The inspiration for my concluded “Buy 5 paperbacks” promo

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This morning at 9am Central Europe Time, I concluded my Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle promo, which has been running since Monday.

As a result of this promo, I sold a couple hundred paperback copies of my original 10 Commandments book. I had multiple people who bought tell me they will use the books as giveaways to their own lists. I got a big jump in Amazon rankings.

Altogether, I call it a success.

I did this promo as a bit of an experiment. I wanted to see if it would work for me. I’m happy with how it went, so I will repeat it, some time down the line, with new bonuses, for my new 10 Commandments book.

Over the past few days, a few people wrote me to say this was an original and interesting promo and offer. And one reader wrote in to ask, “Are you doing a version of Daniel Throssell’s book launch?”

No, Daniel was not the inspiration for this promo. For one thing, it was hardly a book launch — my original 10 Commandments book has been out for 5+ years. More importantly, I don’t even know what Daniel’s book launch strategy is.

That said, my book promo/offer was not original. I copied it exactly from what I saw another marketer doing.

I knew odds were excellent it would to work for me also, because I saw it worked very well for this other marketer.

In fact, this other marketer got me to buy five paperback copies of his book, which are still sitting in their Amazon box, collecting dust, on a shelf right across from the couch where I’m writing this email right now.

I bought those five copies in exchange for a bonus that the marketer was offering, which got me intrigued and which I wanted to get.

And that’s my meta-lesson for you today:

Lots of people are out there sharing marketing how-tos and tutorials and ideas, including in free newsletters like this one.

Maybe all those tutorials and ideas are proven advice. Or maybe they’re not.

But there is a whole other class of marketing and money-making education, which is 100% proven, and which you’ve already paid for, so you might as well get use out of it.

I’m talking about all the offers — books, courses, back scratchers — that got you to buy, and the process by which some marketer or business owner got you to buy them.

Keep a track of those offers and those sales processes. And ask yourself, what did it? Get to the core. Then apply it to what you do. Odds are excellent it will work for you as well.

In case you’re curious, I can tell you that the marketer I imitated for my Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle was Travis Sago.

Some time last year, Travis made people an offer to buy five paperback copies of his book Make ‘Em Beg To Buy From You on Amazon. In return, he would give you a bonus called Shogun Traffic Method, about a source of traffic that converts for any niche or offer, starting at $50 or less.

I had a pretty good idea already of what the Shogun Traffic Method was. But I’ve learned a ton from Travis before, and I decided it was a worthwhile investment. Plus, he piled bonuses on top of his bonuses — including some that were even more intriguing than the core Shogun Traffic Method itself.

As far as I know, Travis ran this promo only within his Royalty Ronin community.

It’s another good reason to be inside Royalty Ronin. Not only is this a community of 500+ Internet marketers who are doing creative deals, often starting from nothing… not only do you get Travis’s ongoing education and inspiration and advice in the community… not only is there a library of Travis’s expensive courses and bonuses (including the Shogun Traffic Method)… but you get to see Travis running creative new promos himself.

The bad news is, that means Travis might get you yet again, so you pay him for something on top of the already expensive $299 that Royalty Ronin costs each month.

The good news is, if you do find yourself paying Travis for something new, you’ve likely just learned a valuable new way to sell (most of Travis’s promos are creative and new in some form or another). You now have a new strategy you can profit from, if you only apply it to what you do.

That’s likely to pay for that new offer you just bought, and maybe even for a few months of Royalty Ronin itself.

If you want to find out more about Royalty Ronin, or maybe give it a try yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

Last call for Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle

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“To gain a fortune, marriage must be dared.”

I read that quote in a book that’s a couple thousand years old. I thought it was funny. I am sharing it with you now because it ties into my message tonight:

To gain a fortune in bonuses, a crazy Amazon purchase must be dared.

This is the last email I will send to promote the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, which I have been promoting since Monday.

The deadline for this offer is tonight, 12 midnight PST.

In case you have successfully evaded or ignored or misunderstood all my emails about this offer, here’s the gist:

1. Get five (5) paperback copies of my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

2. Forward me your Amazon receipt

Do this crazy thing — buy five paperback copies of the same book — and I will give you the following bonuses:

#1. Copywriting Portfolio Secrets (Price last sold at: $97)

In this training, I show you how to build up your copywriting portfolio in the fastest and most efficient way, so you can start to win copywriting jobs even today. I show you the best way I’ve found to win 4- and 5-figure jobs I REALLY wanted, even when I wasn’t qualified for them, and how you can do it too.

I previously sold this training for $97. But it’s yours free inside the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, which also includes my…

#2. No-Stress Negotiation For Well-Paid Copywriters (Price last sold at: $100)

This guide outlines my 7-part negotiating system, which I adapted from negotiation coach Jim Camp. This system kept me sane while I still regularly interviewed and worked with copywriting clients. Follow these seven principles, and you will end up making more money, working with better clients, and being able to stick to it for the long term.

I only offered this information before as part of the $100 Copy Zone guide, which also featured….

#3. How To Get Set Up On Upwork

This free bonus is an excerpt from a short self-published book I wrote once, How to Become a $150/Hr Sales Copywriter on Upwork: A Personal Success Story that Almost Anyone Can Replicate. It tells you how to actually get set up on Upwork — the details of your profile page, your description, your title.

If you combine this bonus with the two bonuses above — Copywriting Portfolio Secrets and No-Stress Negotiation — you have a great shot of winning a job on Upwork by the end of this week, or even today.

#4. Dan’s Timeless Wisdom (priceless, or $25k+)

Between August of 2019 and March 2020, I was in Dan Ferrari’s coaching group. As you might know, Dan started out as a star copywriter at The Motley Fool, and went on to become one of the most successful, most winning, big-money direct response copywriters working today.

Inside his coaching group, Dan dispensed copy critiques, marketing advice, and mystical koans to help his coaching students get to the next level.

At some point, I had the bright idea to start archiving the best and most valuable things that Dan was saying. I got 25 of them down, and they are all included in this document.

(By the way, I never tallied up the exact and rather painful amount of money I paid Dan for the coaching. It was north of $25k. I do know I made it all back, and then some, in just the first two months after I stopped with the coaching, thanks to just one tip I got from Dan.)

#5. Copy Riddles Lite (Price last sold at: $97)

Copy Riddles Lite includes one of the 20 rounds included in my full Copy Riddles program. The round is composed of two parts, in which you practice writing sales bullets, and compare what you wrote to what Mel Martin (as well as several other A-list copywriters) wrote starting with the same prompt.

Do this, and you very quickly realize how much skill went into Mel Martin’s bullets. Fortunately, you also very quickly manage to leech some of that skill from Mel Martin, without spending the months and years of agony it took him.

And once you get a taste for Martin’s skill, then the next step is natural:

#6. “How to Turn Fascinations into Fortunes: Copywriting Secrets To Fascinate, Captivate, And Dominate” (Price last sold at: $97)

Lawrence Bernstein, “the world’s most obsessed ad archivist,” once hunted down a collection of all of Mel Martin’s million-dollar ads for Boardroom, along with other control-beating ads Martin had written for the New York Times book division.

Lawrence then printed out the ads, stuffed them in an envelope, and mailed the collection to Marty Edelston, the founder and CEO of Boardroom.

Did Edelston get a kick out of seeing those old ads that helped build up Boardroom? He sure did.

Marty Edelston was so grateful for these ads that he sent Lawrence a thank-you note, along with a check for $2,000.

If you’d like to see these ads yourself, and study them, and model them for selling your own products, then Lawrence put them together into a collection he called “Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes.”

Lawrence got $2,000 as a thank you for putting together this collection of ads. He then sold this collection for $97.

But you don’t have to pay $2,000, or even $97 for “Fascinations Into Fortunes.”

I’ve made a special deal with Lawrence so you can get “Fascinations Into Fortunes” free, along with Copy Riddles Lite, as part of the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

#7. “How I made an extra $1404.53/month in Amazon royalties at the push of a button”

This report outlines a hack, which involves the push of a button — literally, that’s all there is to it — and which made me an extra ~$1.5k per month in Amazon royalties. I used this hack once, over the span of a few months, or rather a few weeks. I made money with it. And I never used it again.

I’m not saying anybody else should use this hack. I’m not saying anybody else should NOT use it either.

All I’m willing to do is to tell you what this hack is, why I’m no longer using it myself, and how you can try it out yourself, if you so choose, to make easy money off Amazon.

And that’s it.

Those seven bonuses, with a real-world value of $386, counting just what they sold for previously, are yours if you take me up on the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle offer.

Once again, if you want this, here’s what to do:

1. Get five (5) paperback copies of my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

2. Forward me your Amazon receipt.

I will then set you up with the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

The deadline is tonight at 12 midnight PST. After that, no more bonuses — I am merciless about this. To get in while the doors are still open:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

This kind of email drives more sales than the average

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Here’s a free marketing tip for you:

If people are buying, it makes sense to advertise the fact.

In the many promos I’ve run within this email newsletter, I’ve always found that when I write an email in which I share a message from someone who’s just taken me up on the promo offer, it drives more sales than your average sales email.

As an example:

Since Monday, I have been running a little promo, the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, for my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

That promo is ending today at 12 midnight PST.

The whole idea behind the promo has been to pile on the bonuses. The little time I’ve had to write emails has been eaten up by spelling out what exactly people get inside the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

And so, though people have been buying, I haven’t had time to advertise that fact. Lemme fix that now. Here are a few messages I got from readers who took me up on this offer over the past 24 hours.

First, from email marketer Logan Hobson, who lives in Japan:

===

Alright John,

I got 5 copies of “Book” coming to Japan.

Yes, even though I could have ordered them from Japanese Amazon and gotten free shipping with Prime (which is cheaper here than in the US), rankings and sales on the US Amazon have more impact for you so I ordered them from my US Amazon account.

===

Second, from copywriter and marketing consultant Chuck Gibson:

===

John,

Receipt attached.

I, of course, already have the book, but not printed copies. But it’s the bonus intrigue that hooked me. Very interesting offer.

And a cool way to get your Amazon sales up. Now I have copies to give to certain protégés.

===

And third, from a reader who I’m guessing doesn’t want me to share his name:

===

Alright, you got me. This is the worst possible time for me to spend any more money since I have to go on a multi-country trip in 45 days and gotta save as much as possible.

Frankly I don’t even KNOW what I’ll do with every book, Maybe leave one in every Airbnb I stay at as a parting gift? That would be funny but anyway, your bonuses are always amazing and they will be great companions for all the travels.

===

As a result of the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle and of dedicated readers and customers like the above, the paperback copy of my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters has jumped from an Amazon book ranking of 1,016,096 at the start of the promo to a current ranking of 75,795.

In the process, it’s leapfrogged such industry standards as Mark Ford and John Forde’s Great Leads, Brian Kurtz’s Overdeliver, and Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Direct Marketing.

So much for the education/demonstration part of this email. Now for the sales.

Like I said, the chance to get the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle ends tonight. If you have taken me up on this offer, check the bonus area I gave you access to, and you will find the following:

#1. Copywriting Portfolio Secrets (Price last sold at: $97)

In this training, I show you how to build up your copywriting portfolio in the fastest and most efficient way, so you can start to win copywriting jobs even today. I show you the best way I’ve found to win 4- and 5-figure jobs I REALLY wanted, even when I wasn’t qualified for them, and how you can do it too.

I previously sold this training for $97. But it’s yours free inside the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, which also includes my…

#2. No-Stress Negotiation For Well-Paid Copywriters (Price last sold at: $100)

This guide outlines my 7-part negotiating system, which I adapted from negotiation coach Jim Camp. This system kept me sane while I still regularly interviewed and worked with copywriting clients. Follow these seven principles, and you will end up making more money, working with better clients, and being able to stick to it for the long term.

I only offered this information before as part of the $100 Copy Zone guide, which also featured….

#3. How To Get Set Up On Upwork

This free bonus is an excerpt from a short self-published book I wrote once, How to Become a $150/Hr Sales Copywriter on Upwork: A Personal Success Story that Almost Anyone Can Replicate. It tells you how to actually get set up on Upwork — the details of your profile page, your description, your title.

If you combine this bonus with the two bonuses above — Copywriting Portfolio Secrets and No-Stress Negotiation — you have a great shot of winning a job on Upwork by the end of this week, or even today.

#4. Dan’s Timeless Wisdom (priceless, or $25k+)

Between August of 2019 and March 2020, I was in Dan Ferrari’s coaching group. As you might know, Dan started out as a star copywriter at The Motley Fool, and went on to become one of the most successful, most winning, big-money direct response copywriters working today.

Inside his coaching group, Dan dispensed copy critiques, marketing advice, and mystical koans to help his coaching students get to the next level.

At some point, I had the bright idea to start archiving the best and most valuable things that Dan was saying. I got 25 of them down, and they are all included in this document.

(By the way, I never tallied up the exact and rather painful amount of money I paid Dan for the coaching. It was north of $25k. I do know I made it all back, and then some, in just the first two months after I stopped with the coaching, thanks to just one tip I got from Dan.)

#5. Copy Riddles Lite (Price last sold at: $97)

Copy Riddles Lite includes one of the 20 rounds included in my full Copy Riddles program. The round is composed of two parts, in which you practice writing sales bullets, and compare what you wrote to what Mel Martin (as well as several other A-list copywriters) wrote starting with the same prompt.

Do this, and you very quickly realize how much skill went into Mel Martin’s bullets. Fortunately, you also very quickly manage to leech some of that skill from Mel Martin, without spending the months and years of agony it took him.

And once you get a taste for Martin’s skill, then the next step is natural:

#6. “How to Turn Fascinations into Fortunes: Copywriting Secrets To Fascinate, Captivate, And Dominate” (Price last sold at: $97)

Lawrence Bernstein, “the world’s most obsessed ad archivist,” once hunted down a collection of all of Mel Martin’s million-dollar ads for Boardroom, along with other control-beating ads Martin had written for the New York Times book division.

Lawrence then printed out the ads, stuffed them in an envelope, and mailed the collection to Marty Edelston, the founder and CEO of Boardroom.

Did Edelston get a kick out of seeing those old ads that helped build up Boardroom? He sure did.

Marty Edelston was so grateful for these ads that he sent Lawrence a thank-you note, along with a check for $2,000.

If you’d like to see these ads yourself, and study them, and model them for selling your own products, then Lawrence put them together into a collection he called “Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes.”

Lawrence got $2,000 as a thank you for putting together this collection of ads. He then sold this collection for $97.

But you don’t have to pay $2,000, or even $97 for “Fascinations Into Fortunes.”

I’ve made a special deal with Lawrence so you can get “Fascinations Into Fortunes” free, along with Copy Riddles Lite, as part of the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

#7. “How I made an extra $1404.53/month in Amazon royalties at the push of a button”

This report outlines a hack, which involves the push of a button — literally, that’s all there is to it — and which made me an extra ~$1.5k per month in Amazon royalties. I used this hack once, over the span of a few months, or rather a few weeks. I made money with it. And I never used it again.

I’m not saying anybody else should use this hack. I’m not saying anybody else should NOT use it either.

All I’m willing to do is to tell you what this hack is, why I’m no longer using it myself, and how you can try it out yourself, if you so choose, to make easy money off Amazon.

And that’s it.

Those seven bonuses, with a real-world value of $386, counting just what they sold for previously, are what you get if you’ve already taken me up on the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

And if you haven’t yet taken me up on it, here’s how you can:

1. Get five (5) paperback copies of my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

2. Forward me your Amazon receipt.

I will then set you up with the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

The deadline is tonight at 12 midnight PST. After that, no more bonuses — I am merciless about this. To get in while the doors are still open:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

How I made an extra $1404.53/month in Amazon royalties at the push of a button

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This week, I’ve been promoting my Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle. It’s a total of $386 in real-world value bonuses, if you buy five (5) paperback copies of my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

This promo ends tomorrow, Thursday, at 12 midnight PST. But before the final deadline, I have one more bonus.

This final bonus doesn’t have a real-world value, except to me. That’s because I never sold this info, anywhere, at any price. In fact, I’ve never shared it with anyone, as far as I can remember, in real life or online. I’ve been sitting on it and keeping mum about it for years, ever since I hit upon it.

This info is a real make-money hack. You don’t come across many of those.

This hack involves the push of a button — literally, that’s all there is to it — that made me an extra ~$1.5k per month in Amazon royalties. I used this hack once, over the span of a few months, or rather a few weeks. I made money with it. And I never used it again.

I’m not saying anybody else should use this hack. I’m not saying anybody else should NOT use it either.

All I’m willing to do is to tell you what this hack is, why I’m no longer using it myself, and how you can try it out yourself, if you so choose, to make easy money off Amazon.

I’ve written up a report, “How I made an extra $1404.53/month in Amazon royalties at the push of a button.”

If you have already gotten my Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, you can find the report in the bonus area.

I’d appreciate it if you don’t share the info in this report around. I have no way to enforce this — of course you can do what you like, and it’s no skin off my back if you do share this info.

But for reasons I list inside the report, I think it’s better if this stays as hush-hush as it can, and so I’d appreciate it if you use this info by yourself, or not use it, but keep mum about it either way, the same way I have been.

And if you haven’t yet gotten my Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, there’s still time. The offer is this:

1. Get five (5) paperback copies of my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

2. Forward me your Amazon receipt.

I will then set you up with the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, which includes my little report on this Amazon hack.

It also includes Copy Riddles Lite, Lawrence Bernstein’s Fascinations Into Fortunes, Dan Ferrari’s Timeless Wisdom, How To Get Set Up On Upwork, No-Stress Negotiation For Well-Paid Copywriters, and Copywriting Portfolio Secrets, for a total of $386 in real-world value, counting just what these offers sold for previously.

If you’d like to take me up on this now, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

For copywriters who are almost (but not quite) satisfied with their copy chops — and can’t figure out what’s missing

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I’ll give it to you in a word:

Promise.

“Promise, large promise,” as Samuel Johnson wrote a million and four years ago, “is the soul of an advertisement.”

So obvious, right? You know how to make a promise, no?

Of course you do. You just tell people, “Here’s what you’ll get,” and you lay out what’s in it for them. You try to juice it up a bit with some John Carlton adjectives like “astonishing” or “accidental.” As garnish, you put “How to” in front of it.

Except, if this is all there is to making a promise, then why isn’t every offer, even every good offer, flying off the shelves? And why isn’t every copywriter who supposedly knows how to make a promise getting paid in heavy sacks of gold?

I’d like to propose to you that the most basic and most important skill in copywriting — making a promise — is more subtle and more involved than you might at first believe.

And as proof of that, take A-list copywriter Mel Martin.

Martin specialized in writing sales letters packed with sexy, intriguing, promise-heavy bullets.

But Martin was agonizingly slow in writing copy. It took him three to four months to write a sales letter. He could get stuck for a month on a letter opening.

Even at this snail’s pace, Mel Martin was almost singlehandedly responsible for growing Boardroom, one of the biggest direct response publishers, to $125 million a year, back in 1990s money.

Maybe you’ve seen some of Martin’s famous ads for Boardroom. I wonder what you thought?

If you’re anything like me, you might look at Martin’s copy and think, “Pff, I can do the same. So simple. So basic. Just promises and how-to’s.”

Except, there was clearly something magical and mysterious going on during those months that Mel Martin was agonizing over his copy.

That’s why his sales letters pulled in millions of dollars year after year, and that’s why he beat out all competing copywriters he was pitted against.

Maybe your promises are as good as Mel Martin’s. But if you have some doubts, if you suspect you could write better, more magical and mysterious promises, then I got two free bonuses I’d like to offer you:

#1. Copy Riddles Lite (price last sold at: $97)

Copy Riddles Lite includes one of the 20 rounds included in my full Copy Riddles program. The round is composed of two parts, in which you practice writing sales bullets, and compare what you wrote to what Mel Martin (as well as several other A-list copywriters) wrote starting with the same prompt.

Do this, and you very quickly realize how much skill went into Mel Martin’s bullets. Fortunately, you also very quickly manage to leech some of that skill from Mel Martin, without spending the months and years of agony it took him.

And once you get a taste for Martin’s skill, then the next step is natural:

#2. “How to Turn Fascinations into Fortunes: Copywriting Secrets To Fascinate, Captivate, And Dominate” (price last sold at: $97)

Lawrence Bernstein, “the world’s most obsessed ad archivist,” once hunted down a collection of all of Mel Martin’s million-dollar ads for Boardroom, along with other control-beating ads Martin had written for the New York Times book division.

Lawrence then printed out the ads, stuffed them in an envelope, and mailed the collection to Marty Edelston, the founder and CEO of Boardroom.

Would Edelston get a kick out of seeing those old ads that helped build up Boardroom? He sure did.

Marty Edelston was so grateful for these ads that he sent Lawrence a thank-you note, along with a check for $2,000.

If you’d like to see these ads yourself, and study them, and model them for selling your own products, then Lawrence put them together into a collection he called “Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes.”

Lawrence got $2,000 as a thank you for putting together this collection of ads. He then sold this collection for $97.

But you don’t have to pay $2,000, or even $97 for “Fascinations Into Fortunes.”

I’ve made a special deal with Lawrence so you can get “Fascinations Into Fortunes” free, along with Copy Riddles Lite, as part of the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

If you’ve already taken me up on my offer from yesterday, check the bonus area, and you’ll find how to get your hands on these two new bonuses.

And if you have not yet taken me up on my offer from yesterday, the offer is this:

1. Get five (5) paperback copies of my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

2. Forward me your Amazon receipt.

I will then set you up with Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle. It includes Copy Riddles Lite and Fascinations Into Fortunes from above, plus four other bonuses I wrote about yesterday, for a total of $386 in real-world value, counting just what these offers sold for previously.

If you’d like to take me up on this now, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

10 reasons you might want to buy 5 paperback copies of my original 10 commandments book

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This morning, I made a rather outrageous offer, inviting people to buy five (5) paperback copies of my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

Why might you ever want to buy multiple physical copies of this 5-year-old book?

I tried to do the work for you, so here ere are 10 possible reasons why:

1. You want to support me in some modest way, and you want something concrete in return.

2. You make a habit of rereading books if you find them valuable. I know i do, and it’s served me very well. And a symbolic way to make rereading easier is to read a new copy each time.

3. So you can give give away copies to friends, family, colleagues, mentees who could benefit from it. (For example, marketing legend Matt Bacak recommends my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters to mentees in his Secret Email System mastermind.)

4. One of the A-list copywriters I profile in the book, Gene Schwartz, got so rich through writing copy that he lived in a Manhattan penthouse, kept a separate Manhattan office, and presumably sometimes went back to visit his parents in Montana and work there.

If, like Gene, you apply the ideas in this book diligently and you end up becoming the owner of multiple houses and work locations, you will need multiple copies on hand in different location.

Errr…. wait. If you think that’s stretching it, try the next one:

5. For ballast. Another of the A-list copywriters in my book was Claude Hopkins. Hopkins hated the sea but owned an ocean-going yacht, because when you’re effectively a billionaire, the way he was thanks to copywriting, you gotta spend your money somehow. But yachts need to be weighted down for stability, and what better way with a few extra copies of 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters?

A little more seriously:

6. As prizes for a giveaway. In fact, Robin Timmers, “the largest copywriter in the Netherlands,” has took me up on this offer earlier today. When he sent me his receipt, he said that he’s thinking of using copies of my book as giveaways, presumably in some kind of contest or game with his audience.

7. As a coffee table talking point. The physical dimensions of my book are small and if you put one copy on your coffee table, it might get ignored.

But if you lay out five copies, all next to each other, that’s sure to elicit questions from guests. “What’s that about? Why five copies of the same book?”

Good thing is, the book is filled with interesting anecdotes so you can have a ready in to become the eloquent and fascinating host for a few moments.

8. To serve as a doorstop, paperweight, kindling, or a stable platform to put your laptop on when you do Zoom calls, particularly copywriting client calls, which you are likely to have many more of when you start religiously following the commandments outlined in this book.

9. So you can rip up a few copies and take out particularly significant passages and pin them on your pinboard so they remind you while you write copy… and still maintain a fresh copy or two to sit in your library.

10. Because buying five (5) paperback copies of the 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters is my condition to get the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, which currently includes everything listed below.

Tomorrow I will add something else to this bonus bundle. If you’ve already bought your five paperback copies and sent me your receipt, the extra stuff will appear automagically in the course area where the bonuses are hosted.

And if you haven’t yet taken me up on this offer, here are the details of what’s inside the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, and how exactly to get it:

#1. Copywriting Portfolio Secrets ($97 value)

In this training, I show you how to build up your copywriting portfolio in the fastest and most efficient way, so you can start to win copywriting jobs even today. I show you the best way I’ve found to win 4- and 5-figure jobs I REALLY wanted, even when I wasn’t qualified for them, and how you can do it too.

I previously sold this training for $97. But it’s yours free inside the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, which also includes my…

#2. No-Stress Negotiation For Well-Paid Copywriters ($100 value)

This guide outlines my 7-part negotiating system, which I adapted from negotiation coach Jim Camp. This system kept me sane while I still regularly interviewed and worked with copywriting clients. Follow these seven principles, and you will end up making more money, working with better clients, and being able to stick to it for the long term.

I only offered this information before as part of the $100 Copy Zone guide, which also featured….

#3. How To Get Set Up On Upwork

This free bonus is an excerpt from a short self-published book I wrote once, How to Become a $150/Hr Sales Copywriter on Upwork: A Personal Success Story that Almost Anyone Can Replicate. It tells you how to actually get set up on Upwork — the details of your profile page, your description, your title.

If you combine this bonus with the two bonuses above — Copywriting Portfolio Secrets and No-Stress Negotiation — you have a great shot of winning a job on Upwork by the end of this week, or even today.

And finally, this first part of my Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle also includes…

#4. Dan’s Timeless Wisdom (priceless, or $25k+)

Between August of 2019 and March 2020, I was in Dan Ferrari’s coaching group. As you might know, Dan started out as a star copywriter at The Motley Fool, and went on to become one of the most successful, most winning, big-money direct response copywriters working today.

Inside his coaching group, Dan dispensed copy critiques, marketing advice, and mystical koans to help his coaching students get to the next level.

At some point, I had the bright idea to start archiving the best and most valuable things that Dan was saying. I got 25 of them down, and they are all included in this document.

(By the way, I never tallied up the exact and rather painful amount of money I paid Dan for the coaching. It was north of $25k. I do know I made it all back, and then some, in just the first two months after I stopped with the coaching, thanks to just one tip I got from Dan.)

So there you go. $197 in real-world value if you count what people have paid me for these bonuses previously… or $25,000+ in value if you count the blood, flesh, and hair it took for me to get this information to you… or ∞ in value, if you actually take these ideas and apply them, and keep applying them.

And if that’s not enough for you, my Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle will have several other bonuses as well. I will announce those over the coming days, and they will be automatically added to the bonus area if you get my offer before Thursday at 12 midnight PST.

As for what that offer is:

Like I said, it costs $50.

And it’s to get five (5) paperback copies of my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

Put in your order on Amazon, forward me your Amazon receipt, and I will set you up with Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle. If you’d like to do that now, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Announcing: Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle

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Starting today, and ending this Thursday at 12 midnight PST, I’m selling a $50 offer and offering a bundle of bonuses I’m calling the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

(That’s in honor of a reader named Richard, who tried to butter me up to get me to offer the first part of these bonuses. If you want the full back story, read my email from yesterday.)

The first part of the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, and the part I am announcing today, are four bonuses I offered in 2023 as part of a four-day promotion for the Infostack copywriting bundle. These are:

#1. Copywriting Portfolio Secrets ($97 value)

In this training, I show you how to build up your copywriting portfolio in the fastest and most efficient way, so you can start to win copywriting jobs even today. I show you the best way I’ve found to win 4- and 5-figure jobs I REALLY wanted, even when I wasn’t qualified for them, and how you can do it too.

I previously sold this training for $97. But it’s yours free inside the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, which also includes my…

#2. No-Stress Negotiation For Well-Paid Copywriters ($100 value)

This guide outlines my 7-part negotiating system, which I adapted from negotiation coach Jim Camp. This system kept me sane while I still regularly interviewed and worked with copywriting clients. Follow these seven principles, and you will end up making more money, working with better clients, and being able to stick to it for the long term.

I only offered this information before as part of the $100 Copy Zone guide, which also featured….

#3. How To Get Set Up On Upwork

This free bonus is an excerpt from a short self-published book I wrote once, How to Become a $150/Hr Sales Copywriter on Upwork: A Personal Success Story that Almost Anyone Can Replicate. It tells you how to actually get set up on Upwork — the details of your profile page, your description, your title.

If you combine this bonus with the two bonuses above — Copywriting Portfolio Secrets and No-Stress Negotiation — you have a great shot of winning a job on Upwork by the end of this week, or even today.

And finally, this first part of my Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle also includes…

#4. Dan’s Timeless Wisdom (priceless, or $25k+)

Between August of 2019 and March 2020, I was in Dan Ferrari’s coaching group. As you might know, Dan started out as a star copywriter at The Motley Fool, and went on to become one of the most successful, most winning, big-money direct response copywriters working today.

Inside his coaching group, Dan dispensed copy critiques, marketing advice, and mystical koans to help his coaching students get to the next level.

At some point, I had the bright idea to start archiving the best and most valuable things that Dan was saying. I got 25 of them down, and they are all included in this document.

(By the way, I never tallied up the exact and rather painful amount of money I paid Dan for the coaching. It was north of $25k. I do know I made it all back, and then some, in just the first two months after I stopped with the coaching, thanks to just one tip I got from Dan.)

So there you go. $197 in real-world value if you count what people have paid me for these bonuses previously… or $25,000+ in value if you count the blood, flesh, and hair it took for me to get this information to you… or ∞ in value, if you actually take these ideas and apply them, and keep applying them.

And if that’s not enough for you, my Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle will have several other bonuses as well. I will announce those over the coming days, and they will be automatically added to the bonus area if you get my offer before Thursday at 12 midnight PST.

As for what that offer is:

Like I said, it costs $50.

And it’s to get five (5) paperback copies of my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

Put in your order on Amazon, forward me your Amazon receipt, and I will set you up with Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

(The paperback for my 10 Commandments book sells for $9.99. If you have Amazon Prime, which everyone except me has, then shipping is free, so the total for five paperback copies adds up to $50, or actually $49.95.)

You might wonder why you might possibly want to get five (5) paperback copies of the same book, particularly one which you might already own.

It’s an excellent question.

I will address that in my next email. For now, If the above bonus bundle is attractive to you, and you have $49.95 to invest, you can get my 10 Commandments book (five of them actually) at the following link:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

How to get my highly coveted Infostack bonuses

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Last month, right after I announced the publication of my new 10 Commandments book, I got a message from a reader named Richard:

===

Your book is a masterpiece and a gem on its own, no doubt about it.

But if you ever want to throw in a lil somethin’ extra … the 4 bonuses you gave away in 2023 for the InfoStack affiliate promo would perfect, IMO.

(Specially, since I missed them, and have beaten myself up ever since. Ha.)

Big congrats, John — you slammed it outta the park once more!

Best,

Richard

P.S. Just bought my copy today, can’t wait to dive in.

===

My ego, which had been quickly inflating upon reading that my book was a “masterpiece” and a “gem,” deflated when I got to the PS, and realized that Richard apparently hadn’t even read the book he was giving me such over-the-top praise for.

That made me immediately resistant to his proposal. Maybe there’s a lesson there.

But about that proposal:

Back in 2023, I participated in something called the “Infostack Copywriting Bundle.” For $50, you could get a copy of my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters, plus 13 other ebooks and courses by various other copywriters.

Frankly, I couldn’t vouch for all those other books and courses, and if they are worth $50 in aggregate.

And so, to make sure that anybody who took me up on this bundle got their money’s worth, I also offered four free bonuses. Those bonuses had a total real-world value of either $197 or ∞, depending on how you add it up.

The bonuses were apparently highly desirable. Not only did I end up selling a healthy number of copies of the “Infostack bundle” to satisfied buyers, based mainly on the strength of the bonuses, but I had people like Richard writing me about the bonuses even a couple years later.

Anyways, I replied to Richard to say that it makes little sense to me to give away the Infostack bonus bundle with the new 10 Commandments book.

Like I wrote above, I was turned off by the fact he was buttering me up without even reading my new book.

More importantly, my new 10 Commandments book is not primarily about copywriting or primarily intended for copywriters. Plus the new book is only $5 in ebook format and $10 in paperback, so the on $197/∞ in bonuses is a bit of an overkill.

But — I have learned not to shrug off suggestions from readers, even if I don’t follow those suggestions as given.

So I asked myself, why don’t I do something with that Infostack bonus bundle?

I paced up and down my laboratory, asking myself what I could do.

Finally, inspiration struck.

And so, starting tomorrow and ending on Thursday, I will have a $50 offer, along with which I’ll be giving away the Infostack bonuses. I’ll also included several other real-world bonuses, for a total bonus bundle that adds up to $386 or ∞ in real-world value, depending on how you add it up.

In Richard’s honor, I will call this the “Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.”

As for what the core offer will be, and what exactly is inside the Infostack bonuses I will be including inside my “Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle” — full details on that tomorrow.

10 books I could not write from content I’ve created recently

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I have a habit, 10 daily ideas, that I got from James Altucher.

It’s the first thing I do each morning after turning off the meatlocker like air-conditioning in my apartment and brushing my teeth.

This morning, the topic was “10 new books I could write from the content I’ve been writing about lately.”

It’s a prompt I come back to from time to time. I go through emails I have written recently, and ask myself how I could generalize them, or combine them with other emails have written, and turn them into a book or a course or whatever.

