a single source, nothing corroborates it

Write tutorials on your product's exact subject

Teaching the thing the product does attracts precisely the people who will need it, and each post becomes a permanent signup surface aimed at that audience. Both authors traced most of their pre-launch subscribers to this habit rather than to announcements about the product itself.

The method

1. 01

   Publish detailed tutorials on the same subject as the upcoming product and ask readers to join the list on each one; that pre-launch list is the biggest determinant of launch sales.

2. 02

   Publish tutorials on exactly the subject your product covers and funnel every reader into a pre-launch list for it.

3. 03

   Publish a free screencast series and blog posts on the exact topic and harvest emails before you even announce that a book is coming

4. 04

   Run the same loop repeatedly: research the audience's pains, trends and interests, learn to spot the recurring patterns, publish content answering those patterns, then build products answering them - collecting email addresses the whole way through.

5. 05

   Stand up a detailed landing page and collect email addresses months before the product exists: the pre-launch list is the single biggest determinant of launch size

What it returned

• 80

  Nathan Barry got only about 80 RSS subscribers from a year of blogging and 50 signups from an early announcement, but reached 800 email subscribers by launch day through book-related tutorials.

• 800

  App design tutorials took him from no audience to nearly 800 people on the book's waiting list in two months, and launch day brought $12,500

• 896

  Balint Erdi had 896 subscribers before announcing the Ember.js book and launched to 1,518, adding 622 during the six months of writing

• 800

  800 pre-launch subscribers for the first book grew to 1,900 for the second; launch strategy was own blog, guest posts and list building, with the list rated most important

Sources

• It's different nowJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · It's different now · undated
• Self-Publishing Hangout highlightsJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · Promotion · undated
• $26,679 in 24 hours: Stats from my latest book launchNathan Barry · nathanbarry.com · Using Email · 2012-12-21
• Making $12,500 in 3 months with a book on ember.jsNathan Barry · nathanbarry.com · What did you do to promote the book leading up to launch? · 2015-06-03
• How teaching and storytelling can build a profitable businessNathan Barry · nathanbarry.com · My turn · 2013-09-03