Attract, Build, Convert: The Creator’s Roadmap to $1M in Sales with Matt Giaro

I’m Igor Kheifets, and this is The ListBuilding Lifestyle. The podcast is for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures, travel the world, and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my best-selling book, The List Building Lifestyle Confessions of an Email Millionaire, at www.igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

[0:55] Igor Kheifets:

I’m your host, Igor Kaifetz, and today I’m pumped about my guest because if you’ve ever thought I can’t make money online because I’m not loud enough, flashy enough, or GaryVee enough, then today’s guest is about to completely ruin your excuses.

Matt Giaro is living proof you don’t need to scream on TikTok, dance on reels, or wake up at 4.30 in the morning for an ice bath just to get paid. He’s an introvert who hacked the system, fewer followers, more dollars.

Here’s what I mean: Matt has pulled in over a million dollars in sales selling courses. He’s built over 60 online courses, and he did it all with an email list smaller than most people’s high school graduating class.

In fact, at one point, he made over $5,000 in a single month with just 2,216 subscribers, while the rest of us were still binge-watching YouTube videos about morning routines.

He’s been at this for over 14 years, launched two separate e-commerce businesses, one hit six figures in just 18 months, and since 2014, he’s been living full-time off what he teaches.

Oh, and let’s not forget, nearly 20,000 people follow him on Medium, where he publishes daily content teaching creators how to stop chasing shiny objects and naturally turn knowledge into income.

But here’s the kicker, Matt’s whole thing isn’t about needing a massive audience. He’s like the underdog wizard of online business, quiet, consistent, system-driven, and happy to let robots do all the boring stuff.

So, if you’ve ever wondered how to monetize your expertise without burning out, going broke, or turning into a full-time content clown, this is the guy you want to hear from.

And today, I’m going to pick his brain about one lead generation strategy that I think is going to catch speed and really grow as far as impact goes in the coming years due to the developments that I see in the industry.We’ll cover that more as we go into this episode.

For now, ladies and gentlemen, let’s welcome Matt Giaro. Matt, welcome to the List Building Lifestyle.

[3:01] Matt Giaro:
Igor, thank you very much for having me.

[3:03] Igor Kheifets:
It’s my pleasure. It’s been a long time coming, and I’m really, really excited. And just to give our listeners a little bit of a backstory, I came across your program called “Subscribers from Scratch”, where you show how to grow your list with newsletters, specifically with newsletter sponsorships or newsletter ads.

And this caught my attention, because for many years now, in fact, for well more than 10 years, at this point, I’ve been using something called “Solo Ads” to grow my list, and I’ve taught many, many people how to do that as well.

And I think this is the next evolution, or I guess the mainstream version of this is to sponsor newsletters, because I see so many different companies and startups actually getting into it. And as we know, recently, in the last few years, we’ve seen newsletters sort of become big, almost as a business opportunity.

In fact, I was just talking to a guy, a couple of days ago, considering to get him on the show, and he’s an expert at growing newsletters from scratch and then selling them, flipping them for profit.

So, I think what we’re going to talk about today has a lot of potential, and I think we’re just on the verge of it exploding into the mainstream.

So, with that in mind, let me start off with a question: You shared that you burned $7,000 in Facebook ads and even got banned for life before finding this method, so could you maybe walk us through how do you get banned for life from Facebook ads?

[4:38] Matt Giaro:
I wish I could, but it’s like, Facebook is some kind of black box and all these kind of big tech companies, basically, they can just ban you overnight, right?

I’m not the first one. I’m not the last one. We see this on Facebook, we see this on YouTube all the time, and you know, that’s just the way it is.

So, I remember running my first Facebook ads back, I think in 2015 or 2016, it was kind of the golden age, just upload your email list, do some lookalike audiences and you know, like these work great.

So, I’ve been spending, I think $10,000 or so on Facebook ads, work great. I then wanted to start a new business and I thought like, “hey, let’s just try Facebook ads again, right?” So, I burned $7,000. I added a few names to my list, but honestly, like nothing, nothing worth mentioning.

