A mystery about people who willingly live in hell

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A few months ago, I was reading a New Yorker article about foreign nationals — Americans, Frenchmen, Kiwis — who volunteered to fight in Ukraine.

I found the article fascinating. I mean, ask yourself:

What makes someone willing to go halfway around the world, into a war zone, to live in a basement and crawl through mud and huddle in icy trenches, as constant explosions blow out his eardrums and traumatize his nervous system?

What makes a person willing to expose himself to getting shot at and wounded and possibly killed? And what makes him willing to shoot and wound and possibly kill others, who have never done any harm to him or his kind?

Most incredibly, what makes a person do all this voluntarily, without any promise of reward or even any real chance at glory, and without the usual government coaxing or propaganda or impressment?

“Maybe,” you say, “these foreign fighters are fighting for freedom, for justice, for the right thing. Maybe they feel they are doing their duty, as soldiers and as human beings.”

No doubt.

​But taking a page from Frank Bettger’s book, let me ask you one further:

In addition to doing the right thing, what other reason might these foreign fighters have to willingly put themselves in what most people would consider a living hell?

Take a moment to think about that. And when you’re done, read about it from the horse’s mouth, or rather, from the Turtle’s mouth. Here’s a bit from the New Yorker article, about a New Zealander fighting in Ukraine, code name Turtle:

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In New Zealand, he’d been “planning out the rest of my life with a girl.” Before coming to Ukraine, he’d ended the relationship, quit his job, and sold his house and car. “In hindsight, it was very selfish,” he acknowledged. Although he may have suggested to his friends and relatives that Russian atrocities — in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha and elsewhere — had instilled in him a sense of obligation, such moral posturing had been disingenuous. “It was just an excuse to be in this environment again,” Turtle said.

===

Turtle had spent a large and formative part of his life fighting in war zones — he was first sent to Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 17.

Today, a generation later, he’s left his house, his car, his job, and Mrs. Turtle back in the Shire, and he’s decided to trade all that in for an environment he is more familiar with — an army unit in Mordor.

​​“In the end, it’s just that I love this shit,” Turtle said. “And maybe I can’t escape that — maybe that’s the way it’s always gonna be.”

All that’s to say:

Never underestimate how powerful the pull of the familiar, the known, the status quo is on people, even if that status quo is hell on earth.

And that’s it. That’s my possibly sobering psychological insight for you for today. Think about how it might apply to you and the people you deal with regularly, and maybe you can get some value out of it.

As for me, the time has come for my once-in-a-blood-moon pitch for my coaching program on email marketing and copywriting.

It might seem tacky to put a sales pitch at the end of an email about extreme self-sacrifice, or extreme self-immolation. I do it because extreme cases uncover the everyday cases. In any case, here’s my pitch.

I’ve only let in two kinds of people into my coaching program so far:

1. Business owners who want to use email to build a stronger, longer-lasting relationship with their prospects and customers, in order to sell more and to sell more easily

2. Copywriters who have a profit-share agreement with a client to manage an email list, allowing a large degree of control and an upside when things go well

There are multiple reasons why I restrict my coaching program to only those two groups of people. If you’re curious, I’ll tell you one reason, which is that my coaching program is expensive. I only want the kinds of people to join who can quickly get much more out of this coaching than what they pay me.

So if you fit one of the two categories above, and if you’re interested in my coaching program, then hit reply, tell me about yourself, and we can talk in more detail.

And in case you’re wondering whether a coaching program is something you possibly need:

I can tell you that personally, in most areas of life where I’ve had success, I didn’t have and didn’t need any kind of coach. Instead, I either figured it out myself, or I followed a book or a course to the letter, and got results that way.

On the other hand, there have been a few areas where I hired a coach, and even paid that coach lots and lots of money.

As I’ve written before, some of the value I got from coaching was genuine technical feedback. Some of the value was added confidence, via getting an experienced second pair of eyes to look over what I was doing.

But the majority of the value I got from expensive coaching — I would say 75% — came from having to justify the price to myself. From finally being forced to abandon the status quo, and to do things I should have been doing already, but found excuses not to do.

Maybe you say that’s stupid or illogical. All I can say is that this get-out-of-the-status-quo motivation made coaching absolutely worth it to me, and made it pay for itself many times over.

So do you need coaching?

Only you can decide if you’re stuck in the status quo, and if you find that unacceptable. If you decide the answer is yes, then like I said, write me an email, and we can talk in more detail to see whether my coaching program and you could be a good fit.

I’ll start off this email by projecting out some praise and admiration I’ve gotten in the past

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Right about a year ago, I sent out an email with the subject line, “Send me your praise and admiration.” Best thing I ever did.

​​Here are a few of the lavishly praising and admiring responses I got to that email. First, from David Patrick, senior copywriter at Launch Potato:

“If John is behind anything, then I’m sure it’s going to be good. In fact, he may very well be the best thing to happen to America… at least when it comes to persuasion and influence! No, really!”

Second, from “The Eco-Copywriter,” Thomas Crouse, who went absolutely nuts and over the top in his flattery of me and the work I do:

“My inbox is bombarded with emails every day. But when I see one from John, I stop and read it.”

And finally, here’s one from Liza Schermann, the lead copywriter at Scandinavian Biolabs:

“John Bejakovic and persuasion. You can’t beat that. He made me like cats. Even though I used to hate them and they used to hate me. So he’s a great person to find out about a new product that’s about persuading stubborn prospects. Or cats.”

The reason I’m sharing such lavish praise and admiration with you is because I’m still reading a magic book I mentioned two weeks ago.

​​The book is called “Leading With Your Head: Psychological and Directional Keys to the Amplification of the Magic Effect.” It’s basically a guidebook for stage magicians about how to organize their tricks and their shows to maximize the magic, the fun, the show for the audience.

Here’s a relevant bit from Leading With Your Head:

“If we don’t draw attention to the magical occurrences, the effects may be weakened, or lost. The answer lies in analyzing your performance pieces to know when you need to direct attention to the magic. All other times you should be projecting out and relating to your audience, so they remember you.”

I hope that with all the projecting out and relating I’ve done so far, you will remember me tomorrow. Because now the time has come for me to draw your attention, and in fact direct it, to a bit of sales magic. Specifically, to my Most Valuable Postcard #2, which I am offering for the first and only time ever at a 50% launch discount, until 12 midnight PST tonight.

I started this launch two days ago with a message I got from copywriter Kay Hng Quek.

​​Kay went ahead and bought MVP #2 and wrote me about it yesterday. His message is below. Please read it carefully, particularly the parts about how MVP #2 “blew his mind” and how MVP #1 and MVP #2 are “probably the best $100” he has ever spent on marketing training:

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Read it immediately, and how you tied everything together at the end just blew my mind. Obviously this demands a second or third read. Obviously I will learn so much more from that.

Ngl, I would have loved MVP #3, but I’m grateful I got to read at least MVP #1 and #2. Probably the best $100 I’ve ever spent on marketing training…

===

Again, the deadline to get Most Valuable Postcard #2 for 50% off the regular price is tonight at 12 midnight PST. But the only way to get this offer is to be on my email list before the deadline strikes. If you’d like to that, click here and fill out the form that appears.

If you want people to remember you

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My grandma is 92 years old. Yesterday I was talking to her. She got to saying how she is “counting down the days.”

​​Everybody of her generation who lived in her building — a 17-story brutalist skyscraper built in the 1960s — has already died.

“The last two died just recently,” she said. ​​”There was Marija, who was 94, and then there was that guy—” here she turned to my mother “—what was that guy’s name, the guy who liked fried chicken?”

I found this both cruel and hilarious. You live your whole life, even a very long life, and this is how people remember you — “the guy who liked fried chicken.”

It’s not because my grandmother’s memory is failing. At 92, the woman is still razor-sharp and has a much better memory than I ever had.

It’s simply how how mental imprint happens.

Unless there’s something notable, sound bite-worthy, legendary about you, and unless you repeat it often enough to make it stick in people’s heads, then people will pick something random to remember you by — if they remember you at all.

Maybe you don’t want to be remembered. Nothing wrong with that.

But if you are driven to have people remember you, and if you want to make it good, then take matters into your own hands.

A/B test different sound bites about yourself. When you hit upon one seems to resonate, that people feed back to you, then repeat it from here to eternity. Either that, or risk becoming “the guy who liked fried chicken.”

And on that note, let me remind you what I already said yesterday:

I’m now launching my Most Valuable Postcard #2. I’m selling it until tomorrow night at a 50% discount.

Most Valuable Postcard #2 covers a fundamental marketing topic. In fact, it’s a topic that I claim is the essence of marketing and copywriting.

Last night, Jeffrey Thomas from Goldmine.Marketing wrote me to say (some parts redacted):

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Finished reading #2 tonight.

And it was great.

I’ll read it again tomorrow.

Earlier today, before seeing this offer, I thought about [here Jeffrey named “the best copywriting guide ever written” according to a reclusive, bizarre, and yet highly successful financial copywriter]—wild to see it appear in this Postcard!

#2 reminds me that [here Jeffrey spelled out the counterintuitive idea at the end of Most Valuable Postcard #2, which a lot of marketers and copywriters struggle with, but which is true nonetheless].

Definitely some new tools to use. Much appreciated John.

===

I redacted some parts of Jeffrey’s message above. For one thing, I want to keep those specifics behind the paywall. For another thing, I don’t think you really mind. Do you?

Anyways, Most Valuable Postcard #2 is available now, but only to people who are signed up to my email list. Maybe you don’t want to get on my email list. Nothing wrong with that. But if you do, here’s where to go.

Announcing: Most Valuable Postcard #2

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This Monday, I got two probing questions from copywriter Kay Hng Quek:

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1) From Copy Zone — “Sometimes that meant following somebody else’s A-Z system. That’s how I got good at meeting and talking to girls — after 30 years of being shy and pretty useless in that department.”

Ha, was this Rules Of The Game?

2) MVP #1 was so game-changing for me that I’ve been salivating at the fantasy of being sold card #2. Not so much a question then, but just an indication of demand.

===

The answer to Kay’s first question is no, it was not the Rules Of The Game.

The answer to Kay’s second question, or indication of demand, is this:

As you might know, last year I ran a subscription offer, limited to just 20 people, called Most Valuable Postcard. It lasted all of two months.

Each month, I sent a postcard from a new place with a short greeting and a URL. The URL took you to a secret website; there you would find my in-depth treatment of one fundamental marketing or copywriting topic for that month.

Subscribers loved the Most Valuable Postcard.

I hated it.

I hated walking around in the summer sun trying to find nice-looking postcards. I hated writing the postcards by hand, and I hated licking the stamps by tongue.

I hated the pressure of finishing up the actual content each month and making it great before the first postcards started to arrive.

I hated the fact that the postcards didn’t arrive reliably and that I had to resend many of them.

So I killed the Most Valuable Postcard off. Subscribers sighed and said they saw it coming.

But the core concept of the Most Valuable Postcard is something I find too valuable to let go. So I decided to write more Most Valuable Postcards, on no fixed schedule, and put them inside the members-only area of my site. While there are no physical postcard any more, the website content is the same format as before.

To start with, this past January I re-released Most Valuable Postcard #1: Nota Rápida. I got feedback on that like that “so game-changing” from Kay above.

Now I’m re-releasing Most Valuable Postcard #2: Ferrari Monster, again in the same format.

As you can guess, it’s a deep-dive into a fundamental topic. In fact, I make the case it’s about the essence of copywriting and marketing.

That’s a big claim. To back it up, I can say it took me three weeks of research — including a book about Hollywood marketing, a bunch of John Forde’s promos for Agora, and a science paper about strip clubs — to produce this 5-page postcard.

You can now get Most Valuable Postcard #2, and for $50 off, but only if you sign up to my email newsletter first. This is an offer only for people on the “inside.” To get there yourself, click here and follow the instructions.

A record month

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Up until today, my best-ever month in terms of income was November 2020. At that time, I was chest-deep in copywriting client work, plus I was getting a sizeable profit share on two big email lists I was managing.

As this email goes out, 28 days into March 2023, I’m about $200 over what I made in November 2020. And there are still a few days to go this month.

I sat down this morning and made a list of possible explanations for this new record in income.

Was it inflation?

Some part, yes. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, inflation has risen like smoke between then and now, 16%. But I still have one more new offer to make to my list this month. With it, I might have a record month in inflation-adjusted terms also.

Was it client work?

I’ve largely escaped from client work over the past couple years, and that’s why it’s taken me so long to get to a new record month. If I was chest-deep in client work in 2020, I’m ankle deep in it now. I have one client — easy work, good money, and exposure to what’s happening in the industry. It’s nice to have but not a major part of my total income.

Was it sales I made to new subscribers from the classified ad I ran early this month?

So far I’ve made $4k in sales to new subscribers who came from that $1k ad, a 3x return. That’s a nice result and definitely good to have. But again, it’s not a major part of my total income this month.

So what was it then?

Well, I will just deny any rumors you may have heard:

I did not walk through Barcelona’s Gothic district late one night this past December, and I did not come upon a crossroads, where a man in a fedora was leaning against a door and smoking a cigarette.

Furthermore, I did not engage in conversation or debate or deal-making with this man, and I was not as a result offered any occult or supernatural knowledge regarding persuasion or influence, nor did I strike a fearful bargain with said man, up to and including the sale of my soul or that of any firstborn child I might one day have.

No, none of that. If I do have any secret, it’s not supernatural or occult.

I won’t lie and say my big secret, if there is one, is out there for all to see, and available simply by reverse engineering.

But as Tony Robbins likes to say, success leaves clues. And secrets leave footprints, especially on the written page.

And with that, I’d like to recommend to you my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters. It’s based on this very idea — success leaves clues, so why not collect them and put them into quick and easy little Kindle book. As one highly critical (4-star) reviewer wrote:

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excellent book

Short and very pertinent. Loaded with the names of hugely successful giants of the copywriting world and the titles of their successful books. I read the book on Kindle and highlighted many great bits of advice and the names of the great writers sharing advice. If you write ad copy for a living or hope to do so, buy this book.

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You’re now at a crossroads. If you decide to take the path that leads to reading this book, here’s where you can buy it:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

66 1/2 minutes of getting your money’s worth

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At the start of the evening, the mustached gentlemen at the Boston Athletic Association held on to their top hats and leaned forward in their seats, their eyes wide open, all of them focused on the same point at the front of the room.

It’s not every day that you see a living man voluntarily handcuffed, wrapped in chains, placed inside a coffin, and then sealed inside like a corpse.

It was novel and dramatic.

But after a few minutes of intense staring at the unmoving coffin, the audience’s attention started to drift. The members of the athletic club began lighting up fine cigars, talking about sports, the news, and business, chuckling and chattering and catching up.

And then, 66 1/2 minutes after the show started, the coffin crashed open.

The living corpse inside sat up and then stood up, panting, sweat running down his temples, his hair in a mess, his frock coat rumpled. He held the handcuffs in one hand and the chains in the other — he was free.

The gentlemen in the audience broke into applause and cheers. Harry Houdini had done it again. Another amazing and improbable escape.

So far, so familiar. But here’s what gets me:

66 1/2 minutes of sitting and watching a coffin. Many of Houdini’s sold-out shows were like this. They were long — often many hours’ long — and for much of it there was nothing to see, because Houdini performed his handcuff and manacle and chain escapes in a closed cabinet or behind a curtain or inside a coffin.

66 1/2 minutes of nothing happening on stage. What was going on with the audience during all that time?

Was it just a pre-TikTok era, and were audiences happy to sit and zone out for an hour or three, like a cat staring at a blank wall?

Or did people just enjoy being close to danger and death, and was that palpable even if it couldn’t be seen?

I’m sure there was a bit of both to it.

But what gets me in the above story is how the gentlemen of the athletic club started lighting up cigars and having friendly chats about sports, business, and the news.

Maybe that was really what they had come for.

Maybe Houdini’s spectacular escape was really just an occasion to mark out the rest of the audience’s lives. Maybe it was just an excuse to get out of the house, to do what they like to do anyhow — which is to chat and chuckle and gossip — but to do it in a slightly novel and exciting setting.

There’s a good chance you aren’t sold on this point yet. That’s okay. I have more to say about it to try and persuade you. And if you do get persuaded, I have some novel and exciting advice for how to apply this to copywriting and marketing, even today, in the TikTok era, without engaging in daring feats that risk danger and death.

But more about that in a couple days’ time.

For today, I just have a very simple offer for you. It’s my little Kindle book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

​​I used to refer to this as my “10 Commandments book.” I’ll have to stop that since I’m working on a second 10 Commandments book, and I have to distinguish between the two.

Anyways, Commandment III from ties into what I’ll talk about in two days’ time. It’s also the easiest commandment of the lot in my book.

​​This Commandment III takes just 5 minutes to follow, but it can suck your reader all the way to the sale, without him realizing what happened. It was first unearthed during an exclusive, closed-door seminar, which cost almost $7,700 in today’s money.​​

In case you’re curious, the secret behind this and all the other A-list commandments in my book are behind the locked door below. The ticket to unlock the door is but $4.99. If you feel you’re ready, step right behind this curtain:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Some facts for you to judge me by

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Here are a few facts about me that might seem entirely irrelevant to a newsletter about marketing and copywriting:

I am unmarried, I have no children, I am straight. My religious orientation can only be described as puzzled.

My nationality is dual — Croatia and US. ​​I grew up in the US, but I was born in what was then Yugoslavia but then became Croatia, in a mixed Croatian/Serbian family. As a result, my entire life I’ve been hostile to feelings of nationalism and even patriotism, because I experienced first-hand how much of a fictional construct my homeland was — both my old one, and my newer one, and my still newer one.

Here are a few more facts, maybe slightly more relevant to this newsletter:

Try as I might, I don’t care about money beyond the Micawber rule: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness.” I also don’t enjoy working for work’s sake, and I am by nature lazy, in fact very lazy.

And yet, for years now, I have been working, and quite a lot, and I have been making money, and more than I spend.

​​The reason is that, while I don’t care about money and I’m lazy to work, I do enjoy the feeling of being disciplined and achieving goals, particularly if I was resistant to getting started towards them. And if that means doing work every day and if money falls out as an end result, then so be it.

And now a few final facts, which are relevant to this newsletter:

I’ve been working as a professional copywriter since 2015. I’ve have had 100+ clients over that time, but the bulk of the money I’ve made came from maybe 5 of those clients, and the bulk of that bulk, the money that’s sitting in my bank account now and that’s allowed me to live life how I choose over the past few years, came from one client only.

I will tell you more about that client in a second. But first, let me tell you the reason for all the facts, relevant and irrelevant, I’ve just given you. The reason is the following passage from a book called Revolt of the Masses, by a writer named José Ortega y Gasset:

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I may be mistaken, but the present day writer, when he takes his pen in hand to treat a subject which he has studied deeply, has to bear in mind that the average reader, who has never concerned himself with this subject, if he reads, does so with the view, not of learning something from the writer, but rather, of pronouncing judgment on him when he is not in agreement with the commonplaces that the said reader carries in his head.

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Ortega was a snob and his entire book was written in a condescending and bossy tone. But the above point is spot on — people more often read to judge you than to learn from you. And what basis do they use to judge you? What they already know and believe.

So you got two options:

Option one is to start with your own beliefs and experiences, and to be transparent about those, even if they are irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Many people will judge you negatively as a result, and will consciously or unconsciously dismiss you from then on.

On the other hand, a few people will align with your own choices and beliefs, and they will judge you favorably, including on the actual on-topic content you might be sharing.

Option two is to start with your reader. To find out what your reader believes, what experiences he or she has, and then to signal that you share those — even if you have to stretch the truth or cover up stuff.

You might think I am passing judgment and saying to do the first but not to do the second. Not at all. I’ve done both myself. The first in this newsletter, the second in my work as copywriter working for clients.

Which brings me back to that client who was responsible for the bulk of the money I’ve made as a copywriter.

Today is the last day I am selling a swipe file of 25 “horror advertorials” I wrote for that client between 2019 and 2021. And if you check each of the advertorials in that swipe file, you will find that in the very first sentence or two of each advertorial, and many times after that, I signal in conscious but subtle ways that I am like the person who is reading, that I share his or her experiences, that I have similar beliefs.

It’s dirty work, but there is satisfaction in accomplishing it. And it does pay well.

Anyways, if you want to get my Horror Advertorial Swipe File, you have to be on my email list. The clock is ticking, and there aren’t many more hours before the deadline. If you like, click here to sign up.

We groaned when she pulled off her boots, but when she propped her feet up on the seat!

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I was on a train a few months ago. A woman sitting across from me was wearing a face mask, even though nobody else on the train was wearing one. Perhaps a sign of things to come?

The woman had wool-lined boots on her feet — way too hot for the warm and sunny afternoon. So as the train rumbled along the Catalan seaside, she pulled off her boots and propped her feet up on the seat opposite, to cool them off.

The other people around her, myself included, started exchanging looks — disgusted, amused, incredulous. And yet the woman kept sitting there, eyes beatifically closed, mask on her face, her sweaty feet drying in the sealed wagon air.

I talked to a budding email copywriter a few days ago. He said he wants to learn storytelling.

I feel there’s been a lot of mystification around that topic. It’s something like the guy who wrote a book all about breathing — you’re not breathing optimally, you need to read this book to find out how to breathe better.

People breathe fine. People tell stories fine. You don’t need a course or even a book on it. You just need to do it.

That said, there is something approaching a “secret” that makes for better stories, particularly in print.

At least that’s how it’s been in my experience. When I first heard this advice, I felt enlightened; I felt the doors of perception opening up. Maybe I’m just very dense because I needed to have this pointed out to me:

I used to think of a story as a timeline, a series of facts that need to be laid out and arranged in some kind of order. Then you pepper in details to make the important parts come alive.

“Once upon a time, I was born, a baby with not very much hair. The date was February 19, 1939. My family stock was originally from England but my ancestors had settled in Gotham City many generations earlier. My father, Thomas Wayne, a kind, gentle, mustachioed man, was a highly respected physician here…”

The secret is that you often don’t need any of this — the timeline, the explanatory facts, the logical order. If anything, they probably make your “story” less effective.

A much better option is to think comic book, to think movie, to think of a story as a series of snapshots. Even one snapshot can be enough — like that thing up top with the woman and her wool-lined boots on the train.

Anyways, that’s really the only big storytelling secret I have to share with you.

Maybe you don’t think it’s much. All I can say is that if you apply consistently, it produces real results.

And this brings me to my current offer, my Horror Advertorial Swipe File. Each of those advertorials starts out with a snapshot — scary, disgusting, outrage-forming.

​​You don’t need this swipe file to learn storytelling. But you might want this swipe file if you have a cold-traffic ecommerce funnel, and you want to squeeze more results from your cold traffic. In case you are interested, you will have to sign up to my list, because this is an offer I am only making to my subscribers. If you’d like to do that, here’s where to go.

