Deliberate Freelancer #72: How to Grow Your Email List + Earn Passive Income, with Anthony Moore
Today’s guest is Anthony Moore, a writer, speaker and coach in California. He is one of the top 100 writers on Medium.com, where he writes about personal growth, self-improvement and writing.
I had trouble trying to name this episode because there were so many things Anthony talked about that I wanted to call your attention to. So, I hope you find all the areas we discussed helpful in your freelance business.
As a freelancer, Anthony has several income streams: writing, coaching, online courses, affiliate links, book sales.
Anthony has been freelancing for about seven years but didn’t make any money the first four and a half years. He decided it was time to get serious about his freelance career and has since amassed over 100,000 email subscribers and 50,000 followers on Medium and will earn a six-figure income in 20202.
Anthony offers courses in both writing and self-improvement. He sells them through webinars and email marketing. He’s failed a lot, and that has shown him what works and doesn’t work. He says one of his “superpowers” is not being afraid to look stupid. That stopped him from trying new things for a long time.
Anthony makes a lot of his income through courses, which, once created, is an online passive income. Then, he upsells to one-on-one coaching.
Anthony gets 100–200 new subscribers to his email list every day. Part of that is due to writing on Medium, where he has 200,000–300,000 views on his articles a month. Other blogs pick up his Medium articles, amplifying his content. He always includes a call to action in his articles to lead readers to his website. He has about a 6% click-through rate to his site, which is where people sign up for his email list.
Anthony’s call to action focuses solely on getting email subscribers. He no longer asks for social media likes and follows because the income he earns comes through his email list, not social media.
On Medium, Anthony focuses on personal growth and self-improvement. The key has been to be vulnerable and share his own stories, including his past issues with addiction and other challenges in his life. He posts only two to three articles a week now, but his content is evergreen.
Anthony shifted his mindset from being a freelancer to being a business when his article views on Medium skyrocketed. He likes a quote from Jay-Z: “I’m not a businessman; I’m a business, man.” Once you shift your mindset, you stop holding yourself back. Then, you can ask yourself: How far can I take my business?
Anthony asked himself what a professional business person would do, and he began to invest in his business by taking writing courses and buying business books.
Anthony spent a lot of time learning how to sell properly without seeming sleazy. He learned that give away a lot of freebies and then every now and then offer something for sale that is aligned with the customers’ values and would be helpful to them. He uses ClickFunnels for his sales funnel system.
He studied up on sales psychology, such as the “star, story, solution” structure or “hook, story, offer” structure. He encourages people to research how to sell your services and products properly.
To grow your email list, in your blog posts or other content, you need a short call to action to send people to your email sign-up. You need to create a landing page and a freebie to give to people who sign up. Your freebie should not be your weekly newsletter; it needs to be something that will be helpful to them, like a free book chapter, worksheet or checklist.
Once you gain email subscribers, you have to focus on retaining them. Tell great stories and continue to give out relevant freebies to keep them engaged.
Anthony calls for freelancers to embrace “radical self-investment”—learn how to sell, market and run a business.
Biz Bite: Use Evernote app to write down your ideas on the go
Resources:
Learn how to be a remote freelance writer with Anthony’s free one-hour video training: FreelanceWriterStarterPackage.com
“Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki
“Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World” by Gary Vaynerchuk
ClickFunnels (sales funnel system)
Mailchimp (for email lists and landing pages)