Ready to revolutionize your marketing strategies? Join Brett Dyster as he chats with Christina Lopez, a former online business coach turned successful content creator, about the secrets of high-converting email funnels. Christina shares her journey from burnout to building a one-woman show that generates daily passive income without the hassle of sales calls or managing a team. Discover how to automate your content creation process, leverage collaborations, and avoid creator burnout while maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Tune in to learn practical strategies that can transform your approach to content creation and set you on the path to success!

Takeaways:

• Christina Lopez emphasizes the importance of automating content creation to avoid burnout.
• Building a strong email list is crucial for content creators to achieve sustainable income.
• Collaboration through bundles and freebie swaps can significantly grow your audience reach.
• Creators should focus on return on time rather than just return on investment.
• Having a clear welcome email template helps filter out non-engaged subscribers effectively.
• Investing in automation tools allows creators to spend more time on strategy and less on repetitive tasks.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Nespresso
• Zapier
• Cast Magic
• Opus Clips
• Letter Growth

💬 Want to get involved? Leave us a comment, give us a 'like,' and follow us for more insights. Join our Locals for lively discussions, and if you've got questions, email us at bdeister@digitalcafe.media!

👕 Check out our merch: www.digitalcafe.store

That's good.

And welcome to a new episode of digital coffee marketing Bruin.

I'm your host, Brett Dyster.

But this week we're be talking about content creators, a little bit of marketing on how content creators can market themselves, but also content creation because we've all seen a lot of YouTubers are cutting back and they're tired.

So we're going to be talking all about that and content creators and how they can basically automate and be efficient and not be as tired when creating content.

But with me, I have Christina Lopez with me and she is a former online business coach turned to online content creator.

So this is going to be a really great show.

And she basically, after years of hitting that burnout, which we've already talked about a little bit, she basically had to start over and she built a creator business and has daily passive incomes.

No sales calls, no team members.

It is a one person show, which I'm familiar with because I am a one person show myself.

So welcome to the show, Christina.

Hey, thank you so much for having me.

I'm really excited to hop on today's session.

So I'm ready to dive in.

All right.

And the first question is, all my guests is, are you a coffee or tea drinker?

I am a tea drinker.

More specifically, I'm a caffeine free drinker.

I cannot.

If I have caffeine in me, then I will not be going to sleep.

So I'm definitely a tea person.

Is that any time of the day if you have caffeine, you will not be going to sleep or is that like a specific time you have to cut yourself off?

I think it's just generally like once when it's for sure after 12 o'clock, I cannot have caffeine, but I just don't like drinking coffee personally.

Fun fact, I actually used to work for Nespresso back in college and I took one.

You get like free shots of coffee and I took one, one too many shots of espresso.

And then after that I was like, okay, I can never do this again.

But I really just like to go on good old sleep.

That's my form of caffeine.

That's fair.

I got over the hump after starting and I didn't start drinking coffee till like my mid-20s.

And I got over that hump of the caffeine just rushes through you and now it's like I just do it to stay awake.

Yeah.

Anyways, I gave a brief summary of your expertise, but can you give our listeners a little bit more about what you do.

Yeah.

So as my bio mentioned, I'm a former online business coach turned into an online content creator.

And I think it's best to share the story on how I really landed on that.

So as being a person who came from the coaching space, if you are from the coaching space, you really are familiar with the whole kind of strategy of like you hop on sales calls, you have to do client meetings, coaching calls, and it ends up getting, getting to a point where you know you're spread very thin, where you spend part of your time, a lot of time, maybe in DMS and reaching out to people, having conversations and then having sales calls and meetings.

Your calendar is jam packed with meetings.

And I got to a point where I was like, enough is enough, I cannot do this.

I think it really hit home for me when I actually made a very large revenue month.

And we can talk about this in a later topic.

But what ended up happening was after that revenue hit, it was a huge influx of cash.

I had this weird feeling where I was like, I just need to go push harder.

So I pushed harder in that business and more sales calls to the point where it was actually very detrimental to the business.

And I ended up having 20 plus sales calls.

And they all said no.

And I was like, okay, it's not, it's not like the quality of the lead.

I'm like, there's something wrong with me here.

And that's when I realized I hit major burnout.

And I was like, I can't do this.

So I had to look back at the drawing board and think to myself, like, okay, is it?

What type of business do I want to have?

And I thought to myself, like, okay, I want to still help people because that's what I love to do.

Like, I was a former coach, I love to help people create generational wealth.

And my modality is teaching people on business.

But I don't want to have a full calendar.

I don't want to have back to back meetings.

I just really like a free calendar.

And so that's how I stumbled upon content creation.

So I'm a blogger on Medium as well as other channels.

But Medium is like my main place that I hang out alongside my newsletter.

But what ended up happening was I realized to myself, I'm like, okay, if we're going to do this again, we're going to still accomplish the mission at scale.

And I think the Internet's the great place to do that.

So content creation.

But I don't want any sales calls because fuck them.

I'M like tired of them, but I also don't want to have any meetings on my calendar.

I'm very safeguarding of my time.

I have a life outside my business and I think everybody deserves one.

But more importantly, I also didn't want to manage any team members because I did come from the background of managing a team of VAs.

And I realized I rather not be a manager.

I rather just be someone who creates and helps people and not have to deal with the inner workings of management.

So that's just not my personal style.

And I really just also thought to myself, like, okay, I don't want roller coaster revenue.

I just want daily passive income.

If you were to tell me, say, hey, can I give you a thousand dollars or can I give you maybe a hundred dollars a day or $10 a day every day, I take the $10 a day because it doesn't require my time to actually make money.

So it's a one woman show back here.

But I'm really have been able to figure out how to fully automate the process.

So I'm super excited to just walk you more through that.

And so content creation has changed over the years where as I said before, YouTubers are quitting because I always say it's like feeding the monster.

Consecration is feeding the monster of voracious appetites on just the audiences.

Because audiences want to be entertained.

Like the whole like little meme from Gladiator, are you not entertained?

Type of a thing.

And how do you not get burned out on that?

Because for a solo creator you're like, okay, I gotta create this, I gotta create this, I gotta create this.

And it's like an everyday, like almost hamster wheel type of mindset.

So how do you not get into that?

Oh my God, I'm so tired.

I don't want to do this anymore.

So I think the best way to really talk about this is talk about my workflow on how all this content kind of gets created behind the scenes.

So I think as naturally as your creators, you're someone who has a lot of creative ideas, hit them sporadically.

So when it comes to my ideation, I don't necessarily sit down and think.

They just randomly come to me throughout the day, throughout the weeks and things like that.

So I just put everything in an airtable base, which it had, they have an app and I just write my ideas.

And then really from that point on, I take the time one day a month and I actually sit down and look through all my ideas and I pick a couple content pieces Where I'm like, yeah, that's what I want to do now.

Because my really like, my focus is like, I only want to create content once.

And the way that looks like is either I'm going to create one blog article from that idea or I'm going to create one YouTube video.

It has to be one or the other.

It cannot be bothered.

And so it's interesting that you mentioned YouTube because as creators may be stepping back, I'm actually moving forward a lot more into YouTube because it's an evergreen traffic strategy, things like that.

However, I definitely don't want to add more things to my plate.

So this whole idea of creating content once, the way that looks for me is I'll take an idea, I'll film the video, I'll do all the things you need to do, edit, research, stuff like that.

But I'm only doing it once.

And what people, what creators get really burnt out with, in my opinion, is the repurposing process.

Like when you think about repurposing it to Twitter, to Instagram, to Facebook, it's just a lot of, I don't know how to say this, I'm pretty blunt.

It's like a lot of bullshit that like, it doesn't need to take your time.

That's not what you signed up for as a creator.

You signed up as a creator to create, not to be a manual scheduler.

In my opinion, when we think about the automations, really my background is in system design and automation workflows and a couple tools that I'm going to definitely recommend creators check out is Zapier.

Zapier is 100% a no code tool.

I don't know how to code for shit, but it's a great tool to really think about what your workflow process looks like.

So what happens on the back end for me actually is what I do is I will, once the video goes live, that would be the trigger to start the workflow, the repurposing workflow.

And because everything is really starting to get into place with AI, I think it's an opportunity for creators to take advantage of that.

And so when we think about my backend workflow, we have the trigger of a YouTube video.

What I would do is I would send that YouTube video to AI and say, hey, pull the transcript, give me the text to work with, right?

