Hey, I was trying to think of some clever-ass April Fools joke…..but I stumbled across a joke that’s been played on me for years…..and has set me back several years.
I’ve been blogging since November 17th, 2004. That’s TEN YEARS. I was the first person on the internet to publicly post my personal finances for all my small businesses, and was open about who I was.
Albeit I never started NevBlog.com with the intention of a single person to read it and never had the intention of making it a large blog, it’s almost ridiculous that my following is not FUCKING HUGE.
And here’s one of the most wasteful and regretful pieces of non-action I’ve ever done:
I failed to collect the email address of readers.
Doesn’t seem so bad right?
Well lemme explain why I would love to go back in time and PUNCH 21 years old Neville in his big nose (who apparently had $16,721 in the bank at the time).
Here’s what happens when you spend lots of time on blog posts and stick them up on the internet randomly:
You basically hit “publish” and hope people come to your website. For years this is all I did.
When I was a really active blogger my site would get like 2,000 unique people a day coming to it…..but I NEVER once had a strategy on how to get those posts out there, or keep people coming back.
I had a ton of friends in marketing, but none of them convinced me to start collecting emails quite like Noah Kagan did.
Everyone said it was important, but Noah viewed collecting emails as THE NUMBER ONE METRIC he went by.
And it’s because of a chart that looks like this:
You see, if my stupid 21 year old self had put a “Signup by Email” box somewhere on NevBlog.com, everyday I would’ve collected a minimum of 10 and 30 emails per day with the traffic I was getting. That’s conservatively 600 people per month who wanted to hear from me.
And if 21 year old Neville HAD done this, then every time I put out a new blog post, I could hit up those 600 people via email saying:
“Hey, I did this thing where I got a homeless guy to sell bottled water on the side of the road, and we sold all 24 bottles in under 30 minutes! Checkout the blog post here.“
That same day, the 600 people that signed up that month would click the post. PLUS the people the month before, PLUS the people before that, PLUS the people before that, PLUS the people before that, PLUS the people before that, PLUS the people before that, PLUS the people before that, PLUS the people before that, PLUS the people before that, PLUS the people before that, PLUS the people before that, PLUS the people before that, PLUS the people before that, PLUS the people before that, PLUS the people before that, PLUS the people before that, PLUS the people before that and so on………
Basically thousands of visitors would find out about my new post that same day. Driving hella traffic to the site. And since the email list and traffic would continue to grow together, it would create a “compounding traffic” effect in the long run.
So a happy APRIL FOOLS to current-Neville on missing out on tens of thousands of free subscribers & sales!!
Your business homework for tonight:
Make sure somewhere on your website (personal or business) people can signup to get more information/deals/updates from you.
Keep in mind, even though the new owner of my former business HouseOfRave.com does a horrible job with the site, this crap-ass email form still gets him an average of 3 new signups a day:
So even a poorly-executed version of an email signup will help build your business for free. You don’t even have to be emailing on a regular basis right now….just get the damn form up today!!
P.S. This kid Bryan Harris is doing all this stuff VERY correctly right off the bat, and already his blog is exploding. Just two months into starting a blog, he makes $1,500+ a month from his new email subscribers automatically (which 21 year old Neville would TOTALLY be jealous of)! I’ll feature a post about how he did this tomorrow. Stay tuned homie.
P.P.S. Do you have some sort of email collection thingy on your website right now? Post a link to it in the comments, I’m curious to see it. If you’re feeling bold, I’d love to hear the number of signups you get per day!