And then one day, I just got that email or I just tried to log in, I don’t remember exactly, but basically, yeah, my account is gone. And, everything meta related except WhatsApp, is actually part of the past for me, so yeah, that’s in a nutshell.

[5:51] Igor Kheifets:
Wow. So what sort of ads were you running or maybe, I mean, I ask because I’ve got banned from Facebook more times than I can remember. And the only way I can get back on Facebook ads these days, if I use like someone else’s account. There are now services that sell accounts and, or manager accounts for you.

There are also people out there who claim they know people inside of Facebook, they can get accounts unbanned and they offer this, like that’s what they do for a living. They unban your accounts every now and again. And, kind of, at this point, big Facebook advertisers are budgeting that as an expense of doing business on Facebook.

[6:28] Matt Giaro:
Yeah. Like, I really don’t know if it was kind of related with the ads because I had two personal accounts and somehow both were shut down.

So, I really don’t like, even right now, if I’m trying just to sign up and they somehow actually know who I am and then they just won’t allow me to go back on the platform, which I mean, like I was not using it except for just to kind of run ads.

So yeah, I think we could talk about that for hours, but you never really know what’s kind of the true, let’s say the true reason to that.

I know that I’ve been kind of not running some kind of stupid ads that say, “Hey, make $10,000 in 24 hours”, or like, I’ve always been kind of compliant, even let’s say with my landing pages and with all of that.

But, sometimes that’s just the way it is, so!

[7:21] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, I guess compliance is a fluid thing and Facebook can just flip and decide that whatever was compliant yesterday is no longer compliant today.

Yeah, I’ve seen this happen many, many, many times. And it does happen to me all the time, when I could be running my ads and having it my way, having a good life and everything. And then, all of a sudden you wake up in the morning and then none of your ads get approved, everything gets banned.

And if you’re really unlucky, accounts get suspended. And I’m also hearing that Facebook can actually ban your personal account, too, just because of the ads you ran.

[7:56] Matt Giaro:
Yeah. So again, like I don’t think it’s just kind of big tech related. I mean, you see this also, let’s say if you try to get business accounts open in banks, it’s the same thing, right?

It’s just like perhaps there’s just like one thing kind of triggers an alarm. You don’t really know why, and then you have perhaps someone who is actually manually kind of validating or not. And sometimes it goes through and sometimes it’s not going to go through.

So I think it all then goes back to Dan Kennedy’s philosophy, which is like: “the number one is the most dangerous number in business”.

[8:33] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, it absolutely is. So, then you found this strategy. How did you find it?

[8:40] Matt Giaro:
Yeah, so basically I didn’t actually find it straight after Facebook. I was just kind of hopping around, and I just tried YouTube because like, I created my first channel, I think, back in 2013 or something like that. And then, like when I started doing YouTube again back in 2020,it was a little bit more competitive, right?

So, what I did is I’m kind of a workaholic and kind of a hard core guy. So, when I decide to do something, I just go all in. And I was pumping out a video a day. And then after 90 days, it was like, “OK, I hate this”. “I don’t want to do this again”.

So then, I went over to Medium, right? Started writing on Medium, started repurposing my videos on Medium, started writing on Medium, got some decent traction. But still like organic is great because it’s, quote unquote, “free”.

I think we could talk about free if you want later on, but it’s, quote unquote, “free”. But I was still kind of frustrated because I it wasn’t growing as far as I wanted to. And then I was just seeing big creators with sponsorships, right?

So, everyone in the creator space is talking about monetization and basically monetizing your newsletters with sponsorships. But not many were actually talking about that strategy in reverse, which is like, “you sponsoring other creators to grow your list”. And that’s how I got started.

So, I remember there was a guy that I found on X and he came on my podcast, we talked a bit and then we just kept this kind of nice connection. I was just thinking like, “hey, would you be open to kind of, me sponsoring a newsletter, right?”

And he agreed, I think, I don’t know! Iit was like roughly, I paid, I think, one hundred fifty bucks, something like that. And then, hey, we just run the sponsorship, I got new subscribers, I got buyers. And since then, like I was hooked on that, and I just tried to find a system to actually figure this out and basically scale it.

And like I was able to get into some big newsletters like “Smart Passive Income”, etc. So, it has definitely been a huge catalyst in growing my list, so yeah. I think to summarize, the answer is: I found this technique because I was so frustrated with how slow organic traffic.

[11:28] Igor Kheifets:
Right. OK, so what’s been your, I guess what’s been your biggest campaign or biggest win so far with this method?

[11:35] Matt Giaro:
It really depends on how you’re actually looking at things, because here’s what I do, whenever I run a sponsorship and whenever I publish content online; I have this kind of internal tracking system that allows me to know exactly: “Ok, which content brought in subscribers”, and later down the lines when they buy is to identify, “OK, where did these subscribers actually come from?”

So, I’ve got campaigns where I got a lot of subscribers, 300, 500 subscribers almost overnight. But in order to actually make these work, it took a little bit longer, simply because it just took people a bit longer to buy.

But since I’m sending daily emails, it just took perhaps a little bit more few weeks to simply break even. And then everything after that is pure profit.

So, sometimes you’re going to run newsletter ads. And I remember there was like one specific ad that I run in a newsletter, that brought in, if I’m not mistaken, perhaps 10 or maximum 15 subscribers.

But out of these 10 or 15 subscribers, I almost converted 50 percent into paying customers within the first two weeks, right?

So, it really depends on a few different factors, like obviously the audience quality and also kind of the audience offer alignment, so we can talk more about that if you want to.

[13:03] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, absolutely. First, I’m thinking maybe we can talk about where do you send these people, as in what sort of offer or lead magnet that you prefer to use?

[13:19] Matt Giaro:
Yeah. So that’s a great question. I have an obsession to, like what first got me hooked on the Internet is the leverage, right? So, you write an article once and then you let it rank and then it actually works for you.

And I actually took this kind of mentality to everything else that I do, which means that I’m just asking myself, “OK, how can I do something once and then let it work for me?”

And this now was like, where I want to take this is that when I’m creating, when I’m running a sponsorship, what I do is like, I send people straight to a landing page to get a free email course.

Why a free email course? Why not a PDF, why not something else? Simply because it allows me to create the welcome sequence and the lead magnet at the same time, so basically the welcome sequence is the lead magnet, right?

So, it also trains your new subscribers to basically open your emails, read and click, so that’s basically the answer, it’s like they go straight through a landing page and they just get a good old lead magnet, but not the generic PDF.

[14:37] Igor Kheifets:
Right, not a generic PDF. So, the lead magnet is delivered through the emails?

[13:19] Matt Giaro:
Absolutely; it’s an email course; which means that, let’s say I run out about how to create, my methodology to create online courses in five days, create and launch online courses in five days.

Well, you tactically, like when I implemented that, it was some kind of case study. But I then turned this into an email course, which means that every day you get a specific insight about how to actually achieve this, and that’s it.

[15:12] Igor Kheifets:
OK, oK. And over how many days do you stretch it out?

[15:18] Matt Giaro:
I usually like to run my welcome campaigns or my welcome sequences 14 days. And then after that, they get my regular newsletters.

[15:18] Igor Kheifets:
OK. And in those 14 days, at any point, are you pitching them? Are you?

[15:35] Matt Giaro:
From the very first email, from the very first email, they basically get the opportunity to buy. Because in every market, you have these impulse buyers. They just want to buy right off the bat, right?

So, obviously the way I’m pitching is in a subtle way. But, I really believe, and I learned this from Ben Settle, is to really, kind of set the right expectations up front, which is like, “hey, I’m going to send you daily emails. I’m going to also send you offers to my products and services. And one of these products or services is basically this course right here”, right?

“So, you can actually click and actually see it, like the offer within the very first minute, basically, you signed up”.

And this also makes everything way easier, because people like, they don’t get mad at you because you’re including a link to something that you sell every time. And I just found it, it just trains people to be great email subscribers.

[16:46] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, so, you don’t give away PDF reports, you condition them to read your emails by giving the content away, the promise content in the form of an email course.

And you’re also not afraid to pitch them right away, so as soon as you’re sending out the promised free course, is there like a pitch at the end of every email, kind of like Ben Settle style or?

[17:17] Matt Giaro:
Absolutely. So basically think of it as you creating a PDF, but then instead of clicking file export as PDF, and then attaching it to your first welcome email, what you do is that you simply split things and make each chapter of your lead magnet, a separate email.

You load them into your autoresponder, and then, you could basically have more or less kind of the same call to action, at the bottom of every email, and that’s basically it.

[17:50] Igor Kheifets:
Interesting! Can you walk us through maybe, like, just a broad example of what that would look like? Let’s say, I don’t know, let’s say it’s a keto product or a weight loss thing, or maybe it’s a supplement thing.

And we’re giving them an email course on the subject matter. So, what would like a typical email be about and how would you transition into a pitch?

[18:19] Matt Giaro:
Yeah, interesting. So, I really like to start with the end in mind, which means, “okay, what is the product that I’m going to promote, right?

So, just give me an idea of what kind of product, because I’m very bad at weight loss. I’m good at weight gaining, but not very good at weight loss, so!

[18:40] Igor Kheifets:
Let’s say, it’s going to be a weight loss, with a special diet, (Okay) where you load up on the calories, but because you load up on a particular type of calories, you burn all of them much faster than you lose weight.

[18:59] Matt Giaro:
Okay. So basically, if that’s my product, then it could be like your lead magnet could be, let’s say, “seven mistakes or seven reasons why you can’t lose weight with”, like, “why 99% of diets fail”, something along these lines, right?

So basically, the interesting thing, if you start with a number, you already know that, “okay, I would need to have at least five to seven, or -let’s just start with five-, five kind of secrets that I knew that I will need to write an email about”. And then, what I do is I simply make a simple transition.

So, let’s say, if email number one or secret number one is, again, like I’m just so bad at weight loss, it’s just hard for me to come up with something interesting. But it’s like, “Perhaps this is the mistake that you’re making. The mistake perhaps is that you’re”, hey, like, one thing that I that I stumbled across was like, you don’t need to, like cardio is bad for weight loss, right?

And then, okay, mistake number one is that you’re doing cardio, right? And, “hey, in case you actually want to know a system that allows you to lose weight without having to jump on a treadmill or to do, to jump on an elliptical or whatever, hey, check out what is behind this link”. And then, you basically have to say that, then does the pitch for you.

[20:36] Igor Kheifets:
So, this is a classic infotainment approach, right?

[20:39] Matt Giaro:
Yeah, absolutely.

[20:43] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah. Very cool. Okay. So, that would be that would be the lead magnet, so to speak, even though it’s just a series of emails, it’s not exactly like something they download, but that would be the reason for them to get on your list.

And then every email they’ll get pitched into your thing, your product, side note or side question or a side, sort of path here, is it possible to do something like this, if you’re promoting an affiliate offer? So if the product is not your own

[21:12] Matt Giaro:
I wouldn’t see why it wouldn’t work for an affiliate offer.

[21:16] Igor Kheifets:
Okay, okay. So, let’s then talk about how do you find them? (Just) where do you?

[21:24] Matt Giaro:
Yeah, excuse me. You are, I just want, like, as we’re actually talking, like I was just thinking, because I used to be an Amazon FBA seller. And a perfect example for this could be, here’s how to build, or here’s how to, let’s say, find your next winning product on Amazon, right?

So, it’s a free course that shows you, let’s say, the five pitfalls or the five techniques that I use to find best-selling products on Amazon.

They opt into my list and then, okay, here’s how to do, number one, let’s say you need to do this and that, right? And, “Hey, by the way, if you want actually a tool that allows you to do this faster, click here”. And then, you basically sell the tool as an affiliate.

[22:02] Igor Kheifets:
Okay. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense, actually. (Go ahead) And there are now with AI, there’s so many opportunities to promote all sorts of software. (Absolutely. Absolutely).

So, how do you find them? Where do you go? Obviously I would recommend everybody get your program “Subscribers From Scratch”, to kind of get a very detailed look into how it’s done.

It’s a program I’m going through myself, and you have like an amazing cheat sheet there, which makes it so, so easy. In fact, I took the cheat sheet and I think I told you, and I used AI to help me find me like 15 newsletters to go talk to.

But walk us through the big picture stuff, how do we find quality newsletters that are open to getting sponsorship money, and how do we pitch it? And do we need to pitch it? Maybe they’re like pitching themselves. Like, so what do we do?

[23:01] Matt Giaro:
Well, we need to untangle a few things right here. So first of all, you will have newsletters or let’s say creators who already are open to sponsorships, right?

So, in that case, what do you want to do is you can actually simply reach out on the specific page or whatever form they have, right? So that’s probably kind of the easiest option, right?

Number two, you can go to services that kind of aggregate newsletters, right? So there are a few out there.

Or, number three is that you can also then go the hard way and basically look for creators who have a newsletter, but are not actively running sponsorships.

So, let’s just start with kind of the easiest way, the easiest ways to simply find newsletters that are already running sponsorships.

So, again, no matter the market you’re in, you always want to keep an eye on what orders are doing. So, (yeah) I’m not a social media guy. And, if there’s like one reason why I have an X account is simply because it allows like, the discovery engine it’s just so good.

So, let’s say you just start engaging with, I don’t, let’s say some bunch of AI stuff, right? Then the algorithm is only going to show you people who talk about that specific thing.

Then what do you do? Well, you just do this kind of manual monkey method of simply checking out those people who pop up in your feed and then just see, “Hey, do they have an email list?” Right?

And then, you go down that rabbit hole and you simply sign up for everything, right? And then you just, perhaps you can do this, let’s say, in a one-hour or two-hour sprint.

Then you let it sit for a week and then you go back and actually look at, “OK, who are basically the guys who are actually sending stuff out? What are they sending? What are they writing about?” And “hey, do they have some kind of sponsorship slots?” Right?

So, that’s perhaps kind of one of the ways that you can actually do this. And then, like, the only thing that really requires some kind of legwork, if let’s say you want to approach a creator who’s actually not running sponsorships, so you just perhaps need to build some kind of report first and then just kind of take it from there, right?

But that’s just like one technique how to actually do this. It’s like basically scraping social media and then just looking for creators who already have sponsorships going on in their newsletter, and then simply going through the process.

[25:51] Igor Kheifets:
Got it. OK. And I’d say that’s the most straightforward approach, maybe not the most time efficient, but definitely the most straightforward. And of course, there’s now platforms. There’s the likes of Unive and.

[26:05] Matt Giaro:
There are some platforms. If you want, we can talk about a few platforms. But here is one thing, because as I was actually explaining it, I just realized, OK, this might not sound as sexy to people as it is.

But here is the thing: You could actually find, like only one newsletter could actually help you, catapult your results, that’s basically the thing.

And number two is that once you actually find a newsletter that is working well for you, it’s not just, “yeah, I’m just going to run a sponsorship once”, right?

You can then find some kind of agreement and then rerun a sponsorship every six months, so that slowly, slowly you could actually build this up, let’s see. And then, all you need is simply finding six high new quality email lists and then simply wrote it between them, right?

And that’s also kind of a nice way to kind of, yeah, there is some kind of legwork at the beginning. But if there is something that we haven’t really tackled is the quality of those email subscribers, right?

Because, these are going to be one of the highest quality subscribers that you could get, simply, because they are already reading, clicking and buying from newsletters.

[27:25] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, and those of us who did paid ads, we know the difference, like in terms of getting a user of a platform of some kind, versus somebody who’s already on an email list about a subject matter that you want to email them about.

Not to mention having the ability and the desire to buy stuff, because I find that besides getting the opens, besides getting the clicks, from leads you generate off of big advertising platforms.

It’s also not the, especially today, with whatever is going on in the world right now, ever since Trump’s tariffs and a bunch of other stuff, it’s getting people to part with money is a little bit harder than it used to be. Like you said, back in the in the good old days, in the glory days.

[28:17] Matt Giaro:
Yep. Absolutely. And like one thing also that really sets newsletter sponsorships apart is that there is this kind of subtle transfer of trust that’s happening, right?

Because, yeah, even though some newsletters might label, “hey, thank you for today’s sponsor, whatever, were sponsored by X, Y, Z“ there is still this transfer of authority that’s happening.

And that as someone who’s a very successful Internet marketer, that this transfer of trust is actually worth its ounce of gold, right?

[28:57] Igor Kheifets:
Absolutely. We’ve measured this many, many times, and it’s the leads we get from joint venture partners who recommend us, which as you say, “the transfer of trust is occurring there”.

Those are the leads that will spend the most with you, will have the highest satisfaction, will be willing to buy another thing from you down the line, and not argue with you about your price or about your method or about your particular operation. (Absolutely)

So, what was like, I guess, a few, maybe not a few, maybe, what’s like the most important lesson, that if you could impart on a brand new newsletter advertiser, what would be that lesson?

[29:48] Matt Giaro:
There are many lessons, but I think I’m going to tie this back to the biggest mistake I see is that people are going to apply what I said. And then, they are going to basically slap their lead magnet under the face of the other creator and tell him, “I want you to promote this!”, right? And that’s basically a big mistake.

Why? Because, we always have these kinds of assumptions running in our head, right? It’s like, “hey, here’s what I want to create” or “here is the newsletter that I want to send”. “Here is the product that I want to sell”, right? “Here is what I, I, I, I”.

But it’s not really about you, it’s really about the reader. And the one who knows his list best is basically the one who’s actually writing the emails, right?

So, what I do is I always ask the creator, “Hey, here are, let’s say, three to five options, which one do you think will fit your list the best? Right? And then, you just simply run with that.

Now, here’s the thing you might be thinking, “oh, this means I I should create three to five lead magnets?” No, don’t create anything. We’re just getting started.

Simply come up with three to five lead magnet ideas, make them as different as possible. And only once, let’s say you got approval for one of these, you start creating your lead magnet, right? So, yeah.

[31:12] Igor Kheifets:
Interesting. How do you find newsletter owners responding to the proposals of promoting a paid offer versus a free lead magnet?

[31:23] Matt Giaro:
I never really tried to promote a paid offer straight off. Like what I do is, like my way of thinking is: I’m sponsoring these newsletters, this specific newsletter, because I want more email subscribers, right?

And then, I have this welcome sequence going on in the background that is simply here to break even on the ads. And most of the time, it actually pays off multiples.

But it’s like, I never really run, I never really send people to a paid offer straight. I let them opt in first and then, because I know that once I get them, they’re either going to hate the emails and then go to unsubscribe or they’re going to stay.

And ultimately, down the line, they are going to buy something from you, might it be in a week, in a month, or in five years from now, right? So, I’m not really worried about that.

[32:26] Igor Kheifets:
OK, well, I guess I’m bringing the experience of like buying media where we’re striving to get that ROI as soon as we can.

Plus, my belief is if you can get a buyer, why not? Versus somebody who is only there to read your emails for free.

[32:48] Matt Giaro:
Yeah, if I can get a buyer after he actually opted in, I’m definitely on to that. But it’s like first you opt in, and then you read the first email; qnd if you actually want to buy right away, you’re welcome to do so.

[33:00] Igor Kheifets:
And do you have like a funnel and an upsell in that funnel or do you just have them opt in and then immediately go tell them, go check your inbox, and kind of only operate from the emails?

[33:12] Matt Giaro:
Yeah. So, I do have an upsell on this, like the price of the upsell is going to depend on whatever kind of front offer was.

