Shane Melaugh – Audience From Scratch

The reality lived by 90%+ of online entrepreneurs is different from the dream. VERY different…

When we start building an online business, we dream of how great it will be to have a business that works while we’re sleeping, to be free from a strict work schedule and tyrannical bosses… to be able to work from cozy coffee shops or while sitting on a beach, perhaps.

More importantly: to be free.

To have freedom over our work, over our schedule, over our time. To be free to do meaningful, self-directed work that we actually enjoy doing. To bring something of real value to the world.

It’s a beautiful scenario we paint in our minds, isn’t it?

We don’t dream of staring at a screen all day, every day.

We don’t dream of an endless grind of learning new things, trying new things, putting ourselves out there and being disappointed, over and over again.

But that’s the reality most entrepreneurs face. We didn’t sign up for this, but this is what we got.

If you asked the younger version of yourself, from a few years ago, they’d expect that you should be successful by now. That was the plan, wasn’t it? You should have a thriving online business by now. You should have a website that gets lots of traffic, a growing list of email subscribers, followers, fans…

But somehow, that “figuring things out” phase seems to draw out forever.

Why are you stuck, even though you work so hard?

Why is it that so many online marketers are stuck in a cycle of hard work with disappointing results? Why is it that this same problem is so common, for so many people who try to build a business online?

It’s because most entrepreneurs spend most of their energy chasing the wrong goals.

In the online business space, you’re being shown all these seemingly shining examples and there are all these big, clear targets lined up along the horizon. But they’re a mirage. Paradoxically, moving towards these targets moves you away from your actual goals.

Skeptical?

Keep reading and you’ll see that this isn’t just my opinion. This is fact.

You’ve Been Sold an Illusion Of Success… Quick Wins, Easy Money, Viral Content…

Let me ask you a question: what does online business success look like?

In your mind’s eye, do you see any of the following:

These numbers are like targets that have been lined up for you. They’re the targets most online entrepreneurs frantically scramble towards.

They promise salvation: work hard enough, get enough followers and you too can make lots of money!

To be clear: I’m calling these numbers vanity metrics because they don’t matter.

That’s hard to believe, I know. But you can easily prove it to yourself.

You can have a website with lots of traffic that makes virtually no money.

You can have millions of followers and have a completely failed product launch.

Here’s an tragic/amusing example of this problem:

You can be a “success story” in the online world but suffer from burnout & struggle to make ends meet.

At the end of the day, likes, followers, even traffic won’t pay the bills.

If you think about it, this makes sense. After all, where do the vanity metrics come from? They are prominently displayed by social platforms. They’re used by these platforms as a “carrot” to get users/creators to do what’s good for the platform.

The goal of a social media platform is not to help you, the creator/entrepreneur. Their goal is to make money. And if they have loads of people desperately creating loads of content in the hopes of some far-off reward, that’s great for them! Free labour!

The reason so many online entrepreneurs fail is not because something’s wrong. It’s because the system works! The system does what it’s supposed to do. All the struggling creators are just unaware of the system.

The Holy Grail of Email Marketing (?)

While we’re in the process of slaughtering sacred cows, let’s talk about email marketing. Building an email list is the ultimate non-vanity thing to do, right? The money is in the list! How often have you heard that one?

And yes, I’ve preached the importance of building a mailing list as well.

BUT…

You can have a mailing list full of people who don’t open your emails and don’t want to buy anything from you.

There’s nothing wrong with building a mailing list (I recommend it!) but if you’re just chasing that subscriber number, if you’re just trying to get that number to increase, you’re still stuck on the vanity metrics treadmill.

So, what’s the solution? What’s the alternative to the futile pursuit of vanity metrics?

There is a solution to all the problems described above. There is a way to get unstuck – a better way to do things.

In fact, I’ve been following a set of strategies that are way off the beaten track from typical online marketing advice for years. And I’ve been very successful in doing so.

