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Australian author Demelza Carlton joined us to talk about building her mailing list from very low to over 15,000 in just six months! We asked her to share with us exactly how she did it, how much it cost and how one would maintain a list that size once you’ve attracted oodles of subscribers. We also talked about her writing, publishing but not her fear of swimming with fish 😛
About our Guest
Demelza Carlton has always loved the ocean, but on her first snorkelling trip she found she was afraid of fish.
She has since swum with sea lions, sharks and sea cucumbers and stood on spray drenched cliffs over a seething sea as a seven-metre cyclonic swell surged in, shattering a shipwreck below.
She dabbles in photography so she can show some of the things she’s seen.
Demelza now lives in Perth, Western Australia, the shark attack capital of the world.
 
 
Questions and topics discussed:
- So what gave you this crazy idea to get 15,000 people on your mailing list in 6 months?
- Walk us through the process of getting 15k folks on the mailing list
- Where did the list start at?
- How did you plan this experiment?
- How much time and effort do you think you spent per ad?
- What do you offer in your promotions?
- Do you have cross overs between both the mermaid and the rock star series?
- How long are you autoresponder sequences?
- How often are you talking to them?
- Are you hitting them up when you have something to sell, or dropping a newsletter or what?
- Did you see any kind of surge in sales when the Lucifer show was airing?
- What mailing service do you use?
- You used to use mailchimp, what made you change?
- What are the differences between the two?
- Are these general signups, or does this include your ARC and beta reader teams?
- Do you even separate them out? How and why?
- What is your daily sign up rate?
- Were there different approaches to each series?
- Where else are you advertising your sign up promotions?
- Do you think you’d have had such success without such a large back catalogue?
- Will the Rock Star’s Wedding be the final book in the Romance Island Resort series?
- You have at least five romance series now covering mermaids, rock stars, medical paranormal… what is next?
- Last year you had some issues with your health, without going into specifics about the details of that can you tell us how if affected your writing and how you kept writing?
- You hit 15k. What number are you aiming for next year?
- What is your writing day like?
Links and mentions:
- Mailerlite.com <– the newsletter provider that Demelza uses
- Mailchimp <– the one she used to use
- Self Publishing Formula <– Mark Dawson’s facebook ads
- Your First 10k Readers <– Nick Stephenson’s mailing list building and facebook ads
If you have a second, an iTunes review would be VERY appreciated!
Join us next Thursday 7pm PST / 10pm EST
when we chat with Chance Carter
