Growing Your Podcast Through Newlsetters - Monthly Meetup

We all love to post on social media, and I did some research and found out that when you look at newsletters in terms of reach and actually engaging with people, you may not want to ditch social media, but you probably want to add a newsletter.

So this is from the PodPage March monthly meetup, and we're talking about how you can grow your podcast with newsletters.

Welcome to Podcast Website Tips, the ultimate guide for podcasters who want to level up their online presence with no coding required.

Whether you're a seasoned pro or just getting started, this show gives you practical, actionable advice to build and optimize your podcast website.

We cover everything from design and content to SEO and monetization.

Get ready to attract more listeners and take your website from good to great.

Here's your host, Dave Jackson.

So we're going to be talking about growing your show with newsletters.

And you might be thinking, newsletters, is that the thing from the 80s?

And I'm like, yeah, but there's a reason they're still around.

I'll put it this way.

It is 2 o'clock as we record this.

How many people have checked their email today?

Okay, and then some of us have been on YouTube, but maybe not everybody.

That's an interesting question because it used to be you'd get up, check your email.

Now you get up and you check your texts and things of that nature.

But we definitely will get into some stats that may surprise you when it comes to newsletters versus especially social media.

And for this, I want to say this up front.

I'm not anti social media.

It's just if you can have something that works a little better, maybe you might try that.

I mean, right now everybody is all hot and bothered about YouTube because it's, you know, hey, oh my gosh, it's the second largest search engine, so you'd be kind of silly not to use that, right?

Well, okay, well, what if I said there's something better than maybe social media for trying to grow your audience?

Social is a great place to be social, hang out with your audience and things of that nature.

So, and so they're saying here that if you look at social, now, granted, that's Facebook 2.9 billion versus 3.2 to 4.7 billion in email.

And you could say that, you know, if we added up all the TikToks and threads and blue sky and X Twitter and this, and it's probably more than maybe 4.7 billion, maybe.

We'll see.

But here's the fun thing.

Email is one place it's your inbox.

And you don't have to think about it.

If you had to go to every website from someone that sent you an email, that would not be fun.

So that's the beauty of it.

Everybody is on email.

So keep that in mind when it comes to receiving marketing material.

And what this question is, is when it comes to receiving marketing material, in other words, like, hey, I know you're probably going to try to sell me something or you're going to update me on something or whatever.

Here again, email.

72% people are like, yeah, I kind of expect to be marketed to in email.

In fact, I had to opt into that when I signed up versus social is 17%.

So people aren't really looking to be sold to on social.

And the next time you're on social, kind of step back from yourself and go, what am I doing here?

And I'm usually looking for maybe news stories, but I'm not really looking.

There are those.

And you always get the person, you know, episode 16 is out.

Okay, great, that's fine.

It's branding.

You're keeping your brand in front of people.

But in terms of, hey, I'm, I'm ready to be sold to.

Because as somebody who has a teaching background, the one thing every teacher wants is just a willing student.

That's all I want.

Quit looking at your phone in class.

Right.

And so as people that are trying to grow their audience, we're looking for people that are open to receiving our message.

And according to this, you know, they're much more open in email.

I'm like, huh, that's interesting.

What about open rates?

Well, in social, I didn't realize it was that bad.

2.4% versus somewhere between 15 and 25 for email.

And so this is because I thought, like, wait a minute, you don't really open social.

But I think what they're talking about there is, if you think about it, when you send, what do you call a blue sky?

I just call everything a tweet.

Doesn't matter if you're on Instagram, everybody sending tweets, why not sure, but you create a post and if somebody has a lot of people they're following, that just flies by.

I don't know what the average lifespan of a social post is, but that's why I think their open rate is so low.

Because a lot of times it's like.

And you're like, oh, unless they scroll down, they're probably not going to see that.

And I was like, huh, that's an interesting point.

Now when it comes to, once they've opened it, what's the click through rate?

And this is the one that's always depressing, but there's my favorite number, 3%.

I tell people all the time, and look, I don't want to believe it either, but 3% of your audience will take action and they're like, huh, I'm going to get at least 50%.

No, 20%.

No, 10% if you're a demigod, 5% maybe, if you really, really get 3% will actually click on.

So it's, it's, you know, 25% opened.

3% of the 25%.

And I know you're like, well, Dave, that's not very good.

Like, well, it's a heck of a lot better than social media if you're trying to interact with people.

Now this is just a Dave thing.

So I went over and I looked at my email list and right now I have around 1600 people.

And previously last year I had 1300 people.

And there's a part of you that gets hung up with numbers, right?

Our ego, primarily.

And I was like, hey, like I'm in the, the, you know, four figures here.

And I only, I only, only, shame on me.

Had basically 300 people join the email list in a year.

And I was like, well, wait a minute, if you take the difference.

So it's 300 divided by the original is 23% growth.

If you grow anything by 23%, I'll take that.

I mean, granted, 50% would be better, but I'll take 23% money in my savings account, right?

We're all getting, you know, 5% maybe, if we're lucky.

These days, that's just me.

That is a survey of one.

But I just was like, well, what can you kind of expect?

So what do I write about?

And I get this because when you're like, hey, Dave, you know, you're talking about a newsletter, which means I have to, you know, typey, typey, type, you know, like I have, I have no idea which number one, don't sell yourself short.

You're a podcaster, you're a content creator.

And it used to drive me kind of bonkers when I would find a blogger back in the day of blogs, right?

They're still around.

And I would find a blogger that was phenomenal.

And I'd be like, this is great content.

You should turn this into a podcast.

And they would go, I'm just a writer and I would like, well, actually you're a content creator.

Why not put your Content in every form you can so people can consume it.

And I would say, you know, I really like that blog post, but I can't read it on the way to work in the car.

But I could listen to it if it was a podcast.

And I say the same thing to YouTubers.

I'm like, yeah, YouTube has a lot of people.

Have you ever thought of taking your YouTube, pulling out the audio?

Unless it's something where it's woodworking and you got to watch me do something.

But Audio outperforms video 10 to 1, because there's more time to listen than there is to watch.

And so when I see bloggers, I'm like, you've done the hard part.

You created the content.

Why not put that out as a podcast?

And now it's the direct opposite.

Hey, you've done the hard part.

You've put the content out as audio.

Why not shape that into a newsletter?

And so some things to think about.

The director's cut.

If you've ever watched a movie and they have the director's cut and it's usually a couple extra scenes that for whatever reason, maybe for time, maybe for who knows what, but they cut a couple scenes and in the end they weren't bad scenes.

It was just, it was already a four hour movie.

They're like, we need to cut something.

So they cut some stuff.

Well, maybe you had that with an episode or the direct opposite.

Maybe you started an episode and you're like, normally my episodes are X amount of minutes and this isn't long enough.

And I could either try to expand this, but I mean, it's really only this, like, this is the point.

And it takes about seven minutes.

Well, that's a great topic then to maybe put as a newsletter and do a summary.

So the, the stuff that didn't make the cut doesn't always mean it's bad, but you might be able to throw that in there.

So that's something that what I call the director's cut things didn't quite make.

It sounds profitable.

Has a podcast and it's based on their newsletter.

They're basically saying, hey, in the newsletter we talked about topic A, which does such and such and such and such.

Little tease there.

Hey, if you want more information, you got to go read our newsletter.

But at the end they do like a weekly wrap up and they're like, and here are some things that didn't actually make the show, but you might want to go check out.

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

Director's cut.

Kind of information that you might want to throw in there.

But it could be industry news books.

I've had people on occasion be, hey, I'm reading this book.

And they're like, what did you think of it?

I was like, well, I'm on chapter seven, and it's the winner.

And then they're like, all right, I'm going to go buy it, because if you say it's good, it's good.

And I'm like, oh, wait a minute.

And that's where you go, my words have power, right?

And you're like, but it's true.

Life lessons.

This is where it's kind of strange, because, look, you know that I know that you know that I know that you're just you and I'm just me.

I'm just in a spare bedroom.

But anytime you can make a point by sharing a lesson or just what you're thinking or what you're feeling.

I had a friend of mine die, and it bummed me out.

Shocking.

You know, death is still no fun.

And I just shared a little bit about it and how it made me get back on a treadmill and how it made me watch what I'm eating and things like that.

So now what does that have to do with podcasting?

Absolutely nothing.

But it's.

