September closed at $14.3k. Roughly 91% of those sales came through one boring system: email.
I'm a solo founder from the Netherlands with five products. For years, I was great at building and terrible at selling. You launch, nothing sells, and you build the next one. Often the product wasn't the problem. Nobody saw it.
Email is how I got out. This is the short version, in the order you build it.
Phase 1: The free download that gets you emails
Nobody gives you their email for "updates". And definitely not for a "newsletter". People give their email for something useful, right now: a checklist, a template, a short plan.
It solves a pain your customers already feel.
It's useful in ten minutes. Not a 60-page ebook.
It's the first step toward what you sell.
It gives away more than feels comfortable.
My Dutch gymnastics platform brings in about five new leads a day this way.
Phase 2: The 5 emails that build trust
People buy from people they know, like and trust. These five emails take a stranger through those steps, without you:
Welcome (right away): who you are and why you care.
Question (day 2, optional): one click that splits your list.
Confession (day 4): something that went wrong, and what it taught you.
Open door (day 7): "What are you stuck on?" I answer every reply myself.
Offer (day 10): then, and only then, sell.
After that: one useful email every 5 or 6 days, for a year. Three help, one sells. My 7-year subscriber didn't buy because of one great email. She bought 16 courses at once because I was still in her inbox when she was ready.
Phase 3: The offer
One product, one page, one button, one reason to buy now. Send one reminder the day before it closes. My "friendly reminder" email brought in another 46 clicks.
Phase 4: The checkout
The easiest money sits at the checkout. An order bump brought me €2,401 in one year, a one-click upsell €976. The buyer was already paying. Most founders never add that simple checkbox.
Phase 5: Bring people in
Traffic comes last on purpose: build the bucket before you pour in the water. Google does most of the work for me. I write deep blog posts of 3,000 to 4,000 words, and one of my businesses ranks almost entirely on one single post. Socials are where people learn to trust you. Every post points to your signup box.
Phase 6: Keep it running
None of this should depend on your memory. Every email is sent by a trigger: when X happens, do Y. Ten minutes a month to rewrite your weakest email, and clean your list every few months.
It took me eight years to make this true. You can start this week.
The full playbook has every template, my real emails and subject lines, 7 ways this breaks and a 7-day build sprint: read the full email marketing playbook.
Questions? Ask them below. I read every reply 🤝
