The making of a legend

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Today being October 26, 2024, it is the 143rd anniversary of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the most famous gunfight from the mythical Wild West.

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral happened in Tombstone, Arizona, and involved the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday on one side, and a group of cattle rustlers known as the Cowboys on the other.

There’s a ton of legend surrounding this one-minute slice of history, the buildup to it, and the events that followed.

Movies have been made, books have been written. The Wikipedia page about the fight at the O.K. Corral runs to 21,542 words. I spent 3+ hours of my life a couple months ago, napping through Kevin Costner’s Wyatt Earp at a local movie theater that plays old films.

Today, I had a different idea.

I went on newspapers.com, and I searched.

There was nothing on the day of the fight, but several newspapers reported the event a day later (“A sanguinary shooting affray occurred on Fremont street”).

I also found dozens of articles in the coming weeks and months, reporting how Virgil Earp had called in the military to defend the town of Tombstone against the violence… how Morgan Earp had been shot and killed while playing billiards… how the editor of the Arizona Morning Star wrote that the time is past for courts of justice, and that “hemp is the best code” to deal with the Cowboys.

I gotta tell ya:

I felt a real rush reading these old articles, like I could be there, see history in the making. It felt somehow real — without the layers of interpretation and retelling that soon followed.

Because by next summer, the legend was already forming. Virgil Earp was giving interviews in train cars to news reporters. His description of Doc Holliday will sound familiar to anybody who’s seen one of a dozen movies featuring the man:

“There was something very peculiar about Doc. He was gentlemanly, a good dentist, a friendly man, and yet, outside of us boys, I don’t think he had a friend in the Territory. Tales were told that he had murdered men in different parts of the country, that he had robbed and stolen and committed all manner of crimes, and yet, when persons were asked how they knew it, they could only admit that it was hearsay, and nothing of the kind had in reality been traced up to Doc’s account.”

I bet you’re wondering where all this is going. Let me get to it.

My point for you is simply to go to sources that others don’t go to.

Everybody is talking these days, and most of it is rehashed — the same newsletters, the same “gotta read ’em” books, the same Twitter memes.

Maybe you were truly blessed to have a unique perspective among the 8 billion people on this planet, and maybe, even by looking at the same stuff as everyone else, you have something new to say about it all. “No one I think is in my tree,” John Lennon said once, “I mean it must be high or low.”

But if you’re not John Lennon, there’s a cheat code:

Different inputs, different outputs.

This is not just about creating content, but about business strategies, and about success in life in general. Go where other people don’t go, and you’ll see things that other people don’t see.

So much for inspiration.

But what to promote?

I actually meant to promote newspapers.com as an affiliate because I love the service so well.

I will do so in future and offer a bonus if you give ’em a free try through my link.

But I don’t have any of that set up today.

So let me go back to the world of marketing, and tie into today’s theme of sources nobody else goes to.

If you want to see how A-list copywriters turn boring and dry texts into sexy sales copy that gets strangers to send money… and better yet, if you want to go through this same process yourself, and get a real rush of genuine experience and insight by doing, instead of just hearing other people’s interpretation and retelling, then you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Breaking the silence after the promo

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Last night, after the 3rd Conversion training call, I got a note from one of the participants. I’m not sure she wants me to share her name, but she wrote:

===

It was so nice to see you on the call. I just wanted to drop you a quick note to say how much I absolutely loved your live class. It was perfectly timed for me, especially since I’m putting out my own offer for a done-for-you course blueprint. Your presentation was not only engaging but also such a clever demonstration of your course content in action – I was taking mental notes the whole time! (And trying to resist writing everything down lol)

===

I’m telling you this because, well, it says nice things about me, and I need all the ego stroking I can get.

But I’m also telling you this because I’ve noticed lots of people who sell online, myself included at times, are guilty of promoting an offer intensely… and when the promo period ends, it’s on to promoting the next damn thing.

Meanwhile, what happened to the previous training/course/book, which had such large promise about it?

There’s largely silence on that point, until of course it’s time to promote the same thing again.

My theory is that today, people are more than ever craving things that feel real.

It’s not simply because of the recent explosion of AI, but also the ability for automated communication, and simply the inhuman scale of the Internet.

When before in history was it an everyday possibility for most humans to write something that will go out to thousands or even millions of people?

Inevitably, we all become more guarded as a result of this. Things sound good, but they’re not actually good… or they might not even be there at all (Google “these cats do not exist”).

That’s why I think it’s valuable to not only do a good job promoting what you sell… not only do a good job delivering it… but also do good job continuing to communicate, even to people who didn’t buy, even after the fact, that this thing you were selling was for real, and that you in fact are for real.

That’s one way to cope with The Nothing that’s overtaking our world.

Another way is simply longevity, persistence, or maybe track record.

A few hundred words of text, once, can be optimized, faked, generated to suit the moment and to deceive the unguarded.

A few hundred words of text, every day, for years, are hard to fake, particularly if those words are going out to the same group of people.

That’s why there’s power in daily emails.

Writing daily for years might sound intimidating. It doesn’t have to be.

Really, it’s just one day’s effort at a time. And pretty soon, it becomes enjoyable and even addicting (ask me how I know).

The sooner you start, the sooner it will become easier, and the sooner you will reap the rewards.

Even if you don’t know nothing about email, or copywriting, or even writing, you can start writing a daily email today.

But if you must have a guide to help you get started, here’s one I created, based on my own real experience:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

20-lbs of ground beef worth of relaxation and security

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I have many fond memories of driving with my friend Sam to Costco, both for the $1.50 hot dogs and to stock up on 36-packs of Newcastle brown ale for our college apartment.

Costco, as you might know, is a chain of retail stores that operates through a membership club.

Costco has hangar-sized stores all around the North American continent, filled with everything you might ever need for your home — couches, outdoor saunas, gardening equipment, car tires, hot tubs, jugs of liquor, 72-lb wheels of Parmesan cheese, and 4-gallon buckets of mayonnaise.

Whatever you buy at Costco is always huge, and always at a huge discount over what you might pay elsewhere.

Now that you have that background, perhaps you can appreciate how chuffed I was to find out, after all these years, that Costco also has an in-house magazine, which goes out to more subscribers across the United States than Better Homes & Gardens, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic combined.

Sure, you might say, but who reads it.

Not only do people read the Costco magazine, but celebs fight to get on the cover of it.

Example:

Jimmy Kimmel, late-night talkshow host and four-time tuxedo-clad host at the Oscars, begged his publicity team to get him on the cover of Costco magazine.

Why?

“Because I love Costco,” said Kimmel in a recent NY Times article. Kimmel described the deep happiness he experiences when he comes home with 20 pounds of ground beef. “I go there for relaxation. I don’t like to run out of things.”

Think about it a little. How crazy is that?

I mean, we know people like security, that it’s one of our most basic needs. But 20 pounds of ground beef at Costco, to fill a need for security?

If you were ever tasked with writing an ad for Costco, I imagine you might emphasize the convenience, the money-savings, maybe even the club aspect of it.

But Costco as a salve for existential angst?

For me, the only way I would ever think of this as a selling point for Costco is to hear it from Jimmy Kimmel’s mouth.

Point being, the right sales angle can sell the strangest things (a four-time Oscar host, begging to be on the cover of Costco magazine, because security).

But how do you find the right sales angle?

You can get there by experimentation, by throwing spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks… though that might take more time than universe has before it turns into a cold and empty shell.

Or you can get there by research, going to your market, and really talking to them. I mean REALLY talking.

Again, do you think that if you ask somebody at the Costco parking lot why they come to Costco, that their first response would be, “Because I’m terrified by the scale and unpredictability of the universe?”

Or last, you can go and look at 3-5 top competitors in your market, particularly ones who are running long-form direct-response advertising.

See what they appeals they are making. Because those people have already done steps 1 and 2 above, and what’s floated to the top of that milk pail by definition is rich cream.

And now my offer, my old war horse, Copy Riddles.

I won’t pretend I planned to promote Copy Riddles today. I mainly wanted to share the above story of Costco magazine, and I didn’t think too much about how it would sell Copy Riddles.

But regarding research, or at least looking at top competitors in your market:

Take a source text such as a brochure describing some vitamins or hams or potato salad at Costco. Write your own sales pitch for that. Then look at what a top A-list copywriter, like Gary Bencivenga or Gene Schwartz or David Deutsch did with the same.

What you will find is, sometimes the A-list copywriters really will just make an appeal to money-saving or convenience.

But often they will do more than that. They will appeal to deeper, more fundamental psychological drives.

This is something you can train yourself to look out for, and even to do instinctively.

In fact, that’s what Copy Riddles is all about, using the approach I just laid out for you.

I don’t know what market you’re in, but odds are good that you’ll find examples of source material from your market inside Copy Riddles, along with bullets written to sell that source material by some of the greats.

There’s even a section inside Copy Riddles I call the Dirty Dozen, where I lay out some of the deeper, stranger psychological motivations that go beyond the convenience and money-savings, appeals that most B-level sales copy defaults to.

If you would like to get more info about Copy Riddles, and maybe find a bit of safety and control in this massive and incomprehensible world, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Thank you for putting back the plates

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I was at the gym a few weeks ago, headphones in, listening to the Español Con Juan podcast, when one of the girls who works at the gym started talking at me and gesticulating.

“Huh?” I said, taking my headphones out. “Sorry, what?”

“I just wanted to thank you for putting back the plates,” she said.

I must have stared at her with a look of total confusion, because she smiled and pointed to the two 10-kg plates I was holding in my hands.

“… putting back the plates where they belong,” she explained. “I think you are the only one who does it.”

It’s true. I was putting the plates backs on the rack.

But the truth is, I don’t always do that. Well, at least I didn’t always do that, not before the girl talked to me. I’ve been putting back the plates religiously ever since, like a proud little Boy Scout.

Point being?

Maybe it’s obvious. And if not, you can hear me spell it out on tomorrow’s 3rd Conversion training.

This training will be all about techniques that make your paid courses and ebooks and programs more consumable and more digestible… with the goal of getting more people to actually benefit from what you sell, so they get their money’s worth and more, and so they come back and buy from you again and again.

The deadline to sign up for the 3rd Conversion training is tonight, Wednesday, at 12 midnight PST.

The training itself will happen on Zoom tomorrow, Thursday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. There will be a recording which I will send out after the call, though if you can make it live, you and I both are sure to benefit more from it.

If you’d like to get in before the doors close:

https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion

No response

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Here’s an idea that I’ve found to be true:

If you do a good job getting people to consume and digest your content all the way through, it’s much easier to get great testimonials, ones you can actually feature because they say something substantive, and because they have a real shot of converting others as well.

I bring this up because last night, a copywriter named Pete, who’s been on my list for a while and who has already bought a few of my previous offers, signed up for my 3rd Conversion training, all about consumption and digestion.

When I asked Pete why, and what he’s hoping to get from the training, he replied:

===

Reason I joined is, because I’ve done a few workshops in the past few months that I’ve repurposed as content to sell.

Some people bought, but when I send emails to them to get feedback I get no response.

Which I’m assuming is because they haven’t gone through it.

If they thought it sucked, I’m certain I would hear about it. As negative people usually have something to say lol

===

I’m not sure if people who think an offer sucked usually have something to say about it. I know I like to keep my mouth shut and just go elsewhere.

I’m not saying that’s what happened in Pete’s case, and there’s no reason to think so based on his message.

But I do know what I told you above:

If you do a good job getting people to consume and digest your content, it becomes much easier to get great testimonials, or at least feedback and response of some sort.

And as an example of that, I can tell you that last month, Pete bought my Most Valuable Emails and the stripped-down version of Simple Money Emails. When I wrote to him to deliver the courses, he replied:

===

I stayed up last night to binge read everything in MVE…

And all I have to say is, you’re not charging enough, dude.

After going through Copy Riddles and now MVE, and I’ll likely do the same with SME…

Everything you sell is solid.

Always grateful when I see one of your emails roll in.

===

Today, I’m not selling either Copy Riddles or MVE or SME, though of course if you’d like to give me money for those, you can.

Today, I’m simply trying to tell you it’s the last day to sign up for the 3rd Conversion training.

On the training, I will cover a small number of techniques, ones I’ve used and ones I’ve had used on me, to get people to actually go through your paid courses and ebooks and programs, ideally to the end.

I’m only charging $100 for this training. It’s probably not enough, but I’m doing it because frankly I want to organize this knowledge in my own head.

Doing it live, in front of an audience of people who are genuinely interested and can profit from it, is a good motivator for me.

In other words, money and sales are not main reason why I’m putting this training on.

That said, money and sales can be the main reason why you might want to join me on this training.

Everything in your business — from your ads to your emails to your sales pages (hello testimonials) — becomes much easier if people get value from what you deliver.

And in order for them to have any chance of getting value from what you deliver — beyond just the thrill of spending money on something — they have to consume and digest what you’re selling them.

The deadline to sign up for the 3rd Conversion training is tonight, Wednesday, at 12 midnight PST.

The training itself will happen on Zoom tomorrow, Thursday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. There will be a recording which I will send out after the call, though if you can make it live, you and I both are sure to benefit more from it.

If you’d like to get in before the doors close:

​https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion​

How and why I started this newsletter

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For some reason, many people seem fascinated by the obscure origins of this newsletter.

“How did you get started? What was your initial motive? Is it true that you were once a Pinterest star?”

If none of that interests you, I can’t say I blame you.

But if you are curious, here’s my origin story, in all its Peter Parker awkwardness:

1. In 2015, with my savings dwindling and with the thought of going back to an office job being absolutely repulsive to me, I anointed myself a “direct response copywriter” and started selling myself as such to anybody who had $5 to spend.

2. I soon decided to focus on email copywriting, because my Spidey-sense told me this would be a “thing.”

3. After a couple months and a dozen random clients, a suspicion started to creep into my mind. “Maybe I should learn a little bit about email copywriting if I’m going to be selling it?”

4. So I signed up to Ben Settle’s email list, because frankly there was not all that much free and ongoing information at the time about email besides Ben.

Each of Ben’s emails seemed to follow the same format: a teasing promise, maybe dressed up with some pop-culture reference, and a link to sign up to Ben’s $97/month Email Players print newsletter.

5. For years, I didn’t sign up to Email Players, though I was tempted by Ben’s teasing. At first, I didn’t sign up because why pay $97 a month for a newsletter?

“I never pay for information,” I told myself. Instead of paying, I preferred to go on working for years without getting any improvement in my results.

Later, when that changed, I still didn’t sign up for Email Players because of Ben’s policy of telling people not to sign up unless they are fit to be an Email Player, and his threats that if you ever sign up and quit, you can never come back.

6. Eventually, in 2017, Ben’s teasing and mind games wore me down. I signed up to Email Players. (I also finally read the free issue of Email Players that Ben gives away on his site, and which I had gotten years earlier, when I signed up to his list.)

7. I started using some things Ben teaches in my client work, and I got good results. But I was still struggling personally to make consistent good money as a copywriter because client work was unreliable.

8. Ben started selling a new course which was called something like Client Cash Machine, all about how to get clients. I bought it, rationalizing the $297 price by saying that if I got a bit of extra client work as a result, it would pay for the course.

9. A few weeks later, Ben’s client-getting course arrived. I opened it with trembling fingers. It was a flash drive with the audio version, and a printed-out transcript.

10. An hour or so after that, I had gone through the course. It said, in a nutshell, “Start an email list and write it daily.” Disappointing. I knew that already. It was all over Ben’s emails for free, and I had hoped Ben would tell me something exciting and new.

11. Still, some time later, I followed Ben’s advice and finally started an email list, with the distant future goal of getting clients, and with the immediate goal of fooling around in my own sandbox each day, putting into practice things I was learning from books and courses, and demonstrating my growing skills to anybody who would bear witness.

12. Ta-da! A successful personal brand, authority in the field, and a 6-figure-a-year income, just from writing one daily email, or actually more like writing 3,000 daily emails.

THE END.

I’m telling you this riveting story because I’m putting on a training this Thursday. It’s called 3rd Conversion. It’s about getting your buyers to consume and digest the information you sell.

If you read my story above carefully, it can give you lots of clues about effective strategies to increase consumption and digestion.

If you want me to spell out actual lessons, you can get that on Thursday’s training.

This 3rd Conversion training can be useful to you if you’re after long-term customers and fans… rather than one-off transactions with buyers who hand you a bit of money once and then never benefit from what you sold ’em… never buy from you again… never build up your brand by writing up an email like I’ve just written about Ben Settle.

And in case you’re wondering:

My training on Thursday won’t just be about rehashing Ben Settle’s strategies, and using Ben as a good example of effective consumption and digestion techniques. Because Ben can also serve as a cautionary tale.

Like I’ve written before, I ended up unsubscribing from Ben’s Email Players after a few years — even with Ben’s threats of never being allowed back in. The reason again was consumption and digestion. I felt Ben’s newsletter had simply become a chore to read, so I took my money and my custom elsewhere.

The 3rd Conversion training will happen this Thursday at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. There will be a recording which I will send out after the call, though if you can make it live, you and I both are sure to benefit more from it.

If you’d like to sign up for 3rd Conversion now, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion

Czech Russell Brunson’s uncreative success

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A couple days ago, I asked readers what subscription or continuity offers they be payin’ for. I got a number of responses to that email, featuring some familiar offers, and some that are entirely new to me.

For example, a long-time reader from Czechia wrote to tell me about a mastermind he signed up for last month, centered around a “Czech copycat of Russell Brunson.”

“Copycat!” I hear someone saying. “That’s rrreprehensible!”

And yet, this Czech Russell Brunson is clearly seeing success. This made me think back to the real Russell Brunson’s mentor, Dan Kennedy. Dan likes to share the following quote, attributed to McDonald’s CEO Ray “Killer” Kroc:

“Creativity is over-rated. Most business success comes from doing boring, diligent work. From developing a system that produces consistent results and sticking to it.”

Developing, I might add, or swiping…

Anyways, my long-time reader from Czechia finished his message about Czech Russell Brunson by saying:

“I am interested in seeing if you are cooking some continuity of your own, maybe not a postcard this time around 😂“

That’s very on point. I am cooking up — or more like shopping for ingredients for – my own continuity offer.

I want to make this new continuity offer, well, continuous.

Instead of having 10 people sign up and stay signed up for two months each, I’d rather have one person sign up and stay signed up for 20 months.

Also, I want to cook up this new continuity offer sooner rather than later, simply because I am impatient.

Enter my 3rd Conversion training, which I announced in a bit of a hurry yesterday, without much fanfare, buildup, or teasing.

The promise for this 3rd Conversion training is that I will show you how to make your paid info products — whether courses, memberships, or paid newsletters — more likely to be consumable and enjoyable, with the goal of turning one-time buyers into long-term repeat customers.

(Hence, 3rd Conversion.)

I can tell you honestly, I am putting on this training as much for myself as for you.

I’m thinking about all the ways people have gotten me to stick around and consume their products… as well as techniques I’ve used to achieve the same, wittingly and unwittingly, in my own info products like Most Valuable Email and Copy Riddles.

After some pondering, I managed to group all these techniques into three broad categories. Using the analogy of a restaurant, these categories map broadly to 1. Kitchen 2. Table Service 3. Ambiance.

In each category, I have several specific techniques in mind, each backed with a few case studies.

Frankly, I might not be able to cover all this in the 3rd Conversion call on Thursday, not without violating my own rules of consumption. I’d rather make the call more enjoyable and useful than to comprehensive and nausea-inducing.

But I can promise you that, if I don’t decide to cover all the techniques I have in mind on the call itself, I’ll get them to you afterwards, most likely in some written format.

And in case you’re wondering:

Some of the techniques I have in mind would no doubt be familiar to you if you could see them now. Others, on the other hand, are almost sure to be new.

Frankly, even one or two of these techniques, whether you know them or not already, would instantly make your existing products more consumable and enjoyable for buyers.

That means that, if you were to implement just one or two of these techniques right after the call on Thursday, you could reasonably have a few extra sales by existing buyers by the end of the week. That’s likely to be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars right away, and probably, much more down the line.

And yet, I’m pricing this 3rd Conversion training at $100.

I’m offering it at this firesale price is because my primary goal is just to pull all this information together, and to do it now.

My secondary goal is to get feedback live from people once I share these techniques on the call. Maybe that will be you as well.

Last I can tell you that, if I ever make this training available again, it won’t be as a recording of this workshop… but as a proper course for $500 or more.

The 3rd Conversion call will happen this Thursday at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. There will be a recording which I will send out after the call, though if you can make it live, you and I both are sure to benefit more from it.

If you’d like to sign up for 3rd Conversion now, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion

Announcing: 3rd Conversion

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This coming Thursday, October 24, I will put on a live training, called 3rd Conversion.

The ticket to get inside is $100.

3rd Conversion is intended for forward-thinking online business owners and info marketers… those who have realized that selling to one person, ten times over, is easier, more enjoyable, and more profitable than selling to ten people, one time.

Specifically, 3rd Conversion will show you techniques — ones I’ve used with my own products, and ones I’ve had used on me — to turn one-time buyers into long-term customers… by getting buyers to consume and enjoy the info products they bought.

But why? Why worry? Why worry if people consume and enjoy your info products?

Because if people consume and enjoy what you sell them, they are more likely to benefit from it… and they are more likely to come back for seconds, and thirds.

And the third time you sell a buyer something something — the “3rd Conversion” — you cross a kind of threshold.

The research shows, and I got no reason to doubt it, that at this third conversion, for the first time, the customer finally becomes more likely than not to keep buying from you, over and over, year after year.

On Thursday, I’ll give you specific techniques to get to this magic point yourself, and turn your own one-time buyers into long-term customers, by making your info products more consumable and enjoyable.

You don’t have to decide to sign up for the 3rd Conversion training right now. I’ll keep talking about it until Thursday, when I will close the cart down.

But if you’re the kind of forward-thinking person that I think can benefit from this information… and if you already know that you want this info, because you care about getting more customers for the long term… and if you think $100 is a fair price for the promise I’m making… then here’s where to get your ticket for the show on Thursday:

https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion

Why so stubborn?

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My life for the past two decades has been shaped in many ways by information I’ve come across on one single website.

I’ve made health decisions, career decisions, and even decisions about personal beliefs, all thanks to this one website, or rather, to resources I’ve found via this website.

That website is Google no just kiddding.

That website is Hacker News, a kind of precursor to Reddit, which, unlike Reddit, has managed to keep its quality by refusing to go after quantity.

Lately, for some reason, I’ve found myself not going on Hacker News as much as normal.

So this morning, right after correctly guessing the Wordle of the day (in five guesses, Which worldle informs me is “GREAT”), I purposefully went to see what’s new on Hacker News.

And as often happens, I was rewarded. Because one of the top posts on Hacker News today is a link to an article with the headline:

“The feds are coming for John Deere over the right to repair”

In a nutshell:

x1. Tractor maker John Deere has made its new computerized tractors largely unrepairable by customers. This means the tractor has to go back to the factory for repairs. This is nice for John Deere, but expensive for customers, both in terms of time and money.

x2. As a result, John Deere customers have been complaining… the market for used tractors has been booming as farmers seek an alternative to buying new John Deere tractors… and now, even the federal government is after John Deere, for possibly violating Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, about deceptive or unfair practices in commerce.

And yet, in spite all this, John Deere continues to refuse to make its tractors easily repairable by the buyer.

Which really begs the question, why?

Why be so stubborn, and work against what both the market and the very powerful federal government want you to do?

The only answer that comes to my limited mind is:

Because locking in customers in this way is good for John Deere.

In fact, if you look at the stock price of the company since the early 2010s, when customers first started complaining about John Deere’s unreparaiable tractors, the company’s stock price has been, not on a steady rise, but on what looks to my non-expert eyes like an exponential increase.

I bring this up because last year, I asked folks on my list what continuity or subscription offers they buy – the info product version of what John Deere is doing, locking in customers for more than a single purchase.

I got a bunch of responses to that email last year. But I did nothing with those responses, not until a couple days ago. That’s when I went back to the responses I got, summed them up, looked for patterns and exceptions. Some patterns:

x* Out of the 40 or so continuity or subscription offers my readers reported paying for, the majority were primarily personality-based, rather than primarily promise- or interest-based.

x* Out of those personality-based subscriptions, the majority were primarily paid newsletters of some sort, with the rest being paid communities or memberships built around a guru.

x* The prices for personality-based newsletters seem to depend largely on the format. Digital newsletters were priced lower (around $50-$70/month) while print newsletters were priced higher ($97-$199/month).

And then the exception, which caught my eye:

x* One digital newsletter — in fact, just an email sent once a month — bucked the price trend above by selling for $99 a month. In fact, this subscription is not even buyable in a one-month increment — the shortest subscription you can get is three months, with extra inducements also available for 6-month and 1-year subscriptions.

I found this interesting because this subscription seems to be working. Not only was I clued into it directly from readers who pay for it, but I remember hearing a friend mention subscribing to it since.

So let’s get to the deal:

I’d like to update my database of continuity or subscription offers that my readers susbcribe to.

After all, things may have changed in the past 12 months, since I last collected such data.

And so my offer for you today is, hit reply and tell me which subscription or continuity offers you pay for.

It could be a paid newsletter, community, membership, magazine, book-of-the-month club, whatever.

In return, I’ll reply and tell you which digital newsletter I had in mind above, the one delivered by email that bucks the pricing trend, and still seems to do well.

Plus, I will also tell you what one particular thing I thought was very clever and effective on the sales page for this offer, which I think helps this offer convert, even though it’s just a stupid email, which costs a whopping $99 a month.

Do we got a deal?

The old peanut butter & jelly

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A week ago, a dude wrote me with a proposition:

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Proposition for you: let me in on your Simple Money Emails course and I’ll interview you on my channel, promote your stuff in the description of the video, and anything else.

I heard you in an interview, good stuff, authentic…most other marketers in interviews put me to shleep.

Anyhow, if you’re interested, great. If not, no probs mate.

===

… and below that, the dude included a link to his YouTube channel.

Now here’s a fact:

Last month, I got paid good money to come and talk about email marketing inside a small and closed-door coaching community. This involved preparing a bit of a presentation, and critiquing some copy, and a level of transparency regarding how-to that I don’t promise in podcast interviews.

But even when I’m not getting paid to come and speak in front of a group, I don’t pay for the same privilege.

The way I look at it, a podcast or other kind of interview is already a kind of barter:

The host has the audience/platform… I bring the interesting content for that audience.

It’s like peanut butter & jelly. Each has limited dietary uses on its own… but put them together, and you’ve got a culinary marvel you can live on for the rest of your life.

The point I’m trying to make is not that you should be a hard-nosed “Never pay!” negotiator. There are plenty of good occasions to pay for self-promotion. (Last year I paid Daniel Throssell $1k to run 50 words of copy in his newsletter, offering his audience a bunch of valuable stuff for free.)

My point is simply that if you have or can provide good content, there are people who have an audience and who could use good content.

And vicey versy. If you have a platform and distribution, there are people who would love to come and sell for you, present for you, make their good offers available for you.

The old peanut butter & jelly.

And speaking of:

If you run a private community… mastermind… coaching group… podcast… YouTube channel… small-town newspaper… community bulletin board at the local dog park… and you need someone to talk interesting, and to talk email marketing, then reach out to me. Maybe we can barter in a way that makes us both better off.