When you have a newsletter, it's people that are saying, hey, I like your stuff, and I want more from you because I like your style.

I like whatever, what you believe in.

You know, it.

It.

It either makes me laugh, cry, think, grown, educate, or entertain.

Now, I kind of tied it into podcasting.

I said, look, I said, the.

The thing that's sad about my buddy Neil that died is he did make a documentary called the Messengers.

By the way, when you're done, go look up the Messengers, a podcast documentary on YouTube.

And he go, he has a legacy he's going to live on in his content.

And so I did tie it into podcasting.

But sometimes those life lessons, you can kind of make a point as well as let people kind of know what's going on in your life.

Another one you can do is polls, if you want to figure out, hey, I'm thinking of doing something in my show.

And you're like, I don't know if my audience would like this or not.

Well, you've already got a group of people that said, hey, I like your stuff so much that I gave you my email address.

I said, here it is.

Here's my email.

Please don't spam me.

And you send it away.

And they like you.

And they want more stuff.

And you're like, hey, valued newsletter reader, I'm thinking of doing this in the podcast.

What do you think?

And then you send them to a Google form or a.

There's tally.

I think it's ta L L y dot.

So really pretty.

Because I know some people are like, I'm not giving anything to Google.

They're the devil.

All right, well, here's an alternative.

If you don't want to use Google forms, and then the other one is a good old fashioned call to action.

So if you want them to do something, the beauty of it is they are one click away from doing whatever it is you want them to do.

We'll talk about that a little later.

Resources.

We have resources today that we'll be talking about when you're like, dave, I still don't know what to talk about.

All right, I've got some resources for you.

And I have a section of my newsletter that is just called what Caught My Eye.

And what I put in that section is.

I know, wait for it.

What Caught My Eye.

So this might be something I saw on YouTube that I was like, wow, that's really cool.

Or it might be like, I just found out about some tool that you can use to get emails from Facebook groups.

And I was like, huh, is that legal?

Like that kind of stuff?

So I do a little bit stuff, but not really.

That's a great example of not really 100% fit for my podcast audience.

Because not everybody uses Facebook groups.

But I can throw it in the newsletter and the people are like, ooh, there's another cool tool that I learned from Dave.

The other thing you can do are episode summaries.

So sometimes it's like, hey, last week we talked about newsletters, and it turns out we had a part two and yada, yada, yada.

And now you're giving that person the bonus.

You know, the extended dance version of your episode.

So if there was something else you wanted to add, you could do that so you can see it.

It doesn't have to be one thing.

It can be many things that you want.

And like these.

I don't do this in every episode of my newsletter.

Mine kind of has a format if you want to see it.

It's podcastingobservations.com which, for the record, when I think about it, yes, it's an easy to remember address, but that really should be for me because I run a website called the School of Podcasting.

It should be schoolofpodcasting.com newsletter because that reinforces my brand.

But I had a domain burning a hole in my pocket.

So I'm like, I'll point that one in my newsletter.

But you'll see where there's the top section is just basically me talking about what happened this week.

And then it's here's my latest content.

And I always have just the title of the episode and a so to say, like the name of the show.

And then there's a button to follow because we all love those followers, and then a link to the episode.

And this is where your episode titles really come in handy because nobody cares that it's episode 16.

And then I have my maybe something that I want to promote.

So podcast or Happy hours, a little networking event I promote.

And then it's here's what caught my eye and here's what's coming in the future.

And the here's what's coming in the future sometimes gets people like, oh, you're going to be talking about this in the future.

Did you know about such and such?

And my audience will actually help me shape my content, which is exactly what you want.

You want content that people want.

So keep that in mind.

Now, Dave, what's the best one?

Well, I am not saying any of these are the best.

I'm saying these are ones I have used.

And so Substack is free.

They do have a business model because I don't know if you know this or not.

Free is a horrible business model.

Many companies have gone out of business when they charge nothing because it turns out when you buy other things for your company, they want money and you don't have any because it's free.

So stub stacks business plan is, if you want, you can charge people for your newsletter.

Remember, 3% of your people will if you are really, really good.

And they will take 10% of the money that you make.

So they have a business model, but if nobody's selling their stuff.

So I'm a little like, I have some stuff on Substack.

I'm playing with it right now.

But there's a part of me that goes, yeah, this isn't a super solid business model.

