Brian Dean made $100,000 from a 2,000 person email list

Updated September 2026. Originally published February 2017.

Brian Dean has about 40 posts on backlinko.com. He publishes one a month. That is a seven-figure profitable business.

His first course launch went to an email list of maybe 2,000 people, maybe less. He thought it might do $15,000. It did $100,000.

Brian is one of my good friends and I have a total man boner for this guy. He is insanely good at SEO, also known as getting your shit listed for free in Google. I had three questions for him, and one of his answers I went and did to my own site the same week.

Why 2,000 people was enough

Backlinko started as a hedge. Brian’s whole goal in life was $3,000 a month from affiliate sites, because he read The 4-Hour Workweek and was totally going to do that. His best affiliate site got 98% of its traffic from Google. “One day that could go to zero.” So he built a brand that could still get visitors and subscribers even if he stopped ranking.

It made no money for nine months. He barely noticed.

“I knew that to build a blog you need to rank, you need to have good content and you need to have an email list. So I just really focused on those things. I had my nose to the grindstone so much I didn’t even think about it.”

His validation was a focus group of one. “I just figured I would have bought a course. It’s just one person, but I was like, I would buy a course that taught me link building stuff. So I should assume there’s other people out there too.”

The launch itself was copied from Derek Halpern, day by day. If Derek sent an FAQ email on day two, Brian wrote an FAQ email on day two, in his own words. “It was a 100% copy job in that sense.” What he didn’t copy was the knowledge that launches make all their money at the end. “After day three or four I was so dejected. I had no sales. It wasn’t even like disappointment. It was a legit depression.” On the last day he sent one email that said it ends tonight, went to bed, and woke up to 75% of the sales.

Everyone who hears this does the same math. He had 2,000 people and made six figures. I can do that. Sometimes I think no, you can’t. Sometimes I think everyone can. Brian’s answer is that it depends who the 2,000 are.

“The thing I had in my favor was I had a small list, but the product market fit was perfect. The people that found me straight away were exactly my target audience. These were people that were already doing well with SEO and wanted to do better. So when I sold a course to them, they weren’t like, wow, this is $500, I can’t afford that.”

His list was half affiliate marketers and half SEO agencies. If your list is coupon people, your course has to be $15. Who you go after in your first 100 subscribers decides what you can sell them two years later.

The other thing he had was years of SEO experience, most of it doing the wrong stuff. “I at least knew what not to do, which is actually a huge advantage, because then what’s left is what you do.” The blog was case studies he had run himself, in a world where most SEO people were regurgitating the same information.

16 emails, almost a million dollars

He has done eight launches now. The last one did almost a million, and it was the simplest one he has ever run: 16 emails over five days. It’s open, some more information about the course, we’re closing.

“A lot of people do crazy stuff with launches. They think the more complicated it is, the better it’s going to do. A webinar on the first day, a webinar in the middle, a webinar on the last day, a bonus on this day. The more things I took away, the better it did.”

Same with the blog. There are two million blog posts published every day. “Once you realize that, you can either be like, mine’s just going to get lost in the deluge, or step up and be like, I need to make something that’s going to be the best thing that comes out today. It’s really hard to create something that great. That’s why I create something once a month.”

An average Backlinko post takes him 25 hours. Most people put in an hour and wonder why it isn’t doing well.

I pushed him on promotion, because it’s not a great article if no one reads it. He half agreed. “If you do good article plus promotion, that equals a failed article, usually. Crappy promotion plus amazing article is usually great.” In the beginning his promotion was emailing influencers who had already shared something on the same topic. Google the topic, find who wrote about it, find their email with sellhack.com, write to them by hand. Never ask for the share. “I would just say, hey, I have this thing about open rates, do you want to see it? If they like it, they’ll share it. They already did.” Related, not competing. 100% manual. People automate too early. Premature automation, if you know what I’m saying. (More on the no-ask email in how to email a busy VIP.)

He doesn’t do outreach anymore. He emails his list, because most of the people he would have emailed are already on it. Same reason everything I make goes to the 114,000+ entrepreneurs on my newsletter first, with no schedule, only when there is something worth sending.

Fewer pages rank better

My last question: I get eaten by a giraffe and Brian inherits okdork.com. What does he do first?

Positioning. What is this blog, and why would it be different from the thousands of other blogs out there? OkDork worked because of the expert posts, the BuzzSumo guys, Brian, Peep, people teaching what they know. So go 100% that. Then the practical part.

“Delete all the content that doesn’t fit that or serve that. That’s usually the first thing I do when I evaluate a site. The more pages you have on the site, the more technical problems you have, the less likely you are to rank for competitive keywords.”

Every link you get sends PageRank to your site. The more pages you have, the thinner it spreads. Keep the site small and every link counts more for you than the same link would for a giant. That is how Backlinko got on the first page for “backlinks,” “link building” and “on page SEO” with about 15 posts, against Moz and Search Engine Land, sites that had been around for over 10 years.

It also works as a limitation. If you could only publish 12 posts this year, you would not write “five tips for whatever.” I knew this when I wrote up how we grew OkDork 200%. I still wasn’t doing it.

So the challenge, and the thing I did to my own site. Open Google Analytics. Behavior, Site Content, All Pages. Set the date range to 60 days. Sort by page views, lowest first. Export it to a CSV so it’s easier to work through. Then delete every page that brings in no one from organic or social. “This isn’t serving anyone. Let’s just get rid of it.”

Brian built a seven-figure business on 40 posts and a million-dollar launch on 16 emails. Go find out how many pages on your site are doing nothing, and delete them today.

From my podcast, Noah Kagan Presents. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.