3 lessons after $18,487 spent on running Amazon book ads

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Yesterday, with much fanfare and a bit of fireworks, I kicked off the Tour de Commandments event for my 10 Commandments of Con Men etc. book.

I published that book a year ago, and have since sold ~4k copies.

I got a reply about that number from from online creator Kieran Drew, who continues to read my emails even though I viciously and without provocation assaulted him a few weeks ago in another email.

Kieran graciously wrote:

“4k! Incredible. What’s contributed to sales most? Just through your list?”

My list, great though it is, has not been the main driver of my Amazon sales. For one thing, my entire list is not 4k people. For another, while many of my readers did buy the book, more did not.

Instead, I attribute the biggest part of my book sales to Amazon ads.

Over the past 7 years, I have spent $18,487 on Amazon book ads. The vast majority of that has been spent on promoting this new 10 Commandments book and my previous 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

I’ve seen on a couple occasions how my book sales (including organic sales) plummeted after ads were turned off.

For those reasons and more, I believe Amazon ads are the best way to sell books and get quality buyers onto my list, and something I plan to scale up soon (immediately after this promo).

But back to the Tour de Commandments. I have written up a new report, titled:

“3 lessons after $18,487 spent on running Amazon book ads”

I’m offering this report as a free bonus for the Tour de Commandments event. I’ve also prepared two other free bonuses:

#2. “40 Pages to Authority: A $1k article series”

Back in 2023, the the Professional Writers Alliance paid me $1,000 to write a 4-part article series about my experiences writing, promoting, and profiting from a 40-page book (my first 10 Commandments book).

PWA made these articles available to their paying members only. But you can get them as a free bonus for taking me up on my Tour De Commandments offer.

#3. “How I made an extra $1404.53/month in Amazon royalties at the push of a button”

This report outlines a hack, which involves the push of a button — literally, that’s all there is to it — and which made me an extra ~$1.5k per month in Amazon royalties. I used this hack once, over the span of a few months, or rather a few weeks. I made money with it. And I never used it again.

I’m not saying anybody else should use this hack. I’m not saying anybody else should NOT use it either.

All I’m willing to do is to tell you what this hack is, why I’m no longer using it myself, and how you can try it out yourself, if you so choose, to make easy money off Amazon.

And on top of these three new bonuses, there is the bonus I announced yesterday, Manna for Marketers, a live workshop where I will cover I’ve consciously applied these 10 Commandments of Con Men etc. in my biz.

Plus, I’m offering my help and input if you want to raise your hand live on the call, and ask me how to apply any of these commandments to your biz (or life).

If you want to take me up on this Tour de Commandments offer, here’s what to do:

1. Grab five paperback copies of the 10 Commandments book (or four, if you’ve already got a paperback and can dig up that receipt as proof)

2. Forward me your receipt (or receipts, if you already got one) from Amazon

3. I’ll get you in for the Manna for Marketers workshop, and get you access to the above Amazon-related bonuses, as well others I release in the coming days

If you’re in, here’s where to take me up on this offer:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

Announcing: Tour de Commandments

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Today, being May 11, marks the busy and drama-filled kickoff of Tour de Commandments, a special event to celebrate the 1-year anniversary of my conveniently titled book:

“10 Commandments of Con Men, Pickup Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters”

I published this book exactly a year ago, on May 11, 2025.

Since then, I have sold some 4k copies of this book… gotten a bunch of 5-star reviews (“Can’t tell you how glad I am that I clicked Buy Now”… “This is going into my yearly reads collection”… “More compelling than Cialdini with sprinkles of Houdini”)… and had people tell me this is the best thing I’ve ever written.

And now, I have a spectacular, amazing, uncanny Tour de Commandments bonus bundle to encourage you to get your copy, and a few extra copies to boot.

Over the course of this event, I’ll be dripping and leaking these bonuses. Today, I’ll tell you about just the first leg of the Tour de Commandments bonus bundle:

“Manna for Marketers,” a live implementation workshop for the influence ideas from the 10 Commandments book.

Who: For email marketers, list owners, course creators, online business owners, coaches, and sales professionals.

What: How I’ve consciously applied these 10 commandments in my biz, in expectation of this workshop. Plus, my help and input if you want to raise your hand live on the call, and ask me how to apply any of these commandments to your biz (or life).

Why: The #1 thing my readers have been asking me for, on the back of this 10 commandments book, is advice and examples on how to implement these ideas.

So I’m giving it to you.

You can see behind the curtains of how I use these commandments practically. You can get ideas for how you too can use them. And can get my direct help in tweaking these ideas to help you perform miracles of persuasion.

How: Like a gameshow? Listening to me rattle on for a long time is not fun for anybody. So I’ll apply everything I know about making workshops fun, interactive, and even exciting to this “Manna for Marketers” workshop.

There will be a gameshow component, there will be rewards and prizes, and you might win a brand new Tesla (ok no Tesla but everything else is true).

When and where: Next Wednesday, May 20th, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, inside the Big Store (I’ll send you a link if you take me up on the offer below.) And of course, if you cannot make it live, there will be a recording, which others will have to pay for, but which you get for free, as part of this special event.

As I said, I will tell you about the remaining bonuses over the coming days.

If you already know you want to participate in the Tour de Commandments based on the Manna for Marketers live workshop, here’s what to do:

1. Grab your five paperback copies of the 10 Commandments book (or four, if you’ve already got a paperback and can dig up that receipt as proof)

2. Forward me your receipt (or receipts, if you already got one) from Amazon

3. I’ll get you in for the Manna for Marketers workshop, and all the remaining bonuses as I release them over the next few days

If you’re in, here’s where to take me up on this offer and reserve your spot for “Manna for Marketers”:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

I’ll take Problems Of Influence for $500, Alex

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Tomorrow, I will kick off of my Tour De Commandments event. Its purpose:

To commemorate the 1-year anniversary of the publication of my “10 Commandments of Con Men etc.” book, and tease you with some exciting, mysterious, life-changing bonuses connected to this book.

I already have several bonuses ready to be handed out. I also wanted to get my audience’s input for extra bonuses I could offer. I asked for this input inside my Daily Email House community. House member René Kerkdyk wrote:

===

Bejakopardy – the ultimate gameshow about how to apply the Commandment in various situations like B2B, B2C, high-ticket, low-ticket, to a list, to a cold audience, etc. You describe the situation, we answer, you demolish our answers, we learn something. Best contestant wins a shout-out to your list.

===

There are two separate ideas in here:

One is gamification, which I will definitely do as part of another bonus I am already planning.

The other is influence in “various situations like B2B, B2C, high-ticket, low-ticket, to a list, to a cold audience, etc.”

Maybe can help me with making a list of those various situations. Let’s see:

Are you trying to persuade somebody? Influence somebody? Are you trying to close a sale? A low-ticket sale? A high-ticket sale? A bedroom sale?

Are you you trying to make a good first impression? To get people to open up and share information with you? Are you trying to overcome skepticism, or objections, or even hostility?

Most important of all, are you stuck for a solution, for a way forward? Have the things you have tried so far failed you? Are you, in short, experiencing a problem of influence?

If so, write in and let me know.

If I think I can help you by applying one of my 10 Commandments to your situation, I’ll go over how I would do that in a bonus I will offer as part of my Tour De Commandments.

I can keep your name anonymous if you like, or if you prefer, I can keep your name in it and give you bit of exposure.

And if do end up giving my take on your problem of influence as part of my Tour De Commandments, I will share my proposed solution to your problem with you, whether you end up taking me up on my offer, which will kick off tomorrow, May 11. Thanks in advance.

Prediction about the world by the end of 2027

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Last night, as the sun was setting, my friends and I walked to a park in downtown Athens, directly next to the lit-up Acropolis. Innocent enough.

We then climbed up onto a rock inside the park, where tourists gather to take pictures of the thing. Still pretty innocent.

As soon as we got to the top, a ginger-haired, bearded man who was squatting on top of the rock, turned towards us.

“First time in Athens?” he said with a grin.

My friend Marci, who is something like a human golden retriever, smiled back and said yes.

Uh-oh.

This allowed to the ginger-haired, bearded man to open the floodgates. Over the course of the next 20 or possibly 120 minutes, as he twisted his mustache, he covered:

* How he had been island hopping for the past 8 months…

* How he had been “defeated” by a stone staircase that led down the side of a cliff on a remote Greek island, while women and children successfully managed it in the past…

* How the Greek god of blacksmithing, Hephaestus, was repeatedly cuckolded by the Greek god of war, Ares…

* How the Athenians lost the war to the Spartans, which is not really a vote in favor of democracy…

* And, after a few twists and turns covering the current political situation in several countries, how the closing of the Strait of Hormuz will lead to a worldwide shortage of sulfur… which in turn will cause food prices to skyrocket… which in turn will lead to worldwide famine… which in turn will lead to the collapse of civilization as we know it.

Eventually, the guy must have felt he had exhausted his audience.

He stood up, and before walking off into the sunset, he raised his finger to the sky like Plato. “By the end of 2027!” he cried out. “Remember when the collapse happens that the aspy guy in Athens predicted it!”

Now here’s my prediction, which I fully expect to be realized by the end of 2027:

Things will be better than ever.

Humans are not like spaghetti, which flies in a straight line when you fling it at the wall. Instead we have agency, the ability to adapt and solve problems, to change the course of our flight, and to come out ok and even better off.

It’s been like that for a long, long time. And so it will be this time.

(When the end of 2027 comes and things are better than ever, remember this email newsletter predicted it.)

Of course, some people will be worse off in a year and a half. That’s always true.

But you can choose, and the decisions you make today will determine which group — better off or worse off — you will be in when the end of 2027 rolls around.

Since I’m in a prophetic mood, let me give you one more prediction:

An audience, and a strong relationship with that audience, are the only things that will have value in the future…

… because of AI, because of political uncertainty, because of increasing competition in whatever field you’re in, because of a worldwide shortage of sulfur.

Maybe you don’t agree with me. That’s fine.

Maybe you do agree with me, or at least think that having an audience and a strong relationship to that audience is a worthwhile bet to make on behalf of your future self.

If so, you might like my “10 Commandments of Con Men, Pickup Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen etc.” book.

I wrote that book to be interesting (at least if you find stories about persuasion and influence interesting) and provocative (hence the con men and pick up artists right at the start of the title).

The core ideas of this book, however, are really just about effective communication, or if you like, persuasion, which is ultimately what building and keeping a strong relationship is about, whether individually or in groups.

If that sounds valuable to you, and if you you wanna make a bet on yourself for the future:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

P.S. To celebrate the 1-year anniversary of this book, I will be kicking off a Tour de Commandments event on May 11th.

I’ll have more details about this exciting, unique, spectacular, historic, one-time, never-to-be repeated event over the next few days, as the countdown to the start gets closer and closer to zero.

If you wanna be ready for it, grab your copy of my book at the link above.

[T-minus-3] Commercial from the Mediterranean Sea

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Fair warning:

This email is a commercial, coming to you from a sailboat in the Mediterranean, with zero secret tactical info, and the only intended goal of hyping myself up a bit.

The reason for this:

Like I said, I’m currently on a boat, somewhere on the coast of the Peloponnese peninsula, with a few friends.

The evening is warm, the sea is calm, the Germans on the next boat over are playing some dice game while my friends chatter quietly in Hungarian.

Frankly it’s very nice. Yet I’m still trying to squeeze in an email.

Because of the circumstances, I want to be quick, and so I will simply share a nice testimonial, one of the top ones I’ve gotten in the past year.

This testimonial comes from Nick “Jet Set” Bandy.

Nick, as you might know, works as a fractional CMO, and makes a nice $12k/month for a modest 15 hours a week of various and interesting marketing work. He also writes pretty fantastic daily emails, and sell pretty fantastic offers to his email list.

And that’s when he’s not doing commisson-only deals with local businesses that have customer datbases of 10s of thousands of names, and offers in the 10s of thousands of dollars…

… and of course, when he’s not jetsetting with his wife and baby around the world, as he is doing now in Japan.

Nick recently went through one of my courses. That prompted him to write me unbidden:

===

Hey man just wanted to say that your stuff is incredible. I’ve been purposefully not consuming courses for the past few months and just got around to going through a handful of yours. Also grabbed 10 Commandments of Con Men et al to read on our trip.

There are only a handful of people whose products I can go through and say “I couldn’t have prompted Claude to come up with this” and you’re one of them.

===

I’m glad I can still be better than AI, even when prompted by somebody clever and skilled like Nick.

I could link to one of my expensive courses here, hoping that you will buy it.

Instead, I’ll suggest you grab a copy of my 10 Commandments of Con Men et al. book.

It’s only 5 bucks on Amazon, and whether you’re going on a trip or staying at home, I suspect you might find it incredible if you give it a quick read. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

PSA: I failed, and nobody noticed

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A few days ago, I ran a poll inside my Daily Email House community that went… nowhere.

A member, Neil Sutton, had suggested creating little 3-4 person accountability groups. I somehow called them “pods” and ran a poll to see if people would want to participate. The results, from a group of 480 members:

6 people voted “Yes! I love the idea, please make it happen!”

2 people voted “No! Other people are just barnacles slowing down the gleaming ship that is my life”

7 people voted “Ew? I mean, maybe? It would depend on who exactly I’m matched with in my pod”

I’d call that a fail, and I blame the “pods” naming misstep. Some more failures i’ve had in the past couple weeks:

– Psych Psundays. I introduced this series of Sunday emails, ran it for 3 weeks, ran out of ideas and apparently reader interest, called it quits

– Vitriol Wednesday. Based on another Daily Email House member suggestion. Designated a day to pile on hate on a guru in the industry. Lukewarm hate at best. Called it a fail that I won’t repeat.

– Auction for Svet Dimitrov. I had the idea for copy chief Svet Dimitrov to run an auction to help people get copywriting clients. Svet floated the idea to his list and I floated it to mine. Again, lukewarm interest. Call it a fail (though Svet did get a number of coaching clients out of the exercise nonetheless)

– Auction for Copy Riddles resell rights. I floated the idea to my list and inside Monetization Nastermind, another Skool group I run. Again, not enough interest to run an auction. Fail.

Did you notice any or all of these failures? If you did noticed, did you remember any of them until now that I brought them up? And if you did, did you gloat and cackle at at any of these failures of mine?

I doubt it.

In my experience, nobody notices your failures, and if they do notice, nobody remembers.

And yet, I can tell you that each time I start a new project, particularly one that will be out in the open like a poll or a launch or an auction, each time the thought comes to me:

“What if it’s a big old failure? And what if a bunch of people see me fail?”

In other words, all I’ve really developed, in place of a thick skin, is a moderate ability to act in spite of feeling stressed about what will happen if I fail.

The feeling has never really gone away.

And that’s important to remember.

If you’re waiting to stop feeling nervous in order to act, odds are you will never act.

On the other hand, if you act, and if it produces a success, you’re almost sure to be filled with excitment and even confidence.

And if you act, and it produces a failure, the feeling will be much less stressful than the expectation of that failure… plus, like I said, few people will noticed and nobody will remember.

And while I’m on the topic of public service announcements, a reminder that the kickoff of my tour de commandments event is happening in 4 days

To celebrate the 1-year anniversary of this book, and possibly, my 100th review, I will be kicking off a Tour de Commandments event on May 11th.

I’ll have more details about this exciting, unique, spectacular, historic, one-time, never-to-be repeated event over the next few days, as the countdown to the start gets closer and closer to zero.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t yet gotten your copy of my 10 Commandments book, your copy is waiting for you here:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

[T-minus-5] Countdown to the start

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A few days ago, I was sitting in the center of Barcelona, near the Arc de Triomf, waiting for a friend, when I noticed something that deserved an email.