And then what I would do with AI is I would tell AI AI after it pulls a transcript is to start creating other content pieces for me based on the words that I'm saying in the transcript of the video.

And so it's interesting because you wouldn't think that AI would be that great, but it actually does a very good job where I would say alongside with the workflow, hey, I create AI, Create a Twitter thread for me.

Hey, create Instagram reel for me in terms of the text and things like that.

Create a Facebook post.

And when I leverage all those pieces, at that point it's just integrating it with the platforms that I'm repurposing to.

So Zapier is great because they repurpose to Facebook, they repurpose to Instagram, they repurpose to Twitter.

There's another tool because the Twitter recently went off on Zapier, but you can use type fully, which is a great tool to really auto thread your content.

And at that point all I did, at that point was, all I did was just created the video and then I let the automations take care of everything.

But I also didn't need to sit down, manually repurpose it and manually schedule it out because the trigger is when the video goes live and if the video goes live a month from now and I'm on vacation.

So there's been times definitely where I look and I'm like, oh, I guess I posted today.

And that's the type of lifestyle that I personally like to live where I don't like to add things to my plate, but I just like to set it, forget it and move on.

Yeah, coming from a podcaster, we have two different things now because we have to do video and we have to do audio.

I know some podcasters don't right now because it is another extra like resource you have to figure out.

But for me, I use Cast Magic to automate the transcripts and all the show notes and the X and Twitter slash X and all those other stuff.

I also have another one for YouTube.

I also have a new one for automating just the content for creating the written word.

For all the other social media that I just write a few things and it does it for me that if I don't like it, I just rewrite it again until I get what I actually want.

Because AI is never perfect and you have to do it.

But I understand what you're saying because I heavily use, I use opus clips just to go through my whole video and just cut things up for me and then I can just automate that through that way because I don't have time to repurpose everything.

Luckily for Twitter X, if you're a premium user, you can just upload the whole video now.

So you have to worry about like, oh, now I need to cut this LinkedIn.

You do, because it's still only 15 minutes long.

So I just do clips on LinkedIn instead.

Because just cutting 15 minutes can be a little more time consuming than I want it to be.

So with that, is it important to actually use AI but also use other means like email lists and everything?

Because YouTube changes all the time and it's okay, I can use curse words now I can't use curse words.

I can do this.

No, I can't do that.

So is it good to have your own space as well as using the other social media platforms?

100% actually, my one goal with social media, and I think it should be the goal for every creator on social media, is to transition that platform audience to your own audience.

And the easiest way to do that is an email list.

And when I really think about what the purpose behind an email list, I would 100%.

If you're going to make money like the money is in the list, it's not really on content.

Actually, I've been spending the past couple months I haven't really created content on my blog or my any of my other social media platforms, but I'm still making money.

I'm still making that daily passive income.

And when I look at the sources of where that's coming from, that's 100% coming from my email list and some content pieces that are still performing really well.

But the reason why I say that is because when we think about the example of YouTubers maybe taking that step back and creating content creation, it's.

It makes sense, right?

Because if you are a brand new creator and you're thinking to yourself like, okay, I have to create, the starting process for you to see success is a very long process.

It's a very long timeframe before you get to see really any kind of return on time.

And it's not a surprise that creators are stepping back because just the return on time, return on effort may not be there.

Whether you're monetizing through AdSense, affiliate marketing is just not worth your time.

But what is a better worth of your time is maybe creating an email funnel.

And so when you are creating that content, the call to action shouldn't be me.

Maybe to buy your affiliate link, maybe the call to action should be, hey, grab this freebie that I created for you that works well with this affiliate product.

You could grab the freebie now I have their email and I can automate the selling to upsell into that affiliate product.

And when you think about what this looks like, I'll give you an inside scoop in terms of my back end, what my monetization channel is.

I have my content pieces, they all point as a call to action to my email list.

From my email list I have automations that are based on behavior, right?

So if you tell me and you're saying, oh, I have the problem where I don't know how to build an email list from scratch and also I don't want to be on social media, there is that option where it's going to pick up based on actions within my emails where I'm going to be pointing specific freebies to you that I've created that's going to help you solve that problem.

And then when you receive those freebies, that's also telling me in action, hey, I'm verifying that you're interested in this.

So the backend would be, hey, you told me that you're interested because you got this freebie.

I'm also going to recommend.

You may want to consider grabbing our audience profits course because this is a course that's going to teach you how to build an email list without social media.

And you'd be surprised like just by having the actions segment your list you get a higher return on.

I guess you can say email because you're targeting the people that actually want that have raised their hand to said hey, I want to know more information about this and the conversion pieces are better.

And when you think about how this really all plays into action, it's honestly great because email, you can automate that all.

I'd rather spend my time building writing email sequences and all I have to do is maybe take a couple hours within my day, write all the email sequences, put it in an automation flow and then I'm done.

And then I just, my point is just to create content, drive traffic and let the funnels and automations do its thing.

Because I think the problem that creators are having is that they're doing everything.

There's this, I've seen this post before where it's like there's arrows and they're all going like halfway up and that's you trying to do everything.

But if you focus on one thing, that arrow is going to shoot up.

And so if you're going to think about where you're going to invest your time, think in ways of return on time.

It's not necessarily always return on investment.

You want to think about return on time.

What are the strategies that are going to Help me make money even while I'm sleeping, that are going to help me build my audience even while I'm sleeping.

And when you think about your time, because time is the one asset you can never get back, things are going to change, things are going to, you're going to do things differently.

And so I always tell people, start with your non negotiables.

Like how can I work around my non negotiables?

For me, no sales calls, only passive income, no team that's going to limit and filter all the things that you do from that point on.

Yeah, I mean for me it's always about the efficiency, flow.

How can I make this more efficient so I don't have to do every single thing?

Because your brain can only focus on so many things at a time, then you get burned out.

Because that's the problem with people is that we focus on everything and then we get so burned out because we're not focusing on specific things that need more attention.

And so the automation or the AI or whatever would help that process.

Because I don't have to think as much on to this, I can just think on one specific thing and have the other things be tasked out to AI or automation or whatever.

It also allows you the time to really think on strategy.

Right?

Because if you are spending 80% of your time actually doing the work, then it's not a surprise.

Surprised that you're feeling burnt out because you're not actually.

You don't allow yourself the time to really think about.

Are the efforts that I'm doing really worth it?

A perfect example that I had was actually just yesterday I was thinking like, okay, do I work on this content piece or do I work on creating this email funnel?

And then I asked my myself the question which one's gonna bring me money?

And the clear answer was email funnel.

Okay, so I'm gonna focus on writing emails.

So instead of focusing on content, I wrote emails all day and I created an automation.

And then the idea is to layer on strategies that work for you while you're not working.

And so I think it's just again, reiterate that point.

Return on time is the next thing you want to focus on.

So let's say a content creator has an actual email list but nobody's signing up.

They try their best to like promote it and everything.

How do they create that email funnel that will actually be successful?

Because you could create an email funnel and it basically does nothing for you.

I would say the worst thing and no audience is definitely dead audience.

So let's kind of talk a little bit about both sides, right?

So if you have no audience, I actually think that you need to use a different strategy, right?

A lot of creators, what I see them doing is they post on social media, right?

But if you don't have an audience on social media, then you're not going to get jack shit from social media.

And so it doesn't make sense for you to invest your time into it.

But maybe if you're a creator who does have an audience and you're still not getting leads through social media, then maybe that just tells you social media is not working.

And that's why in my course, audience profits, I talk a lot about using non social media strategies.

Now the other strategy that people talk a lot about is paid ads, right?

Now, I'm not personally someone who loves paid ads.

Even though I love leverage, I personally don't like to use it because I'd rather, you know, go for free than paid.

But when you think about.

So let's take a moment to think about what paid ads are.

Paid ads are essentially a pay to play way to leverage other people's audiences.

That's all you're doing.

All you're doing is paying to have access to another person's audience.

So, you know, it works really well for other people.

But I'm thinking to myself, how can I make this ad level reach for free?

To me, as a creator, the next best thing for you to focus on is collaborations.

When you think about audience reach, the best way for you to have collaborations at scale is to collaborate with more people.

And the two strategies that I spend a lot of my efforts on to grow my email list are bundles and freebie swaps, right?

So when we think about bundles, really, if you're not familiar with the concept, I definitely think it's worth your time is essentially everybody, there's a bundle, there's a host who decides, hey, I'm going to create a bundle.

And when they create that bundle, they're getting contributors to contributors contribute a free product to the bundle.

Now when you think about, okay, what is in it for the contributors, right?

They're giving away a paid product for free.

The benefit for the contributor is that they're getting hyper traffic from everybody else's audience within a short period of time.

And they're also gaining emails because emails is I really want you to think about, instead of thinking of pennies, thinking of dollars, right?

And the reason why I say that is because the benefit for them, yeah, I might give a $37 product of mine for free to that bundle.

But I'm getting 200, sometimes even 500 subscribers from that one bundle within a week.

Right.

And so what we think about later down the line is, Okay, I got 500 leads down in my email list.

Later down the line, they're gonna buy a $97 product, they're gonna buy maybe a membership of mine, they're gonna buy something else.

And so if I just thought to myself, and if I was just thinking small and I was just thinking, oh damn, like I'm losing $37 in the grand scheme of things.

You're really not.

Because I probably gained a hundred plus dollars on the back end and I gave something for $37 that was to them for free.

So bundles is a really great strategy for collaborations.

Another strategy that I mentioned was freebie swaps, right?

Freebie swaps is a little bit more time, but it is definitely more of an engaged strategy because at that point it's a one to one swap.

It's a one to one collaboration.

And so it's really easy in the sense of all I do is I just pitch.

I pitch people, I pitch to creators who are serving a similar audience.

I highly recommend this platform called Letter Growth.

It's a really great platform and I find creators who are within my niche and I say, hey, I have X subscribers.

I think that we serve this in our audience.

Would you be open to a freebie swap?

And you'd be surprised.

A lot of people say yes.

And at that point, point, great.

I have a database to track all that and to see, okay, what is my audience reach by booking freebie swaps once a week for the first half of the year.

When I look at the total reach, my total reaches over $130,000.

130,000.

Sorry.

And, and I don't have to be on social media.

Literally just took an email back and forth with a creator and I didn't need to actually create content.

Right?

So that's why when I tell creators, it's like you, maybe content is not the place where you want to spend your time.

Maybe the place you want to spend your time is actually in collaborations.

So that's an aspect.

If you have no audience, if you have a dead audience, there's a couple things that I'm going to recommend for you to do.

Housekeeping are you doing double opt in now?

Some people would say to me like, hey, I don't want to do double opt in because that means people may not subscribe.

You're also telling me that if you're having the problem with an engaged subscriber, then they probably didn't double confirm that they wanted to be on your list.

So people are not going to the list.

And I think another thing that I'm seeing that creators are going to come up with sooner is definitely with the whole domain in terms of verification of domains.

Dude, go get a Frickin domain.

It's $6 on Google a month or whatever.

I don't know what it is, but it's super cheap and it adds a level of credibility to your name.

But also isn't that other level of verification of making sure that your emails are not spam?

So those are like a little bit of housekeeping things, but also like simple things of a welcome email template.

Did you even welcome them to your list and tell them the expectations?

I have this welcome template where I send to my list and I say to them, hey, you signed up for this list.

And I use that welcome template as a filter, if you will, where it's okay if you want to stay on the list.

We got to cover some ground rules.

The ground rules are when I think about the people that I like to serve, the people that I like to serve, they're people who love money.

And you have no problem saying that.

The second thing is you love helping people, but you don't love saving people.

There's a difference.

And the third thing is that you value your time.

You have life outside of a business.

And I just simply say if those three things value are within your values, hey, you may want to stick around because I have some freebies, trainings, resources that are going to help you.

If they don't, happily, no hard feelings, unsubscribe.

And some people would say to myself like, no Tina, like that means you're losing a lot of subscribers.

No, what that is telling me is that I'm making space for the subscribers or for the people that actually want to be served.

Because when you think about having a dead audience that actually negatively impacts you it from an email standpoint, it doesn't really do great with your scores and then it can drive down your deliverability and also just doesn't really create a relationship with them.

Now when you also think about a dead audience, think about the relationship that you're creating with your audience.

And I like to think of it like this, if I said, hey, I'm going to come up to you and I'm going to pay by this.

This, you haven't given me any value, so why would I even want to interact with you?

Because you're just coming off too soon in the relationship.

Because it is a relationship, even though it's on email, to even consider promoting anything.

Maybe what you might want to do instead, which I recommend doing, is asking them, hey, what things do you want to hear more about?

This is the action piece that I was alluding to earlier where it's, are you struggling with building an email list?

Let me know in this poll.

Are you struggling with automating your content?

Click this button if you are.

Are you struggling with maybe converting to affiliate sales?

Check this box right here.

And so what that will tell me is, it'll tell me, okay, this is your problem.

So I have this area where, okay, I know your problem.

I'm gonna send you some freebies that I think are gonna be really good for you.

So if you are struggling with an email list and you don't know how to build it, then you're gonna get a freebie from me and says, hey, hey, maybe I should give you a welcome email template.

Is that something that you're interested in?

And people, they say, yes, I'm interested in that.

And then I've already given a piece of my value.

Now obviously I'm here to also make money.

That's not a lie, right?

I given you value.

The next thing that I would say is, hey, I'm happy to give this to you.

But did you also maybe consider this course might be something that you might be interested in?

And it's yeah, if you're interested in, go ahead.

I don't really, personally, I don't go for a pushy approach.

I'm just like, you're an adult, make your own decision.

If you want to make a decision, go for it.

If not, no hard feelings, right?

There's an opt out section if you don't want to get these emails.

But even in my emails, like, even if I'm on the way of promoting a specific email, like product or whatever, I'll give you value within those set of emails.

And I will say, like strategy of, hey, this is the strategy that I use.

This course is just giving you the rest of the pie on how to actually implement it.

So I think the engagement piece is just, you're missing value.

And if you provide value, whether it's freebies, resources, trainings, even if it's just a Weekly newsletter that's gonna, that's gonna really create a relationship.

And I think it's just creating a relationship is gonna help you drive engagement for your audience.

Gotcha.

Yeah, it's like one of those things where when you said like getting the, like doing the double thing of are you sure you wanna be a part of this?

It's getting the right customers, not the wrong ones.

Because you can get a bunch of customers, customers and they all might be completely wrong and they won't ever really open your email.

They won't really engage with you at all.

How do creators like, I guess the best word is to create that, that welcome email.

Maybe, maybe they don't sign up for you.

But how do they create that welcome email where they do get that double confirmation?

Maybe they just want to do it by themselves because they want to learn it the hard way.

So how do you, how do they like build that stuff step or those steps to create a good welcome email?

So I actually have a welcome email template that I'm happy to give to your audience.

It's actually, I usually sell it for $9.

So I will give it to your audience for free as just a thank you for anyone who wants to listen in and I'll send you the coupon code for that and things like that.

So definitely check out the show notes.

But when it comes to creating the welcome email and really welcoming your subscribers, I think it's being upfront and honest.

I don't really like the marketers who try to sneak things.

If and if you know what I'm talking about, you know what I'm talking about for all those who have had that experience.

But if you don't know what I'm talking about, maybe they start sending you random emails so quickly.

It's just tactics that, let's be honest, we're on a first name basis.

You want to get to know me, I want to get to know you.

But you also need to have this other layer of filtering out the people that don't serve you.

Right.

So obviously the double opt in, that's just an automation within your email provider.

I use Mailerlite, they have that button where I just click to let that go.

Then we think about the email template.

I like to think about really having it within two to three sections where the first section I'm going to say, hey, welcome, thank you so much.

Like genuinely, thank you for deciding to take the next step and come into the world of Tina.

Right.

And so that's the first thing.

The second thing that I'M going to talk about is what can you expect from joining my list?

So I'm upfront where I tell them, you can expect freebies, you can expect resources, you can expect a weekly ish newsletter because I'm human.

And then you can also expect promotions to specific products of mine.

Right?

And I don't hold that information back.

People like to think, oh, like I'm just setting up our list.

I'm not going to get promoted to, let's be honest, creators need to make money, right?

So I just tell people that is a clear expectation and there's going to be options for you to opt out of those sequences.

No hard feelings.

If you want to save my list, that's fine.

And you'd be surprised, actually, there are people that I've who I was doing research and saying, okay, who bought this product?

There are people who've been on my list for two years and they didn't buy a product till two years later.

And so I and I did a ton of promotions, I did a ton of emails.

And some people are just not ready.

And I have to honor that.

I have to like totally respect that.

And so the last piece is I actually like to give that a piece of value in terms of, hey, maybe your signup process for your newsletter can be like, hey, here's a bonus of you could get my idea, my content idea generator.

So I would just have the end off be like, hey, this is also a thank you for you be part of my list.

Here's this download that I created that I think is going to be really helpful for you.

So what this does is it allows people to understand the expectations, but it allows people to also be filtered out if they don't want to be part of it.

And I 100% tell people all the time, if you don't want to be on my list, you don't have to.

It's fine.

And the reason why I say that is because as you grow and as you scale, costs go up.

And when I think about my email list, I was on the free mailer light plan.

It's a great plan for a couple years until I started using all the strategies with growing my email list.

And I was like, oh shit, like now I have to start paying for it, right?

And then you go to another level and you're like, damn, it's more money.

And so you just think to yourself, like, okay, yeah, I want people to unsubscribe because I don't want to pay for a dead subscriber.

And that's just the truth.

Gotcha.

What are your feelings about the subscription model?

Because there is that other aspect of.

You can use Patreon if you wanted to.

But what is that aspect of the subscription model that.

Could it be tied to your email list?

Could it be part of the passive income funnel as well?

Yeah.

I'm going to be completely honest.

I don't have a subscription model when it comes to my newsletters.

Because.

Because for me personally, the way that I like to tell people is I don't like to have to be obligated to do anything.

My automations fulfill my obli.

My.

My automations fulfill my obligations.

But I do think that if you are someone who likes to write and you have that consistency and you have that schedule to do something, then yeah, a paid newsletter makes sense if you want to gatekeep some of your content.

My only forms of gatekeeping content is through my courses.

Right.

And so I'm pretty like general generous when it comes to strategy.

Right?

Like I tell, I'm telling your audience, like everything that I'm doing.

I have no problem telling you the strategy.

But if you're someone who was, okay, how do I actually really do that?

And you need like the templates, you need the landing pages, all those things, the copy, then that's where I'm going to be.

Like, this is going to be like a paid relationship.

You can purchase the course, but for me it just, it really comes down to if it works for your energy, style.

And I personally, the reason why I love automation so much is because I think consistency is bullshit.

It's not realistic and it's not something that is sustainable.

I'm definitely someone who likes to take a couple of weeks off at a time and to tell me that I have to be obligated to write a weekly newsletter that's paid for my audience, that just doesn't work for me and my energy.

So I don't do it because I can't.

I don't.

I know personally that I won't have the consistency to fulfill that obligation.

And also I can't really automate, automate a personalized newsletter.

Right.

I can create an automated newsletter with an RSS feed, but when it comes to personalization at scale, I can't do that.

So I don't offer it.

So I would say it comes down to your energy levels for that.

Gotcha.

And then where do you see all the content creation, content creators going in the next five or ten years?

Do you see more automation happening?

Do you see more AI being used.

Do you see AI avatars being used way more than just real humans because it might be easier to use AI by then.

Like, where do you see this all going?

So the trends and I actually need to eventually either film a video or write something about this.

But when I think about the trends going forward, newsletters are going to be the new social media.

Social media is not going away, but it's definitely becoming very difficult for you to compete with the algorithm.

Right.

But also when we think about burnout, there's always going to be a new platform, there's always going to be a new version of TikTok.

I remember Club Clubhouse was something that was popular back in the day.

Right.

And so there's always going to be like a new platform on the radar, but realistically it's just too much to handle.

So I think people are going to transition off of the platforms as you see with YouTube and they're going to go more into their list because a, you can automate it, but you can also gain your own list.

If, if the platform dies with whatever your traffic gen processes, then your audience goes with it.

With your newsletter, it doesn't die.

You just don't pay your email subscription and you don't back up your audience and then that's where it dies.

Right.

So that's one thing.

The other thing that I think people are investing a lot of their time on and I just like to think about my habits personally is people are shifting more towards community rather than social media.

So personally, I know I'm a creator and it seems ironic, but I don't go on social media at all.

I let on my automations take care of it.

But the.

When I think about what's actually allowed on my phone because I don't really allow social media on my phone for my mental sanity.

It's community based platforms.

So I actually really love school.

School is something that I'm seeing pop up a lot in terms of it's a paid.

It's a paid platform where creators can create their own communities.

So I'm seeing that being an area where people are hanging out.

But I also see the resurgence of Russia, Reddit coming up and people might disagree with me, but I actually would say if you're going to focus on a platform, I think Reddit might be just it.

And here's why.

Reddit is one of the platforms where obviously it has the maturity, where it has acquisition of users.

Millions of people go on Reddit every single day.

So you have the traffic.

The other layer of Reddit is that it allows you to actually have searchability, especially with all the updates that are happening with Google.

When you look up search terms, what's actually popping up in the search traffic is not blog articles, it's Reddit threads.

And the reason why that is is because experience is more valuable to a user than maybe canned information from a blog article.

The other area of that is it's evergreenable.

So when I say evergreenable, it's accessible 24, 7, 365 days a year.

It's not just the fact that it's searchability, but that adds to the evergreen piece.

But also so the piece of having your own social media kind of platform within the platform, you have your own audience within the platform, if you will.

And it's interesting because I've actually been experimenting with it for a while, and it's the one platform where people actually go out of their way to reach out to me and they DM me and they're like, hey, like you said, you have a product, can I check it out?

And so it's actually been an interesting acquisition channel.

And I was talking to one of my friends about, right, Reddit.

And so she's a creator, and so she makes money through affiliate marketing.

And so what she's been doing is she's been using Reddit as a traffic channel to her blog articles, which will then monetize through affiliate commissions.

And people would argue and say, Pinterest is the place to do it.

Pinterest is great, it is helpful.

But she told me she's Tina, like, I just started this account and I've already made commissions just by hanging out on Reddit.

When you think about traffic and like, conversion of traffic, I think Reddit does a better job at conversions because Reddit is the one platform where it has a higher priority on value, right?

Because you can upvote.

You can also downvote, right?

If people see through the bullshit of, like, you just trying to sell something, then they're going to downvote that.

I've definitely seen that with other people.

But if you are coming from the place of actually providing value, then people upvote that and that's a great trial area for you to grow.

But also it's just when you think about the way Reddit is created, the anonymity is phenomenal.

Because one of the things that I really like about Reddit personally is that I don't have to worry as a creator about tarnishing my personal brand, if that makes sense, where it's like, I can drive traffic to my blog articles and things like that.

But I love that it's anonymous.

Right.

I can be a little bit more honest in terms of like when I see something that doesn't look right, I could say yeah, like that just doesn't work.

Rather than if, if it was a public facing platform.

I want to think about how is this going to look like across things like that.

So I think it's just, it is really prioritizing experiences.

It's also prioritizing value driven comments posts, things like that.

Because people's bullshit meter.

It's just that it's pretty darn.

I read it's a really great place to sift through it.

And so people listen to this, they're like, man, I really want to set up your email newsletter, learn more.

Where can people find you online?

Like I said, I'm going to give you guys my welcome email template.

We talked a lot about email lists.

So that is the plug and play template that I use.

If you want to welcome any of your subscribers, you're going to use the coupon code podcast24 at checkout and then you can get this $9 template completely for I'll also send you the link so that the coupons already attached to it so you guys can grab it and then you can automatically sign up for my list by that channel from there.

All right, any final thoughts for listeners?

I would say biggest thing, think about return on time as a creator and also think about what type of business do you want to create.

There's a lot of people who will tell you this is the right way to do things.

That's the right way to do things honestly.

Take pieces of the puzzle right?

Take pie of what works from other creators and see how it applies to you.

My business model might not be your business model and that's okay, but it's also not supposed to be right because we are different humans and that is 100% okay.

I would say if you're going to really think about the scalability and the growth of your business, really ask yourself what is it that you want to be doing with your time?

If the answer is, if I had a million followers, a million subscribers tomorrow, borrow, do I really want to be spending my time scheduling content?

Probably not.

If I think to myself, I just want to send emails and make money and do that, then do you go do that?

So you don't.

You do not owe anyone anything in this business, but you do owe yourself a life outside of your business.

So go live it.

All right.

Thank you Christina for joining Digital Coffee Marketing brand sharing your knowledge on content creation and email.

Say that one more time and I.

I said thank you Christina for joining Digital Coffee Marketing Brew and sharing your knowledge on email lists and content creation and content creators.

Thank you so much.

It was happy to be here and.

Thank you as always.

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