Robert Kiyosaki and Anik Singal have teamed up to promote a new course by Lurn Inc. It’s called Email Startup Incubator. If you click on any of their ads and sign up for their webinar, you’ll have to listen to Anik yap about email marketing for two hours. How it’s the greatest online business model and anyone can do it, even if you’re a complete idiot with no skills or product or anything really. All it takes is a few simple steps. Scroll down for my review.
Here’s the mile-high overview. Throw up a simple one-page website that offers people something free in exchange for their email. This could be an eBook or a report or video case study or anything else, right? Then drive paid traffic to this page. A certain percentage of ’em are gonna opt-in to your list. Have the software you’re using redirect them to an affiliate offer you’re promoting. Whether or not they buy, pepper them with more emails that have more affiliate links to more offers.
Can it work? Absolutely. Especially if you’re a world-class marketer like Anik Singal. Now, will it work for you? Probably not. But if it did, I agree, amazing business. One of the most scalable, hands-free models that exists. You can use technology to automate everything and, once you have a winning ad campaign, just spend more to make more, right? And you get left alone. No dealing with customers or suppliers or Amazon’s legal department or anyone else, really. So it’s actually very passive.
Email Startup Incubator costs nine hundred and ninety-seven dollars. There’s all kinds of modules and swipes and templates and tools and bonuses. Strong offer, fairly priced. Which is no surprise. This is, after all, how Anik sells a bazillion different courses under the Lurn umbrella. But here’s why I don’t think you should buy this program. One, and I hate to be dramatic, but email marketing’s dying. Are you or are you not unsubscribing from just about every newsletter and guru list you’re on? Yeah, me too.
Two, you’d literally be making money as a professional spammer. “Gee, you know what I hope happens today? I hope somebody cons me into joining their email list so they can bombard me with daily emails to buy more junk I don’t need, just so they can make easy money on the internet,” said nobody ever. Which is why I’m one of the only bloggers who doesn’t ask you to opt-in to anything. I don’t like being spammed with emails and so I don’t wanna build a business around doing that to others.
Three, odds are you’ll spend more building your email list than it’ll make ya. Solo lists are trash. Facebook and Google and YouTube ads are dominated by guys like Anik and Robert Kiyosaki, who’ve got deeper pockets and better everything than you: ads, copywriting, squeeze pages, tripwires, follow-ups, sales pages, you name it. What’s that? “Ba-ba-but Katie, that’s why Anik includes all those swipe files and clonable pages inside Email Startup Incubator,” you say? Ah, that brings me to my next point.
Four, whaddya suppose happens when four thousand people just like you buy this course and all start using those same exact assets? Saturation, that’s what. And so, even if it did work in the beginning, for the first few peeps or whatever, the returns just keep diminishing until nobody can win. To summarize, email marketing is becoming less effective by the day, it feels icky, it’s tough to get a return on ad spend, and these copy and paste programs aren’t helping with that. So yeah, it’s a no for me.
