I asked for ideas to fail, and I got ’em

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The results are in. Well, some of the results.

Yesterday, I wrote an email asking my readers for ideas. On how I could make more money. And I offered a $100 reward — if I run with the idea and it fails.

Result:

I got a small number of replies so far. Almost all the replies were thoughtful, serious ideas that could legitimately make me more money.

I’ve decided to try out an idea sent to me by Modern Maker Jacob Pegs. I’ll report on the final result of that — $100 or glory — by the end of this month.

The thing is, I would like to do more. Try out two, three, all of the ideas people sent me. All at the same time.

I’d also like to finish that book I’ve been working on for a while. Plus I’d like to go through my existing emails and package those up into even more books.

I’d like to create a couple new courses, or maybe a half dozen. I have ideas for a few workshops as well. Plus I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a community for a while.

I’d like to find new affiliate offers to promote… I’d like to come up with some sort of continuity program… I’d like to build up my list with more people with money.

And that’s just for this little info publishing business.

There’s a whole big world of money-making opportunities out there that regularly calls my attention and tempts me with the thought of cool new projects using skills and assets I already have.

All that’s to say:

I’m a moderately successful dude. And I have a moderately infinite list of possible projects to do, all of which sound cool, all of which which could make me a ton of money, all of which could be good for me in other ways.

But there are people out there who are vastly more successful than I am. And those people have vastly infinite lists of possible projects to do, all of which sound cool, all of which could make them a ton of money, all of which could be good for them in other ways.

You see the problem:

Infinite opportunities…

Finite time. Finite energy. Finite head space.

And that’s pretty much the argument for going to business owners and saying, “Hey. You. How about I just do this for you? Don’t pay me anything. Don’t stress about this at all. I’ll handle all of it. Just, if it makes money, you give me a share?”

These kinds of offers work. I know, because I’ve made them, and I’ve had them accepted.

I can vouch first hand that these offers can collect you — as the party doing the work — a lot of money.

You can go out now and start reaching out to business owners and saying “Hey. You.”

If that works, great.

But if not, then consider Shiv Shetti’s PCM mastermind.

Shiv’s got a whole system for how to find business owners to partner with… how to approach them… what to say to them… and how to deliver on work that makes the business owner free money, which they are then happy to share with you.

Oh, and there’s also coaches inside PCM to help you along. I’m one of those coaches.

If you’d like to find out more about PCM:

https://bejakovic.com/pcm

$100 for your failing idea

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Yesterday, I wrote about one idea from Jon Spoelstra’s book Ice To The Eskimos.

Well, brace yourself, because today, I got… another. Says Spoelstra:

“Pay bonuses for failure”

Spoelstra believed that the best companies any business could imitate were high-tech companies, because high-tech companies have to constantly innovate.

How do you innovate?

You gotta have ideas.

How do you have ideas?

You gotta get over the notion that’s been beaten into so many of us — via previous jobs, via decades of being at the mercy of professional teachers who accomplished nothing in life except a teaching diploma, and via that smarty-pants girl named Lydia, who always raised her hand in class, and was so smug about it — that there is always a right answer and a wrong answer, and while it’s good to have the right answer, it’s catastrophic to have the wrong answer.

In other words, people are afraid of failure.

​​Of sounding and looking dumb.

Deadly afraid of it.

Not good for coming up with new ideas.

So you gotta coax them out of their hardened protective shell.

Spoelstra’s method was to actually pay people extra for failing ideas. If somebody on his team tossed out an idea that went on to be a proven failure, the tosser-outer would get a monetary prize.

This is how the Nets (the NBA team Spolestra was working with) came up with innovations of all kinds — some small, others worth millions of dollars to the franchise, all of them previously unimaginable to anyone.

I read this. And I told myself, “I should try doing the same.”

Then I told myself, “No, that would be crazy. It would never work.”

Then I told myself, “Perfect. Sounds like a great experiment to try.”

So here’s my offer to you today:

Send me an idea. If it fails, I’ll send you $100.

A few added rules to give some structure to this offer:

1. Let’s limit the scope to ideas about how I could make more money, specifically via this newsletter, or the courses and trainings I’ve created for it, or the coaching I offer on and off.

2. I will pay you $100 if I actually put your idea in practice and find it does NOT work.

​​For that to happen, your idea has to be credible enough and tempting enough that I actually want to give it a try.

​​As a negative example, “Sell meth via email” sounds vaguely criminal, and I would not want to attempt it, even if it’s to prove you wrong.

As a second negative example, ​​”Start a YouTube channel” is so broad, open-ended, and intimidating-sounding that I would not choose to tackle it, even though there might be a perfectly failing idea hiding there.

3. What do you get if I try out your idea and it turns into a smashing success? You get the pleasure of seeing your intelligence manifested in the world. Plus, I will put you on the throne of the kingdom of Bejakovia for a day, and all the happy citizens will know your name, and the great deeds you have accomplished.

So there you go.

$100 for your failing idea.

Take a bit of time. Think about what you know about my newsletter, my assets, my skills. Think about what you know about internet marketing in general.

Come up with an idea how I could do better. Send it to me. And if it fails, it pays.

Four chapters more important than new customers

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Yesterday, I was flying from Girona, Spain to Zagreb, Croatia. It was not a pleasant flight. I tried to distract myself by opening up a valuable marketing book I’ve been reading:

Ice To The Eskimos, or, How To Market A Product Nobody Wants

I’ve been at this book for a couple of weeks already. I’m a very slow reader, which means I’ve just started chapter 5.

“Finally,” I said to myself as I started reading. “Now we’re getting into the sexy stuff, getting new customers!”

But that’s a classic mistake I was making.

Sure, the chapter 5 stuff sounded sexy.

But there were 4 chapters that the author thought were more important to write about before that.

The author of this book is Jon Spoelstra. Spoelstra was a sports marketer who was brought in to boost sales at the New Jersey Nets back in the 1990s.

Here was Spoelstra’s first and most important lesson:

Back in the early 90s, the New Jersey Nets were the worst team in the NBA. They had no stars. They even had no kind of home team advantage — New Jersey residents support the New York Knicks. To top it all off, there was a legitimate curse on the franchise.

The owners brought in Spoelstra to try to turn things around.

They told him to devise a strategy to lure people from Manhattan to buy Nets tickets. After all, Manhattan is so rich and so near, and so full of people hungry for entertainment.

Spoelstra refused.

He called it his Ulysses Method.

Spoelstra plugged up the owners’ ears with wax. He lashed himself to the mast of the Nets ship, so he would not be tempted to heed the siren song that leads to certain ruin, trying to woo customers from a sexy segment of the market where he just. could. not. win.

Instead, Spoelstra focused on unsexy New Jersey. Result:

The Nets went from zero sold-out games the year before Spoelstra was hired, to 35 sold-out games a few years later.

During the same time, the Nets also managed to increase revenue from local sponsorships from $400k per year to more than $7 million per year.

How Spoelstra achieved this is clever and worth knowing, and Spoelstra’s book is worth reading.

But none of it would have mattered much if not for the basic Ulysses Method.

I’m telling you this because I needed being told this myself.

When I first read Spoelstra’s chapter about the Ulysses Method, I impatiently sped through.

“Sure of course makes sense. But not really relevant to me. I am in no danger of chasing after markets where I can’t win.”

A few days passed. With a bit of space and time, I slowly realized Spoelstra’s warning applies very directly to me, and to stuff I’m trying to do now.

So I’m sharing the Ulysses Method with you now, because maybe you can use it as well.

All right, on to my offer to you for today:

If you feel you never learned the fundamentals of copywriting, and you’ve just been winging it based on what you’ve observed others doing, then my Copy Riddles program might be the fix you’re looking for.

Copy Riddles covers the A-Z of copywriting in 20 individual rounds.

Each round covers a specific copywriting topic or technique. The topics and techniques get progressively more sophisticated and rarefied as the 20 rounds go on.

But just like with Spoelstra and his Ulysses Method, the most important stuff is right there in rounds 1 and 2.

Internalize just those two rounds, or have them internalized for you, simply by following the Copy Riddles process, and you will be ahead of 95% of the people who call themselves professional copywriters, including many who make a good living at it.

For more info on Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Birthday bash offer

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I wrote a long email just now. Until I realized I was burying the lead.

So I told myself what I often tell coaching clients – split up the damn thing into two emails. One for today, one for tomorrow.

Here’s one for today:

Today is my buddy Kieran Drew’s birthday.

As you might know, Kieran is a big name in the online creator space. He has a Twitter following of 205k people, a newsletter audience of 30k people, and 6-figure launches every few months.

To celebrate his birthday, Kieran has prepared a special bundle of his most popular offer, High Impact Writing, with his second-most popular offer, the Viral Inspiration Lab.

I imagine that anyone on my list who wanted to get High Impact Writing got it back in March when I promoted it. But I’ve been wrong before.

If you don’t yet have High Impact Writing, I endorse it fully. And now is a good moment to get it because you can effectively get the Viral Inspiration Lab for free.

Plus!

Over the next month, Kieran will also hold a series of private interviews as a special thank-you gift for people who buy HIW now, as well as people who have bought HIW before.

The interviews will be with five successful writers Kieran knows, including A-list copywriter David Deutsch… email copywriter Chris Orzechowski… and yours truly, Bejako the Slow.

If you’re interested and you want to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/hiw​​

How to get customers to consume your info products

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In short, you give them a kick in the pants. In long:

Many years ago, in a country far, far away, I was reading one of Ben Settle’s print newsletters.

In that newsletter, Ben was preaching the importance of “consumption.” Not the disease, but actually getting your buyers to go through the book, course, or program they bought from you.

It’s consumption, Ben claimed, that turns buyers who buy once into customers who buy from you over and over.

That’s why Ben preached creating your offers with a view to consumption… pricing your offers with a view to consumption… and selling your offers with a view to consumption.

I was reading this, and I had what I thought was a bright idea. I thought I had spotted something that Ben had missed. So I wrote him an email and asked about it:

===

Have you ever used email to encourage consumption of an info product (or another product) after the sale?

… like sending out regular elBenbo emails to people, except changing the CTA to say, “If you wanna find out what the secret is, you’re in luck, because it’s right there on page 72 of the book you just bought.” I feel like the direct response standard is to say, “Thank you, you’ve made a great decision” and then to move on to selling the next product in line.

===

Ben wrote back an hour later with a message that just said:

“I think that’d be an excellent idea for anyone motivated enough to do so.”

I was a little disappointed that Ben wasn’t more keen on my brilliant idea. ​​But that’s because I’m a little dense. A little slow on the uptake.

The fact is, Ben does send followup emails getting people to consume his books and courses. He just doesn’t do it right away, but in a few weeks or months time, when it’s time to promote the same offer to his list again.

Of course, I do this too, and so can you.

Sell something, and then keep selling it in plain sight of people who have already bought. Keep it up until you get people to consume what they’ve bought and until you turn buyers into customers.

But does this really work?

Here’s a message I got last night from Howard Shaw of Chester Toys, a UK toy wholesaler that’s been in business for 60 years. Howard wrote:

===

What I like about your emails, John…

Is there is usually something that resonates, and then when I notice the offer link, they serve as a kick-in-the-pants reminder to go and read that course again, as each time I go through one of the multiple items I have purchased from you, I always find something new, fresh and relevant to use.

===

Again, you can do this too. A swift kick in the pants a day, reminding your customers of the value they already own and can benefit from right now.

Of course, that same kick in the pants might also motivate a new buyer to try you out for the first time. It certainly happened with my email yesterday.

If you too would like to get started with this powerful habit today, here’s a resource that might help you out:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

The allure of ecom

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Today, I’m preparing a hot seat for one of the copywriters inside Shiv Shetti’s PCM mastermind.

So far, the dozen or so hot seats I have done were all for info products — high-ticket coaching, courses, a live event.

This hot seat is not for an info product. Instead, it’s for an ecom product, a strange $1,200 metal contraption that’s apparently selling well to an audience of middle-aged men.

As so often happens, this ecom business has a list of tens of thousands of past buyers and prospects.

And yet these guys never, ever, ever get an email from this business.

It makes me think I should go back to what I was doing a few years ago, and simply seek out such businesses, and write their emails on commission only.

It’s an alluring thought, but one to pursue another day.

Anyways, in situations like this, when a business has not been emailing their list for a while or at all, it’s common practice to send out a few warmup emails before a full-blown sales promo.

Those warmup emails typically deliver “value” — as in, they make it impossible for the prospect to buy anything.

It’s not my favorite approach. But in the case of info products, I am willing to run with it.

However, in the case of these ecom buyers, my recommendation as the resident promo expert will be to sell something even in those warmup emails, even in the very first email after a silence of who knows how many months or years.

My reasoning:

Unlike with info product lists, where the intent is often vague and shadowy, the intent for this ecom list is hard and concrete.

The only thing we know for sure about these guys is that they are in the market to buy this physical gadget or something like it. And so I will recommend to give them opportunity to buy something physical in every single email.

Of course, this won’t go out in a typical ecom email, with a big red coupon or even a picture of the product.

I’ve written and sent hundreds of ecom emails.

​​They’ve all looked and sounded very much like the email you’re reading now. And those emails have sold a few million dollars of physical stuff, from shoe insoles to weight loss pills to dog harnesses.

Do you have have an ecom business?

If you do, and you want to see how I wrote such emails, including a few dozen examples of the ecom emails that brought in the most sales, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

Waiting list hell

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Last May, I started a waiting list for a group coaching offer I was planning to run.

I promoted the waiting list with a few weeks’ worth of emails.

I hoped to use the waiting list to effortlessly fill 5 spots in the planned group coaching program.

But when I opened up the cart, a grand jumbo total of two people signed up.

I ended up canceling the group coaching program and refunding the two people who had bought.

This meant that, on top of the injury of having spent a few weeks sending emails to promote an offer that went absolutely nowhere, I also had the insult of having to pay Stripe a good amount of money to process the sizeable refunds.

Compare that to this past January.

I also created a waiting list.

I promoted the waiting list with a few weeks’ worth of emails.

I hoped to use the waiting list to effortlessly fill 5 spots in a group coaching program.

And that’s just what happened.

​​I opened up the cart. And with a couple of emails, I managed to fill the group coaching program. I even had people left over who were knocking on the doors but couldn’t get in.

What was the difference between those two waiting-list promos?

Actually there were lots of differences:

The offers promised in the emails were different… the actual coaching programs were different… the sales processes I used were different… the prices were different — the one that sold out was almost 2x the price of the one that flopped.

All that’s to say:

Are you using a waiting list for an offer right now, and is it giving you some stomach cramps?

Or have you used a waiting list for an offer before, and did it flop like an fish tossed onto the dock?

If so, then hit reply. I have an offer for you that you might like.

How to launch offers that almost never fail

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Last week, I was talking to Steve “License to Quill” Raju. Steve’s a very smart guy who has over the past year transformed himself from a direct response copywriter into an AI consultant for big corporations.

Steve was telling me how he used AI to augment his problem-solving ability.

​​For example, the problem of direct response offers that fall flat.

Steve wanted to see if there’s a way to reduce the risk of offers falling flat. So he asked the AI if this problem has already been solved in other industries.

“The AI came up with the TV industry,” Steve told me with some enthusiasm, and he went on to explain how the TV industry apparently makes sure its shows are hits.

I didn’t say so at the time, but I had my doubts. Not of Steve, but of the AI’s advice.

From what I know, the TV industry is riddled with failure — pilot episodes that never get picked up, shows that get canceled after the first season, spinoffs that go nowhere.

​​Same thing holds in the movie industry. (William Goldman: “Nobody knows anything.”)

Ditto for the publishing industry. About that:

A couple days ago, I read a 4,425-word article that summarized a 1194-page book called The Trial.

The Trial itself summarizes a yearlong antitrust case that came up when Penguin Random House tried to buy Simon & Schuster, and reduce the Big Five publishing houses to the Big Four.

As part of this antitrust case, the heads of all the major publishing companies testified, and revealed the failure-ridden and frankly sad state of the traditional publishing industry.

For example, only half the books published by these companies make any money. A much lower percentage actually pay back the money advanced to the author, and make any kind of profit.

However!

There are two categories of books where the odds are much, much better.

​​These two categories do not quite guaranteed successes. Failures still do happen. But these two types of books are as close to guaranteed as it gets.

The first are books by celebrities. Michelle Obama, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan.

The second are franchise authors. Tom Clancy, James Patterson, Brandon Sanderson.

Of these two categories, the franchise authors produce far more reliable successes. And no wonder.

Franchise authors have already built up an audience that’s demonstrated demand for a specific character or concept. This audience remains highly dedicated and forgiving, as long as the author keeps giving them more of what they already said they want.

When I put it in these terms, the lesson is hardly surprising.

But surprising or not, the fact remains that, in spite of literally hundreds of years of experimentation by established billion-dollar industries, this is still the best recipe for new offers that are an almost guaranteed success:

1. Build up an audience that’s demonstrated demand for a specific promise, product, or persona…

​2. ​​… and then give them more of what they already said they want.

​​Of course, you don’t have to write books. Short emails will do.

And if you want to see how I’ve done this using short emails, in several different industries, from supplements to pet supplies to high-ticket coaching and courses, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

“How do you know?”

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Over the past five or so years, I’ve noticed that I:

1. Am listening to the same music, mostly stuff I’ve listened to for decades

2. No longer enjoy going to restaurants

3. Prefer really simple food, prepared simply

4. (If I watch anything at all) watch TV shows I already know, like Arrested Development or Twin Peaks

5. Watch movies that were made up to the year 2000 but not beyond

6. Am no longer interested in traveling

7. Am in particular not interested in traveling to poor places where I can’t have the comforts I’m already used to at home

8. Have a very routinized life — work, gym, reading, walk

9. Am getting more politically conservative

10. Feel I have an explanation for everything — just ask me.

I’m telling you these 10 highly personal things to illustrate a valuable marketing and copywriting tip:

People in your market will often describe their situation with a statement like, “I am getting closed-minded.” I know I’ve been saying this lately as I’ve noticed myself getting older.

Trouble is, “getting closed-minded” is abstract. It’s fuzzy. It can mean lots of different things to different people.

And even to people who might actually agree such a statement describes them, it doesn’t really spark a very strong emotional self-identification.

The fix for this are four simple words:

“How do you know?”

Ask your market these four words.

These four words get to the specifics, the scenes people can truly see, hear, and touch.

​​This leads to emails and sales copy that hypnotize people.

​​And if you want to know why that is, just write in and ask. I have an explanation for it — and for everything else you might ever want to know.

Back 7 years in time, to my lean and hungry freelancing days

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Day 3 in Lisbon. Yesterday, I ambled to a factory area outside the center, which has been converted into a bunch of restaurants and design shops. As soon as I stepped into this area, a strange feeling swept over me…

I had been here before.

I had been to Lisbon one time before, for two days, seven years ago, back in 2017.

Back then, I still drank alcohol and much of the trip was a blur — either horribly hung over, or drinking more to try to cope with the hangover.

This time, when coming to Lisbon, I tried remembering where I had been and what I had done during those two days back in 2017. I couldn’t remember. But yesterday, I knew at least one thing I had done. I had been to this factory area before.

“And there’s a Mexican restaurant somewhere around here,” I said to myself.

Sure enough, there was a Mexican restaurant right where I suspected it should be. I walked inside. It had a boxing ring right in the middle of it, with a dining table in the middle of the ring, and lucha libre decoration on the walls. I recognized this place. I had eaten here before.

Somehow, out of about 50 million restaurants in Lisbon, I had managed to accidentally stumble into the same restaurant I had been in seven years earlier.

And now for some entirely different news:

Yesterday, I asked my readers what frustration they are currently having.

I got a good number of responses including some unexpected ones:

“… son is now talking about having a PS5 despite only having had a Nintendo Switch for a matter of days.”

“Right now, I’m in Warsaw, and I’m shocked by how nice and kind the girls here are. As a result, I hate the idea of going back to [home town] and trying to date there.”

​​​”My greatest frustration is watching people who have never opened a book in their lives create million-dollar companies.”

On the other hand, many of the reported frustrations were not a surprise. They came from both business owners and copywriters, and were some variant of “I’m looking for more clients or customer or leads.”

Somehow, not very accidentally, by asking this question, I managed to stumble back into the same worry-cloud I had been in seven years earlier, back in 2017, when I was only two years into working as a freelance copywriter.

I managed to make a living from month one of starting to work as a copywriter, back in August 2015.

But it was always a hunt, and there was always a fair chance of going to bed hungry. Not literally — I could always afford food to eat and a place to sleep, and I could even take a trip now and then and waste some money on alcohol.

But I never knew quite how much money I would make by the end of the month. Half the time, it was less than I would have been okay with.

Back then, my interpretation of the problem was the same as the interpretation of a lot of the people who replied to me yesterday.

“I’d like to have more consistent money coming in… so what I need is more good leads… some new source of leads… or maybe an improved way to convert leads I already have.”

Reasonable enough. But wrong, at least in my case.

I realized something only years later, around 2021 or 2022. It’s the only regret I have with regard to my entire copywriting career, and the only thing I would change if i could go back. It’s this:

I spent way too much time looking for new clients and even working with new clients… rather than simply getting more out of the clients I already had.

And that’s my suggestion to you as well.

If you would like to make more consistent money, focus less on looking for more clients or customers. Get more out of the ones you’ve already got.

And if you say there’s nothing more to be had out of them:

You’re creative. That’s why you’re working as an entrepreneur or as a copywriter. So use that creativity.

I guarantee you there are ways, often easy and quick ways, to make new money from old customers or clients. You have everything you need already. It’s just a matter of putting together the pieces.

Of course, if you don’t want to put together the pieces, and if you actually have an email list of previous customers or clients, then write me. Maybe I can put the pieces together for you.