Sign up to Author Stack because it might be interesting or valuable to you

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Today I would like to get you to sign up to Author Stack. it’s free, though you can also pay if you want.

Author Stack is a Substack newsletter by Russell Nohelty.

It’s a newsletter for writers. It covers the mysterious business side of writing, as opposed to the familiar technical side that everybody else yaps about, telling you to tack on an ‘s’ to the the verbs in your headline (“TRIPLES your response!”).

As I wrote a few times over the past week, Russell reached out to me when he read that I’m going down the paid traffic route.

He offered to do a recorded interview, and share his experiences spending $30k to grow his own audience, which now stands at over 70,000 subscribers across his different newsletters.

I was grateful to Russell for the offer and for the info he shared with me.

I asked if there was something I could do in turn to make this worthwhile for him as well.

But Russell said he’s not worried about it. “If you put out good and do things with cool people,” he said, “things usually work out like they’re supposed to.”

Outwardly I smiled. Inwardly I cursed. I hate it when people are relaxed, generous, and non-needy around me.

Fortunately, Russell does write Author Stack, and I would like to get you to sign up for it.

Not because Russell asked me to (he didn’t) or because he was nice to me (he was).

Sure, maybe everything I’ve told you so far can be a bit of proof, or a bit of context to help ease you through the link at the bottom.

But really, I would like to get you to sign up to Author Stack because it might be interesting or valuable to you.

Author Stack can be interesting to you if you’re into things like Substack gossip… newsletter growth… or newsletter monetization strategies.

Author Stack can be valuable to you if you write or you want to write — newsletters, books, comics — but more than that, if you want to make money writing, and you’re looking for practical guidance on how to do that in the current moment.

Like I said, Author Stack is a Substack newsletter.

Like many Substack newsletters, there’s a free version and a paid version.

You can get the paid version if you like… or you can choose to not get it. The advice and info that Russell provides in the free version is already copious, and interesting and valuable without any add-ons.

Final point:

I’m not an affiliate for Author Stack. I am personally signed up to get it.

If you would also like to sign up for it, try it out, read Russel’s articles and see if they can benefit you, or open up your mind about what’s possible in the business of writing today:

​https://www.theauthorstack.com/​

The best reason not to buy MyPEEPS

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The deadline to get MyPEEPS is getting uncomfortably near… but not everybody is nervous. For example, one reader wrote me already last week to tell me he won’t be buying — and he had the best reason imaginable:

===

This is a great offer, John. And I would’ve joined immediately if I hadn’t already purchased this course two times 🙂

I bought it when Travis Sago was promoting it.. and found out afterward that I had bought it earlier when Ryan Lee promoted it.

===

What I’m about to say doesn’t actually apply to the reader who wrote me the above.

He happens to be a successful marketer, and he’s already mastered list building. He bought MyPEEPS — once — because he buys courses looking for a slight edge from people who are masters in various aspects of marketing. He bought it the second time because he’s busy implementing what those courses teach, and it probably slipped his mind he already had the thing.

Unfortunately, many people are not like this.

Many people buy a course, and never implement anything from it, or they implement at the speed of continental drift.

That is in part why I decided to offer the Shotgun Messenger bonus I am offering with MyPEEPS, in case you get it by the deadline tonight. It’s to help you implement… to motivate you to implement… to charm you to implement.

Of course, I’m under no illusion that everybody who buys MyPEEPS and gets in on my bonus will end up going through the course, and actually taking the steps needed to get results.

I would like for that to happen. But I’m realistic. I know that even with my offered help, not everybody will follow through.

But maybe you will join. If you do, I’ll do all I can to help you put this course to good use, so you can build yourself an email list full of people who want to read what you write, and buy what you sell.

Tick tock. The deadline to get MyPEEPS is in a few short hours, at 12 midnight PST.

Are you a little nervous? Maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe it means you still have some interest in this offer, and the outcome it promises.

If you’d like to look over the details and make your decision before the clock makes the decision for you:

​https://bejakovic.com/shotgun​

Who wins the fight: Viral posts or paid traffic?

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I’ll tell ya, or actually, I’ll defer to a person with more authority on the matter:

Russell Nohelty.

As I wrote once last week, 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.

Over the past 6 months, Russell spent $30k on paid ads to beef up his email list, which now stands at over 70,000 subscribers.

Russell and I did a call last Monday about his experiences spending all that money on ads.

On the call, Russell said something interesting — that advertising democratizes virality. Says Russell, advertising allows people who were not “blessed by the magic audience fairy” to build an audience for their work.

Sounds great, right?

Except… do you really wanna go viral? Here’s another thing that Russell said:

===

I have never heard somebody say, “I went viral and got all the best people subscribing to me!”

It’s always some version of “Wow, lots of bigots in the comments who hate everything about me.”

If you are attracting the wrong crowd organically, you could end up in a way worse place than running ads. I know because I’ve been there.

Both are bad and both are good. The difference is the quality of the traffic source, how you nurture the leads you generate, and whether you are paying in time or money.

===

This isn’t about trumpeting paid traffic over organic traffic, or vice versa. The point is simply this:

Where you get your subscribers matters… how you get them matters… what you promise them matters… how you treat them when they’re on your list matters.

This is not any kind of inspirational woo-woo, but very practical dollars-and-cents calculus, borne out by sales, spam complaints, and the number of interesting or annoying reader replies.

And this is one of the reasons why I liked Travis Speegle’s paid list-building approach, the one he teaches in his MyPEEPS course, which I’ve been promoting all week long.

Travis’s system is not about paying to inflate your subscriber count with people who hate you or never want to hear from you. It’s also not about getting the cheapest traffic simply because it’s cheap.

Instead, Travis’s approach is about building a quality list, with paid ads, sustainably, with the goal of having a valuable relationship with the people on that list for the long term. That in fact is why the course is called MyPEEPS, and not “8-Figure A-List Media-Buying Secrets.”

The deadline to get MyPEEPS is tonight at 12 midnight PST, less than 12 hours from now.

The reason to get MyPEEPS before then is my Shotgun Messenger bonus — my personal support and insight as you work through MyPEEPS and implement it to grow your own list.

As an extra bonus, I’m also including the call on which I interviewed Russell Nohelty about his experiences with paid traffic to grow his personal brand…, as well as a series of articles that Russell wrote on the topic, which are normally reserved for his paid subscribers.

If you’d like the full details on MyPEEPS and my bonus offer, or if you want in before the deadline strikes:

​https://bejakovic.com/shotgun​

Getting hooked on the hamster wheel

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Back in 2009, before social media really transformed the world, a Dutch scientist named Johanna Meier set up revolutionary experiment in her back yard:

She put an open cage in an ivy-tangled corner of the yard. Inside the cage, she put some food pellets and a running wheel. She then trained a motion-activated camera on the scene.

Sure enough:

Wild mice started arriving during the night. They entered the cage to get the food pellets. But they also tried out the running wheel — and they got hooked.

Meier recorded more than 12,000 different animals getting on the running wheel night after night. Her point was proven — even perfectly wild, free animals would willingly enter a cage and run around on the wheel, going nowhere.

Once the mice got habituated, Meier could even take the treats away. The mice still kept coming night after night, to run around in place, doing what they had gotten used to.

I bring this up because in the 15 years since that experiment, social media has often unflatteringly been compared to a hamster wheel.

I’ve never really used social media so I can’t say if that’s true.

But maybe it resonates with you. Maye you have experience getting lured into social media by the promise of treats — a huge free audience — only to have the treats pulled away from you, while you keep running in place.

If so, I’d like to present an alternative:

Building up a modest, engaged, scalable email list by paying for ads. Sure, ads cost money. But so does the wasted opportunity of weeks, months, or years of running in place on social media, without getting anywhere.

If this speaks to you, I’d like to remind you of the deadline to get MyPEEPS, tonight at 12 midnight PST.

In a food pelletshell, MyPEEPS shows you how to build your email list with paid traffic — putting in $10-$15, and getting out 10-15 new subscribers a day — so you can in time have a proper audience of people who want to read what you write, and buy what you sell.

Plus, the free Shotgun Messenger bonus I’m offering gets you my direct help and input as you actually put the MyPEEPS process into practice.

If you want the full details on that, or to sign up for before the deadline strikes:

​​https://bejakovic.com/shotgun​​

How to stop being seen as a milquetoast

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Today is the last day to sign up for MyPEEPS and get my free “Shotgun Messenger” bonus. You can expect me to send many more emails about this offer today. And on that note, I wanna tell you a quick story of rejection:

I first discovered marketer Travis Sago thanks to a podcast interview back in 2019. I was super impressed by everything Travis said, and so I got on his email list right away.

Travis had an automated welcome email that ended with, “I’m curious… What business are you in?”

I wrote back. I told Travis that I loved his interview, I gave some specifics of what I loved, and I said my business was copywriting.

And what I got back was… nothing. No smiley face, no “good on ya,” not a single word.

I figured then and in all these intervening years that either Travis didn’t check the reply email regularly, or he simply didn’t think me important enough to reply to.

Then this very morning, Sunday September 15 2024, I was listening to a short recording that Travis did for the people in his community.

Travis was talking about how persistent he is in following up with his prospects, particularly the “movers and shakers.” And he said the following:

“In fact, in my business, if a copywriter reaches out to me, my typical M.O. is not to respond back. I wanna get rid of all the milquetoasts, because I’m looking for people who want to get things done in the face of a challenge.”

Point being:

You might know that followup can get the attention of those who forgot about you or never even noticed you.

You might also know followup can build more desire.

But I imagine you never thought of followup as a kind of proof element.

And yet it is. Because who follows up?

People who believe in what they are doing and selling, including themselves.

The milquetoasts drop away.

So send regular emails, preferably daily… and if you got a deadline coming up, send a bunch.

You’ll catch people’s attention… you’ll remind them of what they want and how you can help… and you will convince them you have something worthwhile, just because you keep following up about it. And now, since you’ve read this email, you are a few minutes closer to the deadline for my MyPEEPS offer. The deadline will come in a flash, tonight at 12 midnight PST.

In a nutshell, MyPEEPS shows you how to build up your email list with paid traffic — putting in $10-$15 and getting out 10-15 new subscribers a day — so you can in time have a proper audience of people who want to read your emails and buy from you.

And the free Shotgun Messenger bonus I’m offering gets you my direct help and input as you actually put the MyPEEPS process into practice.

If you want the full details on that, or to sign up for before the deadline strikes:

​https://bejakovic.com/shotgun​

Is there anything earthbreaking here?

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Comes a question about my ongoing MyPEEPS promotion, which ends tomorrow night:

===

I know you’re selling this course as an affiliate offer.

I’m wondering if you actually learned anything new in the course or was it just a suite of fundamentals.

I’m asking because I’ve taken a number of courses in Ad buying, and most say much the same thing.

There are nuances in approaches… occasionally there’s a course that has an epiphany – something truly earthbreaking. Something that makes you go “wow…. Aha!” For me, ad temperature levels when I first heard it was interesting. I also appreciated TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU links on campaigns that I learned in another course. MintCRO’s approach for deconstructing Ads to landers was interesting – engineered, but interesting.

I’m asking you because I’ve feel you’re earnest in your emails.

===

I am indeed earnest in my emails, to the point of often telling people not to buy offers that I’m promoting.

Which is what’s gonna happen here.

Because rather than, “Is there anything new here,” I think there are better questions to ask first.

Such as, how is your list doing? How many people sign up on average every day? Is that enough? If not, how are you planning to grow it in the future? And how confident are you that it will work out?

If you are happy with how things are and where they are going, great.

In that case, I would say there’s no sense in taking me up on this offer, whether or not it has anything new in it. Go attack some more promising opportunity instead, or just take the afternoon off.

On the other hand, if your list is not where you want it to be, and you have doubts around how to change that, then MyPEEPS offers a simple method, backed by Travis Speegle’s 20+ years as a media buyer, and the millions of leads he has generated for various businesses.

Plus, the “work alongside me” bonus I’m offering is there to make sure MyPEEPS doesn’t just become another set of ideas that you appreciate and find interesting… but to help you take Travis’s system, put it to use, and grow your list, so you have enough people to write to, and enough people to sell to.

And now, to answer the original question:

I haven’t been through a lot of courses on ad buying, so things that are new to me might not be new to you.

If you must have something new, two things come to mind right now.

One is at the very start of MyPEEPS, how Travis thinks about lead magnets and optin offers.

It was an “aha” to me — a new perspective I hadn’t really seen before, in spite of 10+ years of various copy and marketing books and courses.

I can imagine this simple “aha” can make all the difference in coming up with ad campaigns that work as opposed to ones that flop, and that won’t unflop, even with all the sexy tweaks and tactics that you might want to pay thousands of dollars for.

The other “new” thing for me came at the end of MyPEEPS. It was Travis’s “Reverse Course” method. I had never heard of this method before, nor even considered it. And yet:

Travis has been running one such “Reverse Course” campaign, without any change, using the same ads, for 8 years now.

He just did it again a few days ago, and brought in 40k new leads over two weeks.

When Travis runs this campaign, it typically breaks even or makes money on day zero.

And unlike many ad campaigns that run at such a scale, Travis’s “Reverse Course” campaigns actually create a huge amount of good will, instead of the usual irritation and trolling.

The “Reverse Course” method won’t be right for every business. But it is new, and for the right business or list, it is clearly very valuable.

Like I said, I wouldn’t get MyPEEPS just to find out what the “Reverse Course” method is. I would get MyPEEPS because you intend to put it to use and get value out of it.

But one way or another:

The deadline to take me up on MyPEEPS and get the free bonus — community and my ongoing support as you go — is tomorrow, Sunday, at 12 midnight PST.

If you wanna take me up on this offer, or for the full details of how the support element works:

​https://bejakovic.com/shotgun​

3-step plan to create “Electrical Socket Offers” out of thin air

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Last week I did a presentation inside Thom Benny’s Copyjitsu coaching group. Thom coaches 6 guys, all with good copy chops already, and he invited me, John Bejakovic, to come and pontificate on how to write emails.

One of the guys in Thom’s group asked me the following:

===

I have this thing where I’m writing daily emails. I’m getting in reps. I wouldn’t be writing all this stuff if I didn’t believe I could help somebody.

But also, I don’t have any sales pages or digital products. All this that I’m offering, every day, is still consulting.

Do you have any way to think about that, when you’re at that stage, don’t have digital products, but you’re just pitching consulting?

===

This is a great question. I bring it up now because earlier today, I asked what objections people had to buying MyPEEPS, a course I’m promoting until Sunday, on building up your email list with paid traffic.

Along with the usual objections — don’t need it, can’t afford it, already bought it — I got some surprises. For example, a few people wrote to say, “What can I do with an email list when I ain’t got no offers!”

So let me address that now.

If you got no offers, you can always decide to offer… consulting.

That’s Step 1 of my “Electrical Socket Offers” plan.

The problem is, “consulting” is a horrible, horrible offer. I say that without restraint because I’ve been guilty of offering “consulting” myself. I’ve also been guilty of making other horrible offers, like “coaching,” or “copywriting services.”

These offers are all horrible because they put the burden on the prospect. They say, “How am I supposed to know what I can help you with? I do have some knowledge and skill… but you tell me how you can use them.”

So Step 2 of my “Electrical Socket Offers” plan is to take the burden off the shoulders of your prospects.

You take the burden off by figuring out what problems your prospects have.

This is much easier to do than you might think. You simply ask. You can do it by digging around online. You can do it via email. Or, if you have the stomach for it, you can even do it over the phone.

Ask your prospects where they’re at… where they hope to go… what’s keeping them from getting there. Do this a few times, until you find a specific problem you can actually suggest a solution to.

BLAM!!

Suddenly, you’ve taken your horrible, horrible “consulting” offer, and you’ve transformed it into something wonderful and valuable — a solution to a specific problem that your prospects have.

Because really, when my laptop is running out of battery, I look for an electrical socket.

Once I find an electrical socket, I don’t stop and ask, “What manner of electricity does this socket supply? Was it electricity generated by a windmill? A hydroelectric dam? Solar?”

I really don’t care. I just want my laptop charged. Any socket I can plug into will do.

Same thing with people and their problems. People don’t care if you solve their problem via a digital course, consulting, or even a done-for-you service. Really, what they are after is a solution to their specific problem. They’re looking for a socket to plug into.

Step 3 of my plan is optional but highly valuable.

It’s to give your consulting offer a name, such as, for example, “Electrical Socket Offers.”

Because there is magic in giving things a name. It relieves any remaining burden on your prospects, and gives them just a simple, light word or three to hold in their mind.

So that’s the 3-step plan to create “Electric Socket Offers” out of thin air.

I imagine few people will take the above advice seriously.

I imagine even fewer will actually choose to implement it.

But if by chance, you’ve had the the light come on in your head… and you’ve realized that there is in fact nothing stopping you from selling attractive offers, starting today… then maybe it makes sense to build up an email list? You know, so you have people to sell your attractive offer to?

You decide. And if you decide that the answer is yes, then maybe take a look at the MyPEEPS offer I’m promoting. It comes with my free “Shotgun Messenger” bonus, which is live until this Sunday at 12 midnight PST. For the full details on this offer:

​https://bejakovic.com/shotgun​

The “crazy idea” I keep ranting about on Skool

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This week I launched my first-ever Skool group, helping a bunch of list owners start running ads to grow their email lists, including email lists about:

* Guitar

* Horse training

* Electronic music

* Language learning

* Real estate investing

* Weight loss and fitness

* And of course a number of marketing-, copywriting-, and online creators-related lists

My Skool group is only in a kind of pre-launch — it officially kicks off next Monday — but I’ve already been giving members feedback on their lead magnets and landing pages.

Well, “giving feedback” is too kind for what I’ve been doing.

I’ve been foaming at the mouth, banging on the table, and barking the exact same command, to different frightened group members, over and over.

It’s a “crazy idea” that somehow nobody is willing to actually put to use, not unless I yell.

This “crazy idea” is not hard to use.

The trouble is, we all feel we are using it when in fact we are not.

That includes me — I often fail to put this “crazy idea” to use, and I pay the price each time, because it makes the difference between advertising that gets a good response at an affordable rate… and advertising that gets zero response, or that gets response from the exact wrong people.

Fortunately for me, it’s easier to see and solve other people’s problems than it is to see and solve your own. That’s why I’ve been liking this Skool group.

But back to the “crazy idea.”

You might think it’s something like “tell them what’s in it for them” or “use curiosity” or “get their attention.”

NO!!!

None of those! How could you even think something like that?? Bah…

(I’m trying to give you a flavor for the tone I take inside the Skool group.)

No, the reality is, this “crazy idea” is something more mechanical, something you can do right now to produce copy that is infinitely more like to perform, and get you the right audience, at an affordable price you can scale.

And now, I’ll make you a deal.

The deadline to take me up on Travis Speegle’s MyPEEPS list building course, which my Skool group is a free bonus for, is this Sunday at 12 midnight PST.

If you’d like to sign up for MyPeeps and get into the Skool group, you can do so at the link below:

​https://bejakovic.com/shotgun​

But if you would not like to sign up for MyPEEPS or get into my Skool group as a free bonus, at least not yet, then hit reply and tell me your #1 objection or hesitation. Don’t worry, you won’t hurt my feelings even if you are brutally honest.

I would like to hear what’s been holding you back, and you will help me close out this promo.

In return, I will write you back and tell you the “crazy idea” I’ve been teasing this whole email. In other words, I’ll reveal the #1 piece of feedback I’ve been giving inside the Skool group so far, and probably will keep giving as we launch for real next week.

The curious case of the 7,730-word Facebook ad

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“My new husband is disabled, yet he manages to wear me out every night”

… I’m sitting in a busy cafe, full of other expats, because my cleaning woman Flor has taken command of my apartment.

A few moments ago, I was discreetly and quietly digging through the Facebook ad library, looking for what I knew I would soon find.

And I did — a 7,730-word ad, which starts with a teaser:

“Her groom ran away from wedding to pursue his first love. Heartbroken, she randomly found a disabled man who was also abandoned to get married. Unexpectedly, he turned out to be a billionaire!”

This Facebook ad goes on for two chapters of dense literotica, before informing me that “Available chapters here are limited, click the button below to install the App and enjoy more exciting chapters.”

Sure enough I did click, a website opened up, and the above line, about my new disabled husband and his nightly staying power, blared out of my laptop speakers and throughout the cafe, as I scrambled to find the mute button.

So now, rather than raising my eyes from the keyboard and meeting the curious gaze of all the other cafe goers, I am focusing intently on writing this email.

I don’t know the full story of this ad or the business behind it. Maybe it’s some sort of scam.

Or maybe it’s just what it says it is:

A mobile app with a subscription for literotica books… which is being sold via dozens of Facebook ads that run for 5k+ words each.

I bring this up because last night, during the interview I did with Travis Speegle on list building via paid traffic, a question came in:

“Do you feel that attention spans are getting shorter and marketers have to get more sophisticated and learn ‘vsl’ or video ads for more engagement?”

Attention spans aren’t as short as you may have been led to believe.

And video ads are not required for anything, though they can be a good option for many tyings.

More generally, the eternal truth still holds. You reap what you sow.

If you create advertising inviting people to be distracted, gullible, greedy, scared, cheap — or to consume pages and pages of disabled billionaire literotica — that’s what you’re going to get.

On the other hand, if you create advertising inviting people to be good customers or email list subscribers, well, it works in that direction also.

And on that note:

This week, I’m promoting Travis Speegle’s MyPEEPS course, which gives you the core of Travis’s ~20 years of media buying and list-building experience for a one-time investment of $495.

Travis actually walks you through, in real time, how he creates ads in Facebook and what he puts in them to get the right kinds of people onto his email lists and the list of the big DR clients he accepts as clients.

Plus, if you get MyPEEPS via my affiliate link before this Sunday at 12 midnight PST, I will also include a bonus, which I’m offering for free, only this once, and which I would normally charge $500 or more for.

The free bonus is that I’ll ride shotgun as you build up your own list following the process in MyPEEPS, and give you my copywriting feedback and marketing input along the way.

For the full details on how this will work, or to get MyPEEPS and my free bonus as well:

​​https://bejakovic.com/shotgun​

Personal positioning that gets $15,000/month retainers

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Last night, I interviewed Travis Speegle, who is a media buyer, and kind of in the elite of his profession.

Internet marketer Ryan Lee let slip once that Travis gets a $15,000/month retainer, just to start a new project.

I’m telling you this to set up the following quote, which you might dismiss otherwise. Travis was talking about how he moved to Puerto Rico to surf, and how that lifestyle choice influenced how he works with clients. And he said:

===

The personal things, those things that we think have nothing to do with our business, are the things that make the biggest difference.

The thing that made the biggest difference in my business and where I am currently today is when I specifically decided that I was going to live my life and become a professional surfer and that I was going to treat everybody that hired me for anything as a sponsor to my surfing.

And I started telling that story. It was the best filter.

Anybody who couldn’t buy into it or was like, “That’s just stupid,” well they’re not a good client that’s not a good fit for me.

But anybody who did, super respected it, and bought into my life, my lifestyle, then I could almost do no wrong.

And things got better because it just attracted more of the people that would actually like to work with me, not just my style, or the results.

It just so happens that results come a lot easier when you work with the right people.

===

Maybe you have your own takeaways from this, or objections to what Travis is saying.

I won’t try to convince you one way or another.

I’ll just tell you one thing I got from Travis’s “professional surfer” stance, and that’s the value of metaphor — of a super clear and easy-to-communicate image — both for the person who is talking and for the person who is listening.

This is just as true whether you’re pushing a product… a service… or, like in Travis’s case, yourself as a partner, expert, or leader.

But on to biz.

This week, until Sundae, I’m promoting Travis’s MyPEEPS, which gives you the core of Travis’s ~20 years of media buying and list-building experience for a one-time investment of $495 — significantly more affordable than Travis’s $15k/month retainer.

Plus, if you get MyPEEPS via my affiliate link, I will also include a bonus, which I’m offering for free, only this once, and which I would normally charge $500 or more for.

The free bonus is that I’ll ride shotgun as you build up your own list following the process in MyPEEPS, and give you my copywriting feedback and marketing input along the way.

For the full details on how this will work, or to get MyPEEPS and my free bonus as well:

​https://bejakovic.com/shotgun​