The Real Reason Your "Work With Me" P.S. Isn't Selling
Here's something I have personally struggled with over the years.
The thing I help my clients solve…
The thing I diagnose for other people without breaking a sweat…
The thing I sit in a corner and stew about when it's about my own business…
Selling in my emails. Like, regularly.
I love writing. I love connecting with the people on my list. I love the weekly rhythm of showing up in inboxes. What I do not love — what I will go to almost any length to avoid — is feeling like a salesy asshole when I'm hitting send.
And look, the irony of not doing what I do for others is not lost on me.
So this year I'm finally putting my own process — the one I've honed and handed to clients for years — into place for myself.
I'm building up the bottom of my emails.
What Does "Building Up the Bottom of Your Email" Mean?
The bottom of your email is everything that lives below the body — the sign off, the P.S., the place where you list how people can work with you, social proof, your photo, whatever else is happening down there. Done right, it's where a quiet kind of selling happens in every single email.
I'm guessing you've seen the most common version of this. Maybe even tried it.
After the main P.S. — the one about that specific email — there's another little block. It's usually titled something like Work With Me or Ways We Can Work Together. And inside, in tidy bullets:
This course for that
That course for this
And if you'd like to pay a lot to have me do it for you, here's how
I tried this version. Briefly. Nada.
I've had clients try this version. Nothin'. Or very, very little.
Here's why.
Why "Work With Me" Sections Usually Don't Sell
A standard "work with me" list doesn't sell because it's basically a menu — and a menu only works for people who've already decided to eat. Most subscribers haven't decided anything yet. They need way more than a list of titles and links to take the next step.
Think about it.
A menu works in a restaurant because by the time someone is looking at it, they have already made the big decision. They're hungry. They want to eat. They picked the kind of place that serves the kind of food they want. Their job at the menu is just to choose what to order.
A reader scrolling to the bottom of your email is a different person entirely.
They might love your writing. They might be a fan of your work. They might even be a great fit for one of your offers eventually.
What they have not done yet — and this is the part most "work with me" blocks miss entirely — is decided they're ready to buy from you. Not in some vague way. Specifically. About one of your specific offers. Right now.
The menu skips all of that. It just hands them the list.
What's Missing From Most "Work With Me" Sections
A menu of offers is roughly 10% of what most readers actually need to make a buying decision. The other 90% is everything that turns a curious reader into someone who clicks and buys.
Here's what's almost always missing.
Credibility. Why should they trust that you can deliver what your offers promise? Not in a brag-y, "look at me!" way. In a quiet, woven-in way. Most "work with me" blocks skip credibility entirely and just assume it's already established. Usually it isn't — or it's established for you in general, but not for this specific offer you're listing.
Authority. Why is your perspective on this topic the one they want to follow over the eight other people in their inbox teaching adjacent things? Credibility says "she can do the work." Authority says "her take on this is the one I trust."
The actual offer made well. This is the one most "work with me" blocks really blow. Listing the offer title with a link is not making the offer. The reader doesn't know in three seconds what the offer is, who it's for, or what they get out of it. Course Name → link does not sell. A short, voice-led description that lands the benefit fast does.
Proof. Has this worked for other people? Not in a wall-of-testimonials way. In an integrated, contextual way that lives right in the closing of your email — quietly, all the time.
Relationship. Have you given them enough of yourself — your voice, your perspective, your way of seeing — that they want to keep being in your world? This is the part the writing of the email is supposed to do. But almost no one intentionally extends the relationship-building all the way through the closing.
Different buyer types need different amounts of each. A skeptic needs more proof. A long-time reader needs more in the way of a great offer description. A newer subscriber needs more relationship. The point isn't that every reader needs equal portions of all five. The point is that none of these get delivered by a flat list of links.
So when a menu is the only thing happening at the bottom of your email, you're asking the reader to do all five jobs in their own head. On the spot. With zero help from you.
Most won't.
Why People Skip Past the "Work With Me" Block
A static, repetitive "work with me" block trains readers to skim right past it. The brain figures out pretty quickly that nothing in that section ever changes, so it stops processing the content there at all. It becomes invisible.
This is a real thing. It's called banner blindness, and it absolutely kills the conversion potential at the bottom of your email.
The first time a reader sees your "work with me" block, they may glance. They may even click. The second time, they recognize it. The third time, their eyes slide right past. By the tenth email, the block is functionally invisible.
Which is a real problem. Because the bottom of your email is also one of the most-scanned zones in the whole email. People scroll there. They look. They are literally checking it. But if what's there is a flat, static, never-changing list of offers, what they're checking for is whether anything is new — and finding nothing.
Static doesn't sell.
The Strategic Shift
The shift is to stop treating the bottom of your email like a menu and start treating it like real estate that does five different jobs at once. Credibility, authority, the offer made well, proof, and relationship — all woven through the closing zone. Not stacked in a list. Built into the structure.
When the bottom of your email is doing this kind of work, a few things change.
You stop having to write standalone "sales emails," because every email is doing some selling already. Quietly. In the background.
You stop riding the income roller coaster tied to launches, because there's an always-on selling layer humming under everything you send.
And you stop feeling like a salesy asshole. Because you're not making the reader sit through a pitch. You're just making the offer present and easy to find for the people who are ready for it.
The readers who aren't ready yet? They still get to enjoy the email, click around if they want, and move on. The selling doesn't interrupt them. It just exists. In case they need it. And slowly building what they need to buy later, over time.
That's the shift. That's what I'm building into my own emails now. That's what I help my clients build into theirs.
So What Do You Actually Do?
The execution involves designing intentional zones at the bottom of every email — each doing one of the five selling jobs — and refreshing them on a predictable rhythm so they stay alive, not stale.
There's a structure. There's an order. There's a specific way to write each piece so it earns attention instead of triggering the skip reflex. And there's a system for building it once and letting it work for you across every email you send forever.
That's what I'm teaching in The Subtle Sell — a 90-minute live workshop where we actually build two of the most important zones together so you walk out with real drafted copy you can ship that week.
If your list seems to like you but almost nothing is selling, and you've quietly suspected that the bottom of your emails is leaving money on the table — this is the door.
