The Maker Letter · 1 July 2026

Does a waitlist cost you money?

Hey Friend,

I've worked with dozens of personal brands and B2Bs over the last quarter.

Most of them wanted to launch something. A community, a cohort, that kind of thing.

Some pulled $20k+ from digital products, others did $40k from a single cohort launch. A few were quietly banking $5-8k a week with a bit of front-end ad spend.

And almost every time, the same question came up:

"Why don't you ever do waitlists for launches? I've only ever seen you do it when your spots are full."

Any email marketer worth their salt will tell you waitlists are the best play. And they're not wrong. They work.

But 2 things about them don't sit right with me.

1/ Half the time there's nothing to wait for

If you've got a real product with tech specs, a thing that could break on launch day, fair enough. Build anticipation while you get it stable.

But most coaches aren't launching that.

They've got a Skool or a Circle and a few resources to write up. Nothing's going to break. So the waitlist isn't protecting a launch. It's manufacturing a wait.

You sit there waitlist-ing for 4-6 weeks. Then you write 7 days of launch emails. Big spike. Doors close. Then you do the whole thing again next quarter. (This works LIKE A CHARM if you're not emailing daily, and you plan to do it ethically a few times a year).

If you're a daily marketer like me, that's 6 weeks of not selling for one good week. That's chasing the launch dragon 'round the clock. And it gets exhausting.

If you genuinely love doing 4 launches a year, beautiful. Stick with it. This one isn't for you. Now, if you're genuinely capped, and people have to wait, then yes - that's doing what it says on the tin.

2/ People smell it

You do it once. Fine. Twice. Okay. By the third "doors are closing forever," they've clocked you. They know the doors swing back open in a few months.

So the trick stops working. And you've quietly trained your list to wait instead of buying when they're ready.

At that point you might as well be honest about when you open and close, and just open.

Now, I'm not anti-launch. I've helped clients run launches that did genuinely silly numbers. They have their place.

And early bird? Different story. That's worked for me every time. In fact, it's what I'm doing this week. A real reason to move now, no fake countdown.

Something else I've noticed. The people who lean hardest on waitlists have mostly gone quiet between them. They're not emailing daily. Often not selling anything else in the gaps either. Nothing wrong with that. I am simply saying that this is worth observing.

Because if you've got a suite of products and a couple of things you're building, you can't go dark for 6 weeks. Early bird plus a daily cadence does the job without the dramaz. And when your brand carries the weight, people trust you enough to buy without the timer anyway.

For the record, I've only run a waitlist a handful of times. Both times for a product, for the first run, genuinely because I was still building the thing.

And I'm about to do it again - for a minor run.