Ben Settle

“Email Players” subscriber Ian Howarth checks in about how to find more fulfillment, fun, and, yes, profits in his business, from using my sometimes ill-received ways in his emails:

Seriously Ben, I’ve got to thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Truth is, I’d become very unfulfilled with the way I was writing emails that was literally using the copy off of sales pages and from VSL’s which worked but got boring.

I’m pulling stories left right and center now (today) from real people’s testimonials to create my emails.

I’m being creative again like I was when I first started in 2015.

It’s enjoyable again and I’ve only just started.

I know you’re probably being bombarded with messages like this and I’m not one to pester people or bug them but I had to send this.

My emails are practically writing themselves because of your book and I haven’t even completed it yet.

Can’t thank you enough.

Seriously feeling emotional hence me spontaneously sending this message.

Again

Thank you

That’s what I’m talking about.

Email should not be this miserable, heart-breaking activity full of pain, doubt, and frustration.

It should be fun.

It should be fulfilling.

And, it should make your business more sales.

Forget Making America Great Again (MAGA), it’s time to Make Email Great Again (MEGA). If you want to learn how I do it, and how many of my “Email Players” subscribers are doing it, subscribe at the link below. And if you want to learn some free ways to build your list make sure you subscribe before the deadline Friday when I send it to the printer.

Here’s the link:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Last Summer I got this question while recording the final episode of my podcast (which was a Q&A) I didn’t have a chance to get to.

It’s a good question, though

And it’s important to know the answer.

Especially if you are going to use my Email Players methods of selling via email.

Let’s just say this:

When I sold in weight loss, I didn’t go all “Ben Settle” on that list. And, we sold quite a lot of product in that business to a small list. So yes, there is a way to use my “not very nice” ways of writing emails to even the most mush-cookie of markets. And, this is a timely topic, too. Especially in light of people being so weak they had to take a day off of work when Trump was elected. Or what I just read about a college telling its professors not to use all CAPS because it might scare the students.

Like it or not, we live in the age of the mush cookie.

And that’s why I answer his question in the December “Email Players” issue.

The deadline to get it in time is coming fast.

Here’s the link:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

I was re-reading Dan Kennedy’s magnificent NO BS Time Management book (the original, shorter 108-page edition from 1996, not the longer, updated one) the other day, and it reminded me of something I’ve been doing ever since (because of that book) that has resulted in a much bigger business than I normally would have had.

And, has given me much more peace of mind, to boot.

Anyway, here is what he said:

(Paraphrased)

Whenever he fires a toxic client or jettisons a pain-in-the-arse customer, that “void” is *immediately* filled with better clients and customers, more sales, better business relationships, etc.

I first read that back in 2002.

And I have coldly and ruthlessly applied it ever since.

And you know what?

I never once regretted it.

If anything, I am always getting more blood thirsty about it.

For example:

Over the past few years, I have had a policy to (with rare exceptions) not let people who cancel “Email Players” come back, blacklisting them forever.

And there are many specific reasons why.

Like, for instance, as a matter of principle, I refuse to cater to quitters.

After all, what would be the point? So they can pretend to be “serious!” this time only to yet again do nothing, apply nothing, or, even more amusing, make more sales with it again and then let whatever mental block keeps them from continuing to be successful prompt them to quit again?

They’d be better off going back to wandering the goo-roo casino than haunting me.

Secondly, yes, short term, I might make less sales turning business away like this.

But long term, it’s just the opposite:

For some reason, I am still always surprised (albeit pleasantly) at how consistently and reliably my business grows in direct proportion to how many people who have quit I reject from coming back and, also, repel from subscribing at all… just as my sales have always gone up in direct proportion to how many opt-outs I get.

Another reason:

Like I mentioned yesterday, you are the sum total of who you spend the most time with.

Since one of the perks of being an “Email Players” subscriber is to be able to ask me questions via email, this means customers, too.

Take, for example, this recent one:

“Firstly I LOVE all your content. Your newsletters have been invaluable especially the email Players rule book I got with my first news letter. I got this around four months ago and I am still working my way through it, which means I still have two newsletters that still remain unopened. I have a rule that I can’t and won’t open the next edition until I have implemented what I learnt from the previous newsletter. This is my realisation. I am very slow at implementing what I am learning which is frustrating. So until I am up to speed with what I have already I am having to suspend (not cancel) my subscription. What I have learnt already have vastly improved my email game I just need to play catch up. Keep up the good work. I WILL be back.”

No, Chuckles, you won’t.

I have a “rule” too:

I don’t suspend subscriptions, I only cancel them.

And once I do, there is no coming back later.

Instead of improving himself… and improving his reading speed (it’s 16 pages per month, not exactly a novel), improving his time management, improving his slow implementation, improving his attitude… he projects his excuses on to the newsletter.

Why would I want a guy like this back clogging up my customer list?

Why would I want to give him any more of my time or knowledge?

Why would I want to encourage his current attitude?

I am not saying people like him are “bad” people, or that they are any more or less flawed than myself or anyone else. (My laundry list of flaws would fill several volumes of books…) Probably they are very good people, and responsible in every other area of their lives.

But, their lack of commitment makes for terrible customers for me.

And, especially, for the products I sell.

Here’s another example of what I mean:

“So I pulled the trigger on EM@IL Players way too early. I’m in the Philippines and can’t get my program together over here (yet). I am Cancelling the EMail Players subscription as of today. When I finish my product and build a small list…I’ll beg you for forgiveness and reinstatement. Addicted to and still loving your emails though.”

His request to come back will be denied.

For one thing, I am always clear about not subscribing if you don’t have a list and offer.

So the fact he didn’t listen to my first instructions there, free, says something.

But if I was this guy and really didn’t want to be cut off forever?

I would have stuck with it, since he was already getting it and already liked it. And, I would have studied and implemented the info by applying it to make myself better at writing persuasive email copy by using the knowledge for writing ezine articles on major article directory sites, creating YouTube videos (the same principles I teach for email are easily applied to video or any media), guest articles, and short podcasts on iTunes… in addition to doing all the surprisingly simple and effective list building strategies I talk about in next month’s Email Players issue… that would have been building a list I could then create or find an offer to send to that list.

Not being “ready” is never an excuse.

If you’re not ready, you sac up and make yourself ready.

If you make yourself ready before you need to be ready for something, you don’t have to waste time getting ready for that which you are getting ready for when the time comes to be ready.

This includes the “I can’t afford it” excuse, too.

People who natter on about price need only replace “can’t” with “won’t.”

It’s $3.23 per day.

It ain’t the money, it’s their priorities and lack of action-taking.

After all, a bum rattling a used, coffee-stained styrofoam cup full of sticky pennies can afford it. And if they really are that broke, that desperate, they should hop on public assistance and quit pretending they are some kind of business person.

Anyway, so that’s that.

If this offends some of the quitters, trolls, and seethers, good.

They can go find someone who will cater to them, and do us both a favor.

We all benefit that way…

Now, on to the business:

The December “Email Players” issue shows 7 of my oldie-but-goodie list building methods I’ll be using in 2019 and beyond. Some of these can bring you (potentially) hundreds of new people on your list in a single day in some cases. And not just “leads”, but engaged leads already pre-sold on buying before they even opt in to your site. Once you have a list of such leads, you can sell to it rather easily, either your own product or service, or as an affiliate.

The deadline (for non-blacklisted people) to get this issue is Friday.

Here’s the link:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Earlier last week I got this question:

“Hey Ben! I know you only reply to people who have bought your Email Players subscription but recently I’ve been having a problem with my Email Sending Reputation and every email I send is going to spam. Do you have any advice for that? You don’t have to reply but maybe talk about this in one of your emails. If you have any advice on that it will literally save my business.”

I have several things to say about this.

First, in my experience, it is far more important to spend your time on writing better emails people want to read, want to respond to, and want to buy from, than stressing over your sending reputation.

Frankly, I admittedly know very little about the technicalities of it.

And, there are probably many others who can more intelligently discuss it.

But what I do know is this:

The better I get at writing emails… the more I learn how to bond with my list… the higher number of emails I send that people want to read… the less I care about such things and the more my sales go up each year.

I have never once worried about getting better delivery.

Or my “sender reputation.”

Or how often I end up in gmail’s spam or promotions folders.

If anything, I am starting to wonder if my sales go up because of the spam and promotions folder. I have had way too many people tell me “Ben I just want you to know, I subscribed to “Email Players” but the email I bought from was in spam…”

They tell me this as a heads up.

But, I see it as a secret advantage:

When you write emails each day people want to read and buy from (like I teach in “Email Players” each month), they seek you out. They look for you in those folders. And, when they see you there, you have zero competition amongst the legitimate spam, sextortion emails, and other nonsense.

There’s far more competition in the actual inbox.

Anyway, do with this info what you want.

If you want to learn my ways of doing this, and if you want to get in on the December “Email Players” issue (which has a lot about list-building in it) before the looming deadline Friday, go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

P.S. Lest you think I’m full of hot air with my attitude above about not caring about these things, I once talked about this in one of my old Facebook groups. And, the great Marc Goldman (who has owned his own Email Service Provider service for 20 some years, and I would bet understands email deliverability better than just about anyone) said the following:

“… your approach of not giving a shit about being in the Spam or Promo folder is the absolute RIGHT ONE. When you stop caring bout gaming the system and just float content – whether it be in SEO or EMAIL, my theory is that you get points from the bigger providers for being who you are (and you are right – you can stand out a hell of a lot more and since your peeps want to read you and will MOVE you out of the Spam folder that actually matters MORE than any naked ink will.”

And you know what?

I believe this applies even more when you generate leads the way I describe in the December issue.

If this interests you, hop on the B-train today.

Once I send it to the printer, that’s it, and you miss out.

A little over a month ago, I deleted my Facebook account after being on there for over 10 years.

This month, I deleted my Twitter after 10 years, too.

And, I also deleted my Linkedin account.

Thus, I have zero social media presence.

Over this time, a few people — all of them millennials, who seem to think direct marketing was invented on social media — have asked why I’ve done such a thing and, also, “How are you going to build your list without social media???”

I find that question amusing on many levels.

And, there are several answers.

One of which is, all the time that’s been freed up.

Another has to do with one of the only reliably accurate theories in the social sciences about how you become the sum total of the people you spend the most time with.

For example:

I can tell you right now, all that time (and, even though I did not spend nearly as much time as most people I know on social media, I didn’t realize just how much time I was pissing away until killing my accounts off) I used to spend reading the thoughts, ideas, rants, virtue signaling, and grandstanding from people on social media has been replaced with a lot of reading of biographies and auto-biographies of great men. I would, for example, much rather spend my time reading the ideas of great writers, great Hollywood directors, great advertising men, and great leaders than the brain farts of virtue signaling SJWs nattering on about how enlightened they are… or internet marketers waxing philosophical about success they haven’t even achieved… or brain-washed millennials who can’t think outside of what their teachers or the media tells them to think… or the armchair politicians ranting about why this is the MOST IMPORTANT election ev-ER!… and so on, and so forth.

So anyway, that’s one of many reasons why I Thanos’d all my social media.

And, over a month later?

I only wish I’d done it years ago.

The extra time to read and write, the more focused attention span to better learn and hone my craft, the more clarity when creating my own products… are reasons enough alone.

But, there are many more reasons and benefits to doing so.

And, later this week, I will delve into more of them.

But back to the list building part of the questions:

I have used paid ads from Facebook, Twitter, and Google to build my list in the past. And, I have gotten many leads doing so. But, they paled in comparison to the leads I get now as far as quality. And, I am in zero danger of being de-platformed, too.

If anything, I can “siphon” away the best quality leads from those platforms, free.

And, without spending a red cent doing it.

All of which I talk about more in the upcoming December “Email Players” issue, which goes to the printer in a few short days (Friday).

If you subscribe after that, it’ll be too late.

Get in while the gettins’ still good here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

P.S. I wrote the December issue before I deleted both my Facebook and Twitter. At the time, I was still getting good, quality, high-converting leads from both sites, and still would if I cared to be on there. Thus, I left those two parts in, because what I did still works, even though I don’t do them anymore.

I once heard the great Dan Kennedy talk about a weird and paradoxical phenomenon of how, when someone finds a marketing teacher to latch onto, that teacher then becomes the person they think will solve all their other non-marketing problems, too.

For example:

When he got divorced.

Even after his divorce, when it was clear (by his own words) he was the last person anyone should be getting dating, relationship, or marriage advice from… his marketing and business students would ask him about their dating, relationship, and marriage problems.

Same with their investing questions.

And, other questions he said he was unqualified to talk about.

But, that didn’t matter — because it’s just how people are, when they find someone to learn from and they know, like, and trust that person, they tend to want to only learn from them.

Case in point:

Even though I am off Facebook, was never very “good” at Facebook, and couldn’t care less about Facebook, I still sometimes get asked questions about it.

But, I am the last person to ask.

Not just because I was terrible at monetizing it (my old elBenbo’s Lair group notwithstanding, which was a sort of surreal experience, which had people so unnaturally attached to it, and to me, it also resulted in, I recently found out, people getting anonymous threats via phone and other means from my “fans” towards people they thought slighted me…) but because I have so much contempt for it.

Still, sometimes someone will ask me about it.

And, here is what I tell them:

I look at Facebook like going to Chuck E. Cheeses. If you’ve never been there (Child elBenbo went there for several birthdays back in the early 1980’s…) it’s basically a big arcade and game center, with lots of pizza and crappy junk food to eat. It’s fun, it’s a great place to waste money, and it’s an even better place to waste lots of time, make yourself dumber, and interact with other people doing the same thing.

Plus, there is also a big pit in there full of balls kids can play in.

The ball pit is full of germs, dirt, and probably even piss, shyt, snot, and saliva.

But, back in my time, if you found the *white* ball you’d get 50 free tokens to play even more games with.

That, in a nutshell is what marketing with Flakebook is like:

Going to Chuck E. Cheeses, looking for the white ball (i.e. value you can use) in the dirty ball pit, in the hopes you will be the one to find the white ball before anyone else.

But, this doesn’t mean you can’t still use it.

And, I even talk about it some in the December “Email Players” issue.

When I was on there, I did use it in a way to monetize, but not directly, and not in ways anyone was likely to notice. A way that built my brand, strengthened the bond with my audience, and, yes, lead to a few (not many) high quality leads that became long-term buyers and “Email Players” subscribers.

Anyway, I talk a little about it in the December “Email Players” issue.

As well as about some other (far better) ways to build a list.

Including ways I’ll be using aggressively in 2019 and beyond.

Here is the link to get it and subscribe before the deadline, while you still can:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

A rare glimpse into elBenbo’s ever-evolving business model:

(If’n that interests you…)

One of the things I am always doing is planning my business out 2-3 years in advance. As far back as 2015 I knew 2016 was going to be about doing a lot of speaking (which I did for everyone from AWAI, to Real Dose, and MLM Blueprint… to AWAI again, to Brian Kurtz’s Masterclass, and an event I did in Portland along with another I did with Kevin Rogers) and writing the last 4 Enoch Wars novels — which I banged out in 4 months. Then, 2017 was 100% about editing and publishing those Enoch Wars novels (which I have big plans for outside the scope of this list, another topic for another time…). And then year, 2018 was for creating, launching, and finding back end offers, plus writing their corresponding sales letters.

For example:

• I have written/created 5 new products (only two you know of now)
• I launched 3 new products — which is a lot for me (4 new products if you including the upcoming Villains sequel, which I could launch now, but am deliberately waiting until first weekend of January to do…)
• Assembled several more affiliate offers (emails and Email Players inserts)
• Created a crap load of bonus content I’ve used both for projects this year, and some which will be used next year
• Have planned out some very high ticket ventures I am keeping under wraps until next year
• Am *this* close to securing the licensing rights to sell something I’ve been wanting to sell for over 10 years I will be doing with Michael Senoff
• And am putting the finishing touches on the first official elBenbo Anti-Affiliate Program (more on this next month, most likely — but if you are someone who has been wanting to sell my products, this might be what Herr Doktor ordered… maybe, we’ll see…)

As for 2019?

Well, that was always going to be for building my list.

Reason why I waited that long is because I wanted all the foundational stuff above in place, first. Thus, next year it’s time for Yours Ambitious to build a bigger, more responsive, and more targeted list.

I’ve already been implementing many things I’ll be doing next year.

But, I’ve been doing it slowly, and intermittently due to time factors.

(i.e. assembling all the above offers has been very time-intensive.)

Anyway, so far, the results from doing the above list-building methods have been fantastic, and I will be more aggressively doing the list-building methods I’ve been dabbling with the last of half of this year all of next year. Especially since, they have nothing to do with paid advertising, can’t be “de-platformed”, and are not at the flakey whims of Facebook, Google, Apple, etc.

Enter the December “Email Players” issue.

It is an overview of all the lead generation methods I’ll be focusing on in 2019.

Which are, ironically, principles that worked 100 years ago in 1919.

I am just “adapting” them to the internet.

And guess what?

If you do what I am doing and show in the next issue, I won’t say you will build a list as big and rapidly as you will using other methods, like paid Facebook ads, Google ads, etc. In fact, it is a very slow and “trickling” kind of lead generation, you cannot scale at all. Plus, nothing I am going to teach is “new” (nothing you are likely to see at a big goo-roo seminar or anything — and chances are, you’ve already heard about them, but, like most people, are not doing them), and it’s also more time-intensive, too.

But you know what?

I do believe the list you do build using them will be full of responsive leads.

Specifically, leads who are at least 50+% “sold” on buying from you before they even get to your list. And for me, that is far more important. I hate trying to warm-up ice cold leads, find them to be the biggest pains in the arse to deal with, the biggest complainers, and the biggest time suck that is usually not worth my time.

So anyway, the December “Email Players” issue is about that.

The deadline to get this issue is Friday, November 30th.

That’s when I send the list to the printer.

After I do that, it’ll be too late to get it.

So, I would not recommend procrastinating like the marketing proles do.

You can seize your spot today here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Today’s the deadline to get the November “Email Players” issue.

Here’s what awaits your noble self inside:

• A secret way of using curiosity in emails hardly anyone does (and when they do, they do it on accident) that is — hands down — the single most powerful email “method” I’ve ever used. (In fact, I am using this method “on you” in this email…)
• Two topics virtually guaranteed to perk up your email list if they are going cold on you. (I learned this from one of the savviest sales men who ever lived — it works like crazy in emails.)
• The “Black Mirror” secret for writing sales pitch emails people love so much they thank you for sending them!
• 6 ways to almost completely eliminate low open and click rates (and, even more importantly, low sales…)
• A common mistake even seasoned pro copywriters make with their email closes that guarantees lower sales and clicks.
• What to say on your opt-in pages to immediately ramp up the quality of leads you generate.
• A fool proof way to “Thanos” writers block and never have to worry about it ever again. (Do this, and not only will you never have to wrestle with a blank screen ever again — you may have a new problem of getting TOO many ideas…)
• Why using email is probably the worst way to build a digital marketing agency, and what I suggest doing instead.
• The “toss them in hell and throw away the key” secret to making your emails so powerful people will literally click the link, skip reading your sales letter, and go straight to the order form to buy.
• How to make your emails “stick” in your reader’s psychology so they can’t stop thinking about it.

Plus, I am also including a bonus “Ravings of an Ad Man” training.

It’s about research.

Including, some places I do it.

And, some popular copywriting fanboy ways I avoid.

Anyway, the deadline to get this baby is later today.

So if you want it, there’s simply no time to lose.

Here is the link:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle