Two old school ways to make money.

Originally sent exclusively to The Letter subscribers on August 10th. Want to be the first to get my personal newsletter in your inbox every Monday at 7am? Subscribe for free here.

I’ve been left to ponder a couple of fascinating points of order this week.

Two to be precise.

And both have made me think about how we market our businesses.

Point of order number one: How powerful is a newsletter?

A fellow content creator said something to me recently that really made me think.

They make far more money from their newsletter than from their YouTube channel, despite having far fewer subscribers on their newsletter vs the YouTube channel.

Interesting, isn’t it?

It makes you wonder whether more of us should become weekly scribes.

Could you find half an hour a week to write something useful and send it to customers and prospects?

And could you be happy to share knowledge and wisdom, give value, and hardly ever sell?

Because if you do, over time you build a stack of value and trust. And when you do have something to sell, you’ve got an audience that actually wants to hear from you.

(Yes, I do have a Business Masterclass… link here if you’d be so kind)

So why don’t more people do it?

Delayed gratification. That’s why.

With Facebook ads, you can spend money at 9am and see money in your bank account by lunchtime.

A newsletter is different.

It costs almost nothing except your time, but you might need to write it for months before you see meaningful returns.

Most people don’t have the patience.

But I promise you this:

This newsletter you’re reading now has generated hundreds of thousands of pounds in sales. And that, in time, will be a word that starts with an “m” and ends in “illion”.

And there’s another benefit I didn’t expect.

Writing it has been incredibly good for me. It forces me to think clearly, and clearer thinking leads to clearer action and better results for me. Thank you very much.

Point of order number two: The richest bloke in the world sent me a postcard.

You know the richest bloke in the world?

He’s a bit unusual.

Mars colonies. Robots. AI. Rockets. The lot.

Whether you like Elon Musk or not, he’s operating on a scale most of us can barely comprehend. Literally 1 in 7 billion. 

And yet this week, one of the most technologically ambitious companies on earth sent me…

A postcard.

Yep. Starlink sent a printed postcard through the post offering me home internet.

Nothing fancy. Nothing clever.

Just good old-fashioned direct mail.

And it worked. The postcard had a strong offer, amplifying the pain of poor internet in my area, solved by Elon’s multi-satellite constellation that circles our planet. For the price of seven blocks of cheese at Sainsbury’s, I could have super-fast internet.

I already use Starlink for mobile when I’m off in my camper, but the postcard genuinely made me consider home broadband too.

That got me thinking some more.

This weekend I received four things in the post:

A credit card statement.
A bill I can’t remember.
A parking fine.
And the Starlink offer.

(At first I thought the parking ticket neatly placed on my windscreen was a compliment. “Parking Fine” sounded like praise. Turns out it wasn’t.)

Now compare that to my inbox.

I probably received about 7.3 million emails this weekend.

Slight exaggeration… but not by much.

Most emails get mentally filed under: “I’ll deal with that later.”

The post, on the other hand, I actually remember.

And that’s the lesson.

Scarcity gets attention.

Everyone moved to email because it was cheaper and easier, which means inboxes are now completely saturated.

Meanwhile, the letterbox is relatively quiet.

There’s a real opportunity there.

Especially if you have a high customer value or long-term customer relationships.

If £1 spent on physical mail can eventually create a customer worth hundreds or thousands…

Why wouldn’t you test it?

Snail mail could still build a multimillion-pound business.

You just need the basics right:

A strong headline.
A compelling offer.
A reason to act.
A way to respond.
And something interesting enough not to be binned immediately.

Then you’re in business, sailor!

So my two points of order this week are refreshingly old-fashioned:

Write something useful every week.
And occasionally put something useful through someone’s letterbox.

Because sometimes the best marketing ideas aren’t new at all.

They’re just the ones everyone forgot.

To your continued success,

James

Here’s a quote I love:

If you write a problem down clearly and specifically, you’ve solved half of it.

And remember - it does get easier. You just have to do it every day.

To your continued success.

PS: Business Masterclass tickets will sell out and will go up in price.

If you’d like to grow your business and learn all my strategies, click here.