The Three Services Every Business Needs
Pick one of content, email capture, or newsletter and sell it to a growing market
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 83%
Cole observes an accelerating mega-trend: every founder, creator, and business owner now understands their life would be easier and more profitable with a growing audience, an email list, and a way to educate customers on autopilot. From that, every business wants three things: (1) help producing more content, usually text first then video/audio; (2) help moving that audience to an owned platform (email), best achieved by offering free value like an educational email course in exchange for the address rather than 'come join my newsletter'; and (3) a weekly newsletter that nurtures subscribers until they buy. You don't need to deliver all three. Pick one, pair it with your information advantage, and a single client will pay $3-5K per project or per month, replacing a large share of a full-time income.
Origin
Cole's ghostwriting agencies and Academy productize these three services; educational email courses became his agency's core lead vehicle. Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal.
Core principles
- 01Every business now knows it needs an audience, email list, and content
- 02Ride the mega-trend of everyone needing to build on the internet
- 03You only need to master one of the three services to get paid
- 04Move attention to an owned platform via free value, not 'join my newsletter'
How to run it
- 1
Offer content creation
Help the business put out more content, starting with text-based posts (especially LinkedIn) before video or audio.
Pro tip Text is the easiest wedge and the skill most in demand right now.
Watch out Don't default to commodity SEO blog posts; chase the increasingly popular skill instead.
- 2
Offer email capture
Move the audience to an owned email list by giving free value in exchange for the address.
Pro tip An educational email course converts far better than 'join my newsletter'.
- 3
Offer a weekly newsletter
Nurture the list with a weekly newsletter so subscribers eventually buy the product or service.
Pro tip Without ongoing nurture, a one-time email course leads nowhere.
- 4
Specialize and price
Pick just one of the three, pair it with your information advantage, and charge $3-5K per project or month.
Pro tip One client at this rate replaces roughly half a full-time income.
In the wild
Rather than offering everything, a writer specializes in content creation and pitches a private-practice doctor on a monthly LinkedIn service: educating people on back pain, recovery, and treatment options. The writer handles ideas and writing, needs only 30 minutes of the doctor's time monthly, and pulls material from the doctor's existing book.
→ A single $3K/month content retainer from one focused service.
Common mistakes
Chasing commodity gigs
Offering generic SEO articles competes on price instead of riding the growing demand for content, email, and newsletters.
Asking people to 'join my newsletter'
Directly asking for a subscription converts poorly; free value in exchange for an email works far better.
Is it for you?
Best for
Writers and marketers choosing a productized service to build a client business around.
Not ideal for
Businesses that already have mature in-house content and email systems.
From the transcript
“they all want help putting out more content... they all need help moving that audience to an owned platform AKA email... they need a Weekly…”
“the best way to move them is to give some sort of free value where they exchange their email address for something”
From the episode
How to Make $10k/Month as a Writer - Nicolas Cole
Nicolas Cole