“Coke and hookers”: Meghan Markle NYT story proves evergreen copywriting truth

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Back in 2016, I got a job writing a bunch of political fundraising advertorials. I was helping raise funds for Hillary Clinton, for Ted Cruz, and for Donald Trump.

(I found out later that the guy who had hired me was a big-time scammer. Almost none of the money he raised was ever used for any political purpose. But it was used for the purpose of coke and hookers in Las Vegas. Which you might think is a more noble goal than furthering the political careers of any of the above faces.)

Anyways, as part of this job, I had to constantly read a bunch of news articles for research. Politico… Fox… WSJ… and of course The New York Times.

It was then that I developed my contempt for The New York Times.

I guess I still had higher expectations of the NYT. Fox News was clearly an inflammatory tabloid, but the NYT still sold itself as classy and respectable and trustworthy.

But that’s not what I saw. Not when I read each story carefully, compared it with the headline, and then compared the whole with the same story covered in other media.

Whatever. I only bring up this episode from my life because I just came across a fascinating article and a resource on the exact same topic. The article and the resource can be useful to you whether or not you support the New York Times point of view.

So:

A guy named Tom Cleveland wanted to see exactly how the NYT A/B tests its headlines. He wrote up a script to pull in the data from the NYT site, and he started looking for insights. You can head over to Tom’s Substack if you’re interested in the full story. But here’s one quick tidbit, which should be old hat if you’re interested in copywriting:

NYT headlines tend to get more dramatic through A/B testing.

Tom gives a few examples. For example, a recent story about Meghan Markle started its career with the headline:

“Saying her life was less than a fairy tale, Meghan Markle described the cruel loss of her freedom and identity”

Come on Meghan. Every angsty teenager complains of loss of freedom and identity. Sure enough, the editors at the NYT tested ways to raise the stakes. The eventual winner:

“‘I just didn’t want to be alive anymore’: Meghan Markle says life as a royal made her suicidal”

A second example, this about Trump:

“Trump, addressing conservatives, plans to claim leadership of GOP”

Trump, ok. Always a solid way to get engagement. But “addressing conservatives, plans to claim leadership”? It sounds like the overture of a long and boring opera. Compare it to the winning “Tarantino-ized” headline:

“Trump’s Republican hit list at CPAC is a warning shot to his party”

Like I said, this will be old hat to you if you’ve been writing sales copy for a while. But it’s still interesting to see when backed up with the massive data behind the New York Times… and when dealing with the supposedly sophisticated and intellectual readers of the Times.

There’s much more to Tom’s data, including stuff that’s both obvious and not so obvious for copywriters. He goes into more detail about it on his blog. But he has also made all his data available online, in real time, in a very easy-to-use format. If you’d like to see it:

https://nyt.tjcx.me/

How to win my eternal gratitude

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Today for a change I’d like to ask for your help.

As you probably know, I am currently putting together a course that teaches you copywriting by getting you to write bullets.

“Bullets?” you might say. “Like those cheesy 90s sales letters? Who wants to learn that?”

Well, that’s where I hope you can help. Because sales bullets are still around, and they are everywhere, camouflaged in subtle or not so subtle ways. Specifically, they show up in social media ads… native ads… email subject lines… article and sales letter headlines… subheads… body copy… etc. They might not be formatted as bullets… but the words and the intent is the same.

So here’s how I hope you can help me:

As you go about your day, if you spot something that could work as a bullet — whether it’s an ad headline on Facebook or a good subject line or whatever — would you screenshot it and send it to me? You will be doing me a big favor. Thanks in advance.

Taking over abandoned but rich online oil wells

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Jay Abraham likes to tell a sexy story about two marketers. The story is true and it goes something like this:

Two marketers started selling fake diamonds through ads in the same local newspaper.

One marketer wrote a brilliant ad, got a high response, and made a bunch of sales. After ad costs and fulfillment, he was left with a profit of a few thousand dollars.

​​”What a waste of time,” this marketer said. And he moved on to bigger and better opportunities… ones where he could make tens of thousands or maybe even a hundred thousand dollars, using the same approach.

Then there was marketer two. He only wrote a passable ad, and got a lower response than marketer one. He was left in the red after ad costs and fulfillment.

But when marketer two sent his customers the fake diamond, he also included a letter. The letter said something like,

“Behold your beautiful fake diamond! See how it shines and sparkles! And if you by chance find it sparkles a bit less than you expected, perhaps it’s the modest size. But worry not. Send back your beautiful but modest-sized fake diamond… and we will credit it to your next purchase of a magnificent and ginormous fake diamond. Just enclose a check for an extra xyz dollars to…”

In other words, marketer two created a back-end of upsells and followup offers. Result? A business that made something like $25 million in its first year.

(By the way, I only found out later that marketer one, the brilliant but short-sighted copywriter, was Gary Halbert.)

I thought of this story today because I’m seeing something similar right in front of me.

For the past two years, I’ve been writing copy for a client in the ecommerce space. Over the past year alone, they have abandoned about a dozen hot funnels. Yes, including fake diamonds.

Each funnel had an in-demand product… copy that was working… a large, hungry, accessible audience eager to hand over their money.

So why abandon ship? Because fulfillment got tricky… or shipping got expensive… or ad costs went up and made the funnel unprofitable. So on to the next opportunity, the next oil well that can be exploited with just a bucket and a rope, for as long as it lasts.

I had the idea this morning of taking over some of these abandoned but rich funnels. But my first thought was, how could I possibly succeed where my client had failed? After all, they have a gaggle of ad buyers, a herd of ad production people, and money and resources and connections I can only dream of.

So how could I succeed? Perhaps, by having a back-end of upsells and followup offers. By tapping this oil well a bit deeper… and using strategies that go beyond a bucket and a rope.

Maybe that’s doable… but it also sounds like a lot of work. Which brings me to the point.

Last autumn I wrote about my idea of a “cash buyers list.” In a nutshell, I am looking for people who are willing to partner with me in some way on investing in online properties, whether that’s product funnels or blogs or sudoku solver software.

And if you have interest in partnering with me on some tried-and-proven ecommerce funnels… and you either have money, or relevant skills to contribute, then get in touch. Maybe we can create a new case study together for Jay Abraham to talk about for years to come.

Email as she is wrote

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How does your father do?
He is very well.
I am very delight of it. Were is it?
I shall come back soon, I was no came that to know how you are.

In 1855, a Portuguese man named Pedro Carolino published a book now known as “English as she is spoke or, A jest in sober earnest.” Carolino’s book was meant as an English-language primer for Portuguese speakers.

The above dialogue is from the book, of which Mark Twain said, “Nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect.”

​​Here are a few more examples, from a section titled, “Idiotisms and Proverbs”:

To build castles in Espagnish.
He is beggar as a church rat.
To craunch the marmoset.
To do a wink to some body.
I have mind to vomit.

During the Civil War, while President Lincoln was wondering what the hell he had gotten himself into, he used to reach for “English as she is spoke” to lighten his mind. Here’s a third and final example from the book, specifically, examples of “Quadruped’s beasts”:

Lamb | Roebuck
Ass | Dragon
Shi ass | wild sow
Ass-colt | Lioness
Ram, aries | Dormouse

My point in bringing this is up is to remind you that if you put out any kind of regular communication into the world, whether that’s daily emails (as I do) or LinkedIn videos or OnlyFans confessionals, then you want to add in your own quirks and twists and phrases in there. Carolino’s book cannot be imitated, but perhaps it can give you some inspiration.

Because everybody has a unique, inimitable way of speaking… you just have to keep an eye out for your own and catalogue it when you spot it.

Of course, some people won’t be amused with your own unique idiotisms and proverbs. But those who do vibe with you will be bound to you all the more. And as Carolino rightly writes, “If can’t to please at every one’s.”

The copy and influence secret not found in Dale Carnegie

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I got off the boat and took out some cash to pay for the boat tour. The tour operator looked at me. Then he looked at the girl I was with.

“Do you guys need some weed?” he asked in the local language.

Nobody ever offers me weed, but it’s ok because I don’t smoke anyhow. But the girl I was with does. So I turned to her and translated.

She faced the guy and said in English, “Yes, a joint would be amazing. And do you know where we can get some cigarettes?” For reference, all stores are closed today.

“No problem.” The tour operator told us where to get cigarettes.

“And now the big question,” the girl said, “do you know where we can get some food?” The country I’m in is under a restaurant lockdown. All restaurants are closed, except for restaurants in hotels. But you have to be staying at the hotel to eat at the hotel restaurant.

The tour operator had us covered again. “Go to this hotel… it’s amazing. Tell them I sent you… they will fill out a form so it looks like you’re staying there.”

“Thank you so much,” the girl said. “How much for the joint?”

The tour operator shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. It’s on me.”

I just finished re-reading Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People. The essence of that book is to focus on the other person… to let them talk about what’s interesting to them… to make them feel important.

Which is great advice. But I’m not sure it really delivers on the promise in the title. Rather, I think the book should more honestly be titled, How Not To Alienate Friends Or Make People Set On Sabotaging Your Plans.

But for the bigger promise of making friends or really influencing people… something else is often at play. it’s most obvious at the extremes, like today’s situation of the secret restaurant and the free joint.

Some people seem to attract opportunities the rest of us are not privy to. For this girl in particular, it seems to happen regularly, without her doing anything overt to make it so.

The question is why?

The best answer is have is to wave my arms a bit. It must be magic, or some internal vibration.

What really makes people attracted to you… what makes them trust you… what makes them listen to you… it’s more about how you feel (not Dale Carnegie’s advice) than how you make other people feel about themselves (Dale Carnegie’s advice).

Perhaps you’re wondering what this has to do with copywriting. So let me wrap it up with something written by Matt Furey. Matt is a multi-million dollar marketer, a successful copywriter, and somebody who started the trend of infotaining daily emails — much like what you’re reading now. And Matt says:

Truth is, everything you write – whether a simple note to a friend or an advertisement for your business or a chapter going into a book – carries a vibration of some sort, and the stronger your personal vibration while writing the greater the likelihood that those who are somewhat sensitive will feel it.

If you’re in a bad mood when you write, don’t be surprised if the reader doesn’t like what you wrote. Conversely, if you’re in an incredibly positive and vibrant state, the reader may feel such a strong current coming from your words that you lift him from the doldrums of depression into an exalted state of mind.

Then again, if you’re somewhere near neutral when you write, don’t be alarmed if no one bothers to read anything you put out. Make no mistake about it, if you want your writing to get read, it better have some ZAP.”

For more writing like this, you might like to sign up for my email newsletter.

You’ve got everything it takes to motivate people

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“Come on, let’s play!”

“No you go ahead. It’s black magic to me.”

“Don’t be silly. There’s nothing to it. It’s only judgment and memory. Judgment you’ve got plenty of… and didn’t you once write an article about how to remember just about anything?”

“Memory and judgment, huh? All right, I guess I could give it a try.”

In How To Win Friends And Influence People, Dale Carnegie tells a story about being roped into playing bridge with some friends. “Bridge? Oh, no! No! Not me,” said Carnegie. “I knew nothing about it.” And yet he wound up playing.

The above little dialogue gives you a clue how. Because Carnegie’s friend used a standard way of motivating and inspiring people. Speaking of which, here’s a quick aside:

For a long time, I considered myself congenitally unable to motivate or inspire people. Perhaps it’s my own lack of enthusiasm, which I was projecting outwards.

But it turns out that, just as with the broader topic of persuasion, there are formulas for motivating people and stirring them to action.

Carnegie’s friend may have known that intuitively.

But if you can read (which you can), and if you’re willing to follow a few simple directions (and why wouldn’t you be)… then you can motivate people, whether it comes intuitively or not.

Anyways, once upon a time, I collected a list of 10 such formulas for motivating and inspiring.

The tactic from Carnegie’s anecdote above, telling people they already have everything they need to succeed, is no. 1.

If you’d like to read the rest… and maybe even apply them in your own dealings with customers, clients, and perhaps your sullen friends and family… then take a look below:

https://bejakovic.com/99-problems-and-folsom-prison-blues-how-to-write-copy-that-inspires/

Near miss: 100-0 in business and private

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A tense and awkward situation today:

I was walking on a large, wide, empty road. Down the road, I saw a guy walking toward me.

I recognized him. I see him every time I go to the gym. I’ve never spoken to him, but I bet he recognized me, too.

So we were walking toward each other. There were no other people around, and no other distractions.

He saw me coming nearer.

I saw him coming nearer.

Would we say hello, even though we’d never spoken before?

Or would we ignore each other, even though we’d spent hours in close proximity?

At about 10 yards to impact, the guy dropped his gaze and started studying the pavement. I kept my eyes in the middle of his chest — a safe place in case he decided to look up at the last minute, but also not accusatory.

He didn’t look up. I kept quietly staring at the middle of his chest, without making any sudden movement. We passed by each other, as David Ogilvy says, like ships in the night.

Thank God. A near miss.

This brought to mind a post written by Brian Kurtz. You might know Brian as the former VP at direct response giant Boardroom.

Back in the 80s and 90s and 00s, Brian was the guy who hired all those copywriting legends like Gary Bencinvenga and Parris Lampropoulos and Jim Rutz. And today, Brian is still a very successful and well-connected guy in the direct response industry.

Anyways, Brian once shared an idea he called 100-0. 100-0 means you put in the extra effort to build and keep up your relationships. And you don’t grumble about it. Because it will be worth it.

It’s something I clearly need to work on, because it doesn’t come natural. I’m passing on Brian’s idea to you because maybe you are the same.

You can draw your own conclusions. But if, like me and like my nameless gym buddy, you keep waiting for others to make the first move… perhaps try 100-0 and see what it can do for you. In your private and your business life.

And maybe you’d like to start a modest relationship with me today.

Just by email. At least for now. In case you’re interested, here’s where to start.

Guilt deflection

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Here’s a powerful persuasion tactic for your copy and private life. Let me illustrate it with a dramatic scene from the Seven Samurai, in which the samurai find the farmers’ hidden stash of armor and weapons.

A bit of background in case you haven’t seen the movie:

A poor village is being strangled by marauding thieves. So the farmers hire seven samurai for defense. The samurai aren’t getting paid much, but they agree because of the honor of defending the poor helpless village.

And then they find the hidden stash of armor and weapons.

How did the farmers get it? There’s only one way. They must have killed and robbed to get it. And they killed and robbed retreating samurai.

Six of the seven samurai are disappointed and angry. Then the seventh samurai, Kikuchiyo, played by Toshiro Mifune, starts to fume.

“Well, what do you think farmers are? Saints?”

Nooo, he explains. Farmers are cowards who lie, cheat, pretend to be oppressed… and yet they have hidden stores of food where you will never find them.

“They are the most cunning and untrustworthy animals on Earth,” Kikuchiyo says.

And then, he suddenly stops.

“But who made animals out of them? You!”

The other samurai are stunned. How are we to blame, they seem to say.

“Each time you fight,” Kikuchiyo explains, “you burn their villages, you destroy their fields, you take away their food, you rape the women and enslave the men. And you kill them when they resist.”

And then Kikuchiyo falls to his knees and starts to sob. It turns out he is not really all that samurai… he also comes from a farmer family.

Anyways, the point is that in the movie, this works. The samurai accept the farmers for what they are, and they stick around to defend the village.

I call this guilt deflection. It’s a powerful technique to use in your copy.

Because where there’s trouble, there’s guilt being assigned. As I’ve written before, in the copywriting space, that guilt is often directed inwards.

People feel there’s something wrong with them… that they are the ones to blame for their ongoing unsolved problems.

You can’t just skip over that. If you do… if you jump straight into your promise and how great it will be to finally get there… you will just make your prospect disappointed and maybe angry.

So here’s what to do instead.

Yell at your prospect. “Yes, it’s true! You are the most cunning and untrustworthy animal on Earth. But who made you that way?”

And then deflect your prospect’s guilt. Give him an explanation that shifts that guilt somewhere outside him. To other people… to institutions… to ways of doing business.

And like I said, this can work in your private life, too. I learned this from a friend who told me the best way to deal with a woman’s accusation is to accuse her of something in turn. I tried it and… well, I guess that’s a story for another time.

My whole life has been leading to this

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1. Age 7, second grade. I’m standing in front of the class and reading a little story I’d written. It’s about a yellow raincoat I had and a googly-eyed giraffe sticker on it which I tried to rip it off and give to Ivona, the girl I was in love with back in kindergarten.

Some 7-year-old monster in my class gets restless and starts to talk. The teacher shushes him angrily. “Listen!” she says. “It’s such a wonderful story.”

2. Age 17, English class in 12th grade. We break into groups of four and read each other’s college application essays. Everybody else’s essay is a dutiful list of lessons learned and life goals to be achieved. My essay is about my first time waiting at the DMV. I know when people are reading it, because they first snicker and then start to laugh.

3. Age 23, senior year of college. I’ve taken an advanced math class, thinking I might go to graduate school for the same. Well, we’ll see about that.

“Roses are red,” the intimidatingly smart professor says. I nod. I believe I understand what he’s saying.

“If roses are red,” he goes on and faces me, “then violets are…?”

My mind is blank. I can’t follow his simple reasoning. I squirm in my seat. But he wants an answer.

“If roses are red,” I start, “then violets must be… a type of common flowering plant?”

Not the right answer, it turns out. Graduate school for math? No.

Instead, pretty much my whole life has been leading me to this point right here, where I write copy for a living and I write these daily emails for fun.

Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. In fact, it’s very much an exaggeration. But you might believe it, based on the little snippets I just shared with you.

And that’s my point. Because snippets are often all you need.

Yesterday, I gave you a Dan Kennedy story titled, “My chief asset was a cat who licked stamps.”

Part of that story was exaggeration and absurdity and humor. But there was something else. Because Dan’s story wasn’t really a story. It didn’t have a tail and horns and everything in between.

Instead, it was really a snapshot, a scene, an episode.

That’s often all you need. And in today’s world, where everybody and his cat is forcing their life to fit a “hero on a quest” story mold, you might even stand out as somebody more honest. A few snapshots from your life to add color. An episode to make a point — without making yourself out to be Luke Skywalker.

And by the way, if you want a real-life example of selling yourself for millions of dollars using this episode-based approach, track down Dan’s Magnetic Marketing stump speech. It’s available online, and it’s a great sales presentation. Plus, it’s as funny as a Bill Burr comedy special — pretty amazing, considering Dan gave these speeches almost 30 years ago.

And for more intimate snapshots from my private life, you might like to sign up to my email newsletter.

“My chief asset consisted of a cat who licked stamps”

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A few days ago, a reader of this newsletter wrote in with a problem.

He’s an expert in his field. But he feels sick telling his mess-to-success, rags-to-riches origin story. He hates hyping it up and repeating it over and over, even though it’s all true.

I can understand. So here’s an alternative. Take a look at the following background story from Dan Kennedy:

I often tell the story, when I went through a divorce and went broke I started over in info-marketing and my chief asset consisted of a cat who licked stamps.

My wife abandoned the cat and left the cat behind. We quickly came to an agreement that, if it was going to get fed, it had to do something other than hiss, and snarl, and scratch, and bite, which were unattractive attributes of this little monster.

We arrived at a working relationship where it sat on the coffee table, I sat facing the TV at night stuffing my envelopes and getting my mail ready. It sat facing me, and I took the strip of stamps and held it out and the cat licked them and then I did all my stamps.

I kept a little bowl of water there so the cat could, you know… I’m sure all that glue … but they’ve got nine lives! All the glue probably didn’t kill it, its personality probably did.

That’s the end of Dan’s story. In the presentation he gave, he moves on and talks marketing.

So what’s my point in bringing up this story?

You might think it’s humor. And yes, humor is a big part of the story above. If you can be funny like Dan, you are that much ahead of the rest of us.

But there’s something else to Dan’s story. Because it’s certainly not rags-to-riches, is it?

No, something else is going on. I’ll spell it out in my email tomorrow (click here if you wanna get it), and I’ll tell you how it’s relevant for your sales copy… or for your in-person, nose-to-nose, toes-to-toes origin story. Whether you are funny or not.