UPDATE #3: 565 Email Subscribers,

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UPDATE #3: 565 Email Subscribers, Ending the Giveaway, Finding a Product Idea, Building a Proof of Concept, $108 in Book Pre-Sales, Holiday Vacation and a Big New Opportunity.
Dec 30th: The last couple of weeks have been pretty crazy on all afghanistan telemarketing data so let’s take this one step at a time.

How to get 565 email subscribers, pre-launch a product to them and earn $108 in 2 weeks.
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To start off this update: I was successful in validating this business idea.

For now, let’s go back a few steps and talk about how I got there.

How I built a list of 565 email subscribers in 2 weeks.

A total of 513 people entered my gear giveaway.

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On top of that, my manual list building efforts with friends & acquaintances had grown to 52 subscribers (minus duplicates from those who entered the giveaway).

That brought me up to a total of 565 email subscribers.

We ended the last update with the gear giveaway (a GoPro and Osprey pack) still open. I had secured one influencer promotion on Instagram from a friend who’s a talented outdoor photographer in California—perfect demographic for me.

His Instagram post (and giveaway link in his bio) drove in 38 new email subscribers who entered my gear giveaway after seeing his post. 484 people liked his post promoting the giveaway, so 38 people joining would be a 7.85% conversion from like-to-signup. This is great considering I was leveraging an existing relationship that didn’t cost me anything.

What about the other Instagram influencers I didn’t already know?

Alex Gorham, one of the other Instagram influencers I reached out to (in the last update above) also entered the gear giveaway on the last day it was open. Alex didn’t promote the giveaway very heavily after joining (or post on his account about it) and since there were only hours left by time he joined, I didn’t feel comfortable asking him to do more.

More importantly, as one of my readers Sid Jacobson pointed out in the comments section below—I had just established a little bit of trust and rapport with Alex by offering to interview him for my upcoming website (a little bit of value).

Immediately asking him to share my giveaway would likely explode all of that trust I had just built. It would seem a little disingenuous given my website doesn’t actually exist yet, right? Major no-no on my personal business ethics, so I’m glad I didn’t go through with it.

If I were to use this cold Instagram influencer outreach strategy again, I’d give myself way more lead time and reach out to the people I want to promote my giveaway weeks before the giveaway even started. I’d build more of a relationship with them before making an ask—on top of that, I’d ask them directly how I can provide value to them & their business.

I’d get my website live before reaching out, that way I’d be able to immediately follow through with the interview questions and have a published piece of content for us both to promote.

Important: In your business, getting more established people to help you build your own audience will be all about building relationships and providing value, which are both very powerful long-term strategies. I was working under the confines of a 30 day challenge, so I made some sacrifices I wouldn’t normally make if I was building this without time limitations.