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My $135,000 Per Day Lesson on Email Marketing

6 years ago I started a company called Kickflip Inc. At the time, I was the #1 largest Facebook app developer.

Every week Facebook changed its API and we had to change our apps and games constantly. We were forced to play by their rules and they governed how we interacted with our own customers/players.

Kickflip eventually morphed into Gambit — a payments company that worked with Zynga, Tagged, Gaia Online, Disney and more.

Then one day Facebook banned us.

Sayonara Gambit
Within 24 hours, our daily revenue dropped from $150,000 to $15,000.

Imagine losing an extra $135,000 every day!

We had to play by THEIR rules. It was their home turf advantage.

This was a valuable lesson and I was determined not to repeat my mistake.

When you rely on other channels to obtain customers, you’re at the mercy of those channels:

  • What if Google moves you to page 2?
  • What if Facebook reduces the amount of exposure to your fans?
  • What if Twitter decides to block your url? (this happened to us yesterday)
  • What if Tacos were extinct? (false!)
  • Etc, etc..

How can you avoid making the same mistake?

Control your own destiny for your business.

Email marketing I’ve found to be the ONLY consistent, reliable and scalable channel for growing a business.

Is it a coincidence that Amazon, Uber, NY Times and every major online site asks for your email?

The best way to control your own destiny is to have direct communication with your customers and not depend on other platforms for your success.

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19 responses to “My $135,000 Per Day Lesson on Email Marketing”

Huber
July 10, 2020 at 8:18 pm

Need help to market my novels. Thanks

Mike
February 5, 2017 at 2:54 pm

Great insights, Noah! I just can’t imagine losing that much in such a short time span. Haha
I will definitely learn from your article.

binsu
December 16, 2015 at 1:45 am

Email Marketing 1 K

Marina
August 18, 2015 at 5:25 pm

Thanks, Sumo guyz, great share!

Tyler
January 27, 2015 at 6:16 pm

I’ve used the email 1k course to go from 0 emails and 0 visitors 10/01/2014 to over 2k emails and 30k visitors a month as of today. Thanks Noah!

William
January 12, 2015 at 8:13 am

this was my fav line in this post: “The best way to control your own destiny is to have direct communication with your customers and not depend on other platforms for your success.”

BOOM!

Steve Faber
December 1, 2014 at 9:29 am

Noah,
Great stuff (as usual).
The 3 of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs can make when starting a business:
1) Over-reliance on one customer, traffic, or prospect source
2) Building the org’s website on a domain you don’t own, or using social media properties instead of a “real” site on a reliable webhost.
3) Relying primarily on a single marketing platform.

Yes, these are all putting your eggs in one basket on someone else’s property. While you CAN build a large, successful business this way, and many have done so, you can also lose it much more easily due to factors outside your control. Convincing investors to contribute funding to your venture is a much greater struggle as well, as most astute investors do risk/reward calculations, and such behavior balances the equation too heavily on the risk side.

Hanna
November 21, 2014 at 3:13 pm

Awesome post man, I agree email marketing gives you the most effective way to get in touch with your clients. In my email marketing, I am also using email targeting/display advertising for them to show my brand.
I will consider this, I think I will try it 🙂

Chris
October 28, 2014 at 5:55 am

Even though I came in late, I just wanna add that sumome definitely changed the game for my blog. It helped me grew my email list tremendously but I’m kind of stuck now…how to figure out how to move past this barrier. Noah, thank you for everything you do!

P.S.: Folks, Jeff Walker has a book on launching products and he’s basically supporting the ideas of Noah: that we can rely on google and facebook with our business. Email is the new and old school of growing online.

Larry G. Maguire
October 24, 2014 at 6:59 pm

Hey dude, you don’t hide your SumoMe badge in the bottom left hand corner. I was gonna suggest that I loan you the 10 bucks! HeeHee… but you’ve probably it on show as a micro marketing tactic or something… Then again the share bar is there also…

Seriously though….do you need a couple dollars?….

Larry

Michael
October 22, 2014 at 6:39 pm

What do you think abut the changes with Gmail. First the tabs, now the new App “Inbox”.

The result: Google and other companies can influence (in a negative way) the open rates of your mails.

Greg Koralewski
October 19, 2014 at 2:07 pm

I was considering this or similar courses. But I wasn’t sure. I guess later or sooner I will try.

Ryan Biddulph
October 13, 2014 at 2:56 pm

Hi Noah,

So happy you’re back to creating on your own real estate. Many forget, we’re all renters. We can only rent, when we depend on Facebook, Google or any other network created and owned by other folks. Point blank; unless we own it, we are not really free, because the people who own these networks, well, when they choose to make changes, we are at their mercy. Keep on creating through your self-hosted blog. That’s why I spend most of my day creating on Blogging from Paradise and posting comments on relevant, authority blogs. We all own our real estate, and unless we choose to change our values, or our niches, nothing doing on this front, which I dig.

Not the same deal with any network created, and owned, by other folks. That was a ton of money to bleed but it taught you a valued lesson in the process. Create on your own real estate, be an owner, and your life will become infinitely easier. Sure, you’ll need to work, and create, and connect, but you won’t have the wave of worry forever hanging over you, forcing you to flip out when one of the Big Boys decides to make a change which forever affects your online business.

Smart guys. Thanks for the power share. Tweeting soon, and signing off from Savusavu, Fiji.

Ryan

Jacqueline du Plessis
October 13, 2014 at 9:06 am

Great post Noah. So true, playing by THEIR rules often leads to us being on the losing side. Great reminder, and I’m definitely signed up 😀

milan
October 11, 2014 at 12:30 pm

Is your program generic enough for non-US digital marketers to use?

Oloyede Jamiu
October 9, 2014 at 1:25 am

Hey Noah/Tyler,

Awesome article here.

I have subscribed to the list just like you suggested to me in our discussion.

I even wrote an article about it so that my blog readers can also do the same. You can check it out right here.

-Oloyede Jamiu

Robert Maisano
October 8, 2014 at 11:42 am

Great post! I signed up for the course.

Just curious – why was your URL blocked on Twitter?

Tyler V
October 8, 2014 at 1:30 pm

Hey Robert! Good question, we think it was because a combination of all of the traffic, click to tweet message, and it being a new domain.

Alexandr Misiyuk
October 8, 2014 at 8:11 am

Seems like a promo post.. A company that gain 150k*30=4’500.000,00$ per month didn’t make a client db..

Anyway, for my next project Cibo 24 I plan to use SMS list marketing instead of mail list..
And I removed any social plugin of fast signup…

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