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independence7 unconnected · 3 more authors in those circles
applies to

b2b and consumer, no audience needed

confidence

high

evidence

11 claims · 11 articles · 4 receipts

window

2021-01-14 → 2024-02-25

7 builders who never spoke to each other

Move the audience you rent onto a list you own

A following on any platform is held at the pleasure of its ranking algorithm, while an address reaches the person directly and survives the platform going out of fashion. Nine builders here, including several with very large social audiences, treat the borrowed channel as a way to generate attention and the list as where it gets banked.

The method

  1. 01

    Do not leave a large social following as your only distribution: move those people onto a list you own so no single platform's ranking changes can cut you off.

  2. 02

    Alongside the social networks, build the channel you own, usually an email list, so an algorithm change cannot take your audience away.

  3. 03

    Move the people who recognise you off social and onto a weekly newsletter, using the longer format to show how you reason rather than just what you conclude.

  4. 04

    Use borrowed platforms to generate attention, route that attention to a property you own, and bank it as email subscribers, since email outlasts whichever network is currently fashionable.

  5. 05

    Collect email addresses even when search traffic and ad revenue are paying the bills, because a site with no list has no way to reach its audience again.

What it returned

  • 2019

    The site went from a first article in May 2019 to a 19,000-person list within a year, with no ads, no contacts and no pre-existing audience.

  • Alex Brogan has over 620k followers across LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram and deliberately concentrated on the newsletter instead, reaching 70k subscribers.

  • Welsh's trust-building layer is his weekly newsletter plus how-to guides and step-by-step videos, deliberately built to shift his closest followers onto a list he controls instead of an audience he rents from a platform.

  • Luciano Viterale of Ticker Nerd names ad-monetised content and affiliate sites without an email list as the businesses he expects to die first.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.

More in email

all email plays

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click, and the address is used for this and nothing else.