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How big is eBay’s marketplace? Want to build an audience on Reddit? February 25, 2022 [Read in browser]( [logo] [sponsor]( Hello. Those were some bitter 24 hours after waking up to the news of the escalating war in Ukraine yesterday. This is probably the most impactful world event in recent times. So, as we’re transparent with many of our processes, we want to put this note on how such world events affect our content. As our name also gives a clue, we’re very much a marketing newsletter. That’s the industry we know, that’s our expertise. And we are not experts beyond that. We think we’d be doing you a big disservice if we pretended we knew how to report on other news, especially something as impactful and tragic as this war. It’s why you will almost always see our in the moment reaction (like yesterday’s intro), and why you will not see us writing an opinion piece about it. Just like you, we’re hoping that freedom and peace come out on top. E-COMMERCE eBay is larger than you think [article-image] How big exactly is one of the world’s most popular online marketplaces? [eBay just released]( their quarterly earnings report, which gives us an idea. - Revenue: $2.6 billion. - Gross Merchandise Volume: $20.7 billion. In case you’re not familiar, Gross Merchandise Volume is the total dollar amount of products sold on a marketplace. - Active buyers: 147 million. Why we care: Sellers often underestimate the sheer size of e-commerce marketplaces that don’t rank first. It’s earning reports like these that remind us that these marketplaces are massive and worth considering as viable customer acquisition channels. This underestimate is also common for other channels like search and social. Sometimes, not focusing on the biggest channel could be better. ADVERTISING Google Ads simplifies offline attribution Raise your hand if you find attribution a pain in the neck. If your hand is up and you do search marketing, you’ll like this news. [Google has just released]( Enhanced Conversion for Leads, an improved and easier alternative to their existing Google Click ID-based offline conversion tracking. How it works: Let’s say a visitor lands on your website and converts. The visitor provides their email upon purchase. This method allows you to upload the hashed email of the visitor to Google, and Google will match the information back to the ad that drove the visitor to the site in the first place. You can configure Enhanced Conversion for Leads via Google Tag Manager. SPONSORED BY DRIP You can make more money with less effort with this AI-powered profit machine [article-image]( Automation… And not just any kind but hyper-personalized automation. For emails and texts. We don’t have to explain why email and text messaging are some of the strongest channels of 2022, right? So, when you mix AI, automation, and easy integrations, you have a [profit machine that goes by the name of Drip.]( - Direct integration with Shopify, Stripe, Facebook, and tons of other apps, with no code or dev required so you can quickly and easily try it. - Top-notch learning center to make sure you get the most out of your campaigns. - Clear reporting showing how much revenue is coming from specific emails and workflows. Those are just some of the reasons brands like Yoga Girl, The Spice House, Fire Camp and 30,000 others use Drip to personalize and automate their email campaigns, making more money and saving time. [Saint Jane Beauty](, for instance, increased their email revenue by 33% thanks to Drip. And Drip accounted for $1M of revenue of [Haute Hijab]( - that’s 30% of their total revenue. [Try this profit machine for free for 2 weeks without a credit card.]( SEO Lessons from running a SaaS for one year [article-image] For the last year [Max Rozen built and grew his SaaS company](, and wrote a blog post about what he learned from the experience: You’re solving a problem, not selling a SaaS subscription: Look for all the ways you can help your users solve a problem, from improving your service, to providing screencasts, documentation, articles, books, workshops, code samples or software. Treat documentation as part of your core product, not as an addition: When users do not find guides on how to do things with your software, they churn. Pricing is hard to get right: If your prices are high, you might experience a churn from users who expect your app does everything. If the price is too low, you’ll attract the wrong customers. Be prepared to experiment with pricing until you find the sweet spot. Don’t focus too much on MRR (monthly recurring revenue): Measuring your daily active users and other success metrics (pages checked, images generated, and others) can be more helpful because they give you an idea of what’s happening now. That’s because your MRR reflects actions you took in earlier months, not right now. Use a free trial for paid tiers: A free trial can be useful to attract users, but after nine months Max Rozen noted how 95% of paying customers pick a free trial of the pro tier despite the fact that he offers a free tier. In the past we talked about how free tiers can damage a business because you have a bunch of users who consume resources but do not generate revenue. It’s up to you to balance these two facts. It's hard to bring in more traffic, but it’s easier to change what your current traffic does: Getting attention on the internet is a slow and tedious game, especially if you are bootstrapped without a bunch of money for media buying. But influencing what your traffic does is in your control. Spend time optimizing your website. SPONSORED BY DASH.FI AMEX Gold, Chase Ink Business Preferred, or dash.fi - what’s the best cashback for advertisers? [article-image]( Let’s do the math. AMEX Gold is $295 per year, 4x points for online ads up to $150k spend. Chase Ink Business Preferred? $95 per year and 3x points for online ads and a $150k limit. That means an ad spend of $100k per month will get you 16,500 points a year. [Compare that to dash.fi.]( You get up to a 3% cashback without a limit, and no annual fee. The same $100k per month would be $36k cashback. [Experience the best cashback for online advertising with dash.fi.]( THE CREW'S INSIGHTS The actual secret to building an audience from Reddit [article-image] Almost everyone underestimates Reddit as a channel for building an audience. Done right, a post with just 50 upvotes could drive you dozens of newsletter subscribers. Crazy, right? It is, and it scales. A Reddit post with a thousand upvotes can net you hundreds, if not near a thousand, new people subscribed to your newsletter. That’s a value most marketers would shell out their monthly salary for. So why does nobody do it? Because most people don’t understand Reddit. They treat it like every other marketing promotion channel, get downvoted to hell, and give up. [Enter Keevin]( (not a typo). Last year, he accrued thousands of subscribers to his newsletter, Brainstorms, simply by posting on Reddit. [Here’s an example of one]( of Keevin’s best posts. Our mini-playbook from his success: - Know the community. Keevin posted startup ideas in an entrepreneur subreddit. It was exactly what people wanted: A perfect product-market fit. - Be honest about promotion, and only mention your off-Reddit content once. In Keevin’s case, a simple link to his newsletter at the start of the post worked. - Create a metric ton of value. Keevin’s posts were so well-received in the r/Entrepreneur community because of their value. People didn’t mind that he also had a newsletter, and they were happy to subscribe. In other words, change your thinking from “let’s post on Reddit so we can get subscribers” to “let’s create the most valuable post this subreddit has ever seen”. Adjust your mindset to the latter, and the audience will follow. ROUNDING UP THE STACK [BUSINESS:]( Looking for the best business and investing insights in under 5 minutes? Check out The Daily Upside-- written by a former investment banker, it's a quality newsletter that delivers insights to make you smarter every day. [You can sign up completely for free.](* [REDDIT:]( Reddit rolls out a “Discover” tab to help people, well, discover more content and communities. Each redditor will have content tailored to the on “Discover” so if you engage with marketing communities, you will get more of that. [BUSINESS:]( Transferring data to non-EU governments is illegal. That is the message the EU is sending with this draft legislation. Major cloud computing and storage providers will have to adapt. [TIKTOK:]( No, it’s not just dancing. Here are some of the rising TikTok trends, straight from the horse’s mouth. [E-COMMERCE:]( How big is Alibaba exactly? The company just released their quarterly earnings report to give us an answer. Spoiler: this quarter’s growth was the lowest since the company went public. [BUSINESS:]( Which platforms have the biggest percentage of fake reviews? You might be surprised by the answer. *This is a sponsored post. BRAIN TEASER You roll a 5 sided pencil on the table. On one of its sides, it is written “HB Pencil”, the others are blank. What is the chance that the side with text on it ends up straight on top? You can find the [answer here](. [poolside-logo] POOLSIDE CHAT Ready to listen to “Baby Shark” for 90 minutes? [article-image] Then you may love this movie. Baby Shark, YouTube's most popular video, [is being made into a feature-length film.]( There are some serious names behind the film, such as Paramount and ViacomCBS, which gives us hope that the entire film won't just be the entire song stretched out over 70-90 minutes. We wouldn't mind a remix, though. SHARING IS CARING Thinking about a wardrobe upgrade? How about one of our T-shirts or hoodies? All you have to do is get enough referrals using the link below, and we will send the merch your way. Grab your link below. [article-image]( [CLICK TO SHARE]( Or copy your referral link: [ [SUBSCRIBE]( | [INSIGHTS]( | [ADVERTISE]( You are receiving this email because you want to know what is going on in digital marketing. If you aren't thrilled about our emails, reply and let us know why. Or you can unsubscribe from all daily updates by clicking [here.]( Our postal address: Spectrum IT Solutions GmbH, Canettistraße 1/Top0107, 1100 Wien, Austria