You know, I'd have to see if they put out any kind of reports and things like that.

Then another one I've used is Sendfox.

And Sendfox is an AppSumo program.

And if you've never played with appsumo, it's a very dangerous place.

They have all sorts of software at deep discounts and a lot of you'll See where I put the LTD there?

That stands for lifetime deal.

So you can basically buy Send Fox for life for 50 bucks.

Now sendfox is a little more marketing ish where substack, I think they expect people to sit back and pontificate, I'm going to write my thesis on substack and I will tell the world.

A lot of reporters now are like, I'm going to substack and share in my opinion because I got something to say.

So I'm not sure, like you're not getting a lot of ab split testing kind of stuff on a substack.

It's meant more.

It's almost like a blog slash newsletter tied into one where sendfox is definitely newsletter and it's got some neat features.

One of the features we'll talk about here is they can take your RSS feed and turn it into an actual email.

Now that's if you're like, okay, that's fine, but if I want like a team, if I have a team of people, well, that's not going to work.

Sendfox is kind of made for the Solopreneur, but Mailerlite and both Kit, previously known as ConvertKit, both of these allow, I believe it's a thousand, if not more people for free.

And at first you're like, wait, it's only a thousand is a lot of people.

It's a lot of people.

And so keep that in mind.

And so I went over and looked at both those accounts and Mailer Light, when you start to pay is 13 bucks a month and kit was $25 a month.

Kit, where I feel like we're playing the Three Bears here.

Mailer Light, a little more marketing than Send Fox And Kit has all sorts of fun bells and whistles.

And in my opinion, and that's all it is.

So it's a survey of one.

I think Kit's interface is a little more user friendly because you can do things and say like when somebody signs up, send them this PDF and then put them in this little thing which sends them an email every other week or something like that, which you can do in Mailer Light.

It's just, there's just a, for me, just a little bit of clunkiness sometimes in Mailerlite, but it is cheaper.

So if you can put up some clunkiness.

Mailer Light.

And again, whichever budget you're on, you know, if you're like, I'm just going to start up, you might use Substack.

So.

And if you Google email tools, good night.

You're welcome to the rabbit hole.

There's, there's moose, there's something with an octopus.

A lot of apparently a lot of animals involved when it comes to marketing newsletter.

But there are ton aweber mail kimp.

For those of us that remember cereal, they had a mailchimp commercial and it went so viral because they had this little kid and he went to say mailchimp and he went mail kimp.

And there are a lot of people that still call mailchimp mailchimp and they all kind of do the same thing.

Go over, look at the pricing, look at the interfaces, watch YouTube maybe if you want to see their interface.

But there are.

You are not at a loss for opportunities to send emails, just a matter of which one.

So right now I am using Sandfox because I want to do a little more marketing stuff.

I'm actually in the process of moving to ConvertKit.

So that's where I'm headed.

And then I mentioned this earlier, almost all of these, I don't know that substack does, but there is a feature in the other ones.

I know for a fact that you can take the RSS feed from your media host, whoever it is, Spotify, Captivate, Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Blueberry.

Again, talk about more choices.

Again, you can take your RSS feed and now whatever you type in as your, your show notes, in Libsyn, in Blueberry, in Captivate, whoever, whatever you type there in the same way that Captivate takes that and turns it into a website, these email tools will turn it into a newsletter and then just send it on out.

So the only thing that's kind of interesting, and it depends on each one, but in some cases I would actually put a link in the show notes to the actual episode because in theory in most places you're looking at it, but because this was going to a newsletter at the very end, it was like this originated on this website and they could click on it in the newsletter and it would actually send them to the website.

So that's another feature that can be kind of handy if you're like, Dave, I still, I got nothing.

I don't know what to type or I don't feel I don't have time to write a newsletter.

For my little basic newsletter, the last two weeks, I've kind of started a timer.

And if you don't have one of these, you should.

You can get them at Amazon or there's online stuff, but you basically just hit it and let it start, you know, either counting up or counting down, because there are times when you don't realize, wow, I just wasted 45 minutes watching reels on Facebook.

So, you know, we only have so much time, but I think it took me a half hour to put together, and that's making images in Canva and things like that.

Because again, I'm not writing War and Peace.

I'm writing maybe three or four paragraphs.

It's.

It's in my head now.

The other thing is, being a guy that's been teaching for 20 plus years, I know how to type.

I also know how to make typos.

But I'm not.

I'm not a hunt and pecker.

Nothing wrong with being somebody who hunts and pecks, but that's not me.

So your mileage may vary when it comes to how much time it takes to write a newsletter, but even that, you can use things like otter AI and fire up a microphone and just start to talk, and it will transcribe whatever you're saying.

Keep in mind, we don't talk like we write and we don't write like we talk.

So sometimes you're like, I'm just going to take a transcript.

And I'm like, because go read that.

And you'll probably see where, like I said, we don't talk like we write.

We don't write like we talk.

So you might want to throw that into some sort of AI tool and tell it, do not lose my voice, but can you brush this up a bit and maybe focus it a bit or things like that?

When it comes to AI, and this is again, another one.

Everybody has their own opinion.

I'm a fan because I don't have a problem writing, writing stuff, copying it, throwing it into Claude or ChatGPT or whatever AI tool you're using and saying.

A lot of times my prompt is just, can you make this better?

And it does.

And I'm like, oh, okay.

And it still sounds like me.

And then I just take out the word delve and deep dive about 50 million times and we're good to go.

That is an option.

I'm just.

The goal here is just to let you know, hey, if you're like, I am not a writer at all, well, then you might just have it convert your rss.

Hey, it's future Dave.

And I wanted to also mention that in POD page, if you're on the elite plan, the AI tool in PodPage will write a summary of the last four weeks of your episode.

So if you do one a week, you could send out a monthly email and it will summarize the past four episodes.

And we also have an easy way we're going to get to making it easy to sign up.

And how do we get people to sign up?

And one of those is PodPage has built in a easy to remember link.

It's your website, whatever that is, newsletter.

And that's where whoever you're using to collect email addresses, you can set that up.

That reinforces your brand.

It's easy to remember and people can remember to go there to sign up.

The other thing here is that we want to talk about is getting.

I don't get people to sign up.

And that in itself can be a bit of a struggle because you always hear about lead magnets and we'll talk about what those are and how do you make them.

But I was like, well, what would my audience like?

What would be the benefit of signing up to the newsletter?

Because nobody's waking up going, man, I hope I can find a newsletter today.

You know, only if I'm lucky enough will I find nobody's doing that.

What I did one time and I was really surprised because I would get, you know, the occasional person here and the occasional person here signing up for my newsletter.

And I said, hey, if you're listening to this right now and you're on a treadmill or, I don't know, maybe you're on the way to work, be sure to, you know, pay attention.

Or maybe you're out in the middle of the woods on a bike and you're like, oh, I need to remember to go back to that guy's website and check that thing that he just got me all hot and bothered about.

I got to go get that book.

Did you know that you can have my website come to your email?

I might just go to, you know, my website.com newsletter.

So in my case, that schoolofpodcasting.com newsletter sign up and you can have the show notes automatically delivered to you for free.

That was my big wild pitch.

And I thought, oh, nobody's going to go for that.

And a lot of people went for that, like, not like, you know, thousands.

But I was amazed.

There were.

Normally I got this little drip like, hey, you got.

You got two people this week.

Because I was going sign up for the newsletter and they're all going, what's in it for me?

But when I said, oh, by the way, here's how you can benefit.

You can have the show notes come to you.

I probably had 10, maybe 15 people in a week.

And at the time, that was like, unheard of.

That's one way.

If you're like, I don't know how to get people to sign up, just explain to them.

You can have the show notes come to your inbox absolutely free.

Now you don't have to use a crappy radio voice, but you know, do your own thing.

So that's one way you can get people to sign up.

Because in the end what it boils down to is people want to benefit.

Right?

I want to benefit.

So when you explain to them, hey, here's a way you can benefit from, oh, then maybe they'll actually jump in on that.

Now another thing, and this is one I don't know about you, does anybody here hate pop ups or is anybody here like, I love pop ups when I'm trying to read something and all of a sudden, right in your face, PodPage does have a pop up.

And I kind of was like not sure about this.

You know, pop ups, I hate them when they do that.

And then I started using them and I found out why people use pop ups.

They work.

Yeah, they really do.

It's like, holy cow.

But pop ups can work.

And in pod page you can go in and say, look, wait 60 seconds before this pop up even appears.

And then you could say, only show it to people X amount of days if you want to to use the built in pop up.

And that can be a pop up to both.

It can be either it be sign up for my newsletter or if you're promoting something, maybe your book launches here or something, you can use that to just click here and pre order my book.

So keep that in mind.

If you're like, hey, I'm not really getting anything.

I was amazed.

As much as, you know, I kind of don't want to annoy people.

I was like, hey, there is something to this pop up thing.

What about lead magnets?

Because that's another fun one.

You'll hear that phrase, get them a lead magnet.

And so in general, lead magnets solve a problem, novel idea, they deliver value, they're easy to consume.

So when people are like, you can sign up now for free and get my 4000 page ebook on how to blah.

Like no, no, we don't want a 4,000 page ebook.

What we want is a one page, one sheet cheat sheet where you read the 4,000 page ebook.

Now just give me the 10 steps to do what that ebook talked about.

So anytime we all know the hot buttons, right?

Anytime we can save them time or money or anything like that, that's going to be a bonus.

And then some sort of immediate gratification.

So by that it's like, hey, I did these steps, and lo and behold, I'm getting more traffic to my website.

I'm getting.

I'm losing weight, I'm doing whatever it is your audience is trying to do.

And all of a sudden, what's going to happen?

They're like, hey, that Dave guy, that Eileen guy, that Danny, that this guy seems to know what he's talking about.

You know, Ms.

Eileen said I should try this on my YouTube channel.

And it's working.

Well, now when you say, oh, by the way, I got this other stuff for sale, they're going to be more than likely to.

Well, the first thing that they gave away for free was amazing.

Holy cow.

If that was their free stuff.

And all I had to give up was an email.

And now I'm doing this other thing.

Actually, if you, if you go to YouTube and just search for how to write a lead magnet, There are probably 50 million YouTube videos on that.

Again, you think it's has to be War and Peace.

Now it can just be like, one of my lead magnets is just a checklist.

Why?

Because I heard people go, I don't know, when it comes to podcasting, I don't even know where to start.

I'm like, okay, School of Podcasting.com checklist, here's the do this, then that, then this, then that.

And then of course, at the end, it's like, oh, and by the way, if you need more help, you know, that whole nine yards, and you could do the same thing.

They don't have to be warned.

Peace.

In fact, people like them to be short, actionable, they deliver value, going back to Danny's word right there, relative to what people are looking for.

So when you know they're pain, the checklist can solve that.

And they will gladly go ahead and give you an email for that.

So here are some resources.

If you're like, hey, Dave, I.

You know what?

I get the newsletter thing.

I love that podpage makes it easy because you can just embed your form right into PodPage.

So if you want, and we'll talk about this in a second.

But PodPage can collect emails, but we're talking about having another system.

And if you're still like, I'm just not going to write a newsletter, I got too much stuff.

I got seven kids in soccer practice and, you know, a spouse, like, I can't do it.

Well, in some cases, advertising.

Well, first of all, advertising on another podcast, that.

That would be the Best because we know those people listen to podcasts, right?

But another one might be, especially if you have a hyper neat show, is if you go to tink media.com and go to Podcast Friends.

They have a thing for a newsletter database.

And it's a.

I know, hard to believe.

Wait for it.

It's a database of newsletters and so you can search for your topic and see if there's anything that fits and then see if they charge to advertise in there.

Maybe if it's somebody similar to what you're doing, then maybe you're like, hey, do you want to swap promos?

Like, put an ad for me in your newsletter and I'll talk about your newsletter on my podcast.

All sorts of ways to partner that.

So if you didn't know, there is a database of newsletters and Tink Media has a lot of fun stuff over there too, as well as they have a newsletter that promotes their products and services.

And so that might be one you want to check out again.

Tink Media, not think Tink as in like urbel, right.

Tink Media.com is where you can find that some other services here.

As we start to head towards the door.

These are two I've just recently found the last.

Oh, in the last year, I went to ECAMM Creator camp because my buddy Jeff C.

Said it was cool and he was right.

And it was there that I met Liz Wilcox.

And Liz Wilcox has templates and they're.

They're fairly cheap of things to send out an email.

And I just met Paul Gowder, who is another friend of Jeff C.

So if you hang around Jeff C.

You'll meet all sorts of cool people.

And C is S, I E H.

And I interviewed Paul Gowder this week and he is another guy that has a ton of resources.

He's all.

He's email and community kind of combined.

And he was talking about how sometimes we overthink.

Oh, I don't have the perfect lead magnet.

He's like, well, just put out what you got.

But both those folks, Liz and Paul, are they live in the email space.

So as much as I've played with email and I use it and things like that, those folks live and breathe and swim and eat newsletters all the time.

And then I asked Paul, I said, hey, like when it comes to newsletters, like, what's the biggest mistake?

Because the one thing you always, anytime you do something new, right, if somebody hands you some sort of new technology, right, and it's brand new and you're Looking at it and you're like, oh, wait, hold.

Ooh, I don't want to.

I don't want to drop it.

I don't want to break it.

Right?

Hold on.

And we're always worried, like, okay, well, if I start a newsletter, like, what's the worst thing that could happen?

I'll tell you one mistake I made with this.

But when I asked Paul, I go, what's the big mistake that people make?

And he goes, not collecting them.

And I remember I was listening to Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income once, and he said one of his biggest kind of regrets was he didn't start an email list earlier.

He said it was probably he was a big blogger before he got into podcasting and YouTube.

And he said, man, if I had been collecting emails all this time when I was writing a blog, he goes, I can't imagine how big that list would have been because again, when you have those people on a list that shows to get your stuff and they can unsubscribe anytime they want, you have to, for legal purposes, have to have an unsubscribe button in your newsletter.

These are people that are still choosing to consume your stuff.

And one way you can look at this is, you know, some of us are like, hey, please rate and review as it helps us get found.

Well, first things first, it is social proof, absolutely 100% social proof.

And so if your show has 15 reviews and the one next to you has four, sure, people may click on your show for that, but you get your review from, you know, Jim mom 47.

And Jim mom 47 says, love Dave show, he's great.

Yada, yada yada, blue blah, blah, you know, or my favorite, if you get a one star review, a really bad show for a really bad product, Isn't it odd how you can quote your 1 star reviews like their scripture, right?

But ask me to quote a five star and I can't do it.

But one star, a really bad show for a really bad product, I can't email anybody that leaves me a review.

So I got them to do one thing for me and that's it, we're out.

But if I'd asked them to join my email list, well, number one, I could ask them to leave a review.

That would be nice.

I could later in another email say, hey, can you take this poll for me?

Hey, I've got a new book for sale.

Can you buy the book?

Now?

I've got multiple opportunities to do something with that person as well as I don't get this a lot and it's going to be a static I'm going to start paying attention to.

But on occasion I will get people that will forward my own email to me and say this was really great.

It helped me think about something completely different.

And that to me unsolicited feedback, either good or bad is great.

And you just don't get that from reviews.

And so I'm not saying reviews are bad.

I will say they do not help you get found.

That has been said by Apple.

Apple has said this does nothing to the charts.

They are social proof.

And that social proof can definitely lead to people clicking.

But in terms of like it helps us get up the charts because that's been repeated per nauseum that people think it's true.

And Apple has said no, no, this has nothing to do with the charts.

If the reason you're going up the charts it might be from social proof.

But there's no algorithmically benefit of having a review.

So keep that in mind.

And as we head out the door, since I recorded that I have I mentioned appsumo, it's a dangerous place.

And I found a really cool pop up maker called On Vacado.

And it's a weird name because you just want to say avocado but it's On Vacado and it is.

It makes really cool pop ups.

There's all sorts of different ways.

It's 59 bucks for life.

And so if you want to have a pop up, besides the one that's built into Pod page, it's pretty handy and has spin the wheel, all sorts of stuff.

It's pretty cool.

So if you have any questions, the website again podcast website tips.

If you go to podcast websitetips.com voicemail you can leave us an idea of what you'd like to hear in the show in the future.

If you have a question about newsletters, we have links to everything we mentioned out in the show notes.

Just go out to podcast websitetips.com 22 because this is episode number 22 and remember, they got to find you before they can hear you.

Find this show and all of Dave's other projects at powerofpodcasting.

Com.