What’s the best font for making sales?

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A couple days ago, I saw a little study titled, “Best Font for Online Reading.”

Spoiler: there’s no clear answer.

One font, Garamond, allowed the fastest reading speed on average.

But that’s just on average. Not every person read fastest with Garamond. Another font, Franklin Gothic, proved to be the fastest font for the most people, though the average reading speed was lower than Garamond.

So is it time to change your sales page font to Garamond? Or Franklin Gothic?

Or maybe even to Open Sans — the font that came in last in terms of reading speed?

There is an argument to be made for having people be able to read your copy faster. If they get through your copy more quickly and easily, they get your sales message more easily, and they make it to the order button faster. And money loves speed, right?

On the other hand, there’s an equal argument to be made for having people read slower. The more time and effort somebody invests with you, the more likely they are to trust you (one of those mental shortcuts we all engage in), and the more likely they are to justify that investment and trust by buying in the end.

So like I said, no clear answer.

But this did bring to mind a story Brian Kurtz likes to tell about a time he hired Gary Bencivenga.

As you probably know, Brian was the VP at direct response publisher Boardroom. And in that role, he hired some of the most famous and most brilliant copywriters of all time, Gary among them.

Anyways, Brian’s story is about two sales packages, one fast, one slow, both written by Gary Bencivenga, both promoting the same product.

To me personally, this story has proven to be the most fundamental and important lesson when it comes to copywriting or running a direct response business.

Brian’s little story won’t tell you what kind of font to use, or what kind of copy to write, fast or slow. But maybe it will make that choice a lot clearer in your mind.

In case you want to read Brian’s valuable sales and copy study, you can find it at the link below. But before you go read that, perhaps you might like to sign up for my slow but trustworthy email newsletter. In any case, here’s Brian’s article:

https://www.briankurtz.net/how-you-sell-is-how-they-will-respond/

Tricks to make sales stick

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Last week, I wrote an email about misdirection, and asked for examples. A bunch of people wrote in with good pop culture illustrations.

I also got to work, reading up on the theory of misdirection. Step one was Derren Brown’s book Tricks of Mind.

You might know Brown. He is a stage mentalist and TV illusionist. He’s done a TED talk where he reads the minds of people in the audience, and he’s got shows on Channel 4 in the UK where he demonstrates and debunks the acts of psychics, faith healers, etc.

After a rough start to Brown’s book, about Brown’s conversion from gullible Christian to enlightened atheist, the book picks up and talks psychological principles, just like I was looking for.

Today, I want to share one very cool such principle with you. It’s not about misdirection. Instead, it’s the idea that a lot of the “magic” of a magic trick happens after the trick is over.

Brown describes different techniques to do this.

For example, you can repeat a trick multiple times, so tiny (and different) details from different runs bleed together after the fact, gaslighting the viewer.

Or you can give subtle verbal suggestions. For example, you can instruct an audience member to shuffle a deck of cards “again” — when it’s really the first time, and when multiple shuffles make the magic trick more impressive.

The point, as Brown claims, is that people both love magic because they like being astonished and surprised… but they also resist it, because they don’t like being fooled.

And that’s why, once the trick is over, viewers keep going over the act in their heads.

​​And if the magician does his job right, then viewers will exaggerate cool things that happened… forget details that could make them seem gullible or dumb… and invent new memories that support the idea that this was really an incredible and unexplainable act of possibly real magic.

All of which, if you ask me, applies to sales also.

Making a sale is an emotional manipulation.

And much of the sale is made after the credit card details have been exchanged and the transaction is over.

Sure, a part of that is having a solid product and good customer service.

But, like Brown says, it’s only one part, and might be a minor part.

A bigger part might be the rationalizations, selective forgetting, and false memories that pop up in your former prospect’s, now customer’s mind, after the sale is over.

I believe, like in a magic show, that there are different tricks you can use to make this happen in your customer’s head, even once he’s on his own, late at night, driving home from your sales stage show, with your digital information product sitting in his virtual lap.

What tricks exactly?

Well, I’ve got a few ideas.

But I’d like to hear yours also. Specifically:

How can you write copy, or organize your marketing, to get people to keep selling themselves on your offer after the sale is over?

Get on my email newsletter, then write in and let me know your ideas. No judgment — anything that comes to your mind is valid, and I want to hear it. In exchange, I will tell you a few ideas I’ve had on this question myself.

Grumble and grow rich

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I recently decided to stop working with a big new client.

I felt the project wasn’t making any progress. I wasn’t enjoying the work. And perhaps most of all, I didn’t really need the job, because I have other options.

