4 daily email newsletters you might like

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I’m subscribed to several dozen daily newsletters.

Reading most of them is a chore.

In part, that’s cause they all come from Agora or Agora-like companies.

And they either deal with stock tips and gold rush advice…

Or health information about diseases I haven’t heard of, at least yet. (Macular degeneration, when you arrive, I will be ready.)

I slog through these emails each day because email marketing is my job.

But among these dull but important emails, there are a few email newsletters, which arrive daily or even multiple times a day, that I actually open up and read with some personal interest. Here they are:

#1. Simon Black

“America is going to shit and you better have a plan B for when it happens”

That’s the summary of International Man, run by Simon Black.

The thing is, Simon writes interesting emails. There’s always some little history lesson, written as a simple story. I find myself intrigued and educated.

Word to the wise: Simon’s subject lines are pretty dull and too matter-of-fact. Try opening up his emails even if the subject line doesn’t catch your attention.

#2. Newsmax

I mentioned Newsmax a few days ago.

It’s a giant newsletter about news from a conservative standpoint.

All of the stories in Newsmax will get your blood pressure up, whether you vote left, right, or not at all.

Plus, you will get links to some of the most shameless sales letters running on the Internet right now.

#3. Ben Settle

Ben settle didn’t invent daily emails. But he did a lot to make them popular.

He did this by being surprising and polarizing.

Even after many years of reading Ben’s emails, I still open and read them each day.

#4. James Altucher

I only started reading James Altucher several months ago.

He is multimillionaire former hedge fund manager and failed entrepreneur.

He writes long blog posts that get sent as emails as well.

His emails are personal, funny, and interesting.

But James also seems to be backed by some Agora company.

So the interesting and personal stuff that he writes is interspersed with cutthroat sales copy for getting rich off marijuana penny stocks. Just so ya know.

#5. That’s actually it. The above 4 are the only daily newsletters I enjoy reading.

​​But while preparing to write this email, I typed “daily emails” into Google. And I subscribed to a bunch of newsletters I had never heard of before:

– Uptown Messenger (about where to buy drugs in New York City?)
– the Skimm (possibly about the milk industry)
– PRSUIT (of missing vowels)
– Londonist (about things to do in London, where I don’t live)
– and something called “A Season of Grief,” which apparently sends you inspiring daily emails to help you cope with a death in the family

I can’t wait. I’ll keep you updated. But before you go, there’s one more:

#6. Your recommendation.

Do you follow any newsletters (daily or not) that you actually enjoy reading? (Besides mine, of course.)

If you do, please let me know.

This is not just an engagement tactic. I’m planning on putting together a weekly (not daily) newsletter about email marketing soon.

So you’d be helping me out. And I’d give you due credit in the first edition of that upcoming newsletter.

Just click here, and if you’ve got a hit tip for me, send me the juice.

The Warren Beatty strategy for seducing copywriting clients

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“Women are like a jar of olives. You can eat one, close it up. Or you can eat them all.”
— Warren Beatty

I recently read some statistics about the sex life of Warren Beatty.

The man lost his virginity at age 20.

And then, he became a Hollywood star.

Over the next 35 years, he supposedly slept with almost 13,000 women, according to the best estimates of his biographer, Peter Biskind.

That averages to a new woman every day.

Almost certainly not true. Even Beatty himself has denied the claim.

However, he has over the decades been associated with a lot of famous women, including Melanie Griffith, Darryl Hannah, Jane Fonda, Vivien Leigh, Madonna, Carly Simon, Goldie Hawn, Barbara Streisand…

Oh, and Joan Collins, who said Beatty was “so pretty but just TOO exhausting in the bedroom.”

Mind you, all those women knew about each other. In other words, Beatty’s playboy background didn’t hurt. It helped. ​​

Anyways, now that you have that in mind, I want to tell you something related that might help your copywriting career.

I am currently negotiating a project with a client that I’ve done some smaller work for.

If this comes through, it will be the biggest single project I have had to date.

But the interesting thing is how I got this client.

About a year ago, I wrote him a cold email to introduce myself.

“Sounds interesting,” he replied. “I will keep you in mind.”

And he did.

He first hired me for a single project around December, then again for something in April, then a few small things earlier this summer. And now, here we are.

And here’s the thing.

I’ve sent the same cold email to several other leads.

They haven’t hired me yet. But they have all gotten back to me very quickly, with an almost identical response.

“Sounds interesting. I will keep you in mind.”

So what was the cold email? Well, if you’d like to find that out, you can get it inside my shamelessly promiscuous A-List Zone. For more information:

https://bejakovic.com/alist-zone

A natural path to heavier testicles

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The first time I got my testosterone levels tested was in 2012.

They came back normal. Even healthy.

I wasn’t pleased.

Because back then, I wasn’t feeling particularly normal or healthy.

I was 32 at the time, but I had less interest in sex than when I was 9 years old.

I wasn’t sleeping very well, and most days I was as tired as a used towel.

And though I did my squats and deadlifts and even hip thrusters, I wasn’t getting much stronger or more muscular.

So regardless of the reassuring lab results, I kept worrying about my testosterone levels. And I kept getting them tested, until predictably, I got one result that said — LOW.

“I knew it!” I said triumphantly.

And I set off on a multi-year crusade to get my already-normal testosterone levels back to normal.

So I loaded up on the grass-fed butter and vitamin A…

I made sure to avoid handling receipts, because, you know, CHEMICALS…

And I constantly scoured the Internet for supplements from the mountains of Peru or the jungles of Cambodia that had some bro science claims about improving your manliness.

Unfortunately, nothing changed.

My testosterone levels stayed mainly normal (“Lies!”) and I didn’t feel much progress in practical terms (“I don’t understand, you want to come over to my place tonight? To watch a movie? Why?”)

There was no saving me. I slowly resigned myself to a life of undiagnosed low testosterone levels.

And then, while browsing a science magazine at lunch, I came across an intriguing medical study:

“YOGURT INCREASES TESTICULAR WEIGHT”

It turns out some scientists, at MIT no less, fed a bunch of undersexed male mice a yogurt made with a specific strain of probiotics.

Result?

Shinier mouse fur.

Lower mouse inflammation.

Heavier mouse testicles (yes, they killed the mice and cut off their testicles and put the testicles on a mice-testicle-sized scale).

And finally: more mouse testosterone!

Now, I bring all this up for two reasons.

First, because, while a caricature, it is all true. The probiotic strain in question is called Lactobacillus reuteri ATCC 6475. ​​A bit of googling will quickly lead you to the MIT study, as well as to a recipe for making your own L. reuteri yogurt (which tastes delicious, and, you know, works, at least in my experience).

But the other reason has to do with copywriting.

Because this post uses the same basic skeleton as an advertorial I wrote recently.

It’s a good skeleton for introducing a new product, particularly one that’s got some science behind it.

If you look over this post, you can probably glean this skeleton easily with your X-ray vision.

But if you cannot, then you will want to read my upcoming book on advertorials, where I will go over this particularly skeleton in detail, along with other go-to skeletons I’ve used for advertorials.

You can sign up here to get notified when I finish and release this book:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

A hot tip for copywriters and others

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Get ready for some hard-as-headboards teaching. To set it up, let me give you some example headlines:

A. Retire in 15 years
B. How to have a cool, quiet bedroom
C. Key to fitness at any age

Decent headlines, right? All of them have a benefit, all of them are clear, all of them are short.

However, let’s say for the sake of argumance that you wanted to do better.

How might you tweak the above headlines to increase the number of grateful readers who fall into your ad and start reading your copy?

Take a moment and really think about it.

I’ll tell you in a second, but think about it first.

All right, thought some?

Well, here are alternate versions of the above headlines. All of these alternate versions outperformed the versions listed first. And if you look carefully, all of these alternate versions have something in common:

A. How a man of 40 can retire in 15 years
B. How to have a cool, quiet bedroom — even on hot nights
C. Key to fitness at any age for men and women

We know these alternate versions outperformed the originals because these were all case studies reported by the great John Caples in his book Tested Advertising Methods.

So what’s the lesson contained in Caples’s case studies?

Well if you look at the alternate headlines, you could slice the changes in different ways:

– calling out the audience
– addressing objections
– intensifying the promise

But I think all of these different slices can be put under the single, powerful, and shady umbrella of:

Specificity.

Sure, “Retire in 15 years” actually implies “How a man of 40 can retire in 40 years.”

But that’s not how people read ads.

You’ve got a fraction of an unconscious second to wake up your slumbering prospect and get him to hear what you have to say.

Don’t count on his tired brain to do any calculating in your favor.

Instead, use as much specificity as you can. Even if it’s redundant or not actually specific, such as saying “Key to fitness for men and women.”

So that’s my hot tip for copywriters.

Or others, such as business owners who hire copywriters.

​​And if that’s you, and you are looking for more specific copywriting tips (that have to do with increasing sales), then you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Airbnb goes direct response

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Last December, top-flight copywriter Dan Ferrari sent out an email about big changes he was seeing in the copywriting and direct marketing worlds. One part of it was the following:

So watch as companies with products and businesses that don’t really fall into our little world of internet direct response start to require the services of people that know how traffic, copy, and funnels work online, at mega-scale.

Even what you might think of as more traditional “brand” companies (if you have a keen eye, you’ll already have noticed this is happening with companies like Samsung, Bissell, etc…)

It’s going to be another area of HUGE growth and along with it, more big opportunities for the copywriters that have proven themselves.

This stuck in my head. But since I don’t go much on Facebook, since I refuse to download any apps on my phone, and since I live in a tiny eastern European country that doesn’t get too much ad targeting…

I hadn’t seen any examples of the big new players that Dan was talking about.

Well, until today.

Today, I opened up a Newsmax email. Newsmax is a massive newsletter that caters to aging baby boomers who love Trump, hate Obama, and worry about diabetes, immigrants, and race riots. Each Newsmax email has the latest-breaking news from a conservative standpoint, along with a few carefully placed links to long-form, very hard-hitting sales letters.

Except not today.

Today, the sponsored post in Newsmax was for Airbnb. The headline read:

“Earn while you’re away”

The pitch was that you could make money renting out your home on Airbnb while you travel. And the link took you to a regular Airbnb page for signing up hosts.

Now, I personally find it hard to imagine that a 65-year-old retired dentist, who’s afraid that El Salvadorean immigrants are coming to displace him from his castle of a home that he finally paid off after 30 years, will be thrilled with the idea of opening up said home to strangers while he goes traveling (where? to Bali?).

And even if he was curious about this offer, I’m not sure he would know what to do with the Airbnb page that the ad linked to.

In other words, I expect that the Airbnb Newsmax promo was a big stinkin’ flop.

But who cares? Airbnb is currently valued at $35 billion. They can afford to throw away a measly $20k or $50k on some failed ad tests.

But eventually, they will wise up, and they will ask their direct marketing to actually turn some kind of a profit.

And when that happens, you’ll see the situation that Dan was describing above:

“Big opportunities for the copywriters that have proven themselves.”

Just something to think about if you’re deciding whether copywriting is something you want to double-down on, or if you just want to keep dabbling in it from the sidelines.

If you are doubling-down, then you might like my upcoming book. It will talk about what I’ve learned over the past year while writing advertorials for some successful cold traffic campaigns. To get notified when I finish this book, you can sign up here:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Proof that Donald Trump is actually smart

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Dan Kennedy once told a revealing story about Donald Trump:

Some years earlier, Dan was giving a talk at some kind of event. After his talk, he ran into Trump back stage.

​​”What are you reading these days?” asked The Donald.

Dan listed one book.

The Donald nodded.

Dan listed another.

The Donald nodded again.

Dan listed a third.

The Donald turned to his hanger-on and said, “Get me that, I haven’t read it yet.”

​​I don’t know about you, but to me this doesn’t sound like the dolt that the media likes to portray.

Anyways, in spite of the pulling power of Donald Trump, I actually want to talk about Dan Kennedy tonight. In case you haven’t heard, the man is either dead, or very close to dead.

Now, I’m not sentimental about death in the least. But a few things are undeniable:

1) Dan Kennedy was a big name in the direct marketing space, and a big influence on many.

2) He had tons of interesting and entertaining stories, like the one above.

3) He was smart, and he was successful.

So even though I’m not personally saddened by Dan Kennedy’s death, I do respect what the guy did and how he did it.

And so, today I’d like to point you to a Dan Kennedy talk that I go back to regularly, because it’s got so much marketing value.

This talk was the keynote speech to Brian Kurtz’s “Titans of Direct Response” event, which sold for $2k while it was still available.

Brian made this presentation of Dan’s available for free online for some reason.

And if you’re interested in learning more about direct marketing and copywriting, from a guy who clearly knew what he was doing, then I think this video is worth a look. Or two. Or ten.

(Plus, it’s where Dan actually tells the Trump story above.)

In case you’re interested, here’s the link:

https://vimeo.com/user41807591/review/132998983/eacabe46f6

Opening the doors of marketing perception

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A few weeks ago, I found myself at an open-air club in Barcelona, talking to Tony the drug dealer.

Tony didn’t speak very good English.

When he couldn’t find the right word, he would shake his fist at the sky and yell, “TEACHER!!!”

In spite of his habit of selling drugs for a living, Tony didn’t do too many drugs himself.

“Just a little ketamine right now,” he told me. “It opens up the pineal gland.” He pointed to the back of his head to illustrate where the pineal gland is.

Now, from my previous readings, I know the the pineal gland is supposed to be the seat of the soul.

If it gets clogged up, then you find it hard to see God.

When it gets cleansed, say with a bit of ketamine, then you start to see the true nature of reality.

Maybe you don’t believe in any of this.

So let me tell you about marketing instead.

I just had my first call with my new marketing and copywriting coach.

Earlier this afternoon, I was thinking to myself how I’m already a pretty good writer and I know a lot about marketing.

I wonder what this guy is gonna be able to tell me,” I thought.

Well, I’ve just had my pineal gland opened.

And I feel like I got a short but powerful glimpse of the true nature of marketing reality.

I had a similar though less powerful experience the first time I started hand-copying successful ads many years back.

There’s such a big difference between reading about copywriting theory online and seeing real ads that actually made millions of dollars.

And there’s an even bigger difference between working on moderate copywriting projects, and seeing behind the curtain of someone who works on some of the most successful current promotions.

So if you’re wondering what this has to do with you, here’s all I can say:

Find​ some way of cleansing your own doors of marketing perception and opening up your own pineal gland.

Maybe you can start by looking at historically successful ads.

Maybe you can find a mentor or a coach, like I’m doing now.

Or maybe you can get a job in a fast-moving and successful marketing organization, where you can get a lot of experience very quickly.

Speaking of which, a past client of mine, Josh Dunlop, got in touch with me a few days ago.

Josh runs a very big and successful photography instruction website called Expert Photography.

I wrote some emails for Josh in my first year as a copywriter. He’s now looking for somebody to hire full-time.

I’m not interested. But you might be. So in case you want to find out more about the copywriting position that Josh is advertising, check out the following page:

https://expertphotography.com/careers/copywriter/

Copywriting and luck

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I just saw a cute video of a frustrated husky.

The husky is having a fit because his owner is pretending to eat one of the husky’s milk bones.

I saw this video in a Reddit post titled, “No, that’s not for you!” The post currently has 21K points and over 200 comments.

​​And the interesting thing is hiding down in one of those comments. It’s a table that somebody put together of the 24 other times this exact same video was posted before.

Those other posts of the same video range from having 29 points and 1 comment…

To having 81.5K points and 938 comments.

Maybe these fake Internet points don’t mean much to you.

So let’s multiply by 10 and change it into cold hard greenbacks. By that math…

The least successful husky post would have earned you $290, enough to buy a Kindle Oasis, Amazon’s “most advanced Kindle ever with a 7” screen and sleek ergonomic design.”

Not bad. On the other hand…

The most successful husky post would have earned you $815,000, almost enough to buy yourself a McLaren Senna, an “extremely track-focused hypercar” and “McLaren’s most calculated masterpiece.”

Keep in mind, the video was the same in both cases.

The substance was identical.

The only difference came down to title (“”WTF, that’s not yours” vs. “GIMME GIMME DARN :(“) and the time of the posting.

In other words, a bit of copywriting…

And a lot of luck.

So what’s the point of all this?

Well, I actually intend it to be inspirational.

Because if you’ve got decent copywriting (can you guess which of the two titles was the winner and which the loser?) and if you simply keep plugging away until you get lucky, then you too might get a husky post that gets tens of thousands of fake internet points.

Or if that’s not your game, maybe you will come up with a for-real offer that makes hundreds of thousands of dollars overnight. If you need help figuring out how to write decent copy to promote that offer of yours, you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Justin Goff and Stefan Georgi critique my advertorial copy

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Do you know the old chestnut about the drunk copywriter?

He was standing under a flashing neon sign that said ADVERTORIAL.

A passing policeman noticed this strange scene.

“What’s going on here?”

“I lost my keys,” said the copywriter.

“Right here, under this flashing ADVERTORIAL sign?” barked the cop.

“No,” the copywriter said softly. “Somewhere out there.” And he waved his arm into the darkness of the night.

Today, I got a copy critique from Justin Goff and Stefan Georgi.

​​Both Justin and Stefan are multi-million dollar marketers and copywriters. And today, they actually critiqued a bunch of different pieces of copy, mine being one of them. They had lots of insightful and valuable things to say.

So for example, I submitted an advertorial I’d written earlier this summer. According to the client I wrote this for, this offer is “profitable at the moment, although not doing crazy numbers.”

Justin was the one who did most of the critiquing for my copy.

“The advertorial copy is pretty good,” he said. “You could tweak it but it won’t bring in a massive win.”

And then he pointed out some opportunities, specifically in the upsell pages and the actual order page. These were things that would take a small amount of work to do, but could yield a 2- to 5-fold increase in profits. At least that’s what the two experts thoughts.

I won’t spell out these proposed changes here.

I just want to point out that if you’re doing a decent job with copy, then that’s probably not where your lost keys are hiding.

I mean, that’s not where your biggest improvements lie.

And that’s why it doesn’t make sense to keep looking for them under the flashing ADVERTORIAL sign, even though the light is best there.

Instead, you might have to wander out into the darkness that is the rest of your sales funnel. ​​In case you want some help with that, and you want to know the advice that Justin and Stefan gave me, you might like my upcoming guide on writing advertorials. To get notified when it’s out, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

The riddle of the digital coupon

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I’ve got a riddle for your Sunday:

In the olden days of marketing, marketers would run ads in magazines. And if they were smart, then in the corner of the ad, they would put a coupon:

“YES, I DO WANT THIS AMAZING BATCH OF SEA MONKEYS SHIPPED TO ME STAT!”

The coupon worked for several different reasons.

First, it drew attention.

Second, it summarized the offer and did its own bit of selling.

And third, and perhaps most powerful, it was an ongoing reminder.

Coupons were cut out. They stuck around. They encouraged immediate action and they had permanence.

So here’s my riddle to you:

How do you mimic this in a digital setting?

How do you get online shoppers to have an ongoing reminder of you, your business, and your offer, that acts like a coupon?

I don’t have a definitive answer to this riddle. I’m trying to figure it out myself.

But if you have a solution, write in and let me know.

The best answer gets a free copy of my revamped “How to become $150/hr freelancer on Upwork” book, along with the 5 new bonuses I’m adding to it.