10% success vs. 100% success

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Once upon a time, I found myself in a frightening environment — a night club. ​​I was there with a friend. Let’s call him Dave.

​​Dave is not a remarkably beautiful man. If anything, he’s rather physically unattractive.

Now, as you might guess by my opening sentence, a nightclub is not my kind of place.

But from what I understand, the one I was in with Dave was typical. There was a stage, people dancing, music, lights.

Dave started dancing in place next to me.

He then danced his way over to a girl in the crowd.

​​He continued to dance, all the way around her, like some kind of bird of paradise.

When the girl showed no interest, Dave danced his way back to me at the edge of the dance floor.

He shrugged his shoulders and explained his philosophy. “If I go out, and only one out of ten girls likes me, that’s not a 10% success rate. That’s a 100% success rate.”

This message has stuck with me ever since.

Incidentally, today Dave is a highly paid lawyer, working when he wants and from wherever he might feel like. He also happens to be married to and have a kid with a beautiful girl who initially wouldn’t give him the time of day.

I thought of this story today after I got a message from long-time reader Logan Hobson.

Logan is an email copywriter. He writes emails for big-time real estate investing gurus who have audiences of 80k+ people. He repeatedly does 5-figure email-based launches for these guys.

Logan was writing in response to my email yesterday, in which I explained my simple, 5-minute way to come up with 2-3 good email ideas each day — no writer’s block required. To which Logan wrote:

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I like the idea that writer’s block doesn’t really exist – it’s more just idea block.

Once you have a good idea, the words just write themselves. If one of your 10 ideas stands out a good one, then the words just flow.

===

In other words, if you sit down to write… and only one out of ten ideas flows well and turns out to be something that makes you money… then that’s not a 10% success rate. That’s a 100% success rate.

Seamless transition alert:​​

If you want more help coming up with email ideas, specifically ones that flow well and make you money, then check out my Most Valuable Email course.

Logan got that course a year ago. And after he went through it, here’s what he wrote me to say:

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After going through MVE, it feels like the veil has been lifted off some of your writing in the most enjoyable way.

Like a magician who is about to do a trick, but winks at those who know and revealing exactly what he’s about to do, leaving those who aren’t in the know none the wiser.

However in this case, it doesn’t ruin the magic, it just makes it even more enjoyable.

===

For more info on Most Valuable Email, and how it can help you grow an audience and make money:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

How to come up with 2-3 good email ideas each day

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Last night, I was sitting on the couch when my ex-girlfriend came over from the kitchen.

It’s an odd situation. We’re broken up. But we still live together. And we’re on good terms.

“Are you writing your email?” she asked.

I looked at her like she’s crazy. “No, I did it this morning. I’m done for today.”

She nodded. “What’s tomorrow’s email going to be about?”

“Who knows,” I said.

“So how will you write it then?”

“It will be very, very hard,” I said with mock sadness.

​​But like I explained to my ex last night, it’s never really very, very hard, because I have a large and growing list of email ideas in my BEJ journal.

If I ever don’t have something fresh to write about, I can always reach into my journal. I find this resource so valuable that I even created a course once, Insight Exposed, all about my obsessive note-taking and journaling system.

But that’s not what I want to share with you today.

Because today, I didn’t reach into my journal for this email’s topic.

Instead, I did what I often do when I don’t have a clear idea of what to write.

I opened a new text file and started a list. I titled it daily10. Under that title, I came up with 10 possible ideas for today’s email, without discarding even ones that are not really good.

It took me all of 5 minutes.

Not all the ideas were ones that I will turn into an email. But of the ten, one was promising and three were good.

A couple of these possible email ideas I liked better than telling you about my ex and my daily10 process.

​​But since the reason I came up with those ideas in the first place was that daily10 process… I thought I would put those better ideas on hold and tell you about this valuable way to quickly come up with 2-3 good ideas for your daily emails.

So now you know.

And if you ever thought you suffered from “writer’s block”… well, now you also know that it’s really just an excuse not to sit down and write down 10 possible ideas, even if all of them are bad.

But enough inspiration. On to sales:​​

In a convoluted way, my email today is an example of my Most Valuable Email trick in action.

I hope I haven’t given too much away. Maybe I have.

​​But if there is still something that you think you can learn about the Most Valuable Email trick, then you can get educated via the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Fish finder business Cinderella story

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Here’s a Cinderella story you might like and even profit from:

A guy named Yank Dean (yes, real name) started a new company called Hummingbird.

Hummingbird sold an innovative product — a sonar-based fish finder for recreational fisherman. Previously, such fish finders were only available to commercial fishermen.

Quickly, sales shot up to $6 million a year.

Dean estimated the market for his product was $50 million a year. But Hummingbird couldn’t get past that $6 mil limit.

They interviewed and observed customers. They came up with nine new, better variations of the fish finder. The spent time and money on marketing.

And sales still wouldn’t budge. This drove the company close to bankruptcy.

And then one day, a woman working for Hummingbird, Sue Symon, was hanging out at a Bass Pro Shop. She saw another woman reaching for Hummingbird’s fish finder.

“Excuse me,” Symon asked, “what are you buying?”

The other woman replied:

“I don’t care. My husband takes me and the kids out on the boat on the weekends and it’s boring as hell. The kids go crazy. I thought maybe one of these would at least keep them entertained.”

Symon went back to her fish finder overlords and suggested that maybe they are in the wrong business. They thought they were in the fish-finding business. Maybe they are in the entertaining-kids-and-wives business.

The fish finder execs were convinced to give it a go. After all, the company was all but bankrupt.

So they stripped out lots of features from their product. They made it easier and more fun to use. They started selling where kids and wives might see it.

Result:

The first year after the change, Hummingbird went from selling $6 million of its sonar fish finder to selling $75 million of its wife and kid entertainment stations. At the peak, they sold $120 million in a year.

​​The end.

Nice story, right?

​​One of those inspirational and yet useless business case studies.

The conclusion to such case studies is usually one of:

​​Think outside the box…

​​You might not be in the business you think you’re in…

​​Give a man a fish, you feed yourself for a day… teach him how to keep his kids from screaming and his wife from nagging, and you feed yourself for a lifetime.

But how do you possibly recreate something like the Hummingbird story in your own business?

I don’t know. But I know somebody who might know.

His name is Merrick Furst. Once upon a time, he was the dean of the computer science school at Carnegie Mellon. Now he is the Director of the Center for Deliberate Innovation at Georgia Tech.

Basically, using his large brain and his mathematical and CS skills, Furst tries to answer such questions as, “Is this a good idea? And if not, could it be a good idea somewhere else? And if not, what might be a better idea? And how can we systematize this?”

Here’s why I’m telling you this:

Along with a few other smart, oversuccessful people, Furst has written a new book. That’s where I got the story above.

I haven’t read more of this book yet except this story (the book was published 3 days ago).

But if you’re in business… if you create innovative offers… if you want to maximize your chances of making something like $120 million with a change of approach that might be systematizeable… then the following book might be worth a read:

https://bejakovic.com/furst

About the only times I’ve ever felt okay

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Last night, I was reading a book about money and I came upon a quirky passage about John D. Rockefeller.

At one point, Rockefeller’s unimaginable wealth was worth 1.5% of the entire U.S. GDP, equivalent to about $349 billion today.

From the book I was reading:

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John D. Rockefeller was one of the most successful businessmen of all time. He was also a recluse, spending most of his time by himself. He rarely spoke, deliberately making himself inaccessible and staying quiet when you caught his attention.

A refinery worker who occasionally had Rockefeller’s ear once remarked: “He lets everybody else talk, while he sits back and says nothing.”

When asked about his silence during meetings, Rockefeller often recited a poem:

A wise old owl lived in an oak,
The more he saw the less he spoke,
The less he spoke, the more he heard,
Why aren’t we all like that wise old bird?

===

Speaking of wise old birds:

Legendary copywriter Robert Collier wrote that the most powerful appeal in copy is vanity, “that unconscious vanity which makes a man want to feel important in his own eyes and makes him strut mentally.”

Legendary negotiation coach Jim Camp said that from the moment we are all born, we struggle to feel comfortable and safe, or as Camp put it, “okay.” Not behind others in the race of life. Not inferior.

I don’t know about you. I know it’s true in my case. I like to feel smart. Or at least not inferior. I’ll struggle and strive to prove it. Except it never really works.

The point of today’s email is to be like that wise old owl.

Like Jim Camp and Robert Collier and John D. say, there’s real power in shutting up and letting your adversary feel okay, smart, in letting him mentally strut.

It’s the kind of thing you want to do if you’re selling or negotiating.

I’ll only add a little bit, which has nothing to do with selling or negotiation.

​​And that’s that the only times I’ve really felt okay is when I stopped trying to do anything to feel okay.

Something for you to consider, or to entirely ignore.

As for the business end of this email:

You won’t hear vanity discussed often in copywriting courses. But you will find it analyzed in several different ways in Round 19 of my Copy Riddles program, which deals with a sexy technique for writing bullets that leave other copywriters green with envy.

If you’d like to find out more about Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Take a look at this

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Maybe you’ve heard that last month, marketer Todd Brown assembled a gathering called Copy Legends:

A bunch of top copywriters, in a mansion in Palm Beach. Sitting around a big table. Talking openly for a day, while cameras and microphones record it all.

What did these legendary copywriters have to say?
​​
Well, for example, during a discussion of headlines, Copy Legend Kyle Milligan, who used to be a copy chief at financial publisher Agora and who made a name for himself by analyzing sales letters on YouTube, said the following:

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I believe everyone way overcomplicates what needs to be done at the start of a promotion. They’re looking for this whiz-bang tactic to grab attention.

Yet, there are these tried-and-true openers which continue to work like crazy. Like, a visual pattern interrupt that just says ‘look at this’ and gets the prospect to sort of adjust and focus for a second is like one of the most timeless, time-tested methods there is.

If you don’t know what else to do for an opener, go with ‘Take a look at this.’ It’s like old faithful.

===

Kyle’s comment got a lot of people nodding their legendary heads around the Copy Legends table.

I found this amusing.

Because it’s a kind of anti-proof element for the whole concept of Copy Legends. As Todd says himself in the headline for the Copy Legends sales page, that concept is:

​“NEW Copy Techniques Working Like Crazy Today”

As in, they didn’t exist yesterday, and they will probably change by tomorrow.

It makes good sense to position an offer like this.

Like Kyle said around the Copy Legends table, people want that promise. They want whiz-bang tactics. And they will pay good money for such whiz-bangery, even though the really effective methods, as Kyle said at the actual Copy Legends event, are things that keep working year after year, decade after decade.

Todd Brown will soon release upon the world his Copy Legends recordings.

I won’t be buying it. But I certainly won’t tell you not to buy if you are after “new copy techniques.”

On the other hand, perhaps you are looking for timeless, time-tested copywriting techniques.

​​Technique that worked 50 years ago, 5 years ago, 5 months ago… and that will continue to work into the future, because they are based on fundamental human psychology and the competitive research of history’s greatest copywriters.

If that’s what you’re looking for, then… take a look at this:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Hotel Octavia Campo: New room available

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This morning, I rolled out of the creaky hotel bed and stumbled across the dusty, cavernous old hotel room, past the sink, to the small table in the corner, which barely held my typewriter.

Suddenly, somebody started rapping on the door.

“Open up! Open up right now!”

I opened the door to find Octavia Campo, the wife of the hotel owner.

“If I told you once,” she said as she pushed her way past me, “I told you a thousand times!”

I rubbed my face and took a deep breath. “Good morning, Octavia.”

“Don’t good morning me,” she barked. “All night long, clack-clack-clack from your room. All my other guests are complaining! I told you a thousand times! This is a residential hotel! No typewriters! No work allowed here!”

I reached for my Tommy Bahama shirt. And then I walked over to my typewriter, and started to fit it in its carrying case.

Octavia Campo kept railing. “While you’re staying in my hotel” — here she pointed at her chest — “you will not be making any money! This isn’t some brothel, some butcher shop! I only want respectable guests here, who come to sleep and that’s it!”

“I understand completely,” I said. “I’ll take my typewriter now. And I’ll send a boy later for my clothes.”

Octavia’s face got tomato-red. “Good!” she said. “And don’t come back! I don’t want your kind in my hotel! You don’t care how you ruin the reputations of others!”

And that’s pretty much how I checked out of Hotel Octavia Campo… and checked into the shiny and new Bedazzling Happiness Towers, down by the beach, where the guests are free to do what they like in their rooms, and the air is fresh.

Maybe you’re wondering what I’m on about. Well, about that:

Starting a week ago, I’ve been writing and sending my new, daily health newsletter. I’ve been writing and sending it from Hotel Octavia Campo — aka ActiveCampaign.

But then this morning, I got a note from ActiveCampaign telling me that my email from yesterday was not sent. Why? Because it contained an affiliate link.

The note I got from ActiveCampaign wasn’t as shrill as I tried to make Octavia Campo sound. It even offered suggestions for some workarounds.

But still, it was more than I was willing to tolerate.

So I spent about a half hour this morning to move my daily health newsletter to shiny and new Beehiiv, the platform I already use for my weekly health newsletter. I’m not really sure why I didn’t do this in the first place.

In time, I might even move this marketing newsletter over to Beehiiv, because I’m so fed up with ActiveCampaign, and so satisfied with Beehiiv — Bedazzling Happiness.

You might think I will promote Beehiiv at this point, using — gasp — an affiliate link.

But no, and not just because ActiveCampaign might throttle me for doing so.

Today I have a special, one-day, newsletter-related offer to celebrate my move to Bedazzling Happiness Towers.

As you might know, I’m planning to launch a newsletter-related community soon, all about how to publish, grow, and monetize a newsletter.

I haven’t decided exactly how that will look, what it will cost, and what it will include.

But I know it won’t be nearly as one-on-one and as generous as the following offer:

Today only, I’m offering a 1-hour consult at a price I would never offer it otherwise, $100.

This consult is for you if you already publish a newsletter, and want to grow it or monetize it better… or you do not yet publish a newsletter, and you want help in picking a niche, a concept, or a content strategy.

I am willing to sit with you, listen to you, answer your questions, offer my feedback and experience and advice, based on what I’ve learned writing this daily marketing newsletter over the past five years, my weekly health newsletter over the past year, and my daily health newsletter over the past week.

I want to help you succeed with your newsletter, or succeed more. I will share whatever information you can squeeze out of me in an hour, I won’t hold anything back, and I will give you my best ideas.

The only reason I am offering to do this, and at such a low price, is because 1) I’m in a good mood thanks to (at least partly) moving out of Hotel Octavia Campo, and 2) as research and prep for that newsletter community I’m planning.

Speaking of:

If you take me up on this 1-hour consult, I will also apply it to that future community, so you get one month of it for free.

Today’s offer won’t make me rich, and it will require me to work. So I’m limiting it to the first three people who take me up on it.

The cart link is below. If you send me the $100, we can then figure out a time to get on the call that works for both of us.

And if the link below isn’t working, that means three people already signed up, and I’ve turned this offer off.

So in case you’d like in, best move now and move fast:

https://desertkite.thrivecart.com/goodbye-octavia/

What it’s like to be… faced with AI eating your job

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Question:

What’s the worst thing you can ever say to a TV weather woman?

Answer:

“That’s not what my app says…”

I’ll tell you in a second how I found out that riveting bit of information. But first:

At a recent gathering of copywriters in London, I saw several attendees hang their heads and say, “As we all know, it’s been a rough year for many copywriters.”

I kept quiet because I didn’t want to expose my ignorance and absence of rough year.

​​I don’t work with clients any more. And my year has been fine.

What exactly has been rough on copywriters who do work with clients?

Is it the economic climate? AI taking copywriting jobs? Too much competition from the glut of would-be copywriters who entered the field over the past few years?

I felt it would be tactless to ask. So I kept quiet.

But back to the weather woman. I found out that the best way to piss off such a one is to say, “That’s not what my app says.”

I found that out because I’m dipping my toes into a new podcast, called What It’s Like To Be.

The podcast features interviews with people in different professions, so you can find out what it’s like to do their job. The last episode was TV weather woman Lacey Swope, who works for News 9 in Oklahoma City, the world epicenter of extreme weather.

I had no particular interest in hearing what it’s like to be a TV weather woman. But I’m glad I listened.

Because in many ways, weather womaning turns out to be a profession very similar to copywriting.

For example:​​

The job of being a TV meteorologist requires two separate skills — the technical skill of divining the weather, and the presentation skill, you might even say sales skill, of being friendly and cute on TV.

But wait, there’s more.

Weather meteorologists have for years been under threat by apps and websites that give the masses by-the-minute weather info. And the TV weather people who are surviving and thriving in spite of it are all—

… well for that, I will point you to the podcast itself.

You can find the podcast episode at the link below.

It’s worthwhile listening if you’re working as copywriter, and wondering what the future might bring, and how you can best prepare for it.

TV weather men and weather women been there, maybe a decade earlier. You can lean surprisingly practical stuff by listening to Lacey Swope and thinking how to apply her experiences and attitudes to your career.

And if that’s not enough to get you to click through and listen, then I will tell you the reason I started listening to What It’s Like To Be in the first place.

It’s because it’s the new podcast of Dan Heath, who is one half of the Heath brothers team that wrote the book Made to Stick.

​​So if you want to hear how somebody who literally wrote the book on effective, viral, long-lasting communication organizes and structures his content, then here ya go:

https://www.whatitsliketobe.com/2246914/13858315-a-tv-meteorologist

PS. Thanks to everyone who joined me and Kieran for the the storytelling presentation earlier today. I feel it went well. But I honestly never know when I’m presenting. If you were there live, I’d love to know what you thought of it. Write in and let me know.

It’s not funny if they’re laughing

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I got a testimonial. I’m very excited. I want to share it with you.

I know, I know. You can’t wait.

But there’s a point to the testimonial, beyond just the self-promotion. Trust me.

New reader Kameron Bryant, who just got my Simple Money Emails course yesterday, asked me for the link to Monday’s storytelling presentation, which is a disappearing bonus if you get Simple Money Emails right now.

After I sent the link over, Kameron wrote:

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Thanks for sending over and I’m loving the course.

In my eyes it’s more than a course. I see it as a money making email road map.

I’ll be re-reading for the foreseeable future.

Thanks

P.S

I’m a newbie in the email copy space and the testimonial from the guy who said he finally felt comfortable getting client work is what pushed me over… and he was right.

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Now, there is no doubt I am telling you this in a kind of blindingly obvious way to promote Simple Money Emails. But if you want or need a marketing lesson as well, consider the following bit of science:

There was a study in Australia once upon a time. They made university students listen to a recording of a comedian, along with the laugh track provided by an audience.

In one scenario, the students believed the audience on the recording is students from the same university.

In another scenario, the students believed the audience are members of the far-right One Nation party.

In a third scenario, the students just got the recording of the comedian, without the audience laughter.

Result?

The laugh track made the comedian 400% funnier in the “just like us” case… 0% funnier in the “despicable them” case.

As the authors of the study put it, “It’s not funny if they’re laughing.”

Same goes with sales:

People who are just like your prospect is the strongest form of social proof, stronger even than getting a thumbs-up from a Tony Robbins or a Bill Clinton or whoever is the star in your industry.

That’s the lesson you can draw from the last line of Kameron’s testimonial above, beyond the fact that you should buy Simple Money Emails.

But back to self-promotion:

Tomorrow at 4pm CET/10am EST/7am PST, Kieran Drew and I will host a free presentation on storytelling.

The presentation is free as in, you gotta have Simple Money Emails to get in for free. If you have SME before the presentation starts, you get the presentation link and the subsequent recording. Otherwise no.

This is the last email I will send before tomorrow’s presentation. So if you’d like to get in, the time to move is now.

The sales page is at the link below, where you can find testimonials from a book editor… a career coach… a freelance copywriter… an in-house copywriter.

I haven’t yet added the testimonial by an online entrepreneur, Kieran Drew himself, who wrote recently that Simple Money Emails is the the best email writing course he’s ever taken.

If you’d like to join us tomorrow:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

The ONE thing to know about storytelling

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The ONE thing to know about storytelling is that, like cooking, plumbing, and robbing a bank, storytelling is really a collection of skills and strategies rather than a single unifying rule to follow.

I know you probably don’t want to hear that. But look at this:

– How do I know when I’m using too much detail?

– ​How do you know where to stop?

– ​How to add twists to a story?

– ​Making up stories… When might you want to do this?

A few days ago, I asked readers what questions they have about storytelling. Above are a few of the replies I got.

All fair questions. All require separate answers. Any answer that could possibly answer all of them, such as tension! or surprise! or delight!, is so vague as to be useless.

But wait, there’s more.

The real thing I want to share with you in this email is not the discouraging message above.

Rather, I wanna tell you something interesting I read yesterday in a book about magic and showmanship. The author of that book says the best performers, magicians, and showmen practice something he calls conservation.

Conservation: the ability to do more and the will to refrain.

From the book: “If we try to give any routine more importance than it will bear, we destroy the illusion and may reveal the secret.” Hence, conservation. The willingness to hold back the full might of your armory of magic tricks.

Same goes for storytelling.

There are lots of tricks if you really break down what the best storytellers do.

But in order to tell an interesting and effective story, you definitely do not need all of these tricks. In fact, one or two tweaks to what you might normally do are all it takes to turn a bland story into something memorable and exciting.

And on the other hand, making use of more than just one or two tricks per story is likely to destroy the illusion and may reveal the secret.

What secret?

Well, for that (drumroll) I invite you to join me for the free presentation on storytelling that Kieran Drew and I will host on Monday, specifically at 4pm CET/10am EST/7am PST (yes, I know).

This presentation is a bonus for those who get Simple Money Emails before the presentation goes live. After that, no free bonus.

If you already have Simple Money Emails, you should have gotten an email from either Kieran or me with the Zoom link to join Monday’s presentation.

And if you don’t yet have Simple Money Emails, you can get it at the link below. ​​I could try for some callback humor right now to wrap up this email, but instead I will conserve and refrain. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

What’s wrong with affiliates?

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Story time:

10 years ago, my friend Sam and I naively decided to become Internet marketing millionaires.

Somehow we found Andre Chaperon’s Tiny Little Businesses course.

We rubbed our hands together, and envisioned that in six months’ time, we’d be sitting at the beach, drinking margaritas, occasionally leaning over to our laptops to see how many more thousands of dollars had rolled in over the past 15 minutes.

Andre’s TLB told us to pick a niche, find a product we could promote as an affiliate, then build a list using that affiliate product as the offer.

Sam and I followed this recipe to a T and beyond.

We spent weeks picking out the perfect niche (hard gainers, skinny guys who want to put on muscle but can’t).

We did market research to find out the pain points, motivations, and language used by our target market (it helped that both Sam and I were both in our target market, tall and hopelessly skinny).

We found the perfect affiliate offer to promote, a quality program, fairly expensive, with a good sales page. It would make it easy to pay for ads with even a few sales.

I had seen that the owners of this offer had previously worked with affiliates.

But when the time came to promote them, I couldn’t find the form on their site to sign up as an affiliate.

I wrote to the owners to ask about it. A reply came back:

“Thanks for the interest. But we’ve actually paused taking on new affiliates at the moment. It doesn’t really work for our business.”

First, there was a moment of shock. Then my blood pressure shot up.

I may or may not have fired back an email, explaining to this guy that he doesn’t know how business is done online… that this is free money that he’s saying no to… that a new customer is the most valuable thing a business could ever get, and that’s what I’m offering to bring him.

Very rightly and very wisely, the offer owner did not respond to my stupid email.

Those were the early days of my marketing career. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that a businesses would not want to sell offers (particularly info products, with no marginal cost) to somebody new, with no effort involved.

“What’s wrong with affiliates?” I asked myself. My newbie brain simply couldn’t handle it.

As you can guess, Sam and I never recovered from this setback. Our dreams of a drunken 4-hour workweek on the beach vanished like receding waves in the sand.

But that was a long time ago. I’ve learned a lot about marketing and online businesses since then. I’ve heard and seen many other successful marketers say they do not work with affiliates. And today, I can tell you…

I still don’t really get it.

I mean, what could possibly be wrong with affiliates? Why would anybody ever say no?

Over the past few months, I have had two affiliates promote my stuff.

Daniel Throssell promoted my Copy Riddles course back in September.

Right now, Kieran Drew is promoting Simple Money Emails.

During both promos, I rolled out of bed each morning to find thousands of dollars worth of new sales, dozens or hundreds of new subscribers, and somebody with standing in the industry going out of his way to say nice things about me and my products. Here’s a few bits from Kieran’s email yesterday:

===

SUBJECT: The best email writing course I’ve ever taken

B – E -J – A – K – O – V – I – C

The reason I’m shouting letters over Zoom like a Croatian spelling bee is because my friend asked for my favourite newsletters.

I always recommend this guy. People always sound skeptical. It’s not quite the standard Ben Settle or Justin Welsh you hear chucked around in our space.

But out of the hundreds of lists I’m lurking on, John Bejakovic’s emails glue me to the screen the most, and keep me coming back for more.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say he’s the best email copywriter you’ve probably never heard of.

[… Kieran goes on to explain the offer, course plus two free bonuses, and then he says:]

Yes, this is an affiliate link.

But I’ve taken his course 5 times in 5 months. It’s an hour read yet every time I come out noticeably better at copy. Few courses have that effect – which is why I’m promoting it.

===

Who would not want endorsements like this?

​​Aren’t affiliates just the greatest thing in the world?

But maybe you are wiser and more perceptive than I am.

“Kinda cherrypicking there, ain’t you John? Both Kieran and Daniel are pretty atypical cases.”

Maybe.

They do both have a list that they email regularly. They have both built a bond with that list, and authority and trust. And more.

They both cultivate discipline in their readers, rather than preaching the gospel of the 4-hour workweek. They both, explicitly or implicitly, repel people who aren’t down with their message.

In short, both Kieran and Daniel have spent time building up a quality list and emailing themselves into a healthy, respect-filled relationship with that list. And now I get to benefit from it.

I’m not sure what my point is, except:

1) Great affiliates are great, and

2) If you want to be a great affiliate, start a list today. And if you already have one, email it more often, starting today.

And if you don’t want to be anybody’s affiliate, but you simply want to have the opportunity to sell any reasonable and helpful offer you decide to create, start a list today. And if you already have one… well, you know where I’m going with this.

In fact, you probably knew all this before. But if hasn’t clicked yet, or if something is still holding you back, here’s a course that has helped others before you:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/