← The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast With Steve Chou
The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast With Steve Chou
585: What’s Actually Working in Email Marketing Right Now (Real Examples)
00:43:39
In this episode, Toni and I dive into the key takeaways from the Email Newsletter Summit she recently attended. - From list-building strategies that actually work in 2025 to content frameworks that boost open rates,
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- [00:00]
Steve Chou
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to E commerce and online business. In this episode, Tony and I dive into the key takeaways from the email newsletter summit she recently attended. From list building strategies that actually work in 2025 to content frameworks that boost open rates, we'll break down the most actionable insights, trends and expert tips shared at the event. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets are now on sale for Seller Summit 2025 over@sellers summit.com and the prices are now going to go up every two weeks until the event starts. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high level advice, mine is a curriculum based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e commerce business. Entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods and not some high level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000ft. I personally hate large events, so the Seller's Summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast and we've sold out every single year for the past eight years. If you are an e commerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th. Right now this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. So head on over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show. Welcome back to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. A couple weeks ago, Tony went to an email marketing conference and since email is such a big deal for both of our businesses, I thought that we would recap the event today.
- [02:04]
Tony
Yeah, so this is kind of ironic. I'm giving a talk in the next couple weeks about avoiding shiny object syndrome in your business and then I proceed to go to an email marketing summit where I have 52 business ideas and want to implement every single one of them.
- [02:19]
Steve Chou
But that's what you do for a living now. So I don't feel like that was a shiny object.
- [02:23]
Tony
That's true. But I think every time you go to any event and we, we see this with Seller Summit, right? Where people go to Seller Summit, they hear, you know, they hear Tiffany talk about live selling or they hear Andrea talking about Facebook and, or Brett Curry talking about Google. Right. And they're like, this is what I'm doing. I'm doing all of it right now. And, and so I think the biggest thing to take out of anything we talk about today or in general is that, you know, maintain the Steve chewed strategy. Like pick one thing for the year and focus on it. So if you see, if you hear something today that sounds great, make it your one thing for the year, but don't, don't do all of it at the same time.
- [03:01]
Steve Chou
You know what's funny about you saying that is I literally just published a video yesterday about how selling on TEMU might be attractive now because they're not charging any freeze and they're doing free advertising, really poach Amazon sellers because, you know, the, the new rules pretty much decimated their China business.
- [03:18]
Tony
Yeah.
- [03:18]
Steve Chou
So they're trying to recruit U.S. sellers. And then the comments, everyone's like, oh yeah, I gotta try this. Well, hold on, hold on. I'm just saying it might be a good opportunity. I'm not telling you to go out and you know, rush to do it.
- [03:29]
Tony
So anyway, so it was a, it was in Austin, Texas. I actually don't know the people who ran the conference. Um, I actually don't think you knew them either. I don't. I want to give them credit. Uh, it was like, now I can't find the guy, um, Matt something. He didn't speak. So anyway, so just like overall, because I sounds like they're going to do this event again. So if it, if you're into email marketing, this was really focused on content based email marketing. So if you're in E commerce, this probably would be not the best conference for you because there wasn't a lot about E commerce email marketing in there. This was a lot of content based email. However, they did a couple things really well at the conference. One, they had a lot of really smart speakers and they actually only gave the speakers like 25 minutes on stage. Which at first I was like, oh, you know. But I might steal the idea from them because the nice thing about a 25 minute talk is that people can only cover like two or three points. And so you don't leave overwhelmed with like from one session. Right. It's like, oh, I can't absorb or digest all this information. Like everything comes to you in like really digestible ways. So I'm kind of learning to like that 25 minute talk time.
- [04:56]
Steve Chou
I don't like it and I'll tell you why.
- [04:58]
Tony
Okay.
- [04:58]
Steve Chou
Tell me why from a conference holder perspective. Okay, so you have to bring in a whole bunch more speakers.
- [05:03]
Tony
Yes.
- [05:04]
Steve Chou
Right. And I don't think the economics really work out also. Plus having one or two things. I get it, I get it. Because that's how gorgeous conference works. Like every year I speak at DTC X, whatever it's called, and I get 20 minutes.
- [05:21]
Tony
Yeah.
- [05:22]
Steve Chou
And what ends up happening sometimes for me is it's hard to get through something even remotely complex in 20 minutes.
- [05:29]
Tony
Yeah. Which I think is kind of the point though because like to me, at a conference, you can't get super complex. You've got to stay like. If you're going to get complex, it should be one complex thing.
- [05:40]
Steve Chou
Right.