Announcing: Horror Advertorial Swipe File

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A couple weeks ago, right after I ran a classified ad in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter, I got an email from a new reader:

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I just joined your list from Daniel Throssell’s classified ad and really love your Quick and dirty email training, especially because the companies you talk about pertain to ecom.

Was wondering, do you have any other ecom focused resources? Will gladly pay for them.

===

I wrote back to ask the guy what he is doing and what specifically he is looking for.

It turns out he has a Shopify jewelry store in the affirmation niche. And he asked:

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Do you have a swipe file of story-based advertorials? Will gladly pay for it!

I noticed you talked about you using the story based advertorials in your story sells bonus as well.

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The background, as you might know, is, that between 2018 and 2021, I wrote dozens of front-end advertorials — basically mini sales letters — all following the same “horror story” structure. These advertorials were parts of cold-traffic funnels that, by my best estimate, brought in over $15 million in cold-traffic ecommerce sales.

The funnels that featured those horror advertorials are no longer running. Of course, I do still have the original copy. I haven’t ever sold it or shared it before. But I’m no longer taking on clients to write advertorials. So I asked myself, why not sell what I got?

I wrote back to the guy to say he could have a collection of my horror advertorials for $100.

He agreed and PayPaled me $100. Later that night, I drove to an empty parking lot behind an abandoned factory, and I dropped off a leather bag filled with my advertorials for him to pick up.

​​Well, not really. I just sent them to him via email.

But then, sitting on my couch with pen in hand, I had one of those Obvious Adams moments. If one person believes he can get value from a swipe file of story-based advertorials… maybe a second person also might? Or maybe even a third?

I’ll see.

Because right now I am making a collection of 25 of my horror advertorials for $100 to people on my email list.

The offers promoted by these advertorials include everything from anti-mosquito bracelets, bamboo fiber paper towels, fake diamonds, dog seat belts, stick-on bras, and kids’ vitamins.

Is it worth buying this horror-filled swipe file?

​​It depends.

A few days after I clandestinely dropped off the leather bag of advertorials in the abandoned factory parking lot, the jewelry store owner wrote me to say:

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I’ve been going through your advertorials and they’re incredible to study. Off the top of your head, do you have an idea of which ones stood out in terms of sales/performance?

===

The fact is, success in these horror advertorial funnels was due more to the offer than the copy. A good/scary advertorial couldn’t reliably sell a bad/bland offer for very long. On the other hand, a good offer worked even without an advertorial, with an ad that went straight to the product page.

But combine a good offer with a good advertorial and the result was often a big success, and one that could last for years.

I don’t have exact sales numbers for any of these advertorials. But I definitely do know which ones ran for a long time, which ones sold well both on the front end to Facebook and YouTube traffic, and and on the back end via email.

So if you get this swipe file of 25 advertorials, I’ll also sense you a little welcome letter where I describe which of these advertorials were part of long-running successes, which advertorials I think are particularly strong, and which ones might be worth modeling for other reasons.

In this same letter, I also included a quick description of the overall structure of these horror advertorial funnels.

Speaking of funnels:

I encourage you NOT to buy this swipe file if you are simply looking for more swipe file content to hoard, or if you have no experience running cold traffic and are looking for a miracle in that department.

It only makes sense to buy this if you already have a functioning cold-traffic funnel — either for your own business or for a client’s business.

In that case, dropping in a horror advertorial into your existing funnels can help you get much more out of that cold traffic. That’s what happened with that kids’ vitamins advertorial I mentioned above. That client managed to profitably scale from $2k/day to $12k/day in daily ad spend by adding in one of my horror advertorials to their existing funnel.

Last thing:

If you do buy this swipe file, I have a special free (“free” as in no money) mystery offer for you. I will tell you about that offer in the email that delivers the zip file with the advertorials. Again, this offer will only be relevant if you already have a working cold-traffic funnel. In that case, even though this offer is free, it might easily be worth a few thousand dollars to you.

I am making this swipe file available until this Sunday, March 27 2023, at 12 midnight PST. After that I will take it down.

If it turns out there’s not much interest in this swipe file, I will drag the beast to the back of the house and quickly put it out of its misery. On the other hand, if it turns out there is interest, I will think about how to expand this and charge more for it.

In any case, if you want this swipe file, you will have to be on my list first, and before the deadline. To get on there in time, click here and fill out the form that appears.

Best resource for newsletter growth ideas

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A couple days ago, copywriter and business owner Will Ward, who was in Dan Ferrari’s coaching group at the same time as me, forwarded me an email from Quiet Light, an online business broker.

This email described — without naming it – a newsletter that’s for sale right now:

“Social good and transformation” space. 300,000 total subscribers. Paid subscribers totaling almost $50,000 per month in subscription revenue. Started in May 2020. On sale now because the owner is “eager to return to her previous endeavors.” Asking price? $2.55 million.

Those numbers and dates made me wonder where the hell I was in May 2020 and what the hell I was doing then. Well actually, I can tell you almost exactly.

Right around that time, in June 2020, I sent out an email, “Expert advice on how to start an email magazine,” in which I shared an interview with Alex Lieberman.

In 2015, Lieberman started Morning Brew, a daily email newsletter with a summary of the day’s business news.

By 2020, Morning Brew was making $13 million per year in ad revenue. Later that year, in October 2020, Lieberman sold a controlling stake in Morning Brew to Business Insider for $75 million.

Like I wrote in that June 2020 email, I’d been thinking of starting a Morning Brew for X newsletter for a while, where X would be some topic I’m personally interested in.

Had I done it then, maybe today I’d be sitting on a multi-million dollar asset.

I didn’t do it then, but I did do it this past January. I started another newsletter, Morning Brew for X. X is my topic — something I’m interested in, and that I’m not sharing yet publicly. I want to grow this newsletter first and build up a bit of a moat before letting thousands of other marketers in on what I’m up to.

Anyways, as part of starting my own Morning Brew-like newsletter, I discovered there’s already a galaxy of Morning Brew-like newsletters, including many Ponziish Morning Brew-like newsletters that tell you how to grow your own Morning Brew-like newsletter.

My eyes were opened.

For years, I’d been living in the world of direct response-based, daily, Ben Settle-like emails that sell supplements or courses or dog toothbrushes. Most of those daily emails look pretty much the same, sound pretty much the same, and function pretty much the same — a good income or a nice back end.

Meanwhile, you have this cousin industry of people building $2.55 million and $13 million and $75 million businesses, using nothing other than email newsletters.

I’m not ragging on Ben Settle or his ideas. Those ideas, both for growing email lists and for monetizing them, have made me and my clients a healthy amount of money. But I do want to point out how much other stuff is happening in the world of email right now, adjacent to the little Amish world that’s centered on direct response copywriting and marketing.

Of course, this other, Morning Brew-like world has its own Amish tendencies. Also, there are literally hundreds or maybe even thousands of newsletters to choose from right now, all telling you how to make it as a creator or creative entrepreneur or a newsletter operator.

What’s worthwhile in this new world?

I can only tell you the best resource I have personally found. That’s Chenell Basilio’s Growth In Reverse.

Each week, Chenell does a deep dive into the growth strategies of a newsletter businesses — “deep” as in, it takes her 40+ hours of research to produce one of these analyses. For some reason, she does all this work and then gives it away for free.

Some of these strategies Chenell identifies I know about already. Some are new to me. Some are strategies I have no interest in trying myself myself. Some I think are very clever, and they already have me moving.

For example:

You can sign up to Chenell’s newsletter using the link below. It’s an affiliate link — though I’m not getting paid anything.

If you are curious why I’m promoting Chenell’s Growth In Reverse, beyond that it’s a great resource on how to grow your newsletter, and why I’m using an affiliate link, even though I’m not getting paid, then sign up to read her next email, which will arrive this Sunday.

​​Or sign up just because you want to grow your own newsletter and you want new ideas on how to do that. In any case, here’s that link:

https://bejakovic.com/chenell