Lesson 0: Work Backwards from Your Goal

Written by Noah Kagan at www.OkDork.com

Right now I’m on a United plane cramped sitting next to a fat guy en route to New York City.

And hopefully wherever you are in the world you’re more comfortable than me.

What if I told you to meet me for lunch at 12pm tomorrow in New York City?

This is what you’d probably do:

  1. Ask where we’re getting tacos
  2. Look up directions on Google Maps
  3. Figure out if you should get a taxi / fly / hyperloop / ride your bike / use subway

After all this, you’re finally sitting across from me enjoying delicious tacos 🙂

Now what does that have to do with growing an email list?

To grow your email list you have to know where you want to go and plan the most efficient route to get there. Figure out your daily email target and then the ways to get there. It could be optimizing your conversion rate, guest posting, advertising, courses like this one, free books, public relations, podcasting, etc…

It’s hard to figure out which way(s) to go. In Email1K, we’ll tell you the most effective methods and how exactly to do them.

We are here to help but YOU have to commit 30 minutes every Monday and Thursday to doing the work. That’s when we’ll email out the expert lesson.

If you are not willing to do the work for your mailing list, please unsubscribe now.

Good, got rid of all the vegans. KIDDING. Got rid of all the people not cut out for hard work, like crossfitters.

Haha, okay now that I’ve offended everyone left. Now let’s get to work.

It’s absolutely critical to remember this: If you don’t take action on each expert lesson, your list won’t grow.

Today is “Lesson 0.” Before we jump into tactics and strategies, you first have to know where you are and where you are going.

Lesson 0 Activity:

We’ve created a simple spreadsheet to help you visualize where you are going. This is the exact exercise I did when I made my email list my #1 focus in 2014.

This is designed to be a simple exercise to help you see what your daily goal is for new email subscribers. Each Email1K lesson will put your daily goal that much closer.

  1. Open the Email1K planning spreadsheet
  2. Download the Excel file
  3. Change the fields in blue

Just focus on doubling your list, if you’re at 100 let’s get you to 200. Or if you’re at 5,000 let’s get you to 10,000. The point is: Learn the fundamentals of your growth engine so you can repeat it.

Now I want you to do 2 things:

1) Leave a comment here about what your daily email goal is!

The more you set your intention, the more likely you are to get it.

2) I want you to print out your # and put it somewhere you’ll see it everyday for the next 30 days! If you’re adventurous, post it in the Facebook group (VIP members only).

Get to work.

Love,
Noah “hot sauce” Kagan

P.S. Stay tuned for Thursday’s lesson where we help you increase your conversion rate.

890 thoughts on “Lesson 0: Work Backwards from Your Goal

  1. Konrad

    Pumped for this one. Daily target for my travel blog (worldventureproject.com) on how to travel more, and travel better, even with a career = 45.

    Let’s get it.

    Reply
  2. Ramon Sanchez

    First things first, you have helped bring tacos back into my world, “Thanks Noah!”, this alone has introduced additional time being spent on cardio to offset the delicious calories…

    My daily goal is 7

    Reply
    1. Terez

      You’ve convinced me to have tacos for lunch today, Ramon. I’ll pretend that Noah is sitting across the table from me. 🙂

      Reply
    1. Will

      You’re not alone – mine is 1 as well; however, want to quickly try to increase that to 5/day. Hoping this course and info can get me there soon!

      Reply
  3. Judy MacNamee

    Noah,
    I was confused as to my daily email. Are these the ones actually coming in to me for business? If so, I have a Long way to go. I changed my numbers for my email subscribers…wanting to really get this going!
    thanks for all your help and support…I am definitely IN for this!

    Judy

    Reply
  4. Trevor Page

    My daily goal is 128

    Seems a bit ridiculous for me, but I suppose that’s what this course is all about. If I can hit that goal, then I’ll be doing a happy dance 😉

    Looking forward to some HARD work!

    Reply
  5. magdalena

    So glad to be here. Right now my daily goal to target 3 new people. Great place to start.
    Upwards from here right?!?

    Reply
  6. Howard Hermes

    I have a new website with low traffic and only 3 current subscribers…so my goal is to average 2 subscribers a day for next 30 days and that will get my email list to 63.

    Reply
  7. Niels

    My daily target is 198, based on your spreadsheet.

    But… your excel template doesn’t really work for my case: I have a list of 6,000 built up slowly over time. Currently adding 9 subscribers per day, to double my list in 30 days I need to either grow my daily traffic by 2200% or take my conversion rate from 10% to 208% 🙂

    So instead, I’m making it my goal to double my conversion rate and quadruple my traffic, which gives me a daily target of 72. That would grow my list by 30% in a month, which would be a fantastic result.

    Reply
  8. Eduardo

    According to the spreadsheet, I have a 0 new mails daily goal (Sad Panda)- It’d be more accurate to get 1 or 2 a week. It’s a site for my mobile games-

    So I’m gonna say: Daily Goal = 1 (or at least 0.25)

    Reply
  9. Marjorie

    I’m with you Hitesh. I have a couple dozen emails left over from old sites/projects related to my current project but other than that I am starting from scratch. From my old traffic (with not much intention or goals for SEO and SM) I think I can get a consistent 1-2 per day so I am basing my numbers on that.

    Reply
  10. William Mize

    Interesting spreadsheet.
    My “Daily Email Collect” is less than one per day.
    Since most of us are using Google Analytics to measure traffic and visits, it might be better suited to use their terms, such as “Sessions”, “Users” and “Page Views”.

    My Daily Email Target?

    Three!

    Reply
  11. Holger

    May daily goal is 1 subscriber. I have 19 right now.
    I have to up my conversion rate from 0.37% to 0.97% which doesn’t look like it should be too hard. Or I could grow my traffic from ~65/day to ~170/day. This doesn’t sound too hard either. My traffic used to be at around 150/day but I haven’t written as much as I should do. And I don’t market my free email course as hard as I should.

    If you guys want to learn how to create responsive websites in a free 5 day email course please have a look here: http://5minutenpause.com/responsive_web_design_course/

    Thank you.

    Reply
  12. Geoff

    Divide by zero. D’oh!

    Okay, well since I don’t have a list, and we need to start somewhere, we’ll say my daily goal is 1.

    Reply
  13. Kutiba Senusi

    Today I’m starting at Zero, by the end of 2014 (so December) I would like to have 200 email subscribers.

    Reply
  14. MamaRed

    To get myself off my butt and into action, I’m choosing 3/day for now. Goes against my “think big and succeed” mentally and am choosing something smaller to build my success muscles!

    Laugh lots, Love more!
    MamaRed

    Reply
  15. Salma

    Right now I have 0 emails because I just started this project. After my first post, when the website is set up, I would like to have at least 2 emails within the first 3 weeks or 5 emails after the first month. By the end of the second month I would like to have 20 emails and by the end of the third month I would like to have 62 emails.

    Reply
  16. Dean

    Mine is 4. I tripled my list last week from roughly 40 to 120 but that’s the benefit of a small list!
    Just need to launch the site now 😉

    Reply
  17. Colin Gray

    Alright, let’s give this a go. And I’m definitely not a crossfitter btw…

    Daily target is 10 emails.

    Looks high given current growth, but then who ever got anywhere not aiming high 🙂

    Reply
  18. Lee Trends

    Mentioned this in the Facebook group, but I’m starting from 0, so the calculation excel wouldn’t really make sense for me.

    I have however decided to break down my original goal total over the next few months.

    So goal set for 16 / day.

    Reply
  19. Mike Oppland

    Hi. Thanks for the tips on building an email list. I would like to increase my email list to at least 10 per day. I don’t have many email subscribers because I haven’t focused too much on it yet. Hopefully I can get 10 per day to start and then grow from there.

    Thanks,

    Mike

    Reply
  20. Israel García

    Hey !!

    This is fine, I am building my list 50 prospects daily … and really growing fast, the sheet tells me to make 100 …

    interesting … but is not the list growth but the growth of a truly segmented list …

    I will follow your steps to see where they take me.

    Greetings.

    Reply
  21. Vivian

    Eh, I don’t even have a legitimate list yet. By “legitimate” I mean people who subscribed to it. The 25 people on my lists are those with whom I’ve been in email contact with.

    How can a person who doesn’t have a list complete this assignment? (I actually tried entering 1 in the ‘current email list’ field).

    Reply
  22. Marc

    Current list is 255 people. To double that to 510 people I need to get 9 subscriptions per day. I’m currently getting about 1 every other day. Time to step it up!

    Reply
  23. Karli Kelley

    I haven’t been able to get one person to leave me an email, so anything we do here has got to be an improvement! My goal is to have 100 emails in the next 30 days to start with and then grow from there.

    Reply
  24. David Aska

    Hi everyone!
    I am just at the beginning so I currently have zero email (I just created my website). Ending the month with 20 people would already be worth some tacos 🙂

    Thanks Noah for the great work, thinking about taking the monthly1k course soon!

    Reply
  25. Lea

    Looking forward to growing our list and supplying more hungry people with BBQ. Even if its not tacos, it’s still delicious 😉

    Looking to hit: 35k in 2015

    Reply
  26. Alexandra Santiago

    We haven’t launched our site yet so we’re at 0!

    Using the lessons taught in Email1K and applying them to when we start capturing emails in Nov.

    Goal will be 100 emails in 1 month.

    Reply
  27. pramod

    I would like to increase the conversions of my list and take my email list of approx 5000 to obviously something higher, working on those metrics today

    Reply
  28. Devin

    Goal is 24/day. This will increase our subscriber count by 5% in 30 days. We’ve been building this list slowly for 6 years so aiming to double our list’s monthly growth rate from 2.5% to 5% seems a more appropriate goal than 2x the total.

    Reply
  29. Rich

    Other than two of my own email addresses (for testing), I have one. My daily goal is to get to 10 new per day, but 5 per day initially would be a great start.

    Reply
  30. Michael

    1 per day would be a great start since I’m starting from zero mails, almost zero visitors and therefore zero conversion.

    Reply
  31. Stephanie

    Haven’t launched the new website yet so current emails are at 0. My goal for the first month is 25 doubling each month after that. Current daily goal is 1 email/day.

    Reply
  32. Kalle

    Goals:
    Improve the daily traffic from 10 to 100 visitors
    Improve the conversion from 2% to 20%

    Soon launching an iPhone app and a website that will show you the recipes you can make with the ingredients you already have at home.
    Maybe you guys can help out reaching my goals by visiting http://blog.ingredientmatcher.com/
    =)
    Tips for improving the conversion are very much appreciated 🙂 just hit reply here or contact me from the blog

    Looking forward to this course! Good luck everyone!

    Reply
  33. trisha

    OK. I have no list. I have 90 Amazon customers and 10 Facebook fans.
    So let’s set a target of converting 25% of them to my list, and doubling the list every week for the next month. That will give me a 200 person list

    Reply
  34. Michele

    Just getting started with this, so my current mailing list is close to zero. Therefore targeting 100 people by the end of 30 days. Goal is 3 e-mail/day.

    Reply
  35. Helena

    I haven’t even officially launched or begun building my list yet so Imma roll with 1 per day! Reachable and yet, more than the double of zero – Boom!

    Reply
  36. Shenz

    Daily Target: 10 <<< that's what I'm shooting for. I have high traffic but very low e-mail conversion.

    Let's all nail this thing together.

    PS: Is there an FB Group for accountability, etc? =)

    Reply
  37. Marti Owen

    Goal for Today – Find an email service!
    Goal for Tomorrow – Find out how to update my websites to capture email addresses!
    Goal for Wednesday – Update my Websites!

    Reply
  38. Kathryn

    Why I’m here: I am in process of creating a new wordpress site with email collection (and the content to send back out to all the new emails!) My website designer asked me to join you all here at email1k (smart girl!). I do have a self-created weebly page with an average of just under 40 daily unique visitors over last month. I don’t utilize an email list (yet). I am estimating I have 150 people who will quickly opt-in as soon as I ask them to. (that is a low estimate from all my contacts.) As an initial goal – I need 5 emails collected a day. This goal will change once I actually figure out how many really opt in…

    Reply
  39. Jesse

    Daily goal from sheet is 2, but we just launched and I’d love to be at 1000 by end of year, which puts it at 13/day!

    My Daily Goal is 2
    My Daily 1K Goal is 13

    Reply
  40. Camilo

    I’m just starting out and have the incredible number of FIVE people subscribed hahaha
    My goal is to get 2 new people every day. I’m already using Sumo.me List Building and need to change my copy to see if more designers sign in. I will do this today!

    Reply
  41. Pierce

    Since I currently have 0 email subscribers my goal is to learn the basics and attain 100 subscribers, and if I blow that goal out of the water, 1000! Let’s boogie 🙂

    Reply
  42. Sheri McNally

    My goal is 100 since I only just got started. I am almost done with my website and then I will be moving my blog from Blogger to my new website. My goal is also to have my website up and running. I am so excited!!

    Reply
  43. Grant

    I wonder if this email will be the first of its kind. lol
    Maybe I was on the same flight you were, or had way too much coffee, but I think I missed the Pre-requite with you course:
    1). Should already have a website
    2). Should already have an email list.

    If these two points are true, then it looks like I wouldn’t get much use from you course.
    I have a ways to go to get a website, let alone an email list.
    thanks for your time and I apologize for my not understanding what one should already have prior to signing up.

    Kind regards

    Reply
  44. Francine

    Working on website launch… will apply lessons post-launch and aim for 2/day for the first month and increase my target goal accordingly.

    Reply
  45. Alan

    We’re not launching our website until January 2015 but need to build an email list.

    The goal is 50 email addresses by end of the month.

    Reply
  46. Bruce

    My goal is 333 email subscribers a day … [GULP!] Just posted my visible reminder so I can’t forget it!

    My site’s relaunch is 10/27/14, and I’ve got some GREAT content planned. I’ve also got a Dr. Oz appearance that’s taping this week that will air during November sweeps. I’m just hoping to get them to share my blog information during the segment (which will help me reach this goal)! Regardless — 333 email subscribers a day seems like a big number. I’m looking forward to learning more tips on how to make this email goal more doable!

    Cheers!

    Bruce

    Reply
  47. Ali

    Just working on getting my site setup. Currently at looking at a goal of 5 emails per day to start.

    Thanks for the spreadsheet AppSumo!

    Reply
  48. Scott

    Well since my numbers are still really low it won’t give me a goal per day but I’m still trying to double it in the next 30 days, from 6 to 12.

    Scott

    Reply
  49. Bryan

    Daily target: 1

    I have a total of 35 subscribers from over the course of a few months. 1 per day is really more than 2x, but I also haven’t been trying very hard either.

    Reply
  50. Revka

    My site is new – official launch is November – so am working to build from scratch. Currently have 6 signups. Would like to have 500 by end of Nov.

    Reply
  51. Susan Brandt

    I can’t wait to reach my goal of 156 daily subscribers! I look forward to learning your tactics and strategies!

    Reply
  52. Mark lane

    I can’t get the spreadsheet to let me edit anything. I am on a Mac if that helps you explain it to me any better. Im currently at only 300 for the list, aiming for 600.

    Reply
  53. hallicious

    Current list = 1,875
    Goal = 3,750 in 30 days

    Daily Subscriber Target = 63 Emails per day

    Email Conversion Target = 27.4%
    Traffic Target = 9,500

    Reply
  54. Don Carrington

    OK, site not launched yet. 30 day goal: Stop shaky knees, launch within 8 days, get at least 1 per day after that. 0 at this time = 22 and active site in 30!

    Reply
  55. Richard Goward

    I am starting out with an email list I have never sent to. So I would want to get 1 person who replies or subscribes. I really need some tutoring on the process before this list starts. Am I sending the prospect to a landing page? What are the particulars of that page? Once I get a subscriber, what it next. Blogs?, more emails?, specials? Do I need to have all this set up in advance? It would be good to see the whole process before starting.
    Total newbie, but gotta start somewhere.
    Thanks

    Reply
  56. Marie Grace Berg

    This is really embarrassing, but I’m starting a new venture and want to grow a new audience from there. So basically, I’m starting from zero, with a goal of 1000 subscribers in 30days, which means a daily goal of 33! Lord have mercy! However, I believe in hard work, and I’m ready to roll my sleeves and get to work!

    Reply
  57. luis

    I want 5 subscribers a day. By the way , I invite you the Best Tacos you could ever eat from México City , I promise it and I will pay the account !

    Reply
  58. Mark

    Well, at the moment my email list is 2, but the’re rather dodgy! So as I’m pretty new to this stuff, 50 and never built an email list in my life, I’m going for 400-500 REGULAR, SIGNED UP visitors by this time next year. And I’m gonna have FUN doing it!

    Reply
  59. Cori

    Hi all…my daily email target is 21 …. but I don’t get a lot of traffic at the moment, so I think I need to actually focus on Target Traffic which is: 310 Thanks for the great spreadsheet…printed out, on my fridge!

    Reply
  60. Rory

    Sooooo our daily target is 508 emails a day!

    Gotta admit it’s a daunting number which will take a big boost in traffic and conversion rates to achieve.

    Let’s go! 🙂

    Reply
  61. Sarah Mueller

    My target is 17 per day. I’ve already seen a tremendous jump from an average of 1 per day to about 4 since I installed List Builder and I’m still tweaking and hoping to get to 4% conversion which would be just right.

    That spreadsheet was incredibly helpful – thanks!

    Reply
  62. Nathan

    Spreadsheet spit out 11 as a daily target. As I’ve stalled at the same number of subscribers for years (!), I’ll be amazed if I hit that, but anything’s possible—including actually doing something strategic to raise that number!

    Reply
  63. Javier

    I am about to start distributing my documentary film and I want to build a list for this film, some products I want to develop around it, and to get this people to become my followers for future documentaries.

    I currently have 93 subscribers. I don’t have tons of traffic to my website really… like a few people a day between 3-8. so I might have to increase traffic to the site first??

    Reply
  64. Maria

    Starting from zero – well, three. New site, and starting from scratch. Goal is 100 by EOY. 78 days left. One a day too small, two a day exceeds goal.

    Daily target: 3

    Reply
  65. Janine

    By Daily Email Collect I am assuming you mean how many subscribers actually click and open the newsletter?

    goal is 2 daily emails

    However, I get a #Div/0 error message in my worksheet in cell B27 (Target Traffic)

    Reply
    1. email1k Post author

      Daily Email Collect is how many new email subscribers you get. If you’re using Double Opt In, you would only count subscribers who confirm their address. Make sure all of the fields are complete to avoid errors.

      Reply
    2. Will Gibbons

      Janie,

      I had the same issue for a minute. Try changing the ‘Daily Email Collect’ box to a number greater than 0. Even .1 will make give a result rather than error.

      Good luck!

      Reply
    3. Ismail Degani

      Hey Janine, the reason is because your target conversion rate (B24) is zero.

      To fix, change your daily email collect (B4) to something greater than zero. If it is in fact zero, make it 0.01 or something small.

      Reply
  66. Will Gibbons

    Alright, here we go! I’m not going to try to just double my email subscribers because I’ve only got 3. I just got SumoMe and all relevant apps installed and did some needed branding work on my blog! First time around I wasn’t able to get the SumoMe installed properly for who knows why.

    My goal is to get my first 50 subscribers in the next month. I’ve got 3,000+ connections on twitter, 3,000+ on Linkedin and 500 or so on Facebook as well as another 350 or so on Pinterest and a hundred or so on G+ and Instagram… with just shy of 7,000 people who might make their way over and subscribe, 50 people is only .007%… maybe I should aim a bit higher, but regardless… SO EXCITED to get going on this!

    Mad thanks to Noah and AppSumo team!

    Reply
  67. Bradley Shively

    I’m just getting started / launching my site. I don’t have much (any?) traffic yet, so I am shooting for 1 subscriber/day. If I landed somewhere in the 30-50 subs range by end of month, I’d be very happy.

    Reply
  68. Jonathan

    My new website isn’t finished or up yet. I have opened an account with MailChimp but have no idea how to use it yet so maybe I have the cart before the horse. That being said, I have decided to stick with this so I can learn. I have also added a worksheet to the spreadsheet provided and am going to start with my current client list and enter Names and email addresses there so I can stay with you folks.

    Current List – 0
    Starting with 2 today…

    Reply
  69. Ismail Degani

    Our SnapJet portable film printer needs a lot of kickstarter support to get off the ground!

    Just put up our website, and our list is currently at 40. We’re going to try for 1-2 per day (though secretly I am hoping for 10 per day).

    Reply
  70. Christopher Lynn

    My goal is to add one per day. I have lots of social media connections so I am working to get those on my list.

    Reply
  71. Sean

    Basically have a small list (250) but no idea about how many read or follow through. Most I know personally and will talk to directly as part of (old-style) marketing process.
    So doubling even this small number will be useful.

    Reply
  72. Stephanie

    I’ve got a 342 person and I’m ready to accelerate this 🙂 But at least in the next 30 days, I’m going for 684 total subscribers. I’ve got 11 daily emails to collect.

    Reply
  73. Hazel

    Sorry, I get a little confuse. I’m suppose to change only the blue columns right?
    This is what I suppose to fill in my CURRENT list?

    Add your # of Email Subscribers (I’ve only 7 people in my list.)
    Add your # of Daily Email Subscribers (No new email collected on daily basis.)
    Add your # of Daily Visitors (Almost no visitors to my squeeze page.)

    I get error messages and 0 in some columns.

    Where to fill in the goal?

    Reply
  74. JC

    current: 12,854

    To double it in 6 months, I need 107 per day.

    Currently getting ~20 per day. I’ma shoot high, and aim for 107/daily optins.

    Reply
  75. Jessica

    Well, considering that I have a list of…ahem…1…

    And my website is under development; landing page drawing <1 person per day currently.

    The spreadsheet doesn't output a usable number, so I'm going to aim for 3/day as my goal.

    Reply
  76. Dave

    So I realize this is one of those “first-world problems” in that I’ve got a great list to start with, but I thought I’d share anyway. I’m at 10,800 subscribers, so my target to double is over 20K. That means I need to go from ~12 subscribers a day to ~300 a day. Hmm…

    My conversion rate sucks at the moment…less than 1%. BUT, because my site is mostly advertising/affiliate supported, I have to balance opt-in optimization with affiliate click optimization. I have added a pop up and tweaked my copy on other subscriber forms, but I suspect I’ll have to do (a lot) more to reach this goal.

    Reply
  77. Professor Blue

    My daily goal is 3! 3 is the magic number, yes it is.

    Also — the spreadsheet (Excel) doesn’t show B27, Target Traffic. Just shows #DIV/0!

    Which means something something but can anyone tell me what that something could be?

    Reply
  78. Brian

    According to the worksheet, my daily goal is 1. Honestly, since I am starting out at 31 susbscribers, I think that goal is pretty reasonable. 🙂

    Reply
  79. Steve

    The fact Sumome actually captured four emails for me already is amazing! It means I really can build a list. So my goal is 1 per day or 30 to start. After that it will be time to pour on the rocket fuel.

    Reply
  80. Lauren

    My daily email list goal is 10 emails a day. If I can do this for the next 30 days I will have 300 emails on my mailing list which would be so super!

    Reply
  81. John

    My target is real specific (Physician’s, Pharmacists and other high income healthcare professionals). Also, I’m collecting name, email and phone which is more difficult. I’ve been doing it for one month and collected 70 subscribers. My goal for the upcoming month is 90 new subscribers or 160 total subscribers.

    Reply
  82. Peter

    daily goal 5
    just started the business… and now I want to start growing the list. first 5 will be a lot, and after a couple of months I’ll raise the goal

    Reply
  83. Mimika Cooney

    Thanks for the awesome tips Andrew Warner was right about you, yo rock! My goal is to get to 10,000 within 6 months. Just downloaded Kingsumo (I’m already an Appsumo customer).

    Have a fabulicious day!
    Mimika:)

    Reply
  84. Denis

    Doubling from 0 is…. 0?

    Ok Noah, I have to ignore for once what the spreadsheet told me (0) and put my own target to start: 1. 🙂

    Reply
  85. Michael Cary

    Thanks Noah,
    You are an inspiration.

    I launch my site 11/25
    My goal is 2 a day to start.
    Thank you for all the inspiration.
    Michael Cary

    Reply
  86. PJ

    Strange math is afoot. I have a lot of traffic (1100/day), and maybe a conversion every 3 days. So, with this:
    current: 9
    Daily: .33
    Visitors: 1100
    …. I need to do nothing to double. But I want more! So, I’m going to try to get 1/day at first, making my number 31.

    Reply
  87. Grant

    400 per day. Currently at 130-145 per day. Also reduce CPA from £0.6 to around £0.45. Happy with open &CTR as they are 70/23%!

    Reply
  88. Sarah

    I am starting at practically zero and desperately seeking ways to build my list. I am starting with a goal of 25 a day. I hope to explode that number.

    Reply
  89. Amanda

    I didn’t really understand your spreadsheet. I work with a lot of numbers, so I see what you were trying to do, but being a company that’s just starting out it doesn’t give much confidence when the spread sheet tells you that the Emails you Need -20
    Daily Email Target 0

    Just saying…. Hope this gets better. 🙂

    Reply
  90. Riley

    I have a subscriber list of 42. So my goal at this point is to get to 84. I think? Brand new at this, so… 🙂 I’ve never sent out an email to my list, so maybe another goal is to get one of those out, too?

    Reply
  91. Taylor Banks

    The list I’m attempting to double is a small list (for now), and as a result, my Daily Email Target is a puny 1 email per day. I _should_ be able to do that in my sleep. *kicks self in shin*

    Reply
  92. Taylor Banks

    After running through the spreadsheet with my newest and smallest list, I decided to go through the exercise with my largest and most valuable list.

    Sadly, my projected Daily Email Target for the bigger list is 124 emails/day. Yikes!

    That seems pretty unattainable… but then again, this is but lesson zero, so maybe I’ll just shut-up, sit back, and get schooled. 🙂

    Reply
  93. Neil Schultz

    I only have 4 current email subscribers. I don’t really obtain any new email subscribers, and my traffic averages around 350-500 per month. With such low numbers, the spreadsheet brought me to the PRINT ME! number of 0.

    Any help would be appreciated!

    Thank you,
    Neil

    Reply
    1. email1k Post author

      Hey Neil! Start with 1 a day. After 30 days you should aim to have 30+ email subscribers. In Lesson 2 you’ll see that 1 a day is a good number of you based on your traffic.

      Reply
  94. Hazel Longuet

    Well my list is really limited whilst I have over 10k social media followers I only have 9 on my email list as I didn’t focus on it at all until now. So I’m going to go gently and aim for 2 a day which would be a huge leap for me. Fingers crossed.

    Thanks for providing this free course Noah – it’s great.

    Reply
  95. Hazel Longuet

    Well my list is really limited whilst I have over 10k social media followers I only have 9 on my email list as I didn’t focus on it at all until now. So I’m going to go gently and aim for 2 a day which would be a huge leap for me. Fingers crossed.

    Thanks for providing this free course Noah – it’s great.

    Reply
  96. Joe

    I’m at 5 subscribers too. It’s a totally new site (not 100% ready) to curate funky music , with 0 traffic, and I got 5 of my friends to sign up for the list already.
    The spreadsheet says my goal is 0. I’ll shoot for 2 a day for 30 days.
    The spreadsheet is an excellent resource, thanks. I’m sure I can refer back to it when I have a real list and some traffic.

    Reply
  97. David Wilson

    Our WINE website is almost complete – we have 53 subscribed already through our landing page and the plan is to explode this number to have anywhere from 200-400K subscribers.

    Reply
  98. Lily

    My life coaching list is at 800, and I’d like that to be 2,000 by this time next year. So my daily goal is 2-3 a day. My copywriting list is at 100 and I’d like to double that in the next 30 days, so 3-4 a day!

    Reply
  99. Jason "J-Boom" Legaard

    My biz partner and myself are in the midst of launching our first product and currently have 18 email subscribers. We will shoot for 1 a day to get to 48 in 30 days. Nothing but gratitude and free tacos for life to you Noah for all the value you provide on the daily my friend.

    Sincerely,

    Jason

    Reply
  100. Dave

    I have a few sites and about 50 people spread over them, but some of them seem to be dead. In fact I am sure I saw mould growing on around 45 of them!

    For the purposes of this course I am going to concentrate on my PLR site. I got a thing called email Jeet to send emails (I am broke and this seemed a good way to do it and avoid monthly bills). But the software screwed up on its first release and constantly mailed people, bringing the small list of 27 down to a paltry 5 when people got pissed off with me. It’s all fixed and works great now.

    So, I want to grow that 5 into 5,000. Okay, 10 will do.

    So, I don’t know yet what steps we will be taking, whether this will suit a PLR site, yadda yadda… hence I am choosing a daily goal of 2. You can tell I use maths with broad strokes..

    All the best,
    Dave

    Reply
  101. Javier

    I’m Javier, tango pianist & composer. To double my list of 148 subscribers to 296, I’ve set my daily email goal in 5 – Thanks Noah for the course!

    Reply
  102. Michael La Ronn

    Well, I debated on even posting here since the rest of you are light-years ahead of me, but my daily goal would technically be 0.12 signups per day…but I’ll keep it to round numbers and say 1 signup.

    Reply
  103. Augusto

    We currently have 200 subscribers, registering at 2 a day. I want to get 13 a day since we have around 200 visits a day. That means 390 in a month… stretch!

    Reply
  104. Ika

    I am currently building my website, so currently I’ve got 0 traffic. I got 11 subscribers from offline resources (namely friends). My goal is a humble 1 email subscription a day.

    Reply
  105. Mark

    My goal is to convert 5 subscribers each day (150 in 30 days). My site is new so there will also be some effort in gaining traction for my target audience.

    Reply
  106. Yiannis Nik

    Currently I have 217 subscribers, I don’t think people subscribe on a daily basis so I have 0 there. And I’m not really sure how to measure my daily visitors 🙂

    Reply
  107. Nils

    I need a whooping 1,629 emails a day. Also by looking at the numbers it is very clear that this has to come from increased traffic and not conversions…

    Reply
  108. Willow Neilson

    I want 1,000 within 2 months. I have a list already but they are mixed up from people who had subscribed to my mailing list recently and those that were on my mailing list from before I heard of mailchimp etc. many of them are out of date so I am going to email the 4,000 I have that may specifically be interested in saxophone stuff (the subject of my site) and sign up for the new mailing list. After that I have a bunch of strategies I have to finally put in place to get subscribers of which I am sure we will all learn more… sorry to be complicated.

    Reply
  109. Kayla Bryson

    My email list is currently at 12, and the site gets about 500-800 visitors/month. I’m definitely at the baby stages of growth, but I feel totally happy about that. My goal for the next 30 days is to gain 1-2 email subscribers per day. Woo!

    Reply
  110. Roger Calhoon

    My traffic is extremely seasonal, this being the slow season.
    In October, to triple my email list in 30 days would require moving my conversion rate from 0.005 to 0.05.
    This time of year that rate would yield one new signup every second day.
    My goal for the next 30 days is 15 new signups, or 0.5 per day.

    The following 30 days I will push that up to at least 1 per day.

    Reply
  111. Mark

    Playing catch ups with the course, but my daily email target is 12! If you could do with some friendly motivational kick up your arse to help you move forward with your project, may that be writing your book, launching your business, starting a blog of changing jobs, sign up at http://www.markleruste.com for my free tips and strategies on how to do just that!

    Reply
  112. Melissa

    I have had my website for a year and a half but hav only looked at the possibilities an email list can have. As such I am just starting and don’t have anyone on my list (so the spreadsheet wouldn’t work for me as my values were 0.
    I would be happy if I could get even 5 people to sign up to my list in a week!

    Reply
  113. Dave Goodman

    Having just pulled back the curtain on this website, which is mainly for my drum students, and more generally for anyone interested in learning to be a better drummer, and not having done any particular kind of promotion yet beyond my social network friends, my email goal – as per this doubling exercise – is to get from 14 subscribers to 28 over the next 30 days, which means the “Daily Email Target” column displays “0”, but the true answer is 0.46666666666667 per day. I’ll be doing some strong promotion this month that will change these figures anyway, so it’ll be interesting to see. I guess, if the list number simply doubles each month, then that’s an all around win, no matter the numbers involved currently. Thanks very much for the exercise.

    Reply
  114. Michael Paul

    Got two my first day! I’d like to add two every day this week, and four everyday next week, then 8, 16, 32, until I hit a plateau.

    I’m also looking for guest bloggers in the Self Improvement market with active sites to trade content creation with!

    Reply
  115. Frank Barragan

    I have two Email Daily Goals (for two separate projects)
    Project A is 1 email daily
    Project B is 10 emails daily

    Reply
  116. Pierce Anthony

    I’m starting with zero emails and zero traffic since I’ve yet to launch my site, but I’m setting a daily goal of 5. I think that’s super doable but will adjust my expectations as needed 🙂 in fact, if anyone has any experience growing a list from zero I’d love to know what a reasonable 30 day goal is.

    Reply
  117. Ash

    333! That sounds like a lot. Looking at this, I’ll have to bump my traffic, my conversion rate is already pretty high. Let’s do this!!!

    Reply
  118. Elizabeth

    What if we don’t currently have any sign-ups from our site? We have a sign-up form but nobody uses it now, which is why I’m doing this course! For the projection sheet should we just put 1?

    Reply
  119. Wes Tidwell

    Ready to do this! Starting from SCRATCH. I have got Tom….my Mom…my girlfriend in the Niagara Falls area…and…yup that’s it. Want to be @ 1000 by the end of the year! To double what I have now will need 1 new sign up every 10 days. To get to 1000 by year end, need to push that to about 1 every 8 hours.

    Reply
  120. Alan

    Daily target is now 48 emails per day. I currently get anywhere between 4 and 10.
    So 48 per day – how??
    Looking forward to the rest of the course and discovering how to do this!
    thanks
    Alan

    Reply
    1. Paul

      Same!
      I only need 1 subscriber a day for 30 days to double my list. But seems like no-one’s visiting. I hope this course will help change that.

      Reply
  121. Alden Ryno

    Current: 0.
    Daily Goal: +3 engaged subscribers
    Monthly Goal: 75!
    Alden
    Xfitgen.com educating and curating the world of exercise, nutrition, and health!

    Reply
  122. Jay

    Currently at 350 subscribers. Looks like I need 12 per day to get to 700. Currently getting 1 or 2. This will be a challenge.

    Reply
  123. Heather

    My goal is to double my list from the current 16,113 subscribers (I started in 1999!) to 32,226 (but I’d be happy with 25,000). So according to the stats, I’ll need 537 new emails each day (currently I average 15-20/day). Gulp! I mean, woo hoo!

    Reply
  124. Peter Williams

    Currently at zero subscribers. Site not launched yet (just finished a landing page). Looking to get to 20 subscribers before launching the site. So I am aiming to add 1 a day for the next 28 days.

    Reply
  125. Kyle Skinner

    My name is Kyle. I run an online fitness and nutrition coaching company. My email list currently has 207 emails. The vast majority of those emails have been added by me doing the leg work, messaging people I know, inviting them to join one by one. I’ve nearly exhausted that method I think. I would love to get to 500 emails in 30 days.

    Reply
  126. sam

    The Email1K planning spreadsheet doesn’t work with numbers as small as mine. My list of current emails is 8, and I’m supposed to get -22 in the next 30 days. Guess I’ll shoot for 22 instead.

    Reply
  127. Iain Ryan

    I’m at stone-cold zero. My daily sign-up goal is 3 per day. I want to get to 100 before the end of the 30 days. I’m new to the space I’m working in (very new), but I think I can do this. I have all the back-end built.

    Reply
  128. Mariska

    Currently I have almost 300 subscribers, so in order to double that in the next 30 days, I need 10 new subscribers per day… I am lucky to get one or two per day at the moment, so I’m looking forward to learning how I can grow that!

    Reply
  129. James

    I’m just starting up a weekly newsletter on reducing procrastination.
    I’ve currently got 3 emails on my newsletter.
    The spreadsheet doesn’t like small numbers so I’ll shoot for 30 in the next 30 days.

    Reply
  130. Jake

    As a performing musician, I get most email subscribers via playing shows (which is not happening a lot right now). I am at 1145, and getting to 2000+ would be awesome (though then I need to start paying for Mailchimp).

    Reply
  131. Angela

    Spreadsheet set our daily target at 50. Would be good with 25 within 30 days. Just hired someone to help with more frequent marketing so we’re ready to grow.

    Reply
  132. Matt W

    It looks like my daily email goal is 1! Exciting, manageable, and now that I am installing SumoMe list builder on my website hopefully I can capture at a faster rate!

    Reply
  133. Elrond Burrell

    I heard of this from Noah’s interview on the Tim Ferriss Show podcast. I thought it was time to see what I could do with my blog subscriber numbers since I’ve been blogging for 1 year on a very niche subject: The Passivhaus Standard for buildings. I am currently on 288 email subscribers, so doubling would be 576. It might even be worth me putting out a product for sale at that point!

    Reply
  134. Brandon

    I’m trying to double my email list to whopping 210! Guest posts have been doing the best for me so far. I have 2 ready to go that should be posted in the next 7-10 days or so. I’m also going to run a giveaway, but I need the $$ to purchase the items first.

    Reply
  135. Dodie Jacobi

    Hey Noah – look forward to using your protocol – right after I get sumome’d up with a new site coming next week. Saving and reading and following along! Thanks for the great info, and really look forward to the impact of sumome!

    Reply
  136. Wasswa Samuel

    I am on 304. I need to collect 10 emails daily to double that. Its sounds tough because I have collected less than 10 emails over the past 2 months.

    Reply
  137. Miki

    Hi Noah, I’m at 6 at the moment, and would like to get to 66, which is 2 new subscribers per day.
    Thanks for the opportunity.

    Reply
  138. Yvonne M

    I’m with the some of the others I’ve got less than 200 subs at the mo, so by the end of 30 days I’d like that to be 500 or close as.

    Reply
  139. Paul

    Looking to go from 0 to 50 using your Tim Ferriss Keto newsletter method – selfie plus very low key invitation.

    Reply
  140. Carolina

    Hey! I’m in good company here! Thanks guys for being honest!
    I have so often felt like all my friends have like 10,000 subscribers or more (and they kinda do) so it’s nice to get with other people who are committing to doing this and are in a similar situation.
    Let’s do this!!

    Reply
  141. Ivana

    Hi,

    My current daily email collect is almost nothing, so everything more than that is great;) Well, exactly 0,267..So 1 new email per day is a start!

    Looking forward to the next lesson.

    Thanks

    Ivana

    Reply
  142. Matthew Woolhouse

    I have 2 subscribers for a learning language newsletter. I’ve never written a newsletter. I’ll aim for 30. 1 a day.

    Reply
  143. Omri Iram

    Right now I have ZERO email subscribers. My goal is 3 emails collected per day.

    I remember you’ve said that your CTR for email collection is about 1.5% so I’ll need about 200 visitors per day.

    Right now I have ZERO visitors and ZERO emails so it’s a nice goal for the next 3 months.

    Reply
  144. Dennis

    Currently 27 subscribers. Goal – 54 by the end of the month (1 new subscriber per day for June), 1000 subscribers by the end of the year.

    Reply
  145. Wendy

    My goal is 300 in a month, so 10 per day. SumoMe is powering my site and I have a lovely 7 day lifestyle detox called “Oh, f*ck it!” to lure them in!

    Reply
  146. Christina Rebuffet

    Hi guys,
    I’m catching up on the Email 1K program, so just now getting around to lesson 0, but here are my stats:

    Current email subscribers: 831
    If the aim is to double that, my target is 1662 subscribers in 30 days
    That means I need to have…28 subscribes per day for the next month.

    Oh dear…Noah, do you work miracles? 🙂

    Reply
  147. Kelvin Bramhall

    Also looking to go from 0 – 50 in a month, so my daily email goal is 2.

    I also tried the Tim Ferriss keto selfie method…. Currently had 0 responses but I am looking in to ways to get my posts shared and retweeted to reach a wider audience.

    Reply
  148. Noel

    Hi All,

    I have 0 subs at moment and as per program want 1k, so have a target of 333 per day…

    Wishing everyone best of Irish luck and lets hope the pot at the end of the rainbow in 30 days is filled with subscribers..

    Noel.

    Reply
  149. Simon Singh

    I currently have no email subscibers but would like at least 100 in the 30 days, I do have current customers and friends/family. I will also be sending out an email campaign to potential customers so if I can’t do more than 100 I am a pretty lame salesperson/marketing dude.

    Thanks

    Simon

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *