John Bejakovic

Free bonus: Storytelling for sales

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Here’s a shameful confession:

My only ambition in life was to be a novelist, but I’m largely cured. An article by Robin Hanson, titled Why We Fight Over Fiction, does a good job explaining why:

We tell stories with language, and so prefer to tell the kind of stories that ordinary language can describe well.

[…]

Stories that take place in modern settings tend to focus on personal, romantic, and family relations, as these remain to us relatively familiar moral universes. Or on artist biopics. Or on big conflicts like war or corrupt police or politicians. For which we have comfortable moral framings.

In other words, we almost always tell the same stories, reinforcing the same mores we’ve been reinforcing for a long-ass time, dealing with the same types of characters we are already all-too familiar with.

This might be bad news if you had hopes of being a novel novelist… but great news if you want to influence and persuade people. Because even though we’ve heard the same stories over and over, we keep craving more. Storytelling remains a powerful way to persuade and get attention. And yet it’s as formulaic as making a soft-boiled egg.

Which brings me to the bullets course I am launching next Monday. Bullets happen to be great for mastering most of what copywriting is about. But one big piece is missing, and that’s telling a story.

So to fix that, I’m including a free bonus along with the course. It will be a special presentation, delivered by me, on how to tell a story in copy or your other sales messages. And for the record, this is something I know pretty well.

Over the past several years, I’ve written dozens of front-end advertorials — basically mini sales letters — all following the same “horror story” structure.

By my estimate, these advertorials have made several million dollars worth of sales from cold traffic, mostly Facebook and now YouTube. I think a big reason for this success is the stories right at the top of each of these advertorial — they grab prospects and keep them reading, all the way to the point where they are wondering, “What the hell did I just buy?”

So in this bonus presentation, delivered over Zoom so you can ask me questions, I will tell you how I come up with these effective stories… how I organize them and present them… and how you can do the same.

Again, this is a free bonus that you get if you sign up for my bullets course by Sunday. If you’re interested in signing up for the course, or just to learn more about it, then the first step is simple and risk-free. It’s to sign up for my email newsletter. You can do so here.

Looking for 7 beta-testers to pay an unthinkable amount for my copywriting knowledge

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I’m looking for 7 beta-testers for a trial run of my bullets copywriting course.

Bullets? Yes, that’s the mechanism. But the goal is to get you better at writing copy all around.

If you’re already writing sales copy, even if you’re advanced, I think this course will make you better. That’s what it did for me, even though I’ve been writing copy for money for years.

On the other hand, if you’re new, this course will implant the basics quickly and thoroughly into your brain, including the stuff that everybody talks about (“just make a big promise!”) but nobody really gives you the fine points of.

Like I said, mastering bullets is the mechanism to do this. My argument (in fact, not mine, but Ken McCarthy’s and Gary Halbert’s) is that bullets are what sales copy is all about. That’s not because you should write sales letters packed with bullets (“so 1997…”). It’s because if you can write a great bullet, you can create curiosity, you can rev up desire, you can control attention.

But the point of this post is not to sell you. If you’re not sure you want this course, no problem. It probably makes sense to skip the rest of this email.

​​But if you’ve been reading my blog for a while… or if for some other reason you already know that you do want in… the first step is to get on my email newsletter. That’s where I will share the full details of this bullet course, and make it possible for you to join.

Casino Royale positioning

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Last night, I finished rewatching Casino Royale, the first Bond film starring Daniel Craig. As you might know, this movie came out surrounded with controversy.

There was a lot of opposition to casting Craig in the Bond role. Fans complained that Craig — short, blonde, and blessed with “large, fleshy ears” — was a complete mismatch to the required Bond look and feel.

And yet, Craig has grown on Bond audiences. Casino Royale was a big part of that. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie gets a 94% approval rating, and the summary says:

“Casino Royale disposes of the silliness and gadgetry that plagued recent James Bond outings, and Daniel Craig delivers what fans and critics have been waiting for: a caustic, haunted, intense reinvention of 007.”

So I’d like to propose to you the idea of Casino Royale positioning.

Strip away the silliness and the gadgetry of the current offers in your market. Instead, offer a short, blonde, large-eared alternative that nobody in his proper mind should want.

Here’s a famous example:

Back in the late 1950s, the American car market was dominated by beasts. Each year, American car models became larger, with more chrome and more tailfin. When that game went to its extreme, the unlikely winner turned out to be Volkswagen, with its promise of a small, ugly, practical car.

Example two:

This one comes from closer to home, namely, the financial newsletter market. In that market, the typical promise goes something like,

“How to double or even you triple your investment — as soon as next month!”

In other words, the typical promise is to get rich quick. And then get richer, quicker! And then even richer, as of yesterday!

So into this market came Gary Bencivenga, often called the world’s greatest living copywriter. And rather than coming up with creative new ways to promise millions of dollars in the next 14 minutes, Gary did a Casino Royale. The promise in his headline?

“Get rich slowly”

And yet, this short, flat-faced, large-eared promise turned out to be one of the bigger successes in Gary’s very successful career.

So if your market is outdoing itself in silly promises and gimmicky mechanisms, Casino Royale might be the thing to try.

Strip everything away… look into your customer’s eyes with an icy cold stare… and say, like Craig does when asked whether he wants his martini shaken or stirred…

“Do I look like I give a damn?”

I’m planning on putting out a book in the next few months with more positioning ideas. If you’d like advance notice when that book comes out, along with more free positioning ideas before then, you might like to sign up to my secret service MI6 email newsletter.

My secret fear: I should be further along than I am

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I’ve been writing sales copy for clients for almost six years now. I tell you this fascinating fact for two reasons:

First, because I often worry that I should be further along than I am.

Don’t get me wrong. I do ok.

And in many ways, I’ve achieved the ideal of the life that I once wanted, back when I first heard you could make a living writing sales letters while sipping mai tais on the beach… with no other assets than a laptop and a bit of how-to knowledge available for free online.

(It turned out to be more involved than that. And I figured out along the way that I can only stand the beach for about 3 days a year.)

So I do ok. But the fact remains:

When I compare myself to the people who are really at the top of the copywriting game — both in terms of success and writing ability — well, then my throat gets dry and my hands get cold and I feel the blood drain out of my face.

Which brings me to the second reason for today’s post:

A while back, I read an article by a guy named Rob Allen, titled How To Become An A-List Copywriter In 3 Levels.

Rob had a podcast called Kings of Conversion, or maybe he still does, where he interviewed successful copywriters. He himself is a successful copywriter, though from what I understand, he is not somebody you would call an A-lister yet.

And yet, Rob wrote up an interesting description of the copywriter journey. I found it useful and reassuring. You might find the same.

Rob’s article breaks down where people tend to be, in terms of mindset, success levels, and skills, based on how many years they’ve been in this field.

It’s surprisingly accurate in describing my career so far… and I’m hopeful it will be a good predictor of things to come.

Like I said, you might find Rob’s article useful, and perhaps also eerily on point. In case you’re interested, here’s the link:

https://kingsofconversion.com/how-to-become-an-a-list-copywriter-in-3-levels/

Cheapest way to get an A-list copywriting education (only good until Thursday)

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Say you’d like to get a bunch of A-list copywriters to sit around and share insights and advice with you. I’m talking the biggest names in the direct response industry… people like Gary Bencivenga and Parris Lampropoulos and David Deutsch. Copywriters who have sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stuff with just their magic, fascinating words.

How much would you be willing to pay for such an opportunity, if it lasted, say, an entire afternoon?

$5k?

Too much?

How about $1k?

Still too much?

Maybe only $500?

Well, I’ll tell you how to get it for free.

This Thursday at 1pm EST, a bunch of the most successful copywriters of all time are getting together in virtual space, somewhere in east Zoom. The occasion is the one-year anniversary of the death of Clayton Makepeace, himself a famous A-list copywriter, and a mentor to many of the people who will be speaking on this call.

Here are few things that might interest you about this event:

1. It will last for 3 hours.

2. So far, about a dozen A-list copywriters and other direct marketing veterans are confirmed to be participating.

3. I have no idea what these people people will talk about. But even if there are zero headline tips and even fewer magic sales letter closes being shared… I suspect the call will still be very valuable.

4. Since this is organized in Clayton’s honor, and based on the profile of the people who will join, I imagine it won’t just be a 3-hour-long tease-fest that’s designed to sell something else. But I could be wrong.

5. I don’t know if there will be any recordings of the call, and if there are, how they will be made available and to whom.

5. This event is free to attend, but you do gotta register.

So if an A-list education sounds good to you… and if free is a price you can afford to pay… then here’s where to go:

https://members.carlinecole.com/clayton

Dan Kennedy’s grungy ghostwriting gig

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In 1933, Don Dwyer published an interesting self-promotional book. The title of the book was, “Target Success: How You Can Become a Successful Entrepreneur, Regardless of Your Background.”

There are two curious things about this book:

1) It was ghost-written by Dan Kennedy.

2) It was really a sales tool for Dwyer.

A bit of background:

Don Dwyer owned Rainbow International Carpet Dyeing & Cleaning Company. This was a franchise carpet cleaning opportunity. For something on the order of $10k, you could buy into the franchise and get set up with your own carpet cleaning biz in your own town.

So Dwyer’s Target Success book was there to give him credibility and positioning… and to pitch the business opportunity of buying into Rainbow Carpet Cleaning.

And here’s the clever bit:

Dwyer could have published a self-promotional book like, How To Be Successful In Carpet Cleaning. But as Dan Kennedy said, Dwyer was too smart for that.

Because such a book would not elevate Dwyer’s status. Quite the opposite. It might diminish his status.

So instead, Dwyer had Dan write a generic success book. Lessons from a self-made millionaire… how to set goals… what really makes successful people tick. And once you’re well into that story, well, then you find out about this carpet cleaning opportunity. It might not have sounded great right in the headline… but it sounds pretty good 150 pages into the book.

That opportunity might have sounded almost as good as the following simple rule:

When writing copy, it’s always better to get more specific. Always.

Except when it’s not. Sometimes, when you get specific, you turn off potential customers and clients… you narrow your market too much… you can’t get attention because you’re talking about something too fringe, cringe, or grunge.

In that case, it makes sense to go up a level or two or three, and make your appeal more ethereal. This is true whether you’re positioning an offer… or writing a sales letter… or just a sales bullet.

Maybe you didn’t find that useful at all.

Maybe you did. In that case, you should know I write an email newsletter on similar topics… quick and grungy. In case you’d like to join the newsletter, here’s where to go.

A followup to my Trump prediction from last year

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Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote an email for my email newsletter where I predicted that Trump would lose the election. My arguments were based on three persuasion “first principles”:

1. People vote against the other guy rather than for their guy

2. The only thing that disqualifies you from becoming president are looking annoying or having a fucked up name

3. People care more about getting out of hell than about getting into (or staying in) heaven

I remembered my prediction today because I read an article about a guy named Gerd Gigerenzer. Gigerenzer is a psychologist and he studies how simple rules of thumb often outperform complex data-driven predictions. There’s apparently a lot of interest in Gigerenzer’s work in the world of healthcare and finance and I suppose political modeling.

Makes sense to me. After all, I’m 1-for-1 with my political predictions based on simple rules of thumb.

Which got me thinking…

Perhaps you should write down a list of rules of thumb you yourself find useful. In your personal life… in your business life… for managing your own bad self. Perhaps force yourself to explicitly state how you make choices and predictions… because you might be able to rely on those same rules of thumb in other situations, too.

Perhaps I should do the same. In fact, I started writing down exactly such a list today. But then I remebered something else. Last summer, I had actually created this very thing.

Back then I called it, “My 10 direct response fundamentals that work almost any time.” You can find them at the link below.

There’s nothing very shocking here. But perhaps these rules can help you make a better marketing decision next time… or avoid a stupid mistake that you will hate yourself for. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/second-hand-news-my-10-direct-response-fundamentals-that-work-almost-any-time/

“Coke and hookers”: Meghan Markle NYT story proves evergreen copywriting truth

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Back in 2016, I got a job writing a bunch of political fundraising advertorials. I was helping raise funds for Hillary Clinton, for Ted Cruz, and for Donald Trump.

(I found out later that the guy who had hired me was a big-time scammer. Almost none of the money he raised was ever used for any political purpose. But it was used for the purpose of coke and hookers in Las Vegas. Which you might think is a more noble goal than furthering the political careers of any of the above faces.)

Anyways, as part of this job, I had to constantly read a bunch of news articles for research. Politico… Fox… WSJ… and of course The New York Times.

It was then that I developed my contempt for The New York Times.

I guess I still had higher expectations of the NYT. Fox News was clearly an inflammatory tabloid, but the NYT still sold itself as classy and respectable and trustworthy.

But that’s not what I saw. Not when I read each story carefully, compared it with the headline, and then compared the whole with the same story covered in other media.

Whatever. I only bring up this episode from my life because I just came across a fascinating article and a resource on the exact same topic. The article and the resource can be useful to you whether or not you support the New York Times point of view.

So:

A guy named Tom Cleveland wanted to see exactly how the NYT A/B tests its headlines. He wrote up a script to pull in the data from the NYT site, and he started looking for insights. You can head over to Tom’s Substack if you’re interested in the full story. But here’s one quick tidbit, which should be old hat if you’re interested in copywriting:

NYT headlines tend to get more dramatic through A/B testing.

Tom gives a few examples. For example, a recent story about Meghan Markle started its career with the headline:

“Saying her life was less than a fairy tale, Meghan Markle described the cruel loss of her freedom and identity”

Come on Meghan. Every angsty teenager complains of loss of freedom and identity. Sure enough, the editors at the NYT tested ways to raise the stakes. The eventual winner:

“‘I just didn’t want to be alive anymore’: Meghan Markle says life as a royal made her suicidal”

A second example, this about Trump:

“Trump, addressing conservatives, plans to claim leadership of GOP”

Trump, ok. Always a solid way to get engagement. But “addressing conservatives, plans to claim leadership”? It sounds like the overture of a long and boring opera. Compare it to the winning “Tarantino-ized” headline:

“Trump’s Republican hit list at CPAC is a warning shot to his party”

Like I said, this will be old hat to you if you’ve been writing sales copy for a while. But it’s still interesting to see when backed up with the massive data behind the New York Times… and when dealing with the supposedly sophisticated and intellectual readers of the Times.

There’s much more to Tom’s data, including stuff that’s both obvious and not so obvious for copywriters. He goes into more detail about it on his blog. But he has also made all his data available online, in real time, in a very easy-to-use format. If you’d like to see it:

https://nyt.tjcx.me/

How to win my eternal gratitude

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Today for a change I’d like to ask for your help.

As you probably know, I am currently putting together a course that teaches you copywriting by getting you to write bullets.

“Bullets?” you might say. “Like those cheesy 90s sales letters? Who wants to learn that?”

Well, that’s where I hope you can help. Because sales bullets are still around, and they are everywhere, camouflaged in subtle or not so subtle ways. Specifically, they show up in social media ads… native ads… email subject lines… article and sales letter headlines… subheads… body copy… etc. They might not be formatted as bullets… but the words and the intent is the same.

So here’s how I hope you can help me:

As you go about your day, if you spot something that could work as a bullet — whether it’s an ad headline on Facebook or a good subject line or whatever — would you screenshot it and send it to me? You will be doing me a big favor. Thanks in advance.

Taking over abandoned but rich online oil wells

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Jay Abraham likes to tell a sexy story about two marketers. The story is true and it goes something like this:

Two marketers started selling fake diamonds through ads in the same local newspaper.

One marketer wrote a brilliant ad, got a high response, and made a bunch of sales. After ad costs and fulfillment, he was left with a profit of a few thousand dollars.

​​”What a waste of time,” this marketer said. And he moved on to bigger and better opportunities… ones where he could make tens of thousands or maybe even a hundred thousand dollars, using the same approach.

Then there was marketer two. He only wrote a passable ad, and got a lower response than marketer one. He was left in the red after ad costs and fulfillment.

But when marketer two sent his customers the fake diamond, he also included a letter. The letter said something like,

“Behold your beautiful fake diamond! See how it shines and sparkles! And if you by chance find it sparkles a bit less than you expected, perhaps it’s the modest size. But worry not. Send back your beautiful but modest-sized fake diamond… and we will credit it to your next purchase of a magnificent and ginormous fake diamond. Just enclose a check for an extra xyz dollars to…”

In other words, marketer two created a back-end of upsells and followup offers. Result? A business that made something like $25 million in its first year.

(By the way, I only found out later that marketer one, the brilliant but short-sighted copywriter, was Gary Halbert.)

I thought of this story today because I’m seeing something similar right in front of me.

For the past two years, I’ve been writing copy for a client in the ecommerce space. Over the past year alone, they have abandoned about a dozen hot funnels. Yes, including fake diamonds.

Each funnel had an in-demand product… copy that was working… a large, hungry, accessible audience eager to hand over their money.

So why abandon ship? Because fulfillment got tricky… or shipping got expensive… or ad costs went up and made the funnel unprofitable. So on to the next opportunity, the next oil well that can be exploited with just a bucket and a rope, for as long as it lasts.

I had the idea this morning of taking over some of these abandoned but rich funnels. But my first thought was, how could I possibly succeed where my client had failed? After all, they have a gaggle of ad buyers, a herd of ad production people, and money and resources and connections I can only dream of.

So how could I succeed? Perhaps, by having a back-end of upsells and followup offers. By tapping this oil well a bit deeper… and using strategies that go beyond a bucket and a rope.

Maybe that’s doable… but it also sounds like a lot of work. Which brings me to the point.

Last autumn I wrote about my idea of a “cash buyers list.” In a nutshell, I am looking for people who are willing to partner with me in some way on investing in online properties, whether that’s product funnels or blogs or sudoku solver software.

And if you have interest in partnering with me on some tried-and-proven ecommerce funnels… and you either have money, or relevant skills to contribute, then get in touch. Maybe we can create a new case study together for Jay Abraham to talk about for years to come.