The reputation benefit of a bigger list

by

My own email list — this one, about marketing and copywriting and influence — is tiny. But some of the people on my list have much bigger lists than I do.

One such person is Russell Nohelty. Russell is a bestselling author of fantasy books and comics. He also writes about the business of writing, and he runs Writer MBA, a membership program to help writers make more money.

Russell’s audience on Substack is over 70,000 people.

Last week, when I started writing about my plan to grow a new list via paid traffic, Russell reached out. He offered to share his experiences spending $30k since February to grow his audience.

Russell and I got on a call this past Monday. It was interesting and valuable throughout, but one thing in particular stuck with me, something Russell said about the reputation benefits of various list sizes. In Russell’s words:

===

There were a couple of break points where everything felt different.

10,000 emails felt different than 8,000.

30,000 emails felt way different than 20,000 emails.

From my experience, talking to other people, 50,000, 80,000 — there’s different break points where people go, “Oh you’ve got 45,000 people on your list! Yes, I want to get in front of them!”

Promotions become easier. When you’re a Dream 100 guy like I am, you can reach out to almost anyone and be like, “Hey, do you wanna be in front of my 35,000, 45,000, whatever the number is, people.”

===

I can imagine that somebody somewhere has just crossed his arms and frowned. “Well, I’d much rather have a small but mighty list than a stupid big list that doesn’t read or buy from me.”

Sure. It’s my policy as well with my own list. That said, you can have both a large and a mighty list — Russell does.

But here’s the sneaky thing:

All of us constantly use mental shortcuts to evaluate the people around us and the choices we have.

On the one hand, a large list is an immensely valuable asset for its own sake.

On the other hand, a large list is also an immensely valuable asset because of its reputation benefit. Because people treat you differently if you get one. Because opportunities open up which would be closed otherwise.

All that’s to say, if you got a business, and a list, but it’s not quite going how you’d like… then the solution might just be to get a bigger list. Maybe if you can make it to the next break point, like Russell says above, then your problems now might just go poof.

Which brings me back to my plan to grow a new list via paid traffic.

If you like, you can join me. You can build up your own list using the same process I will be following, and get my copywriting feedback and marketing input while we work alongside each other.

I can tell you right now that the investment for this offer is $497 to get started, plus $10-$15 a day for ads. If that doesn’t deter you, hit reply and tell me so, and I can give you more information.

$10-$15/day to stop being a newbie

by

For the past couple days, I’ve been fielding responses about my new “work alongside me” offer.

In short, I’ve launched a new list and I’m starting to grow it by paying for ads. I’m inviting people who want to follow the same process I’m following to work alongside me and to grow their own list.

Inevitably, I’ve gotten a few timid hand-raises from folks who consider themselves beginners, like the following message:

===

I don’t actually have a list yet. But I am scouting for products at the moment, which I would like to promote as an affiliate.

Would this offer be relevant for me as a newbie?

I am starting this side venture in the hopes of replacing my 9 to 5.

===

And the answer is…

Yes yes, of course! This offer’s PERFECT for newbies!! Just give me your money now, and we can talk about it later.

A little more seriously:

I followed up with the dude above. I wanted to know what exactly “newbie” meant to him. Turns out, he has been studying marketing and copywriting for a year+, buying courses, preparing to jump in for real.

The fact is, I do think that this “work alongside me” offer would be relevant to him.

But whatever I write now will seem self-serving, just as self-serving as my “yes yes, just pay me” rant above.

So I won’t write anything now.

Instead, let me share something I wrote almost six years ago, specifically on Dec 29 2018, in an email with the subject line, “The salutary effect of paying for traffic.” That email was about my campaign at the time to grow my alternative health list via Facebook ads, and the positive effect it had on me:

===

Well, paying for traffic doesn’t have the same salutary effect [as making cold calls].

But it does make me want to write emails every day to these leads.

What’s more, it makes me want to write emails that get read and get people stirred up.

In other words, I’m no longer just writing for the sake of being able to say I’ve done it. Instead, I’m writing to make sales.

That’s both because I’m spending money on traffic now (rather than counting on an indefinite stream of leads from Google)…

And it’s also because it becomes a game — can I make back the money that I will spend on ads, so I can do this all over again on a bigger scale?

The weird thing is, this kind of sales-first writing is something I’ve been able to do for a long time — as long as I was writing for clients. But it took paying for traffic to get me to do it in my own project as well.

===

I’d like to suggest that paying for traffic could have the same salutary and head-clearing effect on you, even if you are a newbie.

Does that mean this “work alongside me” offer will give you a side venture that can replace your 9-5?

Nope. It will only give you one thing, and that’s a paid traffic system to build you an audience.

That done, you will still need to find or create offers to promote. And you will still need emails to send to people, whether you write them yourself or get someone else to do it.

At the same time, will you be 1,000,000x more likely to do those things and actually succeed if you start paying to build an audience… than if you just keep paying for courses and preparing to jump in for another year?

I absolutely believe you will, for reasons that I wrote about in that email from 2018:

The fact you will be paying money (even $10-$15 a day is very motivating)…

The fact you will be able to see quickly if it’s working or not…

The fact that it will feel like a game you want to win.

Of course, ultimately, it’s your call and your decision.

But if you want to experience the salutary effect of paying for traffic, and get some real experience, which you can then flip over and over on a bigger scale, then maybe you’d like to get my help along the way?

That’s what this “work alongside me” offer is about. In case you’re interested, hit reply, and I can give you more information.

The Shoshal Media Redemption

by

In my 13+ years of trying to make money online, I have had precisely ZERO success in creating an audience on social media. But I do know somebody who’s had a lot of success with it.

It’s my friend Kieran Drew. Since 2021, Kieran has built up an enviable one-man business on the back of a 250,000-person audience across Twitter and LinkedIn.

A couple days ago, Kieran launched a new product, and in promoting it, he wrote:

===

Because I don’t know about you, but I became an entrepreneur for freedom.

I want to spend my days doing what I love because I choose to.

But social media?

It’s a prison in disguise

You have to post every damn day and slave away in the comments. And if you stop, you fade into obscurity within weeks.

You’ve basically made an algorithm your boss.

And the crazy part?

You don’t even own your audience. You rent it. And they can rip away the keys whenever they’d like.

===

Maybe, like Kieran, you’ve had success on social media.

In that case, maybe you can empathize with what he says. Maybe you’ve had your fill of constant posting and replying… and fighting off dwindling reach… and crack-like addiction to notifications.

Or…

Maybe you haven’t yet had success on social media. Maybe you’re hoping to build an audience there, and you are looking up to people like Kieran.

In that case, maybe Kieran’s message above gives you a taste of what’s waiting for you in case you get what you think you want.

But let me pay off the Shoshal Media Redemption subject line.

If social media is a kind of Shawshank Prison for Kieran, with its loss of autonomy and control… then what’s the equivalent of the little fishing village on the Pacific coast of Mexico, where you can live life on your own terms?

Like Kieran says in his new promo, it’s having your own engaged email list.

Sounds great, except… how do you build up an email list if you don’t use social?

I’d like to propose a way that doesn’t involve years of hammering through the thick wall of indifference on LinkedIn… or crawling through a mile-long sewage pipe on Twitter.

That way is to pay, specifically for ads, more specifically for engaged subscribers to grow your email list.

Sure, ads cost money. But wouldn’t you pay money to stay out — or get out — of prison?

If you’re at least open to the idea, I’d like to remind you that I have started a new list. And in the next few days, I’ll start building it up via ads.

If you like, you can join me. You can build up your own list using the same process I will be following, and get my copywriting feedback and marketing input while we work alongside each other.

I can tell you right now that the investment for this offer is $497. If that doesn’t totally deter you, hit reply and tell me so. I can get you the full details of my daring escape plan, and you can decide if you want to join me, or if Shawshank Prison doesn’t sound so bad after all.

Announcing: Attentive human vending machine

by

In Hangzhou, China, there’s a vending machine that sells live crabs. The machine has a 3x-your-crabs guarantee — if it ever spits out a dead crab, you will be compensated with three live ones.

Significantly higher up the prestige totem pole, there is the gold bullion vending machine in Dubai. It holds up to 520kg of gold, and prices are updated every 10 minutes via an Internet feed.

And then, higher still, all the way at the top, with diamond-level prestige, there is the attentive human vending machine.

That’s what I want to talk to you about today.

The attentive human vending machine takes in $10-$15 in coins or credit, and dispenses 10-15 attentive humans.

More specifically, it dispenses 10-15 readers for your email list.

You can then email these new readers, so they read whan you wrote… recommend you to other attentive humans… and buy from you when you choose to sell them something.

And if you like, you can go back to the attentive human vending machine whenever you like, even every day, and put in more coins and get more attentive humans out.

As you can probably guess, the attentive human vending machine is paid traffic. Ads. A system that takes in money, and gives you readers in return.

I’ve started a new list and I will start building it up via ads.

I will be following the how-to blueprint of a master list builder and media buyer I’ve had the good fortune to come across.

If you like, you can join me. You can build up your own list using the same process I will be following, and get my copywriting feedback and marketing input while you put your attentive human vending machine together.

I can tell you right now that the investment for this offer is $497.

That happens to be the price of the blueprint I mentioned above, the course that lays out the how-to of the master list builder.

Depending on your perspective, that means you can either invest $497 to tap into my ~10 years of professional copywriting experience, and get my help with your ad copy and landing pages, and get the how-to blueprint for free…

Or you can pay $497 for the blueprint, and get to work alongside me, and see how I do it, and get my help and advice, for free.

In either case, the way forward is to reply to this email and express your interest.

I’ll send you more details about how this project work. You can then decide if you want to join me… or if you’d rather go spend your money on a bunch of possibly dead crabs.

Everything is copy

by

I woke up this morning to see an email from one of my most dedicated readers, copywriter Carlo Gargiulo, who wrote:

===

Hi John,

Are you ok?

I didn’t get your email yesterday!

I hope you are okay and it is just a technical problem.

===

I appreciate the concern. I am indeed okay. As for my non-email yesterday:

In the 5+ years of this daily email newsletter, I’ve missed sending an email only two times, yesterday being one.

On both occasions, my email service provider, ActiveCampaign, wasn’t working properly, and their support team didn’t fix the problem in time or even get back to me.

But like Nora Ephron’s mother used to coldly say whenever little Nora came home, crying about some injury or insult:

“Someday this will be funny, and you will write about it. Everything is copy.”

I’m still not finding the situation funny, but it has actually become copy.

The good news is that my non-email yesterday forced me to do something I had been planning to do for years, and had still planned to put off for a couple of weeks — and that’s to move out of the dingy and leaky-roofed hotel Olivia Campo, aka ActiveCampaign.

And so, I’m writing you today from my comfortable new email home on Convert Kit Lane. I’m still moving in and so it’s a mess around here, but at least I have a place to sleep.

As for my email yesterday, the one that will never be sent, it announced that today I will actually be starting a new promotion.

It’s for the “work alongside me” offer to build up your list via ads, with my feedback and help. I revealed a bunch of details about that offer in my non-email yesterday, but I will save that now for the official announcement later today at the usual time.

Thanks for reading. And now, I’ll go do some more unpacking.

Using pendulum swings to predict opportunities

by

I read today that SpaceHey just reached 1 million users. In case you don’t know, as I didn’t —

​​SpaceHey is an ugly and basic social media network that’s meant to recall the web of the early 2000s.

SpaceHey was started four years ago by a German 18-year-old with no budget. Last week, SpaceHey reached 1 million users. It still has no budget, except occasional donations from users who love the service.

Point being:

In pop culture as in politics, there are pendulum swings. A big part of how we humans define ourselves is in opposition to what came before, or in opposition to what’s here now that we don’t like.

The result of this are pendulum swings, from polished to rough, crowded to sparse, materialistic to spiritual, conservative to liberal.

It makes sense to keep an eye on what the pendulum is doing. It can give you clues about what’s coming in the future, and where opportunities might lie.

And on that note, I would like to announce that starting tomorrow, I will be promoting a $497 course called myPeeps, put together by Travis Speegle.

Travis is an expert list builder and media buyer, who has built up email lists totaling some 7.5 million subscribers for big brands (BowFlex, Thrive Market, Truth About Cancer) as well as for big non-profits (Surfrider Foundation and Well.org).

Travis’s myPeeps course lays out his how-to of buying ads to grow an email list. It’s based on Travis’s experience and philosophy, which is to keep things simple, fast, and effective.

I’ve gone through Travis’s myPeeps myself. I’m planning to follow it to the letter to grow a new list I have started.

And if you like, you can work alongside me, follow Travis’s process also, and build up your own list with my help and feedback.

I’ll have more info on how this “work alongside me” component will look. For now, I’ll just say this will be a free bonus I’ll be offering to encourage you to buy myPeeps through my affiliate link.

And in case you’re wondering, Why? Why this? Why now?

It’s because I’m feeling a pendulum swing away from Twitter and social and free means of list building in general.

I’m feeling it in myself. I’m feeling it in the people I talk to.

This includes some people who have actually been successful in the past in growing a free audience on social. In spite of their success, they are feeling fed up. And they are looking for an alternative that costs less time, that’s more reliable, and that doesn’t require them to build their house on a platform that could be pulled out from under them on a whim.

But more about all that tomorrow. Meanwhile, if you want to know what the future looks like:

https://spacehey.com/

Just suck it up

by

HER: “Are you upset with me?”

ME: “No, I’m just in a bad mood.”

HER: “What’s wrong?”

ME: “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

HER: “Ok… but is it something I did?”

ME: “No, but I really don’t want to discuss it.”

HER: “I see… but maybe I can help? If you would just tell me what’s wrong…”

This is the kind of conversation I’ve had a thousand and one times with various girlfriends.

Whenever I’m feeling upset, bad, uncertain, miserable, the last thing I want to do is discuss it.

In my experience, bad moods tend to pass — sleep fixes almost anything.

​​But when I try to give a form to my bad moods, when I crystalize the dark clouds in my head into little droplets called words, then somehow all that negativity becomes real and permanent. And if I go one step beyond, and share those words with somebody else, it becomes doubly real and permanent.

HER: “Are you still feeling bad about X?”

ME: No. [thinking to myself, no, I wasn’t, until now.]

This is not to put the blame on any of my ex gfs. I know they were just trying to help. I also know I’m the odd one out, and that most people actually feel better when they discuss what’s bothering them.

BUT!

I was still pleased to come across a study a while back, published in the prestigious journal Science, that pretty much backed me up.

Two cognitive scientists at Cambridge had a hypothesis that suppressing negative thoughts not only would not harm mental health… but would actually improve it.

They set up an experiment where they trained some 120 people, across 6 countries, in the techniques of sucking it up. The result was just as they predicted:

– no paradoxical increase in negative thoughts
– less frequent, less vivid, and less anxiety-producing negative thoughts

So there you go — just suck it up.

Or don’t.

It’s likely that this Cambridge study is just a swing of the pendulum. We’ve been told for so long that it’s important to express what you feel, it was inevitable somebody somewhere would try to say otherwise.

And I’m sure that if you like to talk things out when you feel bad, there are plenty of studies to back you up also.

Maybe it’s just like Walker Percy said, that modern science cannot say anything about you specifically as an individual.

That’s my bit of inspiration for you for this Sunday.

​​If you want some more, you can find it in my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

Most of those commandments have to do with copywriting and marketing. But a few have to do with thinking and living. As you can imagine, those are the most valuable ones. If you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Do you make this mistake with your customer database?

by

Back in the early 1990s, the New Jersey Nets — the NBA team that’s now the Brooklyn Nets — had a rather clever way of cutting costs:

Each season, they saved on hard drive space by deleting the names of the previous season’s ticket holders.

After all, who’s got space for all those names, addresses, and phone numbers of people who had paid thousands of dollars for season tickets?

Besides, if anybody had not renewed their season ticket this year, then what was the point of keeping their contact data? The Nets could just go out and run TV ads or radio ads or maybe go knock door-to-door to fill any unfilled seats.

Maybe my tone is not sarcastic enough, so let me make it clear:

If you do a good job selling to a cold audience — to people who have never bought from you before — you can hope for about a 2% conversion rate.

In other words, 1 out of every 50 strangers might decide to give you some money, carefully, guardedly.

On the other hand, if you do a modest job selling to a warm audience — to people who have bought from you before — you can hope for about 20% to 50% conversion rate.

In other words, 1 out of 5 people might decide to give you more money, or it might be as high as 1 in 2. Plus, the selling tends to be easier, and the price more flexible.

All that’s to say, the Nets’ habit of regularly deleting customer records was an act of criminal negligence. It probably cost the organization millions of dollars in profits over the years.

Of course, it’s not much less negligent to save customer records and never do anything with them.

One ecommerce client I worked with had a database of about 150,000 buyers. It just sat there inside Shopify, while the client worked furiously to optimize Facebook ads and bring in more new customers.

But you see where I’m going with this, so let me wrap it up:

Step one is to stop wiping your hard drive clean and throwing customer records away.

Step two is to start selling those customers.

If you want to get it done for you, write me and maybe I can help. Or if you want to get it done yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

A dirty rotten scoundrel’s secret to making a living online

by

I recently watched a dirty little movie called Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is set on the French riviera. It stars Michael Caine as Lawrence, a dapper English scammer who charms rich and corrupt women for large sums of money… and Steve Martin as Freddie, a classless American jackass who milks the pity of any woman for tiny bits of money.

It’s been a few days since I saw the movie. The following monologue by Caine’s dapper scammer is what’s stuck in my mind:

===

Freddie, as a younger man, I was a sculptor, and a painter, and a musician.

There was just one problem. I wasn’t very good. As a matter of fact, I was dreadful.

I finally came to the frustrating conclusion that I had taste and style, but not talent.

Fortunately, I discovered that taste and style are commodities that people desire.

===

Like I said, this stuck with me. Maybe it will stick with you too.

You don’t have to scam anybody — that’s not what this is about.

But what Caine says about taste and style is true. They are commodities that people will pay for.

The amazing thing is that whatever your taste and style — ahem, obscure and campy 80s comedies — there are people out there who will appreciate it. And thanks to the miracle of the Internet, it’s easy and affordable to find such people.

I rely heavily on this, simply curating ideas, articles, movie scenes that I find interesting or funny or outrageous.

You can do the same. You can use your own taste and style, and simply share ideas that somehow impressed you or stuck with you.

That’s all you need to do, and you can be successful.

But if you want to do something a little bit extra with those ideas that impressed you or stuck with you, you can apply what I call the Most Valuable Email trick.

The result will be something that goes beyond what most other people will ever do.

In case you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

“What just happened?”

by

I woke up last night at 2:30am in what felt like a fever.

​​My forehead was wet and my body was burning. “Why is it so hot…” I mumbled as I threw the covers off me.

Turns out I didn’t have a fever. But my A/C did die.

Some time after I’d gone to bed (11pm, nice and cool), the A/C stopped doing its job. Immediately, the Barcelona heat, along with my nighttime panting, brought the temperature in my bedroom up to about 990 degrees.

I promise to get to the marketing moral of this email very soon. But before I get there, I have to share one more personal detail:

I’m kind of done with traveling. The packing, discomfort, displacement — I’m getting more and more resistant to it. I can’t be bothered to take even a half-hour trip out of town.

And yet:

Last night, around 4:30am, as I sat wide awake in my sauna of an apartment, in a mild panic that this is how my life will be until the A/C gets fixed (and who knows when that will be — last year it took two weeks), I started fantasizing about traveling.

Somewhere… anywhere, as long as it was cool, or at least had A/C.

And that’s the marketing moral I promised you. Imagine if in that moment, or really even now, because it’s still very hot, I had come across an ad that said:

===

Did your A/C just die?

Get away from the heat with our special “while your A/C gets fixed” hotel package!

Beautiful getaway in the cool Pyrenees mountains, only two hours’ drive from Barcelona. And yes, we do have A/C in all our rooms, just in case!

To book now, call 1-800-HELLA-HOT

===

… had I seen this ad, I can tell you, I would have called. In fact, I might even go to the trouble of researching such a hotel and calling it now, even without the ad.

The bigger point:

Nothing ever gets done without a deadline, right?

Right.

That’s why marketers have invented a million tricks and tactics for amping up the fear of missing out — countdown timers, 10+ emails on the final day of promos, disappearing bonuses, etc.

All that stuff’s necessary when you’re trying to motivate people who are not internally motivated at that moment.

But there are people who are internally motivated at that moment. And the way you find them is by asking yourself, or better yet, by asking your buyers,

“What just happened? Why did you buy, now?”

Often, it won’t have anything to do with your specific offer (continental breakfast, stylish wood paneling, friendly staff).

Instead, it will have to do with your buyers, and their life circumstances. The A/C that died in their apartment the night before, and the three hours of sleep they got as a result.

Useful info. Because once you know it, you can use it to pick these people out easily from among a huge crowd… to make them a premium offer… and to do them a huge service.

That’s my free advice for today.

But if you’d like to contribute to the Bejako “while the A/C gets fixed” fund, and learn techniques used by A-list copywriters to rope in just the buyers from among a huge audience, you can find that in my Copy Riddles program.

​​For more information on that:

https://bejakovic.com/cr