The Trojan horse of lead generation

by

“And armed hosts, an unexpected force,
Break from the bowels of the fatal horse.”
— The Aenid by Virgil

How do you overthrow a city defended by impenetrable walls?

You build a wooden horse and you get the Trojans to do your work for you.

How do you get paid for advertising your own product to other people’s customers?

You write a short book and you get the Amazons to do your work for you.

At least, that’s what one very successful Internet marketer had to say a few years back.

I’m thinking specifically of Hollis Carter, who ran (or still runs) a publishing company called Velocity House.

I remember watching a talk that Hollis gave at Mindvalley a long time ago — it was one of the first things that that got me excited about internet marketing.

The basic message was this:

Whatever you want to do — build a reputation, get leads, rank for a competitive keyword on Google — then writing a book and putting it on Amazon can do that for you.

Instead of paying for advertising, Hollis was saying, Amazon will actually pay you to deliver your ad (in the form of a book) to your target audience.

Well, I’m on this horse.

I’m putting together a Kindle book right now that will serve only for lead generation.

The best part is, it’s easy to do, since I’m just repurposing emails I’ve already sent to my email list.

But there’s a little twist to making sure this book unleashes the armed hosts and unexpected force of lead generation.

It’s a small principle that I learned from Ben Settle, who I suppose learned it from Matt Furey. Outside of these two guys, I don’t hear anybody else talking about it.

If you want to find out what this special principle is, I’ll tell you. All you have to do is sign up by the end of today (midnight PST, Tuesday, December 4) for my upcoming book on email marketing, and I will send you an email explaining the rest of this Amazon Trojan horse lead gen approach.

Here’s the link to sign up:

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

The Dwight Schrute school of email marketing

by

“I like the people I work with, generally, with four exceptions. But someone committed a crime, and I did not become a Lackawanna County volunteer sheriff’s deputy to make friends. And by the way, I haven’t.”
— Dwight Schrute, The Office

This morning I concluded the launch weekend of my new aromatherapy book.

Spoiler alert: everything went according to plan.

I sent out a lot of emails.

I sold quite a few books — in fact, more than I had anticipated.

And I also got some unsubscribes.

It’s this last bit that I want to talk about.

Before I started this promotional launch (which spanned 4 days and involved 9 promo emails), I sent out an “email avalanche warning” to my subscribers.

I told them what the email forecast was for the weekend, and I also told them that, in case they don’t want to hear me pitching my book, they have two options:

1. They can ignore my emails until next week

2. They can unsubscribe

And sure enough, a few people (though not very many) did unsubscribe at that point.

However, once the email launch actually kicked off last Thursday, more people unsubscribed, including a few who had been faithful readers of my blog and email newsletter for several years.

And my reaction, without any bitterness or sarcasm, was Schrute-like. (In case you don’t know, Dwight Schrute is the jackhammering, hard-working, merciless alpha male assistant to the regional manager from the TV show The Office.)

You see, with a few exceptions, I generally like the people who are subscribed to my email newsletter.

But I’m selling a book and trying to make a solid business out of my Unusual Health website.

And I did not become a low-level aromatherapy expert to make friends.

In other words, when people who would never buy anything from me unsubscribe from my emails, I actually feel glad to see them go.

Anyways, if you want more details about my ebook launch strategy, including the reasoning behind the emails I sent and the schedule I used, you’ll want to get a copy of my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space.

Fact: It’s not out yet, but you can get a free copy when I do finish it.

Here’s where you can find out more:

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

The secret online fountain of the truth

by

“You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about in parties, you WANT me to be overweight, you NEED me to be overweight.”

Sometimes you gotta probe a little.

For example, I heard Ben Settle mention on his podcast, and maybe in a recent Email Players issue, how you get to the bottom of your market’s worst fears.

You first ask them (for example), “Why would you want to lose weight?”

“Because I don’t like the way I look and it’s unhealthy.”

“I see. Any other reasons?”

And then they think. And think. And if you’re lucky, the real story comes out:

“To tell you the truth, I was in a store yesterday and as soon as I came in, this snotty-looking sales girl intercepted me at the door and she said, ‘We don’t have anything in your size.’ I just got so humiliated and furious I decided something had to change.” (True story, by the way.)

You see, it’s that second, follow-up question which really gets the deep, dark, painful reasons why people do what they do.

It’s like the climax in A Few Good Men.

Tom Cruise’s character keeps probing and probing, asking just one more question…

Until he gets Colonel Jessup, played by Jack Nicholson, to expose himself and yell out the famous line:

“YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!”

Well, as a copywriter and a marketer, the issue is not that I can’t handle the truth.

Rather, the trouble is that I often can’t get at it.

After all, I rarely have my prospects before me.

I don’t have Colonel Jessup sitting in a courtroom either, waiting for my interrogation.

Instead, I have to go online and do some sleuthing to try to uncover THE TRUTH rather than those surface-level answers everybody is programmed to give.

The trouble is, all the typical places that you will hear recommended — Facebook, Instagram, personal blogs — are full of social posturing, and they don’t actually show people’s dark and scaly underbellies.

However, I do have a reliable way of getting that information.

In fact, just as an exercise, I tried to come up with THE TRUTH for a typical person interested in essential oils.

Within a few minutes, I had an avatar.

Yes, I found out what this person looks like, what her hobbies are, what her favorite TV show is…

But I also found out what rare disease she has, her personality type, and her insecurities around her friends .

This is NOT stuff that you will ever find on Facebook.

But it is out there, right on on the Internet savannah — if you know where to look. And though it might seem creepy, it’s a necessary part of the research you have to do if you are going to target an audience effectively.

Anyways, if you want to know what this deep fountain of personal information is, you’re in luck.

I’ll talk about it in more detail in my upcoming book.

Sign up below and I’ll send you a free copy when I’m finished with it:

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

Scientists confirm the seductive power of this hidden button

by

A new scientific study out of the University of Reading confirms:

Deep inside the human mind, probably shaped by millions of years of evolution, there is a hidden and very powerful button.

If you can reach in and press this button, you can seduce almost any person.

You can get them to act against their own interests.

You can even get them to willingly expose themselves to physical risks. In fact, in the scientific study I mentioned, people were willing to risk electric shocks when this mental button was pressed.

And what do people get in exchange for all this pain and misery and risk they take on when this button is pressed?

It’s not their physical needs that are satisfied.

It’s not money, or status, or validation they will get.

Instead, the gains are trivial, meaningless, and passing.

What’s more, the poor seduced person whose button has been pressed knows this up front, and still allows for the seduction to happen. That’s because — and this is what this study was all about — it seems this button activates the same brain area as physical hunger. It blocks out everything else, and focuses our motivation on just this trivial goal.

And here’s the kicker:

This button isn’t hard to press. It can be done without talent. Almost mechanically. Over and over, dozens of times a day.

If you’ve read this post carefully, you know what the button is and what I’m talking about. I’ve even written about it on this blog earlier.

And I’m going to write about it some more. As you can imagine, pressing this button is a great way to get people to buy — and to enjoy buying.

That’s why you can find out all about this big red button, and how to press it over and over, in my upcoming book:

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

The worst aromatherapy book Broadway has ever seen

by

“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

by

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

by

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

by

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?

by

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

by

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/