I spend too long on social media.
These are the things I found that aren't a waste of time.
Free and seems to work well
From Huggingface. Just reading these has taught me a few tools I never knew existed
From this tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@willfrancis24/video/7424234299651656992
From one of my old affiliate buddies - Chris Frost
8 pages of prompts. It's worth looking at to model the "structure" of the prompts and see the depth & precision you need to get back the exact response you need.
Nice little demo using Detail app. Similar to Riverside, but for in-person chats.
By Rafal on Twitter. Scrapes your website or other documents into a text file to train Custom GPT's
Higher level than the typical Hubspot guide. Gives some good preogressions from prompt engineering, to using API's to building a full LLM
Research paper shows how to improve prompts by up to 50% with simple amends:
by Nicolas Cole & Dickie Bush
Neat little tool that shows you how your brand colours look on a live site. Good for checking that your personal brand designs actually work as a web page.
A free AI tool to analyse your landing page and figure out what you actually do.
By Caleb Ralston - 6hrs of teaching
Login [Notes]
Scott Adams advice to non-fiction writers
Interview with @ceolandshark from Twitter by @beautyofsaas
Repurposing social content is a top tier Strategically Lazy skill, so thanks to Ross Simmonds for this
40 minute VSL's are nothing new in low-state markets like supplements, but for biz-opp you need a more positive vibe. This is an example of where I think the VSL market is headed. I've seen Netflix productions with lower production values.
The model in this thread is straight up robbed from Jack Butcher and Dickie Bush has never given credit for it, Jack is too busy doing epic shot to call him out on it. However, the breakdown is useful so I'll throw him a bone for that.
Twitter's half-hour MBA
Threads like this are gold for research. I just need to build an AI scraper for this lot now, and another one for email marketers.
It this point it should be obvious that I have an unpaid video mentor on Twitter.
Another banger by Courtney. Watch her channels long enough any you'll realise how few themes you need to be a success on social
Useful when you're doing full body-length videos and don't want a dull outfit
Colin's been using this to devastating effect on short video, but the principles are universal
For when your LinkedIn headshot won't cut it, this is a great checklist to give your photographer as you get your site redesigned.
By Colin Jewett [Notes]
Steve is the author of PipDecks
Described by Rob Lennon here:https://twitter.com/thatroblennon/status/1702464615039545763
Contins some useful models about the first, hardest step.
Of course I'm going to geek out on this one.
Words to bar from your copy vocabulary, by Ian Lurie
The golden nugget in here is that from about 20 minutes you can see the breakdown of two of Ian's funnels for his copy products. His results are exceptional (he's a copywriter with a well established reputation), but it shows a working pattern for the type of offers you can give as bumps and upsells and how you can sell a mid-priced product off a relatively small front-end. This is what it actually takes to profit off a relatively cheap looking product. A lot of offers and follow-up.
Bullets are the greatest skill in copy, becauase when. you can write bullets, you can write headlines. Lots of headlines Which is wha it takes to write one good one This is a copy copying course that just focusses on bullets.
A VSL masterclass from one of the best in the trade.
What is it, and what makes it effective?
Joel talks about how he got into the supplements game and how he learned copywriting for this intesely competitive industry.
Possible the easiest way to get into affiliate marketing is mass market product offers like this, and native ads, run via an advertorial page you own.
This affiliate has been collecting long form VSL's and built a handy library for un in the process.
Jay Acunzo's Book Outline looks surprisingly like a sales letter outline, which makes sense as books and sales letters have the same idea. To change someone's mind.
Dan Pena quiz funnel
https://www.newsletteroperator.com/p/first-1000-newsletter-subscribers?utm_campaign=want-to-grow-your-newsletter&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=www.newsletteroperator.com
The email will discuss the sale % and/or the deal that is expiring soon. The email will tell a simple story that ultimately sells your product, or the idea that makes your product attractive. The email will riff on a "secret breakthrough discovery" and its benefits. The email will be a mini sales letter that has a short lead, short sales argument, an offer description, and a minimal close. The email will be part of a mini launch sequence and that email is either the lead, 1 sales argument, the offer, or 1 part of the close.
On Andy Newsom's Podcast
Matt was on of the newsletter growth guys at The Hustle and has some good tips on using paid channels to grow a list.
All the swish features in the world won't help if your message isn't getting through
Takes too long to get to the pitch, but not bad as a set of email ideas.
Short, 120 word emails to maximise clicks for affiliate sales.
Content database Unique Value Proposition Plug-and-play format Repurposing system Monetization engine
Adrian is an absolute master at email deliverability, so read this if you want to pump up your open rates.
Because there's no way they're just not reading your emails. There has to be a more sinister answer.
1st video in a free course by wifimoneyguy from Twitter. Build out 25 email prompts by asking the same questions at each stage of awareness. Link to the rest of his course is given at the end.
“The purpose of a system is what it does”
Recommended as a great business read by @jasonfried
Ex KGB agent talks about how to subvert societies
A collection of inspirational images by Jack Fricks.Way better than corporate motivation posters The replies to his thread are incredible:https://x.com/jackfriks/status/1987914091038642273
Sidekick's "about us" page is a perfect example. To do brave work you need brave clients. If someone admires the risk you've taken on your own site, they're going to come into the relationship expecting you to do the same for them (probably toned down a bit). Don't be afraid of repelling timid, risk-averse customers unless you're selling insurance.
I've been reading more Dan Kannedy who does a great job as a historian of info products. This is where he points to it all starting in the self help category.
Some domains are just silly. By Simon Cox, who I met back in the wonderful ExpressionEngine days.
Solid choice for office background music if you need a change from lofi and synthwave.
Bookmarked for the quote "“You’ll notice that the same script has a huge distribution of reactions… so you must not be making anyone feel anything — that must be their own doing.”
Based on David Hawkins writing, this shows how our emotions affect our outcomes
The "dirty tap" analogy
"I'd rather wrote shit than write nothing. Because with shit, you have something to work with."
“Marketing is about values. It’s a complicated and noisy world, and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us.”
The first ever youtube video, uploaded by Youtube founder Jawed Karim
50th anniversary video for Sydney Opera house. A celebration of standing out. (Thanks to John Spencer Williams for sharing)
From "How I Taught My Brother-In-Law To Make A Movie"
“I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on Fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.” - Hunter S Thompson Kingdom of fear
Definitions of success, and the creative gap between your taste and your abilities.
The story talks about how Epstein wanted to show off their vesatility, but instead made it hard for the label to work out how they could be marketed. A straight up rock & roll set would have been a better choice in this respect.
Quoted in the 1925 college paper, this was a mailer sent round as a joke about business opportunities
"T.I.s are like the sand underneath Las Vegas: there’s nothing unique about a patch of sand in the Nevada desert until a city is built on it." I found this line in an article about the incredible monopoly and moat that's been built around a crappy 1990's calculator.
A reminder that we're still early
Jay Dieboldt presentation on building the Credit Secrets upsell sequence [Notes]
Taki Moore's lightning fast Webinar presentation at James Schramko's SuperFast Business
Recommended by Nathan Barry
By Kieran Drew
Some smart tips about how to get testing data, and when you've found an ad that can scale
At 4:49 by GrowingHalves viral video course
Solid roundup of the challenges in education businesses this year.
Not enough marketers keep pushing people to use the product. It's the root of why course marketers get labelled as scammers - they don't maintain the hype that led to the purchase.Solid pattern here from Olly (who runs a £10m language course business)
Your careers advisor should have shown you this. The difference between a job a career and a business is more blurred and fluid than you think.
Scott Delong launches an epic site growth challenge with this essay about how successful content fuels identity
It's time to reposition market research (because almost noone does it anyway)
Big ideas are where a customer insight overlaps with a brand strength(I thik the orignial may have been deleted)
There is literally a market for anything. If you think your product is too niche, you just haven't figured out distribution yet.
It's actually a good guide for B2B as well but Courtney Johnston posted this on LinkedIn so props to her for making it relevant.
Excellent thread on Average Order value (AOV) and why it's a waste of time optimising for it. By Aaron Orendorff on Twitter. Short version...it's too tied to conversion rate, so just focus on that instead.
Wonderful list of "rules to live by" that I will absolutely be plundering for top of funnel, relatable content.
a bit outside of the usual info product strategies but useful for agencies / saas
An interesting guarantee to encourage consumption.
$12 extra per visitor? Yes please.
Found via @Mike_Scully_ on Twitter A bit generic but a good homepage layout.
Really expert piece of sales beginning. Watch out for Decision making process (these are never 1 single call in large B2B projects)Digging into what they really want and the pain driving it. Source of the lead. Time vs budgetKnowing that the RFP is never the way to find the right supplier
2 solid ones in this post. I tried the "I'd pay for" search and found the same thing from a good half dozen people.
Watch how Naeem positions branding as a necessary first step in the leadgen process. A perfect example of selling what people want, and giving them what they need.
Incredibly in depth post with high level sauce on how online offers really blow up.
Charles Floate's last presentation about link building, from SEO Summit
Published by the GMA and News statesment, this is based on marketing "thought leader" opinion rather than consumer research, but still makes interesting reading.
See the differences that the top selling creators use to propel them into higher sales & profits.
All the give-aways from the webinar in one place
Given to affiliates for the $100m leads event (distributed with permission)
5 dimensions of human behaviour which aren't quantifiable.
Adam Hayes ran 7 figure ad budgets growing The Hustle. His guides to running ad guides for a high growth newsletter are highly actionable and cover account structures, creative, and targeting.
Nathan is the man behind Convertkit and knows a few things about sales and sending emails. Work a watch for the sales mindset tips
Comprehensive breakdown of "what the hell is growth marketing". Having a breakdown of the steps is the first move in building an effective flood of leads into your business and knowing what parts you should try to automate or outsource.
Lessons learned from Uber's huge data sets on giving apologies, discounts, and the value of taxi driver chat.
A replay of John William's workshop this week. One highlight is the "pain driven positioning" - focussing 100% on the feeling they have right now about their problem.
Ever written a sales letter for a new product and needed some positive customer comments for it? Me too, and it involved a trawl around a half dozen note-taking apps and searching in long-abandoned Facebook groups. I'm finally getting them organised inside Senja.
A course on how to get acquired, by the owner of Acquire.com. Great content in its own right but also showing how courses are increasingly being used as "lead magnets" for software.
Distraction technique for pre-performance
by Steve Pressfield
Wim Hof mini-course
A lecture by Malcolm Gladwell
Jay Lambert's quest to attain hyperfocus and enlightenment though meditation and affirmations, has a literal cheat sheet on the back.
I used to suffer from this, so I know it’s sound advice. Tbe secret is not trying to fall asleep, but that’s easier said than done.
Turns out luck has a lot to do with it.But I found this headline the same day as I started reading "Competing Against Luck", so maybe there's a way round it.
Nature backgrounds are particularly good.
Not just solid background for the office but its a livestream that's been going for a month already!
If you're earning wifi money, you're spending too long in your chair. Don't pretend you're not.
By Jack Butcher
Note how the process isn't a given until it's been stripped back to its core.
I bookmarked this because it has some useful tips about situations that can kill our willpower. These are useful so we can see them coming and course-correct back to our goals.
38 pointers from 37Signals on how to make better decisions in a business
Colin Landforce credits this with stopping his cannabis business from descending into chaos as it scaled.