I agree with the conclusions. I've read it and it's a nice introduction to what Newsletters are and what they can do for you. If you're a new author who's just beginning and you're sinking in all the information you get thrown at you about everything, then it will help you get an idea of what to do with your newsletter. But it could have been so much more. Just telling someone to make good subject lines is not that helpful. I would have loved some case studies of what kind of stuff you put in a newsletter, or how you improve them, even if they would have been in a different genre and with a different tone.
💯 one of the strengths of this book is the fact that it's tailored to authors specifically. But the bar for educational content about newsletters is so much higher when you look to broader resources for email marketing in general, even just the free stuff. I should have noted that she does offer a free email mini-course called "Rock Solid Foundation" that promises to walk you through how to set up a mailing list. There are 3 lessons: #1 on choosing an EMS; #2 on authenticating your domain; and #3 on landing pages. - #1 and #2 contained some useful stuff and were slightly less waffly compared to Newsletter Ninja. BUT...#1 had affiliate links and #2 literally had an instruction to use Google. It was for a step relating to your web host so I understand not covering it, but come on. Even just an example screenshot or some brief instructions on where to look in the web host settings (and some don't let you manually adjust them!) would have been more helpful. - #3 was a 800+ word email telling me I need to build a landing page at a URL I control. There was more information on what makes a good landing page in a few paragraphs in Let's Get Digital than there was in this email lesson. - The next email after lesson #3 is "that's it, subscribe to my main list and sign-up for my paid course". 🤦🏻♀️ Maybe I've been spoiled by Ramit Sethi. I complained about his list in my other video on mailing lists but the free content he puts out is quality, miles ahead of many paid offerings. Like, here's a general blog article about growing a mailing list...with screenshots and clear action steps to take: growthlab.com/how-to-build-an-email-list/
Oof. I'll go point by point here. First, Email #1 has DISCLOSED affiliate links and there is nothing wrong with that. I am an affiliate for several email marketing services; why on earth wouldn't I be, given what I do for a living? Second, in Email #2, I recommended Googling how to authenticate your domain because my students and one-on-one clients use or have used more than 35 email marketing services and at least 20 hosting providers, and I am absolutely not going to give detailed instructions for how to authenticate 35 different email marketing services with 20 different hosting providers; that would be 700 sets of instructions, all of which I would have to type out, many of which I would have to screen grab, and some for which I would have to make video - and no, I will not do that for a free three-day leadgen course. My lowest-tier paid course has a tech vault with video walkthroughs for the most popular combinations, and I won't apologize for putting that level of work behind a paywall. Third, David Gaughran often says - in his own books and in the forward to my book that you've "reviewed" here - that I taught him everything he knows about email. I'm glad he was able to say it more concisely than I did in Email #3, but I teach courses on this and Dave doesn't, so let me assure you that many, many people NEED a much more detailed explanation. I'd rather give too much information than deal with repeated email replies asking me to elaborate. Believe me, I've done it both ways, and this is better. Fourth, I suppose I could have just never sent another email after Email #3 (it does, after all, CLEARLY say that there are three lessons), but I chose instead to wrap up with a fourth email that mentions my least expensive course and invites people to join the Newsletter Ninja mailing list - note that I don't just add people to the list, which 99% of other marketers would do; the mini-course is truly no-obligation and no strings attached, which I think says quite a bit about my ethics, despite your implication here that my ethics leave something to be desired because I mention (MENTION!) that I also have a paid course if you need help. I know I'm going to regret not just ignoring this, but, again, this just feels like really weird criticism for the sake of criticizing, and like I'm supposed to feel bad for earning money? My highest-priced course is 1/4 the cost of Mark Dawson's ads course, and people never so much as blink at him for making a very comfortable living off that. I also do a ton of stuff for the author community with no benefit to myself, I pay my own way and speak at conferences for free, I'm in my FB group and email inbox for hours every day answering people's questions. I created this little free course to help folks set up a few things I saw them getting wrong over and over again, thousands of people have taken it (and only about 10% of them join the mailing list, so I truly do not benefit much at all from it), hundreds of people have emailed to tell me they didn't know any of it and they were hugely grateful, and I'm just flat-out offended by you basically saying "this free stuff isn't good enough, you should have given me better free stuff." I have dogs to feed, and I am not at all ashamed that people pay to learn more from me, or to have me do their emails for them. (However, you could not pay me a higher compliment than "She's not like Ramit Sethi," so thank you for that.)
@@NewsletterNinja Hey Tammi, thanks for taking the time to drop by my channel and reply. Please don't feel bad for responding instead of ignoring this-I don't ever want my comments section to end up as an echo chamber-you are welcome here! I can see from your reaction that I did not take enough care in how I worded my opinion, and I'm sorry. It was not my intent to throw any shade on your ethics or to guilt-trip you about charging money for your hard-won knowledge. To be absolutely clear, I have nothing against you earning money from affiliate links or an upsell at the end of a free leadgen course. You are one of the few genuine experts marketing to authors out there and we appreciate you sharing that expertise. And we're willing to pay for it! I am willing to pay for it! I've bought both of your books on newsletters and I will buy the third one when it comes out. It's the price of a coffee and being able to pick the brain of an expert for the price of a coffee is always a good bargain. Where the first Newsletter Ninja book and the free email course both fall short, in my opinion, is that neither live up to their respective promises on the packaging-that of becoming a mailing list expert and a mini-course that walks through setting up your first mailing list. Perhaps it could be argued that nobody in their right mind would believe you can become an expert in anything after reading a 148-page book and therefore that part of the promise should be taken as normal marketing verbiage. That said, if it had been marketed as something like "the only book you need to start your email list RIGHT", I still think it would sell just as well. Could I make a case, in the spirit of A/B testing, that if you made some slight adjustments so the promise in the packaging aligned with what the contents actually deliver, I think you would see some higher percentages in your leadgen conversion? I'm not presuming to know your numbers or that I'm any sort of sales and marketing expert myself-those are two areas that terrify me. But I assume that, as a self-pubbed author, I am someone who would be an ideal target customer for you, and I can tell you exactly where the leadgen process fell over for me. When I went through the mini-course, I'd already been subscribed to your list-I signed up from your website after I read Let's Get Digital. But had I not already done so, there was very little in your mini-course to persuade me that doing so would be worthwhile. I was expecting a mini-course that would walk me through setting up a mailing list and creating a perfect landing page. Emails #1 and 2 were promising, but Email #3 said "put the sign-up link on your website", and nothing else about what differentiates a good landing page from a bad, let alone how to create a perfect one. Now, hypothetically, let's say that Email #3 was a before/after case study of a landing page, showing how sign-up rates went from X% to Y%. (Nothing fancy necessary-hand-scrawled notes on a screenshot would do just fine.) And it ends with a little mini-checklist of some do's and don't's of creating an effective landing page, that I can tick off one by one as I build one myself. A handy reference document that walks me through the nuts and bolts, as promised. If that is how the mini-course ends, you can bet when the final email comes along, with a CTA to sign up for your main mailing list and a mention that there's more great material like this in your paid courses, I'd be getting out my credit card straight away. I'd bet that leadgen conversion rate goes from 10% to something much, much higher. Maybe that's too much work for a free thing. I don't know your numbers and what ROI would be worth it. But we all know free is not really free. "Free" is access to my email inbox, and my time and attention on your content. With self-publishing exploding and getting more and more crowded, the self-publishing advice niche is too. Just like how you can't hope to self-publish and earn back your investment with a less-than professional cover and less-than-polished manuscript, I think the quality bar for free is rising across the board. Ramit Sethi is not everyone's cup of tea but he is very, very good at sales for two reasons-his ability to zero in on the customers he wants and how he hooks them. Because his free stuff IS better than 99% of the paid stuff out there...and his paid stuff IS better than his free stuff. That's how he can price his courses that high. I've never regretted a single dollar that I've spent on any of his courses-and I have bought several of them.
When I first read it, I was a total noob and it really helped me to figure some things out - the advice to write your emails to a specific person/treat them like a friend was particularly helpful! It also helped me shift some of the gross feeling about sending emails so that I could actually do it without spending hours cringing and putting it off lol I actually like sending them now! After watching this I can definitely see your point though, and I had the benefit of other prior knowledge about the industry etc to help me make sense of the book.
The shift in mindset is absolutely HUGE, because I feel like most of us come to the idea of starting a mailing list as all about being selling and yeah, for anyone who is assailed with dread because of that, I would definitely recommend reading this book to start!
@@PaperTigerProductionsthat mindset shift was so massive. I feel like there are a number of them along the journey of being an author - still finding new things to shift myself forward! lol
Disagree with your review for 2 reasons. First, every email service is different- the author/preneur has to work with the techs. Second, this review is out-of-date- Book 2 dives deeper into detail. Third, the author has several very inexpensive classes and FREE tipsheets and UA-cam talks available. She is also one of the best human beings on this planet, willing to help as she is able. So yes, more than 2 reasons Newsletter Ninja is a valuable resource.
Thanks for reading this so I don't have too! Totally agree about the need for a chart to explain the process!
Great sum-up and constructive critique! Neat to learn you are a textbook contributor, too! :D
I agree with the conclusions. I've read it and it's a nice introduction to what Newsletters are and what they can do for you. If you're a new author who's just beginning and you're sinking in all the information you get thrown at you about everything, then it will help you get an idea of what to do with your newsletter.
But it could have been so much more. Just telling someone to make good subject lines is not that helpful. I would have loved some case studies of what kind of stuff you put in a newsletter, or how you improve them, even if they would have been in a different genre and with a different tone.
💯 one of the strengths of this book is the fact that it's tailored to authors specifically. But the bar for educational content about newsletters is so much higher when you look to broader resources for email marketing in general, even just the free stuff.
I should have noted that she does offer a free email mini-course called "Rock Solid Foundation" that promises to walk you through how to set up a mailing list. There are 3 lessons: #1 on choosing an EMS; #2 on authenticating your domain; and #3 on landing pages.
- #1 and #2 contained some useful stuff and were slightly less waffly compared to Newsletter Ninja. BUT...#1 had affiliate links and #2 literally had an instruction to use Google. It was for a step relating to your web host so I understand not covering it, but come on. Even just an example screenshot or some brief instructions on where to look in the web host settings (and some don't let you manually adjust them!) would have been more helpful.
- #3 was a 800+ word email telling me I need to build a landing page at a URL I control. There was more information on what makes a good landing page in a few paragraphs in Let's Get Digital than there was in this email lesson.
- The next email after lesson #3 is "that's it, subscribe to my main list and sign-up for my paid course". 🤦🏻♀️
Maybe I've been spoiled by Ramit Sethi. I complained about his list in my other video on mailing lists but the free content he puts out is quality, miles ahead of many paid offerings. Like, here's a general blog article about growing a mailing list...with screenshots and clear action steps to take: growthlab.com/how-to-build-an-email-list/
Oof. I'll go point by point here.
First, Email #1 has DISCLOSED affiliate links and there is nothing wrong with that. I am an affiliate for several email marketing services; why on earth wouldn't I be, given what I do for a living?
Second, in Email #2, I recommended Googling how to authenticate your domain because my students and one-on-one clients use or have used more than 35 email marketing services and at least 20 hosting providers, and I am absolutely not going to give detailed instructions for how to authenticate 35 different email marketing services with 20 different hosting providers; that would be 700 sets of instructions, all of which I would have to type out, many of which I would have to screen grab, and some for which I would have to make video - and no, I will not do that for a free three-day leadgen course. My lowest-tier paid course has a tech vault with video walkthroughs for the most popular combinations, and I won't apologize for putting that level of work behind a paywall.
Third, David Gaughran often says - in his own books and in the forward to my book that you've "reviewed" here - that I taught him everything he knows about email. I'm glad he was able to say it more concisely than I did in Email #3, but I teach courses on this and Dave doesn't, so let me assure you that many, many people NEED a much more detailed explanation. I'd rather give too much information than deal with repeated email replies asking me to elaborate. Believe me, I've done it both ways, and this is better.
Fourth, I suppose I could have just never sent another email after Email #3 (it does, after all, CLEARLY say that there are three lessons), but I chose instead to wrap up with a fourth email that mentions my least expensive course and invites people to join the Newsletter Ninja mailing list - note that I don't just add people to the list, which 99% of other marketers would do; the mini-course is truly no-obligation and no strings attached, which I think says quite a bit about my ethics, despite your implication here that my ethics leave something to be desired because I mention (MENTION!) that I also have a paid course if you need help.
I know I'm going to regret not just ignoring this, but, again, this just feels like really weird criticism for the sake of criticizing, and like I'm supposed to feel bad for earning money? My highest-priced course is 1/4 the cost of Mark Dawson's ads course, and people never so much as blink at him for making a very comfortable living off that.
I also do a ton of stuff for the author community with no benefit to myself, I pay my own way and speak at conferences for free, I'm in my FB group and email inbox for hours every day answering people's questions.
I created this little free course to help folks set up a few things I saw them getting wrong over and over again, thousands of people have taken it (and only about 10% of them join the mailing list, so I truly do not benefit much at all from it), hundreds of people have emailed to tell me they didn't know any of it and they were hugely grateful, and I'm just flat-out offended by you basically saying "this free stuff isn't good enough, you should have given me better free stuff." I have dogs to feed, and I am not at all ashamed that people pay to learn more from me, or to have me do their emails for them.
(However, you could not pay me a higher compliment than "She's not like Ramit Sethi," so thank you for that.)
@@NewsletterNinja Hey Tammi, thanks for taking the time to drop by my channel and reply. Please don't feel bad for responding instead of ignoring this-I don't ever want my comments section to end up as an echo chamber-you are welcome here!
I can see from your reaction that I did not take enough care in how I worded my opinion, and I'm sorry. It was not my intent to throw any shade on your ethics or to guilt-trip you about charging money for your hard-won knowledge.
To be absolutely clear, I have nothing against you earning money from affiliate links or an upsell at the end of a free leadgen course. You are one of the few genuine experts marketing to authors out there and we appreciate you sharing that expertise. And we're willing to pay for it! I am willing to pay for it! I've bought both of your books on newsletters and I will buy the third one when it comes out. It's the price of a coffee and being able to pick the brain of an expert for the price of a coffee is always a good bargain.
Where the first Newsletter Ninja book and the free email course both fall short, in my opinion, is that neither live up to their respective promises on the packaging-that of becoming a mailing list expert and a mini-course that walks through setting up your first mailing list.
Perhaps it could be argued that nobody in their right mind would believe you can become an expert in anything after reading a 148-page book and therefore that part of the promise should be taken as normal marketing verbiage. That said, if it had been marketed as something like "the only book you need to start your email list RIGHT", I still think it would sell just as well.
Could I make a case, in the spirit of A/B testing, that if you made some slight adjustments so the promise in the packaging aligned with what the contents actually deliver, I think you would see some higher percentages in your leadgen conversion? I'm not presuming to know your numbers or that I'm any sort of sales and marketing expert myself-those are two areas that terrify me. But I assume that, as a self-pubbed author, I am someone who would be an ideal target customer for you, and I can tell you exactly where the leadgen process fell over for me.
When I went through the mini-course, I'd already been subscribed to your list-I signed up from your website after I read Let's Get Digital. But had I not already done so, there was very little in your mini-course to persuade me that doing so would be worthwhile. I was expecting a mini-course that would walk me through setting up a mailing list and creating a perfect landing page. Emails #1 and 2 were promising, but Email #3 said "put the sign-up link on your website", and nothing else about what differentiates a good landing page from a bad, let alone how to create a perfect one.
Now, hypothetically, let's say that Email #3 was a before/after case study of a landing page, showing how sign-up rates went from X% to Y%. (Nothing fancy necessary-hand-scrawled notes on a screenshot would do just fine.) And it ends with a little mini-checklist of some do's and don't's of creating an effective landing page, that I can tick off one by one as I build one myself. A handy reference document that walks me through the nuts and bolts, as promised.
If that is how the mini-course ends, you can bet when the final email comes along, with a CTA to sign up for your main mailing list and a mention that there's more great material like this in your paid courses, I'd be getting out my credit card straight away. I'd bet that leadgen conversion rate goes from 10% to something much, much higher.
Maybe that's too much work for a free thing. I don't know your numbers and what ROI would be worth it. But we all know free is not really free. "Free" is access to my email inbox, and my time and attention on your content. With self-publishing exploding and getting more and more crowded, the self-publishing advice niche is too. Just like how you can't hope to self-publish and earn back your investment with a less-than professional cover and less-than-polished manuscript, I think the quality bar for free is rising across the board.
Ramit Sethi is not everyone's cup of tea but he is very, very good at sales for two reasons-his ability to zero in on the customers he wants and how he hooks them. Because his free stuff IS better than 99% of the paid stuff out there...and his paid stuff IS better than his free stuff. That's how he can price his courses that high. I've never regretted a single dollar that I've spent on any of his courses-and I have bought several of them.
When I first read it, I was a total noob and it really helped me to figure some things out - the advice to write your emails to a specific person/treat them like a friend was particularly helpful! It also helped me shift some of the gross feeling about sending emails so that I could actually do it without spending hours cringing and putting it off lol I actually like sending them now!
After watching this I can definitely see your point though, and I had the benefit of other prior knowledge about the industry etc to help me make sense of the book.
The shift in mindset is absolutely HUGE, because I feel like most of us come to the idea of starting a mailing list as all about being selling and yeah, for anyone who is assailed with dread because of that, I would definitely recommend reading this book to start!
@@PaperTigerProductionsthat mindset shift was so massive. I feel like there are a number of them along the journey of being an author - still finding new things to shift myself forward! lol
Disagree with your review for 2 reasons. First, every email service is different- the author/preneur has to work with the techs. Second, this review is out-of-date- Book 2 dives deeper into detail. Third, the author has several very inexpensive classes and FREE tipsheets and UA-cam talks available. She is also one of the best human beings on this planet, willing to help as she is able.
So yes, more than 2 reasons Newsletter Ninja is a valuable resource.
Thank you for clarifying why I should skip this book.