Yesterday, I wrote an email about a course I bought via the “dark marketplace” for courses.
There was some valuable and potentially profitable point in that email, but it didn’t matter much.
Because almost all the responses I got, and I got a hobuncha, said something like the following:
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I’m sure you’re getting plenty of replies like mine, but I can’t help it… what’s the course??
Not planning to buy it, just plain ol’ curiosity. It’s so weird thinking in 2025 that there’s still info that can’t be accessed immediately with just 2-3 clicks…
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I didn’t share the name of the course yesterday and I won’t share it today.
Like I wrote in my email yesterday, I bought the course without knowing anything about it, based on a recommendation alone.
I can’t recommend it to others since I haven’t received it or gone through it yet. In fact, I can’t say anything more about it other than what I have, aside from its name. But what are you gonna do with that?
Legend says that near the end of his career, direct marketer Gary Halbert quizzed a protege. Halbert asked, “The best way to get a prospect’s attention is to appeal to…”
The protege thought for a moment. “Their sense of self-interest,” he said.
“No!” said Halbert, and he whacked the protege on the wrist with a large wooden ruler. “The right answer is, their sense of curiosity.”
True true.
Now here’s the valuable and potentially profitable point of this email:
Another legendary marketer, John Caples, found that pure curiosity headlines always and dramatically underperform pure benefit headlines in terms of sales.
Sure, curiosity headlines got the attention, just like Halbert said. But Caples found that benefit headlines got the money. The best performing of all were headlines with both a benefit and an element of curiosity.
All that’s to say, idle curiosity isn’t worth much, not unless you can channel it into something else.
I’m telling you this if you’re trying to sell, and I’m telling you also in case you are not.
But on to sales, specifically of my new 10 Commandments book.
I’ve tried to make this book intriguing and curiosity-baiting up to 11. I mean, that was the whole idea behind talking about con men and pickup artists and such. But as I say at the close of the book:
“Of course, the real question is, what are you going to do with this stuff? Learning new techniques is nice, as is getting an a-ha moment, a new insight into something profound about yourself. But none of it matters much unless you put it to use and somehow apply it in your life. Will you do that?”
I hope you will. The book contains simple but powerful ideas to make you more effective in communicating, whether you want to sell, negotiate, or even seduce. If you’re curious, and if you’re looking to benefit, here’s where you can find out more: