Ben Settle

A question about using my content creation ways to YouTube:

What are your thoughts on applying this “more and faster content” philosophy to youtube?

From what we can see people who post the most frequently on there are the ones who make the least views and money whereas the ones who take their sweet time and heavily balance it out with quality get way more views and money.

So I guess the philosophy of daily contact with your audience wouldn’t work as well there due to how the site works.

What are your thoughts on it?

First, a caveat:

I am not a “YouTube” guy. So I don’t keep up with its ever-changing rules and algorithms and biases… or play dodge ball with its censorship and de-platforming shenanigans. To rely on such a platform as anything other than supplementary (like we do with BerserkerMail’s YouTube channel) is a recipe for frustration and, I would argue, a horribly foundation to 100% rely upon for selling and/or distributing content.

Personally, I don’t create any content based on algorithms.

I don’t even create content based on clicks.

I base it on…

Relationships.

That is the only “algorithm” I care about.

I’d rather have ONE engaged person consuming my videos/audios/emails/books/other content than a million non-engaged peopled consuming it. I write, record, and talk to one person, not a crowd. To one person, not a list. To one person, not a crowd. When people go through my content I want them to feel like I’m communicating with them and them alone.

This goes back to old school Mister Rogers when he was told by an early influence of his that TV (video content) was all about:

“one little buckaroo”

That is who he was talking to.

And it added a huge layer of both humanity and influence to his content. I daresay he was the single most beloved and biggest “brand” of the 20th century — even bigger than Disney (not financially — although I believe he could have been if he’d chose) and any single President or world leader — just going by sheer number of people – and generations of people – who loved and knew about him, and who still do.

You think he made his show based on some fleeting rules or algorithms?

No.

He had the exact same format for 33 years.

On a public supported channel.

At a time of the day when most people were at work.

Obviously, this does not lend itself to businesses who wrap their livelihood’s up in click-based monetization on a platform they don’t control, run by a company that has long ago abandoned caring about making a profit and instead exists to serve a social agenda above all else.

So those are my thoughts on it.

Here are a couple more related thoughts:

1. With Congress trying to ban TikTok…

I don’t know what to tell all the online marketers who screwed around building a TikTok audience instead of an email list the last several years. Except, maybe a quote from the crazy Irishman in the movie Braveheart when he tells William Wallace (as arrows are raining down on their heads and puncturing through their thin, wooden shields):

“The Lord tells me he can get me out of this mess. But He’s pretty sure you’re fooked!”

Anyone who relies on a 3rd party platform is in the same boat.

Yes, even if it’s a so-called “based” one like Twitter.

Ffs build an email list, back it up, and get their snail mail addresses.

2. Many years ago (on the old “Better Networker” site — which served as a great article directory at the time for the home business niche) my friend & computer scientist the late Jim Yaghi once showed people the inanity of relying on soft metrics like clicks and views, etc.

In this case:

There were certain articles that got thousands of shares.

Maybe even 10’s of thousands, but I don’t remember exact numbers.

And he wrote about how dumb it was to base an article’s success or monetization on shares, which people assumed was the gold standard metric at the time. And he illustrated how dumb it was to care about shares by showing how almost all those popular articles got way less actual views than shares.

i.e., nobody was reading them, they were just mindlessly forwarding them.

Not all that much actual “engagement.”

This was probably back in 2009 or 2010 and that mentality has only gotten worse.

Immoral of the story:

Unless, I suppose, you get directly paid a lot of money based on views alone there is little reason to create content for clicks or opens or views or shares or anything you see so-called influencers obsessing over. None of them are direct response people. I doubt very many have businesses that’d survive if they were kicked off YouTube at all. So I suggest creating content for the creation/expansion/fortification of the relationship with the person you are trying to reach/teach/help with your content, so they go wherever you go, to whatever platform or media you use.

i.e., talk to that One Little Buckaroo.

You don’t have to ignore all those other metrics.

But to wrap your business around them is foolish.

* Build/grow your list.

* Create content for that list.

* Sell it to that list EVERY day (despite what some idiotic algorithm wants)

* Sell those buyers something else.

Focus on that and the rest will take care of itself. Then, if you want many more of my insights & experiences with selling with email check out the paid Email Players Newsletter.

Here is the link to learn more:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

An excellent question that came in a while back:

“Quick question (feel free to use for future content): how do you get so much done on your walks? Are you reading/responding to emails on your phone while walking? Taking voice notes? I know you do some great content creation while walking (as per your awesome YouTube vids) but wanted to get an idea for what else you do to make those walks more productive.”

The short answer?

Yes.

The longer, more detailed answer:

Some of my walks are 3-3.5 hours long — while others are maybe 20-45 minutes long. But long or short I never let the opportunity go to waste. That time is a pure, uncut, and unadulterated example of what the great Dan Kennedy teaches about:

“Unused Capacity”

i.e., time that can be used to grow my business.

Thus, depending on the day and situation that time consists of things like:

* Doing a Twitter Spaces call with Email Player subscriber and BerserkerMail co-owner John Wood — which has obvious immediate benefits, but that he then also uses as content on the BerserkerMail YouTube channel that he runs, and that we could put up as a BerserkerMail podcast, and probably be cut up and used for other things too.

* Back-and-forthing with my various biz partners on other matters — whether it’s with John & Troy Broussard about our BerserkerMail biz, or Troy with Low Stress Trading biz, or with Stefania about life/business/scheduling/whatever… and the list goes on. I have filled entire 3+ hour walks just doing this, barely noticing the time going by.

* Listening to audio books, podcasts, courses, or recorded conversations about business I want to review, dig deeper into, think about, etc

* And, of course…

Creating content.

I’ve “written” entire Email Players issues, for example, on walks with my phone’s recorder. I’ve also co-created a course or two on walks. Not to mention belting out content for bonuses, premiums, and that sort of thing. I’ve also gotten ideas and built the outlines of books while on walks — stopping whenever an idea pops in my mind to jot the idea down, email it to myself, catalog & organize it later when I get home.

And the above is just for starters.

I’m not even getting into the health benefits of all that walking/jogging/running.

i.e., Road work as Gary Halbert taught in his Boron Letters.

People like ‘hacks’ — well in my business walking is the most profitable hack of them all.

Highly recommend.

To learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

My biz partner at BerserkerMail Troy Broussard (former Navy nuke engineer-turned-world-class-email automation specialist & software developer) recently sent the following to his list about the folly of deleting people off your list because they haven’t opened an email in the past 30, 60, 90 days or whatever.

This is something a lot of people wonder about.

Certainly, we get lots of questions about this.

And I can only assume someone is out there teaching to do this. And the tl;dr answer is is it’s not only majoring in the minors but is like cutting your business’ balls off.

But here is a more detailed answer from Troy about why that is:

There are numerous reasons why not emailing people that haven’t opened an email in the past 30/60/90 days is not wise:

+ Most Android devices block email opens by default

+ Many email clients from popular ESPs also block email open tracking

+ Many others create “false data” by programmatically triggering false opens, throwing things even more askew

+ Email open rates will fluctuate quite a bit from month to month and provider to provider. As various ESPs roll out changes to their platforms, the open rate data gets all out of whack. This is a continual cycle that I can only call, in very technical terms, a “bat sh*t crazy hot mess”. Yes those are technical and official terms! But seriously, trying to correlate that is just a wee bit insane.

+ But the bigger reason is much more important. In fact, dare I say, quoting Metallica’s hit song, “Nothing Else Matters”!

The real reason is all about sales and income. Ben Settle and I have been preaching this for years. We both make sales every single week from people that don’t “open” our emails (officially, at least). 

Recently, when I was running my 24 Books in 24 Days promotion, a sale came in from my friend and mentor Ken McCarthy. Just for sh*ts and giggles, I opened up his contact record in BerserkerMail…

That’s when things got interesting…

Scrolling back through months and months, not a single email “opened” officially. Yet, sales have come in…

This is why both Ben and I are NOT proponents of filtering people off your list based on open metrics — you’ll simply be leaving money on the table.

There are, however, dead emails on your lists… and that’s why at BerserkerMail we charge a setup fee and force an email list scrub to analyze them. It’s amazing how much junk we uncover.

Look, email is an imperfect science to be sure. It always has been and it always will be. There are simply too many variables for it to be anything else.

Do what you will with that info.

But this is one of many reasons why I don’t blanket delete people or pay much attention to open rates at all and never have. I curate hard at the opt-in, use BerserkerMail’s advanced blocking features to keep the bots & luke warm types off, and if I want to start jettisoning people I do a list scrub, not a list carpet bombing and throwing the proverbial babies out with the proverbial bathwater.

All right enough.

More on the paid Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

A troll displays his true feelings for me:

Yeah, you know what?

Fuck Off!  You’re a little bitch!  Yeah, you good at what you do, and you’re newsletter is excellent, but you yourself are a colossal douche!

It’s not worth the headache…

And besides, I have both your books and your AWAI 10-minute email course to use without having to put up with your super-douch, whiny ass beta-male little bitch personality.

Ha ha!

So Fuck You!

Fuck Off!  Nobody’s worth that much trouble.

Asshole  ? 

Sometimes people think I’m joking or exaggerating when I say a lot of online trolls are just one or two more rejections away from putting on a dress.

But if anything, I believe I am understating it.

The troll above literally sounds like a scorned woman sending a crazy text to the guy who dumped her, complete with all the the self-loathing, emotional projection, and irrational reaction to rejection. All of which is very often what drives all the online troll’s anger, jealousy, & repulsiveness. In his case, my angry admirer above was someone who had left Email Players, tried to come back, was told No… and instead of moving on with dignity decided to triple down on the very attributes that torment him.

And it’s all part & parcel of the online troll’s pathology.

They literally have female thought patterns.

That is good & normal for women to have female thought patterns, of course.

But for guys it’s as creepy as them putting on a dress and hanging out inside girls bathrooms. It’s also why it’s impossible for me to take any of them seriously, or get offended by them, or feel even the slightest tinge of guilt about marginalizing & monetizing them, and make them part of my business’ “lore” for content, emails, future books, etc.

Never look a gift troll in the mouth I always say.

To do otherwise would be undignified…

To learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

One of the benefits of having a business haunted by drooling-on-the-carpet trolls, slanderers, liars, reply guys, and other assorted bums is you can learn a lot about yourself, your beliefs, values, philosophies… and even what you didn’t even know you teach/advocate.

For example, according to my trolls apparently I teach people they:

1. Must always have to be funny & lighthearted in emails, even when writing about serious topics

2. Should never, ever put images in emails and that images “don’t work”

3. Always need to make their emails plain text

4. Have to use my “style” or sound like “me” and do things exactly like I do them

5. Must avoid ever using mega headlines (20+, 30+, even 40+ words)

6. Have to make all their products physical (no eBooks, membership sites, etc) and are way better off with paper & ink books and newsletters

7. Should avoid ever taking on clients for any reason whatsoever

8. Have to tell a story in every. single. email.

9. Absolutely have to be a “shock jock” of some kind and pick fights with everyone

Who knew?

I certainly don’t remember writing any of the above.

But there’s been no shortage of low IQ trolls claiming as such.

And that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

I am also reliably informed that:

I hate women (don’t tell Stefania!)… have a “scarcity” mindset due to my policy of not letting people come back to Email Players… am a Republican who is a slave to Fox News… am a psychopath (just not a very “charming” one, according to one troll)… I’m desperate for sales… I lack “proof” and “results” in my emails/sales copy and they’re all hype (they never actually show any examples of this, of course)… I use a lot of profanity in my emails… and, most recently, that I am racist (* gets out KKK grand wizard robe…)

And so the troll drum grunts on and on and on.

I lose track of it all at this point.

Mostly I only hear about it at all due to my loyal SettleHeads letting me know via screenshots, forwarded emails, etc as I am on very few lists these days, nor do I haunt Facebook outside of the BerserkerMail Mead Hall group and a couple local groups… (I have it set up so nobody can friend or message me).

All of which has been admittedly good for my business’ box office gross.

These trolls have helped my business thrive in ways I never could have on my own.

And so I believe it can almost certainly be with your business.

If you don’t have people talking shyt about you, gossiping like little girls about you, lying about you, spreading rumors about you, and clout-chasing by whining about you with all their loser friends joining in inside an echo chamber… then I suggest trying harder.

Because you’re are very likely leaving a lot of sales on the table.

These trolls are absolutely a gift.

They can potentially send you all kinds of free traffic, customers, and clients.

With daily emails it’s easy to profit for trolls.

Just learn how to write emails in a way people like to read, build a fanbase, when some low IQ troll attacks use it as content for an email to make sales.

You might even thank them afterwards.

They are, after all, sending you money.

To learn about the paid Email Players newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

An Email Players subscriber (not sure he wants me naming him) asks:

Hey!

Quick question: Do you ever hold back on sending an email if you notice the one before it is pulling really well?

For example, I sent an email that has gotten me more sales than most. Is it wise to keep it top of the inbox for a bit? Or is it fine to stick with my schedule and throw another one on the pile? Or does it not matter in the slightest and I’m overthinking it?

Let me put it this way:

I’ve definitely switched out emails when hitting a nerve.

I’ve even switched out entire pre-loaded email campaigns at times.

Like, for example:

During the lockdowns.

I had spent a bunch of time writing & loading emails to sell my Copy Troll book. But, I did an impromptu Q&A livestream right when lockdowns were imposed, when people were freaking out & uncertain about the future… and a good 50% of the questions were from marketers wanting to suddenly know how to build an email list. They could not have given a rat’s puckering arse about monetizing trolls at that point. (That came a few months later during the black lives matter/antifa rioting & sudden virtue signaling/shaming olympics – when I did the same thing with an already pre-loaded campaign selling a different book). So I spent the next day scrambling to switch out the already locked & loaded Copy Troll emails with a campaign selling my List Swell book.

The result:

More List Swell book sales.

More happy customers.

More fun… during that campaign than when the book originally launched.

Gotta strike while that nasty iron is scalding hot.

Thus:

Keep mailing about that topic until interest wanes, is my advice.

To learn my way of doing email, see the paid Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

1. You’ll become a better writer

2. You’ll write better sales copy

3. Your writing will inevitably get faster

4. Generate more ideas (ideas beget ideas, emails beget emails…)

5. Clearer thinking

6. Accomplish more than your lazy peers

7. Generate more testimonials

8. Engineer more JV opportunities

9. More customers to which you can sell other offers to

10. More clients

11. Regularly demonstrate your knowledge & superiority

12. It’s therapeutic

13. Might inspire others

14. It’s fun

15. Can create more financial security

16. Troll fodder handed to you on a rusted platter

17. Entertainment when you see someone melt down over something you wrote

18. Can elevate your thinking

19. You can teach cool ideas to a receptive audience you wouldn’t be able to otherwise

20. Makes your other (non email) writing easier to pound out

21. Gets your business more attention

22. Lets you demonstrate leadership

23. Will very likely make you many new industry connections

24. Can create other opportunities you never considered

25. Attracts better leads

26. Repels weak or unqualified leads

27. Less spam complaints (no, that is not a typo)

28. Creates “friendly familiarity” making the choice to buy from you much more likely

29. Builds & strengthens relationships with your list

30. New product ideas spring forth the more you do them and get feedback from your list

31. Gives you content to repurpose for other things

32. Better inbox deliverability (if you do email right)

33. Your business can make more sales

I could go on and on and on.

But if those 33 ways aren’t enough to light a fire under your righteous gluteus assimus to grow your email list and mail it each day, then probably anything else I say will go in one ear and right out the other.

As far as the how-to’s of profiting from email?

That is what the paid Email Players Newsletter is for.

More here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

First two on the list are mandatory though.

If you can’t or won’t do these first two, then the rest won’t do you much good.

All right here goes:

1. Write interesting content people want to read

2. Sell offers people want to buy

3. Mail more often, not less (assuming you’re doing both of the above)

4. Curate your list as aggressively as you can at the opt-in especially

5. Ramp up your email blocking game — i.e., block catch-all addresses, or emails that put things like “help”, “spam”, “newsletters”, “subs”, “subscribe”, etc

6. Delete ’n block any and all bogus-looking domains on sight

7. Do the opposite of what any email grifters say who were Facebook experts last month, a crypto expert the month before that, a TikTok expert before that, but now suddenly are email experts today

8. Do a list scrub immediately to help you identify the bots, spam traps, honey pot addresses that are scraped & harvested by spammers, spam button pushers, as well as undeliverable email addresses, malformed email addresses, & abandoned email addresses seized by ISPs to “spy” on email marketers, etc

9. Encourage people to ask you questions

10. Write opinionated content people have a hard time not replying to

11. Do your own customer service (apply Gary Halbert’s “white mail” warning)

12. Rejoice when trolls & reply guys don’t like you (they don’t even like themselves) and pour gas on the fire

13. Periodically sell low ticket offers where lots of customers buy and have to email you to get a link back for the bonus(es)

14. Don’t worry about offending the dogs, concentrate on selling the foxes (more Gary Halbert wisdom)

If you want to learn how to write emails see the Email Players Newsletter.

Here is the link:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

P.S. Of course, also make sure you got your DMARC, DKIM, and SPF settings right too. Ask your email broadcasting/autoresponder provider’s support for help if you have no idea how or what any of that means.

First, an admission:

I’m probably the last guy on planet Earth to ask about VSL’s because I don’t really use them. And the reason I don’t use them has absolutely nothing to do with me thinking they don’t work or whatever. They obvious can work and do for many businesses. However, I also have found them to be completely overhyped since the very first sales letter I ever saw selling VSL software that was literally written as a text sales page — which was beyond amusing & ironic then, and is even more amusing & ironic to think about now.

So-called “AI” hype today has the same vibes.

How many are using AI to write the ads, tweets, social media posts to promote it?

I doubt it’s very many.

That said:

VSL’s are a perfectly fine marketing media if it works for you.

But I don’t use them because:

1. I despise video, video is not my game, and in fact I wish the whole internet would go back to plain text, minimal or no graphics, old school bulletin board-style — when the internet was a lot more fun, scared away the low IQ types who need a bouncing ball to follow a subject & object, and where substance mattered a lot more over style, imo

2. I’m a warm leads kinda guy, not a cold leads guy — not that I am against cold leads, it’s just not my game and the older I get, the more I prefer to play the marketing game on easy mode anyway

3. In my experience, selling in multiple markets (consumer and biz) I have never seen a test on said warm leads where video did better than text or vice versa when I’ve used daily emails the way I do them

Example:

Back in 2011-2012 I co-owned an info publishing biz selling eBooks to overweight females. And one of the other partners in that venture was the late, great traffic maestro Jim Yaghi who put together a video version of my sales letter for the main offer, and ran some cold traffic to test it against the text sales letter.

He also tested my warm daily emails pitting the video vs the text sales letter.

The winner?

Neither, in both cases.

One would always barely beat the other and vice versa, every time.

No statistically relevant difference in any of the tests, whether to cold or warm leads.

The reason?

Presumably, because the emails, relationship created, the quality of the info products, the market place positioning, and/or (to cold leads) the appeal of the main offer itself especially did most of the heavy lifting. Plus maybe a thousand other variables, I don’t even know, it’s been a while — but probably not whether it was video or text or whatever.

Another, more dramatic, example:

In 2007 I was hired to rewrite the wildly popular Magnetic Sponsoring offer sales letter by the boys at Magnetic Sponsoring. So I wrote a long form, text sales letter and it handily won. And it not only won, but whenever I spoke at events where there were a lot of affiliates for that offer hanging around, it was not unusual for them to come up to me and practically kiss my hand because that ad helped them make so much money as affiliates.

And it was just a “plain vanilla” sales letter.

It was also mostly text (minimal graphics, basic stuff).

i.e., nothing fancy or sexy about it, one way or the other.

Now, “fast forward” 7 or 8 years later:

I was speaking at another event where one of the co-owners of the above company told me they tried like hell to beat my text sales letter — including testing video/VSL’s against it. But he said my ugly little plain text sales letter with minimal design won every time. One of the other co-owners (Tim Erway) even recorded a video for me as a testimonial saying how that one sales letter brought in “millions of dollars and probably tens of millions of dollars in backend sales” (his exact words). So if VSLs were this magical “they always out convert everything!” unicorn format that always wins, then that should not have happened. Especially since, from what I remember of those guys, they did not test things lightly, and took their tracking quite seriously.

Those are both anecdotal obviously.

And I just list them as examples.

This is NOT to say plain text is better or that VSLs are inferior.

I also know of many other tests where VSLs kicked the crap out of plain text sales letters. And I have seen many other tests where a combo of both worked better than one or the other. I also know of tests where plain #10 envelopes beat the hell out of magalogs, too, so that’s another thing.

Which brings me to the point:

VSLs, text, audio, online, offline, even fapGPT (to whatever extent it actually works for this — and I don’t believe a single word anyone shilling it says about it right now)…. all are just marketing medias or tools. i.e., they are options to use, test, and get hog nasty rich from in whatever way you see fit. But no matter what media you use, what’s most important is the message to market match which is just basic, Marketing 101 fundamentals. To obsess over video vs text or using one media over another without getting that right first is majoring in the minors at its most gruesomest.

Finally:

4. I simply prefer text over video

And I prefer text over video for many reasons besides the fact above about how I hate diddling around with videos, shooting videos, editing videos, storing videos, writing slides for videos, or anything else with videos. Text is quick, easy to edit/update, no coding is needed, no video software is required, no outsourcing is necessary, and it’s probably not going to make any gigantic difference in my response either way, with my level of traffic, that is all warm traffic.

It’s also more appealing to the people I prefer selling to:

Readers.

“Leaders are readers” ain’t just a trope from what I’ve seen.

And in my business, targeting and selling to leaders has always been a lot more fun than selling to proles & newbies or those who hate reading, prefer watching videos, and prefer getting all their education from podcasts.

All right so that’s my take on VSL’s.

None of this is to say someone should or shouldn’t use them. Text is just my preference. If you like VSLs, if you make a lot of money with them, or if you just prefer them then use them. Frankly, you’d be foolish not to if that is truly the case.

If not, then don’t.

But anyone saying VSLs always win or are “better” is out of their mind. And probably selling you some kind of VSL service or software or something. There is no “always” in marketing. There’s just now and what works for you. The rest is just social media fapping and living in a false economy.

Kinda like this email is, probably…

Whatever the case, more info on my paid Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle