Business Ideas

Free advertorial + no bondage

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Lemme tell you about my recent positioning fail, so that we’re on the same page, or so you can maybe avoid the same:

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been talking to a guy who runs a big ecom business.

He had heard of my “free advertorial” offer and was interested.

We got on a call. At the end, he asked if I would sign an NDA.

I figured it’s harmless. I’ve never revealed any insider secrets from businesses I’ve worked with, and I don’t mind signing a paper to say I won’t do it in the future. I said, “Sure, send it over.”

The NDA arrived. Except it turned out it was not just an NDA. Actually, it was a noncompete agreement as well, and how.

First, the contract was asking me to agree I would never work with any of the dude’s competitors.

When I refused that, the dude took the offending clause out. He put in a new clause that said I could never use any knowledge or insights gained via working with him with any other clients.

I politely bowed out.

As with everything else in my life, this is my fault.

I didn’t really make it clear to this guy how I am going into this whole “free advertorial” thing.

I’m not a copywriter looking for work. In fact, I might very likely farm out the work to one of the copywriters I am coaching inside my ongoing advertorial cohort, and simply copy chief them to make sure the result is up to my standard.

Rather, I’m going into this “free advertorial” deal as an investor. I’m looking to partner with business owners, contribute valuable assets, tangible and intangible, which I own and will continue to own and have control of, and take a cut of any profits we generate together.

I am certainly not willing to put myself in a situation of voluntary bondage to anybody.

If you’re a copywriter looking to graduate to a new level, and partner with businesses instead of serving clients, I’m sharing my positioning fail with you because you might somehow benefit from my experience.

And if you are not a copywriter, but own an ecom store yourself, or if you know somebody who owns an ecom store, my low-pressure, low-risk, zero-bondage offer still stands. You can find out more about it here:

https://bejakovic.com/do-you-want-a-free-advertorial-for-your-ecom-brand/

How to make a $5 offer easy to sell

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This morning, I shut off the cart and concluded my Daily Emails 101 experiment. Results:

* 155 sales

* About 65 first-time buyers

* A sales page conversion rate north of 33%

In my book, that makes this Daily Emails 101 experiment a success.

What done it? Is the usual threesome? An amazing list of dedicated readers and customers… an irresistible offer… my hypnotizing copy?

Yes, yes… but I would like to wager, there’s something else as well.

The price of Daily Emails 101 was just $5.

That alone won’t do it. There are plenty of $5 offers that don’t sell a single copy. So price alone ain’t it.

What is it is that, most of the time, I sell things that are $197 or $997 or $5k.

Yes, $5 is genuinely cheap, particularly for all I was giving away with Daily Emails 101. But $5 is extra cheap if you’ve been on my list for weeks, months, or years, and you’ve seen me promoting other, much more expensive offers with success. Human beings live by contrast.

My point for you today is two-part.

One part is to raise your prices. Once again, people live by contrast, and if you have at least some expensive offers, it makes everything else easier to sell.

The other part is that once you’ve raised your prices, to remind your readers of your high prices regularly, and to justify those prices, so that, whether people buy or not, they know you and your high prices are for real.

Speaking of:

Today, I would like to tell you about my Copy Riddles program. Copy Riddles sells for $997 and has been for years. Several hundred people have bought it and gone through it, some when it wasn’t yet priced at 997, many at $997.

Copy Riddles is the best thing I sell.

I created it 5 years ago, back when I was still orienting this email list to copywriters alone. The sales page for Copy Riddles reflects that.

The fact is though, Copy Riddles is a course in effective communication and persuasion, and it is relevant to if your business involves written communication of any sort.

I would love to repackage Copy Riddles in industry-specific versions tailored to investment fund managers who communicate with investors via reports… to trial lawyers who need to craft persuasive arguments… to carpet cleaners and HVAC installers who do their own marketing.

Maybe one day. For now, if you are interested in learning how to persuade using words, based on hundreds of millions of dollars of tested advertising, in a way that ensures these insights get burned into your brain rather than slip in one nostril and out the other, then take a look at the Copy Riddles sales page.

Yes, you might have to put in a bit of brain work to see how this program targeted at copywriters could be useful to you in what you do.

That’s the cost.

The payoff you can get for that cost is to be the first in your industry to download this proven influence and persuasion knowledge into your brain, and have first-mover advantage for months or years over all your competitors, at least until I create that specific version of Copy Riddles for your industry.

If you’re interested in the full details on Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Why I chose my 2 (or maybe 3) Daily Email House partners

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This last Saturday, I wrote in an email that I’m looking for two “Daily Email House partners.”

My offer was, “Come and write interesting and valuable content inside my Daily Email House Skool community. You can promote my offers, your offers, or anybody else’s offers, and we split the profits from your posts 50/50.”

I’ve since found my two partners, and I’m also talking to a third guy who might be a good fit.

I once applied for a copywriting job I didn’t get.

The guy who posted that job ended up creating a video where he walked through why he hired the guy he ended up hiring, and he sent it to everybody he didn’t hire.

That video has since made me a lot of money, and I was always grateful to that non-client for taking the time to enlighten me.

I want to do something similar today. Here’s why I chose the two partners I chose, and why I am considering the third guy as well:

#1. All three have email lists and all three email daily

(I’ve seen they can write, they know how to run promos, and they are comfortable with selling. Very relevant since my Skool group is all about making money via writing daily emails.)

#2. All three have courses and offers they can legitimately promote to my audience

#3. All three have their own Skool groups that they are actively running

(A Skool group is not a sales page or a sales email, and while copywriting and marketing knowledge is helpful, it is not sufficient or even necessary for creating good group content.)

My point being:

Yes, there is value in partnering with people who have assets.

That said, you are dramatically more likely to be taken seriously as a partner if you are coming at it not as a newbie hoping to be given an opportunity, but as an “equal” bringing an opportunity.

And before you have a chance to throw up your hands in exasperation:

“Equal” is a matter of perception. You don’t need a certificate to turn you into a “business owner,” “investor,” or “chief of a Skool community.” In the words of Dan Kennedy:

“While you’re sitting in the bath, anoint yourself. Sprinkle some water in your head and call yourself a life coach…”

… or, I would add, list owner, or Skool group owner, or offer owner.

You can set up an email list and start emailing it for free if you want.

You can set up a Skool group for $9 a month.

You can launch an offer even if nobody buys, and even if you haven’t created any deliverables yet.

You can experiment, learn, and practice.

Within two months, nobody will be able to tell you were once a beginner, and not so long ago.

My personal preference for where to start, if you are just starting, is with an email list.

Nobody knows how big your email list is. You can write for years even if nobody’s reading (don’t scoff, I did it). Of course, you can also be proactive and energetic, and start making money with your very first email.

One way or the other, it’s a completely different thing to to approach a potential partner when you have your own assets, when you have real-world expertise, when you know you don’t need the partner, even if you’d like to work with them.

If this resonates with you, get started today.

If you wanna do email, all you need is email software. My recommendation, and what I myself am using, is Kit. It’s not perfect, but nothing is, and out of all the email software I’ve tried, it’s the most acceptable. You can try it yourself with a 14-day free trial here:

https://bejakovic.com/kit

P.S. If you sign up for Kit with the link above and actually use it to send out your first email, forward it to me. I have some bonuses with your name on them.

Toxic, prejudiced, and “socially and democratic-ly regressive”

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I’ll pay off that subject line in a second. But first, let me tell you about the great Nick Bandy, who I mentioned in my email yesterday.

Last December, Nick won my “I endorse YOU” auction by bidding $31k, and boy was I lucky Nick was the one who won.

Because Nick Bandy is GREAT.

Nick works as a fractional CMO for a massive reverse mortgage company. He collects a lot of money for a little bit of work each week ($12k/month for 15 hours/week). That gives him expertise, credibility, and a unique perspective in the direct marketing industry.

Last year, Nick decided to start a personal email list about marketing and online businesses. Using his fractional CMO skills, Nick built out a great cold traffic funnel that pays HIM to add new buyers to his list every day.

On top of that, Nick has since created great courses he’s been selling to his list, like Ghostbuster Sequence, which I’ve promoted repeatedly and which I myself have used to shockingly good result.

And finally, Nick writes great daily emails. I read them pretty much every day, and I think they are funny, clever, and interesting.

Not everybody agrees with me though.

Yesterday, like I said, I sent out my daily email, not about Nick, but mentioning Nick. I got a reply to that from a long-time reader and customer, who wrote me the following block of text:

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So given Nick Bandy has recently come out in all his socially and democratic-ly regressive Trump (and MAGA aligned) ‘glory’, and given that he is platforming his prejudices and his views in his newsletter now in full stereotype, you might want to mention that in future eulogies. I understand he paid you a lot of money and you’re kind of stuck with him (and who knows you may genuinely like him), but I certainly won’t buy anything more off him. I did buy one product before he out-ed himself but the internet and marketing is toxic enough without financially enabling that. I am still on his list as I like to ‘know thy enemy’ although most emails now go into a file rather than read (said enemy is a tad predictable after a while). I do realise you’re not selling him in this email but the lucrativeness of your skool group, but the epithet was still promoting him. Maybe that cesspit-corner of the world is lucrative enough, I don’t know, but no promise nor amount of money is worth that.

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Ok. so let me address this reader’s comment step-by-step.

First, Nick is American, and from what I can tell, he is happy and even proud to be American.

He recently hammed up his patriotism around the Fourth of July, including putting a “Proudly made in America 🇺🇸” line into his email signature and calling his promo the “Freelance Freedom Jubilee.”

I personally found it funny and even wrote Nick to say so, but again, I like Nick and his emails.

Second, as for Nick being a Trump and MAGA supporter, that was news to me.

Not that Nick is or is not pro-Trump — I have no idea either way. It’s just not something I’ve ever seen in his emails or heard him talk about anywhere else.

In fact, I just searched for both “MAGA” and “Trump” in Nick’s emails and Skool group. I found four mentions in total. Here’s the most recent and relevant one, and the only one that was anything more than a passing comment or third-party rant:

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I woke up at 4 am for this appointment SOLELY to get the “Trump” passport.

It’s only available in DC, and only available for in-person appointments.

But I put “Trump” in quotation marks because to me, it’s a semiquincentennial passport. It’s not a “Trump” passport unless you think one picture of Donald Trump among dozens of pages makes it a “Trump” passport. By that logic, it’s also a “Mount Rushmore” passport because there’s one page with Mount Rushmore.

It’s also a “Nick Bandy” passport, since there’s a big picture of ME inside it, too.

People see what they want to see.

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Nick’s final line leads into my final point about my reader’s comment above.

People see what they want to see, and most often, that’s a reflection of their own mental state.

Like I said, that reader who wrote me yesterday has been on my list for years, and has replied to dozens of my emails in the past.

One time, after I wrote an email casually mentioning Ben Settle, she replied with a 562-word response, calling Ben a “toxic, insulting, method-acting control jerk.”

Now the same reader is calling Nick toxic, prejudiced, and “socially and democratic-ly regressive.”

You can draw your own conclusions.

My conclusion is that this reader is the toxic, prejudiced, and socially and democratically regressive one.

I mean, if you go around saying nasty stuff about people based only on your own whims, what is that but toxic?

If you assume that anybody who is patriotic must also be pro-Trump, what is that but prejudiced?

And if you think that everybody who doesn’t agree with you is your enemy, what is that but “socially and democratically regressive”?

Anyways, that long-time reader is not a long-time reader any more. I’ve unsubscribed her from my list and banned her from my Skool group. I don’t want people like her hanging around.

As for Nick, like I said, the guy is great. GREAT. I endorse Nick Bandy, wholeheartedly.

Yes, that’s because Nick won my auction. It’s also because I genuinely believe everything I’ve written in this email about Nick’s emails, courses, and marketing expertise. Plus I like the guy personally.

If you want to get on Nick’s list so you can be shocked by his funny, relevant, and patriotic emails — “Proudly made in America 🇺🇸” — then here’s where to go:

https://nickbandy.com/

Looking for two Daily Email House partners

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I’ve got a free Skool group called Daily Email House.

It recently crossed 500 members.

Last winter, I ran an auction in the group and the winning bid (by the “Fractional CMO Whisperer,” Nick Bandy) came in at $31k.

I am now looking for two partners for Daily Email House, to help me run the group and to share in the profits.

If you are interested, you can find more details here:

https://www.skool.com/daily-email-house/looking-for-two-daily-email-house-partners

Likes are cash, but better

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A while back (and now for all I know), there was an online business guru who built his brand on the slogan:

“Likes ain’t cash”

Except, likes are cash, or actually better, at least if you know where to look.

Today is Monday, which is quickly turning into my day to promote Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin community, of which I myself am a paying member, and have been a member for over two years.

Travis’s Ronin community is about making money online.

It’s very engaged, just as it is, even though the entire group is only about 500 members. People post and comment a lot every day, as does Travis.

And yet, Travis will soon be running a month-long contest to get members to post even more, to comment even more, to engage even more.

The winners will be determined by — you guessed it — likes.

As for the prizes, they will come in the form of licensing rights to Travis’s IP (most of his courses and trainings sell for $2k+), in the form of distribution to Travis’s audiences (I’m guessing Ronin, plus Travis’s other Skool communities, and maybe his email list), as well as Travis’s help running the campaign.

In other words, the winner will get a product to sell… an audience to sell it to… and Travis’s help in selling it. And frankly, I don’t know anybody online who is as good at running sales campaigns as Travis is.

Insert a saying here about how you cannot lead a horse to water, but you can teach him how to fish—

—you know what I mean. Cash is nice. But cash + evergreen assets + newfound knowledge on how to sell those assets is much nicer.

Of course, there’s great value in winning Travis’s contest even without the official prizes.

If you don’t know what that value is, then you must be less of an egomaniac than I am.

All I can say is, I myself keep swinging back and forth between the idea of not participating in Travis’s challenge (I have enough to do already, without competing in a contest that involves lots of posting and commenting) and participating in it (I would love to win, just so I can inflate my ego, and the prizes genuinely sound nice).

Anyways, I’m telling you all this for two reasons:

1. Reason one is to promote Ronin. Maybe you are curious to see this contest unfold. Or maybe you yourself want to go into Ronin, and start implementing some of the stuff that Travis teaches there, and report on your results. In my experience, that kind of content always gets the most likes. If you dedicate yourself to it for a month, you have a legit shot at winning, and you have a legit shot at making tens of thousands of dollars even if you don’t win, simply by implementing what Travis teaches.

2. Along with being an expert in running sales campaigns, Travis is also an expert in community management. This challenge idea is one that you can try for your own community in order to boost engagement and to get a ton of content generated for your group for free. (Travis has more such ideas inside Ronin.)

Anyways, Travis’s contest kicks off in a few days. If you’d like to try out Ronin, either to observe the contest from the sidelines, or better yet, to participate, Travis offers a free 7-day trial, which you can find here:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you sign up for the trial to Ronin and then write a post inside the group to introduce yourself, write me a message and let me know. I have several bonuses with your name on them.

A non-zero amount of sales

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This morning, I woke up to a ThriveCart sale notification.

“What’s this?” I said. I ripped it open like Dudley Dursley ripping open his 36 Christmas presents.

The notification revealed its secrets, and told me the new sale I made:

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Emails That Did Well – $79

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“Emails that did well” is an offer made earlier this week, in one email only.

After I made that offer and sent that email, I got a reply from expert email marketer and superior fractional CMO Nick “Jolly” Bandy, who wrote:

“Actually laughing my ass off reading this. So you are selling the SAME bonus stack as last week… without the main offer…for the same amount of money…and this will most likely make a non-zero amount of sales.”

Yes, it’s pretty much like Nick says, minus the laughing.

I first offered “Emails That Did Well,” plus all the free bonuses eventually included with it, as free bonuses to an affiliate offer.

After the affiliate offer closed, I offered the same bonuses for $79, which happened to be the price of the affiliate offer.

And I made a non-zero amount of sales as a result. As for how non-zero?

That’s for me to know and you to find out, at least if you have gotten yourself access to my Emails That Did Well document.

But before I send you to a page that outlines all the details of that offer and possibly entices you to buy it, a bit of marketing insight:

The first email I ever wrote to my list on the topic of positioning came in 2020.

In that email, I compared your positioning to a spear, which needs to have a very small and very sharp point, in order to pierce your prospect’s thick defenses (his skull) and lodge in the soft gray matter inside.

The thing is, if you fuse together several very small and very sharp points, they lose their “very small” and “very sharp” qualities.

Your positioning becomes less like a spear, small and sharp, and instead becomes more like an iron, flat and heavy.

An iron will hurt somebody if you throw it at their head, but it won’t pierce anything or create any kind of new understanding.

In short, positioning is not additive. A plus B plus C is not always greater than A alone, and often it is less.

That’s why a non-zero amount of people have taken me up on the Emails That Did Well offer.

If you’d like to get that offer, so you can find out how well that email has done so far, and to keep track of my other successful emails, now and in the future, here are the full details:

https://bejakovic.com/announcing-emails-that-did-well/

Announcing: “Emails that did well”

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Last week, I was promoting an affiliate offer and throwing in a Santa-sized sack of free bonus gifts to boot. To which I got an email from a reader who wrote:

“What if all I want is your email bonus? Will you sell me just that?”

That email bonus is called “Emails that did well.” It was the first and maybe foremost of the bonuses I was offering.

This first and foremost bonus consisted of perpetual access to a private, behind-the-scenes document I have created for myself and keep updating a few times a month, called “Emails that did well.”

In “Emails that did well,” I note down which of my emails stood out in terms of results, and how.

In a way, it’s an ever-expanding swipe file of rare, outstanding emails from yours truly, in case you want to know which of my emails to model because they genuinely worked. (Like I wrote last week, only about 10% of my emails produce outstanding results.)

And if you didn’t want the affiliate offer I was promoting last week, but you do want “Emails that did well,” why, yes, I will sell it to you.

I will sell it to you for $79. And I will also include the all the remaining bonuses I was offering last week (you can find them listed in the PS below.)

Maybe you’re wondering how I have the cheek to sell the bonuses I was giving away for free just a few days ago.

Simple.

First off, I believe these bonuses are worth what I’m asking for them and more.

Second, I have done this exact strategy in the past and it worked great. I first gave away valuable free bonuses and later sold them, for a price that seemed unimaginable, and made a nice bunch of sales. If you need a marketing and info publishing lesson for today, let that be it.

And if you want more valuable marketing insights, you can find them inside “Emails that did well,” and the bonuses I’m including.

If you’d like to grab “Emails that did well” and my 5 free bonuses, ho-ho-ho your way over to the following page:

https://desertkite.thrivecart.com/emails-that-did-well/

PS. Here are the free bonuses I am including if you get “Emails that did well” for $79 today:

FREE BONUS #1. “Core Promise Workshop and Q&A call” recording

I recently sold this workshop recording for $97, along with some bonuses. It’s yours free (minus the bonuses) if you get Lawrence’s Lead Gen Legend.

FREE BONUS #2. “Perfect Lead Gen Offer”

Not my idea. Also not a specific offer template you can swipe. Rather, a simple but counterintuitive process for figuring out what offer to make in your lead gen ads to maximize lifetime value and minimize ad costs.

FREE BONUS #3. “How to get copywriting clients a dozen at a time”

A recording of of the call I did with Dawn Apuan, grilling her on how she has been able to become the resident copywriting guru in multiple business masterminds, and rake in dozens of clients at a time.

FREE BONUS #4. A lazy, ‘mom & pop’ ad template to add 3-4 buyers to your email list every day, at a slight profit”

Nick Bandy’s lazy but effective way of creating ads to get people to buy his low-ticket front-end offer and get on his email list.

This is part of Nick’s $500 training on running a low-ticket funnel, but it’s just as applicable if all you wanna do is run lead gen ads.

It’s yours free as part of this Lead Gen Offer, though you will have to additionally opt in to Nick’s list to get it.

FREE BONUS #5. “The second coming of Gary Bencivenga” ad and landing page

A few months ago, I found a guy who was running an ad on Facebook… 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. It was a brilliant, modern application of the classic Gary Bencivenga agency ad.

I’m planning to model this same approach to get advertorial clients. If you’d like the ad and the landing page copy, they are yours as part of this bonus bundle.

To get “Emails that did well” and all 5 of these bonuses:

https://desertkite.thrivecart.com/emails-that-did-well/

Do you want a sexy newsletter-writing job?

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I have a friend named Will. Will and I were both in Dan Ferrari’s coaching group at the same time back in the late 19th century.

I talked to Will last week to catch up.

For the past couple years, Will has been doing all the email marketing for Polymarket, one of the two big prediction markets.

First he was doing a cool weekly email, which I even read, because it’s interesting.

Then they got him to start doing a daily email as well.

It’s a lot of writing and a lot of work.

Will is looking for help, for a writer to handle either the daily email, or segments of the weekly newsletter, or some combination of both.

I offered to put the word out to people in my audience in order to:

1. Help Will

2. Look cool to people in my audience

There’s a conflict between those two goals.

Will’s first question was, “Will I get inundated with replies?”

I told him that chances are yes. And I offered to act as an intermediary, to vet people before I pass them on to him.

If you are interested in writing for Polymarket:

1. Reply to this email

2. Tell me you specialize in writing Morning-Brew style newsletters

3. Include highly relevant samples to back up your claim in 2 above

I’ve already put this call out inside Daily Email House, my Skool group. I’ve had three people apply. Two frankly could not follow the instructions above. The third did, and I passed his info on to Will. But I’m guessing you still have a really good chance at this sexy job (at least sexy to me) if you really want it.

But what if you don’t have relevant samples? In that case, you have two options.

Option one is to not apply for this job. If you don’t send me highly relevant samples, I will not forward your stuff to Will, and I will not listen to you when you explain to me why I should hear you out.

Option two is to create highly relevant samples on the spot, maybe even a sample Polymarket email or two (their stuff is all online and you can find it and model it).

NB: If I have to parse, read into, or interpret your message or your samples to figure out how they could be relevant to this job… I will just skip your application. The whole point here is to figure out if you are the kind of person I should hand off to Will. A part of that is your writing experience and skill. Another part of that is your ability to make his job easier, rather than harder, and right now I’m the proxy for that.

What about salary? Terms? Stock?

I have no idea.

If that’s your first concern, I’d say, don’t apply for this.

But if you have relevant experience, or if you want experience writing for a big and exciting newsletter, then you know what to do.

A dog’s life

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Today is the last day of the movie festival I’ve been attending in Bologna for the past week.

Last night, after a too-rich dinner and a few glasses of wine, I finally sat down among a crowd of thousands on the hot stones of the Piazza Maggiore, the main town square.

On show on a huge screen above me, with a live orchestra playing the score, was the first million-dollar movie ever, A Dog’s Life by Charlie Chaplin.

The experience and the movie were really nice.

Then I got home and found a new 1-star review for my 10 Commandments of Con Men etc. book. The 1-star review said:

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10 commandments of Lame

Lame, by the numbers book that gives no insight or real knowledge. It’s like the author took cliff notes from a used car salesman

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Maybe because I’ve been on vacation for a week, or maybe because I feel the review is so off-target, but I felt zero indignation at this.

The fact is, my book is “by the numbers” — that’s the whole “10 Commandments” conceit.

It also is like Cliffs Notes taken from influence professionals such as used car salesmen, though I didn’t include the specific technique I was thinking of including from Joe Girard, the world’s sellingest car salesman.

As for giving no insight or real knowledge, that’s where I feel this review is so off-target to not even bother me.

Of course, you might think, it’s natural I would say my book is insightful or full of knowledge, since it’s my book. So take it from several other horses’, or maybe dogs’, mouths:

#1 [5 stars] “of interest not just to con men!”

“I found quite a few good ideas that can be used in sales & other endeavors and in everyday interactions, as well.”

#2 [4 stars] “Great Advice”

“Great advice on how to influence others. I plan on using some of his above in my presentations. I recommend this book to anyone trying to improve their powers of persuasion.”

#3 [5 stars] “Great as always”

“John Bejakovic always delivers. Very entertaining yet informative. Do yourself a favor an get on his email list if you wanna know about persuasion.”

Since you’re reading this, you’re already on my email list, as that last reviewer advises.

So instead, if you wanna learn more about persuasion, I’d say, do yourself a favor and grab a copy of my by-the-numbers, Cliffs’ Notes of influence techniques, full of insight and real knowledge, waiting for you here:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments