Homework #8 - Jake Stoddard

My reader magnet is a text adventure game which you can play on my website. Thanks to a suggestion from Thomas, I made it so you can play the beginning of it without signing up:

https://jakestoddard.com/play-rescue-the-princess-demo/

I've had an email list for a couple of years now, but I'm only at 36 subscribers. My biggest challenge is that my text adventure game isn't attracting many people. I've configured a Google Search ad for it, but after months, I haven't gotten a single impression.

The other problem is that a text adventure game cannot be used with traditional author email list building techniques. For example, it can't be delivered by BookFunnel or StoryOrigin.

I think I need to either:

• Double down on advertising

• Write a novelette as a new lead magnet

• Launch my novella as my lead magnet instead of charging for it

• Or simply launch my novella on Amazon as planned but without a big initial following

In January, I switched from the old MailerLite to the new MailerLite. Unfortunately, I lost all my old open rate data. Since then, my best performing subject line was, “Why do you read?”

I wonder if questions generally work well as subject lines.

Then again, with only 36 subscribers, my data is not conclusive.