Dear Diary,
Tom here. Sheesh. It's been a while, eh? I guess it's time for an update...
It's been close to a year since I last posted an update on this blog.
How is that even possible?
Time flies, I guess…
So you might be wondering:
Questions. So many questions. Some are even good.
So here’s the deal.
Over the last few years, I’ve been deep in the trenches, creating and launching products and growing an online education business (among other things)...
My focus for the last couple of years has been to build a business that can live and grow on its own and without my name all over it. I designed this business intentionally so as to avoid creating a 'cult of personality' type business (that, while clearly profitable, always rubbed me the wrong way).
I'm several years into this "quest," which has taken increasingly more time and effort than I expected (but also did kind of expect, if you get me), and I'm pleased to say it's doing well, we've built an engaged subscriber list of approx 50,000 readers, and have served over 70,000 customers worldwide...
…yet in spite of this progress, I still have "promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep" and the journey is far from over...
And so I'm writing to share an update on where I've been, and where I'm planning to go moving forward (in business and life, as well as with this blog and the newsletter).
I think there may be a valuable lesson to share here, so let me start at the beginning...
When I started this blog in 2012, I didn’t really have a plan.
I just wanted a place to share my ideas on life, work, and things that I found interesting. A "dear diary" if you will (haha, get it?).
I published unapologetically for myself, NOT for others.
I didn’t expect anyone to read what I wrote.
But, they did.
And, eventually, my ‘dear diary’ became less for me and more for others.
Soon, my blog, podcast, and newsletter became a place for others to find useful training, tools, and resources to help them achieve their goals (and overcome the army of bad habits and destructive self-talk propaganda that keep so many of us dormant, stagnant, and stuck).
So I decided to keep doubling down in this direction; writing about things that I thought would help the greatest number of people, on the subjects I cared the most about.
(and yes, that was the full extent of my ‘marketing plan’)
Slowly but surely, I attracted new readers and subscribers. I did it all for free, spent thousands of hours on it, and made no money from it.
Of course, "free" is not sustainable, so I embarked on a new quest...
Quest #1. I wanted to replace my income from the military with my writing and publishing work.
I resigned my commission as a Captain in the Army in 2013 (making somewhere around $50 or $60k a year if I remember correctly) and replaced it with a $0/year income as an “entrepreneur.”
Basically, I jumped and then had to build the plane on the way down, so to speak…
My thinking was that if I could replace my previous income with the profit made by creating and selling digital products on my site, I could continue to do this "thing" that I was doing (and, ipso facto, avoid becoming a wage slave).
Fortunately, I reached that goal by the end of 2014, which gave me the runway I needed to keep going.
So I set my site on the next summit...
Quest #2. I wanted to hit that elusive 6-figure mark (annually).
According to a few random business and market reports I found online, only about 10% - 15% of small business owners earn more than $100k per year. Therefore, breaking that number would put me in the 90th percentile of entrepreneurs.
A good challenge.
I felt like if I could earn at least that amount on my own, through my own creative effort, I could consider myself a “legitimate tough guy” (see page 20 of The Art of Instigating -- hat tip Vin Diesel from “Knockaround Guys”).
Through a combination of my own writing and publishing, as well as consulting with brands to help them increase their traffic, subscribers, and sales (and earning a small percentage of the revenue I helped them generate), I crossed that threshold in 2015/2016.
This was a major milestone for me.
It provided the validation that my monkey brain needed that this “thing I was doing” could be sustainable and that I could keep doing it (despite my Dad's plea for me to get a 'real job')…
…yet, it was also a double-edged sword (as success often is). In this case, the other edge of that sword meant bigger, more ambitious dreams, desires, and pursuits.
Needless to say, I set off on a new journey...
Quest #3. I wanted to build a “proper” business
By “proper” I meant an enterprise with more people than just me and a VA, and likewise: something that provided a bigger impact and delivered bigger outcomes for a greater number of people than I could on my own.
Ideally, this "something" could one day run itself or be sold for a profit.
After a few fits and starts, including growing an agency to multiple 6-figures per year (before shutting it down...a story for another time), I finally got something off the ground that worked (and met all my above criteria).
A few years later, we reached the "important revenue goal" and now we have what some might call a proper business.
That's cool because, statistically, close to 90% of small businesses fail after 5 years...
(so again, hitting that 90th percentile, which I'm a big fan of)
What's also been a great experience is building a team and increasing our scale of impact.