- [05:41]
Tony
So, yeah. And I would say as a conference holder that agreed that the math doesn't work to bring in, you know, double the amount of speakers. But what does work is giving people more networking time or more roundtable time or things like that. So I think you can balance it. But I did like that format because I think one of the problems, because, you know, we don't have trained speakers at our event. Right. These people are people who are working in the business on a daily basis. And so I think when you say to someone you've got 50 minutes or you have an hour, they're like, oh, you know, and they. And we've had speakers show up with 135 slides.
- [06:15]
Steve Chou
Yes.
- [06:16]
Tony
And. And not like the slides because there was a one speaker here that had a lot of slides. But it's like each slide was like one second. Right. It was just to keep your. Like Pat Flynn does this. It's to keep your attention. Right, right. So anyway, all that to say, I did like that format. The speakers were awesome. The logistics were a little iffy, but it was their first year. So obviously, you know, we've all had a first year. Well, not everybody but you and I have had a first conference year. I've had a couple. There's always some hiccups. But I want to start with honestly what I got the most excited about. And the most excited. The talk that got me the most excited and also sent me onto the rabbit trail, and that is local newsletters. And.
- [06:59]
Steve Chou
Yeah, you mentioned that talk. Talk to me about that. Okay. So you would create an Orlando newsletter.
- [07:04]
Tony
Yes. So the guy who spoke, his name's ryan. He owns 6am City. And it's basically a. I don't want to say it's a franchise, because it is. It's more like they just basically find cities and go in and start local newsletters. Right? Like, so they. He has local newsletters all over the country. Now I would say just because I'm telling you this, don't think that you can't start one too. Even if 6am cities already in your town. Most towns can definitely support. I mean, most towns support multiple hospital systems, multiple, you know, dentist office, multiple, you know, little league, whatever. So don't think that just because this guy owns like a bunch of them that it's like, well, he's already done that. There's no room. I think there's absolutely room. And this is actually, he's got a genius business model. So he goes into a city with two editors and a sales guy. And basically their model is to make the local newsletter profitable by six months. And the way that these make money is primarily selling ads in the newsletter. Now I went and did a little digging on him and they do have websites to go along with the newsletter. So if you like read an article, if you see an article in the newsletter, you're going to click over and read the full thing on the website. So all the information is not delivered inside the newsletter. However, I think you could do that too. I don't think you need a full robust website to do this.
- [08:33]
Steve Chou
Sorry, go just walk me through it. I mean, how do you sell advertising unless you have the audience to begin with?
- [08:40]
Tony
So he talked a little bit about growing the audience. A lot of it is in kind of getting yourself out there. It basically is not a hard sell. Right. I don't know where if this happens where you live, but where I live, I get a magazine. In fact, I just got it this week for my town. And it's like little feel good stories and the ice cream shops opening and this, you know, like we had the town I lived in. Well, it's basically the same town. Our little league team won the world series this year, right? Or last year. So like, you know, there was an article about that and the little parade and all these things. So it's all these like feel good local stories and you know, where people are rescuing birds and you know, and then in that magazine there's ads, right? So I think when people go, hey, here's a newsletter that you can read and learn about the happenings in your city. Learn when the new Publix is going to open, you know, get information on, you know, things in your community, it's not a hard sell. And you basically can work with other local businesses to get subscribers. So for example, you could like we just had a donut shop open right down the street from us. They're really good. I was a little hesitant, you know, to try a new donut shop, but I'll take one for the team and test donuts. But, like, they just opened. And so if I had a newsletter for my town, I would say to them, hey, maybe we could work out a deal where someone gets, like, a free coffee, a very inexpensive thing, right. In exchange for providing their email address, you know, to you guys. And we'll get it too, Right? And you obviously disclose that to the person signing up, and then we'll give you advertising in our newsletter. Right. So both is growing. Both are growing, right? Right. They're getting an email subscriber, and then they're getting people that don't. Don't know that they exist in your newsletter. I think this guy said he started his very first one with, like, just family and friends, like 70 people, put it on his Facebook page kind of thing. And because the content was so good that it just sort of organically grew because it's not. It's not like, oh, I want to subscribe to Chipotle's emails, right? Where it's like, I don't want to get a taco email every day, but do I wanted to get an email about, like, what I can do this weekend, what time the farmer's market's open? Absolutely. So he had a couple suggestions or, you know, rules that they use, obviously, for going into cities, since it's. They have a whole, like, production basically with this. They like, like the smaller metro areas. So he wouldn't go into San Francisco. I think that he actually said they did and it didn't do well. They like to go in places where. So let's say I live in Orlando, right? So for me, we've got Orlando, we've got Jacksonville, we've got Tampa. Right. They're like three big metro areas. But if you have an Orlando newsletter, the healthcare systems are the same, right? Like the healthcare system in Jacksonville and in Tampa. They have all the same. It's the same company. So, like, if I want to sell advertising to that healthcare system, they could get it in three areas if I had the three newsletters, right. So it's an easier sell and an easier grab for advertising. Obviously, you can sell to the mom and pops, but he made the point that we talk about a lot. It's easier to have ten customers at ten grand a month than it is to have a hundred customers at a thousand dollars a month. Right. With advertising. So when you find these like little metro areas where you can like have, you know, you can sell to companies that are like, you know, just located in that area. But they're like a healthcare system isn't going to blink at a 10k ad spend. Right? But a mom and pop place is. The other issue is a healthcare system is never going to care if they get a click. Right. Whereas the mom and pop, if they're like, well, this is our $500 advertising budget for the year. If you're not driving clicks or they're not seeing traffic, you know, they're gonna probably pull their dollars. So he talked a lot about using like the grocery store, the bigger spenders and ads to work on the advertising. Obviously you can do the mom and pops too.