From my vantage point, I can see all the struggling entrepreneurs flailing and failing as they scramble along the well-trodden highway to frustration. It’s clear as day to me why they’re struggling. It’s clear that doing more of the same isn’t going to get them the results they want.

But there’s a problem: the way I’ve done things is so different, it’s hard for some people to believe. I can show you what I do differently (and I will – just keep reading). The question is: can you open your eyes to it? Or will you return your gaze to the shiny mirages and resume your struggle to chase vanity metrics?

The choice is yours.

Ummmm… what?

Isn’t that what we’re trying to do already?

“Build an audience” means: get more Twitter/Snapchat/TikTok/whatever followers, right?

Get those numbers up and then (somehow) make money. Desperately struggle to get more traffic from more keywords to my blog posts, etc. That’s what we’re already doing!

Yes. But that’s not what I call “audience building”.

Your “audience” is not your followers or subscribers. It’s not your traffic. Building an audience operates on a whole different level from building a following or generating traffic.

Here’s a simple test to illustrate the (massive) difference between vanity numbers and an audience. Think of all the online content you have personally come across in the last 10 days. Check your browser history if you want a really detailed view.

In all likelihood, you’ve visited hundreds of different pages over the last 10 days. You’ve visited dozens of different websites and scrolled past posts made by hundreds of different creators, companies and brands on different social media platforms.

For each one of those, you were “traffic”. You showed up in their vanity metrics.

Now: how many of them can you still remember? How many of those websites can you name and remember the URL of? How many social media or YouTube creators can you name, off the top of your head? How many of them do you actively want to come back to and learn more from?

My guess is that it’s nowhere near hundreds. Maybe not even dozens.

Small Scale, Big Results: Why All This Matters

Why is it so important to define what an “audience” is, anyway?

Here’s why: what keeps most online entrepreneurs stuck is that they don’t realize how much success is possible at a small scale. They’re chasing big numbers because they don’t know there’s a better way.

My own business journey is proof of this. If you looked at the vanity metrics for my brands, you’d guess that I’m a broke wantrepreneur. Here’s a sampling (numbers as of my writing):

One of my brands is ActiveGrowth. Here’s the sad picture the vanity metrics paint:

These are not strange exceptions or outlier results – building businesses like this is my MO.

I have many more stories of building such businesses in my past.

I turned tiny audiences into thriving businesses before social media even existed. I co-founded a SaaS company that had no social media presence at all, but made more than $1M in annual recurring revenue, just from webinars…

The point is this: very early in my career, I got the precious advice not to focus on vanity metrics and I took that advice to heart.

Then, social media burst onto the scene and the online business world has descended into vanity-metric-obsessed madness around me, as I’ve been calmly working away at my small-but-successful businesses.

Meet the Man Who Had it Right All Along

And it’s someone whom I’ve never met personally.

The man who had it right all along is Kevin Kelly, a futurist and best-selling author. Over a decade ago, he wrote the most important essay for becoming a self-made entrepreneur under the new paradigm of the Internet… and it has since been ignored by almost everyone.

Kevin Kelly presented the concept of 1,000 true fans. The idea is simple: if you have 1,000 true fans, that’s enough for a thriving business.

Across many business models and price points, you’ll see that a group of just 1,000 core fans is enough to make a full time income.

1,000 fans. Not 100,000 followers. Not 1,000,000 subscribers.Just 1,000 people who really know you, love what you do and want more from you.

Get Off the Treadmill

If you’ve ever wondered why I just don’t care about social media, why I’m perfectly happy with a small number of YouTube subscribers and why I don’t have or pursue huge traffic numbers, this is it.

I don’t care because I’ve never had to care. I got off that treadmill a long time ago.

Following the 1,000 true fans principle changes the focus of a business entirely. It’s not about volume and grasping for more and ever more. Instead, it’s about creating something that can build a core group of fans and then investing heavily in serving that core group as best you can!

This is what I’ve been doing since 2010 and it has served me well all along.

Many things have changed in online marketing, since 2010. But if your focus is to build a core group of fans and serve them well, many things have stayed the same.

The things I did in 2010 in niche forums to grow a small fan base are fundamentally the same things I did in 2015 on my blog and the same things I’m doing now on my websites and on YouTube.

If you want to quit the online business rat race and use a better approach, now is the perfect time.

How to Build an Audience from Scratch: The Unconventional Way to Grow a Small-Scale, Big-Results Business

For the first time ever, I’m teaching the approach that I’ve practiced and refined for over a decade, for building an audience online.

This is the exact approach I’ve taken to build up thriving businesses without needing to chase huge numbers of social media followers and without needing to get floods of traffic to my website.

I’ve created a course that teaches you exactly how to create a brand and message that resonates with people, how to create content that reaches the right people (without having to spend $$$$ on ads) and how to turn visitors into followers, fans and customers.

How to Build an Audience from Scratch is an online course consisting of videos and worksheets that you can go through at your own pace.

The 3 Components of Audience Building

There are 3 components that must be in place for an audience to grow. Miss any one of these and you’ll be perpetually struggling.

The Treadmill & The Power Curve

Discover why most online entrepreneurs are stuck on “the treadmill” and learn how to use power curves to escape this predicament. Once you understand this principle, you’ll see it everywhere!

The Manifesto Method

How exactly can you create something that people will want to rally around – something that generates fans, not just followers? The Manifesto Method is your step-by-step recipe to do it!

The Story Challenge

Looking for a way to kick-start your audience growth? The Story Challenge is a method you can use to generate buzz around your brand and find your first group of fans.

Content Deconstruction

The Internet is full of good content that no one’s ever heard about. In the course, you’ll learn a framework to help you create content that actually gets noticed and gets results.

The 8 Content Dimensions

Develop x-ray vision for online content. Once you go through the module with the 8-dimensions framework, you’ll finally understand why some content succeeds, while most content fails.

Authentic Audience Interaction

Learn why “engagement” is overrated and how you can open an authentic, value-driven dialogue with your audience.

Serial Interactive Content

Discover the most powerful recipe for creating content that boosts your reach, turns people into fans & builds meaningful relationships between a creator and their audience.

Putting it All Together: The Audience Building Master-Plan

The Audience from Scratch course is chock-full of valuable strategies for reaching more people and turning visitors into die-hard fans. But it’s not just a collection of tips or strategies. The course is topped off with a step-by-step system that you can follow. It gives you a clear roadmap, telling you exactly what to do and in what order, to build your audience – even if you’re starting from literally zero!

The Content Recipes

At the core of audience building lies content. The only way to build a real audience is to have a message, to tell stories and to create content that will resonate with people.

In the course, you’ll discover that all content that grows an audience falls into one of 5 categories.

We provide recipes for all these “growth content” strategies:

The Seed Audience Challenge

What’s the fastest way to implement the Audience from Scratch principles while also growing your mailing list?

Glad you asked!

The course includes the Seed Audience Challenge which is perfect for anyone with a mailing list of under 100 subscribers. This challenge helps you validate a business idea and get that first set of subscribers as quickly as possible.

And we’re not talking about the usual “list building” stuff here. This isn’t about getting your subscriber number to go up, only to discover that most of those subscribers don’t even open your emails.

In the Audience from Scratch course, we’re using email to stay in touch with highly engaged “true fans” and that’s a whole different ballgame.

Challenge44: The Shortest Path to Excellence

“Challenge44”sounds pretty strange, right? To explain what this is, I need to tell a story:

Challenge44 is distilled out of all my experience teaching marketing skills in intense learning environments.

If you want to seriously level up your content creation game or you want someone on your team to level up their content creation game, have them do Challenge44, following the Audience from Scratch principles.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because Challenge44 is included in the Audience from Scratch course, at no extra cost.

What Makes the Audience from Scratch Course Different?

The Audience from Scratch course is not your average online course.

Here are 3 reasons why:

1) Use the Power for Mental Models

2) Pragmatic & Implementation Focused