Building a team is challenging. People depending on you so that they can put food on the table is even scarier. This is why it's so meaningful to me that we are able to give our team the ability to work for an amazing company on an important mission (no corporate BS, we're not funded by Blackrock so I don't have to force people how to "think right", and because I'm bootstrapped, I don't have to bend the knee to anyone -- we can focus entirely on serving our customers, clients, and team).
I'm proud to say everyone who has joined our team since the beginning has stayed with us -- and I'm hoping for another decade or more of continued success.
With that said:
And of course, the higher heights you reach, the greater the fall (if you fall)...which makes the 'fear of failure' that much greater.
So while it’s not all Bugatis and bling (more like diapers and a 401k), we now have a substantial asset/entity/enterprise that can make a meaningful difference in the lives of people around the world.
It also means...
And maybe most importantly of all:
It's proof that with the right mindset, dedication, and a pinch of audacity, it's possible to turn your creative or entrepreneurial dream into reality.
(if my attention-deficient, cave-man brain can start with nothing and bootstrap to success, I have to believe it's possible for just about anyone to do it)
Waaaaayyyyyy back in 2014, I wrote a blog post called “The Entrepreneur’s Journey." In this post, I wrote about how I envisioned the pursuit of anything creative or entrepreneurial.
I depicted this journey in a classic fantasy format (because -- paraphrasing C.S. Lewis -- sometimes fiction can be "more true" than non-fiction because no one can be deceived by it).
I was so into the idea of it, that I even ‘illustrated’ what that journey looked like in a PowerPoint slide (just Tom being Tom, investing an absurd amount of hours into the "important" things 🤣)…
Long story short -- in an unintentionally prophetic way, my story + illustration about “The Entrepreneurs Journey” ended up being accurate.
In particular:
Once you've conquered one summit, it's natural (dare I say: automatic) to set your sights on the next summit...
That desire for the ‘next great height’ I believe is in all of us -- certainly it's in the heart and blood of creators and entrepreneurs…
And that’s why I’m writing this today.
I'm fueled by the desire to push further and to ‘test my chops’ in this next phase of work, business, and life...
But I've changed...
My thinking has changed...
The world has changed...
And the things I'm "up against" now are bigger and badder than before...
Bottom line: this path I'm walking is very different than what came before (with a lot more riding on it than ever before).
So I say this with some trepidation around this next phase of life...this next quest, this latest pursuit, this new height in front of me...
Just because I haven't fallen doesn't mean I won't. This is the everpresent reality of business, writing, and life in general ("nothing gold can stay" and all that, since we're getting poetic in today's blog post)...And while I think somewhere in my heart I was hoping to someday be completely over that "fear" of failing...
...the reality is that even with experience, wisdom, and a "track record" of success -- it still feels like I'm at square one...
Which leads me to...
Quest #4. What's coming next...
Over the coming months, my hope is to reignite this blog and my newsletter with a renewed sense of purpose and what I hope is a wealth of lessons learned from my last decade "in the trenches"...
I want to share the good, the bad, and the ugly; what's working and what's not, based on real-world experience...
And I'm also interested in exploring new projects and ideas, like how to use an "A.I assistant" to create simpler and more profitable businesses (especially for solopreneurs and those looking to stay lean/agile), how to tell meaningful stories (that attract readers, customers, and clients), and more...
BUT! -- I only want to share what's useful and meaningful for YOU.
Since I'm over the need for an online 'dear diary' and this blog/podcast/newsletter has served its purpose for me...unless what I write is useful to you, I might as well shut it all down.
And that may be what I do.
But before I metaphorically "nuke the site from orbit," I want to hear from YOU!
What do YOU want me to write about?
What do YOU want me to share, teach, or explore?
Leave a comment below and tell me what would entertain or inspire you? What would make you come back to read my next blog post or newsletter?
For those who have been following me for a minute; what has kept you coming back all these months and years? Or what would be “Tom returning to form” for you?
All ideas are welcome.
Even the crazy ones.
(post anonymously if you have to, but DO make sure to leave at least one comment!)
P.S. Listen, I know it's 2023, and people don't really comment on blogs anymore. It's likely if this was a TikTok post with me pointing at floating text on the screen while I carefully gyrate my hips to the latest Nicki Minaj track, this would get more views (how couldn't it?)...
...But I believe there's still value in blogging, and there's still a place for long-form content in this world, at least for those of us who can read above a 6th-grade level.
I also believe in the value of being able to have a dialogue outside the policed echo chambers of today's mainstream platform...
Bottom line: I want to hear from you so leave a comment below! Right now!
If you've never commented on any of my blog posts before, make this your first.
And if you're a returning reader; an OG who's been commenting for years -- your feedback is especially important to me and I want to hear from you!
Your words and feedback fuel me, and I’d love some energy moving into the next phase of this journey.
Thanks, and as always: stay frosty.
Chelsea Clark is a blog and marketing strategist. She also helps aspiring bloggers to start money-making blogs over at HerPaperRoute.com.
In today's call, we talk about how Chelsea Clark started blogging and started monetizing her blog and manage to do it numerous times now by figuring out exactly what's working in 2019.
My big takeaway from today's conversation is that blogging still works, and affiliate marketing is still an effective way to monetize a blog. You'll have to play the long game but it works.
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I think it's pretty common knowledge at this point that if you’re an author who wants to make more than $500 per year, you need a website and an email list.
A website is important because it’s the place where your biggest fans can come to find out about your books.
More importantly, it’s the place where your biggest fans can send other people to see your work.
But a website isn’t enough.
You also need an email list so you can connect and engage with these readers.
For the past couple weeks, I’ve written about why you need a website and why you need an email list.
I’ve gotten an overwhelmingly positive response to both articles with hundreds of shares and thousands of views (if you were one of the people who shared, thank you so much).
The positive reception to this idea also led to an equivalent number of questions asking about the how. Specifically:
“what tools / tech / software do you recommend for authors and self-publishers to build a lucrative platform?”
(which is only the second most commonly asked question I get after “how are you so really, really, ridiculously good looking?)
So today, I’m going to take you behind the scenes and show you how I use ConvertKit for myself (as both a publisher and author) and for the authors I work with through Insurgent Publishing.
If you find this article helpful, please share!
10 reasons you should use @convertkit to grow your email list: http://bit.ly/1M5R1r8 via tmorkes #selfpublishing #emailmarketing (click to tweet)
If you’re not familiar with ConvertKit, it’s an Email Marketing Service (EMS) that lets you build an email list and engage with your readers, subscribers, and customers easily.
And today I’m going to share with you 10 reasons you should be using it for your publishing projects.
But first, let’s start at the beginning…
Email marketing is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using email. – Wikipedia
So if email marketing is sending messages to a group of people using email, an Email Marketing Service (EMS) is software that allows you to do just that (versus, say, sending an email with 10,000 people cc’d).
You do, if you plan to sell products or services (sorry, social media is not a replacement).
For a more detailed answer why, check out my free, in-depth resource: The Author’s Guide to Building an Email List (and selling more books)
There are a lot out there. Search Email Marketing Service and you’ll find dozens if not hundreds of competitors. I’ve been doing this stuff for the past few years and have had the chance to work with many EMS’s through consulting work with various clients. They all have their pros and cons. Below, I’ve listed just a few of the more well-known EMS’s for authors, bloggers, and product creators:
A favorite of affiliate marketers (it has a great affiliate program), Aweber provides a simple platform to connect with people in mass (who have opted into your list, of course). I have dabbled with Aweber, but found it no better than Mailchimp, and Mailchimp is free to start, which made it the no-brainer solution a few years back when I was debating between the two.
This is the EMS I used for over two years. It was great at first because it was free…then after a few months, I realized I needed more advanced features like the ability to create email autoresponders, which was NOT free with Mailchimp. So I upgraded and continued using the platform…unfortunately, it’s mind-boggling how unituitive it is for the most simple tasks, like sending out an email broadcast or creating online courses (more on this below). Bottom line: I really wouldn’t recommend Mailchimp to anyone who is serious about starting or growing a business online.
This is the big boy in town. A lot of the biggest names in blogging use Infusionsoft with good reason: it’s an all-in-one solution (email marketing, ecommerce tool, etc.). Infusionsoft has been around long enough that it integrates with just about every piece of relevant software and can do some pretty advanced stuff…but it also costs an arm and a leg (starting at $199/month for only 2,500 contacts). I’ve also been told that to do anything with the software, you need to hire a consultant. Bottom line: not worth the investment until you’re making $100k / year (and even then, may not be worth the investment unless you need an all-in-one solution).
This is the new EMS in town, started by Nathan Barry, a professional designer and published author, to scratch his own itch as a blogger, author, and product creator. There are a lot of reasons to consider ConvertKit if you’re working online, 10 of which I’ll point out in today’s article.
ConvertKit is intuitive.
Hands down, it’s one of the simplest, easiest to understand email marketing service out there.
With Mailchimp, I have to struggle with the simplest actions. Even sending a routine email (known as a campaign in MailChimp and a broadcast in ConvertKit), is painfully counter-intuitive. There are about 6 different pages I have to go through and 12 buttons I need to click before I can send an email. With ConvertKit, sending a Broadcast can be completed in 3 pages and 4 clicks.
Here’s the process you need to go through to send an email with Mailchimp:
Here’s the process to send an email with Convertkit:
This may sound minor. but when you’re sending emails weekly, and when the same complexity spills into everything else (see segmenting below), it quickly becomes a time suck (and therefore a drain on your wallet, because time is money – am I right or am I right?).
ConverKit also excels at auto responders (what MailChimp calls automation and what ConvertKit refers to as Courses). Once again, the process of building an auto responder in MailChimp is a huge pain that is needlessly convoluted. With Converkit it just makes sense:
“Drip email is so powerful, but for some reason it’s incredibly complicated in other software. The way ConvertKit allows bloggers to organize their drip emails is just logical.” – Andrew Warner
Here’s a brief video to walk you through the user interface and dashboard of ConvertKit:
What can I say, I’m a sucker for good design.
Not in the “hey, everyone look at my [place name of status-symbol device here]” kind of way, but in the functional kind of way. This is one of the reasons Apple can charge exorbitant prices for their products – because people will pay money for looks that improve function.
ConverKit’s interface is clean, clear, and tells me everything I need to know at a glance. Compared to competitors, it’s the Model X of Email Marketing Services. (if Nathan reads this, yes he can use this as a testimonial)
Because of ConvertKit’s design, it’s a tool I don’t need to spend much time with, but when I do, I don’t mind.
One of the fastest ways to build an email list is to offer an incentive for people to subscribe.
For more on how to build your email list with free gifts, check out: The Author’s Guide to Building an Email List
Say you’re an author and you want to get people to sign up for your email list. A simple way to do this is to offer a free chapter of your book.
With MailChimp (or Aweber), it’s impossible to do this out of the box (not if you want different optin gifts for different forms).
Alternatively, you can pay $40 / month for Leadpages and use their lead magnet delivery tool. I’ve used this solution for the past year or so and have had great success with it, growing my list several thousand people in the process. However, Leadpages is a bit pricey if you’re just getting started, and is more of an add-on than a core piece of software for most authors, self-publishers, and product creators.
With ConvertKit, on the other hand, you can create an unlimited number of form-specific optin incentives which can be automatically delivered when someone subscribes.
This is made even more powerful within ConvertKit because you can tag users based on what what form they opted into, what gift they downloaded, or dozens of other variables that can help with segmenting your list.
Now, with the help of ConvertKit, you can figure out what form is resulting in the most subscribers, which free gift is most enticing (and leads to the most downloads), and which type of form placement is the most effective.
Convertkit comes with powerful and easy-to-understand analytics baked into the software.
With Mailchimp I can see how many people receive my email, open my email, and click through a link in my email. This is a good start, but there is absolutely no way to measure exactly where these people signed up for my list, or which form is working the best (not without additional software, at least).
ConvertKit does all of the above, but does one even better – it tracks how many people see and sign up for my various forms or signup pages.
A few months ago, I spent the better part of 30 hours and hundreds of dollars on education to figure out how to track Mailchimp conversion rates on signup pages throughout my website via Google Analytics. While I’m not the most technically inclined person, I can usually figure out a hack with enough time and effort. I simply couldn’t do it with Mailchimp and Google Analytics.
Luckily, ConverKit tracks these conversion rates right out of the box.
Tracking conversion is important for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it lets me know what is working and what isn’t working on my website. For example, if one of my forms only converts at 5%, and a similar form but with different sales copy and a different image, converts at 55%, which do you think I should replace?
Without ConvertKit, I would still be in the dark about what is working or not, and therefore would have no idea how to fix it to improve my overall results.
ConvertKit has similar pricing to Mailchimp, but with features that are closer to (and some that are on par with) Infusionsoft.
One of these features is subscriber tagging.
Tagging is the process of applying a specific description or keyword to a user / subscriber. Tagging is powerful because you can tag a single user with multiple tags, and then filter your list before sending an email (so you send the right emails to the right people). Tagging users is usually reserved for higher end EMS’s like Infusionsoft.
Another really cool feature is the “resend to unopens.” Basically, what this feature lets you do is resend an email to all of the people who did not open your last email (and automatically removes anyone who opened it, so you don’t hit someone with the same email twice).
I recently used this feature and went from a 35% open rate to a 45% open rate (a 28% increase!). That was an extra several hundred people I was able to share my recent blog post with, who would NOT have seen it had this feature not been available.
Very powerful stuff.
ConvertKit also comes with the ability to create unlimited autoresponders, unlimited forms, and digital product delivery. While not as robust as Infusionsoft (there is no built-in ecommerce solution, for example), ConvertKit strikes a great balance between cost and features (features that actually matter and that you will use).
Believe it or not, some Email Marketing Services restrict how many autoresponders and forms you can create.
Not ConvertKit.
This means you could create an automated book sales funnel for every book you’ve written, or create a free course to teach people about a really cool, unconventional pricing technique that actually works.
In this video, I’ll show you how to set up and deliver free courses to build your email list:
Believe it or not, adding a simple email signup to your website can be a nightmare depending on who you’re using for your EMS.
With Mailchimp, the process for embedding a form into a simple wordpress page is overly complicated and doesn’t loos right unless you hire a designer (or have a background in design and CSS). Creating an optin page is just as tiresome and often still looks sloppy (maybe it was just me, but I could never get the optin form to look the way I wanted it to, unless I was using a 3rd party plugin, which slows down your site and adds another layer of complexity to your sales funnel).
With ConvertKit the process is painless and intuitive. Even better, there are multiple types of forms you can embed. For example, you can make any of your forms inline (they sit at the bottom of a page), modal (popup when you press a button), or slide-in (an automated popup where the form slides in from the side of the screen).
These forms are also dynamic if you choose, so once someone subscribers, they won’t see the same form optin incentive. Insted, you could replace it with a link to a new product (“buy my new book”), new blog post, or whatever else you want.
This is really powerful because if you send subscribers to your site why would you want to keep asking them to subscribe? That’s amateur hour.
Before ConvertKit, I would have had no idea how to do this. It would have been expensive and probably wouldn’t have very much longevity (as I’d probably have to keep updating the software over time).
With ConvertKit, you can make any form responsive, which is incredibly powerful.
In this video I’ll show you how to create and embed forms throughout your website:
I remember when I first started writing two years ago, all I wanted was a simple way to email my blog posts to subscribers. Instead of the process being automated or simple, I’d have to copy and paste my work into MailChimp and reformat everything so it would look right. The process took at least an hour per email, on average. That’s several hundred hours I’ve wasted in the past few years just formatting emails. Absurd.
With ConvertKit, new blog posts can be turned into email broadcasts that are ready to send to your list automatically.
This means instead of spending hours of your life copying, pasting, and reformatting every blog post into your EMS, ConvertKit does the heavy lifting for you, so all you need to do is click send.
In this video, I’ll show you some of the more advanced features inside ConvertKit:
Here are just a few of the things ConvertKit does out of the box:
ConvertKit also seamlessly integrate with software relevant for authors and product creators, including:
Each integration only takes a few minutes to set up and then you can create some really powerful automation:
Nathan Barry is the creator of ConvertKit, and the author of several books including one of my personal favorites, Authority.
What’s important to note here is that Nathan built this software to solve his own problems as a blogger and author. He wanted a better solution to connect with and interact with his readers. He wanted a painless way to create automated emails sequences. He wanted a way to offer a gift (free book, free chapter, free course) in exchange for people signing up. He wanted software that just worked and didn’t require dozens of 3rd party apps or plugins to achieve the same endstate.
The result is a very simple, powerful piece of software that is great for authors, self-publishers, bloggers, and product creators (oh, and it’s constantly being improved with new features added every month).
As you can tell, I’m a big fan of ConvertKit.
It does everything I’ve wanted an EMS to do from the start, and it does it much cheaper than Infusionsoft.
Bottom line: if you’re a blogger, author, or product creator, you should look into ConvertKit – it could save you a lot of time, money, and frustration versus going with bigger, entrenched (but not necessarily better) competitors.