How can build audience on our website or blog

 Hey guys and girls, so this is the bonus episodeof my course. It's about audience building because I don'tthink I'm super good at it. And here's the guy who is awesome at audiencebuilding, he have built quite a few audiences. I'm sure you all know about it, about him. It's The Noah Kagan, he's the founder of AppSumo,Sumo.com, KingSumo, and like pretty much every domain name in the world that hasthe word "sumo" in it. So let's not waste time and start with somenumbers because I'm sure people want to know, like, the size of your audience. Like, can you tell us about the email list thatyou have at AppSumo, AppSumo.com, your own email list at OKDdork? What's the size of your YouTube following,what's the size of your podcast, like, let's start from some numbers. One thing I... Hello everybody, hey Tim,good to see you. Thank you for having me! Just Noah, not The Noah Kagan or anything like that. One thing I just want to highlight. A lot of times when I hear guys that have moremoney than me, or girls, or people have bigger houses or nicer cars...

 I think you always have to know what's going onunderneath and you also have to understand what your own objectives are. Because a lot of people might say, "Man, if Ihad a, you know, large mailing list, or if I had this much money, or if I had more hair(which I don't), everything would be great." Or, you know a lot of... You know, I could giveyou every email that's on my our mailing list but they probably wouldn'tdo anything. They probably wouldn't open your email,they probably won't respond to you. So what I like to... I really encourage everyone:don't worry about how big the email list is worry about the quality. So worry about how many people stray up like you... and I'll give you a good example. How many people stray up if you said "Hey,I need your help I'm working on this project can you donate some money or can you contribute?" How many people in your audience would give a shit? That's the number that matters more. 

Cause I... You know I talked to a guy yesterdaywho had 30 thousand people on his mailing list which is... it's a lot of people! Imagine thirty thousand people in a stadium, that's a... that's a soccer stadium. Or you... or you know, football stadium, that's it... Or Singapore, actually... Close enough. But, you know, his open rate's for 15% which is shit. That means that no one gives a crap aboutwhat he's saying. And we can talk about strategies around that too. The second thing is like I did a charity thingjust as an example. And, you know, I was able to raise $30,000from very small amounts because, you know, I've spent 15 years giving out free content to people. And so when I finally said "Hey, I'm doing charity. Do you guys want to contribute?" it was easy for me to actually make that effective. So just again coming back, I just want tosay we'll talk about some of the stats cuz it is interesting. But what I've gotten as I'm getting older now,Tim, I'm 36, it's less about the vanity numbers and more aboutthe actual... It's like when people talk about revenue you should ask what profit is. And when people talk about their email list youshould say what's your, like, revenue per opens or what's your open rate or something like that. More than actually just the size of it. So that is a little pushback for people think... uhmjust think about the quality, work out one by one. I think in marketing people miss that.

 You are like, how many people... I'm like won'tyou just to go one at a time and get every single person who watches your videos, respond to their comment. Or every person who's joined your mailinglist - email them. Or like with KingSumo.com, anyone who buys - wepersonally email, everyone who sets up a giveaway we personally message them. Agree 100%! The sizes were there, I mean AppSumo, I think is like almost a million subscribers... OKDork is a hundred thousand, plus Sumo.com is a few hundred thousand people using it... So over... you know... we've been doing thisbusiness almost 10 years and I've been doing my personal blog... 15 years. Yeah, so what about your personal numbers? The YouTube channel I think you have...how many... 35,000 subscribers or?.. Yeah, there's around 30... you know what'sfunny - I don't really pay attention to that, Tim, but there's 34,312, I mean I guess. I mean, you know what's interesting withYouTube subscribers? Same thing, man. I see these guys... I've seen two guys recently: one has100,000 subscribers and one has a million subscribers. But then sometimes I wonder why... when theyput out a video, only 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 people watching it? People aren't looking forward to their their emails,or their videos, or their articles whatever.

