I’m good at writing stories, hate writing personal stories, and found a new way to look at it

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I spent a good amount of time just now, thinking up and then discarding 10 alternate angles to start this email about personal stories. The fact it took me so long and I still got nothing proves the point I’m trying to get at:

It’s easy to write stories. It’s hard to write personal stories. At least write ’em well.

But what does that mean?

I’ve written thousands of stories, in the context of this newsletter, in sales emails for clients, in Facebook ads, advertorials, sales letters.

Many of those stories were written well, in the sense that people read them, and were then hypnotized — they became open to suggestion and influence.

Most of those thousands of stories involved my clients, or were retold horror stories I’d found online, and one was about Benito Mussolini, and what happened to his corpse after he died.

But out of those thousands of stories, some were also personal stories, featuring me. Some of those personal stories I managed to write well. Some not. I never knew why.

Because of this, I always felt an extra level of confusion, resistance, and doubt whenever I have to tell a personal story. “Is this a good story? Should I include this bit? Is it relevant? Is it interesting? Am I just including it for the sake of ego? Is it irrelevant to the story but somehow important on another level?”

Today I was reading an old issue of the New Yorker. I came across an article, written by Prince Harry’s ghostwriter, about the challenges of ghost writing a memoir for Prince Harry.

“No thank you,” I said immediately, and was ready to turn the page.

But I have this rule that whenever an article seems utterly repulsive to me, I force myself to read it. And good thing I did. I came across the following passage.

The ghostwriter was fighting with Prince Harry over a detail in a story. The prince wanted the detail included. The ghostwriter didn’t. The prince insisted, because this detail showed an important bit of his character. To which the ghostwriter said, “So what?” And he explained:

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Strange as it may seem, memoir isn’t about you. It’s not even the story of your life. It’s a story carved from your life, a particular series of events chosen because they have the greatest resonance for the widest range of people, and at this point in the story those people don’t need to know anything more than that your captors said a cruel thing about your mom.

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I found way of looking at personal stories insightful. I mean, this is what I’ve always done instinctively when writing stories about other people. But it’s something I could never put my finger on when writing stories about myself.

And I’m only telling you I found this insightful because maybe you too have found it frustrating to write personal stories in the past, and maybe you will find this new way of looking at personal stories insightful also.

There were other valuable things that prince Harry’s ghostwriter said, which might be useful to you, whether you’re trying to bring to life your own personal stories, or whether you too work as a ghostwriter. In case you are curious:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/05/15/j-r-moehringer-ghostwriter-prince-harry-memoir-spare

Guy rebuffs my attempt at cross-promotion

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A report from the trenches:

I’m working on growing my health email newsletter, which I launched a few months ago.

One part of what I’m doing is reaching out to other newsletters to offer to cross-promote. I’ve been contacting newsletters of a similar size to mine, who share some common elements with mine:

– sent out weekly
– news-related
– “proven” — make an emphasis on providing references or sources
– is made up of actual paragraphs of text that people read, rather than just a collection of links

I’ve had a few people take me up on my cross-promotion offer. But one guy, whose weekly newsletter is for people who want to “stay on top of the current issues and that like to read more than just bulletpoints,” was not interested in my offer. He wrote me to say:

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I don’t think this partnership would work out, basically because I’ve done it before and the clicks were very, very low. Also, I don’t think there’s a great overlap in the content of our two newsletters.

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As Dan Kennedy might say about that first reason, if we all stopped doing something if the first time was a fail, the human race would soon die out. There’d be no more babies born.

But what about that other reason? About content overlap?

It’s very sensible to only sell competitive duck herding products to competitive duck herding enthusiasts.

But most offers are not that one-dimensional.

The “world’s greatest list broker,” Michael Fishman, was once tasked with finding new lists to promote an investment newsletter.

Michael suggested a list of buyers of a product called Big Money Pro Golf Secrets. The publisher of the investment newsletter said, “We’ve tried golf lists before, they don’t work for us.”

Michael said, “No problem. It’s not a golf list. Think about who would buy a book called Big Money Pro Golf Secrets. I don’t care if it’s Big Money Pro Flower Secrets. Anybody who would respond to that language is somebody whose door we want to knock on.”

Point being, if you have something that’s not as narrow in appeal as duck herding, there are many dimensions along which you can expand your market, beyond the obvious topic or content or promise of what you’re selling. ​

​ By the way, Michael Fishman is somebody worth listening to. I’ve read and watched and listened to everything I could find online by the guy. I make a habit of occasionally searching the Internet to see if anything new has cropped up.

