A question from Garrett came in last night asking if he should keep writing copy for clients, or focus on growing his own list…
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Justin! Looking forward to the list building training you’re putting together. I have a question for you (maybe you can answer it in an email to your list).
I’m currently writing emails and long copy for two retainer clients in the blood sugar space and they pay me around $7500 a month.
This pays my bills and leaves me a little extra every month.
I’ve been thinking about starting a list in the tennis niche because I live and breathe tennis. I played in college and still play today, so I think it’s something I’d enjoy writing about.
So my question is this…
How much time and effort should I put into building my tennis list? Can I do this as a side project for now, and then ramp it up if it starts making money? Or should I drop one of my clients, and use that time to build the tennis stuff?
What would you do here?
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Great question.
Here’s my 2 cents…
If your client money is what pays your bills and puts food on your table, then I would not recommend stopping that.
That would be a mistake.
I’ve seen a lot of copywriters who think their new list will take off right away, and they wind-up in a big hole when it takes longer than they thought to get it going.
So I think you should keep writing for your current clients…
And then I would set aside 1-hour a day to focus on building your tennis list.
During that hour, you’ll research the tennis niche…
You’ll learn what offers are working…
And you can try to connect with some of the people who are doing well in the niche…
Then once you have a decent idea of how the niche works…
You can start building the list.
You can build it with leads, or you can build it with buyers.
There’s advantages to both…
And I’ll cover how to do both of those in my list building training…
But the big thing I want you to understand is that the time you spend building a list is worth infinitely more in the long run because when you have your own list, you essentially have your own ATM machine.
Seriously.
A list is a real asset.
So if you want to make money…
You simply create an offer that you know your list will like and you mail it to them.
That’s it.
And you can keep doing this month after month, and year after year.
Take my list for example…
When I started my list in 2018, it had less than 200 people on it.
But I still managed to make $350k from my list that year.
Fast forward to last year, and my list had around 9200 people on it…
Which is still relatively small compared to a lot of people in this space…
But with a 9200 person list, I was able to make $1.6 million.
So my list is a real asset for me.
I can make money now…
And I can also make money for the next 3, 4 or 5 years from it.
So when you’re putting time into building a list keep this in mind.
It’s not just “money now”…
It’s perpetual money for the next couple of years.
So my advice?
If you’re currently writing copy…
Or you’re currently in a 9-5 job…
But you’d like to have your own list someday…
I say start working on it now.
Set aside an hour a day.
And start building your list.
And then once it’s humming along and making you good money, then you can drop your copy clients (or leave your job).
That’s what I would do.
Treat it as a “side hustle” for now.
And then once it’s bringing home the bacon, then turn it into your main thing.
Make sense?
I hope so…
Cause that’s all I got for today.
I’ll have more info for ya next week on the list building training I’m putting together.
So keep your eyes peeled for that.
Enjoy your Saturday,
– Justin
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