Came a comment:
Hey Ben,
I recently just watched a YouTube video by a well known creator in the online business space about how to grow an audience, and in it he was saying that people who do daily email don’t care about actually changing anyone’s life and they only care about making a quick buck off you.
He thinks long-form weekly newsletter content is how you actually create value and build a long-lasting audience.
What are your thoughts on this?
My thoughts are guys like him are projecting.
I’ve been relentlessly – never skipping a single day, to my knowledge in all that time – writing/sending daily emails for 17-years straight. And my biggest regret is it took me 6+ years to start doing daily emails at all (didn’t start until 2008) after being inspired by the great Matt Furey’s original email course.
That’s a lot of writing,
Way I see it:
Even if I’d only been writing one email per day during this time, that’s over 6,000 emails. Assuming the average email is one page (many are 2, 3, 4, even 5, and as long as 16+ pages in a few cases long – this email is pushing 2,000 words), that’d still have been well over 6,000 pages of content, but is probably more like 10k – 15k pages due how long most are. And assuming each email takes only 10 minutes (I enjoy it – and savor it, and often spend 30+ minutes or more when not in a time jam), that’s at probably somewhere around 100,000+ minutes or 10,000+ hours.
But the reality is I cannot say the exact numbers off the top of my head.
What I can safely say though, is this:
I’ve written at least 10,000 – 15,000 emails in the years just to this list. Especially considering I often write way more than one email per day – and also especially when writing multiple campaigns each month.
I publish well over 700 emails per year, give or take, on average.
And this does not even count the 1000s of emails I collectively wrote doing client work.
Or that I sometimes write for Low Stress Trading.
Or that I’ve written for various other ventures I’ve been involved with.
And while there are admittedly times when I “recycle/repurpose” emails… the older I get, the less interest I have in doing that, unless under excruciating time crunches… not just for reader Experience, but also my own Experience – as I enjoy writing emails.
It’s like eating dessert first for me each day when I write them.
So even considering that, I have no problem saying 10,000 original emails.
And, again, probably much closer to 15,000.
And for the AI geek chorus reading this:
These were all written by me, with my brain, not some generative so-called AI tool.
Anyway, what’s the point of all this?
If I was doing daily emails just “for money” or if I “didn’t care”, I’d have skipped a lot of days when things are fat & happy especially. That’s just human nature. Plus, I am no different than you or anyone else, where there are days where I’m just not feeling it and would prefer to do something else or anything else BUT write.
Even doing fun stuff loses its novelty at times.
So there’s more to it than just “money.”
If anything, I’ve been writing LESS emails this year.
As I wrote in an Email Players last year:
I am more interested in quality than volume, even if more volume technically would potentially make more more sales – and it very well might. BUT… those short term sales would chip away at the long term sales that can only come via a strong relationship with my list. Especially as they’ve been getting bombarded with nonsensical generative so-called AI emails and, arguably worse, cold emails sent by absolute spammers who have to constantly warm up new IPs and buy aged domains just to keep their stupid, skeevy little games going while desperately insisting on social media how much it “wOrKS!”
None of that will last, in my opinion, by the way.
Google, Yahoo, etc are punishing such emailers.
So I suspect that particular situation will resolve itself.
We will see.
And so those who are doing things the right way need only riiiiiide out the current wave of stupidity perpetuated primarily by goo-roo burnouts and social media anons who were born after the year 2000 and still live in their moms’ basements.
Back to the point:
To me it’s all about the relationship first.
I don’t do the “sell the click” shtick.
I sell the relationship – which I have found gets the clicks, which leads to sales.
I call it the “relationclick.”
And in my experience:
You get that not buy sending LESS emails, nor do you get it by sending too many emails, as the law of diminishing returns kicks in eventually – or else you’d see people sending hourly emails. No, Chachi, you get it by sending the right kind of emails, with the right kind of intent, in just the right kind of volume/frequency… with the right message, to the right person, at the right time.
Something you can only discern, really, by writing and sending…. daily emails.
Every list is different, just as every business and marketer is different.
Those looking for hand-holding or a “system” probably didn’t find this very useful.
But then again, nothing I teach will help them people anyway.
They’re fooked and don’t even realize it.
As for the grownups who can think & act autonomously?
That’s where the November Email Players issues shines.
You can read more about what’s inside it below in the P.S.
Otherwise, to subscribe while you still have some time to get in for it, go here:
Ben Settle