Here’s what I came up with today:

#1. “101 Magic Words”

I already got 5: “Rosebud,” “One,” “Big,” “Black,” “Love.”

#2. “Mystery Merchants: How To Create And Profit From Curiosity”

Everything from Robert Collier to Novak Djokovic.

#3. The nature of reality

Ok that’s not a title, but it’s the core idea, and one I come back to a lot in these emails, including a few times over the past few weeks (“Amputees needed,” “The dark side of social proof”).

#4. Overcoming procrastination/avoidance/resistance to doing what’s needed

I try to distance myself from this topic and from the people who seek out such info, but the fact is I’m one of them and that’s why I find myself writing about it repeatedly.

#5. “How to be an effective teacher”

Certainly not by writing a book titled “How to be an effective teacher.” But I have written a lot, including recently, about how to get people to pay attention, to understand, to accept, to remember, to apply information.

#6. “Online Info Business Quick Start Guide”

Yeah, I won’t be writing that, but I could, since I have content that would definitely fit into such a book.

#7. “Influencers, or what really happens when somebody has a platform”

This is connected in my mind to #3 above, the nature of reality. I’ve written about the strangeness having an audience, and, when you think about it, the equal strangeness of being in somebody else’s audience. Not a practical topic, but interesting to me.

#8. “How To Choose A Niche”

Again, this won’t be happening, but it could.

#9. “Consumption & Digestion”

Related to #4 above. I have an entire training on this, which I’ve sold for good money before. But some part of that training, plus a few recent emails, could become a book as well.

#10. “Flip The Script”

Oren Klaff unfortunately already wrote a bad book by this title, which is a shame, because I find the topic very interesting. I know I could develop it with lots of examples, from different disciplines and different eras (I wrote an email once about a 4th-century B.C. greek general who “flipped the script” to keep assassins from his bedside and poison from his cup).

I don’t know what will come from these ideas. Maybe something. Maybe nothing. In any case, there’s no lack of opportunities.

The point is, if you are writing emails daily, generating a bit of content regularly, this can serve multiple purposes.

It can make you sales today.

It can build a relationship with readers so they keep reading tomorrow.

And it can be repurposed next week or month into a book that gets you lots of new subs to your list, or to a course that gets you lots of new dollars under your mattress.

That’s why my subject line today was “10 books I could not write” rather than “10 books I could write.” Because the idea is, these books will already have been written — by somebody, not me, at least not in that moment. All I really have to do, in that moment, is the editorial work of pulling together that writing and adding a cover on it. And of course, reaping the benefits.

It can be the same for you.

It happens bit by bit. Within a few weeks of daily action, you already have resources that you can do something more with.

But you do gotta take some action though. Maybe even now.

If you want my help in starting and sticking with the habit of writing daily emails, so you can make sales, and grow a relationship with readers, and have the building blocks of future books and courses:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

“Rosebud works”

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My friend Sam forwarded me a YouTube video yesterday with the title:

“Donald Trump Movie Review – Orson Welles – ‘Citizen Kane'”

“Oh God,” I thought. “Here comes a stupid AI mashup.”

But no. The video was uploaded to YouTube back in 2015. I checked just now — it was recorded in 2002.

Trump looks kind of the same, just younger. He is in fact reviewing Citizen Kane. The review is not tremendously long nor tremendously insightful. But Trump does say the following:

===

The word “Rosebud,” for whatever reason, has captivated movie goers and movie watchers for so many years, and to this day is maybe the most significant word in film. Perhaps if they came up with another word that meant the same thing it wouldn’t have worked. But “Rosebud” works.

===

If you haven’t seen Citizen Kane, “Rosebud” is the word with which the movie opens, and which the isolated and bitter multimillionaire Charles Foster Kane whispers as he’s dying. Nobody in the movie knows what it means. As the movie goes on, we the audience find out it’s the name for Kane’s boyhood sled, a throwback to happier times.

With that explanation out of the way, let me get back to Trump’s point. It stands, and not just for Rosebud and for film. Consider:

Would Einstein have become the gentle, frizzy-haired, absent-minded genius we all recognize 70 years after his death, had his last name been, say, Berkowitz?

Would Disney be the brand it is today if Walt Disney had been born Walt Johnson? (“Johnsonland: The Happiest Place on Earth”)

And would Citizen Kane have been as impactful if Kane, on his deathbed, were clutching a snowglobe and whispering, “Pelican Runner…”

This ties into an email I wrote a few weeks ago, about how some words really do have magic power, over and above their meaning.

Trump I guess knows this well, and that’s why he is well-known to experiment with phrasing and words in public, seeing how people react in live situations as he speaks in front of crowds.

It’s why Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip Dilbert and a trained hypnotist, predicted before anyone thought it was possible that Trump would rise to power, based solely on what he, Adams, was seeing Trump doing in rallies and speeches and on the campaign trail.

It’s yet another connection between different-seeming but highly-related fields like political propaganda, and hypnosis, and screenwriting.

If this is the kind of stuff that works for you, you can find more here:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments