Hi Reader, The world's largest captive crocodile, Cassius, died in Greenland, Australia, earlier this month. Croc experts say Cassius lived for a whopping 120 years. That’s a good inning for anyone, never mind a hungry croc. Now, I’ve always had an odd fear of crocodiles. I love open-water swimming, and the idea of wading into a lake only to be pulled under by an 18-foot saltwater monster terrifies me. Am I irrational? Certainly. I live In a leafy Irish town 1000s of miles from the nearest crocodile, unless you count Dublin zoo. The thing… is a crocodile ate my business model earlier last year. And its name is the Google algorithm. The hungry algo, in fear of its nemesis (The US Justice Department), devoured all the traffic of smaller publishers like me. As I write this, it’s also in the middle of digesting traffic from big-name publishers. SEOs for Forbes, Wall Street Journal and CNN are all dealing with Google de-indexing thousands of their pages. Moreover, Google engineers say they can’t roll back or change their algorithm, even if they wanted to. Good thing I know how to swim. I jumped out of the water once I saw my traffic stats sinking and the SERPS flooding with AI drivel. I canceled my subscription to half a dozen SEO tools, said goodbye to content optimization, and sold off some sites. This year, I pushed hard writing on social, growing my email lists, and helping business owners with their content strategy. I’ve two big advantages here: I’ve spent years writing online and I worked as a content strategy for a big corporation before I got into the online publishing game. My business model is croc—proof. Perhaps you didn’t wade deep into SEO like me? Well, consider if a croc is lurking in the water, and looking to chow down. Writing a book is one way of pivoting a business. You can use it to land clients, public speaking gigs, and sell consulting. Or to start an author career. If that's a 2025 goal, you'll need this Write Publish Profit Bundle. It contains over $6,000 of writing courses and tools for $97. If you're pursuing a different business model, like say consulting or content strategy, I can help you directly. This week, I'm offering a 60-minute consult for readers of this list who want to add $3-5k to their business. I've 10 spots open. |
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Hi Reader, I was sitting in a pub a few days ago with a copy of The Power Broker by Ron Chernow. A man sitting beside me said, “Can you write a book report on that for tomorrow?” He was joking about the size of the book. It’s over 1200 pages. In between scoffing mince and polishing off a cheeseboard, I’ll spend the next few days making inroads on it. Wish me luck, I could still be reading it next Christmas. Here are the 5 best books I read in 2025 (4 new, one old). Shattered by Hanif Kureishi...
Hi Reader, I wanted to make a nice side income selling online courses back in 2015. So, I subscribed to email lists of the net’s biggest marketers to see how they promoted their wares. Before Netflix and X fame, Ramit Sethi was a big online course guru. I liked reading Ramit’s emails. I could tell he wrote them himself. And even though I’m from Ireland, I enjoyed his contrarian American-style take on personal finance. Ramit launched various online business courses over email every month. His...
Hi Reader, Designing a landing page trips many people up. I was on a call with a marketer who presented a landing page that looked like….a Gingerbread house! She explained to Zoom attendees, “Visitors can click on the windows on my house. We'll send them a PDF if they get the right one.” The team never signed off on her landing page. You see… A good landing page either sells or converts. It’s not a puzzle. And it’s not a work of art. Send traffic to your landing page from social media or paid...