Welcome back to part five of our increasingly inaccurately named trilogy of posts answering Codename Phantom’s question on how to start a creative side project as a paid writer of another kind.

For those who’re new here, you can catch up on the saga at the links below.

Part one covered the unsexy but essential advice to build a financial foundation before starting a creative side project.

WWN52 : Starting a creative project on the side 

Part two covered a clarification of that advice, and went on to discuss the importance of expertise before you start teaching.

WWN53 : Creative Side Projects 

Part three covered becoming a niche unto yourself, featuring a conversation I had with Ben Settle and some others on email marketing.

WWN54 : Two approaches to list-building for creative side projects 

And part four continued the conversation with Ben Settle et al. where I chipped in with what I think is the biggest mistake a writer can make building an audience.

WWN55 : The Biggest Listbuilding Mistake Writers Make 

Well, our conversation carried on some more after that and although you can listen to the full thing here if you want to, I’m going to extract one more section from the discussion. And I wanted to include this part of the conversation because it’s a problem that a lot of authors face.

The fear of “annoying” their audience.

Now, Codename Phantom is a copywriter and should know better, but many are not.

So I’m going to let Ben take it away as our transcript continues with an opening question from author Charyse Allan…

James Carran:

I think we've got another question. Presumably, it's fiction related from Charyse, if I pronounced that right.

Charyse Allan:

Yes. You did. Everybody can hear me okay?

Ben Settle:

Yes. So far, your your time may be very limited. We're all getting kicked off this one by one.

Charyse:

I'll be short. I'll be short.

It's along the lines of Josh's question because, yes, I am a fiction writer, and I have an okay sized newsletter, subscription, whatever, list. And what I guess what my question is, is ‘how do you figure out the happy medium of sending enough and also not annoying your readers with your content?’ Because I've been trying out different things as a fiction writer, like sending out chapters, kind of what you suggested, sending out cool things I find for research. And I just wanna make sure I'm not annoying them to the point they're unsubscribing.

Bird:

Chirps loudly

Charyse:

Excuse my boy in the background.

Ben:

Yeah. What's going on with the parrot?

Charyse:

He's mad at me for talking, I guess.

Ben:

Well, look.

There's a lot of ways you can go at this. If you know, I was just thinking what we were talking about earlier. This could be a good, excuse. Right? To write whatever you want about your topic and then monetize it by charging for classified ads in every email you send out.

Right? So just from a monetization point of view, this could be a good... I've never tried it, but there's marketers that wanna get traffic. Right? And if you have a list, even if it's a small list or big list, it doesn't matter. Now you could try playing with classifieds.

But as far as how do you know if you're boring them? Well, you cannot bore them if you're in their world. So, if they're on your list because they wanna hear more about you and your fiction, you're probably not boring them. And anyone you are boring was really probably not someone's gonna buy from you anyway, and you should be happy when they leave. Like, they're doing you a favor.

Right? And you're doing them a favor, don't worry about unsubscribes. Don't even worry about that. As long as you're adding names to your list on an ongoing basis, the unsubscribes are irrelevant. And in fact, I've had people... I've challenged people to do the math on this.

People who who fight me on this. I'll say, go back in your sales, right, for whatever you're doing, and I've done this, and I know people have done this. And you will find that your sales probably go up in direct proportion to your opt outs if you're doing things right. So, you know, opt outs are not that big of a deal. They're really not.

They're actually a good thing. There's you should celebrate them. You just got rid of someone who is clogging up your bandwidth and let them go haunt someone else. And they'll be replaced by somebody better. So I as long as you're writing stuff that they're interested in, that's what's important.

John Wood:

If they're the type of person that would feel annoyed by the stuff that you're sending out, then they shouldn't be there in the first place. So they're doing you a favor by unsubscribing, and you're just getting more engagement from people who are interested. So I wouldn't view it as a bad thing. Write whatever you wanna talk about. If you feel that it's important enough to tell your list, then, just go for it.

Then let them decide whether they wanna be there or not.

Ben:

You might even wanna kick people off your list. Just if they get snarky with you, they get out of line, make one false move, they're out. Right? This is like literally the I I that I'm kinda being facetious, but it's true in spirit.

John, I know you do the same thing. Right? Any excuse to kick someone off, do it. I mean, don't once you start doing that, you'll stop caring because you'll be like, I really just want this small responsive list. I don't need this big list.

The size does not really matter with this at all.

John:

I'm judicious about this, and I've mellowed some because there were points in time where I was not a benevolent dictator. I was an angry god…

And it's not that they can't have their point of views, but if somebody wants to have a mature disagreement and wants to talk about things, I'm all for that. If they're a dick, and they're just there to waste my time and cause trouble, that's different.

But then again, you know, there's also occasions, where you can stir up things because it gives you something to talk about. And, you know, “hey, I got this smarmy response from this guy, look at what he said.”

And that that will actually probably get you more engagement than anything else.

Ben:

Oh, people love that. People love that. It I'm telling you, it's good sport for your list.

Everybody loves that. I've never done that where people just did not love it, and I guarantee you, everyone I know who's done that reports the same thing. I don't know if you get a lot of trolls like that, but if you're not then that means you need to push harder probably. Get yourself some trolls. Everybody should have some trolls. Trolls are great. Alright.

Charyse:

Thank you. Thank you. That was all really great advice. I appreciate it.

John:

Only only famous people have haters. Just remember that.

Ben:

Some of us actually deserve them, John.

Here endeth the transcript. You can get more from the fine folks at Berserkermail including a bunch more email marketing specific stuff by listening to the full space here.

But let me draw it up just like last week, and then I think we might just spend one more week summarising everything and drawing it all together into some sort of approachable framework for writers hoping to diversify out into creative fields.

Because there was gold being dropped there by Ben and I don’t want you to miss it.

Here is the money quote:

Dear reader, let me be very clear and break this up all guru-style so you get it:

If you worry about boring your audience…

…so you step back…

…mail them less…

…interact with them less…

…then you’ll end up boring your audience more!

The reason is simple.

If you only mail monthly, you’re not in their world. You don’t know them. You don’t know what they want. You don’t get the regular feedback that comes from mailing daily and seeing what gets sales and clicks and unsubscribes and responses. You don’t know what to say to speak to their deepest needs and insecurities - because you haven’t invested any time in getting to know them.

Mailing your list infrequently because you’re worried they’ll get bored and unsubscribe…

…is like talking to your wife once a week because you’re worried that she’ll get bored and divorce you.

Dear reader, at that point?

You don’t have a wife!

(Or a husband. Works both ways.)

Likewise, if you’re not mailing your readers because you think they’re going to leave you, you don’t have any readers. You just have some numbers on the screen.

I mean, do I need to spell this out to you?

Because if you fret they’ll unsubscribe after hearing from you, they’re not reading your stuff. If you’re not sending stuff, they’re not reading your stuff. And if they do unsubscribe?

Well.

They’re not reading your stuff…

…which is what was happening anyway. So who cares?

The solution is not to back away, but to move in. To mail more often, talk to them more, get inside their head.

Be in their world!

This is already going long so I’m not going into the details.

Go back over what we talked about in the previous issues. Figure out who you want to attract (writers or readers?), how you can attract those people. Figure out what they want from you and give them it as often as you’re capable of doing. Ideally daily.

But also be willing to lose people who aren’t the right fit. You have to be willing to kick people out of your world too.

I’ll be honest, when I send stuff about my poetry and hymns I get more unsubscribes than any amount of bland writing-about-writing. And I still do it.

Why?

Because it ain’t about the metrics.

It’s about the message.

If people aren’t interested in the stuff that I write? Why would I want them on my list? I’m not interested in padding my ego by saying I have ten thousand readers if only four thousand people read my emails.

I’d rather just have the four thousand and know where I’m at.

But that’s all we have time for today…

…next time we’ll start to wrap things up neatly, if nobody has more questions to add to the mix. That might be next week, or the week after depending on how busy I be...

Meanwhile, may your pipesmoke put off all the wrong people and your prose do likewise,

James Carran, Craftsman Writer

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