One aspect of blogging I absolutely adore is the opportunity to work with brands. I find it fun and a highly profitable yet low-stress assignment... when it works to my advantage. Like, a couple of months ago, I wrote a blog post for Squarespace (around 1,300 words, took me a couple of hours), and got $1,350. That is frikkin' fantastic. Like, I'd happily take on 5-6 $1k partnership projects per month... only... 1) I'm lazy and brand partnerships require some legwork (Squarespace reached out to me so that worked out great, but for this to be a regular income source, I must put in the effort) 2) Pricing is a headache... not all brands have the same kind of money. The brands I actually want to work with are especially struggling, so not every brand is willing to dish out $1k+ for a single post 3) I personally hate negotiations. Haggling is such a drag! But man... when it works, it works so, so well! Anyway. The point is, I took a chance and pitched a company a few days ago. It was my second time pitching to them. The first time, they straight out told me they didn't have a budget for it. That was last year. I figured maybe they've seen light, so I pitched them again, and guys... they're interested! Now I fear that I'll give them my usual rate and they'll bolt 😅 In any case, how interested are you guys in working with brands? I know there are plenty of you here who do not blog and probably couldn't care about brand deals... But the bloggers amongst you: Are you interested? Should I make it into a build-in-public thing where I document the process? Mind you, the next time I email them with my rates, they may just shut me down... So... it could end up being a reeeeaaallly short project, like... one email... lol.

This community is a lot of work. And I plan to add more work in the near future. So, I'm turning it into a paid community... NOT a recurring payment, just a one-time fee to weed out grifters. Everyone who's in this group right now will continue to stay in this group, no payments necessary ever. Consider this my heartfelt thanks for your support early on :) Got any questions for me?

Here's something I tried recently that didn't work: I get bored easily, so I keep trying new things to entertain myself. Recently, I tried it with the Write Without AI workshop. I sold it in two phases back-to-back: Early bird (cheaper) > then regular price. I thought most people would get it at the cheaper early bird price. I had zero buyers 🙃 All of the sales came AFTER the price increase. I tried a similar scheme last year, when I launched my Email List-Building OS, and the exact same thing happened then, too. I thought it was a fluke then. But now it's become a pattern. So this experiment ends here, I guess. No more early bird pricing. Anyway, in case you followed the promo... word of advice... don't do what I did.

Not all of you are on social media, but many of you are at least on some sort of platform, I'm assuming. For traffic, lead gen, etc. OK so, for example, I'm on Pinterest. It's a visual search engine, so I get decent traffic from Pinterest to my blog, and a decent chunk of said traffic converts to subscribers, too. I mean, Google (thanks to SEO) is still my biggest traffic source, but adding just one other platform definitely helps. So, here's a poll for you: What's your primary platform of choice? Vote below and then let me know in the comments whether you're currently using it with some level of success, or if you want to start using it because you've heard good things. And if you vote "somethin' else" then let me know that in the comments, too.

I was following the Kit Course & stumbled upon something that confused/upset me. Few years ago, when I first started trying to learn Convertkit, if I remember correctly, the Sequences feature was available, in a limited way, in the Free Plan. Now, it's under a paywall along with the visual automations. Their website says I can create 1 sequence & 1 visual automation: https://help.kit.com/en/articles/9053602-the-kit-newsletter-plan, but nope. It immediately prompts me to subscribe when I try 🥲 So... has it been always like this or since a couple of years ago or is it new? am I right for feeling like this or should I chill? I think I should chill... 😗