Behind the scenes of my affiliate deal-making

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Over the past few weeks I’ve been approached to promote three affiliate offers, and uncomfortable thought it was, I turned all three down.

All three of these offers were solid. They had good info at a fair price. There’s no doubt each of them can be very valuable to the right person.

Also, all three offer owners who approached me I already had previous relationships with. I had already done some projects with them, or at least we had exchanged some non-business emails and had some sort of rapport going.

Finally, all three offer owners were paying out generous affiliate commissions. In theory, I could make some good money here.

And yet, like I said, I turned down the opportunity to promote any of the three offers.

The reason was simply I personally couldn’t get excited about them. I took a look at these offers and my personal reaction was “Hm, I see.”

I imagined writing emails to promote these offers. How? I’d have to do some jumping jacks before, in order to simulate a bit of life in my copy.

I also imagined taking myself out of the equation altogether. I imagined saying, “Hey this isn’t for me, but don’t let me get in your way, maybe it’s for you.”

That still didn’t sit right. After all, with that approach, where do I stop? Do I end up promoting $3.45 pork chops on sale at Target, because somebody somewhere might want them?

I’ve made the point many times before that I don’t look at this newsletter as a business first. I look at it as my own personal playground, an opportunity to experiment and practice, a reflection of my own interests and tastes.

I can’t blame you if you shrug off everything I’ve said above as just my perverse attitude, something that I do because I apparently don’t care enough about money to reach out and grasp it when it’s offered to me.

Still, I remembered something while thinking about this rather unpleasant issue.

Ben Settle, who I think treats his email newsletter as much more of a business than I treat mine, shared almost the same attitude in an email a couple years ago. In fact it’s possible I got my attitude from Ben.

Ben wrote that the best affiliate offer to sell, at least for him, is one that’s personally fun. And when an offer is not personally fun for him… well, here’s Ben’s report on one such campaign:

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No matter how much time I spent writing those emails, no matter how much time I spent strategizing the campaign, and no matter how much time I spent interviewing the creator of the product (and I did) it did not matter, and the sales were lackluster at best.

The reason?

Not because the offer was bad.

It was extremely valuable, especially for the price.

No, one main reason why was because it was not fun.

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I’m telling you this because over the next few days, until Tuesday to be specific, I’m promoting Tom Grundy’s Subtraction Method.

In fact, I’m promoting it as an affiliate, even though it’s a free training.

There was was the option to simply promote the paid workshops that Tom will be running in the coming weeks, on the back of the (free) Subtraction Method training.

But Tom and I both agreed that the best and happiest way to promote this was simply offer the free training first, one where Tom would reveal all the concepts underlying the Subtraction Method.

It’s Tom’s job to sell the group implementation workshops, following the free training, just to those who want help working through those concepts with Tom’s guidance.

Point being, the real reason I’m telling you to go sign up to Tom’s Subtraction Method is that I’m personally interested and even excited by what Tom has to teach. The promise of an affiliate payout alone wouldn’t do it.

But maybe you don’t even know what I mean by the Subtraction Method. If so, here are the details from my Al Pacino-themed email yesterday:

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Tom’s story is that he quit his high-powered London banking job in order to seek enlightenment. Enlightenment found, Tom ended up going back to the bank.

Curious, right?

The first time around at the bank was miserable, says Tom. The second time around has been enjoyable, stress-free, and even fulfilling.

What made the difference is what Tom calls the Subtraction Method.

The Subtraction Method is not about the kind of minimalism that involves living in a hut in the backwoods of Montana, shooting and skinning rabbits, and melting snow for drinking water.

Rather, it’s about a different kind of minimalism, one that has to do with ideas and attitudes.

The end result can be that you achieve all the external success you think you want now, and you do it on such terms that you’re not eaten out from inside like Michael Corleone or Al Pacino.