 So I think it's really... trying to figure out like, am I creating food or beverages or content or video or podcast that people are looking forward to consuming. Yeah, this is actually one of the last questions inthe interview about the kind of content that you should put out. But let's not force it there. So there's email list, there is YouTube following,there's also following on medium.com. I started, like, posting some articles therebecause you can reach an audience. So, like, what is... what do you thinkwhat's the difference? Should people try to be present on different platformsthat allow you to have following or should you focus on just one medium or just like email list which is classic. What are your thoughts on this? So, I I've done a bunch and I've experimentedI think there's two things you do. And this is what I've... This was in my experience,I can't tell what were for everyone. Number one: email list. Number one! Number two: find the medium that works for you. So what does that mean? You might be great on audio so do podcast, you might be great in in professional stuff - do LinkedIn you might find that your... Quora is your medium. But I never build my house on someone else's property, ever. Because Facebook changes an algorithm. Like, I talked to this guy, he said "Oh yeah, Facebook... I get less traffic." I'm like, "Yeah of course it's their traffic you're getting it for free they get over the f*ck they want with it." I don't know if I could swear, is that okay if I swear? Yeah! Okay, well I think it's okay. So I'd say experiment with different mediumsand then find the medium that you're actually getting people to respond to you and then that's where you find people. But then you push them to your email list.Why email list? Even with Gmail's changes or all the, you know,changes of an Inbox it's still the only medium that I've ever found that I can directly control communicating with a lot of people. Even with LinkedIn, I have 30,000 followers,when I post something, sometimes they see it, sometimes they don't. YouTube video, I have all these followers, sometimesI get 1,000 views, sometimes I get 10,000. With my email list I get 20 to 30% opens every single time guaranteed. And so it's the only medium that if you everwant to make sure that you don't go to business, I would build up and then use these other channels. This is where people find out about you. So you're using your YouTube channel, your podcast,your following on LinkedIn to, like, reach people to spread awareness about what you do, aboutyourself, about your brand's your businesses. And then you... at the end you try to funnel them insome email list of yours like if it's a business email list or personal email list that would be the most relevant to them, okay. I mean, so figure out the channel that works for you. So for example, I tried Quora for all of the year maybeit was nine months and it taught me all these views. But I can never get people, like, to leave, to follow me anywhere else. And think about this, you're like "wow, you've allthis follow," but if I ever say like I want to promote something, Quora's god can change the rules on me. The same with a Facebook page. So for me it's "figure out your channel." So for me the channels that I found work reallyeffectively now: I do LinkedIn because I actually find it helps me get new exposure, and thenYouTube because the size of the audience. So those are the two channels I'm looking to findnew people and then push them into event so I can communicate them directly with my emails. Yeah I think that's... that makes a ton of sense. Okay, let's talk about converting people to your email list. So you have Sumo.com which is, like, a suit of tools for converting people. But I see a problem with list building, with all those"hello" bars, pop-up slide-ins, like, and whatever that usually people would use some kind of leadmagnet some kind of PDF or some freebie that would motivate people to sign up to their email list. And then, which is quite obvious, when people get thisfreebie they're kind of no longer interested to receive any subsequent emails and so they just unsubscribe. So what do you think about this? I think you're right and the two things that I'm doingand our company is doing more in 2018 and beyond. Number one is we're actually asking for emails less and I know that sounds backwards... it's still... this point is to still ask for email. You know, a conversion on a website for purchasing is one to two percent, and so you have 99 percent not doing anything. So you have to ask for an email, you have to get that other 10% and then you could build relationships. But I've actually toned down, if you go to OKDork,I'm much less aggressive and how often I do pop-ups or how often I'm doing scroll box, and this, and this, and this. Because you want to find people who want to hear from you. You got to say "Hey, do you wanna hear from me?" But people... you know, I think two years ago I was super aggressive on it. So I would actually encourage people to tone it down, number one. People still need to ask for it 'cause it's critical. The second thing... the second thing I've beendoing is how do you create tool or software that people want to give you an email address for. Instead of just just, like, "Hey, I'm gonnagive you a sh*tty PDF," you know. Or you know, I think in some companies it's a littledangerous to get in the discount train which is like "Hey, here's a discount" or "Here's something that..,"so how could you give them a tool where they're like "Oh cool, I want to use this. I actually want it." And I think people aren't investing enough in it right now. And so it's like, you know, KingSumo is a freething for us, and people sign up, give us an email, and then we can actually communicate with them. But it's a free software that helps build an email list. Okay, the way I found around this issue is that backon my personal blog I was offering people to sign up for five five-email free course. So basically they weren't downloading anyPDF but I was sending them like one email every, like, two or three days and this gotthem to a habit of receiving my emails. So yeah this work as well. But I'm totally with you on toning down theaggressiveness that makes a lot of sense, because I think a lot of people now even hate it and theywould be vocal on Twitter, on Facebook, on Reddit. Can I recommend two other things? Yeah, sure. I'll recommend to other strategies. So one thing that I do with KingSumo, it's one of ournewer products for giveaway software, is anyone who signs up, I say "Hey, you know, use KingSumo." It... first that the email says, and everyonecan try it, you'll find out, it says "Why did you sign up and when you're gonna...""How did you hear about KingSumo?" - number one. And number two: "When are you going to runyour giveaway?" And it's an autoresponder. So everybody, a lot of people, reply - about 50%reply - and I email every single person back. So that's the thing I would recommend. Instead of saying "I'll give you a shitty PDF" why don'tyou say "Hey, give me your email and I'll personally reply to you?" It'll shit the pants, and somebody like "No, there's no way Tim's gonna do it!" And I know you're like, "Well that's a lot of work." I'm like, yeah it's a lot of work to build an audience. I think I know what people will gonna say at this point:"Yeah, it's Noah, everyone wants to get the response from Noah. But I'm just starting out myblog is new so it won't work for me." No, that's actually even more important for you 'causeI don't really have as much time on like OKDork. I don't email people, every single person anymore. But for the first thousands of people I emailed every single one. "Hey, when you join I'm gonna personally..."like, whatever people are specializing in. If I specialize in real estate, if I specialize in sales, if I specialize in account management and whatever it is... Tell them what you're gonna do like, "Hey..."   - ifyou're a designer - "Hey, I will give you a free logo, or I'll give you a free site review, I'll give you four things to do with your site." The second thing that most people should do...Here's another idea, I'm actually doing this one 'cause everyone... If things get saturated... all right,it's like when it's a it's a good deal or when there's a shorter line in the supermarket, everyonefills that line up we all know that. So one day, actually I literally thought of it today, it'll probably help me grow my email list but a few years ago I started doing Summerofmarketing.comand, you know, 1k.com and Traffic.. so it was actually like, a legit course. You know, I put a lot of time and money into, it had really helped grow my email list. One thing I'm gonna start doing is the trainingprograms, so actually like live training programs. It wasn't... I guess it wasn't really thought to bean opt-in I just thought it'd be a good way to meet cool people. So, whatever vertically in like, let's take SEO,you could say "I'm training junior SEO marketers so JuniorSEOmarketingtraining.com. And they opt in, and then maybe for your firstprogram you do live video training, like live lessons and you record that and that actuallybecomes a training of people. So I think it really is a potential new way of an opt-in. Okay, I'll see you do it first then think about it too. But actually I have to give you credit because thiscourse that I'm building right now it was inspired by your course, it's The Email1k, The Summerof Marketing, The Traffic One M, I believe. And I think that there's also a talk on v-mail I amgoing to put all the links that we mentioned in the description of the video, below the video. There's also a video from MicroConf where, Ithink the name is David Kadavy talks about this It's David's idea... He talks about the strategy it's pretty cool so, yeah. I'll leave a link below so that everyone could benefit from it. And you mentioned that... Sorry, David is designed for Hackers.com here's the original one who I copied. Yeah, everyone is copying each other. Well, I think the point is that everything is a copy, you just have to iterate it. So David did it and then I added more viral component. So if you go share it, I had like bonus things,like a Facebook group, but you have to share to get in the group. Yeah-yeah I'm doing it all video, for example.So yeah, everything changes. You mentioned giveaways, so let's talkabout giveaways and they... I think that with converting people to your email list withgiveaways, the problem that they sign up for freebie only gets even bigger. So again what are your thoughts about thisand since you have a KingSumo.com which is a giveaway platform - how do you make sure thatpeople get results and how do you make sure that people stay and pay you for your software? Yeah, so giveaways... No one should ever do a giveaway more than once a quarter, in my opinion. And I think giveaways suck for the most partbecause people are like "What are you giving away for free? Cool, I want that, fuck you." right? Like, how many times have you been to an event?You ever been to, like, a conference and they give out free food or something and you don't evenknow who's sponsoring or who's doing it. So what I suggest is that you give away a goodproduct, it doesn't have to be expensive, that's targeted to your audience. So, for example, like let's say Ahrefs, I wouldgive away a book around marketing or something. A physical book, maybe it's all of Seth Godin books. Because your audience is targeted, you know,a