Sublime Text Tips – Josh Earl
Sponsors
Sensor Tower is the best bet to get your app noticed. The platform has all the right tools to grow your user base and get exposure in all the right countries. Research your competitors, get new ideas, and optimized your app until you’re getting more of the right kind of users. Sign up for free at GetSensorTower.com.
Are you developing a mobile app? Get anything from icons and buttons to your entire mobile app designed at 99designs! You can start your next graphic design project for as low as $199. Visit 99designs.com/Chat and get a $99 Power Pack of services for free.
Subscribe to the Show
Subscribe via iTunes
Subscribe via Stitcher
Subscribe via RSS
About the Episode
If you ask any successful entrepreneur what is the number thing you must have? Well, they’ll probably tell you it’s an email list and today’s guest built his email list from just a few thousand to over 200,000 using a giveaway. Also listen to how his first ebook generated over $16,000 in its first year.
Josh Earl is a self-taught developer, writer and entrepreneur. Find more about him on JoshEarl.com.
Show Notes
Building Your Email List Through Give Aways
Having a fat email list is one of the major tools in driving sales and Josh had come up with a contest to grow his. He came up with a raffle where he gave out one Sublime license worth about $70. The first time he did it, he had gotten around 400 people to sign up. Six months later, when he decided to do it again, he had an announcement up on Hacker News and garnered about 1800 emails. On the next run, he incorporated something new wherein users can get more chances to win if there friends sign up through the URL that they will be sending out. It was a WordPress plug in called King a Somu and it drove the contest to be viral and he ended up getting over 200k emails by the end of the contest!
One of the ingredients for his success as well is that he went and found a product which is interesting to his specific audience not to the general public.This ensures that the people who signs up are the people who you want to be in your mailing list.
How Josh Made a Hit eBook
Two or three years ago, Josh made a 30-day blog challenge where he pushed himself to write one blog per day regardless of topic. During that period, he discovered Sublime Text,which he really enjoyed, so he wrote about new tips he had found out about Sublime, published it and submitted the link to Hacker News. The next day, he saw about 30 page uses of the blog post and the blog post also went to Hacker News’ front page overnight. Reading from a resource that someone made money from eBooks, he decided to write his own focusing on Sublime. He worked on it for three months and with about 15 pages done, he published it through leanpub.com. With the help of Peter Cooper’s weekly newsletters and his email list, his eBook soon began bringing in cash.
What advice would you give to anyone looking to build a mobile app?
Having a great idea is only a part of the equation, you really need to learn about marketing. Marketing is not a dirty word, it just means connecting people who has pains to the solutions.
Show Mentions
– $16,228 earned, 1014 copies sold: Lessons learned from a year as a self-published author
– What I Learned From Growing My Email List 3,418% (Nearly 200k) in Just 11 Days
– Fav app:
– Strong: (iTunes)
– JotBox: (iTunes)