It's Wednesday afternoon. You know full well that there should have been a LinkedIn post out yesterday, and that the newsletter needs to go out on Friday. You open a blank document, stare at it for a while and then close it again, because, after all, your clients
You've probably been there yourself. You're working on a newsletter, a sales page or just an email to a customer, and as you go along you realise you also need to mention the new course, and that there's a discount this week, and that
The question I'm asked most often about newsletters is the most basic one: how do I even get subscribers when I'm starting from scratch? Today, you'll hear the story of someone who solved this in a way that still impresses me. In 2018, Mette
Last Friday, I wrote about how the newsletter is the only channel you fully own. Today, I’d like to show you what that means in practice with one of the twelve stories from the book. When the copywriter Kathrine Louise Nielsen started her business in 2016, she’d just
There’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and which underlies pretty much everything I write about here in The Sharp Pen. Almost all the marketing we self-employed people do takes place on ground we don’t own ourselves. We build a following on LinkedIn,
Hi there 🤗 When career coach Mark Crossfield started his practice, he had plenty of clients. After 28 years as a civil engineer, he knew lots of people, and referrals kept his diary full. He didn’t need a newsletter. But he started one anyway. Most self-employed people do the
The other morning, I was sitting with my coffee when I received my ISBN number. It might not sound like a big deal. But you need an ISBN number when you publish a book — it’s what enables bookshops and libraries to find the book. And that was the last
For a long time, I was afraid of selling to my mailing list. Not because I didn’t believe in what I was offering — but because I was convinced that my readers would react negatively if I suddenly started promoting a product. That they would feel manipulated — as if the
A couple of years ago, I counted how many times I’d written “I should write more” in my diary without actually doing it. The answer was too embarrassing to share here. The only thing that changed that was making a commitment to others. Commitment is what’s missing Most
There’s a piece of advice you’ve heard so many times it almost feels like a law of nature: grow your list. Get more subscribers, and the money will follow. It sounds logical — and that’s precisely why it’s so dangerous, because it makes you look for the
You’re sitting there wondering what your next product should be. Or what you should write about. Or how you should position yourself. And you’re guessing. There’s one way to stop. Ask your customers. It sounds obvious. It Is obvious. But that’s exactly why most people skip
Last week, I received a question from a reader who had just received a large number of new subscribers to their new newsletter. ‘How much should I invest in a welcome series? I hear different things. Some say seven emails, others say you should just send the standard email straight