elBenbo’s list-building game

One of the many books I sell is about list-building. And, the ad spends a lot of time — to an admittedly obnoxious degree — talking about how I am not the “list guy”, I don’t know why anyone would care to know about my list-building ways, and how my list-building game is slow, requires the patience of Job, and takes a whole lot of work pumping out pages and pages and pages of content, takes a whole lot of hours giving interviews and other manual labor, and requires a whole lot of consistency doing the same things over and over and over day in, and day out. The reason? Because I want what I have heard Dan Kennedy describe as: “Upstream leads” i.e., leads that have to work to get into my World. I don’t pursue them (like paid traffic) they pursue me. And the reason I do this is not because I like slaving over prospecting, but because pursuit — in all things, not just list-building — is not, never has been, and likely never will be my game. My game is more akin to laying traps (in the form of “doorways” into my World) and then cultivating an environment where those who I like selling to enjoy being inside and don’t want to leave. The upside is a list so responsive many marketers I have mailed for could hardly believe it. Not every time, necessarily, as market/product timing & offer have a lot to do with it. But certainly way more often than not. The downside is: It’s not at-all scalable, makes for very slow list-building, and takes a lot of manual labor. But, that happens to be my game. And I rather enjoy it. But it’s certainly not everyone’s list-building game. Frankly, it’s not even most peoples’ game. I dare say most people don’t even have list-building game. And the reason they don’t have any list-building game is because they never figured out what their game should be in the first place. I know a lot of folks who do paid ads who suck at that game but do it anyway. I also know folks who try to do what I do and suck at it because they hate doing it. At the same time, I know folks who have magnificent list-building game because they figured out what works for them — including some who love navigating the ever-changing rules of big tech platforms. Something else to think about: I once tested paid ads. But that kind of “pursuit” game is not something I enjoy. Yes, even though it technically did “work” for me, and I highly respect it, I would have hated it. My pal and Email Players subscriber Shane Hunter is a Facebook guy (I used to hire him to do mine until I got banned from running ads many years ago) and he did a great job. We dabbled with Twitter traffic, too. I also hired my other pal Jim Yaghi around the same time to do the same with Google leads. In all those cases, the leads were not the kind I like to deal with for the particular business I run. For some offers, those leads would have been perfect. For me, and how I run my business, not so much. But, when I partnered in the weight loss niche 10+ years ago Jim was also in that venture. He was the list guy, so we played his paid list-building game combined with the other partner’s article marketing game (he built an entire $70k per year, 5-minutes-of-work-per-day business using just articles, when that still worked). And it was a combo of Google ads, solo ads to a complied list and Amazon kindle book buyers. In that case, paid ad game was ideal. But it was still mixed with upstream leads. And so it goes. Everyone’s game is different, and sometimes even depends on the venture. We do list-building game for BerserkerMail I don’t in my main business. And same with the other software properties. The key to list-building is finding out the game you like and are good at and that deliver the kind of leads you want… and then knowing when to adjust that game depending on circumstances, market place shifts (I used to be a big ezine articles fan, until the best ezine submission site that ever existed under God's blue heaven suddenly halted new article submissions… yeesh), and a whole host of other events — including being exposed to ways you haven’t seen before. I was recently exposed to such a way that I briefly describe on page 13 in the upcoming April Email Players issue, and taught in depth to my 10-Minute Workday buyers as a bonus recently. More: The April issue is not “about” list-building. Yes, it does mention several ways to do it. But mostly it’s a thought exercise in what kind of marketing game you should be playing — versus what you’re playing now, or see others playing who are all probably not playing the game they should be playing either — with ideas & beacons to follow in your business. Very little if any “how to” info. Definitely not for newbies or the shallow-thinking types. That is the case with every issue. But it just happens to be more the case than ever with this particular issue. Thus I am mentioning it here. If you still want in before the deadline tomorrow, go here immediately: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com]( Ben Settle This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2021 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA