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Apr 13, 2023

Hello friends,

Thanks again for signing up for the newsletter. And an extra special thanks to everyone who replied to all the previous emails asking about your motivation for blogging (it's a huge help, I'm still replying to all the emails 🤩)

Today I’ll talk about 4 things

Cold Emailing Mistakes
Where and why should you publish your content?
How I Motivate Myself to Write
A Free Webinar

These are the Biggest Cold Emailing Mistakes

This section is a snapshot of Day #13, an email from my cold email/DM course.

If you're no longer interested in my emails, please unsubscribe and feel free to rejoin us whenever you think it's best.

Day 13 email content:

I have to say this "Cold emailing gets a bad rap. And for a good reason."

Many people try to abuse it at the expense of interesting and busy people 👎

The flip side is, a genuine cold email or direct message is one of the most scalable and systematic ways to get a reply from busy and interesting people.

Done well, Cold email or DM has more power than spammy tactics.

This week, I'll share some of the "Biggest Cold Emailing Mistakes".

Here we go 🤝

1- Writing a generic cold message or DM and send it to everyone.

Personalized No one likes a generic email—it'll get auto-deleted 99% of the time.

When sending a cold email, the personal touches can make all the difference.

Your goal is to make it clear that you didn't send out hundreds of the same note!

Three factors boost the likelihood of a response to your cold email/message:

1. Call them by their first name.

2. Tell a story of the first time you got to know them (if it’s an interesting one).

3. Ask a question at the end.

2- Unpleasant Follow-ups

Bad Strategy:

The most obvious response to a cold email or DM is "No response" at all and this is your test. 99% of the time people failed here and get emotional and even get angry and do annoying things and damage their reputation and credibility.

If you need help from a stranger on the internet, you must show respect you shouldn't laugh at them if they don't respond or even couldn't help. It's you who reached them, not the other way.

An example shared by Sergio

Most people don't have any idea how to handle rejection in cold outreach. The good news is, there's an easy way: When this happens, never take it personally and move on.

A Good Strategy:

Give busy people plenty of time to respond.

If you haven't heard back from them after a week, send a follow-up message at a different time of day.

You might wait another week and send the final follow-up message via a new channel (for example, if you sent an email twice, try sending a Twitter DM).

Keep in mind that this is the final strike; if they don't react, you're out. Move on to the next person.

3- Lack of social proof and proof of work

Sending cold emails or direct messages (DMs) to startup founders on Twitter without any credibility will not get you a response.

Social proof makes a big difference and warms them up and it's important, too, for your social proof not to be false or misleading.

4- You get frustrated after sending 5-10 emails.

I've sent over 1,000 cold DMs on Twitter in the previous three years and still don't have a flawless formula.

It's a volume, patience and luck game.

The biggest part of success in cold email or DM is going through the process and believing in yourself.

If you have sent emails/DMs to 5-10 different people and haven't got a response, It's time to reconsider your approach.

You need to believe in the process to master the art of cold emailing. it's boring but it works.

In the end, remember "One cold email can completely change your life." Never disrespect the person even though you didn’t get the reply because they don’t have any obligation to respond.

If you’ve had a great cold email or outreach success story, I’d love to hear it!

Let me know by replying to this email!

Cheers,

Ankur

If you like this snapshot you will love the course and book.

Start reading whenever you're ready:

A Developer's Guide to Blogging : Transform your blogging into a lead generation machine with “Developer's Guide to Blogging”. This comprehensive book will teach you the system I use to grow my blogging views from 0 to 800K+ on multiple platforms and $50,000+ in side income from my writing.

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Where and why should you publish your content and find your audience

Once you’ve written your blog post, you can’t leave it at that and expect to get readers.

You must actively promote your post and find people interested in your content.
You can’t post your blog posts on your website and expect readers to find them.
So you need to share your content so people can find it.

Best Places to Share Your Blog Posts

After you've hit the Publish button on your blog post, you'll need to drive traffic to it. It just sits there if you write something and don't find a way to get it to read.

Here are a few places to post your blog to get some traction

Twitter is my favourite place to share a new blog post. I had to build an audience by creating valuable content and helping people.
Reddit is another option for posting your blog. Find a suitable subreddit and try to create a catchy headline for your post. I had one of my blog posts trending for a few days on r/javascript, which brought a ton of traffic to my blog post.
FreeCodeCamp is a great place to post and receive thousands of readers. One of my blog posts on freeCodeCamp received 30,000 views in one month. You must be accepted as a freeCodeCamp author before you can post.
Hacker Noon will let you immediately sign up to post your blog post there. I’m constantly aimlessly scrolling through Hacker Noon to find new posts, so this is a great way to drive traffic.
Hacker News is another option, but I generally don’t recommend it for most blog posts. Instead, you tend to have considerable competition, and getting any readers is hard.
Dzone is another excellent place to post a blog.

But to stay in the long game I would always encourage you to get started with blogging and Treat Medium, Hashnode, DevTo, FCC, Dzone, and HackerNoon as a traffic-acquisition channel rather than a home for your blogging content.

Why you should be publishing on your own domain name

The reason for this is simple: You own it and no moderator can delete your posts from your own blog.

Owner of blog space >>> Rental space.

It's just you and your website.

Twitter can change "the algorithm".
Google can put more ads on top of your search results.
Twitter can suspend your account.
Medium, Substack or any other channel can run out of funding.

But your domain (and eventually, your email list) are YOURS.

That’s why learn to syndicate your content in a way that doesn't hurt your Google rankings.

Want to learn more about canonical URLs? Read this article by Yoast: The Ultimate Guide to Canonical URLs.

How I Motivate Myself to Write

This is a frequently asked question, especially now that regular blogging has led to good side earnings from writing.

Here are the 3 steps that worked for me:

1- Start Writing - Regularly But?

In 2017, I decided to write about my experiences in software engineering, a field in which I had previously worked for many years.

When people ask me for blogging advice, I always give them more of the same: pick a schedule you can live with and stick to it. Write when motivation strikes. I personally tried all the schedules, morning, evening, afternoon and late nights but it’s hard very very hard to write every single day so next time someone tells you they were writing for X years. Most likely they’re meaning they were writing whenever motivation strikes most of the time otherwise they’re selling you something 😉

Treat each blog post as a small bet and make a commitment, time! You'll discover a lot.

2- Copy Your Favorite Blogger's Writing Style

Most of the writers I like on the internet have a very unique style.

This made me consider my writing style when I first began.

What format should I use when writing? I experimented a lot and am still not afraid…to try a new style… but when I first started out, I tried to emulate the writing style and approach of well-known bloggers.

Nowadays I see many new writers copying my style… 👍

You'll develop your writing style as you write more, and you won't feel the need to "copy" another writer's style. In my case, this is what took place.

3- Capture Ideas On The Fly

Taking notes as ideas came to me has been extremely beneficial to my writing.

You don't need another app. The Notes app is the best idea logger you have on your phone. Anytime I get a new idea, it goes into my log as a new task.

Ideas for my tech blogs
Ideas for my tweets
Ideas for my small bets
Ideas for my business

I'm working on a new blog post in which I'll expand on this section into a full post. Stay tuned for a post later this month.

I’m Hosting a Free Webinar.

I’m hosting a free class next week for everyone on “Blogging for Developers”.

If you want to participate and ask your questions live, this is your best chance.

I'll share everything I've learned about blogging and how a developer can monetize their writing skills.

Articles I published in March

The Top Highlights of the Last 30 Days.

My blog was featured on medium digest! Yay 😍 Blog Link

This random meme went viral on Twitter.

As usual, got some hate and love both at the same time but this was the real pain point we all have in our daily development life.

The real reason behind the tweet 😉

I shared my experience of working as an immigrant from India in the EU. link

Many people didn’t like it but this is the harsh reality. Reality doesn't care about expert opinion. Thinking to convert this into a blog post with more details🤞

Received another payment from Baas (Blogging as a Service) from a startup client!

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a small win but I noticed levels following back last week on Twitter and it feels good to add some more credibility on Twitter! 🙌

What next- bought a new domain and expect an MVP product in the next month.

Hint: you don’t need to worry about writing leads, I’m working with startups and you’ll get the leads straight into your inbox. If you would like to know more. Hit reply.

PS... Replies go straight to my inbox and I love getting mail 😊

See you soon 🙌

That’s it for today, the more I know about what you read & want, the easier I can help you do that. If you enjoyed this, please hit a reply if:

you care about a topic you’d like to see covered.
you just want to say hello

Where to get more. If you want to get helpful tips that sharpen your mind & help you perform better then you can follow me on Twitter

See ya in the next issue! 👋

P.S. If you found this newsletter helpful in any way, I’d really appreciate it if you shared it with your friends & family Thank you! 🙏

Until next time,

Stay awesome,

Cheers!

- Ankur Tyagi