The worst aromatherapy book Broadway has ever seen

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“Tonight, essential oils. Tomorrow…”

The Producers — a brave and brilliant comedy from back in 1968.

The basic plot goes as follows:

A Broadway producer named Max Bialystock meets an accountant named Leo Bloom.

Together, they realize that a play that flops could earn more money than a big hit.

So they set out to produce the worst play in the history of Broadway. It’s titled:

“Springtime for Hitler”

It’s shocking, it’s campy, it’s offensive, and it’s guaranteed to fail. Except, against all odds, it becomes a hit.

Well, I am currently having my “Springtime for Hitler” moment.

You see, once upon a time, I got into the aromatherapy niche. This was mostly a marketing exercise, and the main reason I chose aromatherapy was the big interest I saw among Amazon best selling books on the topic.

In other words, I expected it to be a quick cash grab or more likely a flop.

Fast forward a few years, and I am genuinely interested in essential oils (I use them myself), I’ve spent hours upon hours researching and writing about the topic, and I’ve even become a low-level expert on the matter.

And now, I have my very own book to prove it.

As of today, my first book about essential oils, Essential Oil Quick Start Guide, is live for sale.

And while it’s not a Broadway hit yet, I do have my first sales trickling in.

Anyways, you can see the sales page at the link below.

If you have zero interest in reading about essential oils, it probably won’t make you buy. Still, it might be worth looking at just to see how I weave in valuable information (suggestion: Gary Bencivenga) with a non-stop barrage of bullets (suggestion: Gene Schwartz). Here’s the link:

http://www.unusualhealth.com/quick-start-guide/

Gattefossé’s un-accidental discovery

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The legend goes like this:

The year was 1910. And a French perfumery chemist, named René-Maurice Gattefossé, was working in his laboratory as per uzh.

Except this day, the lab experiment went bad. There was an explosion, and Gattefossé’s hand got badly burned.

In a moment of fright and shock, Gattefossé dipped his burned hand into the nearest vat of liquid, which just happened to be…

Lavender essential oil. (He was a perfumery chemist, remember?)

Over the coming days, Gattefossé observed the disgusting pulp of his hand. It was healing well. Scarring was minimal. He recovered wonderfully.

Impressed by these results, he went on to dedicate his life to studying the health benefits of essential oils. And, the legend concludes, that’s how the modern field of aromatherapy was born.

The end. Only one problem:

This is not exactly how it happened.

Gattefossé tells the actual story himself in his book Aromatherapie.

Yes, his hand got burned (in fact, both his hands), and yes, he used lavender oil to help the healing. But the most dramatic element of the story — the accidental dipping into the vat of lavender oil — seems to be made up. Instead, Gattefossé already knew of the healing benefits of lavender oil, and he used lavender oil in a methodical process to treat his hand once the fire was already out.

Somehow though, the true story doesn’t sell.

Which brings up an important point if you ever want to persuade people. Just because a story is true, doesn’t automatically make it good sales copy fodder.

For example, the “accidental discovery” plot will almost always beat out the “slow and methodical progress” plot.

My gut feeling is that this comes down to that old Jim Camp favorite, vision.

It’s easy and dramatic to imagine Gattefossé screaming out in pain and dunking his hand into the nearest vat of liquid. It’s not so easy to imagine him, at some uncertain time later on, using lavender oil to perform a precise and tedious intervention on his burn.

Of course, this applies to emails as well.

And no, you don’t have to make anything up to have successful sales emails. But you do have to choose your stories well.

If you want to see some of the stories I’ve successfully used to promote health products (supplements, info courses), then take a look inside my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space. You can get a free copy when it comes out by signing up below:

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

Freelancing incels on Upwork

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Around April of this year, a polarizing new term entered everyday language.

The word is “incel,” short for involuntary celibate.

This is typically a man, one who meets three criteria:

First, he’s not getting laid, and he can’t see a way to get women into his life.

Second, he’s suffering for it.

Third (and possibly most important), he wants to feel like a victim.

These incel guys have had a lot of hate piled onto them once their secret Internet lairs became exposed. I’m not sure that’s wise or fair, considering that A) these guys are suffering and B) many other people in our society like to feel like victims.

Consider for example, a post I saw in a copywriting group on Facebook a few days ago. The text read,

“Well, then. Serves me right for trying Upwork again.”

… and below this was a screenshot of a message that this freelancer got from a potential Upwork client. The client was trying to clarify what the freelancer’s rates were: 0.15 cents per word (which seemed too low), or 15 cents per word (which the potential client said was way out of their budget).

Now, I’m not here to discuss these rates, but rather the attitude. You see, this post and the thread that followed seemed to be made up of unsuccessful freelancers wringing their hands and shaking their heads about how Upwork clients are terrible and how they don’t offer fair wages for fair work.

To me, this sounds a lot like those other incels. Their problems are different, but the victim mentality is the same.

The fact is, there are good clients on Upwork. I know, because I work with them, month after month, year after year. And yes, I know they are far outnumbered by people who cannot or will not pay you what you want. That doesn’t mean you cannot make Upwork work.

But the thing is, nobody owes you anything.

And so, rather than going on Facebook and complaining about how you can’t find good clients on Upwork (or going on Reddit and complaining about how you can’t get a girlfriend), I think it’s much better to take the attitude that this situation is your own fault and your own responsibility to improve.

So how to improve it?

As I mentioned a while back, I was interviewed about how I managed to become successful on Upwork. I’ve had that interview transcribed, and I’m going to expand it a bit and make it into a little Kindle ebook. For now though, if you want to read the raw transcript itself and see how to become a top-rated, well-paid copywriter on Upwork, write me an email, and I’ll send you a copy. Here’s how to get in touch:

https://bejakovic.com/contact/

Secrets of the dead magus

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I read today that Ricky Jay is dead.

It was strange to read, because I’ve spent a lot of time this year reading about the man and watching videos of him performing. (I’ve even mentioned him on this blog before.)

While alive, Ricky Jay was (so the experts say) one of the best sleight-of-hand artists in the world. He could also turn playing cards into weapons, and throw them in such a way as to pierce the thick pachydermous outer layer of a watermelon. He was a historian of magic, an author of a dozen books, and a chronicler of bizarre or transgressive occupations, such as confidence men, bearded ladies, and mind readers.

I’m still waiting for my copy

And if you are interested in copywriting and persuasion, Ricky Jay was definitely somebody you could learn from.

Why?

My feeling is that magic, as practiced by top performers like Ricky Jay, is about controlling the audience’s attention, about painting mental pictures, about entertaining, about building curiosity, all the while guiding people to a tightly controlled desired outcome — the magician’s desired outcome. With some small tweaks, that also sounds like the job of a copywriter, or more broadly, any persuader.

So no pitching about email marketing from me today. Instead, I will leave off with an immoral anecdote about a time that Ricky Jay asked for advice from one of his idols and mentors, Dai Vernon:

“Professor,” I protested, “I really want to know how I can improve my technique and performance. I want to take lessons from you. I really want advice.”

Vernon smiled his patented half smile, and with a delicate movement of his eyes beckoned me closer. I leaned forward with anticipation, almost unable to contain my excitement, about to receive my benediction from the master. “You want advice, Ricky,” he said. “I’ll give you advice. Fuck as many different women as you can. Not the same one. Not the same one. Fuck many different women. Many different women.”

If you want to learn more about Ricky Jay, I can recommend the wonderful article that introduced me to the man, a New Yorker profile from 1993 titled “Secrets of the Magus.” Here’s the link:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/04/05/secrets-of-the-magus

What’s the frequency, Brian?

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Did you know a group of ladybugs is called a “loveliness”?

Entomologists might not use this term, but it is what former CBS anchorman Dan Rather seems to call a ladybug congress. I found this out from a Tweet that Dan posted today.

He seems very chipper these days, does old Dan, enjoying being retired and spending time with his grandson. But it wasn’t always so.

As you probably know, poor Dan got beat up on the streets of New York back in ’86 by a guy who kept yelling, “Kenneth, what is the frequency?”

The “Kenneth” phrase became a kind of 80’s meme and inspired the big R.E.M. hit, “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?”

The song’s lyrics are opaque and also include the line, “Richard said, ‘Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy.'” This in turn comes from a scene in the movie Slacker, directed by Richard Linklater, in which one of the characters offers Oblique Strategy cards to a passerby, and the “Whithdrawal in disgust” card is what the guy picks.

Oblique Strategies, by the way, are cards designed by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt. They hold short, cryptic instructions to help with creative work.

This links back to the R.E.M. song, which slows down at the end. Apparently, the bass player had appendicitis as the song was being recorded, and they had to stop playing and rush him to the hospital. They never finished the recording properly. I don’t think this was one of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, but it runs in the same vein.

You may think this is aimless rambling. And it is — but there is a point to it as well.

A while back, Ben Settle linked to a video that he said was very influential in how he wrote emails. The video is titled “Admiralty Law: Word Controlled Humans & The Law of Money” and it’s the recording of a presentation of one Jordan Maxwell, a world-famous conspiracy theorist.

The video is kind of mind-bending to watch, and the email marketing lesson I drew from it is the power of stringing two ideas together in surprising ways. Each idea has to be somewhat interesting on its own, at least to you. The way you string them together is also up to you — it doesn’t have to make too much sense.

Why do this?

Well, one reason is that surprising people is always a good thing. It wakes them up and makes them pay attention.

But there’s a second, and possibly more important reason. And that is:

Because these are your curious associations between different facts and ideas, they give your unique flavor to what you write. It’s this unique voice that helps you build a relationship with your readers. And ultimately, building a relationship is the highest level of email marketing.

So developing your own voice can be done consciously, like I did with the “Kenneth” stuff above.

The thing is, this association game is not the only way to develop a unique voice for your copywriting.

There are several other strategies. I’ll go over them in similar detail in my upcoming book on email marketing. If you want to get a free copy when it comes out, sign up here:

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

The mere puffery of sales pages

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Back in 1997, Pizza Hut sued Papa John’s Pizza.

They claimed that Papa John’s slogan — “Better ingredients. Better pizza” — was misleading advertising.

After all, who’s to  say that better ingredients do indeed make for a better pizza? It sounds like some kind of tomato-industry propaganda.

Anyways, the initial ruling was in Pizza Hut’s favor. On appeal, however, Papa John’s won out.

The court decided that Papa John’s slogan was mere puffery — meaning an empty exaggeration that didn’t influence buyer behavior.

I thought of this today because I finished up the sales letter for my new book on essential oils.

And as usual, I sent it over to my trusty proofreader and copy editor.

AKA my mom.

“It’s good,” she said, “I just feel like it might be a little too broad.”

“You mean it’s too long?”

“Yes,” she replied. “It reads nicely, I’m just not sure that anybody would read all this.”

And she’s definitely got a point.

Even though this sales page features some valuable information (thanks Gary Bencivenga) and a bunch of curiosity-baiting bullet points, I’m not sure I would read it all myself if I were my own potential customer.

No surprise there.

In fact, for many of the online purchases I’ve made in the last year or so, I did not read the sales page. I was already sold long before I got there, and I just scrolled straight to the end to the “BUY NOW ” button.

I expect the same to happen with my customers — because they can only get to this sales page from my emails, and I expect them to be pre-sold thanks to those emails.

So is the sales page mere puffery in that case?

In other words, is it just empty advertising that doesn’t influence buyer behavior?

It might well be.

After all, several respected marketers I follow have had successful product launches by sending people straight to the checkout, no sales page in sight.

It’s something I might try in the future, as I get more experience selling to this particular audience.

For now though, if you want to get an idea of the kinds of emails I will be writing to actually sell this course, sign up below to get a free copy of my upcoming book.

It deals with email marketing for the health space, including for info products like the one I’m launching. Here’s the link:

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

“Show and sell” day at Copywriting High

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I listened to another episode of David Garfinkel’s Copywriters Podcast today.

This episode was about the old writing maxim “Show, don’t tell.”

I wasn’t 100% clear what David’s position was on this idea.

But it did get me thinking of the sales letter I am currently writing, for my own book on essential oils.

The version 1.0 lead for this sales letter was a placeholder, and a lame placeholder at that:

Essential oils — Mother Nature’s miracle cure…

Or an expensive gimmick peddled by multi-level-marketing companies?

Well, a little bit of both.

Here’s the truth: essential oils can really be a wonderful help for issues like… [yadda yadda yadda]

After I listened to David’s podcast, I went back and rewrote this in a “Show, don’t tell” way:

Back in May 2017, a woman in Florida thought she was preparing a nice bath for herself.

Like many times before, she added some essential oils to Epsom salts, and let this sit for 30 minutes before adding it to her bathwater.

She then got in.

This time, however, the bath wasn’t the usual relaxing nighttime routine.

Instead, she got painful burns on her back.

“Normal brand essential oils,” she later wrote, “and coconut oil took the red burns away, but did I do something wrong?”

[it then goes on to explain what she should have done]

More effective?

I think it is.

This “show, don’t tell” approach is something I actually do all the time when writing sales emails.

For example, when I look at the 10 emails I wrote for RealDose Nutrition’s new front-end email sequence, exactly half kick off with a story that “shows” either the problem or the benefit.

Does it work?

Well, the new sequence is outperforming the old one by 30%.

So you can say it’s “Show and sell.”

Anyways, if you want to know more about the little tricks I built into that email sequence, and others I wrote for RealDose, check out my upcoming book. It’s free if you sign up for it now, $17 when it goes on sale:

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

Thanksgiving frustrates Bejako’s turkey

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I’m preparing to launch my new book on essential oils, and while I’m pretty much ready to pop this turkey in the oven, there’s a snag:

This Thursday is Thanksgiving.

The day after is “Black Friday.”

And the Monday after is “Cyber Monday.”

Which means every retailer, online and offline, will be bombarding their email lists with offers and special discounts.

Not a good time to try to vie for attention, especially since I plan to do so starting on a Thursday and ending on a Monday.

I’ll have to wait a week.

No problem though, because it will give me time to write all my promotional emails ahead of time.

And there will be a lot of them.

I’m largely following the product-launch strategy that Ben Settle outlined in his September 2017 issue of Email Players.

And it’s something I’ve applied once before, with a lot of success, for a big client, RealDose Nutrition.

This is an 8-figure company in the supplement space.

I rewrote their front-end autoresponder along the same lines I will be using for my own product launch.

The outcome was a 30% increase in sales — and that’s for a company built on direct response, and one that already relied heavily on email marketing.

If you want to get the full details of what I did for RealDose, you’re in luck.

Because this will be an ongoing case study in my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space.

The book is not out yet, but if you want a free copy when it does come out (it will sell for $17 after that), you can sign up here:

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

Roger Federer offers a bit of negotiation wisdom

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Last night, Roger Federer lost in the semifinals of the ATP year-closing tournament.

This means that Federer, possibly the greatest player who has ever played tennis, still has just 99 titles under his belt.

Asked by a journalist whether he needs that elusive 100th title, Federer responded:

“I don’t NEED it. I will breathe air if not.”

It might sound as if Federer is simply debating semantics, or that he’s even a little testy after his loss.

That’s not what’s going on.

Here’s a bit from an interview earlier in the week when he was asked a similar question:

“Personally I’m still not thinking of the number 100. I won’t let that get in my head, make me go crazy because it should be something I’m excited about and not something I should feel extra pressure about.”

This exactly mirrors what negotiation coach Jim Camp says.

One of Camp’s main rules is not to get needy. In other words, don’t trick yourself into thinking you need something when you actually don’t, and when you have all the things (like air) that you actually do need.

There was a time when I didn’t fully get the importance of this.

“There’s no difference,” I used to think, “between really wanting something and needing it.”

If that’s how you feel now, I won’t be able to convince you otherwise.

All I can do is tell you that I noticed, personally, that needing something actually seems to take place in an entirely different part of the brain than wanting that same thing. It seems to be an entirely different chemical process, and an entirely different emotion.

In short, even though it might seem needing and wanting are closely related, in truth they couldn’t be further apart.

As Jim Camp himself wrote in his book Start with No:

“As a negotiator aspiring to excellence, you must, at all costs, avoid showing need. In order to avoid showing need, you must never feel it. You do not need this deal. But what happens if we simply substitute the word and the emotion ‘want’ for ‘need’? The dynamics change. […] ‘Need’ is death, ‘want’ is life.”

I doubt Federer read Camp’s Start with No, but he seems to have learned the same lesson on his own.

And even though he only has 99 titles to his name, it’s hard to say his focus on wanting instead of needing has left him with a lack of motivation or success.

Something to think about, whatever your chosen field is.

A special note if you happen to be in the health field and you want (not need) more effective marketing:

You might like my upcoming book on email marketing in  the health space.

Along with advice on actually writing emails and structuring email marketing sequences to sell supplements and health info courses, this book will also have a section on the mindset you should adopt to be successful in today’s marketing-saturated world — such as the Roger Federer/Jim Camp lesson above.

Anyways, if you’d like a free copy of this book when it comes out (I’m planning to sell it for $17 when it is out), put your red RF headband on, and sign up at the link below:

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

The trouble with the best PR video of all time

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A very popular Reddit thread appeared today, titled

“NASA Just Published the Best PR Video of All Time”

It turns out we’re going back to the moon. This time, we’re staying. And that’s just the start.

There’s awesome adventure…

Exciting exploration…

Sexy science…

Top-notch technology…

This video’s got it all.

There’s only one thing this greatest PR video doesn’t have. It’s a small thing. But pretty, pretty important. Particularly if you’re ever looking to influence anybody, and get them to do something.

I’m talking about a call-to-action.

NASA’s video doesn’t give you a link to a webpage where you can find out more. It doesn’t ask you to support them by sending in donations. It doesn’t even ask you to study hard so you can become a NASA engineer one day.

Instead, it just leaves you hanging.

Going somewhere… just not clear where

Maybe that’s ok for NASA.

But it’s definitely not ok if you’re writing sales copy.

Especially if you do a good job pumping up your readers’ emotional juice (like the NASA video certainly does).

The thing is, including a call-to-action in your copy doesn’t have to be difficult, nasty, or salesy.

It can be clean and simple.

For example:

I’ll soon be putting out a book on email marketing, with a focus on the health space. If you’re in the health space (or you hope to be one day, if you study hard ), then it might of interest to you. To get a free copy when it comes out, sign up here:

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