I was ogling the people, ogling the dogs, ogling the big red brick Arc itself. And then, I noticed a yellow and black construction in front of it.

It was a countdown timer, counting down second, minutes, hours, and days to something. Immediately, I was sucked it, and I wanted to know more.

“What’s gonna happen? And when? Should I be here? I bet it’s gonna be exciting.”

I saw that the construction had the yellow jersey of Tour de France on it.

I checked later. Sure enough, it’s a countdown clock, counting down the time to the start of the Tour de France, which will kick off on on July 4th, from Barcelona, which is not in France, but okay.

(I gotta tell you, there’s nothing more boring to me than watching bicyclists, but this year, I feel invested in the Tour de France.)

The day after that, I was at the gym, also very close to the Arc de Triomf.

I was listening to the latest James Altucher podcast. James was interviewing Amy Morin, author of the “13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do,” which is a bestselling book that spawned a whole series of “13 Things Mentally Strong X Don’t Do” books for Morin and made her a multimillionaire.

The weird thing is, Morin’s original book wasn’t an overnight smash success.

It took a year and a half for it to reach bestseller status.

James asked about that. Because normally, if a book doesn’t sell well straight out the gate, the publisher will give up on it and stop promoting it.

How did Morin’s book not sell well at first, and yet become a bestseller a year and a half later? Morin explained:

===

Honestly it was from Rush Limbaugh. He mentioned my book on a Monday.

He said, “Today we’re gonna talk about the 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do.” And he never got to it that day.

So Tuesday he said, “Today is the day. We’re gonna talk about the 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do.” And he didn’t get to it that day either.

By about Wednesday, the book had literally sold out of every bookstore.

He didn’t get to it until Friday. He plugged my book five days in a row. It sold out.

A year and a half in, where it only sold ok, most bookstores only had one copy. Even Amazon didn’t have that many in stock. So it sold out everywhere by about Wednesday.

It was the next week that I hit Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller lists.

===

My point being:

Most marketers are plenty familiar with countdowns to the end. “Deadline in 24 hours! 12 hours! 8 hours! Deadline is here! Deadline! Deadline! Deadline!”

But few marketers are familiar enough with coountdowns to the start. To teasing excitement to the launch of a thing, and not just the disappearance of an opportunity.

But smart people, or some lucky ones, like Amy Morin above, know the benefit of not only counting down to the end of a thing, but the start of it as well.

Let me put that into practice right now.

I published my new 10 Commandments book, “10 Commandments of Con Men, Pickup Artists, Magicians, etc.” almost exactly a year ago.

In the meantime, I’ve amassed 99 reviews on Amazon, the majority of them 5 star.

To celebrate the 1-year anniversary of this book, and possibly, my 100th review, I will be kicking off a Tour de Commandments event on May 11th.

I’ll have more details about this exciting, unique, spectacular, historic, one-time, never-to-be repeated event over the next few days, as the countdown to the start gets closer and closer to zero.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t yet gotten your copy of my 10 Commandments book, your copy is waiting for you here:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

Announcing: Done-for-you newsletter service

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A couple years ago, I announced a done-for-you newsletter service.

And since I recently wrote an email about the mutually reinforcing benefits of having both an education track (this newsletter) and a client track (something I gave up 3-4 years ago)… and since that email ended up persuading me as well… I’m bringing the done-for-you newsletter service back.

When I first launched this service, I was writing a newsletter in the health space.

​​In that space, I had seen lots of both new and established companies, which either didn’t have a newsletter or had a terrible one, for various reasons ranging from unreadable layouts to offensively infrequent sending to tear-inducing dullness.

I thought, with my email marketing and copywriting and newsletter-creating experience, I could go and help these companies.

I could come up with a new concept for a newsletter for them, and give them ideas for ongoing content that would be interesting to their readers and valuable to the company.

But “concept” and “content ideas” are not easy to sell, at least in my experience.

So I thought I could offer the entire package.

Problem:

​​I don’t want to write another ongoing newsletter, particularly if it’s not for myself.

Solution:

I do have this first newsletter, the one you are reading now, with hundreds or maybe thousands of writers who might be interested in a job.

I figured I could hire one or a dozen such writers from my list, coach them, monitor them, crack the whip on occasion, and guide them to make sure they provide quality work, so that everybody’s ultimately happy — the company, the writers, me.

I might still end up doing that, at scale, in the health space.

But I decided, as an experiment, to offer this done-for-you newsletter service to my marketing list first.

Here’s what to know:

1. This service is meant for you if you have a business already but no newsletter or, let’s be honest, a terrible newsletter.

​​This is for you if you have customers and an offer that’s selling, whether a product or a service.

As you probably know, a newsletter can be an easy, profitable, prestige-building way to get more people into your world, to get more of them to buy what you sell, and to keep them around until you sell the next thing. And with my done-for-you newsletter service, you don’t have to do anything, except pay me to get it all done for you. ​​

2. This is not for you if you have nothing to sell. There’s nothing wrong with starting a newsletter if you have nothing to sell. But that’s just not the kind of client I’m looking for for this done-for-you service.

3. This is also not for you if you already have a newsletter, and you want my help growing your newsletter. My take is that, if you think you have a newsletter growth problem, what you really have is a monetization problem.

As you might be able to tell from my tone above, I’m not desperate to find clients for this service. I have enough money and other plans and opportunities. I even debated for a good while about offering this at all.

At the same time, it would be great to find a business I could genuinely help.

​​I like this newsletter game, and I find I’m good at it.

​​It would be great to have the experience of starting new newsletters and helping them succeed, without having to 1) create the offers to make the newsletters pay off and 2) do the writing myself. That experience was the reason I did decided to offer this in the end.

If you are interested in this done-for-you newsletter service, and if you fall into group #1 above, then write me and we can start a conversation.

I’ll talk about this offer over the next few days and then I’ll shut up about it.

​​If the offer turns out to be successful and the delivery enjoyable, I’ll take it to that health niche I was originally planning on targeting.

​​And if it’s not enjoyable or not successful, then I’ll lock it up in the cellar, along with my Most Valuable Postcard (locked up since 2022, next up for parole in 2038) and my “Win Your First Copywriting Job Workshop” (locked up in 2021, life sentence, not eligible for parole).

For now, this done-for-you newsletter offer still stands. If it’s got you excited, write me, and we can talk.

Off-market affiliate deals

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I’ve been lurking on Facebook lately, doing research for my low-ticket funnel. That’s how I came across an interesting new offer for coaches and consultants:

1. We will build out a low-ticket funnel for you, for free

2. We will run traffic to it, for free, using our own money

3. We will drive buyers who come through this funnel to a sales call for your high-ticket coaching or consulting offer

4. We only take a cut when you close a deal

I don’t know how well these guys are doing.

But I do know another company that effectively has this same business model.

It’s a company I used to write copy for back in the day.

They didn’t advertise that this was their business model, but since I was a copywriter for them, I know that that’s what they did.

They started out with real estate investing gurus who had high-ticket coaching programs, and then graduated to more general bizopp coaching offers.

I happen to know that they were making a killing back when I was working with them. They only seem to have gotten bigger since.

My point for you is:

Affiliate marketing is great.

It allows you to promote and profit from offers, without having to go through the massive trouble of creating and delivering those offers.

Affiliate marketing also sucks.

Most of the available affiliate offers are no good, and the few good ones have a ton of other people promoting them.

The solution to this dilemma is to roll your own off-market affiliate offers, like the guys above.

In other words, to find people who have good offers, or the makings of good offers, but who aren’t promoting them adequately, and who certainly don’t have affiliate programs…

… and then make some sort of a deal with them to promote them adequately, using your own skills and resources.

(And better yet, to put yourself in toll position, so you get the unique right to promote this off-market affiliate deal, while others only look on with wonder and envy.)

If this is something that interests you, you can go off on your own right now and start doing.

I really hope that’s what you will do.

But if you want some support and help for this kind of stuff, my best recommendation is the Royalty Ronin community, which in many ways is a community of people who are rolling their own off-market affiliate deals, using various techniques and approaches.

In case you wanna find out more, you can sign up for a free 7-day trial here:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you sign up for Ronin and make it past the first 7 days, write me and let me know. I’ve got some bonuses with your name on them.

My list swap outreach template

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Today I wanna tell you about a free database of list swap partners, and how to actually use it to get others to promote you, even if your list is tiny.

First off, the database:

You’ve probably heard of it, because many list owners have promoted it over the past few months. It’s called List Match.

I’m late to the game of promoting List Match, but I will aim to make up for it.

Because since February, I have been signed up for List Match myself.

Thanks to that experience, I can tell you the good and the bad of List Match, and how you can turn the bad into great for you.

The good of List Match:

The people behind List Match keep promoting it. That means the platform is full of list owners who have said they want to run a list swap, and who have even gone through the trouble of signing up for an account and creating a profile.

The List Match database is fresh and more people keep getting added every week.

There are some whales on there, but most of the people on List Match have small audiences. (That fixes the problem of, “my list is too small for a list swap.”)

The bad of List Match:

List Match is hosted on Circle, which is community platform, and simply not a fit for a database tool like this.

People are supposed to “like” your automatically generated profile post, and then Circle is supposed to notify you, so you can somehow pick up the interaction.

I never get notified. Plus discovery of potential partners is inconvenient at best.

(I’ll tell you in a second the only decent way I’ve found to discover relevant newsletters on List Match).

How to turn the bad into great:

Like I said, the people behind List Match keep promoting and expanding the database. That means new people sign up, expecting others to reach out to them (that’s the official promise).

But because of List Match being on Circle and the tech problems around that, few if any of these list owners ever get any possible partners reaching out to them.

That becomes your opportunity, because this is effectively a starving crowd of people who have expressed interest in an outcome (list swaps), except nobody is satisfying that hunger for them.

My advice:

1. Get on List Match yourself

2. Once you’re on it, don’t just scroll through the hundreds of list owners on there. Instead, search the database using the search function for terms relevant to you.

(I just tried “email marketing” and found dozens of good people, including ones I have already done swaps with, bought ads from, have inside my Monetization Mastermind community, etc.)

3. Instead of relying on Circle’s unreliable “like” notifications, hoping that if you “like” somebody they will reach out to you, you reach out to them, and you do it off Circle.

(Yes, you have to be the one to take 100% of the initiative. But that’s precisely where the gold is, not just in this particular case, but everywhere else in life.)

List Match gives you the website of the person who wants to do a list swap.

Go to their website, find their contact email, or barring that, sign up to their list and then hit reply when you get the welcome email.

This bit of work is super likely to pay off. Again, these aren’t random list owners that you are cold-pitching for a list swap.

Instead, they are people who have expressly stated they are looking for list swaps… who have shared their list size so you know you are in the same ballpark… and who you have something in common with (you are both on List Match).

You can use these facts and your own copywriting or networking skill to craft a short outreach message to encourage these people to respond to you and to agree to a list swap.

Or if you like, I have a ready-made and proven list swap outreach email I’ve used in the past with another, earlier database of list swap prospects. You can use my outreach message instead of writing your own.

I used this outreach email to do a buncha list swaps for my now-dormant longevity newsletter.

Almost every list owner I reached out to with this message got back to me, and most people said yes, including when I had just a few subs.

My deal to you:

1. Sign up for List Match using my link here (it’s free): ​https://bejakovic.com/listmatch​

2. Forward me your account confirmation email (mine had the subject line, “Your account is ready”)

3. I will then send you the list swap outreach email I’ve used in the past, plus a templatized version you can fill in the blanks for and send out yourself