November 13th, 2018 | By Tom Woods
Those of you who opened last night’s email [to my online business list; join it here] about becoming a New Yorker either laughed out loud or were horrified.
But those of you who did: I appreciate you. You looked at that subject line, simply had to know how I was going to deliver on it, and opened up and read.
I just looked over all the subject lines for this list in 2018. I’ve had some doozies.
Here’s the thing, though: they’re not clickbait. I deliver on these headlines, and I draw a business lesson out of the subjects discussed.
Here are my favorites from 2018. Note one thing they all have in common: they arouse curiosity.
Curiosity is the most powerful thing you can appeal to when it comes to email and marketing.
Here we go:
(1) I see dead people (handing me products to sell)
(2) Watch me punish a belligerent customer
(3) Stereotyping helped me not get swindled on Airbnb last night
(4) Now that my clothes are back on, I can give you the good news
(5) this guy was homeless. now I’m speaking at his conference
(6) So I brought a cup of my own urine to the savings bank
(7) I’m getting sick of Bruce Willis following me around
(8) Your military coup in the Land of the Knuckleheads
(9) Extreme couponers are chumps
(10) I watched a millionaire leave a one-dollar tip, and then reacted
(11) Report: Woods is “the most divisive figure alive” in the libertarian movement
(12) The only thing I ever promoted that *nobody* bought. And I mean nobody
(13) With Justice Kennedy retiring, the Nazi takeover is nearly complete
(14) That cat video got 100,000,000 views, and your blog has 12 visitors
(15) Real-life Nigerian demands I pay him $60,000 (I’m not joking)
(16) It’s LGBTQ Pride month. And that means…
(17) Nobody knew who I was, and I beat everyone. Then they knew.
(18) Hey Woods, how do you get so much done? The horrifying secret
(19) How I defended Ron Paul against the scum of the earth
(20) The cats keep pooping in my bathroom
(21) The tooth fairy, a.k.a. pathetic loser
(22) I just kicked my Uber driver in the rear end
A good subject line matters: it gets your reader’s attention. Eventually you hope to become good enough at this email game that it’s not the subject line but the “from” line that gets their attention. They see, say, Tom Woods, and they wouldn’t even consider not opening it.
I need especially good ones these days because if you miss my live Q&A session with Paul Counts, I will be genuinely unhappy. Rarely do we get the opportunity to pick the brain of someone as knowledgeable and successful as Paul.
He’ll get you over whatever that hurdle is.
Plus, you’ll be speaking to Patrick Henry’s seventh great-grandson, which is a novelty in itself.
Reserve your seat right away, and I’ll see you there:
http://www.tomwoods.com/counts
November 12th, 2018 | By Tom Woods
When I told my college roommate, who was from Brooklyn, that I would be attending Columbia University for graduate school, he told me how I’d know I had truly become a New Yorker: I would reach stage four.
The four stages involved the subway.
Stage 1. You walk down the subway platform, and you wonder what that liquid on the ground might be.
Stage 2. You say to yourself, “Wait a minute. Could that be…?”
Stage 3. You walk right through it, paying no attention.
Stage 4. You’re on the subway platform late at night, there are no facilities, and you really have to go….
I never got to Stage 4, thank goodness.
You’ll note that the progression from stage one to stage four involves becoming desensitized. What once got your undivided attention no longer even registers.
Is that happening with that online income stream you promised yourself you’d build, as insurance against the pink slip?
You were all excited, and as the crush of daily life has taken over again, it’s back to meh.
I’m going to jolt you back into excitement and determination.
I managed to get Paul Counts, Patrick Henry’s seventh great grandson — no joke — to join us for a live Q&A. Ask whatever you want, and Paul, who’s a master of online business, will give you a good, meaty answer.
Paul, who’s been working for himself online for 19 years, knows everything there is to know about this stuff.
Bring your questions, or just listen and learn.
But for the sake of all that is sensible, reserve your spot and be there:
http://www.tomwoods.com/counts
November 11th, 2018 | By Tom Woods
Here’s how you can build a lucrative asset most people would kill for, without spending a dime.
In fact, this is precisely how I do it.
The strategy goes like this.
Offer a report or an eBook that helps solve a problem. (If you’d like to know easy ways to do this, ask us about it in the live Q&A we have coming up; trust me that this is not difficult.) In order to get the report, the visitor needs to enter his email address.
You are now building an email list, an asset of enormous value. (I know you know this by now.)
Now here comes the key step.
Once the visitor has opted in to get the report, take him to a page making him a one-time paid offer. (At the moment the person has shown an interest in the free content you have to offer, it makes sense to offer an inexpensive paid product that is related to what he opted in for.)
A modest percentage of people will take you up on this offer.
Here’s the beauty of this strategy: the money you earn from sales of the paid product can then be spent on paid traffic methods to build your list further.
In other words, you don’t use this money to enrich yourself, at least not directly. You pour it right back into your list-building efforts, and thereby make the building of your biggest asset completely costless.
Neat trick, eh?
This is called a “self-liquidating offer.” It’s one of those secrets few tell you about.
Of course, I left out one hurdle: how the heck are you going to create a paid offer in the first place? That sure sounds like a lot of work!
I’ll tell you how I did it.
I bought the rights to an extremely helpful tech course by Paul Counts that people working online are going to need. Over 100 bite-sized, step-by-step videos.
So I didn’t even have to create the paid product. I bought the rights to Paul’s and sold that. I don’t owe Paul anything after paying $97 for the rights. I keep all the dough I earn.
Last time I checked (it’s gone up since then), Paul’s course has brought in $53,676 for me since October 2016, and that’s from barely even trying.
Nowhere do I advertise this course. The only way you can get it is by signing up for my eBook, and even then I don’t advertise the offer until the person’s email address has been entered.
And by the way: why wouldn’t it bring in that much? After all, it solves a major problem my audience has. If they didn’t have that problem they wouldn’t be seeking out my eBook in the first place.
Here’s the punchline: this Paul Counts fellow is going to answer your questions in a live session this week.
First he’s going to give us a presentation building on what I just explained here (valuable stuff, surely, right?). And then he’s taking your questions, on whatever you’re stuck on, even if you’re stuck on step one.
I don’t think I’ve ever managed to swing something like this before, with someone as experienced, knowledgeable, and successful as Paul.
So please: make the time to be there.
And remember: Paul is the seventh great-grandson of Patrick Henry, so there’s a certain novelty involved in chatting with him….
Reserve your seat right away:
http://www.tomwoods.com/counts
October 5th, 2018 | By Tom Woods
In 2009 I had a book on the financial crisis spend ten weeks on the New York Times bestseller list — and then never come out in paperback.
Evidently the hardback sold well enough that the publisher decided it wasn’t in a hurry to produce a paperback edition.
I had written it in a month, since the publisher said mine had to be the first book on the crisis if I expected to get any traction.
A horrible ordeal.
But an amazing result.
Well, I’m happy to announce that a tenth-anniversary edition of Meltdown is about to be released…in paperback.
My publisher was so helpful to me: I did some good television, a ton of radio, and some print interviews, and I promoted the book at a whole bunch of events.
In general, though: publishers suck a lot of your revenue, and don’t do much for you (except prestige, which I grant).
That’s why I, and lots of other people, have turned to self-publishing: you get to keep a lot more of the moolah.
The one problem: there’s a learning curve, and a lot to keep straight: cover design, editing, interior, marketing, distribution, etc.
You can spend 500 years mastering it all, and then hating your whole project, or you can get a little help and enjoy your life.
Plus, the checklists and videos I’m recommending come with the right to resell them as your own product. Somebody in your audience (blog, social media, whatever) needs this and will thank you for it.
Seems like there should be a catch, but there isn’t.
Except that the price goes up by 60% at midnight.
Keep your sanity. Click this link:
https://www.happyearner.com/totherescue
October 2nd, 2018 | By Tom Woods
Remember when as a young person you were impressed to learn that someone had written a book?
Then, 250 crappy books later, it didn’t impress you quite so much?
Here’s the thing: writing a book — even a short one (plenty of eBooks are well under 100 pages) — opens doors for you. It positions you as an authority, and in fact may be the quickest route to authority status.
It builds you an audience.
It gets you media attention, which builds your audience and readership still further.
(Believe me, as a guy who needs five podcast guests per week, someone who approaches me having written even a little book is a lifesaver.)
You prove something to yourself by writing it: yes, I am an action taker, and yes, I’ll emerge from my comfort zone.
So instead of looking at the authors of all those crappy books with contempt, we should instead say: even these knuckleheads figured out the value of writing a book.
Problem:
There’s a lot to it, if you really want to do well. You may even give up, and wind up as so much roadkill on the information superhighway.
I won’t let that happen.
Here’s the best way to keep everything straight, not to miss anything, and to maintain your sanity:
https://www.happyearner.com/totherescue
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