But (yeah) it’s very lean, very simple. Like I don’t like to overcomplicate things with upsells, downsells, cross-sells and all that kind of stuff. So, it’s like, if they’re buying the main offer, I’m happy, if they upgrade, I’m more than happy.

And like, also, this goes back in in how I’m kind of running my business. So I really like to focus on frequent purchases, rather than just trying to make as much money as I can in one specific transaction.

It’s like, I’m releasing a lot of products and I know that you’re also creating a lot of products. But yeah, my philosophy is create specific courses on a specific topic, release them often, so that people come, if people are happy, they come back and then they buy more from you.

[34:14] Igor Kheifets:
Yeah, yeah, I guess it’s more of the approach you choose to take up front, meaning while I also bank on the emails and I pitch from the very first email that I sent, as soon as somebody opts in, I’m always there trying to sell them something.

So, in my mind, I’m thinking, do I change my strategy and do I need to switch to the approach that you’re using, where it’s very low key and there’s no friction for the newsletter owner.

Because they’re kind of recommending a free thing, they’re getting paid to recommend a freebie. So I would imagine most people who have an email list would take the money.

Versus recommending a paid thing, even if it’s only a low price thing, because I’ve seen, for example, Mark Manson, he managed his newsletters on ConvertKit, or now it’s Kit.

And I’ve seen him push a few actual e-commerce products, supplements, things like that. There’s also product he promoted that I use for quite a few years now called “Brain FM”.

It’s like an app that plays neural beats music for focusing, for recharging, relaxing. It’s really neat app. It’s like 10 bucks a month, I really like it. So, I’ve seen him promote that, too.

[35:37] Matt Giaro:
Yeah, I think that we kind of need to put things into context. So, first of all, I just like to run my business in such a way that I would like to be treated as a customer.

Again, I’m not saying it’s the best thing to do. It’s just like the one that I feel the most comfortable with, which means that if I opt in for something free and I don’t know you yet, the chances are that I’m going to take you up on an offer, even if it’s just like a one-dollar offer, is really low.

Like I’m lazy, I need to like, perhaps I’m browsing on my phone or on the recliner and then I have to go up, take my credit card, like it’s just it’s just not how I operate.

But does that mean that it’s bad or like, no! There are people who’ve built, I don’t know, a million-dollar funds out of that.

So I just, like that’s kind of my big principle is like I just try to run my, I just really think that the way I’m running my business is really kind of like a family-operated store. It’s like you just build a kind of relationship and then people come back to you every day, right? Or every week or whatever the frequency is. So that’s one thing.

Second thing is, if you like, you took the example of Mark Manson, like I doubt that people who take him up on this offer are people who don’t know the guy, which means that, yeah, like I already heard, like listen to his podcast or read his books, or I’m already a fan, so I simply opt in.

And then, yeah, if he’s going to slap me with a seven-dollar trip wire or whatever kind of offer, I might take him up on that. But I just assuming, “hey, I’m a nobody”, people don’t know me. I just kind of hijacked their favorite creator’s attention.

And I just, if I really want to make them care is like, the best way is to simply get them open my email, understand, “hey, I’m legit, I can help you with this problem. And in case you want to know more about that specific thing, yeah, click here. And then we take this, we can take this conversation further online”.

[37:34] Igor Kheifets:
OK, yeah. So, I guess we’ll experiment, because I like to I like to be aggressive when it comes to this stuff just from years and years of.

[37:49] Matt Giaro:

And that’s good, that’s good. Like, if that’s the way you operate and the way you thrive, absolutely go for it.

And I think this is also one of the big issues of online marketing, is that everyone tries to kind of convince you of their school of thought, right?

I’m pretty open about it. And I just say, “hey, like if this works for you, great, don’t change anything. But here’s how I’m doing it, if this makes sense to you, then you feel to kind of, quote unquote, steal the steal the strategy or steal the tactics”.

So, I’m totally fine with that. And you might even get better results than I’m getting. And if that’s the case, that’s awesome.

[38:31] Igor Kheifets: 

Then it calls for subscribers from scratch to point out.

[38:35] Matt Giaro:

Absolutely. Cool.

[38:36] Igor Kheifets: 

I appreciate your insights today. And I think there is a lot to explore in this method. Conceptually, it’s very simple, it’s finding the newsletters that are willing to publish the ad to your lead magnet.

While there’s a lot of detail like where would you place the ad? Which landing page would you use? How would you structure this stuff? So there’s a lot to cover.

So, could you maybe talk for 60 to 60 seconds to maybe a few minutes? Tell us about subscribers from scratch and exactly what we can learn if we go and grab a copy.

[39:17] Matt Giaro:

Yeah, so basically the best way to actually see this more or less and like we talked a lot about welcome sequences, et cetera, in action is to simply opt in -I’m sure I’m going to leave the link down below- And yeah, within the course, I’m basically showing you the step-by-step system.

So, as you mentioned, the devil is always in the details, right? So, in that specific course, we cover how to really find, like all the publishers, I also have some kind of ninja technique that you can then also use with AI to kind of scrape the Internet to just find interesting newsletters that you can sponsor, right? So, with a simple Google search, right?

Then obviously, we’re going to talk about the lead magnet, how to structure the lead magnet, how to how to basically find kind of an enticing promise, so you can get these three to five ideas and then just start pitching the newsletter creators.

Obviously, the landing pages, another important part is really kind of assessing the publishers, because you’re going to see that not all publishers are created equal.

And also, there’s like one thing that I think is really important, that most people don’t understand is how to actually calculate whether or not the sponsorship fee is actually fair or or unfair, right? So, how do we actually see, “OK, that’s a deal”, or “that’s not a deal”, right? So.

There are specific metrics that I found out after doing this for several years. And that is going to be helpful so that you make sure that you’re not getting quote unquote ripped off, that’s one thing.

Then obviously, writing the ad. So, what type of ad should you run? Should it be a longer, shorter one? Like, how do you actually write this ad in the most effective way?

And then obviously it comes with a bag of bonuses, right? Showing you also the breakdown of my funnels, the price points, and the whole entire ad.

And then, you also have another bonus, which is quite interesting, which I call “the negotiation ninja”. So it’s basically how to grab sponsorships for up to 42% cheaper. So, yeah.

[41:34] Igor Kheifets: 

OK, so where can we go to get subscribers from scratch?

[41:40] Matt Giaro:

There is a link down below to allow you to opt into my email list. And then, if you follow along the call, the very first email, you will get the link to buy the course, if you wanted to. Else, check out the free course and make an idea for yourself.

[41:58] Igor Kheifets: 

All right, guys, if you’re listening on our website, thelistbuildinglifestyleshow.com, there’s going to be a link down below. We’re going to take you to subscribers from scratch, we can find out more about this program. I highly recommend you get it. I went and I bought it myself.

If you’re listening on an audio platform like Spotify and like, then you can head over to igor.top/matt, that’s M-A-T-T dash Subscribers. Yeah, Matt dash subscribers, a bit of a handful, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

So, we’re going to go ahead and wrap this up, before we finish, any last piece of advice?

[42:48] Matt Giaro:

I think I dropped some very interesting insights and thank you very much, Igor, for your time, for this interview, and yeah, always been a huge fan, so thank you very much.

[43:01] Igor Kheifets: 

Awesome, man. Well, thank you for being here, thank you for doing this and for hanging out with me, really appreciate it.

I also want to pick your brain, maybe on a different episode about how the heck do you produce 60 courses?

[43:14] Matt Giaro:

I’m 100 right now, so.

[43:18] Igor Kheifets: 

Oh, really? Damn it. I had outdated data for my intro. OK, well, we’ll get that up to date then. So, Matt, thank you again. And until next time we chat, have a good one.

[43:31]
Thank you for listening to The List Building Lifestyle. Get access to the previous episodes, transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also, remember to claim your free copy of my best-selling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list buildings starting from scratch, plus I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com now to claim your free package!