Hundreds of course buyers… one implementer

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In reply to my email yesterday, the original Crazy Email Lady, Liza Schermann, writes:

“Ha! This offer sounds eerily similar to what Sean Ferres teaches in his AI Ads Lab. I wonder if this guy came through that program.”

The context is that yesterday I wrote about a guy who is getting clients for his ad copywriting services by running ads on FB. The offer he’s promoting via his ads is, “I’ll beat your best ad or it’s free.”

Liza’s message got me curious that maybe there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of people all running eerily similar offers, all coming out of this AI Ads Lab?

Facebook ad library is very unfriendly to searching. But after about 10 minutes of poking around with various terms like “beat your best ad” and “or you don’t pay,” I found exactly… two advertisers making anything like the offer I told you about.

The first is the guy I wrote about yesterday. The second is some agency that’s offering to create scripts for 5 video ads, and in case they don’t get a winner, you pay nothing (in other words, it’s really a different offer).

Strange, right? Really strange.

What I mean is, apparently there’s a guy teaching this strategy for getting clients for writing ad copy.

Also, the strategy clearly works (as I wrote yesterday, the dude who’s running these ads has had close to 70 takers in the past ~6 months).

And yet, there is exactly ONE guy (well, at least that I could find) who is executing this strategy.

What about all those other people who went through the AI Ads Lab course?

I’m sure they have good things to say about the course. I’m sure some of them have consumed the material all the way through. I’m sure a few have even gotten results, maybe with some other client-getting strategies. Still, I would bet my left lung, kidney, or testicle that the vast majority never even consumed the material, much less implemented it, or pursued it consistently enough to see results.

The fact is, ideas have zero value unless you put them to use in some way.

I’m telling you this because I’m currently promoting an implementation cohort that’s using the 1-Person Advertorial Agency course as a blueprint.

I’ve heard lots of good things about 1PAA over the past few days. People say it’s a great course. Some have gone through it all the way. Some have even put it into action, at least partly. But the majority haven’t pursued it enough to write a single advertorial, much less to get a paying client.

That’s where my cohort comes in.

The cohort is not free. In fact, it’s expensive.

We will be following 1PAA, both for advertorial-writing and client-getting.

If you join me, you get my feedback and input, both on advertorial-writing and client-getting.

The immediate goal is to get you to complete an advertorial, and get a client who will run it.

The long-term goal is to get you to make $10k from advertorial work. My offer is I’ll keep working with you until you get there.

We start next week. In case you’re interested, reply now.

How I’d get advertorial clients without Upwork, cold outreach, or a network

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A couple months ago, I got back on Facebook in a BIG way. What I mean by that is that I started spending a few minutes there every couple days or so.

I was lurking, and trying to see what offers I would get pitched by the Facebook ad algorithm. (I was and am planning on launching my own cold traffic funnel, and wiser heads than mine say that you gotta do your research ahead of time.)

That’s how I came across a pretty, pretty brilliant offer.

It’s a dude who is running an ad… telling you he will write an ad to beat your best performing ad… and if he doesn’t succeed in beating it, he’ll give you all your money back.

(The offer started at $97 and has been going up each time he sells out the slots he’s got for the month. It currently sells for $247.)

From what I can tell, the dude has been running this since last November.

He has had 67 people take him up on it so far.

Out of those, he’s been able to beat their best ad 61 times, while refunding people 6 times.

In true Gary Bencivenga fashion, his landing page is FULL of social proof resulting from this challenge, including the refund requests from the 6 refunders, all of whom were complementary to his skill and business model.

Do you think that, out of any of the remaining 61 people whose best ads he beat, he got any long-term clients who are now paying him thousands of dollars a month?

My guess is yes.

I’m telling you this because right now, I’m promoting a cohort iI will run, starting next Monday, May 1st. The cohort will involve writing advertorials and getting clients who will happily pay for those advertorials.

So far, a few dozen people have expressed interest in this. I’ve been talking to them, or rather, emailing with them. I asked them for more information about where they’re currently at.

A few people have told me that they are either sick of looking for copywriting clients on Upwork or via cold outreach… or that they don’t have time or interest in looking for clients at all, and would rather outsource that to me.

I’m sorry to say, in that case, this cohort is not for you.

For one thing, I’m offering to help and advise with getting clients, not do it in your stead.

For another, the client-getting methods we will be using are the ones outlined inside the 1-Person Advertorial Agency course, which are (gulp) Upwork and cold outreach.

(The good news is, Upwork is where I got my biggest advertorial clients, and the way of cold outreach that 1PAA teaches is likely to be more effective and efficient than your usual kind.)

Still, if you hate the idea of Upwork and cold outreach for getting advertorial clients, then I just gave you a working alternative above. Spelled out, it goes like this:

1. Create a landing page with a headline that says something like, “FREE advertorial for your ecom brand”

2. On that landing page, explain your deal, which is basically that you will write them a free advertorial if they will pay you a commission in case of success

3. Explain who it’s for and not for (eg. must have a working cold traffic funnel, must be making at least X sales per day, must not be currently under investigation by the FTC, etc.)

4. Get people to fill out some kind of a form with whatever details you want from them in order to decide if you want to work with them, or to invite them on a screening call

5. Run super basic ads on Facebook for $20 a day to advertise this landing page

6. Update your landing page with proof as you get it

I’ve kick-started my own advertorial agency by reaching out to my list and network. Maybe that will be enough to get me all the advertorial clients I will ever want. Or maybe i will eventually tap out that demand, in which case I will do exactly what I wrote above, with that Facebook advertising strategy.

But if you like, you can beat me to it, and get your name out there in the world, and get clients who pay you for advertorials in the process, by doing what I just told you I would do.

In any case, the countdown to my advertorial cohort continues. Here are the high-level details:

I’ve made an agreement to write an advertorial for a client.

I’m inviting copywriters to join me and work alongside me as I do this.

You get my help with writing an advertorial following the 1-Person Advertorial Agency system.

You get my help tracking down, vetting, and closing a client (or partner business) using the two client-getting methods in 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

Plus, I’m promising to keep working with you and giving you my support and input until you get to $10k from advertorial work.

We start next week. In case you’re interested, reply now.

How much it costs

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Last week, I wrote an email about 10 things that are working for me right now. One of the 10 was the following:

#6. Making a coaching offer that consists of a down payment to get started, and the rest conditional on success

I’m working with a few people on this arrangement right now. It makes selling easier. It makes delivery easier. It makes me more motivated. It makes coaching clients more motivated. It allows me to charge more than I might otherwise. I’m waiting to find out what the downsides, if any, might be.

I’m also making a new offer right now.

I’ve made an agreement to write an advertorial for a client.

I’m inviting copywriters to join me and work alongside me as I do this.

You get my help with writing an advertorial following the 1-Person Advertorial Agency system.

You get my help tracking down, vetting, and closing a client (or partner business) using the two client-getting methods in 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

Plus, I’m promising to keep working with you and giving you my support and input until you get to $10k from advertorial work.

So how much it costs?

$5k.

The destination we’re headed to is advertorials that you can reasonably make $2k+ with the right clients, and that take max 1-2 days each to finish.

If you get just one such gig a month, I figure it’s worth $24k over the next year.

$5k is a reasonable investment to fix that.

That said, I am committed to getting you to where I say I will get you.

That’s why I’m breaking up the $5k as follows, so I have a stake in the outcome I promise to get you:

* $2k to start

* The remaining $3k when you make your first $10k from advertorial work

If you’re not completely appalled by the above numbers, and if you want to find out if this opportunity could be a fit for you, reply now. We start next week.

You + me = advertorials?

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Things move fast in Bejako land:

Last week, I asked for an advertorial client. As of yesterday, I’ve got an advertorial client.

He sells an ecom product I have never heard of before, and apparently he is running millions of dollars worth of traffic to it every year.

I will be writing a test advertorial for him over next few weeks. If it makes money, I’ll get paid on commission. if doesn’t make money… we’ll see. Maybe I’ll try again. Or maybe I’ll go write an advertorial for someone else.

Earlier this year, I promoted the 1-Person Advertorial Agency training, and I wrote that this is the hottest opportunity for copywriters in 2026.

I still believe it.

In fact, it’s why I even decided to offer advertorials to businesses, and why I offered them for free.

I will be implementing what’s inside 1PAA myself, and combining it with my own knowledge, expertise, and copywriting savvy.

But you know what? Selling bizarre ecom products to the tune of millions of dollars every year is a lonely business.

That’s why I’ve decided to take a few people along with me.

Specifically, what I’m offering here is to:

1. Help you write an advertorial that’s up to my standards

2. Help you get a client or clients who will run that advertorial

3. Keep working with you until you make $10k from your advertorial work

Would you like to join me and a few others who will be going for this trip?

We start next week. In case you’re interested, reply now.

A new episode about clever product names

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This morning, I showered, shaved, looked at myself squarely in the mirror, and said, “It’s time.”

I picked up a little plastic bottle, which had arrived by mail yesterday.

For the first time ever, I opened up the bottle and squeezed some of its contents onto my hand.

Out came a creamy white liquid, which is distinctly unwaterlike. I smiled at my own gullibility, and I rubbed the creamy white liquid all over my face.

The thing I bought and rubbed on my face is called “Fusion Water.” It promises 50 SPF, immediate absorption, and no stinging of the eyes. Pretty much, it’s a sunscreen like any other sunscreen.

And yet, a few days ago, as I walked around the city and saw an ad on an advertising column for this thing, I instantly decided to buy it.

I was sold by the “Water” in the name. I imagined something actually like water, cool, clear, not white or creamy, that I could splash on my face to protect myself against the Barcelona sun.

Sure, I knew deep down that “Fusion Water” is probably a sunscreen like any other. But that “Water” in the “Fusion Water” still sold me.

Another example:

After moving to Barcelona, I found that many people here are fans of the air fryer.

“Have you used one? It’s amazing! You should get one.”

I looked up what an air fryer is. It’s basically a small, stovetop convection oven.

But “Fry with air!” sounds much more appealing than “Bake without oil.”

The first brings to mind an image of crunchy and delicious French fries which are somehow good for you.

The second brings to mind the image of a lump of flavorless baked potato, and who cares whether that’s good for you or not.

So what’s in a name?

A lot. That which we call a rose, by any other name would NOT smell as sweet. Neither would “Fusion Water” be as appealing if it were called “Fusion Sun Cream.” Nor would “yet another stovetop oven” sell as well as an “air fryer.”

So think about names. Think about what your audience hates about your category of solution. Call your thing by a name for an entirely different category, which is blessedly free from the negative associations your audience might have with what you sell.

And on that note, I’d like to tell you about a unique digital tool that implants A-list copywriting skills into your brain.

This tool is called Copy Riddles, and one of the A-list copywriting skills it implants into your brain is precisely the skill of seductive names, which can make the sale before a prospect even knows anything about your offer.

For more information about this unique tool:

http://bejakovic.com/cr

Talking to any prospects?

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Last Thursday, I sent out an email asking readers if they want a free advertorial for their ecom brand.

I got several handfuls of responses.

Some weren’t a fit.

Some are ongoing conversations.

And some I replied to in turn, asking for a bit more info… and I NEVER EVER HEARD BACK.

Is it because they hate me?

Or they disqualified themselves?

Or they lost interest in my offer?

Or because it was the weekend?

Or because their car broke down… or their kitchen flooded… or their kid got sick… or something good was on TV… or they had bigger priorities with work, family, friends, or their Creator?

I have no idea.

But I do know that tomorrow, Tuesday, I will do what I’ve been doing every Tuesday for a few months now, with great effect.

I’ll open up a spreadsheet where I track all ongoing conversations with prospects — whether for list swaps, or affiliate deals, or interviews, or auctions, or more recently, advertorials — and I will follow up with everyone who has dropped off.

Following up with prospects used to be a chore on the order of getting on my knees and scrubbing the floors with a dirty rag soaked in filthy water.

These days, following up is a chore on the order of pressing a few buttons on my phone to tell the Roomba to get to work.

A part of the reason was that spreadsheet I created, and that calendar reminder that goes off every Tuesday and Thursday, which tells me it’s time to follow up.

The other part of the reason is that I have a set of ready-made followup messages.

I don’t have to think, be creative, second-guess myself, anything.

I just copy and paste.

That set of ready-made followup messages comes from Nick Bandy’s Ghostbuster Sequence. I highly recommend this little guide. I use it every week. It works like magic. And it makes my life much easier.

Ghostbuster Sequence currently sells for $97. To mark Memorial Day, Nick is generously continuing to make Ghostbuster Sequence available for $97 until 10pm EST tonight, at which point the price will more than double, to $197.

So are you talking to any prospects?

I guarantee some of them will drop off. Who knows why? What I do know is that you can reanimate almost all those conversations, and that at least some will turn into deals.

If you want to make your job easier and your success greater, I highly recommend Nick’s Ghostbuster Sequence. To get it before the price doubles:

https://bejakovic.com/ghostbuster

TOTO, Nintendo, and Bejako: Titans of the surival-based business

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Yesterday I read an article that’s been going viral around the world, and which tackles the seemingly pointless topic of “Why Japanese companies do so many different things.”

Example:

TOTO is a Japanese toilet manufacturer that’s been gaining ground in the US.

But besides excellent toilets, TOTO also makes excellent bathroom tiles, faucets, modular kitchens, photocatalytic coatings for buildings, and assistive equipment for the elderly.

And now, thanks to the growth of AI and the resulting demand for memory chips, TOTO has a booming new business making something called an e-chuck, which is a component of the semiconductor supply industry.

There are dozens of examples like this among Japanese companies.

Kyocera makes kitchen knives, LCD systems, and joint replacements.

Yamaha builds motorcycles, guitars, and industrial robots.

Nintendo started out as a handmade playing card company, tried to enter the taxi service and instant rice markets, and eventually settled on making Mario and Zelda.

A bunch of Japanese companies do a bunch of stuff, often entirely unrelated, at a very high and very profitable level.

How? Why?

I won’t attempt to summarize the viral article here. It’s over 5k words long, and it is itself based on summarizing a number of much longer econ research papers. Here’s just one relevant insight for you and me today:

American and Japanese companies are built up of fundamentally distinct “bundles of practices.” Among economists, these distinct bundles have gotten the names H-firm (typical American biz) vs J-firm (typical Japanese biz).

Elements of the H-firm you’re probably familiar with. Things like employee specialization, promotions and salaries based on performance, frequent workspace switching, openness to external capital.

Elements of the J-firm are much more foreign if you’re not from Japan. They include such practices as lifetime employment (even in times of economic crisis), hostility to outside capital, general employee knowledge rather than specialization, promotion and salary based on seniority rather than performance.

There’s one more distinction that’s relevant for us:

The H-firm is geared towards profitability and returns to investors.

The J-firm, on the other hand, is aiming simply at its own survival, even though it can be wildly profitable as it looks to survive.

It’s an interesting topic, and the viral article is worth looking up and reading.

But it’s not just idle curiosity why I’m sharing this with you. This whole distinction between J-firms and H-firms sounded familiar and personally relevant to me. I figured the J-firm is much more like my email-newsletter-based biz, which you might call the B-firm (for Bejako-style business).

The B-firm is also a bundle of practices, such as:

1. Selling yourself, your own personal attitudes and interests, rather than promising to solve a customer problem first and foremost

2. Regular and frequent communication

3. High prices

4. High trust

5. Customers who stick around and continue to buy for years, and often buy many different things, often entirely unrelated

Ultimately, the B-firm is also about long-term survival rather than short-term profitability, though the B-firm has been very profitable to me over the long term.

I’m telling you this in case you have an idea of what a “business” looks like.

Some of the most fundamental ideas we have about “business” are actually only assumptions, or rather, bundles of practices that make sense in a given context, like Silicon Valley or Wall Street.

Other forms of business exist, as part of other bundles, and can be very successful, and maybe much more palatable to you personally.

A final insight from that viral article:

In Japan, there was a trigger that caused the emergence of the J-firm bundle of practices. That trigger was the decision by the Japanese government, during the 1930s and 40s, to instruct firms to prioritize employees over shareholder profits, as part of the Japanese drive to build up military capacity.

Similarly, if you want to have a B-firm like mine, there’s a trigger that will in time pull in other practices, like high prices and customers who continue to buy year after year. That trigger is starting to communicate regularly and frequently with your audience, such as by sending daily emails.

You don’t need my help to start a daily email habit. But if over time you’ve decided that you want my help in starting your own daily email habit, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Solopreneurs suck

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Before you get out your pitchforks, tar, and feathers, maybe hear me out:

A few years ago, I joined the paid membership of a business coach.

I won’t say the guy’s name, but he’s well established in the DR world, he’s been in business for decades, and he’s somebody I’ve mentioned in this newsletter on a few occasions. (Though if you think you know who it is, you probably don’t.)

My first day in the membership, I was scrolling through some of the posts. In one of them, another member was getting advice on a new business he was setting up.

The business coach asked who the target audience was.

The member replied it was solopreneurs.

To which the biz coach replied:

“Solopreneurs suck.”

I felt a bit hurt this, being a solopreneur myself for 12+ years now, and generally determined not to hire.

The business coach gave his explanation, that solopreneurs make for bad customers, and that it’s much better to go after people who have a small team of two or maybe three people.

There was truth to it. I forget exactly what the coach’s arguments was, but as a solopreneur myself, I can tell you that solopreneurs…

1. Are too tightly controlling

2. Are paradoxically willing to accept lower quality on many things in their business (design, copy, marketing, customer service) as long as they do it themselves

3. Are slow to implement big and important changes thoroughly

4. Are fickle, and will change direction and follow new whims and ideas, but since they have no ballast, will often change direction too quickly, and then change again

Put all these things together and you find that solopreneurs have serious limits to income, limits to growth, limits to the value can get out of anything you sell to them, and therefore the money they can pay you.

On top of which, the fact that solopreneurs have no employees makes it easier for them to simply up and leave from one day to the next, particularly in today’s world, where most solopreneurs’ tangible assets consist of a Macbook and maybe a Nespresso machine.

I’m just putting this idea out there.

Like I said, I myself am a solopreneur.

I don’t know if that will change.

Maybe it will. (I’ve convinced myself with my own emails before.)

Maybe it won’t. (Even with all the arguments above, I find myself resistant going back to point 1 above.)

In any case, I will tell you something I have figured out as a stepping stone out of the solopreneur swamp.

It’s the idea of partnering with the right people, rather than hiring.

I’ve done it already with one major project.

I’m very likely do more partnerships as I spin up my new “advertorial agency.”

If partnering with people resonates with you, and you want to find people to partner with, and you want more advice on how to do it right, both from an “inner game” and an “outer game” perspective, then I have a recommendation for you.

It’s Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin community.

Travis’s Royalty Ronin is made up of a bunch of people who have the solopreneur mindset, who want the simplicity and freedom of solopreneursip, but who at the same time have realized that you can only do so much and go so far by doing every damn thing alone, and that there are real costs to solopreneurship, in terms of both income and free time.

(Btw, Travis is not the biz coach I talked about at the start of this email.)

If you wanna find out more about Ronin, there’s a free 7-day trial here:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you do make it past free trial and stay inside Ronin, write me an email and let me know. I have some bonuses with your name on them.

When breakthroughs fail

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If, like me, you’re into pop psychology, you’ve probably heard the following (ahem) fascinating, dramatic, and yet true story:

A UFO cult was expecting a UFO to land in Chicago on Dec 21 1954, and whisk away the believers before a huge tidal wave wiped out the face of the Earth.

December 21 came and went. No UFO came. No tidal wave came either.

The UFO cult was headed by a woman named Dorothy Martin. She was in contact with the aliens via automatic writing (and sometimes over the phone).

In the hours after the supposed UFO arrival failed to materialize, Martin got the message that the aliens had decided to spare the Earth because of the good work of the UFO cult in spreading the word.

That’s the dramatic part. Here’s the fascinating part:

The UFO cult, which until then had been very secretive, very hostile to publicity, very closed to outsiders, suddenly went on a PR blitz, announcing to the world the good news. It was no longer enough for the cultists to be in direct contact with powerful aliens who had decided to spare the Earth from destruction — everybody else had to know about it too.

I’ve written about this before in my newsletter. I got the story from Robert Cialdini’s book Influence, in the chapter on social proof. Cialdini in turn got the story from the book When Prophecy Fails, a classic of pop psychology, which was written by the researchers who infiltrated the UFO cult in order to study it.

Only one problem:

I was wrong. Cialdini was wrong. I mean, we were wrong to report this as a fascinating, dramatic, yet true story.

Today, with recently dug up reports and research, it appears that the original research was tainted, exaggerated, or even made up. As many as half the cult members were actually researchers who infiltrated the cult. One of the infiltrating researchers became a cult leader, and told people to say and do things that would look good in the book. Several of the legit cult members changed their tune and walked after the UFO failed to show, completely negating the claims of “cognitive dissonance,” a term this book introduced.

Over the past few years, it has seemed like all the dramatic, memorable social science stories were invented:

* The marshmallow test, in which kids who could delay marshmallow gratification did dramatically better later in life. (The result doesn’t hold up when you control for some obvious other variables.)

* The Harvard “power poses” research, where standing like Superman — head high, arms akimbo, legs apart — raises your testosterone and lowers your cortisol. (Sloppy data collection and wishful statistics.)

* The Stanford prison experiment, where ordinary people suddenly turned into monsters when put into positions of power. (The “guards” were apparently told what part to play.)

So what’s left? What do we have when all the good stories are gone?

What’s left is a mountain of boring, incremental progress, unintelligible and uninteresting to anybody except the experts in the field, which grows decade by decade, century by century.

Harumph. If you didn’t like that, I’m afraid you’re gonna hate this:

I’ve been listening to a bunch of big-time, behind-the-scenes marketers who do not primarily make their money by teaching or by via their personal brands. (These interviews are part of bonus #5 in my recent Tour de Commandments bonus bundle.)

One thing I’ve noticed these behind-the-scenes, big-time marketers say is some version of:

“There’s really no secret to the success of this funnel/offer/business. It’s just been a bunch of small and incremental improvements and fixes over time, which added up.”

It’s instinctive for all of us to search for the dramatic, memorable breakthrough that upends our entire understanding of how things work. It’s a good story. Our brains like it. It sticks in the memory and it invites us to share it with others.

The real story though is about smaller, less dramatic, even boring improvements that accumulate.

I’ll leave you today with that idea, and by pointing you to my Most Valuable Email training.

The Most Valuable Email trick, which I teach in this training, started out as a way of making my emails more fun to readers and myself.

It’s since become the guiding philosophy of this newsletter, and it’s become a transformative practice that has allowed me to accumulate hundreds of small improvements in the way I write, in the way I create offers, in the way I position myself.

Over time, it’s added up.

If you too have a personal brand online, and if you want to rack up your marketing and persuasion wizard points, slowly but surely, over time, to levels that you cannot even imagine now:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Free advertorial for your ecom brand?

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As I wrote a couple days ago, with the current situation what it is, the Sun being in Gemini and the Moon in Scorpio, I’ve decided to get back into client work.

I already got one client last week for a DFY newsletter service.

But there’s another thing I know a lot about, and that’s copy for cold traffic ecom funnels, specifically advertorials that make unprofitable funnels profitable and allow profitable funnels to scale.

I’ve charged a lot of money in the past to write an advertorial. But I’ve since learned the value of investing up front in order to find the right clients, or rather, the right partners.

So lemme ask you:

Do you have an ecom brand?

Or do you work with an ecom brand in some capacity?

Would you like a FREE advertorial you can drop into your (or your client’s) existing funnel, and test, to see if it increases conversions, increases AOV, allows you to scale, and makes you more money?

If you’re interested, hit reply and let’s talk.