2 tips about email marketing from Tim Ferris (via Kevin Rose)

I didn’t expect to learn an actual email marketing tip when I tuned into foundation’s Kevin Rose interview chat with Tim Ferries, you know, The email list curation and email marketing tips that usually online marketing managers talk about, skillshare.com could charge $100 for a “class” like that.

It’s a long video, I’ve briefed it into following 2 tips: (but there are lots of other invaluable insights, do watch)

1. Understand three numbers: 1000, 10k, 1 million
From 27:30, Tim started talking about having email communications with your “email subscribers”. He provided 3 numbers that a content provider should be aware of: Tim says – If you have 1000 email subscribers who you carefully curated because of your own original blog content, you will never worry about marketing. If you have 10k people who would scream on top of their lung they love your book/content/blog/product, you will for sure reach 1 million people. The take away for new bloggers, entrepreneurs is to focus on creating solid content, finding passionate audience, build your first 10, 100, 200, 500 etc.; For example, aiming at building passionate list of 100 subscribers in first 3 months.

2. This tip is golden: Find out that single author bloggers who has deep connection with his/her audience.
At 28 min or so , Kevin brought up marketing at “crazy big email mailing list” that you have. Tim answered with “put in some effort on emails. Never write mediocre draft email and blast at 500 people.” From 28 to 32 mins, Kevin and Tim had probably the best ever discussion any new entrepreneurs, bloggers would pay big bucks to listen to. Please give it a listen! Tim stressed 80/20 rule approach: thinking about how one can input the least to maximize the output. Find out who those 20% audience are that generates the 80% of results (traffic, revenue, buzz etc.), and focus on your communication effort at these 20%. For example, Tim thinks a single author blogger with 1 million monthly uniques can sell 100 times more than an respected editor at a respected online magazine, because of personal connections that blogger has with his audience. Tim says “the email I would send to someone who has a successful blog…would be as well thought through as the email I would send to the editor-in-chief of Economist”, and of course, Kevin immediately realized how golden this tip is and said “this can be applied to anything!”

I didn’t purposefully look for Derek Sivers, nor did I know who he is. I simply followed a tweet from Tim Ferris to his article.

Derek’s site is clean, content rich, full of readers’ comment, ads free, huge traffic, spending a few minutes reading it reminded me Steve Pavlina, and his infamous “how to be a man”.

Both Derek Sivers and Steve Pavlina are true mavericks: they quitted the society norm long ago, and relentlessly chase their own ideology of life. In the process, they create their own utopia, hence followers follow and be inspired.

I ask myself: who else would not like a life path set by oneself? No one! But How many people can achieve not only that, ie. complete financial freedom, but land of Zen-ideology: to look at the world peacefully, and give, not ask things for return? Too few.

Why? I think it’s the “power”:Desire for power and materials drive most people to keep climbing societal ladder after achieving financial freedom.

If there is anything we can all learn from Derek and Steve, and other super people like them, such as Seth Gordin, Leo Barbauta, it’s the another kind of desire: desire to constantly learn new things, constantly create new things, never stop giving. Nework Mayor Cory Booker’s epic “conspiracy of love” speech at 2012 Stanford commencement (see below) is not an coincidence. Its purposeful seeking the true meaning one believes.

Finally, I am putting up this photo I took recently from 11000 feet at High Sierra for us to remember where we are all from, and will undoubtedly return to.