random person wouldn't really be that interested. And I wouldn't do it too regularly that's... just I don'tthink it's as effective if you do that all the time. Because only, you know... giveaways is oneform of marketing you have to do. There's ads, there's content, there's press - allthese different things, SEO... giveaways is just one slice of the pie. And so do it once  quarter. The other thing is, I make sure people opt-in andthen I try to email them really quickly afterwards to be like, "Hey, here's what we're about if you'renot interested let us know or like unsubscribe." Because you want to get them to actually be engaged with what your business is as quickly as possible. One other thing that I like to do is that we remove anyone from our email list that doesn't click or open it three months. So we call... like, we get rid of people very quicklyit's one it saves your your email service provider bill. probably cuts it down by a half. But as well... hope it helps your open rates andyour deliverability and really it makes it more effective when you send. So remove people who aren't signing and that's goodfor you... who joined giveaways and people who don't. What I found data-wise is that from a giveawayaround 40% to 50% of people who join your giveaway, that confirm their email, will actually end upbeing a good customer. That's what we found for AppSumo whenwe were running a lot of giveaways with us. One other thing that I just thought about is that youshouldn't run your giveaway to like everyone in your audience but you can actually have segments. For example, here at Ahrefs I thought that we havesome customers, some super-loyal people, who were with us, like, for five years. So we could launch a giveaway exclusively to them. Like, "Hey guys, you're our long-term customers thisis why for you we're giving this opportunity to get all of Seth Godin books, like, share this app, justshare this link with your friends..." or something. So yeah, I thought that it doesn't have to be your fullaudience but you can segment it by different criteria and then launch different giveaways to these people. So do you think it makes sense? I love that, I mean two other things I would recommend is: 1. I like giveaways where everyone wins. I like a giveaway where, you know, if it's an Ahrefs'giveaway, it's like, "Hey, we'll give away these books." And everyone who enters and even they don't win, it's,like, maybe it's that course for free, maybe it's a training for free maybe it's a discount if your people are comfortable with that But something where everyone who joinsgets a benefit out of it. The other thing that we're working towards is that... and this is I think a recommendation... What is the point of a giveaway? Like, the point of giveaway is not for me to just giveaway something for free because I'm a nice guy. I think I'm mostly nice. But I do a giveaway because I'm hoping... I'mhoping people will join the giveaway and then tell their friends to join because they get more... a better chance of winning. So the whole point of a giveaway is to get new customers. And so what we're moving towards with KingSumois how do we use the same mechanisms of customer referral to help people grow their businesses. Because you guys have all these customersat Ahrefs and everyone listening or watching. Has customers and they have an email listhopefully they have a few even if it's small. But those people have your other customers for you. So how do we create more tools that help people encourage that? And even if people don't use KingSumo, thinkabout that, like you already have all these customers, just you work with them! Don't try to always... just go outside andfigure out new ideas. Makes a lot of sense. Okay, we're getting from converting people intoyour email list or whatever medium you're using to kind of keeping them engaged, buildingthat loyalty and trust so that people would actually open your emails. This is what you've mentioned, you may havea hundred thousand emails on your email list but when you send them an email it wouldbe, like, 5% open rate. So what do you do from day one? So, from day one when people... when aperson has signed up to your email list, how do you make sure that this person willstay with you? All right, a few things... I'll just give you tactics,I'll just give people things they should do. #1: Make your post subscribe page really cool. So after I give you my email and you redirect meto that post subscribe page, make it something that's a benefit for me. Like, "Hey, you're already here, join my YouTube show." "Hey, you're already here, go read this best article." So that's one thing most people don't do. #2: Make a welcome message that's either engagingso that they want to reply to it, or something that's very simple like, "Hey, here's the..." like... What I do, my goal is to get people to watch me on YouTube. So my welcome email is "Go subscribe to me on YouTube. Hhere are the three best videos I've ever done. I love you, welcome for.. welcome for coming to OKDork!" So that's what I do, so I neither say "Engage themor show them your best thing right away" because they're most interested the moment they join. The second thing you have to do is you have to have an autoresponder. And what is an autoresponder I mean itmeans that it works in every email provider. So in your autoresponder, what I do is I takemy best content or my best things and I have it automatically sent. So with OKDork when someone joins my mailinglist... and this is true for all of our companies... different emails for each company, but when you join OKDork, my first email is YouTube,my second one is to follow my podcast, my third one, I don't remember right now, my fourth oneis, like, go check me out on LinkedIn. So, it's automatic every three days andthe sooner you do it the better. Because basically what happens with email openrates is first days the highest 50%, second day is 40%, then 30% and then it flatlines 30-20%. So what you want to do is in the first, probably,seven days, seven to ten days have three emails or you can figure it out just, you know, do asmuch as you feel comfortable with, that is like showing your best stuff. Think about it it's like if they come to a restaurant:would you give me your shittiest dishes or are you giving your best? And the best thing about an autoresponder is thatwhen they come, every time they come they get the same best dish. So that's that's the... you have to do that. Now, once you guys got that unlock and if people are like, "No I don't know what to put for my autoresponder," here's the easiest way of figuring that out. Look through every email you've ever sent, pickthe three highest open rates you've ever had, and then make those your autoresponder. Easy! And it works for every type of business: eCommerce, content business, agency business, SAS business, they all should have autoresponders. What people need to do, so the second things that I would say... #1: Your emails should be something you're excited to send. A lot of people send emails, they're like, "Oh yeah,I'm supposed to send emails," and they send it. I'm like, "Are you excited about that?" 'Cuz you know, every time you send me an emailand I don't really like it, there's a higher chance I'm gonna not ever open it again, or I'll mark it as spam or unsubscribe. So, with a lot of our emails, like AppSumo emails...And in AppSumo, email probably takes two to three days to write one email. And our business, it makes 90% of our revenuethrough email, so it's very important. But for other businesses, spend more time writing it. And the second thing that's key is thatyou need to have a consistent cadence. A lot of people forget this, they send an emailbecause it's like, oh yeah it's Thursday and I haven't sent not even one, let me send one. But it's like your favorite TV-show, you want customers looking forward to you. So you want, you know... for me, the way I do it andeveryone has to figure out what they think is reasonable For me, I think it's reasonable to sendto our customers every other week. So for KingSumo, for instance, every other week all we send is just what we're working on. Because I think, I don't know... If I'm a customer,I just want to know what the hell's going on. Like, "Hey, what the hell you guys been doing for two weeks?" And they feel a part of a community, they feel apart of the process and they can respond like, "Oh, that's cool... I know that sucks..." Versus, you know, six months later or a monthlater: "Hey, here's a new feature and your shit, that's been going on," or random-ass email"Go buy something," or "Here's a special!" So I would say, pick a time frame and then just put that on repeat. So, my personal same thing every two weeks,Sumo.com, our email marketing software, that's every week, they send an email every Monday. New content, specifically content to helpsmall businesses, eCommerce pro. So an AppSumo was... Okay, great. Sorry. I like that you mentioned KingSumo, AppSumobecause we were kind of running out of time and they have my last question. What's the difference between building an audiencefor the... yeah, your personal brand, because you have it on OKDork, you have your personal email list. And what's the difference between building anaudience around the business, like what are the tips there? Anything people should know? I think people like buying from people. That's one thing, you know... When we talk to people... and I don't ever reallytried to build a brand, I just like sharing things. I think if people try to build their brand sohard, I think is when they don't do so well. I think what it is, is build your tools, build your software, and go help people with it. I think the thing they don't remember is puta human voice behind it whether you trying to build your personal brand which... Actually, a lot of people that use Sumoproducts have heard of me, right? So there is benefit. But even the Sumo products, and Sumo group are family of products, all of them use human talk. And I think with every business... like, when yousend an email it's always like, "Cheers, Ahrefs" but instead it should be "Tim and Ahrefscrew" or whatever kind of... I think just put in more human, and howpeople can think about it is that when you're writing emails, or content, or anything, thinkabout if it's as you're sending an email to a friend. You're not writing an email or you're notwriting a blog post for just random people. So you'd use the word "you" instead of "they,"like you're talking to them, and I think that's overall not about personal brand butjust being human in your market. So basically, in the general scheme buildingan audience around your business and around your personal brand is pretty much the same, they intersect a lot. Yeah, I think they should blend. Oh it's an interesting thing, right, but you only have so much time in the day. And I'm very fortunate, I work with great people thatrun the two businesses so I have time to kind of do podcast or YouTube and things that I'm interested in. And then it lets me... because of that I can then mention that the businesses that we work on. I think if I was... if we were a lot smaller I probably wouldn't spend at any time on OKDork or that stuff. Except like you know, maybe 10% of mytime or just as a hobby. Okay, thanks a lot, this was amazing, a lot of great tips. Thanks a lot for agreeing to do this interviewand sharing so much knowledge with people. Thanks for it too, Tim. You're the man, thanks... Whatever Tim asks - I do.