- [12:42]
Steve Chou
Is this a legwork related thing? Like, you literally walk from store to store and you have these negotiations.
- [12:48]
Tony
So that's why they hire us. They have a sales guy that does that. I think if you're active in your town, this would be pretty easy to do. Like, if you already have relations. Like, I know my friend Sandy who you've met. Like, she knows the manager at the grocery store she shops at. She every. She lives by a shopping plaza. She knows every owner in that plaza personally. Right. So, like, you start with the relationships you already have and then you build it out. The nice thing is it's easy to get subscribers for this because people want this information.
- [13:18]
Steve Chou
Yeah.
- [13:19]
Tony
With the death of like, newspapers, right. Like, I remember when I was a kid, we got a daily newspaper and on Friday or Thursday there was like this event section in the newsletter that told you everything or the newspaper. Well, I don't even know if that exists because I haven't gotten a newspaper in like 20 years. But like, even if it does exist, most people aren't getting a newspaper anymore. So you're providing a really valuable service to the community. The other thing that I thought was interesting that he said and I think is important if you're thinking about doing this is you don't have to go to all the events. The events will actually give you all the information you need to write it up. And you can get people who go to the events to take the photos and email them to you. Right? Because think about like your mom or my mom or, you know, like, oh, my picture was featured in my news, right. And be like, when it was a big deal to have like your picture in the newspaper, people are still excited to submit content. And so, you know, he said that's one of the biggest mistakes they made early on was Thinking that they had to be at everything. And he's like, you don't to be at anything. Now, obviously, if you want to go or do stuff like that. I think the other cool, like, side benefit of this, and this is just like through someone who's been in like content creation forever, it's kind of cool to be like, hey, we get to go to all the restaurant openings for free. And we get, you know, like once you become a, you know, a force, you get a lot of opportunities like that. Now that might not be for everybody, but to me that's always a fun side benefit.
- [14:48]
Steve Chou
I remember when I was little, there was this local newspaper called the Potomac Almanac. It was just for our neighborhood.
- [14:55]
Tony
Yes.
- [14:55]
Steve Chou
Didn't you and I used to, I used to read that thing religiously. This is the same thing.
- [14:59]
Tony
Yeah, yeah. So basically you're just taking what used to be, you know, something that was print and you're making it digital. And I think the, the real key in this one is that, you know, print media is just in such a decline that it's like, why would you not jump on this? And it's not even like you can't monetize it in other ways too, right? Like you can have affiliate links, you can, you know, you can have other things in there. You can work on commission with, you know, local vendors, things like that. Like, maybe there's a pet spa, right? And so it's like, hey, we'll do a coupon. And for everybody who brings in that coupon, you know, we get 10%. You know, you can work deals and things like that. So I actually think that's a pretty cool business model. And I don't think a lot of people are doing it. Like, when I started looking around, I didn't see like this, you know, overwhelming amount of local newsletters.
- [15:55]
Steve Chou
I mean, this is definitely a word of mouth thing. Right. Because now that Google isn't really ranking smaller sites, it's pretty much, you know, you get someone and then they talk to someone. They talk to 10 people.
- [16:06]
Tony
Yes.
- [16:07]
Steve Chou
Yeah. Okay. I can see how this would work.
- [16:10]
Tony
Yeah. So that was, that was, that probably got me the most excited about stuff as far as, like, I was like, maybe I should start an online newsletter. What about list building strategies from the conference? Yeah, interestingly enough, they didn't talk a lot about that.
- [16:29]
Steve Chou
Okay.
- [16:30]
Tony
I know. Or maybe I wasn't paying a lot of attention, but I think, yeah, they just, I mean, a lot of it they. The same stuff that we always talk about in our courses and Stuff like that is, you know, but the number one thing that every, every single speaker said that I remember was that your content is your best list building strategy. If you have great content that you're putting out, your list will grow organically. Now you've got to start somewhere, right? But you know our friend Chanel who spoke at this event, actually, this is what she hammered home the entire. Her entire talk. And if you think about her newsletter she started two years ago, she's at, I don't know how many, 40 plus thousand subscribers in two years. That's very fast growth considering she didn't have a website. Really have a website. Right. She had like a landing page. She didn't start her podcast until two months ago, three months ago. Right. So it's like her only mechanism for growing the newsletter was people sharing the newsletter. Right, Right. But because the content of her newsletter and her newsletter is called Growth in Reverse, Shout out to Chanel. And it basically does deep dives into content creators who've grown their businesses. But the content in her newsletter was so good that people couldn't not share it. And I think that's honestly the key with any newsletter is that you just have to have content so great that people want to talk about it. And I mean, it was funny because you and I both know Chanel. I've known her for a long time. She's a huge introvert. Right. She was like, you would have thought Justin Bieber walked into this conference. Right. Um, like she's famous in the newsletter world. Like, everyone wants a picture with her to talk to her. And of course I'm laughing because it's like her nightmare. Right? Like she likes to meet people, but she does not want to be the center of attention by any stretch. Um, but just from creating that great content with her newsletter, she's. She's built it in an organic way. Now I will say that ConvertKit and I think I'm not sure if Beehive offers this too. I did talk with the Beehive folks, which is another email newsletter platform. They have some tools now that make people sharing and getting subscribers pretty easy in your newsletter, some pretty cool features. So. But I think that's just another incentive to continue to make great content because, you know, you want people to share, you know, to share what you're talking about.
- [19:09]
Steve Chou
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of if you are interested in starting your own online store. I put together a comprehensive Six day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be obtained@mywifequitterjob.com free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I'll send you the course right away. Once again, that's my wife. Quitter job.com free. Now back to the show. Now, to be fair, I think Chanel used some tactics to build her list too. Right. Partnering with other, other people with lists, some JV programs. I, I can't remember exactly. She, she did a post on it. I remember.
- [20:05]
Tony
Yeah. So she. Yeah. And she actually put her time to 50. She has 50k subs. Was. Oh, this is. Oh, sorry. This is her average time. Hold on. You know, people, let's see. To 50,000 subscribers. Of the people that she interviewed, 7% had 50,000 subscribers within six months, 14% had it within a year, 17% had it within two years. But the main amount was two to three years is 50,000 subscribers, 33% of people. So I think that, I think that's important to note.
- [20:48]
Steve Chou
Yeah.
- [20:50]
Tony
And I think for one of the things that you can do to grow your newsletter is, you know, basically what Chanel did too was she profiled other content creators. So if you can partner with anyone, doesn't have to be, you know, profiling of a content creator. If you can partner with anybody to email their list, you email your list. The only caveat to that is if you have 5,000 subscribers and they have a hundred thousand subscribers, that's probably not the partnership that's gonna work. But if you find another creator with under 10K subscribers, they're probably very happy to do like a joint blast or anything like that. Kind of the same way that you can do with YouTube. Right. Where you can work with other content creators to. Right.
- [21:37]
Steve Chou
And do collabs and whatnot.
- [21:39]
Tony
Yeah.
- [21:39]
Steve Chou
Similar principle. Yeah. What was her talk on, by the way?
- [21:44]
Tony
Basically like all the people she's interviewed in the, in the, like, what did they all do the same? And her thing is basically everything that everyone did the same was quality content.
- [21:58]
Steve Chou
Like, see, I mean, honestly, I hate that answer.
- [22:01]
Tony
I know, right.
- [22:03]
Steve Chou
Because what is quality content? It's basically just, you know, you. Right.
- [22:07]
Tony
Yeah, yeah.
- [22:08]
Steve Chou
And how you do things and.
- [22:11]
Tony
But I think. And she called it insanely valuable content.
- [22:15]
Steve Chou
Sure.