Or the end result can be you don’t achieve the external success you think you want now, and you find out that that’s perfectly fine, because what you thought you wanted is not what you actually want.

Here is where I start waving my hands and waffling and mumbling a little too much. Because the Subtraction Method is not my area of expertise. Rather it’s Tom’s area of expertise.

That’s why I’d like to invite you to sign up to his training. The training is free. It’s happening next Wednesday, Nov 6, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. I’ll be there. If you’d like to be there as well, you can register to get in at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/subtraction

“Thank God I’ve missed my big chance”

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A couple weeks ago, I made the mistake of looking up a clip from The Godfather on YouTube.

Since then, YouTube has been serving me up a steady diet of Al Pacino interviews, which I of course have allowed myself to be “force-fed.” At least I found out the following curious anecdote:

During the shooting of a scene in the Godfather, Pacino was supposed to jump into a moving car. But he missed the car and almost broke his ankle.

Pacino said later he was shocked by the feeling of relief that passed over him.

“Thank you God,” he said as he lay on the ground. “You’re gonna get me out of this film.”

Pacino had felt like an underling on set, unwanted and unfit for the role of Michael Corleone.

“This injury could be my release from that prison,” Pacino said later.

Of course, that’s not how it ended up. The director, Francis Ford Coppola, liked Pacino too well. That, plus a bunch of corticosteroid injections, meant Pacino stayed in the movie.

In that way, the career of Al Pacino – from young theater actor, talented, unknown, but hopeful, to massive Hollywood star and international celeb, jaded, paranoid, and alcoholic — mirrored the progression of Michael Corleone in the Godfather — from the modest, good, patriotic son with plans of a respectable career, to ruthless head of the Corleone mob family, addicted to control and power, even at the cost of everything in his family and inside himself.

Before I get you too depressed, I wanna make it clear:

This email is not about the vanity of pursuing any kind of achievement or success in life.

Over the next few days, I’m promoting Tom Grundy’s Subtraction Method training.

Tom’s story is that he quit his high-powered London banking job in order to seek enlightenment. Enlightenment found, Tom ended up going back to the bank.

Curious, right?

The first time around at the bank was miserable, says Tom. The second time around has been enjoyable, stress-free, and even fulfilling.

What made the difference is what Tom calls the Subtraction Method.

The Subtraction Method is not about the kind of minimalism that involves living in a hut in the backwoods of Montana, shooting and skinning rabbits and melting snow for drinking water.

Rather, it’s about a different kind of minimalism, one that has to do with ideas and attitudes.

The end result can be that you achieve all the external success you think you want now, and you do it on such terms that you’re not eaten out from inside like Michael Corleone or Al Pacino.

Or the end result can be you don’t achieve the external success you think you want now, and you find out that that’s perfectly fine, because what you thought you wanted is not what you actually want.

Here is where I start waving my hands and waffling and mumbling a little too much. Because the Subtraction Method is not my area of expertise. Rather it’s Tom’s area of expertise.

That’s why I’d like to invite you to sign up to his training. The training is free. It’s happening next Wednesday, Nov 6, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. I’ll be there. If you’d like to be there as well, you can register to get in at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/subtraction

Announcing: Subtraction Method

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There’s a link at the bottom of this email and honestly I’d like you to go click it and sign up for the free training that’s waiting for you on the other side.

But first a bit o’ background:

This free training is being put on by Tom Grundy, who at one point was in my Write & Profit coaching program.

I’ve mentioned Tom a few times before in these emails because he writes interesting and engaging emails himself, which I read pretty much daily.

Tom also happens to be a London banker with an unusual career trajectory:

He quit his high-powered London banking job because stress and misery… he went in search of fulfillment… he found fulfillment… and then he went back to his high-powered London banking job, because he actually kinda likes the work and the people and the environment now.

Tom’s free training is about what’s allowed him to find sense and satisfaction along with success. This is what he calls the Subtraction Method.

Earlier this year, Tom approached me about promoting a workshop about “mindset.”

I tentatively agreed because 1) I like Tom and I know he knows stuff about self-development and psychology, and 2) I know Tom had already delivered a weeks-long series of workshops on mindset at his company Lloyds Bank. These workshops went so well he’s been rerunning them at Lloyds and even getting asked to do them at other banks too.

Still, I agreed only tentatively, because to be honest I’m a little repulsed by the entire idea of “mindset.”

In particular, I imagined Tom’s workshops were about wholesome 1920s topics like the power of positive thinking… and how to set goals… and clutching to the idea of your children’s college fund as you try to reframe the humiliation of, say, dancing on TikTok to build up your 7-figure personal brand.

But!

It turns out Tom teaches none of those things in his workshops. In fact, he teaches pretty much the opposite, which again he calls the Subtraction Method.

Tom explained his Subtraction Method to me last month. I found that I can get behind his approach 100%.

Tom’s Subtraction Method matches the vague conclusions I’ve been able to reach in my own lifelong search for some sort of understanding and management of my own feelings and internal drives. It’s just that Tom has much more specific and concrete ideas about this, where I’ve only caught some occasional glimpses.

So there you go:

Tom’s free training for you on the Subtraction Method, with my 100% endorsement and in fact personal interest (I will be there on the training too).

As for the details:

1. This training is happening live over Zoom on Wednesday November 6 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST.

2. Tom will be offering a paid series of group workshops on the back of this one-off free training. These workshops I imagine will follow the ones he’s been putting on at his bank.

That said, this one-off live training is not just a tease or a sales pitch for those workshops, because Tom will reveal fully the concepts behind the Subtraction Method.

In other words, if you wanna work through those concepts with a group of people, with Tom at the helm, you will have that option following this one-off training.

If on the other hand, you just want to learn about the Subtraction Method just for curiosity’s sake, or so you can try it out in your own life, in your own good time, by yourself, then this training will give you all the info you need.

3. You might have doubts about what a London banker can teach you about fulfillment and achievement and happiness. After all, odds are you yourself are not a London banker. You might live in a very different kind of world and do a very different kind of work.

My best response is to suggest you go sign up for Tom’s training, and then read a few days’ worth of Tom’s emails, which will start landing in your inbox.

If Tom’s emails really say nothing to you, then skip the training and unsubscribe.

If on the other hand, you find yourself both amused and intrigued by what Tom has to say, the way that I do when I read Tom’s stuff, then you won’t have nothin’ more to do, except show up on Zoom on Wednesday Nov 6, and hear Tom explain the Subtraction Method.

If you’d like to sign up now:

​https://bejakovic.com/subtraction

A critical look at Daniel Throssell, part III

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In the unlikely case that my newsletter is the only direct marketer-y list you subscribe to, let me tell you some news:

Last week, there was an affiliate contest.

That means that a bunch of marketers all fought to promote the same affiliate offer, all at the same time. Beyond bragging rights, I assume there were also generous prizes for the best-performing affiliates, above and beyond the usual affiliate commissions.

I did not participate in this contest, and I didn’t even pay very close attention.

But I do know that among the people who did participate, there was a selection of A-list copywriters and top-flight industry gurus, with decades or maybe centuries of experience among them, and with big communities and hefty email lists at their disposal.

And yet:

The person who won this contest was a young guy, who apparently lives in the slums of a second-tier city in Australia… who nobody knew of before he started to build his legend online some five years ago… and who only has a modest-sized email list of his own.

That young guy is a certain Daniel Throssell.

I’m on Daniel’s list, and so I can share with you what Daniel wrote about the final results of this affiliate contest:

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As of the final cart close, I think I had something like 60% of the TOTAL sales (thus meeting my usual goal of ‘more than everyone else put together’) … and somewhere between 8-10x the sales of the second-place affiliate.

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How did Daniel do it?

I’ve already written a couple emails in past years with my thoughts on Daniel’s successful strategies (hence the “part III” in today’s subject line).

As for this most recent success of Daniel’s, my guess is it has to do with all three elements of the old 40/40/20 formula.

40% of your results comes down to your list…

… 40% down to your offer…

… and the remaining 20% down to the least important part, your copy. But it’s that least important part, the copy, that I want to talk about today.

In fact, I just wanna talk about one aspect of copy, a very mechanical aspect. Because even without paying close attention to this affiliate contest, one thing was notable to me:

Daniel sent 28 emails to his list to promote this affiliate offer.

He sent at least one email each day, as he does every day of the year, and many more emails as the deadline neared.

I’m not on the lists of all the other people who participated in this contest.

But from what I can see, most of the big names who did participate do not write daily emails to their lists outside of this promo. Some of them, including some who said they really really wanted to win the contest, chose not to send daily emails even during the actual promo.

To my Elmer Fudd mind, the conclusion is simple:

Email more, and you’ll make more sales, even if you don’t change a d-d-d-damned thing else.

But that’s not all.

Because if you email more, it’s gonna have a positive effect on that next 40% of your success, meaning your offers.

I defy anybody in the world to argue honestly that Daniel’s high-priced courses — which he gave away as free bonuses for this affiliate promo — would have the perceived value they have if Daniel didn’t send daily emails to build up desire for them… to justify the premium prices they sell for… to highlight all the other people who have bought these courses and praised them.

Anybody can say their course costs a thousand dollars. But that does nothing, unless people believe it, and unless they want it.

As for that other final 40%, your list:

I imagine that most everyone on Daniel’s list is also on at least one other list of someone who participated in this contest.

And yet, the odds are two-to-one (or actually better) that if such a person bought this affiliate offer, they bought it via Daniel.

In part, that comes back to the offer. But in part, it’s about the fact that daily emailing trains and transforms the people on your list.

The people on your email list are not simply “buyers” or “not buyers” — like it’s some God-given caste system you have no control over.

Relentless email followup, done well, takes disinterested or skeptical people and turns them into followers, converts, and partners. Not just anybody’s followers, converts, and partners — yours. That’s a moat that protects your business, even if some other business owner can somehow get the names and email addresses of everyone on your list.

So yeah.

Copy is the least important part of your success.

But in a way, it’s also the most important, via its effect on the perceived value of your offers, and via the transformation it creates in the people on your list. And I think Daniel’s results prove that.

All that’s to say… I don’t know? Email more? Maybe daily?

Yesterday, I announced a new service I’ll be launching over the next 30 days that gives you a new daily email prompt each day. The goal here is to make sending daily emails faster by an hour or two a week, and easier to start with and stick with for the long term.

I can tell you that my email today was based on one such prompt, one that I set myself a few days ago. Yes, I eat my own dog food.

I will be offering first access to this service to a small number of people on my list, based on who I think will be most likely to get value from it.

But my offer from last night still stands:

If you feel daily email prompts are something that could be useful to you, then hit reply and tell me what you like about this idea (do tell me why, because simply replying and saying “yes!” won’t do it). If you do that, I will add you to the priority list, so you have a chance to test this service out sooner rather than later.

My new 30-day startup

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Last week, my friend Sam — we studied computer nerdery together in college — forwarded me an interview with a note that said, “Pretty inspiring.”

I listened — 3 and 1/2 hours.

The guy being interviewed was a certain Pieter Levels. Levels is a software developer who creates websites and tech tools and puts them out into the world. Some take off, others don’t. At one point, Levels launched 12 startups in 12 months.

I realized while listening that I had actually come across some of these websites before. There’s Hoodmaps, which shows you a map of your city with crowdsourced tags for each neighborhood, down to the street level. There’s Photo AI, which I guess was one of the first services to allow you to put in your broke selfies and get out rich-looking professional headshots.

Levels has this philosophy of “build cool shit.” As far as the money goes:

Hoodmaps, virally popular though it is, makes no money.

On the other hand, Remote OK, another of Levels’s websites, was making $140k/month back in 2020 (it’s now scaled back to just $10k/month).

But since Levels keeps spinning up new projects, and since most of them run independent of him after the initial sprint of work, the income starts to stack very nicely.

I’m telling you this because there’s a general insecurity that plagues my mind and maybe yours, and that is, “Will it fly? Is this the right project to embark on? Will I end up wasting my time and only get frustration and disappointment as a reward?”

One option for dealing with this insecurity is to wait for a lightning bolt from heaven to strike you and leave you with the certainty of a life mission, one that you will pursue at all cost.

Another option could be something like Levels is doing. To commit to a process. Say, a new “startup” every month, one that you make so tight and well-defined and bare-bones that it can be launched in 30 days or fewer.

At the end of your month, if you reel in your line and find nothing there, then next month, you put a new piece of bait on your hook and cast it out into the world again.

On the other hand, maybe you catch a live and possibly magical goldfish. You then gotta figure out what to do with it — throw it back, club it to death and eat it, or maybe put it inside your aquarium at home and nurture it and watch it grow.

I’ve decided to do this myself.

I will tell you my first “startup.” It’s based on something I learned from Ben Settle, in an appendix to his Email Players Skhema. That’s where Ben gives a sample 30-day email schedule, with a different prompt — “personal story,” “challenge assumptions” — for each day.

I took that idea and I’ve been using it on and off for years. At the start of the month, I spend an hour or so to plan out what kind of email to send each day, over the coming 30 days.

Even when I’m “on” with this daily prompt habit, I don’t always stick to the prompt I’ve set out for myself. Some days I have a specific thing in mind for my daily email, or something specific to promote, and that is good enough.

But in general, I’ve noticed that when I’m “off” this daily prompt habit, when I entirely improvise each day’s email, day after day, my emails take longer to write… end up trying to do too much… and are simply less effective.

On the other hand, when I follow a prompt I’ve set for myself ahead of time, it forces me to actually be more creative. Plus I get my emails done faster, and the result (based on both feedback and sales I’ve had) seems to be better than emails that are improvised from the ground up.

I can tell you this email you’re reading now was based on a prompt I set out for myself ahead of time. As they say in the software development world, I am eating my own dog food.

Over the next 30 days, I will be creating a subscription that gives you a new daily email prompt each day. The ultimate goal here is to shave shave off writing time if you’re already sending emails regularly, and to make it more likely that you send consistently if you don’t do so yet, so you keep building up the relationship with the people on your list, and so you have a real shot at making sales.

I will be offering first access to this to a small number of people on my list, based on who I think will be most likely to get value from it.

But I will make you a deal right now:

If you feel daily email prompts are something that could be useful to you, then hit reply and tell me what you like about this idea. In turn, I will add you to the priority list, so you have a chance to test this service out sooner rather than later.

Solid as a rock

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I was on the Barcelona metro yesterday, bouncing along, keeping my eye out for potential assailants, and listening to a podcast — James Schramko interviewing Ryan Lee.

In case those names don’t mean much to you, both guys are highly successful, highly influential Internet marketers.

Both James and Ryan have been at it for decades.

Both have made many millions for themselves, and probably hundreds of millions for their various coaching clients.

For example, Ryan has coached multimillionaire fitness marketers like Mike Geary (PaleoHacks, Truth About Abs) and Jeff Cavaliere (Athlean-X, 14M subscribers on YouTube).

James on the other hand has coached multimillionaire info marketers like Ryan Levesque (ASK Method) and Kevin Rogers (Copy Chief).

Point being, both Jeff and Ryan are the real deal when it comes to knowledge of Internet marketing and to getting actual results.

At the end of the interview, just as I was nearing my stop, James summed up the takeaways of their call, with Ryan jumping in:

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JAMES:

1. Find a way to get recurring income

2. Keep it as simple as possible

3. YouTube is a strong front-end driver and potentially a good income earner

4. Email is still solid as a rock

RYAN: No matter what you do, whatever social platform you pick…

JAMES: … build an email list.

RYAN: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram — get ’em on your list, because at the end of the day, you control it.

JAMES: That’s the simple advice that people ignore.

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I’m telling you all this because there are still people who say they don’t have time to email.

Maybe that’s you too.

I’m sure you’re busy, and you have lots of stuff to do. Work, family, dog, cat.

I can completely understand.

I just wanted to share the point of view of James and Ryan above, because they are both very experienced… because they both make very nice money by working something like 10-15 hours a week… and because they are not in the business of selling email marketing or email copywriting.

And yet, both agree that there are only a few needed ingredients for long-term success… and that email is one non-negotiable part of that. (By the way, they both practice what they preach, and write emails, as Ryan says, dailyish.)

If you want to follow their simple advice, and you also want to see how to write dailyish emails faster, in as little as 15-20 minutes a day, without being particularly creative or inspired, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

60% of my book is meh, says reader

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I got a hot/cold review for my book on Amazon a few weeks ago. The headline of the review says, “great.” The number of stars is five. And yet, the actual review reads:

“Love this, recommend this. Could use an update and some more work, 60% is meh. But the other 40% might make about $20k in the next week. So that’s a good ROI on 45 minutes of reading.”

That’s quite an emotional rollercoaster for 37 words.

When I first read it, I was left confused, exhilarated, offended. “Love this… 60% is meh… good ROI.”

I can tell you two things:

1. If you want people to feel something about you, notice you, react to you, then giving them the hot/cold treatment is much more effective than giving them either the hot treatment or the cold treatment by itself. And if you want proof of that, then take this email as proof.

2. Even though the dude above says 60% of my book is meh, I am on the whole well-pleased to have his review up on my page. Not because he gave me 5 stars or because he says he loves the book, but because it sounds like he might be somebody who takes action.

And ultimately, people who take action are the kinds of people you wanna associate with, at least if you are involved in something that might be called business.

If you need some ideas to take action on, here’s my book.

40% of it is apparently worthwhile and has money-making potential, that is, if you have 45 minutes and $5 to spare. Link:

​https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

The making of a legend

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Today being October 26, 2024, it is the 143rd anniversary of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the most famous gunfight from the mythical Wild West.

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral happened in Tombstone, Arizona, and involved the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday on one side, and a group of cattle rustlers known as the Cowboys on the other.

There’s a ton of legend surrounding this one-minute slice of history, the buildup to it, and the events that followed.

Movies have been made, books have been written. The Wikipedia page about the fight at the O.K. Corral runs to 21,542 words. I spent 3+ hours of my life a couple months ago, napping through Kevin Costner’s Wyatt Earp at a local movie theater that plays old films.

Today, I had a different idea.

I went on newspapers.com, and I searched.

There was nothing on the day of the fight, but several newspapers reported the event a day later (“A sanguinary shooting affray occurred on Fremont street”).

I also found dozens of articles in the coming weeks and months, reporting how Virgil Earp had called in the military to defend the town of Tombstone against the violence… how Morgan Earp had been shot and killed while playing billiards… how the editor of the Arizona Morning Star wrote that the time is past for courts of justice, and that “hemp is the best code” to deal with the Cowboys.

I gotta tell ya:

I felt a real rush reading these old articles, like I could be there, see history in the making. It felt somehow real — without the layers of interpretation and retelling that soon followed.

Because by next summer, the legend was already forming. Virgil Earp was giving interviews in train cars to news reporters. His description of Doc Holliday will sound familiar to anybody who’s seen one of a dozen movies featuring the man:

“There was something very peculiar about Doc. He was gentlemanly, a good dentist, a friendly man, and yet, outside of us boys, I don’t think he had a friend in the Territory. Tales were told that he had murdered men in different parts of the country, that he had robbed and stolen and committed all manner of crimes, and yet, when persons were asked how they knew it, they could only admit that it was hearsay, and nothing of the kind had in reality been traced up to Doc’s account.”

I bet you’re wondering where all this is going. Let me get to it.

My point for you is simply to go to sources that others don’t go to.

Everybody is talking these days, and most of it is rehashed — the same newsletters, the same “gotta read ’em” books, the same Twitter memes.

Maybe you were truly blessed to have a unique perspective among the 8 billion people on this planet, and maybe, even by looking at the same stuff as everyone else, you have something new to say about it all. “No one I think is in my tree,” John Lennon said once, “I mean it must be high or low.”

But if you’re not John Lennon, there’s a cheat code:

Different inputs, different outputs.

This is not just about creating content, but about business strategies, and about success in life in general. Go where other people don’t go, and you’ll see things that other people don’t see.

So much for inspiration.

But what to promote?

I actually meant to promote newspapers.com as an affiliate because I love the service so well.

I will do so in future and offer a bonus if you give ’em a free try through my link.

But I don’t have any of that set up today.

So let me go back to the world of marketing, and tie into today’s theme of sources nobody else goes to.

If you want to see how A-list copywriters turn boring and dry texts into sexy sales copy that gets strangers to send money… and better yet, if you want to go through this same process yourself, and get a real rush of genuine experience and insight by doing, instead of just hearing other people’s interpretation and retelling, then you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Breaking the silence after the promo

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Last night, after the 3rd Conversion training call, I got a note from one of the participants. I’m not sure she wants me to share her name, but she wrote:

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It was so nice to see you on the call. I just wanted to drop you a quick note to say how much I absolutely loved your live class. It was perfectly timed for me, especially since I’m putting out my own offer for a done-for-you course blueprint. Your presentation was not only engaging but also such a clever demonstration of your course content in action – I was taking mental notes the whole time! (And trying to resist writing everything down lol)

===

I’m telling you this because, well, it says nice things about me, and I need all the ego stroking I can get.

But I’m also telling you this because I’ve noticed lots of people who sell online, myself included at times, are guilty of promoting an offer intensely… and when the promo period ends, it’s on to promoting the next damn thing.

Meanwhile, what happened to the previous training/course/book, which had such large promise about it?

There’s largely silence on that point, until of course it’s time to promote the same thing again.

My theory is that today, people are more than ever craving things that feel real.

It’s not simply because of the recent explosion of AI, but also the ability for automated communication, and simply the inhuman scale of the Internet.

When before in history was it an everyday possibility for most humans to write something that will go out to thousands or even millions of people?

Inevitably, we all become more guarded as a result of this. Things sound good, but they’re not actually good… or they might not even be there at all (Google “these cats do not exist”).

That’s why I think it’s valuable to not only do a good job promoting what you sell… not only do a good job delivering it… but also do good job continuing to communicate, even to people who didn’t buy, even after the fact, that this thing you were selling was for real, and that you in fact are for real.

That’s one way to cope with The Nothing that’s overtaking our world.

Another way is simply longevity, persistence, or maybe track record.

A few hundred words of text, once, can be optimized, faked, generated to suit the moment and to deceive the unguarded.

A few hundred words of text, every day, for years, are hard to fake, particularly if those words are going out to the same group of people.

That’s why there’s power in daily emails.

Writing daily for years might sound intimidating. It doesn’t have to be.

Really, it’s just one day’s effort at a time. And pretty soon, it becomes enjoyable and even addicting (ask me how I know).

The sooner you start, the sooner it will become easier, and the sooner you will reap the rewards.

Even if you don’t know nothing about email, or copywriting, or even writing, you can start writing a daily email today.

But if you must have a guide to help you get started, here’s one I created, based on my own real experience:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

20-lbs of ground beef worth of relaxation and security

by

I have many fond memories of driving with my friend Sam to Costco, both for the $1.50 hot dogs and to stock up on 36-packs of Newcastle brown ale for our college apartment.

Costco, as you might know, is a chain of retail stores that operates through a membership club.

Costco has hangar-sized stores all around the North American continent, filled with everything you might ever need for your home — couches, outdoor saunas, gardening equipment, car tires, hot tubs, jugs of liquor, 72-lb wheels of Parmesan cheese, and 4-gallon buckets of mayonnaise.

Whatever you buy at Costco is always huge, and always at a huge discount over what you might pay elsewhere.

Now that you have that background, perhaps you can appreciate how chuffed I was to find out, after all these years, that Costco also has an in-house magazine, which goes out to more subscribers across the United States than Better Homes & Gardens, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic combined.

Sure, you might say, but who reads it.

Not only do people read the Costco magazine, but celebs fight to get on the cover of it.

Example:

Jimmy Kimmel, late-night talkshow host and four-time tuxedo-clad host at the Oscars, begged his publicity team to get him on the cover of Costco magazine.

Why?

“Because I love Costco,” said Kimmel in a recent NY Times article. Kimmel described the deep happiness he experiences when he comes home with 20 pounds of ground beef. “I go there for relaxation. I don’t like to run out of things.”

Think about it a little. How crazy is that?

I mean, we know people like security, that it’s one of our most basic needs. But 20 pounds of ground beef at Costco, to fill a need for security?

If you were ever tasked with writing an ad for Costco, I imagine you might emphasize the convenience, the money-savings, maybe even the club aspect of it.

But Costco as a salve for existential angst?

For me, the only way I would ever think of this as a selling point for Costco is to hear it from Jimmy Kimmel’s mouth.

Point being, the right sales angle can sell the strangest things (a four-time Oscar host, begging to be on the cover of Costco magazine, because security).

But how do you find the right sales angle?

You can get there by experimentation, by throwing spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks… though that might take more time than universe has before it turns into a cold and empty shell.

Or you can get there by research, going to your market, and really talking to them. I mean REALLY talking.

Again, do you think that if you ask somebody at the Costco parking lot why they come to Costco, that their first response would be, “Because I’m terrified by the scale and unpredictability of the universe?”

Or last, you can go and look at 3-5 top competitors in your market, particularly ones who are running long-form direct-response advertising.

See what they appeals they are making. Because those people have already done steps 1 and 2 above, and what’s floated to the top of that milk pail by definition is rich cream.

And now my offer, my old war horse, Copy Riddles.

I won’t pretend I planned to promote Copy Riddles today. I mainly wanted to share the above story of Costco magazine, and I didn’t think too much about how it would sell Copy Riddles.

But regarding research, or at least looking at top competitors in your market:

Take a source text such as a brochure describing some vitamins or hams or potato salad at Costco. Write your own sales pitch for that. Then look at what a top A-list copywriter, like Gary Bencivenga or Gene Schwartz or David Deutsch did with the same.

What you will find is, sometimes the A-list copywriters really will just make an appeal to money-saving or convenience.

But often they will do more than that. They will appeal to deeper, more fundamental psychological drives.

This is something you can train yourself to look out for, and even to do instinctively.

In fact, that’s what Copy Riddles is all about, using the approach I just laid out for you.

I don’t know what market you’re in, but odds are good that you’ll find examples of source material from your market inside Copy Riddles, along with bullets written to sell that source material by some of the greats.

There’s even a section inside Copy Riddles I call the Dirty Dozen, where I lay out some of the deeper, stranger psychological motivations that go beyond the convenience and money-savings, appeals that most B-level sales copy defaults to.

If you would like to get more info about Copy Riddles, and maybe find a bit of safety and control in this massive and incomprehensible world, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr