Last year, I did something objectively dumb.
I spent hours writing LinkedIn posts I genuinely believed deserved a tiny parade. Real numbers, actual strategies. Stuff I wish someone had slapped into my hands when I started.
I hit publish, leaned back in my chair, did that little “ah yes, success” chair squeak, and waited for the flood of responses.
Then LinkedIn handed me this: 7 likes. 1 comment a month later from what I’m pretty sure was a bot.
Meanwhile, a post with a stock-photo sunset and “Monday Motivation: Believe In Yourself” got 14,000 likes.
I’m not gonna lie – I was pissed. Then confused. I stared at my screen asking myself, “What the hell am I doing wrong?”
And then it hit me. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. The game itself had changed, and I was still playing by the old rules.
I’ve seen this exact pattern destroy an entire industry before. (More on that in a minute.)
What changed, exactly?
The content tsunami hit everything at once
Remember when “content is king” actually meant something?
I do. Back then, if you could consistently create good stuff, you won (simple supply and demand). There wasn’t that much quality content, so if you showed up and delivered value, people found you.
But here’s what I didn’t see coming (and maybe you didn’t either): Humans get tired. We get stuck. We have days where our brain feels like oatmeal and the words just… won’t come. I know I do.
Bots don’t.
Bots don’t need coffee. They don’t wonder if they have anything worth saying. They just… produce.
They test a thousand different headlines while you’re still trying to pick between “7 lessons” vs “7 hard truths.” They analyze what performed well and remix it into infinity. And they’re already here.
I watched LinkedIn for an afternoon and half the posts had the same skeleton: “X years ago I was [struggling]. Today I [success]. Here’s what I learned…”
Some of them were from real people. Some weren’t.
The scary part? I honestly couldn’t tell which was which.
And here’s the part that really stings: the algorithm can’t tell either. It doesn’t care if you wrote your post in four hours or four seconds. It cares about one thing – engagement.
So let’s talk about…
The math that breaks “traditional content”
Let me show you why this is already over for the traditional approach.
You’re one person. Maybe you get 2-3 hours a day to create content if life behaves. On a good day, you might crank out one solid post. Maybe two if you’re on fire.
A bot posts 20 times while you’re making breakfast.
That’s not “competition”- that’s you showing up to a race in running shoes and discovering everyone else brought motorcycles. Sure, you might be a really good runner. You might have great technique and strong lungs. Doesn’t matter. They’ll still lap you before you hit the first mile marker.
So you’ve got options:
Option 1: Post more.
Good luck with that. I tried it. Lasted ~8 weeks before I was eating dinner at my desk at 10 PM, stress-posting garbage just to “stay consistent.” My mom called me to ask if I was okay. I lied. Don’t do this.
Option 2: Hire a team.
Great. Now you spend $10k a month to compete with accounts that cost less than Netflix. Enjoy explaining that to your CFO.
Option 3: Build your own AI content factory.
This sounds smart until you realize you just joined the slop parade.
I know a guy who set this up and could generate 30 social posts in an hour. His engagement went up, while revenue stayed dead. Sure, his slop was slightly better than the basement-in-Pakistan slop. But it was still slop – generic and indistinguishable from the other 10,000 AI-generated posts.
It’s like showing up to a screaming match with a megaphone. Yeah, you’re louder now. But everyone else has megaphones too. And nobody’s actually listening anymore.
This way you’re not “standing out” – you’re just adding to the noise you were trying to escape.
Works if you monetize on the platform, but if you run a normal business? Nope. Wrong game.
Option 4: Buy ads to cut through the noise.
I talked to a guy last month who spent $40,000 on content last year. His agency posted twice a day on every platform. Professional graphics, the whole “we’re building brand” thing. His revenue actually went down.
I asked him: “How many of those posts asked people to buy something?”
Long pause. “I thought brand awareness was the point,” he said. But brand awareness doesn’t pay your staff salaries.
His revenue dropped because he was so busy ‘building a brand’ that he stopped building a business. He was paying for vanity, ignoring his actual sales channel.
Remember what I said about seeing this pattern before?
Video games. Steam went from ~8,000 releases in 2019 to 20,000+ last year. Tech barrier dropped, and quality drowned in volume.
I watched indie devs with genuinely brilliant games get 47 sales while asset-flip garbage hit thousands. Not because their games were bad – because discovery became impossible when everyone could publish.
When supply is infinite, discovery becomes a lottery. In Steam, it’s a search algorithm. In social media, it’s an engagement bot.
Either way, you no longer own the bridge between your product and your customer.
So where’s the right option? It’s…
The one thing bots can’t touch
Email. Obviously.
Bots can flood feeds, but they can’t flood your inbox.
Do this right now – open your email. How many messages sit there? 20? 30? Annoying, sure, but finite. Manageable.
Now open Instagram or LinkedIn. It’s an infinite firehose of content you didn’t ask for, created by accounts you don’t follow, all screaming “LOOK AT ME”
See the difference?
In feeds, you’re yelling into a hurricane. In an inbox, you’re having a quiet conversation with someone who chose to hear from you. There’s no algorithm deciding if your message gets seen. No AI curator throttles your reach to 2% because you didn’t inspire enough “🔥🔥🔥” comments.
When someone gives you permission to email them – that’s sacred ground.
And yeah, bots can write emails too.
But they can’t force their way into your Primary tab unless you invited them. In the feed, you’re a target for everyone. In the inbox, you are the gatekeeper.
They also can’t build a relationship. They can’t be… human. They can’t be interesting on purpose. They can only remix “Hope this finds you well” and “We’re excited to present our new offer.”
So… guess what actually matters for your business?
Exactly.
Except there’s a problem:
Most people treat email like another feed
They collect subscribers and blast the same generic message to everyone. Then stare at their 10% open rates and $0 in revenue.
Conclusion: “email doesn’t work.”
Email works fine. Wrong strategy doesn’t.
Having an email list and knowing how to use it are completely different things. That’s like owning a pro kitchen and thinking it automatically makes you Gordon Ramsay.
See, Email is a protocol, not a platform.
This is a nerdy way of saying: nobody owns it. It’s the fundamental internet thing. No CEO can decide to ‘delete’ email or change how it works overnight to make more money from your ads.
So you don’t optimize for the algorithm here. You optimize for the real flesh-and-bones human on the other side.
So what does that look like?
Three-part system
After wasting about $17,000 and 3 years learning this the hard way, I realized you need three systems running at the same time. If you don’t have them, you don’t have a business – you have a hobby that requires extra typing.
1. Autoresponders (to repeat the right things)
Someone subscribes? They immediately enter a sequence that delivers upfront value, builds trust, and makes offers
You don’t have to manually send anything – this runs whether you’re working, sleeping, or on vacation.
This is your foundation. No autoresponder = wasted subscribers.
2. Launches (for revenue spikes)
This is how you scale beyond “hoping people buy stuff.”
When you need cash – product launch, beta program, whatever – you need a campaign that drives decisions. Not “hope my post goes viral.” Actual money that shows up after you send your offer.
This is how you scale beyond crossing your fingers.
3. Broadcasts (to keep them buying)
I’m not talking about daily spam. And not about disappearing for 3 months and then showing up like, “BUY MY THING.” I’m talking about consistent, strategic touches that remind people your business exists and you’re still doing valuable stuff they might need today.
This prevents your list from turning into a graveyard.
Cool. Now you know what you need.
The next question is:
How do you build it?
You can absolutely figure this out yourself. I did.
You’ll test different sequences. Study what works. Trial-and-error your way through months of mediocre open rates and zero revenue until you crack the code.
That’s a valid path. It’ll cost you time and money, but you’ll learn a lot. Also it’s unnecessarily painful.
Or you can skip the part where you recreate mistakes and grab the playbook I built after doing this for dozens of clients. It’s what I hand people when they ask “where do I actually start?” because most folks don’t need another pile of tactics – they need a clear starting point.
>>> Grab your Email Profit Playbook here
The bot flood isn’t coming – it’s already here. Every week you wait, feeds get noisier and your business gets more dependent on a slot machine you don’t control.
So build yourself a life raft while they’re still cheap. Or at least buy some floaties 😉
P.S. How many people do you follow on social media whose posts you haven’t seen in months? Now check your inbox. The companies you actually buy from are already there. Think about it.