Agora finally gets into Internet marketing

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I remember back in 2006, when Amazon announced its new Amazon Web Services.

How clever, I thought. Like Donald Trump selling golden mailboxes at Trump Tower to entrepreneurs who want the ritzy mailing address.

After all, Amazon already had all of the computer boxes and wires and know-how for connecting them together. Other businesses didn’t have this — but wanted it. So Amazon could make a nice business by making its internal IT resources publicly available on a per-use basis.

And what a cash cow it turned out to be. AWS is now estimated to bring in $25B a year — more than McDonald’s — and is one of the main profit centers at the famously profit-free Amazon.

Now here’s a puzzle for the marketers out there:

What’s lying around your desktop (literal, computeral, or mental) which you could sell like Amazon sold AWS?

Don’t just shrug if off, but think for a minute.

Because even some of the most successful marketing businesses out there don’t collect this free money. Case in point:

Agora.

Agora is probably the biggest direct response company, with dozens of subsidiaries, and hundreds (thousands?) of offers, mostly financial newsletters.

You can bet that with all this experience selling high-margin info products online, the people at Agora know a thing or three about copywriting and Internet marketing.

And yet, in spite of its tremendous proof elements and branding, Agora doesn’t have any offers in the profitable and growing copywriting/IM niche.

Or at least… they didn’t.

Right now, Agora is spinning up a new division focused on Internet marketing.

I’m not sure what it’s called, but they have an email newsletter called Daily Insider Secrets.

On different days, you can read insights from Evaldo Albuquerque, one of the most successful copywriters at Agora Financial in the past few years…

…from Peter Coyne, also a successful copywriter and the youngest publisher inside Agora…

…and finally, from Rich Schefren, a big name in the IM space for the past decade or two.

I’ve been signed up to these emails for a few days. So far, it’s been like they say — IM secrets you can’t get nowhere else.

Except perhaps, in my own email newsletter. After all, my only fun in life is scouring the Internet for new marketing and persuasion ideas, and then giving them away in my daily newsletter. Usually packaged up in some kind of story.

If that sounds like the kind of thing you might be interested in, then you can try out my (FREE!) email newsletter here.

How to never run out of daily email marketing topics

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I felt like vomiting.

About 15 people were looking at me as I stood there at the front of the classroom.

3 of them were judges, in charge of evaluating my speech.

I looked at them with fear. I was sweating. I was trembling. I felt sick.

Not because I had to give a speech. After all, this was a debate tournament. I had given speeches like this hundreds of times before.

I felt sick because the night before, I’d had way too much to drink (a debate tournament tradition). Even though I’d vomited earlier in the morning and I’d slept a couple hours, I still felt wretched.

Now as you might know, a competitive debate speech is supposed to last exactly 7 minutes. Most debaters have way more to say than that, so it becomes a game of trying to fit their best arguments into 7 minutes.

But not me. Not that morning.

My mind was a black hole. All I wanted to do was to sit and close my eyes. I certainly didn’t have 7 minutes’ worth of persuasive arguments.

So I spoke incoherently for about a minute…

I looked around for help, which didn’t come…

And then, to the shock of the debate judges, and to the dismay of my debate partner, I shut up. And after a moment of silence, I dragged myself back to my seat and crumpled down in the chair.

In case I’m not communicating it properly:

This was a humiliating, borderline traumatic experience. I felt stupid. I felt humiliated. And I knew the whole room had just witnessed my unique failure.

Perhaps you feel something like this when it’s time to sit down and write.

Sure, writing isn’t as stressful as public speaking. But if you have to come up with new ways to sell the same thing, again and again (such as in daily emails), it can be stressful enough.

So what’s the fix?

Well, rather than spelling it out for you, let me point you to a video that illustrates how to come up with all the content you will ever need, at least for daily emails.

This video stars a guy named Mike Rowe, who is now famous as the host of a bunch of TV shows such as Dirty Jobs.

​​But back in the early 90s, Rowe had the 3am slot on QVC (a cable shopping channel). And he had to sell all sorts of shit, which he did in a pretty hilarious and inspiring fashion.

Don’t watch this video if you’re hoping for some sort of magic solution. But do watch it if you want to see a demonstration of all the selling (and non-selling) techniques you will ever need in daily emails:

Andre Chaperon peep show, this way ——->>>

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A few years back, a bizarre sandwich board appeared on a street in Melbourne, Australia. It read:

“Ed Sheeran peep show! $2 ——->>>”

Next to the sandwich board hovered a shady looking spruiker, stopping passersby.

“Get yer Ed Sheeran… Who wants some Ed Sheeran…”

He’d point to an unmarked door leading to a darkened room. Unsurprisingly, people avoided him in a wide arc.

So he got more desperate: “We’ve literally got Ed Sheeran sitting on a stage, waiting for you.”

(Ed Sheeran really was there in the darkened room, waiting behind a red curtain, guitar in hand.)

But nobody wanted Ed Sheeran for $2. Or more likely, they just didn’t trust this shady spruiker and his sandwich board peep show offer.

It’s much like when somebody is strolling along the Internet, minding their own business… and they hit upon your optin page. It reads:

“7 steps to fixing your biggest problem now! Enter your email ——->>>”

Do people want their biggest problems solved?

Of course.

So why do so few opt in — and why do even fewer read anything you send them afterwards?

Much like with that spruiker on the street, they don’t know you. They probably don’t trust you. They certainly don’t like you. You’re just some shady character, pointing to an unmarked door, promising an amazing experience behind it.

But that’s just a fact of direct response marketing, right?

​​Unless you want to spend weeks, months, or years cultivating a brand through blogging or podcasting or whatever… then you have to take this hard stance and lose a few people in the process.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps not.

I’ve been going through a newish course by Andre Chaperon. You might know Andre from his course Autoresponder Madness, where he introduced story-based, soap opera email sequences that suck readers in, build a relationship, and simultaneously create anticipation for a paid solution to a problem.

Fact is, story-based email sequences are not the only big innovation that Andre has created.

He also invented something he calls “multi-page presell sites.” These suckers build a relationship and trust quickly, before asking people to opt in (or buy).

Andre’s been using them for years, and he claims they are the bedrock of his business, along with his Autoresponder Madness email approach.

(I’ve also seen some serious direct response businesses switching over to this “presell site” approach — both for getting people onto their mailing lists, and as a replacement for traditional sales letters.)

In case you wanna know more about Andre’s presell site system… or if you wanna see it in action… then you’re in luck. ​​Cuz I got it ready for you, in a darkened room hiding behind the link below. You won’t even have to opt in:

https://tinylittlebusinesses.com/manifestos/product-launch-marketing/

A non-tactic for making friends at marketing conferences

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One of my todos for 2020, along with losing 80 pounds, developing a magnetic personality, and writing my first novel…

Is to go to a marketing conference.

All the big names say you gotta do it. It’s where relationships are made… it’s how you meet the top clients… and if you’re serious about copywriting, it’s supposed to pay for itself.

So I’m putting together a list of such events, and I’m steeling myself to go. I say steeling, because my image of how conferences work isn’t pretty:

A bunch of hungry, pushy, teething pups, all pressing forward to grab a nipple on the tired bitch’s teat.

If that’s how you imagine marketing conferences as well, then I wanna tell you a story.

I heard it today while listening to a podcast episode where Kevin Rogers (of copychief.com) interviewed Dan Ferrari (a top copywriter).

At the time of this interview, Dan had only been copywriting for 3 years. And yet, he already had a string of controls for the Motley Fool, and he had made connections with some of the biggest names in the industry.

Such as for example, at Brian Kurtz’s Titans of Direct Response in 2014. This event featured a bunch of copywriting and marketing legends, including Gary Bencivenga, Dan Kennedy, Jay Abraham… the list goes on.

On the first day, Dan (Ferrari) found himself seated all the way in the back of the room, one table away from all the speakers.

When the break came, the whole room erupted as everybody pushed to the back to try and get a word in with one of the celebrities.

As the smoke cleared, Dan spotted a woman sitting meekly by herself. And rather than trying to join the feeding frenzy, he started talking to her.

She wasn’t a marketer.

She wasn’t a copywriter.

In fact, she was only there because her husband had to come.

So Dan and she had a nice conversation. At the end of it, her husband came over. She introduced him to Dan.

And that’s how Dan met and started a friendship with Gary Bencivenga.

Now, I’m definitely not telling you this as a manipulative tactic for worming your way into the inner circle of big players you cannot reach otherwise.

I just want to suggest (to you as well as to myself) that going to a conference and having normal, human-sized conversations, can be productive and useful, even in such a seemingly competitive environment.

By the way, if you too are thinking of going to a marketing or copywriting (or other) conference in 2020, let me know. Maybe we’ll be at one together, and I’d love to meet you in person.

A copywriting revelation from today’s Uber ride

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I took an Uber today and in my best Gene Schwartz moment, I decided to chat with the driver.

We talked for a few minutes about casual topics. Suddenly, he shifted to his interest in theology and his deep Catholic faith.

He spoke enthusiastically for a minute. And then, sensing my lack of religious conviction, he launched into a persuasive argument. These were the key points:

1. Perhaps you think God doesn’t care about you?
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2. Of course he does. Why else would he make you in his own image?

​3. You’ve got reason… You’ve got memory… You’ve got free will. These are all aspects of God. He gave them to you because he cares.

​4. You should look into this more… it will give you the meaning you haven’t been able to find so far in life.

Here’s why I bring this up:

A few days ago, I watched an excerpt from the Agora copy camp (or whatever it was called). This is a video training recorded at Agora Financial offices where they locked a bunch of newbie copywriters in a dungeon, and over the course of a week or two, taught them the Agora way of writing copy.

The excerpt I watched showed Joe Schriefer, the copy chief at Agora, explaining how to structure your sales letters.

The first step is to brainstorm a giant list of objections…

Then pick out the most important ones, and put them in a logical order — the order in which they will appear to your reader.

The next step is to convert each objection into a sexy subhead.

And the final step, the actual writing, is to expand each subheadlined section in a 4-part structure, which my Uber driver adopted instinctively:

1. Objection
2. Claim
3. Proof
4. Benefit

If you write sales copy, you should look into this structure. It will give you the kind of writing speed and persuasive power you haven’t been able to develop with more heathen copywriting methods. Why else would Joe Schriefer share it with you?

A screeching halt for curiosity subject lines

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A few days ago, my (former) car started giving me serious barney.

Suddenly, I couldn’t change gears properly.

One time, I was in second gear, trying to shift into third.

After a struggle, I got it out of second gear… but instead of third gear, it hopped into first.

Of course, since I was trying to speed up, black smoke shot out the diesel exhaust, the car revved up with a roar, and then slowed down. The exact opposite of what I was trying to accomplish.

I bring this up because right around the time this car trouble started, I sent out an email with the subject line,

“My biggest email mistake of 2019”

It was about how I don’t get much love whenever I use bizarre, curiosity-first subject lines. To which a reader named Andrew responded:

“I’ve noticed similar variations with my own email open rates depending on the subjects. For example, my list really doesn’t like rants, but the same email posted to LinkedIn as a blog post generally does much better.”

Andrew’s definitely got a point.

There are general principles of how to create an effective message, whether that’s an email, a blog post, or a YouTube video.

But much also also depends on the medium and the market.

For example, people are saturated with marketing emails — and they are much more ready to dismiss a weird email. On the other hand, LinkedIn probably has way fewer direct marketers, and something that stands out as a little bizarre might do very well there.

In other words, what works in one setting might not work in the other. Maybe that’s Obvious Adams.

But unless you take the trouble to find out what works where… and adjust your (formerly effective) message accordingly…

Then you might find that the end result is like jamming your car into the wrong gear: black smoke, an unpleasant noise, and a screeching halt.

Soothing the shame-filled sailor

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If Billy Budd is real, I haven’t met him in my 39 years on this planet.

Billy Budd, as you might know, is the eponymous main character of Herman Melville’s last novel. He’s “the handsome sailor,” which is shorthand for saying he is beautiful, brave, optimistic, strong, kind, likeable, healthy, and noble.

Quite a combination.

Not often seen.

Especially in real life.

For example, I’ve only ever come across a few people — fewer than 5, either men or women — who I thought qualified to be a real-life Billy Budd. And that was only at first sight.

Because whenever I got a chance to know these people better… it turned out they were not really “the handsome sailor.” These perfect-seeming people all had secret problems, conflicts, and scars lurking beneath the surface.

And so it is with all of us.

All of us have problems. Usually bunches of problems.

​​And along with these problems, there’s almost always shame. ​This shame doesn’t have to be conscious. But it’s there. And it’s powerful.

That’s why a hackneyed copywriting phrase crops up in so many sales letters, year after year. You might think this phrase is hokey… but it works. It soothes shame, cleanses sins, and opens up the reader to the possibility that their problem can be fixed.

Do you wanna know the phrase? Here goes:

“It’s not your fault.”

Try using this phrase in your copy in some form. And watch your conversions rise like a sail in a full breeze.

Because like I said, most of us are not handsome sailors… we’re shame-filled sailors. Not that that’s all bad. In Melville’s book, Billy Budd pays for his perfection with his life — though he dies a noble, admirable death. But who wants that?

How to write like your client in 3 mechanical steps

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Who’s the greatest actor in Hollywood? Well, now that Chris Farley is dead and Mickey Rourke is unrecognizable, the field is thin. In my opinion, it’s not De Niro… or Pacino… or DiCaprio… or even Nicolas Cage.

Instead, I think the greatest actor is [drum roll, opening the envelope]:

Jim Carrey.

Yes, Jim Carrey is amazingly talented. If you don’t believe me, just go on YouTube and find a 1983 appearance he did on the Johnny Carson show.

Carrey puts on a complex performance, doing pat imitations of James Dean, Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, and Elvis. He actually becomes Elvis. It’s incredible. Almost supernatural.

How does he  do it?

Well, there’s body movement.

When he’s imitating Elvis, Carrey can’t stand still. Hair flailing, shoulders jerking, weight shifting from leg to leg, arms out to the sides like he’s trying to balance himself on a slippery patch of ice.

Then there’s the face.

Lips in a one-sided sneer, eyes rolling back in his head.

Then there’s voice.

Yes, there’s a bit of magic in how Carrey mimics the color of Elvis’s voice. But he also creates the effect by exaggerating Elvis’s cadence — how fast/slow, how loud/quiet he speaks — and which words he emphasizes.

And that’s all there really is to it.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s no doubt that Carrey is talented, and that he worked hard to develop his plastic face and his mimicry of the people he imitates. I just want to point out that there are 3 almost mechanical strategies that, when perfected, allow him to create the illusion he is actually another person.

And get this:

The same thing is true when you’re trying to imitate somebody’s voice in writing.

Fortunately, it’s much easier to write like somebody than to imitate how they look and speak. When you’re writing, you’ve got much more time — and you don’t need to get everything perfect.

But just like on stage, a few simple tricks or strategies are enough to imitate somebody’s voice on the written page.

In fact, if you go by the advice of Justin Blackman, a “Brand Ventrioloquist” who’s written copy for big brands (Red Bull) as well as direct response businesses (The Copywriter Club), there might only be 3 mechanical steps you need to take to write in anybody’s voice.

Which 3 things?

Well, Justin laid them out on a recent episode of The Copywriter’s Podcast. If you’re in the business of imitating your client’s voice in print, it might be worthwhile to listen to. Here’s the link:

http://copywriterspodcast.com/index.php?podcast=940

Simple price negotiation with long-term clients

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Yesterday I talked to a previous client about a possible new job. He offered me to handle emails for one of his businesses on a straight-up commission basis.

At this point, a lot of copywriters would start running and screaming “Red flag!” But I got no muss with getting paid all on commission, at least with this client. I’ve worked with him already… he’s legit… and his business is making money and growing.

At issue is how much commission I would get paid. The client wrote:

“What’s the minimum amount you’d want to be making for the volume of emails that I’m proposing?”

Hmmm. That’s not a question I have a good answer to. So I thought for a minute. And I responded using a strategy that I saw described on Mark Ford’s blog.

Mark says he saw his client/partner BB (I assume Bill Bonner, the billionaire founder of Agora) using this strategy throughout his career.

It’s a way of negotiating that’s very simple, but effective if your main goal is a long-term relationship and a fair outcome for everyone involved.

I think Mark’s post explains it very well, so I won’t rehash it here. It’s worth reading if you find yourself negotiating prices with clients, and you hope to do business with them again. Here’s the link if you’re interested:

https://www.markford.net/2019/10/23/11059/?doing_wp_cron=1576003704.1623599529266357421875

The original live recording of Purple Rain

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After Prince died in 2016, a bunch of Prince videos suddenly flooded onto YouTube. These included both the legit, MTV videos, which Prince wasn’t allowing on YouTube before, as well as crazy bootleg recordings of various Prince concerts.

Among these, you can now find the original live recording of Purple Rain.

​​It turns out the album version, the same one that’s in the movie, was really recorded live in 1983 at a benefit concert in Minneapolis. I find this pretty incredible — but it’s a testament to how tight of a band Prince ran and how crazy talented they all were.

I think there are a bunch of persuasion and influence lessons that could be squeezed out of this whole story and the live performance that Prince and the Revolution put on. ​​But for today, I want to give the persuasion stuff a bit of a break — something I called “persuasion bleach” in an earlier email.

Instead, I just want to share with you the original live recording of Purple Rain.

​​If you’re not a Prince fan, this probably won’t be meaningful to you and you will want to pass. ​But if you do like Prince or at least his particular song, then this original version is definitely worth a look and listen. ​​Here it is if you’re curious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE8gScJGfa4