- [22:16]
Tony
So. And you know, most newsletters are free. So you know, for, for someone to be able to get something that's that valuable for absolutely free, it is, it's a win, right? And she included some quotes like that things have people have said about her newsletter is I can't believe this is free. How do you only have X amount of followers? Like when she was first getting started, I feel like I'm stealing from you. How do you put out content like this every week? You know, just people. That was the feedback she was getting when she was putting out her newsletter. And she was said, basically she said if you're not getting replies like that to your email newsletters, you have a content problem. And so that's basically her whole shtick, right? Is that if you, if you're putting out this great content is once, once you get the ball rolling, right. Like those first six months, this first year, you know, then you start to see like by two and a half, three years you're getting that 50k subscriber base. And I think that's where most people miss the mark, to be honest. And I'm not going to call you out, but I am. But if you think about how you use your email newsletter, it's not about great content, right. It's just about pushing out to people what you Talk about on YouTube or on the blog or you know, whatever.
- [23:39]
Steve Chou
Yeah. I mean the content in the YouTube video is good but I'm not writing creative content in the newsletter itself.
- [23:47]
Tony
Right. There's no reason for someone to sign up for your newsletter because, because they can just go look on YouTube at what year they can just subscribe to you on YouTube and obviously you have a different business model, you know. But I think the newsletter, the other big takeaway I got from this was like the newsletter based business model is alive and well and I think very underutilized. And here's the little like this is the nugget I think that I got out of it. One of the big things is that people still read newsletters. They don't read email. Right. Like they're not looking at every promotional thing that ends up in their inbox, that kind of thing. But like our friend Dana John Zema started a newsletter, I don't know, it was like a year ago or something. She doesn't email very regularly but when she emails, like when I see that in my inbox, I am excited. It's the first thing I open in the morning, it's the first thing I read. And I always share it with like three people. Right. Like based on the content and so I think if you want to put great content in an email newsletter, there's still. And Dana's not monetizing or doing anything like that, but there's still a ton of monetization opportunities for you. And I will. I will say it's probably on par with like, YouTube, right. As far as, like, your ability to grow it.
- [25:10]
Steve Chou
Okay, there. That's where.
- [25:11]
Tony
That's where you disagree. I knew you were gonna disagree. That's okay.
- [25:14]
Steve Chou
You can, because, I mean, then it's just word of mouth versus like some gigant engine that can instantly broadcast you to millions of people, right?
- [25:23]
Tony
Yes.
- [25:25]
Steve Chou
Like, my. My top YouTube video has some. Almost like 3 million views. How would I get that in a newsletter?
- [25:32]
Tony
Well, you're probably not going to get 3 million views on a newsletter, although there are people that have. There are people that have that many newsletter subscribers. Right. I think as far as, like, there being the opportunity, like, we still, you and I both think that YouTube is like, you can still start a YouTube channel today, grow it and be rich. You know what I mean? And I think you can still start a newsletter today. Grow it and be rich.
- [26:00]
Steve Chou
No, I agree with that.
- [26:01]
Tony
That's. That's where I feel like the opportunity is the same where. Versus, like, if you want to start a website and just start blogging and just slogging through the blog content, the opportunity is less.
- [26:13]
Steve Chou
Like, if I wanted to do a newsletter really well, I would be forced to just take the content that I'm putting in the video and write it in the newsletter.
- [26:22]
Tony
Yeah.
- [26:22]
Steve Chou
In a creative way. And tell the story.
- [26:24]
Tony
Yeah. So.
- [26:25]
Steve Chou
So speak.
- [26:26]
Tony
Speaking of the great content, so Chanel did have some takeaways of, like, what is, what is great content? Like, what gets people to share your newsletter, subscribe, promote it to their friends, all that stuff. And it's funny because this is like what we talk about all the time. So make money, Right. Like, if you're teaching people how to make money, people love that. If you're teaching people how to save money, people like that. So, you know, even like the old school people like Clark Howard and Dave Ramsey, people still like the money saving. Like one of the great newsletters I get every day is the points guy. Right. He's teaching you how to save money on travel, save time, which is like, where my newsletter would come in. Right. I'm always trying to help people get more time back with like, you know, money and time saving hacks to make them laugh, which is a big one. And not everybody has the ability to do that obviously that's a pretty tough one. And then to teach them something, so when they, when they read it, they feel smarter. And I think that's actually a big one. Right. Because if people can read something and there was a guy and I'm trying to think of what the newsletter was that basically gives people, like everything you need to know for the day, like the day or the week. Like, it's all from a like, agnostic perspective. Like, what are the sports highlights, what are the political highlights? Without, like a spin on it. Right. What are, you know, what is, what is the, you know, whatever. What's trending on TikTok, whatever you. So you read this newsletter, right? And I'll have to figure out the name of it. I can't think of it right now. It's a popular one. They have millions of subscribers. But basically they've built their whole business on if you read us every morning. It's kind of like the old, once again, the old school. If you read the newspaper every morning.
- [28:09]
Steve Chou
No, I totally get it.
- [28:10]
Tony
Yeah, yeah.
- [28:12]
Steve Chou
So, you know, I'm just looking at my inbox and there's actually very few newsletters that I actually read. The ones that I do, I read because they don't have any other way of hearing from them.
- [28:24]
Tony
Yes, yes. Which I think is key.
- [28:28]
Steve Chou
So, for example, like this, I read Drew's newsletter whenever, whenever it comes out because he's kind of a witty writer. Like, he's pretty good.
- [28:37]
Tony
Yes.
- [28:37]
Steve Chou
But he doesn't really have a website, he doesn't have a channel, he doesn't really have a podcast. So if he did, I might not read it.
- [28:46]
Tony
Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, I agree. Okay. So the one newsletter that I was talking about was Morning Brew. Have you heard of that newsletter?
- [28:55]
Steve Chou
Oh, yeah, of course.
- [28:56]
Tony
Of course.
- [28:57]
Steve Chou
These guys are worth. They sold. Right, didn't they? For a huge sum.
- [29:02]
Tony
Yeah. But basically that's one of those that makes you smart, Smarter. Right. You get the Morning Brew and they spend a lot of time, like curating the content. Like, this is a full time job for people, right. Like, this isn't like, oh, you're gonna do this on your side hustle kind of thing. But I think it's important to note that they do a really great job of breaking down information and giving it to people, like in a digestible manner. And you know, once again, they, and they use some tactics where, like, they incentivize people to subscribe and things like that early on. But now they don't have to do anything really to incentivize people. It's just people want to be on the list.
- [29:41]
Steve Chou
I think what Chanel does can be done with very few people.
- [29:45]
Tony
Yes. I mean, Chanel, basically, it's her and one. She has an assistant.
- [29:49]
Steve Chou
Exactly. Yeah. As a side hustle. So she puts out really good, researched content.
- [29:54]
Tony
Yeah.
- [29:55]
Steve Chou
And I think she only sends out email, like once a week, right?
- [29:58]
Tony
Once a week. Yeah, once a week. Which is. Is pretty. I think the morning brew does every day, but, like, realistically, you could do this once a week. I want to say that when I talked to Chanel at Fincon, she was telling me that it took her about 20 to 25 hours a week to curate all the content. Now she's writing thousands and thousands of word pieces of content. But yeah, I mean, I think. I think 20 hours a week is still a side hustle if you need it to be.
- [30:21]
Steve Chou
I mean, her content is very thorough. I would not be surprised that he spent. She spends that much content time.
- [30:26]
Tony
Yeah.
- [30:26]
Steve Chou
And it's a post. It's a blog post, right?
- [30:28]
Tony
Yes, yeah, essentially.
- [30:30]
Steve Chou
And then her newsletter is pretty witty too, to guide people to that.
- [30:33]
Tony
Yes.
- [30:34]
Steve Chou
Blog post.
- [30:36]
Tony
But I. So I feel like this is something where if you're not doing this right now, like, you should probably. If you're. If you're creating content, Right. You should figure out what the angle is for your business. Like, let's just. We always use Kevin in the podcast as an example, but Kevin's one of our students. He's a. What is he? A tech security guy?
- [30:59]
Steve Chou
He's an. It's it, Right.
- [31:01]
Tony
Yeah, yeah. Internet security. I was trying to think of the buzzword for that, but, like, I think Kevin could put out an email like once a week. That's like the highlights of Internet security. Right. Like hacks that happened, little, you know, tips, like he could send out a morning brew. But in it world, like. And I'm sure this. This newsletter exists. In fact, I think I saw an example of it at the summit. Like, I would totally subscribe. Actually, this one does exist to like an NBA digest. Right. Like, if you email me in the morning, give me all the games, highlights, link to some ESPN clips, like, you know, and I could get it all right there instead of having to click all around on my phone and go to different tabs and all that stuff. Like, I would totally subscribe to that and. And I would share it with everybody in my life that likes basketball.
- [31:50]
Steve Chou
Actually, I belong to a newsletter like that in the tech world for all the latest, you know, consumer electronic stuff.
- [31:56]
Tony
Yeah.
- [31:58]
Steve Chou
Yeah, I do open that one higher than average. Cause I'm just curious. It's my way of knowing what's going on. He could totally pull that off. Absolutely.
- [32:05]
Tony
So, yeah, so I think that there's still, like, such an opportunity here that people aren't taking. I want to get to this one real quick before we have to wrap it up. There were a lot of good sessions. I will say, every session I took at least one nugget. There was one session by Steph Smith that basically talked about all the different ways to curate content now with AI and not using AI to write the newsletter, but, like, how there are publications from the government and all these websites where you can go to and have AI use AI to basically curate that content for you to use in your newsletter. So there were a lot of good tricks, but I will say probably my favorite talk was from Jay Clouse, who I did not know before this event. And he just. He basically took everything that we see people, like, kind of floundering with and. And was like, hey, here's how you sort of put it together. So he talks about, like, so many different platforms. There's X, there's Threads, there's. What's the new one? Blue Bird, Blue sky, something like that. There's. Yeah, there's TikTok, there's Instagram, there's Facebook, there's LinkedIn. Right? And no matter who, if you're listening to Chase diamond, he's like, get on LinkedIn. It's the best way to grow your business. And if you talk to someone else, they're like, get on TikTok. And you talk to the next person and they're like, x is still where it's at if you're in this market or whatever. And he made a good point, which I think people really need to remember when they're thinking about this, is that a lot of Those platforms, especially TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, you know, Threads, whatever, that's just the distribution, right? Like, that just is where you're gonna put little teaser contents, but that should never be your platform. And. And we. I'm gonna see this at the Pet Summit in a couple weeks, right? People who've built their Entire platform on TikTok or Instagram. And I get it. Like, you've had videos hit on TikTok, right? And you're just like, give me more, you know, because it's like that. 100,000 views, things like that. But at the end of the day, there's really no way to monetize those people outside of, you know, the monetization inside the platform, which is generally pretty cruddy, right? And so his whole point was figure out one of those platforms that you want to use, right? Maybe it's TikTok, maybe it's Instagram, maybe it's Twitter, right? And I think that is very dependent on the type of content you're creating, right? Some content lends itself much better to Instagram versus being on, you know, Twitter or something like that, and then only use that as your, you know, distribution method. You want, you know, you want your whole goal of all that to bring people in to the newsletter. And if you can't figure that out, you, you're not going to be in that 1%. Basically, you know, his holds, like growth strategies, the 1%. If you can't figure out how to get people in from, you know, TikTok or Instagram or Facebook, you're not going to really have a business that's going to last you a long time. And you and I both know that, right? Like, we've seen so many things come and go, trends, Google updates, but the one thing that really stays consistent is like, we can always communicate with people through our email newsletters. And so always thinking about your owned platform as the biggest priority in your business and just thinking about those other platforms as, you know, just a way to get the word out about who you are, I think is a big mind shift for a lot of people. And actually, in this talk that I'm going to give in a couple weeks, I break down like, how much does something cost you versus how much happiness does it bring you versus how much do you make? And I took some examples of brand deals that I did in the past, right? And it's like, I did a brand deal, I made $5,000, right? How long did that brand deal take me? 20 hours, right? Between going back and forth with the brand, creating the content, making the brand approved. So it's like, okay, 20 hours to make $5,000. That seems great. Until I realized that, like, okay, well, what does it take to make $5,000 with the course to do one webinar for five hours total. Like an all work, all in.
- [36:34]
Steve Chou
Yeah, I mean, sure, sure. I have tons of stories about brand deals where actually I'm in the midst of one right now where it's. I thought it would go really smoothly, but it hasn't. And I'm thinking about just terminating the contract because I don't care.
- [36:50]
Tony
Yeah, but, but I think so many people get caught up in like, oh, this is Making me all this money without looking at the, like the long term and the back end cost. Right. We just see, you know, five figures. Right. I mean, I've had brand deals for five figures, but when I look at the amount of work that I put in to make those five figures, I was like, that was like a month of work, right?
- [37:13]
Steve Chou
Yeah.
- [37:14]
Tony
Versus. Okay, like, we'll take ebooks. Right. I mean, this is an older example, but like I made five figures on my ebooks back in the day in a month. And the ebooks maybe took me 10 hours total. And then they continue to make me money today and I haven't done any work on them in years. So it's like, I think the newsletter is kind of that same idea of, you know. Yes, you're gonna. If you want to sell ads and things like that in your newsletter. Which I also think people don't do.
- [37:44]
Steve Chou
Right, that's correct. Yeah, I, I've been offered. I've never done it before.
- [37:48]
Tony
Yeah. So there, and there's. We'll. We'll probably end with this. But like, if you want to think about how to monetize a newsletter, there's a couple ways to do it. One, using affiliate links, promoting products, promoting services, things like that. So just a straight up affiliate play. Obviously, check with the programs to make sure linking a newsletter is acceptable. It's not on Amazon, FYI. And I was actually surprised at how many people I met at the conference that didn't know that.
- [38:15]
Steve Chou
Oh, really? They've been sending out?
- [38:17]
Tony
Yes.
- [38:17]
Steve Chou
I was like, well, they'll let you get away with it a couple times.
- [38:20]
Tony
Yeah. Until you make a lot of money. And then they shut you down. Right?
- [38:23]
Steve Chou
Then they shut you down.
- [38:24]
Tony
They don't take all your money. Yeah. So it's a great idea. Until it's not. But then you can also just sell ad space within the newsletter. And there's actually some like, services that help you with this. I think is a Zoic one of them. I think they were at the event.
- [38:40]
Steve Chou
You know, the newsletter platforms. I want to say Beehive has that built in kit.
- [38:45]
Tony
Has it built in kit has it too. I think Zoic is another one that allows you to sell ad. And actually, I think Ezoic actually they sell the ad space. It's almost like an ad network for your newsletter. Yeah. They were actually at the event, but every time I went by their table, no one was there. Okay. Because I wanted to find out. I was like, I think that's what they were saying. But I'm not positive so you can just sell ad space within the newsletter. And that's probably the most. I kind of compared that to like selling podcast advertising, right? Like, you get a slot right in the middle, at the bottom, at the top, whatever, and then you. And usually these are on like contract terms, right? So you're gonna have a slot for six months. I put out a newsletter once a week. You pay X and it's always based on the amount of subscribers and opens. So you want to like, do the math on that. And there wasn't really a much talk of like, what the going rate is. I'm sure if you googled it, you'd probably get some blog post articles on that. Then the other monetization method is just to sell a blast, right. Which would be the most expensive, the one that I would be the most cautious of. Because if you're going to blast your whole list, that product or service better be so relevant to your people. And I think, you know, like, Chanel promoted this newsletter conference in her newsletter. They didn't pay her to do this, but because I fully. I was like, did they, did you. Did they buy ad slots? But like, people will buy ad slots and like, for Chanel, sending an email newsletter ad about an email newsletter conference to people who subscribe because they want to learn more about email newsletters makes 100% sense, right? But if you're gonna. If you send a blast out about, you know, a product or service that you use, okay, you got a free printer, right? You use this printer with Bumblebee. If you were to send out a blast solely about the printer, you would lose a lot of people, right? Because while it's definitely an e commerce based product, it's not necessarily something that most of your audience is interested in. So the blast one is, to me, the least exciting. To me, the most exciting is selling the individual slots or just using your newsletter for affiliate.
- [40:56]
Steve Chou
I mean, to me, almost like the newsletter has kind of replaced the blog, right? It's written content, people subscribe, just like the old days. Remember when people used to subscribe to blogs and the feed and everything? And so, yeah, things have just moved on.
- [41:12]
Tony
Yeah. And. And the hidden demographic of newsletters. We'll leave you with this tip. If you. The people that I met, I met several people at the event. The trend in newsletters is to baby boomers. And if you think about this, it makes 100% sense, right. I think about my mom. Your mom. My mom reads everything, right. She opens every email. She's very interested in anything that's she wants to know every detail of things. And so most, that's very, that's very common in baby boomers. People, you know, ages probably 65, 70 and up, right. They're retired. But most importantly, they all have money. Right. So I met multiple people running newsletters to different baby boomer groups. One was like travel based, one was like news and lifestyle. But to me that's the like hidden opportunity because most people that get into this space are like young, you know, go getters and it's like they're not thinking about writing a newsletter to 75 year olds. But if you can do that, like I don't want to write a letter to a newsletter for my kids. They don't have any money. Like, you know what I mean though? Like I'm not sending newsletters to Gen Z.
- [42:40]
Steve Chou
They're all, I don't know how to do that.
- [42:42]
Tony
Yeah. So I do think, you know, if you're thinking about this and you have an idea for the boomers, that is your opportunity. And I, that's where I would chase the, I would chase the shiny object. If you've got a baby boomer newsletter idea, I would run with it.
- [43:00]
Steve Chou
Hope you enjoyed this episode. I never thought about doing a local newsletter, but there's definitely a need. For more information and resources go to my wifequitterjob.com Episode 585 Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellers summit.com if you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit. Com and if you're interested in starting your own ecommerce store, head on over to my wife, quithherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I'll send the course right away via email.