The secret to triggering Upwork’s recommendation algorithm

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One day, I got an invitation to interview for a job on Upwork. The invitation read:

“I’d like to invite you to apply to my job – and I found you by looking up something related to sex and gender. Please review the job post and apply if you’re available.”

The job itself wasn’t interesting to me.

What was interesting was this mention of “sex and gender.” You see, just a day before, I had added a new item to my portfolio.

This portfolio item was titled, “Daily Emails for a Dating & Men’s Health Guru.” It talked about how I had written all these emails about dating, relationships, and sexual health for a big ClickBank seller.

This was the only mention of “sex and gender” in my entire Upwork profile.

And that’s why I think your Upwork portfolio is the secret to triggering Upwork’s recommendation algorithm.

Sometimes, those recommendations happen when clients are looking for specific keywords, like in the situation above.

But in my experience, new portfolio items mean more job invitations overall, even for jobs that don’t have to do with the portfolio item you just added. It certainly doesn’t happen every time, but I’ve seen such a bump in invitations often enough to think it wasn’t just chance.

And here’s the beauty of your Upwork portfolio: you can put anything in there.

Of course, you should only put in actual writing projects that you’ve done. But it can be on Upwork or off Upwork, it can be paid or done on spec (ie. for no money), it can be professional or a school project — whatever, as long as it’s relevant to a potential client who is looking for a copywriter.

And if you want to know how I write those Upwork portfolio items that trigger the Upwork recommendation algorithm, you’re in luck.

I describe it all in detail in my new book “How To Become a Top-Rated, $150/Hr Sales Copywriter On Upwork.”

And what’s more, you can now get this book for free. At least that is, if you act by midnight tonight PST.

In case you’re interested, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book

A sewer drain leading straight into the Upwork gold vault

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The Bank of England holds about 400,000 bars of gold.

It’s the second largest gold reserve in the world, after the New York Federal Reserve.

And though it’s worth over £100 billion, nobody has ever managed to break in and steal even one ounce.

Well, almost nobody.

Back in 1839, the Directors of the Bank started receiving anonymous letters.

The letters announced a man would meet them inside the vault at an hour of their choosing.

Finally, the Directors agreed to test out what was going on.

So, one night, they gathered inside the vault.

And waited.

And waited.

And then, at the appointed hour, they heard a noise.

It was coming from underneath their feet.

And the next thing they knew, a couple of the floorboards moved, and a man climbed out.

He was a sewerman who, during repair work, discovered that an old sewer drain led straight to the floor of the Bank of England gold vault.

It turned out the sewerman never stole anything — they counted all the bullion — though he sure could have.

So he was rewarded for his honesty with a gift of £800 — about £80,000 in today’s money.

I bring this curious story up because I’ve got a monumental announcement:

I’ve just published my guide to becoming a top-rated, $150/hr sales copywriter on Upwork.

This prestigious tome is like a sewer drain straight to the Upwork gold vault.

It contains the best insights I’ve gathered over the past 4 years freelancing on Upwork.

And while most of the book is not particularly glamorous (hence sewer drain), I certainly wish I’d had this guide when I was starting out. It would have helped me make a lot more gold shekels early on and save myself a lot of frustration and headache.

I’ll give an example of just one such story tomorrow.

For now, if you want to grab a copy of my Upwork guide, you can get it as a Kindle book on Amazon. Plus…

You don’t even need to reward me in any way for my sewerman honesty.

That’s because if you act in the next 36 hours or so (12 midnight PST on Wednesday), you can get this book for free. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book

How to sell lousy rotten garbage

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“HOT”

That’s the headline of a famous ad written by Joe Sugarman some time back in the 1970’s.

The ad was for a membership program called Consumers Hero — basically a mail-order catalogue of refurbished goods such as clock radios and digital watches.

Sugarman used the “HOT” concept to suck people in — the idea was that this stuff was so cheap that it was basically like stealing from the manufacturers.

And that’s not the only clever idea in this piece of copy.

For example, there’s also how old Joe addressed an objection that the reader was sure to have earlier on. The objection being:

“Sure, the refurbished clock radio might be cheap, but isn’t it junk?”

To which Joe says, of course it is!

In fact, as Joe walks you through Consumers Hero and its service, he uses the phrase “lousy rotten” six times to describe their merchandise. At one point, he even refers to it as “garbage.”

This is something that famed negotiation coach Jim Camp used to call the “negative stripline.””

In effect, it’s when you take a more negative position that the person you’re negotiating with (or selling to).

This disarms much of your adversary’s negativity.

And it can even cause him to try to bring you to a more neutral position.

“Lousy rotten garbage? It can’t be that bad! Tell me more about it, and I’ll see if I want one.”

And of course, Joe does tell you. All about how the money and care that goes into refurbishing the lousy rotten clock radio, into testing it, and in making sure that you’re perfectly satisfied when you get it and use, including a five-year warranty.

So what’s the point?

If your prospects are sure to have an objection, don’t shy away from it.

Beat them to it.

And even make a joke out of it.

And then, end on a less negative note. Such as:

If you have lousy rotten garbage on your hands (just kidding!) and you’re trying to offload it onto your customers, you might like the email marketing lessons found here:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Copywriting lessons from a knife-wielding burglar

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Back when I was in college, I lived in a slum house with four other guys.

One of them eventually turned out to be a weed dealer. Which I didn’t mind for a while — it was Santa Cruz, after all.

But that all changed one sleepy afternoon.

I was taking a nap in my room, as I tend to do. And then a strange rasping noise woke me up.

Rasp rasp rasp.

I tried to go back to sleep.

But the rasping wouldn’t stop. It wasn’t even so loud — but it was such an unusual noise, and coming from somewhere so close, that I got curious to find out what was going on.

So I got up, opened the door of my bedroom, and stepped outside into the hallway.

There was an unfamiliar man there.

He was ​​holding a large kitchen knife, and trying to carve a hole in one of the other doors. The door belonging to the room of my weed-dealing housemate.

The burglar and I looked at each other in the darkness of the hallway. He collected himself first and said, “Go back to your room.”

Which I promptly did. I locked the door behind myself and called 911.

Of course by the time the police came, the burglar was gone.

All that was left was the kitchen knife lying in the hallway, and the random pieces of door that he had uselessly chipped away.

Which brings up today’s marketing lesson.

You see, this knife-wielding burglar attacked the door from all angles.

In fact, the area that he was trying to carve through was about the size of a dinner plate.

If he had focused his energy on a smaller part of the door…

Or even better, if he had just clawed away at the door knob…

Then he probably would have gotten to the money and the weed on the other side.

And that’s the marketing lesson I mentioned.

When you’re writing a sales message, you don’t want to spread yourself thin, and hope to have a breakthrough by chipping away at all parts of your market.

Instead, you should always aim for the white-hot core — the fanatics, the ultra-devoted, the people with the most consuming pain. ​​

Why?

Well, because the experts say so. I’ve heard the above sentiment from at least two A-list copywriters (Gary Bencivenga and Richard Armstrong). And whenever I’ve taken it to heart, I’ve found I get better results than when I try to make too many different appeals.

Sometimes, business owners find this hard to accept. Which is why it helps to get an outside perspective with your marketing and sales copy.

And in case you want to see how I’ve helped some big supplement businesses by applying the above principle, you might like to get a free copy of my upcoming book. You can sign up for it here:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

How to dupe Hollywood’s 2nd biggest action star into humiliating himself

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Back in 1992, a terrible movie came out called Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.

(If you want to go on YouTube for a minute to check out the trailer, go ahead. I’ll wait.)

It starred Sylvester Stallone as a tough cop who has to team up with his overbearing mom to solve a case.

Stallone later said this was the worst movie he’s ever made, and he expressed regret for getting involved.

Critics seem to agree.

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot has a remarkable 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with one reviewer generously saying, “Give it half a star for being in focus.”

All right, so the movie sucks.

The question then becomes, why would Sylvester Stallone, one of the biggest action stars of the 80’s and early 90’s, agree to be in this clearly terrible production?

The answer is simple.

​He got conned.

It turns out Stallone had a long-running “Whose is bigger” competition going on with the other massive action star of the period.

I’m talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Who is clearly a better politician than Sly. Case in point:

Arnold read the script for Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.

He saw immediately that it was godawful.

And dyed-in-the-wool politician that he is, he then leaked something to the press about how he was tremendously interested in the movie.

Knowing how Hollywood works, he also asked for a huge amount of money to star in the movie.

So of course the producers then approached Stallone, hoping to get a better deal.

And since Arnold had made it known he wanted to do this movie badly, Stallone accepted, thinking he’d swiped a good opportunity from out of Arnie’s jaws.

Clever.

And an illustration of the most fundamental principle of human persuasion, which I heard goes back to Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch:

“Find out what people want, and show them how to get it.”

Of course, you sometimes have to dig deep to find out what people really want.

Stallone didn’t want money. Or even a hit movie. His real motivation was to one-up Schwarzenegger.

Sometimes it takes political genius to uncover this (like in the case of Arnold and Sly).

Other times, you simply have to do extensive research. And if you want to see my approach to doing research to figure out what people really want, specifically for writing up sales copy, then you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

The secret life of an Amazon Dash button

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A couple of days ago, I read that Amazon will no longer sell its Dash buttons.

These were the physical gadgets you would stick inside your pantry or laundry room.

When you run out of Betty Crocker cake mix or Tide laundry detergent, you simply press the corresponding Dash button and… presto! An order is placed on Amazon for a restocking.

When these buttons were announced a few years ago, the Internet mocked them as stupid, ugly, and intrusive. And now, a court in Germany has declared them illegal. A few days after the ruling, Amazon announced it will stop selling Dash buttons.

The Internet seems to be celebrating, as if to say, “We told you this is a stupid idea, Amazon!”

But I think few people are thinking about the very smart underlying principle behind the Dash buttons.

The buttons themselves sold for $4.99 (they probably cost Amazon well under a dollar). And their basic function was to get you to buy more stuff from Amazon.

Did you catch the wonder of that? You pay Amazon so you can buy more stuff from Amazon.

When looked at in this way, the Dash buttons aren’t so stupid after all.

In fact, this same idea — pay us so you can buy from us — is something that smart direct marketers have been doing for decades.

In essence: you subscribe to an interesting newsletter, say Second Opinion.

The price is cheap, $20/year.

But each newsletter is in fact a more or less direct sales pitch for other products, such as supplements, where the real money is made.

Of course Amazon, which is really the biggest direct marketing company in the world, knows this well. And it even admits that the real reason the Dash buttons were axed was not the German court ruling.

Instead, Dash buttons have been replaced by Amazon’s other, more successful reordering and subscription programs. Most of which are only available — you guessed it — if you also pay for Amazon Prime.

How does this apply to you?

Well, I think the underlying principle is this:

It’s always easier to get extra sales from existing customers, than to drum up new business.

Of course, you don’t need Dash buttons to do that. You can simply write your customers emails, and make them new offers. In case you need help writing those emails, press your “Profitable email marketing” Dash button. If that doesn’t work, then you might try the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

How to get away with murder and sales

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“‘This young man did not deserve to die on a parking lot of Long John Silver’s on a Saturday night,’ Chris Bailey, Indianapolis Police deputy chief, said after the killing. ‘Those with information who are not sharing with us should be ashamed of themselves.'”

A couple of years ago, the national murder clearance rate dropped to its lowest level ever since the FBI started tracking the issue.

The clearance rate measures how many murder investigations ended with an arrest or with an identification of a suspect.

Nationwide, it’s around 60% right now.

In big cities, however, it’s much worse.

So for example, in Indianapolis, you’re more likely to get away with murder than not. And if you shoot somebody dead in Chicago, you’ve got roughly a 75% chance of never being caught.

So what’s behind this?

There are lots of possible explanations. But one big reason — at least according to police chiefs — seems to be a growing unwillingness to talk to the police, whether it’s out of fear or simply because of a no-snitching policy.

Which is pretty crazy if you think about it. People dislike or distrust the police enough to side with murderers.

And as usual, there’s a lesson here that you can apply to your own marketing.

​It’s a powerful technique that you can use to get your market to side with you — even though you might be worse than a murderer (that is, a salesman).

This technique something I learned from copywriting legend Gary Bencivenga. In a nutshell, the technique is to create a common enemy. ​​In Gary’s own words:

“Instead of the usual ‘I’m trying to sell you something,’ which sort of sets up immediately in the reader’s mind a you-versus-me mentality, I found a way to shift gears by saying, ‘it’s you and me against these other guys.’ And if you can create an enemy in your copy, that’s what happens. You set up a three-point discussion and you come around from your side of the desk to be on the reader’s side of the desk and then it’s you and the reader against the enemy that you’re railing against.”

Of course, you want to be careful when you pick your enemies.

And I would also add, you want to be intellectually honest.

In other words, pick on people (or ideas) because you genuinely disagree with them — not just because you are looking for a fight.

The good news is, if you start looking around your market, you’re very likely to find good candidates to turn into enemies. And when you identify them, you can start honing the perfect message to position yourself against them.

How do you hone that perfect message?

One way is to write daily emails to your list, and see what they respond to best. And if you want help with those emails, then you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Irrational influence of initial rhyme

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A while ago, I was reading a book titled Born to Be Good.

The book didn’t make a terrible impact on me, and I can’t remember many details of it. However, one little bit did stick with me ever since:

Some of the subchapter titles were along the lines of, “Compassion conspiracy,” or “Nature, nurture, and naughtiness.”

I noticed that each time I was ready to stop reading, these subchapter headings would pull me in and get me to read a bit more.

So of course, since I do sales copywriting, I took note of this.

And I have since been using alliteration (also known as “initial rhyme”) in email subject lines on occasion.

Some of these emails (“Sudden slump in sexual stamina”) did very well. Which made me think I had discovered something new when it comes to writing effective sales copy.

Well, it turns I’m not a copywriting trailblazer. Direct marketers have been on to the power of alliteration for a long while. For example:

List broker and direct mail expert Michael Fishman once mentioned was how he was trying to find new lists to promote a product called The Big Black Book (which was a compilation of secret ways of doing things more effectively).

Michael, list genius that he is, proposed selling this to a list of infomercial buyers of a product called Passion, Power, and Profit (which seems to be about reprogramming your subconscious to achieve your goals).

Now, the two audiences seem to have little in common — except their love of alliterative titles.

And yet that was enough. the Passion, Power, and Profit list wound up buying The Big Black Book.

So what’s the point?

First, alliteration works, particularly in titles, headlines, and subject lines.

Second, never underestimate how crazy and irrational people can be in their buying decisions, and how trivial details can get them to buy.

And finally, if you want help with sales emails that entertain, educated, and engage, you might like to grab a free copy of my upcoming book:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

How to handle an outrageous offer by shouting obscenities

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Imagine you’re a big-shot Hollywood producer.

You’ve got a film being made in the jungles of Myanmar, starring one of your biggest assets — action star Tugg Speedman. Then suddenly, you get a call:

Tugg has been kidnapped. His kidnappers, the heroin-producing Flaming Dragon gang — are demanding $50,000,000 in ransom.

So how do you respond?

Now you might recognize this plot from the movie Tropic Thunder. The big-shot Hollywood producer is called Les Grossman, and he’s played by Tom Cruise — in one of his best roles.

I bring this scene up to get you to imagine how you would personally handle an outrageous offer that starts off with a gargantuan sum like $50 million.

While you think about that, here’s what you should NOT do — at least according to Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman:

You shouldn’t respond with an equally outrageous low offer.

The reason for this is the concept of anchoring.

That first ridiculous number ($50 million in the Tropic Thunder case) has already influenced your psychology on a subconscious level.

Even if you counter with a ridiculously low offer — “We will give you $1,000 and not a penny more!” — chances are you will wind up paying way more than you would otherwise. That’s because the pull of the anchor is so strong, whether you’re consciously aware of it or not.

So what you can you do to rid yourself of the effect of the outrageous anchor?

Well, Kahneman thinks you should make a scene — scream and shout to make it clear to both yourself and the other person that any negotiation with this starting point is unacceptable.

And that’s exactly what master negotiator Les Grossman does in Tropic Thunder. After listening to the demands of Flaming Dragon, he takes a breath and calmly responds:

“Okay Flaming Dragon, fuckface. First, take a big step back… and literally fuck your own face! I don’t know what kind of pan-Pacific bullshit power play you’re trying to pull here, but Asia, Jack, is my territory. So whatever you’re thinking, you’d better think again! Otherwise I’m gonna have to head down there and I will rain down an ungodly fucking firestorm upon you! You’re gonna have to call the fucking United Nations and get a fucking binding resolution to keep me from fucking destroying you. I am talking scorched-earth, motherfucker! I will massacre you! I will fuck you up!”

And that’s how to inoculate yourself against ridiculous anchors.

Of course, not everybody knows this.

And if you’re selling in many markets, it makes sense to use anchors in your own marketing to justify your prices or to increase sales.

But enough obscenities for today.

In case you need help with sales emails, you might like my upcoming book. It contains bits of wisdom I’ve gained by writing for some very successful health clients. If you’d like to find out more or sign up for a free copy when it comes out, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Even better than two Michelin stars

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There’s a restaurant in Copenhagen called Noma.

The name is short for “nordisk mad” — Danish for “Nordic food.”

And while that might not sound too appetizing, Noma is quite a destination for gourmands.

In fact, it’s got two Michelin stars — a pretty rare honor that only a small number of restaurants around the world share.

And yet, in spite of all the Michelin stars, there was a time when Noma wasn’t flush with business.

And then, in 2010, out of the blue, Noma came in at the top of the World’s Best 50 Restaurants.

This is a new restaurant list (unlike the Michelin Guides, which have been around for a century).

It kicked off in 2002 as a lark, but it’s since become more successful than anticipated. In fact, it’s become so powerful that it impacts the tourist industries of entire continents.

And it does wonders for individual restaurants:

The day after Noma got the top spot in the World’s 50 Best, a hundred thousand people tried to book a table. Suddenly, finances weren’t an issue any more.

So what’s going on?

How could the upstart World’s 50 Best do so much more for Noma than 2 prestigious but stupid Michelin stars?

For that, let me quote an interview that I just listened to. It’s with Michael Fishman, one of the world’s most successful list brokers, and a guy who has bushels of experience in direct marketing. Says Michael:

“When you give prospects a choice in direct mail, the danger is that they don’t make a choice and that you lose the order. […] The more choices you give and the more effort you embed in the process, the more likely you are to lose an order.”

I think the same reasoning applies to restaurant guides.

The Michelin system might be prestigious, but it requires effort.

After all, there are multiple restaurants all around the world with two or more Michelin stars.

On the other hand, there’s only one restaurant at the top of the World’s Top 50.

Which means no choice.

No effort required.

No chance to give up and say, “Ah to hell with it.”

Maybe you think I’m stretching this too far. But as Michael Fishman puts it, this idea of effort is “excruciatingly sensitive.” Michael illustrated this with the example of a direct mail reply card that required two perforations instead of one. Even such a tiny bit of extra effort reliably lowered response, compared to the simpler option.

Just something to keep in mind when you are designing your offers.

Or setting up your marketing campaigns.

Or writing to your clients.

Speaking of which, I’ve got a no-choice, no-effort offer for you. If you want a free copy of my upcoming book on email marketing, head on over to the following page, and sign up with your email:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/