best in the business at it. growthinreverse.com. Make sure to subscribe over there. Check out the Growth in Reverse podcast if you want more Chanel in your life. Don't forget to grab your free listener bonus for this week.

59:36It's my AI-assisted side hustle brainstorming worksheet to get you some realistic side hustles personally tailored to you. I know the people who've gone through it send me notes like, oh, it surfaces things that they never would have thought of. And it's cool to get that kind of feedback. So just hit the show notes link in the description for this episode. Test it out for yourself. Let me know what it comes back with. Big thanks to Chanel for sharing her insight. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. SideHustleNation.com slash deals is where to go for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.

1:00:09That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.