Why I don’t have an online market place with all my books for sale

A self-described “broccoli head/him/lonely extrovert” asks: “Have you talked about why you don't have an online marketplace with all of your books for sale? Unless I'm an idiot (very likely), I don't see where I can search through your books for a specific topic and buy. Other than the "him" pronoun he’s no idiot and is correct: Mine are scattered on separate pages. In fact, just this month a few people wanted me to hand them a list of them to pick a book to go along with the Ken McCarthy copywriting course offer I did earlier (where if someone bought from my affiliate link by the deadline, they could pick any book of mine as a bonus). And I didn’t have such an organized list of URL’s like that. I got so many now that sometimes even I forget the URLs! And someone might ask why don’t I have an online catalog? A place where eager beavers can go and potentially buy lots and lots and lots of stuff? The short answer: Because I like money. The longer answer can be illustrated with this real life story: For a long time, I’ve been able to tell when one of my new Email Players subscribers is an Agora Financial copywriter or has worked for Agora (or any big direct marketing company), even if they don't go out of their way to tell me they are, as if that is something I should be impressed by. The tell? They start giving me unsolicited advice. And very often that advice is something like: "Ben you should be upselling back issues and include a catalog of them every month!" To be fair to them, I once assumed that too. In fact, for the first 6 years (I am on the 13th year now) of the newsletter's existence I did include a catalog and I'd get maybe a small handful of sales. So I switched things up and tested just selling one back issue (per what I read Gary Halbert teach in his Boron Letters) that was popular. And that nabbed a few more sales than just a catalog. Then I decided to try something else. What I did was, I included a sales letter with a discount for one of my books with each issue instead. And, in most cases, I make the "theme" of that newsletter related to that book's topic to make the purchase even more valuable and natural to those who read that issue, and vice versa. The result was often something like 10-15x more sales than a back issue catalog. Nowadays I only sell back issues once in a great while. And even then, I only sell them to paying Email Players subscribers, as non subscribers are not professionally, intellectually, or probably even mentally qualified to buy them anyway. I don't mean that as an insult. It's just a fact from what I've seen doing this over many years, seeing who benefits most, who are the best referrers, who have the most success, and the list goes on. Anyway, the point is, I do what I do because it works for my business. If I was a $500 million business I might do things differently. But alas… I’m just short of an $11+ million business. By that I mean this: I’ve been in this business since 2002. But I didn’t really get my act together with the info publishing side (a few affiliate offers, and a couple little info products aside sold via PayPal) until 2009. That’s when I got a cart and started slowly building things out to what it is today. What? No, I’m afraid it was not overnight. Sorry if that disappoints… But back to the story: Since then as of the day I’m writing this email (January 20th) I’m just shy of putting $11 million through my cart software that is so ancient people have joked that I’m one step away from using an actual shopping cart. (That may be more true than not…) That doesn’t include the combined affiliate sales and royalty income from other deals or all the SaaS offers launched from my own list with all the sales copy and emails I’ve written since. Not to mention it does not count the tens of millions (I have no idea how to calculate it at this point) in collective sales clients credited me with helping them make back when I did client work. But just going by MY cart... I can legit claim all those sales as I did all the work. (Build the list, the customer base, the brand, the offers, not just a freelancer) I bring this last part up because of this: While I am (1) obviously not even close to being the highest earning copywriter who ever lived and (2) not a “funnel” guy… the February Email Players issue does teach the exact funnel I’ve been using since 2009 to do all the above selling my own owners and affiliate offers and SaaS offers and offers I get paid royalties on. It’s an extremely simple funnel and I did not "invent" any of it. Devoid of fluff or nonsense. No white board is needed and no clout or Facebook high fives will be earned if you show it. But, I believe, it can work for nearly any email-driven business. And, I also believe it can potentially work better than any fancy shmancy funnels you’ve used or seen. I call this funnel: “The Marketing Funnel of Love” And to complement this specific teaching, it comes with an 8-page bonus called: “The Business of Lust” And it’s like a 10-minute crash course in how I think, write, and make sales with email. If that interests you, here’s some of what’s inside: * Why the best method for making sales in 2024 was figured out in 1994. (The vast majority of money via direct response online today is basically the exact same thing that made the vast majority of money back then in direct response online. Ain’t nothing new under the sun..) * How to “snuff out” email list churn while ramping up email list retention. * Email list subscribers you should rake and scuttle off your list as soon as humanly possible if you care about inbox deliverability, sales, and peace of mind. * How to radically improve your email inbox deliverability with Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. * What the world’s best face-to-face salesmen did to build relationships with buyers that can easily be replicated with email. * Ideas for how to re-engage and win back inactive email list subscribers. * A near “caveman proof” way to integrate email marketing with other digital marketing channels. (Based on how the late William Randolph Hearst integrated the various marketing channels he used in the 1920’s - 1940’s to grow his media empire — with no needing to be a billionaire like he was required.) * Anatomy of a high-converting email landing page. * Why probably the best direct marketing resource you can study is the early Sears Catalog from the late 1800’s. (The technology has changed but not the principles that made it work. Amazon, for example, is simply a modern Sears Catalog according to the founding father of online marketing Ken McCarthy.) * The One-Sentence email campaign plan that’s made my business the most sales over the years. Tomorrow’s the deadline to get on this. If you want in, best hurry and use the link below. Chop! Chop! [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com]( Ben Settle P.S. The reason why I don’t have a hub of where all my books can be bought is also talked more about in the February issue too. Lest my flippant “Because I like to make money” and the Agora back issues example not satisfy you. This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2024 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