This week we’re going over my 4-part plan for what I’d do if I had to start completely over from scratch in business.
I’m pretending that I have a full-time job with only 1-2 hours to work on business each day and that I have little-to-no startup money to invest. My business contacts have disappeared and I have no email list to speak of.
I hope this will help those just beginning in their entrepreneurial journey get clear on the first steps in an online business. If you’ve already started a business you might find some holes in your existing way of thinking or find inspiration for where you might take things.
So far we’ve covered…
- Step 0: Start with the end in mind (Timeline: Do this NOW)
- Step 1: Learn how to write copy (Timeline: Keep your job & dedicate 3 to 6 months, 1-2 hours per day, to learning)
- Step 2: Build an email list (Timeline: Start 5 or 6 weeks after you begin learning copywriting)
Yesterday we talked about Step 2 and picking a target market for the list you’d build.
Today I’m going to show you how I’d build a simple landing for my list and how I’d approach getting the initial bit of traffic to that landing page.
Step 2a: Getting Initial Traffic To Your Email List Landing Page
Before you build your first landing page, which I’ll show you how to do below, start thinking about how you’ll get some traffic to it.
There are all sorts of strategies you could use to drive traffic including free and paid (ads) options and the advice on either could fill up entire courses.
But I’ll tell you what I’d do.
I’d start with free traffic sources:
- I’d signup to X and LinkedIn.
- I’d join a paid forum in my chosen market.
We will discuss more of this tomorrow but I’d start posting highly valuable, non-promotional content, to these platforms. I’d become a high-value contributor.
Repeat: I would NOT promote anything for the first few months that I’m on these forums (a link to your landing page in your profile is okay but do not do any overt or even covert promos).
Only after I started gaining a tiny bit of "cred" on those platforms would I reach out and ask people if they wanted to subscribe to my newsletter.
If I wanted to move a bit quicker and if I had $10 a day ($300/month) to spend on my business, I’d use the paid traffic strategy I’ll walk you through next week.
I recommend that you start thinking about which traffic sources you’d like to use starting right now. The more goodwill you can build up before you launch anything, the better. Or, the more you can learn about the paid traffic source you’ll be using, the better too.
Now let’s talk about where you’ll send that traffic…
Step 2b: Creating Your First Landing Page With ConvertKit
There are actually 2 all-in-one email list platforms that I can recommend: ConvertKit and Beehiiv. Both will enable you to easily send emails to your list and build landing pages and forms to capture email addresses.
For the rest of this tutorial I’ll keep things simple and use ConvertKit as an example (I’ll make a commission if you buy through my link but like always, I don’t promote things I don’t believe in and/or currently use).
I recommend you start with the "Creator" plan because you can create more than one email sequence and you’ll be able to remove the ConvertKit branding.
But if you go with the free Newsletter plan to start, that’s completely okay – I just want you to get moving.
Setup your simple "landing page" in ConvertKit
Once you’re setup with ConvertKit, you’ve essentially just started a business! A list is a business asset that you can sell in the future. So congratulations!
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Pick a "landing page"
I’m putting "landing page" in quotes because we’re actually going to use ConvertKit’s simple Form’s feature to create our first landing page.
You’ll navigate to Grow > Landing Pages & Forms then click the "+ Create new" button. Select "Form" and then "Inline". From here you’ll choose your template.
"Mills" is the safest bet but if you can use ConvertKit’s stock imagery, then any of the other Form templates can work.
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Write your Landing Page Copy
With your Form selected, let’s now write some copy that will attract the target market we settled on yesterday.
Remember that we are only starting lists in the beginning that either a) help businesses or regular people solve problems that make them more money or b) help rich people solve rich people problems. And the key when we’re starting from scratch is that we’re solving real and/or painful problems.
In order to write copy for this landing page, we need to first shift our mindset.
The best type of email list to build in the beginning in my opinion, is a "newsletter."
In other words I think you should "start a newsletter" instead of "starting a list". The benefits to this approach are too numerous to list here, but mainly, starting a newsletter removes A LOT of complexity and allows you to write simple opt-in copy. Plus, the modern consumer understands what a "newsletter" is and will opt-in to receive one with less resistance.
(And we’ll talk about this tomorrow, but a newsletter makes writing your email content much easier and doesn’t require that you be an expert on the topic).
Here’s an example of a simple newsletter signup page in the online business world – the Hustle. (The Hustle was started by Sam Parr, a CopyHour student. He sold this newsletter to Hubspot for $20mm+)
As you can see the opt-in copy is very simple. The problem that this newsletter solves is a bit nebulous and general but that’s fine. I’d say it’s, "Tech and business news is scattered. If you can get it all in 5 minutes a day, you’ll be smarter (and thus make more money)."
Back to our example. If I were starting over from zero I’d go into the golf market which is filled with "rich" people who pay lots of money to solve problems they encounter on the golf course.
I’d choose a topic like breaking a score of 80. My friend Sean Ogle has a website with that very name (BreakingEighty.com) but his content is directed at product and course reviews (which is a great topic for him). I’d focus on building a newsletter (aka list) that helped people break a score of 80 from the instructional, how-to content standpoint.
Here’s what my landing page could look like.
Take note there’s just one headline and no other text. In the beginning it’s best to experiment with as bare bones of a landing page as possible. We want to see if our newsletter idea is resonating. If you try to add other elements it gets messy quick – and you risk turning people off by saying too much (a legitimate concern when you’re a beginner in copywriting).
To be honest, I don’t know if this would work – but I really don’t care to limit my speed of implementation. I need to get something up and running in the real world.
The mindset is "fail forward".
Now, tomorrow I’m going to start talking about Step 3 of my plan for starting over from zero. I’ll be discussing what I would send to an email list once I started getting subscribers.
Interestingly, what I’d send to that list will give you a clearer picture of what kind of content you could post to the free traffic sources I mentioned above and how you might also be able to use a small dollar amount of paid traffic to send to your landing page.
Things will make a lot more sense when I cover Step 3 tomorrow.
To quickly review:
- Step 0: Start with the end in mind (Timeline: Do this NOW)
- Step 1: Learn how to write copy (Timeline: Keep your job & dedicate 3 to 6 months, 1-2 hours per day, to learning)
- Step 2: Build an email list (Timeline: Start 5 or 6 weeks after you begin learning copywriting)
- Step 2a: Start becoming a valuable contributor on free social media platforms and in forums (Timeline: Start this NOW)
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Step 2b: Setup a landing page (Timeline: Start 5 or 6 weeks after you begin learning copywriting)
Talk to you tomorrow!
— Derek