If you want a place to start, here’s a great interview that Michael Fishman did with Michael Senoff of Hard to Find Seminars:

https://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Michael_Fishman_Interview.htm

Is this the most immoral email ever written?

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Or is it the most sensible, the most practical, the most revolutionary thing you will read today?

To find out, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Is your business or career a source of annoyance or frustration instead of a source of pleasure and fulfillment?

2. Have you become tense and irritable because of the incessant, nagging demands made upon you by others?

3. Do you remember my email from last week, the one where I had a little story from Drayton Bird, about how he and Gene Schwartz independently wrote the exact same ad headline, word-for-word?

Well I tracked that ad down. By the tone of it, I guess it’s the Gene Schwartz version.

This ad sells a book — “the most immoral book ever written?” — which was initially published in 1937, then went through a lot of reprints, then went out of print, and was finally resurrected in the 1960s by Gene for his mail-order book-selling empire. Gene is still supposed to be the guy who has sold the most books by mail in history.

I invite you to check out the full ad on the page below. If, after 10 days, you do not believe that Gene Schwartz’s masterful cold reads can dramatically transform your marketing, you may return the ad and owe nothing. Otherwise I will bill you for $0.00 plus postage. Click the link below and then read the page that opens up:

https://bejakovic.com/most-immoral

Not comfortable asking for more money?

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Trevor “Toe Cracker” Crook was at the front of the room, finishing his presentation, and was about to launch into the pitch for his offer.

“How many of you regularly close 5-figure copywriting contracts?” he asked.

You’re supposed to participate if you’re in the audience at a conference, and give the speaker some signs of life. So I raised my hand.

I was sitting in the front row. I glanced over my shoulder. I realized that, out of 25+ other copywriters in the room, maybe two or three also had their hand up.

I felt sheepish. I put my hand down.

The fact is, I’m not overwhelmingly confident. I’m certainly not assertive or demanding.

And yet, a couple years ago, back when I was still regularly taking on client work, I was closing 5-figure deals matter-of-factly. And if I were taking on a big project now, I wouldn’t have any trouble asking for — and probably getting — $15k or $20k, upfront, depending on what needs to be done.

In my experience, asking for more money is not a matter of confidence, in the sense of some unshakeable self-belief. Nor is it a matter of assertiveness.

It’s really about systematically putting yourself into a situation where neither of those is needed. As negotiation coach Jim Camp, who guided Fortune 100 CEOs and revamped the FBI’s hostage negotiation process, had to say:

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I’ve got wonderful non-assertive people that just do magnificent jobs in negotiation. But that’s because they have the tools. They don’t need to be assertive. Assertive is not a trait that is to be desired in negotiation by any means.

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I’m thinking about putting on a training in June about how to be comfortable charging more. This isn’t only about copywriting work. I’ve been selling courses, live presentations, and consulting to make up for the fact I rarely work with copywriting clients any more. I’ve found the same principles apply whenever money changes hands.

If such a training is something that would interest you, hit reply and let me know. In case there’s enough interest, I will put it on.

Looking for a deliverability expert

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If you know somebody who is an expert on email deliverability, please send them my way or tell me where I can find them.

The background, as I’ve mentioned before, is that I’ve launched a new newsletter.

My new newsletter runs on Beehiiv, which is a Substack-like platform.

I recently started paying for Beehiiv “boosts” — basically co-reg when people sign up for other Beehiiv newsletters.

I also have double-optin set up for my Beehiiv newsletter.

When I started running the paid boosts, I quickly started getting dozens of new subscribers per day.

But none of them, not a single one, was double-opting in.

The good news is, with boosts you don’t have to pay for subscribers who don’t double-opt in. The bad news is, I wasn’t growing my list.

I didn’t know what was wrong, and I wanted to find out in the quickest and most direct way possible.

So I wrote up a post about what I was seeing. I titled it, “Boosts: Shaky day 1 experiences.” And I posted it inside the Newsletter XP community, which is hosted and run by the Beehiiv people, and which has a few hundred people, mainly Beehiiv users, who paid good money to be there.

Result:

It seemed like the entire Beehiiv team got on the case. They figured out that the Boosts were not to blame. Rather, it turned out my double-optin emails were for some reason ending up in spam.

One of the Beehiiv people suggested changing my sending domain from my custom domain to the default Beehiiv domain. That fixed the issue for the moment. But it’s not a permanent solution.

Yesterday, I tried reverting to my custom domain again. And again, I am seeing that practically nobody is doing the double optin.

I’m guessing my confirmation emails are going to spam again. ​​

So if you know somebody who can help me diagnose and fix the underlying issue, tell them to contact me or tell me how to contact them.

For the right man or woman, I’ll pay top dollar to get this problem solved. And I’ll be grateful to you for your help, and for putting me in touch with this person.

My local convenience store superstar

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My girlfriend was staring hard at a piece of bubble gum in her hands. “Malik has been giving me a ton of these lately.”

Malik is a nice Pakistani man who runs the convenience store downstairs. My girlfriend regularly chats with him.

“I thought we were friends,” she said. “He made me look at his wedding photos.”

Malik doesn’t ever ring up what you’re buying. He never gives you a receipt.

​​Instead, he eyeballs the stuff you’re holding in your hands — a bottle of water, two cans of beer — and tells you the total. 7 euro 65 cents. Tomorrow, the same basket of stuff might cost 6 euro 30. Or 9 euro 15.

Sometimes, Malik senses he has overcharged you. And without looking at you directly, he senses whether you feel so too. If he ever thinks he’s gone too far, he doesn’t lower the price. Instead, he throws in something extra — a single-serve cookie, a lollypop, a piece of bubble gum. ​​Lately it’s been happening a lot.

For the past six days, I’ve been milking last week’s copywriting conference for email ideas. I will probably be able to do so until the end of this month.

During the copywriting conference, I saw a half dozen presenters go up to the front of the room to give a talk. At the end of each talk, they all sold some existing high-priced offer.

Most of the presenters offered a discount as an inducement to act now, before the conference ends.

But a few of the really smart, experienced, established marketers didn’t lower the price. That’s an ugly habit to get into. Instead, the most sophisticated marketers threw in something extra — a bonus training, a private consult, a piece of bubble gum — to get you to act now before the conference ends.

Simple, you might say.

But it was the difference between money lost and money made. It was also the difference between the adequate marketers and the superstars.

Anyways, I got an offer for you. It’s one I haven’t offered since last summer. It’s my Email Marketing Report.

If you have an email list of at least 2,000 names, and you would like to make more money from that email list, then this Report might be right for you.

My Email Marketing Report is not cheap. But it’s not shamelessly overpriced either.

That’s why there’s no discount, and no piece of bubblegum as bonus.

Even so, you may choose to take me up on this Report, because you see and decide that it can be valuable for you. If you’d like me to help you make that decision:

https://bejakovic.com/email-marketing-report/

Anonymous personal guru

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“It’s anonymous,” he said. “They never see me or find out who I am.”

I took my face out from the little plate filled with different cheeses. I leaned back in my seat. “So how do you deliver it?”

“It’s just audio of me talking. They don’t see me. And I never say what my name is.”

I was getting excited. “But what about your high-end coaching clients, the ones who are paying you a grand?”

“Yeah, we get on a Zoom call. They do see my face, and I tell them my first name. But they still don’t know who I am.”

During the Gdansk conference, I met a copywriter who’s kind of a big thing on copywriting Twitter. But his Twitter account is anonymous. He only goes by Mercure.

A couple months ago, he launched a couple coaching offers.

The quirky sales page for these offers reads and looks like a detective pulp novel. It’s red font on black background and there’s an mp3 clip at the top, hosted on Soundcloud, that sets the mood with a kind of film noir soundtrack.

The “beginner copy camp” offer sold on this page is 200 euro. The “intermediate copy camp” is 1000 euro.

A bunch of people have bought, at both levels. And they keep buying. Even so, they don’t get to find out who Mercure is.

I’m telling you this for two reasons.

One, because Twitter might not be the meme-filled sewer I always assumed it was. I spent much of the farewell dinner at the Gdansk conference grilling this guy about what he does on Twitter and how. It all sounded very positive.

Reason two is, to remind you that you can do things your own way, and it can still work.

This guy never shares his name online, either on Twitter or to his customers. He never shares anything personal about himself, beyond the fact that he’s a successful copywriter. He says he also never engages in drama or mud-slinging or taking sides.

He has a sales page that looks like it was made by a teenager in 2001 using raw HTML… he makes people submit proof they are actually intermediate copywriters if they want to join his higher-tiered thing… he kicks people out of the coaching if they don’t do the work, and he doesn’t refund them — it’s part of the deal.

And yet, it works.

Maybe you don’t want to get on Twitter. Maybe you have no problem sharing your personal life online. Maybe you like engaging in drama.

All that’s fine. I’m just telling you there really are options. Lots of things can work, as long as you get some of the basics down.

If you want to see some of that in action, then I’ll point you to Mercure on Twitter.

He and I didn’t talk about doing any kind of cross-promotion. He doesn’t know I am writing about him. In fact, we haven’t talked since the farewell Gdansk dinner.

I’m just telling you about him because I think you might benefit from knowing about the guy — either directly, via what he does, or just as inspiration, via how he does it. In case you are curious:

https://twitter.com/MercureCopy

“If you’re a copywriter and you don’t do consulting…”

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On the last day of the copywriting conference in Gdansk, A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos gave his second talk.

As part of the talk, Parris said something encouraging and nurturing:

“If you’re a copywriter and you don’t do consulting — let me put this delicately – you’re a fucking idiot.”

In my email from a couple days ago, I asked readers what they know that they could sell.

I got a lot of responses to that email. Most of the ideas I heard I thought were very sellable. A few I was ready to pay money for then and there.

I wonder what will come of all those ideas. I hope many will in fact turn into something. And maybe Parris’s encouraging and nurturing words above will help somebody transform their sellable knowledge into cash.

If you’re a copywriter… or you like the idea of offering consulting, but something is blocking you… you might like my daily email newsletter. I occasionally share ideas which you might find valuable. Click here to sign up.

Non-scientific advertising

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The copywriting conference is over.

I’m at the Gdansk airport, wandering around and looking for my gate. Surprise. I come across a glass display case with a taxidermied bear inside.

It’s not an eastern European way of entertaining passengers. Rather, it’s a message from the WWF about trafficking in rare animals and animal products.

Besides the whole taxidermied bear, the glass case contains a bear head, a cheetah pelt, a skinned python, several pairs of snake leather slippers, taxidermied alligators and iguanas, a bunch of coral, and a giant turtle shell.

Those are the souvenirs. Then there’s the charms, potions, and amulets.

Cobratoxan. Seahorse capsules. Little carved ivory Buddhas. Skin caviar, with extract of sturgeon eggs. Bear balsam, with real bear inside.

Was the copywriting conference worth attending?

I’m 100% glad I came. I’ll see how it pays off and when. One thing I do know:

Marketing is like magic. Words and formulas have real power. Money can appear out of nowhere. And none of it happens without belief.

It’s time for me to board my plane and head back home. I’ll be back tomorrow with another email. If you’d like to read that, you can sign up for my email newsletter here.

The fastest, but certainly not the newest, way to cash

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Day 3 of the copywriting conference.

​​You can’t make an omelette without cracking two to three eggs, and you can’t go to a copywriting conference without getting your brain scrambled with hundreds of different ideas, stories, pitches, open loops that never get closed, jokes, not-jokes, cliches, and important takeaways.

Let me pull it together for a moment and tell you about the fastest way to cash. It’s not the newest way to cash. In fact it’s not new at all. I’m sure you’ve heard about it. But maybe you need a reminder.

Yesterday, one of the speakers, Adam Urbanski, said the fastest path to cash, in his experience, is to sell what you know.

The day before, Barry Randall, who I wrote about in my email yesterday, said something similar.

Barry said that what he does is, learn something, keep it simple, and then sell it. On the other hand, what most other people do is learn something, complicate it, and then get stuck.

I’m not sure those are Barry’s exact words. In spite of 51 pages of notes so far, I didn’t write that bit down. I’ll have to seek him out today and confirm it.

Meanwhile, I have a deal for you:

Sign up to my email newsletter.

When you get my welcome email, hit reply and tell me what you have learned that you can sell. I genuinely want to know.

In return, I will reply to you and tell you a practical tip to make your presentation better if you ever do sell that knowledge you have in your head.

This tip is something that popped up in my head yesterday during Adam Urbanski’s presentation.

Adam’s presentation was excellent and very effective. But I believe with a small tweak it could be even more effective.

​​I won’t seek out Adam today and tell him that — nobody wants an unsolicited critique. But if you like, hit reply, tell me what you have learned that you can sell, and I will tell you what I have in mind.