Hey Reader, Sweating. That's how I remember feeling the first time I ever launched something. My twins were 2.5 months old. I was barely sleeping. But I'd been working on this ebook since before they were born, and I had this overwhelming urge to launch it. I needed to get it out of my head and into the world. And I knew if I didn't, I'd try to perfect it forever, and I no longer had the luxury of time on my side. So, I wrapped my Google doc in a shitty Canva template and hit publish on this Tweet: I hadn't done much pre-launch buildup, which is a big no-no. However, I had something else on my side that let me get away with that... I'd built up my audience's Trust Battery, as Jay Clouse likes to say. Here's a snippet from his article on this concept (I'll link it below so you can read it in full). By the time I launched the Book of Hooks, I'd been posting on Twitter and LinkedIn almost daily for a year. 365ish days of giving away value and expecting nothing in return. So when I finally asked people for something? They jumped at the opportunity to "pay me back" if you will. But let's be clear: I wasn't making a random ask. I'd built up tons of authority on this topic. Like when I wrote about clickbait vs. valuable hooks five months earlier: But even though I didn't prime my audience about my Book coming, you better believe I kept the momentum going once it was live. Here I am running the "Early Responses (Share Initial Social Proof)" play from our Launch Content Playbook. By the time I was ready to release V2 a few months later, I had a much better understanding of how to write launch content. Here's the first time I primed my audience for "Something's Coming," a critical pre-launch play. It worked. I made $14,849 in 5 months. I still had a day job, so this side hustle money felt excellent. Since then, I've launched 8 or so more times. I wish I had screenshots of all those launches in one place, but I've switched tech and stuff too often. So here's what my past year has looked like: The spikes are launches. I'm hoping that one on the far right surpasses the one on the far left in the next few days...we'll see 👀 I owe all this to a strong launch strategy and resonant launch content. I rarely hard sell. I like to think of it as inviting people to invest in a solution to their problems. That makes me feel way less icky about selling, and makes writing emails like this fun, instead of a chore. With that said, I'd love to invite you to grab The Launch Content Playbook before the price goes up on Thursday at midnight PST. 257 people have picked it up so far. The first spike is the presale, and the second is the launch sale we're running right now. (Gosh, this is so meta lol.) My favorite piece of feedback so far is, "What is this witchery." So perfectly timed with Halloween month. >>> Grab The Launch Content Playbook now <<< Cheers, Erica PS. Here's that Jay Clouse article about Trust Batteries if that topic piqued your interest. ​ |
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Hey Reader, A few months ago, I wrote a 5-part email series on the MP3 Framework, the content strategy I developed with my co-founder, Nick. The response was big. People were shocked that it was free. And they were adding the examples to their personal knowledge bases. But one question kept coming up over and over: "Is there a way to get all of this in one place?" The series was great to follow in real-time, but scattered across five separate emails? Not exactly reference material. So we did...
Hey Reader, I did something new this week. Nick and I wrote our first mini-book together. It's called "The Recognition Gap: How solopreneurs replace referrals with a sustainable pipeline and scale on purpose." Here's why I'm telling you about it: Over the past few months, I've been obsessing over this question: Why do so many talented people struggle to get recognized for their expertise? Like content marketers who create incredible content but can't seem to break through? Or solopreneurs who...
Hey Reader, A few weeks ago, I wrote a LinkedIn post with the help of AI. But nobody knew I used AI, because it looks, sounds, and smells like me. Yes, my content smells delicious. Doesn't yours? So I figured, what the hell, let's go behind the scenes. Today I'm gonna show you: The prompt I started with The exact back and forth I had with AI The final manual edits I made Alright, let's go. First, read the post Here's the post in its final form. Give it a quick skim. Doesn't read at all like...