An influence and positioning riddle

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Let’s see if you can spot the pattern:

1. Today, I got a question from a paying subscriber to my Daily Email Habit service. The question was about writing daily emails. I wrote up my answer to that question and posted it inside my Daily Email House community, which has ~500 members, many of them also Daily Email Habit paying subscribers.

2. Earlier today, I got a question from one of the folks who joined my advertorial cohort, which kicked off yesterday, and which I charged $5k for. This cohort member wanted feedback on a couple advertorials she had written, and she had a question about cold outreach.

3. Yesterday afternoon, I got on a call with a business owner who I’m helping to better monetize his email list. We spent some time talking about email copy (I gave him a little tip about positioning) and then we moved on to talking offers, which is where the real money lies.

So, can you spot the pattern?

I’ll give you a moment.

No rush.

I’ll be right over here, eating a banana and getting a sip of water, while you prepare your answer.

Got your best guess?

Ok. So let me tell you what’s up:

Yesterday on that call with the coaching client, he said something like, “I’ll be able to increase the price of this offer in the future after I get some client wins that I can share.”

No doubt, case studies of client wins are valuable.

But I would argue that an occasional case study, even one featuring a very dramatic and successful turnaround, is less valuable than simply hammering home to people, day after day, that you’re the kind of person that others come to and pay for advice, guidance, and help.

In other words, it’s more valuable to be seen as a leader than to be seen as an expert.

It’s what I done above.

I told you I had people coming to me, paying me, getting my advice and guidance.

I didn’t say anything about the results of that advice and guidance. There was no “case study,” no “client wins.” I simply positioned myself as the wise old man (quite old) at the mouth of the cave at the top of the mountain, who others seek out for his wisdom (and old age).

Of course, if you can combine expertise and leadership, then you’re really in the money.

If you wanna flex both your leadership and your expertise at the same time, and if you’re willing to email regularly about topics like influence, marketing, or copywriting, then I’ll remind you of my Most Valuable Email program.

I’ve had a few hundred people pay me a few hundred dollars for this program. Here are the results that some of them have reported after implementing the Most Valuable Email trick:

#1. “… made me make 5 times more the investment in MVE”

#2. “The highest-converting single-email campaign sent to the non-buyers of all time”

#3. “My inbox is flooded with applause and response and compliments”

For more info on MVE:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Emotional reactivity in email promos

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Last Wednesday, I started a new, possibly doomed email promo.

My goal was to get 5 people into the 1-Person Advertorial Agency Cohort.

My offer was help with copywriting, help with getting clients, up to and including making $10k from advertorial work.

My price was $5k.

Like I said, I started promoting this on Wednesday.

By about Friday, I was hating it.

A few dozen people had responded to express interest, most of them before I had publicly announced the price.

After several days of email back-and-forth, nobody had signed up. Some people had opted out. Some had stopped responding. The others had questions, doubts, or concerns. The nerve!

I spent a part of my Friday fantasizing of simply closing down this whole thing, and focusing on writing my own advertorials rather than trying to persuade anybody to join me. “I’ll show them!”

Fortunately, I have been here before.

Instead of lashing out at the world, I simply kept promoting the offer to my list, answering questions from the people who had expressed interest, and honing the 1-1 sales process bit by bit.

On Saturday, one person joined. Yesterday, four more people joined, including one guy (a long-time reader and buyer) who only responded to the “Final Call” email I sent out.

In sum:

I wanted 5 people. I got 5 people. $10k collected over the past two days, with another $15k due when I get people to the result I promised.

I’m telling you this because, besides running this advertorial cohort, I’m also coaching several business owners on how to make money with their email list. And making money with your email list means email promos.

I’ve recently seen, on a couple different occasions, people getting frustrated due to a lack of results, shutting down their promo after just a day or two, and scrapping the offer.

I know how it feels. I’ve been there. In fact, like I just told you, I was there last week, ready to shut down my own promo and scrap the offer.

Maybe now that I’ve told you that it happens to me, you will be able to recognize it in yourself as well.

It’s helpful to label it. (“Emotional reactivity” is not a very elegant term, but it’s what I call it.)

It’s also helpful to remind yourself that, now that you’re in the middle of the promo, it’s probably not a good time to make dramatic decisions, like killing the offer, or slashing the price, or promising tons of new deliverables that you hadn’t planned on initially.

Rather, the middle of the promo is a time for talking to your audience, clarifying your offer and your positioning, and making the best out of what you’ve already got.

From time to time, I like to promote Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin community. From time to time, I like to reiterate that Travis’s Ronin is the best deal in Internet Marketing right now. From time to time, I cite some cool or fundamental thing I’ve learned from Travis.

The fact is, this entire “advertorial cohort” promo wouldn’t have happened without the many things, big and small, I’ve learned from Travis and the courses and trainings and regular posts he puts up inside Royalty Ronin.

Everything, from the very concept of this promo, to the offer structure, to the pricing, to how I promoted it, to the fact that I didn’t give up in frustration after a few days of no results… all of that comes from stuff I can trace directly to Travis.

Travis offers a week-long free trial for Royalty Ronin. I’ve gotten a metric ton, and 100k+ worth of income, due to what’s inside Ronin. Maybe you will too. If you wanna give it a try:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you do make it past free trial and stay inside Ronin, write me an email and let me know. I have some bonuses with your name on them.

Last call for 1PAA cohort

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I’m reading a book called No More Mr. Nice Guy, and on page 65 it says:

“Nice Guys have a difficult time comprehending that in general, people are not drawn to perfection in others. People are drawn to shared interests, shared problems, and an individual’s life force.”

The book is about 1-1, personal relationships. But the same applies to 1-many or business relationships.

Let that be the useful marketing message for today.

In entirely unrelated news, this is the last call I will make for the 1-Person Advertorial Agency cohort.

It’s come to my attention that this entire week, I’ve been promoting this cohort and insisting that it kicks off on May 1.

That of course is nonsense, since May 1 is well past.

The fact is I made a mistake, one I then copy-pasted over and over. The cohort actually kicks off tomorrow, JUNE 1.

Since I’ve been promoting this offer all week long, I imagine that you’ve either dismissed it as not being for you, or you’ve replied to me to express interest. But on the odd chance that this is the first time you’re hearing about this offer, here’s what’s up, in 3 points:

#1. The investment is $5k

The destination we’re headed to is advertorials that you can reasonably make $2k+ with the right clients, and that take max 1-2 days each to finish.

If you get just one such gig a month, I figure it’s worth $24k over the next year.

$5k is a reasonable investment to fix that.

That said, I am committed to getting you to where I say I will get you.

That’s why I’m breaking up the $5k as follows, so I have a stake in the outcome I promise to get you:

* $2k to start

* The remaining $3k when you make your first $10k from advertorial work

#2. I will help you get clients via the two methods laid out in 1PAA

One of these methods is Upwork (that’s where I got my biggest advertorial clients back in the day).

The other is cold outreach to promising brands with a ready-made advertorial.

(I suggest doing both of these methods in parallel during the cohort, for the quickest and best results.)

I will help you filter out who to approach, the messages to send them, the offers to make them. But you still have to do the work, as laid out in 1PAA.

#3. We get started next week, May June 1st, and we keep going until you get to $10k

The cohort will be organized as a month-long Skool group where I can answer questions and give feedback on copy and client-getting efforts.

1 month is plenty of time to pick/get a client, write an advertorial for them, and deliver it. (If you’re feeling very proactive, it’s enough to write and deliver 5 or 10 advertorials.)

After the month is done, I’ll keep giving you ongoing support and feedback over email (for any questions you might have) or Google Docs (for advertorial critiques).

Again, my promise is to keep working with you until you make $10k from advertorial work.

That’s it.

If you’re interested, reply to this email. Again, we start tomorrow, JUNE 1st.

Hundreds of course buyers… one implementer

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In reply to my email yesterday, the original Crazy Email Lady, Liza Schermann, writes:

“Ha! This offer sounds eerily similar to what Sean Ferres teaches in his AI Ads Lab. I wonder if this guy came through that program.”

The context is that yesterday I wrote about a guy who is getting clients for his ad copywriting services by running ads on FB. The offer he’s promoting via his ads is, “I’ll beat your best ad or it’s free.”

Liza’s message got me curious that maybe there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of people all running eerily similar offers, all coming out of this AI Ads Lab?

Facebook ad library is very unfriendly to searching. But after about 10 minutes of poking around with various terms like “beat your best ad” and “or you don’t pay,” I found exactly… two advertisers making anything like the offer I told you about.

The first is the guy I wrote about yesterday. The second is some agency that’s offering to create scripts for 5 video ads, and in case they don’t get a winner, you pay nothing (in other words, it’s really a different offer).

Strange, right? Really strange.

What I mean is, apparently there’s a guy teaching this strategy for getting clients for writing ad copy.

Also, the strategy clearly works (as I wrote yesterday, the dude who’s running these ads has had close to 70 takers in the past ~6 months).

And yet, there is exactly ONE guy (well, at least that I could find) who is executing this strategy.

What about all those other people who went through the AI Ads Lab course?

I’m sure they have good things to say about the course. I’m sure some of them have consumed the material all the way through. I’m sure a few have even gotten results, maybe with some other client-getting strategies. Still, I would bet my left lung, kidney, or testicle that the vast majority never even consumed the material, much less implemented it, or pursued it consistently enough to see results.

The fact is, ideas have zero value unless you put them to use in some way.

I’m telling you this because I’m currently promoting an implementation cohort that’s using the 1-Person Advertorial Agency course as a blueprint.

I’ve heard lots of good things about 1PAA over the past few days. People say it’s a great course. Some have gone through it all the way. Some have even put it into action, at least partly. But the majority haven’t pursued it enough to write a single advertorial, much less to get a paying client.

That’s where my cohort comes in.

The cohort is not free. In fact, it’s expensive.

We will be following 1PAA, both for advertorial-writing and client-getting.

If you join me, you get my feedback and input, both on advertorial-writing and client-getting.

The immediate goal is to get you to complete an advertorial, and get a client who will run it.

The long-term goal is to get you to make $10k from advertorial work. My offer is I’ll keep working with you until you get there.

We start next week. In case you’re interested, reply now.

How I’d get advertorial clients without Upwork, cold outreach, or a network

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A couple months ago, I got back on Facebook in a BIG way. What I mean by that is that I started spending a few minutes there every couple days or so.

I was lurking, and trying to see what offers I would get pitched by the Facebook ad algorithm. (I was and am planning on launching my own cold traffic funnel, and wiser heads than mine say that you gotta do your research ahead of time.)

That’s how I came across a pretty, pretty brilliant offer.

It’s a dude who is running an ad… telling you he will write an ad to beat your best performing ad… and if he doesn’t succeed in beating it, he’ll give you all your money back.

(The offer started at $97 and has been going up each time he sells out the slots he’s got for the month. It currently sells for $247.)

From what I can tell, the dude has been running this since last November.

He has had 67 people take him up on it so far.

Out of those, he’s been able to beat their best ad 61 times, while refunding people 6 times.

In true Gary Bencivenga fashion, his landing page is FULL of social proof resulting from this challenge, including the refund requests from the 6 refunders, all of whom were complementary to his skill and business model.

Do you think that, out of any of the remaining 61 people whose best ads he beat, he got any long-term clients who are now paying him thousands of dollars a month?

My guess is yes.

I’m telling you this because right now, I’m promoting a cohort iI will run, starting next Monday, May 1st. The cohort will involve writing advertorials and getting clients who will happily pay for those advertorials.

So far, a few dozen people have expressed interest in this. I’ve been talking to them, or rather, emailing with them. I asked them for more information about where they’re currently at.

A few people have told me that they are either sick of looking for copywriting clients on Upwork or via cold outreach… or that they don’t have time or interest in looking for clients at all, and would rather outsource that to me.

I’m sorry to say, in that case, this cohort is not for you.

For one thing, I’m offering to help and advise with getting clients, not do it in your stead.

For another, the client-getting methods we will be using are the ones outlined inside the 1-Person Advertorial Agency course, which are (gulp) Upwork and cold outreach.

(The good news is, Upwork is where I got my biggest advertorial clients, and the way of cold outreach that 1PAA teaches is likely to be more effective and efficient than your usual kind.)

Still, if you hate the idea of Upwork and cold outreach for getting advertorial clients, then I just gave you a working alternative above. Spelled out, it goes like this:

1. Create a landing page with a headline that says something like, “FREE advertorial for your ecom brand”

2. On that landing page, explain your deal, which is basically that you will write them a free advertorial if they will pay you a commission in case of success

3. Explain who it’s for and not for (eg. must have a working cold traffic funnel, must be making at least X sales per day, must not be currently under investigation by the FTC, etc.)

4. Get people to fill out some kind of a form with whatever details you want from them in order to decide if you want to work with them, or to invite them on a screening call

5. Run super basic ads on Facebook for $20 a day to advertise this landing page

6. Update your landing page with proof as you get it

I’ve kick-started my own advertorial agency by reaching out to my list and network. Maybe that will be enough to get me all the advertorial clients I will ever want. Or maybe i will eventually tap out that demand, in which case I will do exactly what I wrote above, with that Facebook advertising strategy.

But if you like, you can beat me to it, and get your name out there in the world, and get clients who pay you for advertorials in the process, by doing what I just told you I would do.

In any case, the countdown to my advertorial cohort continues. Here are the high-level details:

I’ve made an agreement to write an advertorial for a client.

I’m inviting copywriters to join me and work alongside me as I do this.

You get my help with writing an advertorial following the 1-Person Advertorial Agency system.

You get my help tracking down, vetting, and closing a client (or partner business) using the two client-getting methods in 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

Plus, I’m promising to keep working with you and giving you my support and input until you get to $10k from advertorial work.

We start next week. In case you’re interested, reply now.

How much it costs

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Last week, I wrote an email about 10 things that are working for me right now. One of the 10 was the following:

#6. Making a coaching offer that consists of a down payment to get started, and the rest conditional on success

I’m working with a few people on this arrangement right now. It makes selling easier. It makes delivery easier. It makes me more motivated. It makes coaching clients more motivated. It allows me to charge more than I might otherwise. I’m waiting to find out what the downsides, if any, might be.

I’m also making a new offer right now.

I’ve made an agreement to write an advertorial for a client.

I’m inviting copywriters to join me and work alongside me as I do this.

You get my help with writing an advertorial following the 1-Person Advertorial Agency system.

You get my help tracking down, vetting, and closing a client (or partner business) using the two client-getting methods in 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

Plus, I’m promising to keep working with you and giving you my support and input until you get to $10k from advertorial work.

So how much it costs?

$5k.

The destination we’re headed to is advertorials that you can reasonably make $2k+ with the right clients, and that take max 1-2 days each to finish.

If you get just one such gig a month, I figure it’s worth $24k over the next year.

$5k is a reasonable investment to fix that.

That said, I am committed to getting you to where I say I will get you.

That’s why I’m breaking up the $5k as follows, so I have a stake in the outcome I promise to get you:

* $2k to start

* The remaining $3k when you make your first $10k from advertorial work

If you’re not completely appalled by the above numbers, and if you want to find out if this opportunity could be a fit for you, reply now. We start next week.

You + me = advertorials?

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Things move fast in Bejako land:

Last week, I asked for an advertorial client. As of yesterday, I’ve got an advertorial client.

He sells an ecom product I have never heard of before, and apparently he is running millions of dollars worth of traffic to it every year.

I will be writing a test advertorial for him over next few weeks. If it makes money, I’ll get paid on commission. if doesn’t make money… we’ll see. Maybe I’ll try again. Or maybe I’ll go write an advertorial for someone else.

Earlier this year, I promoted the 1-Person Advertorial Agency training, and I wrote that this is the hottest opportunity for copywriters in 2026.

I still believe it.

In fact, it’s why I even decided to offer advertorials to businesses, and why I offered them for free.

I will be implementing what’s inside 1PAA myself, and combining it with my own knowledge, expertise, and copywriting savvy.

But you know what? Selling bizarre ecom products to the tune of millions of dollars every year is a lonely business.

That’s why I’ve decided to take a few people along with me.

Specifically, what I’m offering here is to:

1. Help you write an advertorial that’s up to my standards

2. Help you get a client or clients who will run that advertorial

3. Keep working with you until you make $10k from your advertorial work

Would you like to join me and a few others who will be going for this trip?

We start next week. In case you’re interested, reply now.

A new episode about clever product names

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This morning, I showered, shaved, looked at myself squarely in the mirror, and said, “It’s time.”

I picked up a little plastic bottle, which had arrived by mail yesterday.

For the first time ever, I opened up the bottle and squeezed some of its contents onto my hand.

Out came a creamy white liquid, which is distinctly unwaterlike. I smiled at my own gullibility, and I rubbed the creamy white liquid all over my face.

The thing I bought and rubbed on my face is called “Fusion Water.” It promises 50 SPF, immediate absorption, and no stinging of the eyes. Pretty much, it’s a sunscreen like any other sunscreen.

And yet, a few days ago, as I walked around the city and saw an ad on an advertising column for this thing, I instantly decided to buy it.

I was sold by the “Water” in the name. I imagined something actually like water, cool, clear, not white or creamy, that I could splash on my face to protect myself against the Barcelona sun.

Sure, I knew deep down that “Fusion Water” is probably a sunscreen like any other. But that “Water” in the “Fusion Water” still sold me.

Another example:

After moving to Barcelona, I found that many people here are fans of the air fryer.

“Have you used one? It’s amazing! You should get one.”

I looked up what an air fryer is. It’s basically a small, stovetop convection oven.

But “Fry with air!” sounds much more appealing than “Bake without oil.”

The first brings to mind an image of crunchy and delicious French fries which are somehow good for you.

The second brings to mind the image of a lump of flavorless baked potato, and who cares whether that’s good for you or not.

So what’s in a name?

A lot. That which we call a rose, by any other name would NOT smell as sweet. Neither would “Fusion Water” be as appealing if it were called “Fusion Sun Cream.” Nor would “yet another stovetop oven” sell as well as an “air fryer.”

So think about names. Think about what your audience hates about your category of solution. Call your thing by a name for an entirely different category, which is blessedly free from the negative associations your audience might have with what you sell.

And on that note, I’d like to tell you about a unique digital tool that implants A-list copywriting skills into your brain.

This tool is called Copy Riddles, and one of the A-list copywriting skills it implants into your brain is precisely the skill of seductive names, which can make the sale before a prospect even knows anything about your offer.

For more information about this unique tool:

http://bejakovic.com/cr

Talking to any prospects?

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Last Thursday, I sent out an email asking readers if they want a free advertorial for their ecom brand.

I got several handfuls of responses.

Some weren’t a fit.

Some are ongoing conversations.

And some I replied to in turn, asking for a bit more info… and I NEVER EVER HEARD BACK.

Is it because they hate me?

Or they disqualified themselves?

Or they lost interest in my offer?

Or because it was the weekend?

Or because their car broke down… or their kitchen flooded… or their kid got sick… or something good was on TV… or they had bigger priorities with work, family, friends, or their Creator?

I have no idea.

But I do know that tomorrow, Tuesday, I will do what I’ve been doing every Tuesday for a few months now, with great effect.

I’ll open up a spreadsheet where I track all ongoing conversations with prospects — whether for list swaps, or affiliate deals, or interviews, or auctions, or more recently, advertorials — and I will follow up with everyone who has dropped off.

Following up with prospects used to be a chore on the order of getting on my knees and scrubbing the floors with a dirty rag soaked in filthy water.

These days, following up is a chore on the order of pressing a few buttons on my phone to tell the Roomba to get to work.

A part of the reason was that spreadsheet I created, and that calendar reminder that goes off every Tuesday and Thursday, which tells me it’s time to follow up.

The other part of the reason is that I have a set of ready-made followup messages.

I don’t have to think, be creative, second-guess myself, anything.

I just copy and paste.

That set of ready-made followup messages comes from Nick Bandy’s Ghostbuster Sequence. I highly recommend this little guide. I use it every week. It works like magic. And it makes my life much easier.

Ghostbuster Sequence currently sells for $97. To mark Memorial Day, Nick is generously continuing to make Ghostbuster Sequence available for $97 until 10pm EST tonight, at which point the price will more than double, to $197.

So are you talking to any prospects?

I guarantee some of them will drop off. Who knows why? What I do know is that you can reanimate almost all those conversations, and that at least some will turn into deals.

If you want to make your job easier and your success greater, I highly recommend Nick’s Ghostbuster Sequence. To get it before the price doubles:

https://bejakovic.com/ghostbuster

TOTO, Nintendo, and Bejako: Titans of the surival-based business

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Yesterday I read an article that’s been going viral around the world, and which tackles the seemingly pointless topic of “Why Japanese companies do so many different things.”

Example:

TOTO is a Japanese toilet manufacturer that’s been gaining ground in the US.

But besides excellent toilets, TOTO also makes excellent bathroom tiles, faucets, modular kitchens, photocatalytic coatings for buildings, and assistive equipment for the elderly.

And now, thanks to the growth of AI and the resulting demand for memory chips, TOTO has a booming new business making something called an e-chuck, which is a component of the semiconductor supply industry.

There are dozens of examples like this among Japanese companies.

Kyocera makes kitchen knives, LCD systems, and joint replacements.

Yamaha builds motorcycles, guitars, and industrial robots.

Nintendo started out as a handmade playing card company, tried to enter the taxi service and instant rice markets, and eventually settled on making Mario and Zelda.

A bunch of Japanese companies do a bunch of stuff, often entirely unrelated, at a very high and very profitable level.

How? Why?

I won’t attempt to summarize the viral article here. It’s over 5k words long, and it is itself based on summarizing a number of much longer econ research papers. Here’s just one relevant insight for you and me today:

American and Japanese companies are built up of fundamentally distinct “bundles of practices.” Among economists, these distinct bundles have gotten the names H-firm (typical American biz) vs J-firm (typical Japanese biz).

Elements of the H-firm you’re probably familiar with. Things like employee specialization, promotions and salaries based on performance, frequent workspace switching, openness to external capital.

Elements of the J-firm are much more foreign if you’re not from Japan. They include such practices as lifetime employment (even in times of economic crisis), hostility to outside capital, general employee knowledge rather than specialization, promotion and salary based on seniority rather than performance.

There’s one more distinction that’s relevant for us:

The H-firm is geared towards profitability and returns to investors.

The J-firm, on the other hand, is aiming simply at its own survival, even though it can be wildly profitable as it looks to survive.

It’s an interesting topic, and the viral article is worth looking up and reading.

But it’s not just idle curiosity why I’m sharing this with you. This whole distinction between J-firms and H-firms sounded familiar and personally relevant to me. I figured the J-firm is much more like my email-newsletter-based biz, which you might call the B-firm (for Bejako-style business).

The B-firm is also a bundle of practices, such as:

1. Selling yourself, your own personal attitudes and interests, rather than promising to solve a customer problem first and foremost

2. Regular and frequent communication

3. High prices

4. High trust

5. Customers who stick around and continue to buy for years, and often buy many different things, often entirely unrelated

Ultimately, the B-firm is also about long-term survival rather than short-term profitability, though the B-firm has been very profitable to me over the long term.

I’m telling you this in case you have an idea of what a “business” looks like.

Some of the most fundamental ideas we have about “business” are actually only assumptions, or rather, bundles of practices that make sense in a given context, like Silicon Valley or Wall Street.

Other forms of business exist, as part of other bundles, and can be very successful, and maybe much more palatable to you personally.

A final insight from that viral article:

In Japan, there was a trigger that caused the emergence of the J-firm bundle of practices. That trigger was the decision by the Japanese government, during the 1930s and 40s, to instruct firms to prioritize employees over shareholder profits, as part of the Japanese drive to build up military capacity.

Similarly, if you want to have a B-firm like mine, there’s a trigger that will in time pull in other practices, like high prices and customers who continue to buy year after year. That trigger is starting to communicate regularly and frequently with your audience, such as by sending daily emails.

You don’t need my help to start a daily email habit. But if over time you’ve decided that you want my help in starting your own daily email habit, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/deh