Still, I took some time after it all ended to make a list of good things that came from this experience.

One was that I got turned on to a cool new gadget (the reMarkable tablet).

Another was hearing some good stories about how to build an 8-figure business within a few years.

And a third were some new book recommendations, including Mark Ford’s Automatic Wealth.

As you might know, Mark is a multimillionaire entrepreneur and marketer. He’s one of the guys who helped build up Agora into a billion-dollar company. And he’s a prolific author, best known in copywriting circles for the book Great Leads, and best known in non-copywriting circles for his book Ready, Fire, Aim.

From what I can tell, Automatic Wealth was Mark’s first book. It’s about — maybe you guessed it — wealth. What you need to do to get it. What you don’t need to do. And on that last topic, here’s a quote from Mark’s book:

“But if getting rich and successful were simply a matter of replacing negative thoughts and feelings with positive ones, why are some of the richest, most successful people that I know miserable, grouchy, and gloomy? Not all the time. And not in all circumstances. But as a general rule it seems to me that most of the people out there making the big bucks are more driven than dreamy, more testy than tranquil, and more hard-pushing than easy-going.”

You don’t have to be miserable to grow rich. But based on what Mark’s saying, if you are miserable, it’s not an impediment.

The thing is, as I’ve written before, I really don’t care much about getting rich. I make enough money as is, and my appetites are limited.

That’s not to say I’m not ambitious in my own way, about other things (a topic for another email).

And that’s why I wanted to share this quote with you. Because it applies equally well to achieving anything in life. To achieving moderate success. To just getting started, on any project, or any change you’d like to make.

You don’t have to be miserable, obsessed, or filled with negative thoughts to succeed at what you care about.

​​But if you are negative, a grouch, or even filled with doubts, it’s not an impediment. Not unless your job is to be a greeter at Disneyland or a radio DJ or a head shop owner.

​​Or who knows. Maybe you can succeed even in those careers, if you just get going. And if you just have the will to keep putting the one foot in front of the other, however grumblingly.

So much for inspiration. For practical marketing and copywriting ideas, get on my email newsletter.

Anatomy of a penis pill business success

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In early March of this year, I was listening to some Dan Kennedy seminar when Dan casually mentioned a penis pill company, out of Scottsdale, Arizona, that Gary Halbert used to write for, and that got busted by the Feds in the early 2000s.

I did some research.

​​I couldn’t find evidence connecting GH.

​​But I did find an NBC News article that said there was a company, called C.P. Direct, out of Scottsdale, Arizona, that sold “more than $74 million worth of pills that it claimed would enlarge penises or breasts, make the consumer taller or hairier — even sharpen his or her golf game.”

C.P. Direct got busted in 2002.

But they didn’t get busted for bogus claims, ineffective product, or lack of proof or evidence.

Instead, they got because of forced autoship and not giving people refunds.

The NBC News article concluded that “C.P. Direct would likely still be selling its pills today if it hadn’t illegally charged customers’ credit cards without reauthorization.”

Well, maybe.

Or maybe not.

Maybe if C.P. Direct had run a more legit business, at least in terms of not actually stealing from people, then there wouldn’t have been much of a business at all.

Maybe they would have had such high refunds and low reorders that even Gary Halbert’s magic front-end copy couldn’t save them.

And vice versa.

Just because Gary Halbert, if he did write the front-end copy for C.P. Direct, did create $74 million worth of sales of herbal supplements — “guaranteed to induce gross physical alterations of the human body” — well, that doesn’t mean that the copy was any good.

​​Maybe Gary’s copy was a total flop, but the fact that C.P. Direct could milk hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars from every naive customer, against the customer’s will, made the business profitable nonetheless.

My point being, there’s a lot of number porn out there, people who (truthfully) claim their copy has sold millions of this and trillions of that.

Or you can see ads that keep running in Newsmax or on Taboola, month after month.

But the fact is, the advertising you might be copying and studying from might not be great advertising after all. Even if it’s got hard numbers to back it up.

​​Well, at least it’s not great, unless you are also willing to copy the rest of the business, shady and illegal practices included.

And now the big question?

Are you happy with your size? Breasts or penis? If you’d like to increase and improve what you have, completely naturally, then join thousands of other satisfied readers and sign up for my email newsletter.

I broke the email chain yesterday

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This morning, reader Jesús Silva Marcano wrote to say:

Hey John!

Today when I saw that I didn’t have an email from you….

And after waiting a few hours…

I must admit a part of me was a little saddened.

Besides Ben Settle’s emails, yours are the ones I usually look forward to.

They never disappoint.

I hope all is well.

It’s true. I didn’t send out email last night.

I broke a chain going back to July 2020, when I skipped a few days because I was on vacation at the seaside, drinking quite actively, and generally celebrating and feeling high from having made a ton of money the previous few months, my first really big copywriting months.

But nothing exciting like that happened yesterday.

I had an email scheduled. I checked my inbox before I went to bed. But the email still hadn’t arrived.

I checked ActiveCampaign. It said my email was “Pending Review.”

I tried to stop the campaign so I could recreate it and send it again. It wouldn’t allow me. I tried again. No soap.

I contacted ActiveCampaign to ask what’s up.

No response.

I went to bed, figuring it would solve itself.

It didn’t.

This morning, my email from yesterday is still “Pending Review.” I can’t imagine why, because I wasn’t writing about any controversial or flaggable topics. (I do have an email about a certain kind of “gross body enhancement” coming up, but last night’s email waddn’t it.)

Oh well. The world doesn’t end if I don’t send out an email.

​​But it does spin a little faster. So it’s a shame I don’t have something to sell you right now.

In my experience, people today are starved for something — anything — real.

And when your readers witness you making a mistake, in real time, or getting involved in conflict, in real time, or failing to deliver on a public promise like a daily email, that’s more powerful and engaging than even the most personal stories you share.

And if I had, say, a training on writing faster, that would be perfect. I could end this email right here by saying something like:

“But you know what? Let’s talk copywriting. According to my extremely neat timekeeping, 72% of so-called “writing” really goes to editing. And things often don’t get delivered on time, or ever, because they are “Pending Review” by that finnicky, editing part of your brain. So if you don’t want to be at the whim and mercy of your own inner editing demon, if you want to meet all deadlines, if you wanna get projects done more quickly and make more money, then join me for the Faster Writing (and Editing) Workshop here blah blah…”

Well, maybe a little less ham-handed than that, but you get the idea.

If only I had the faster writing offer for sale right now, then the fact that ActiveCampaign is behaving like a lazy consular office processing my visa application… rather than as a for-profit business that has been taking my money for the better part of a decade… well, that would’ve all worked in my favor.

So keep this in mind if you have your own email list. Anything really real in your life, particularly that readers can experience and verify for themselves, makes for the pinnacle of engagement.

As for me, I got nothing. No gain from this ​event. ​Except to tell you that indeed I am ok, in case you were worried. And now that I’ve told you the background of all this, to maybe make a slightly stronger bond with you, so you get excited about getting my next email tomorrow, and decide to sign up for my email newsletter.

John Bejakovic writes only for the Letter

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I’ve got a quirky history lesson for you today. But before you run and hide, let me say this lesson is as valuable and as relevant as an NFT investing tip. Here goes:

The first full-page advertisement in the U.S. appeared in The New York Herald, on June 7, 1856. It repeated the same phrase nearly a thousand times, all the way down the page:

“Fanny Fern writes only for the Ledger”

The ad was taken out by the extravagant Robert Bonner, the owner of the Herald’s rival newspaper, The New York Ledger.

​​Bonner had hired a then-popular writer, Fanny Fern, to write a story for his newspaper at an astronomical $100 per column. And now he was advertising the fact, over and over, in a single ad, in his rival’s newspaper.

Result?

The circulation of The Ledger doubled, to nearly 50k.

Bonner didn’t repeat this exact ad in the future, but he kept his eccentric advertising practices to promote his newspaper. Sometimes he repeated a phrase in an ad over and over, sometimes he ran a full-page ad that was almost entirely empty.

His newspaper circulation grew and grew. Bonner died a millionaire, back when a million bucks could buy you a skyscraper or three.

So what’s the point?

Well, I won’t try to massage this little story into a stiff lesson for you. Rather, I’d like give you a meta-point:

A clear example or two, or fifty, are often more valuable than a bunch of rules.

And if you truly are interested in persuasion, influence, copywriting, and the like, then there’s an entire history of real-world experiments out there, just waiting for you to discover and rediscover.

Maybe you can reduce these experiments to theoretical rules. Or maybe, more profitably and usefully, you can just use them for new ideas you can imitate, sometimes verbatim, in your own marketing and influence efforts today.

Speaking of which:

My headline above says, “John Bejakovic writes only for the Letter.”

The Letter. Yes. That’s the name for my daily email newsletter. The John Bejakovic Letter. In case you want to join the growing circulation of this little rag, I still have a few copies available, and you can sign up to get one, on the regular, for free.

The gruesome adventures of Mussolini’s corpse

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On today’s date, April 28 1945, the leader of fascist Italy, Benito Mussolini, was executed by Italian partisans in a small town next to Lake Como. But it turned out death was only the beginning of the adventures of Mussolini’s corpse.

The next day, the corpse was taken to Milan. It was dropped off in a square recently renamed to honor 15 partisans killed by Mussolini’s forces.

There, on the ground, Mussolini’s corpse was kicked and spat upon by passersby.

The corpse was then hanged by its heels from an Esso gas station.

Hanging upside down, the corpse was stoned by an angry crowd. One woman fired five bullets into the corpse, one for each of her five sons who had been killed by Mussolini’s soldiers.

Mussolini’s body was eventually taken down, and buried in an unmarked grave in a cemetery north of the city.

The end?

Oh no.

Next year, on Easter Sunday 1946, Mussolini rose from the grave, or rather, his corpse was dug up by three fascist sympathizers.

The decaying mass that was left of Mussolini was then kept in a trunk for over 10 months, and smuggled around from place to place.

​​Eventually, the Mussolini trunk made its way to a Franciscan monastery near the town of Pavia. There, the corpse was recaptured by Italian authorities.

The end?

You wish.

The new Italian government couldn’t decide what to do with Mussolini’s remains.

In fact, the government kept agonizing over this question for over ten (10) years.

I couldn’t find out exactly where Mussolini’s corpse was kept all this time. But the conclusion was that, after intense political deal-making, Mussolini was finally reburied, in 1957, in a crypt, with marble fasces on the side, in a cemetery in his home town.

The end, finally.

​​A gruesome story, right? And so… illogical.

I mean, the guy was dead. The war was over. Fascism had ended. Why all the fuss over what would happen to the rotting flesh of the man who had once ruled Italy and caused death and destruction?

Well, because that’s how our brains work. What I mean is…

It’s impossible for our brains to take in all of a complex historical process, even if it’s happening around us.

And while it’s not impossible, it’s certainly hard and unpleasant to keep an abstract concept like “fascism” in our minds for very long.

But a specific person… with a name… a title… and all the ready-made emotional reactions that we humans get in response to other people… well, that’s very easy and natural to keep in mind.

But forget all this stuff I just said. And just remember Benito Mussolini and his traveling corpse.

Because whether you want to promote an idea, or bury one, you will find it much easier to promote a person, or to execute one. Figuratively of course. And then to figuratively kick and spit on the corpse, and let it hang by its heels for all the world to curse.

By the way, do you hate Benito Mussolini? Or love Bill Burr?

Then you might like my email newsletter. You can try it out here.

Dude… you gotta read this email

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This morning I was idling on the Internet when I saw a clip of an MMA fight between all-time great Fedor Emelianenko and all-time loudmouth Chael Sonnen.

In the clip, Sonnen managed to get Emelianenko on the ground. Sonnen then did some fancy/silly move to get himself in trouble, with Emelianenko on top, raining punches down on Sonnen’s head.

But what really had me transfixed was looking at the ad on Sonnen’s shorts. It read:

DUDE WIPES

Dude wipes? It turns out to be a real thing. Disposable wet wipes for men, in masculine black packaging.

My first impression was that calling your intimate hygiene product “wipes” is already emasculating, and defeats all the manly branding.

But apparently I’m wrong. DUDE Wipes is a successful business. As proof:

They have many offers on their site beyond just wipes (DUDE bidet)…

They have endorsement deals with pro sports figures (pro golfer: “On the golf course and off it, I’m taking it to the hole with DUDE Wipes”)…

And on Amazon, various bundles of DUDE wipes have tens of thousands of reviews, almost all five-star, though with some caveats (“The wife is always reluctant to have them in the guest bath when we have company because of the, as she puts it, sophomoric name and black package”).

This brought to mind my long-simmering idea to create a business by taking a consumable product and applying it to an affinity or identity group.

The usual order in much of direct response is to take a niche and then figure out, what could we sell to them? What could we create and sell at a high-enough markup and with repeating revenue for long enough to make it worthwhile?

This system clearly works.

But the other way works also, and maybe even better. As Claude Hopkins put it, “It is a well-known fact that the greatest profits are made on great volume and small profit.”

So the idea is to take a consumable product which is a known seller to a mass audience, and brand it for a specific affinity or identity group.

I’ve already seen this done with coffee for Reformed Christians. That brand was called Reformed Roasters, and within two months of being launched, it was making $40k/month.

So why not a line of fine cheeses for militant atheists?

Or air fresheners for QAnon nuts?

Or dog food for dogs of heavy metal heads?

Maybe you say any of these ideas is arbitrary, and much more likely to fail than to work.

I’m sure you’re right. To make this work, you will need good marketing to get your Sunni Soda off the ground.

But if you have capital to invest, I happen to know a good marketer. And if you’re looking for a partner to help you create the next Pepsodent or Palmolive soap — for dudes — then sign up for my email list and then we can talk.

Never start a relationship with a commission-only arrangement

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A few days ago, I shared a Jeff Paul sales letter that tells the story of how Jeff dug himself into a deep hole, with $100k worth of debt, living in his sister-in-law’s basement, without a job, humiliated, scared, and unable to provide for his wife and two kids.

What happened to Jeff? How did he get trapped in this hole? In Jeff’s own words:

I got talked into a 100% commission job with a company in Philadelphia, while my wife and children were living here in Chicago. I stupidly allowed the company to talk me into moving my family to Philly, uprooting them from the only home they knew, away from Peggy’s large and close family, and all the kids’ friends.

Here’s the killer. Two weeks after Peggy and the kids moved into the home I bought with our last nickel, I found out the company was going under. Shutting the doors. Without paying me one cent of the six-figure commissions they owed me. (Because they weren’t paying me, and like an idiot I believed their lies of future money coming, I was using credit card advances to live on.)

I don’t know how true this story is in Jeff’s case. But it rings true enough, based on my experience.

I don’t mean I’ve ever racked up $100k of debt by accepting a commission-only job. But I’ve never made a single cent from such a job. And not for want of trying.

I’ve had three client arrangements that were commission-only from the start.

In each case, there were lots of stupid meetings, wasted weeks or months of time I could have spent on others things, and even free work that I did. And I never saw a cent from it.

Maybe it’s just been bad luck. Or maybe it’s the reverse of my “Why royalties are good for everyone” argument.

If a client has never paid you anything, and feels they never have to pay you anything until you make them some money, maybe they don’t take the project seriously. They become eager to drag their feet, or to have things done exactly how they imagine it, or to pursue dumb ideas, instead of taking your expert advice into consideration.

So what’s the point?

Well, all this is not to say commissions or royalties aren’t great. Or that commission-only arrangements can’t be great.

The fact is, the most money I’ve made to date from copywriting came from a commission-only arrangement.

But it came from an existing client, who had paid me a lot of money already for other work I was doing for him. The commission-only project was a bonus on top of that other work. ​​

On the other hand, whenever I started a new client relationship with working only on commission, it’s lead to nothing except the stress and hassle of eventually having to call it off — with the client being offended that I don’t want to keep working for them for free.

So should you just say no when somebody makes you a commission-only offer?

In my experience, it’s certainly better than saying yes.

​​Of course, you can also try to spin it a little. Set yourself up with a better deal than zero. But that’s a conversation for another time, and perhaps, for another Jeff Paul sales letter. In case you want to join that conversation, whenever it does happen, sign up for my email newsletter.

An Internet stranger offers to pick my brain

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A couple days ago, an Internet stranger wrote me to say he’s “pretty open” to having me do some free work for him.

He had seen a podcast I had done about ecommerce advertorials. He’s in the dropshipping space, is interested in advertorials, and would love to get on a call to “pick my brain for a few minutes.”

When I read this, I just raised my eyebrows. “Sounds like a great opportunity to do some free consulting,” I said to myself.

I replied to the guy to say I’m not taking on any client work at the moment, but if he is interested in hiring me, I can let him when I am taking on client work in the future.

And then I took a moment, and I lit up with satisfaction. Not because the guy was asking for something valuable for free, while offering nothing in exchange. I was just happy with the way I instinctively responded.

Here’s why this might matter to you:

Last autumn, I wrote an email where I said, never do anything for free. Especially give out advice.

The thing is, I have done things for free since. Including doling out free advice. Even in situations where I could have asked for money. Even though I knew what I was doing was not smart.

My point is this:

It takes time for a new dam to change the course of a river.

In my life, I’ve often found myself making personal development resolutions, working on them earnestly, not achieving much, or not a damn thing, and then getting exhausted and discouraged and quitting.

And then one day, once I had forgotten all about it, I found to my wonder and surprise that the change I wanted had happened somewhere along the way.

In time, I’ve grown to accept this slowness of change. I’ve stopped being frustrated about it. I’ve found it’s even something you can use to motivate yourself.

It was Bill Gates or Tony Robbins or Kermit the Frog who said something like, most people overestimate what they can achieve in one year, and underestimate what they can achieve in five.

Progress is not linear. It’s often not visible. Don’t let that stop you. At least that’s my free advice.

For more free advice, and more valuable things I don’t do for free, sign up for my email newsletter.