Customer Selection

The first online course to sell for $1M?

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Will an online course ever sell for $1M a pop?

Probably not, but who knows. Maybe it will be yours. Consider the following:

In 2007, rare-book dealer Glenn Horowitz made a prediction in the New York Times that a rare, signed copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses, known as the Kaeser edition, would become the first 20th-century book to sell for $1M.

“I can’t remember now,” said Horowitz later, “but, knowing myself, I imagine I would have used the statement as a come-hither.”

And that’s what it turned out to be.

Soon after, Horowitz got a call from a collector who proposed paying $1M for the Kaeser. Horowitz then called Ron Delsener, the then-owner of the book, who had paid $460,500 for it a few years earlier.

“It took Ron about 10 seconds to say yes,” Horowitz recalled. Horowitz’s commission for making that come-hiter statement about the first $1M book, for making the call to the then-owner, and for waiting 10 seconds to hear yes, was $100,000.

I was amazed to read an article about Horowitz, the top-of-the-top among rare-book dealers. I found so much in common between the rare-book dealer’s world and the course creator world.

Sure, course buyers won’t pay $1M for a course (yet), and most people buy courses for reasons other than collecting.

But consider the following change in the rare-book industry, brought on by the Internet, as described in the article:

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The Internet made scarcity scarce: everyone could see that there were a gazillion copies of the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica for sale online, and their price plunged. To sell, a book now had to be the best copy, the cheapest copy, or the only copy.

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Swap out “copy” for “course,”” and “the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica” for, say, “How to write emails,” and maybe you can see a valuable lesson in the above. Again from the article:

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Such books required dealers to know more and to be more imaginative: they had to articulate what made a particular provenance or inscription so valuable. Christian Jonkers [a rare book dealer] said, “Our job as booksellers is to justify the difference between the price we bought it at and the price we’re selling it at by providing a narrative about why you should buy it.”

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Marketing guru Jay Abraham, who claims he has helped his clients create an extra 8 billion dollars in value, has this idea of industry cross-pollination. Says Jay, valuable practices that are as common as gravel in one industry can be imported profitably into your own industry, where they appear to be magic, or gold.

I would never have thought to go searching for business ideas in the rare-book dealer’s world. but the article I read is full of ’em, down to Glenn Horowitz’s downfall, near-bankruptcy and possible jail time, for engaging in a common though legal-gray-area business practice.

I have pages of notes from this article. I even got the idea to create a kind of paid newsletter where I would profile interesting people from other industries, in a kind of done-for-you cross-pollination report.

That’s almost certainly never going to happen. But if you sell courses or information more broadly… and if you’re looking for profitable ideas that nobody else in the course creator industry is using… then the following article is worth a read:

https://bejakovic.com/rare-book-dealer

60% of my book is meh, says reader

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I got a hot/cold review for my book on Amazon a few weeks ago. The headline of the review says, “great.” The number of stars is five. And yet, the actual review reads:

“Love this, recommend this. Could use an update and some more work, 60% is meh. But the other 40% might make about $20k in the next week. So that’s a good ROI on 45 minutes of reading.”

That’s quite an emotional rollercoaster for 37 words.

When I first read it, I was left confused, exhilarated, offended. “Love this… 60% is meh… good ROI.”

I can tell you two things:

1. If you want people to feel something about you, notice you, react to you, then giving them the hot/cold treatment is much more effective than giving them either the hot treatment or the cold treatment by itself. And if you want proof of that, then take this email as proof.

2. Even though the dude above says 60% of my book is meh, I am on the whole well-pleased to have his review up on my page. Not because he gave me 5 stars or because he says he loves the book, but because it sounds like he might be somebody who takes action.

And ultimately, people who take action are the kinds of people you wanna associate with, at least if you are involved in something that might be called business.

If you need some ideas to take action on, here’s my book.

40% of it is apparently worthwhile and has money-making potential, that is, if you have 45 minutes and $5 to spare. Link:

​https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

EXPECTING YOUR REPLY

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This past Sunday, I sent an email with a link to a survey, asking people about their single biggest challenge when it comes to writing or profiting from their email list. One respondent wrote:

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Getting suitable copywriting clients to work with and how to find them and make sure they are suitable and are a good fit with both client and service provider happy with outfoem of the relationship. What are the most effective ways to find copywriting clients when starting out? (EXPECTING YOUR REPLY)

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Even though this respondent included his (pseudonymous) email address, I did not reply to him. Maybe you can guess what happened next.

I got an email yesterday from the same guy, replying to that email I had sent out on Sunday. He asked:

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Hey John!

How would you get your first copywriting client if you had to start with that?

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I nodded thoughtfully for a moment, and then I scrolled down to the bottom of the email and I unsubscribed the guy from my list.

Not because he’s pushy or entitled (though EXPECTING YOUR REPLY did rub me the wrong way).

I unsubscribed him because I have zero interest in writing about getting your first copywriting client. I also expect that, for the rest of my life, that will never ever change.

It would be a waste of time, both for me and for the guy above, if he were to stay on my list and keep EXPECTING MY REPLY, given that his single biggest challenge is to get his first copywriting client.

To my mind at least, the most merciful thing is to set this bird free so it can fly off somewhere else. Which is what I did.

You might feel this email is a kind of flex about how I’m so cool that I can casually send engaged readers away from me.

Well, it is that, but it’s also something more.

Because one thread I found in the survey responses came from various people who already run email lists. Their single biggest challenge is that the people on their lists are the wrong type of subscribers.

Too broad of an audience… or no money… or simply a different kind of profile to what the list owner is looking for.

I’d like to suggest to you that regularly sending away the wrong people is one part of getting more of the right people onto your list. We all define ourselves both by accepting and by rejecting. You can bond with someone because you both love the Beatles… or because you both hate the Rolling Stones.

By the way, I’m not saying there’s anything personally wrong with someone if they like the Rolling Stones… or if they are looking for their first copywriting client… or if they have no money right now.

I’m just saying we all have the right to choose what birds we allow to perch and nest inside our own private and walled gardens.

Of course, repelling the people you don’t want is usually not enough. You usually also have to do some things to actively attract the people you do want.

So lemme ask you:

Do you face the challenge of getting the right people onto your list? Or do you face the challenge of a list filled with subscribers you don’t want?

If you do, hit reply. I’d like to hear more about what you’ve tried to overcome this challenge, and how it’s worked out for you.

In turn, if I can give you any suggestions or advice to help you get more of the right kinds of people onto your list, I will.

Should I say it now? I guess it’s inevitable:

EXPECTING YOUR REPLY.

Customers who pay you to pay you

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Right now, for the meager price of $30,000 to start, and then $10,000 per year to keep going, you can sign up to get a spot at Carbone.

Carbone is an exclusive restaurant in New York.

​​The $30k + $10k/year membership gets you a regular weekly table there.

​​Of course, you still have to pay for the food and drinks and service, which, as you can imagine, are expensive.

It turns out there are more and more such restaurants, going members-only.

They cater to people with money who want a few different things. One is better service, less waiting, and being treated with respect. Two is status and recognition. Three, and more than anything it seems, is a feeling of community.

In other words, people are paying good money to be among others like themselves, and to feel comfortable, welcome, and warm.

I’m telling you this to maybe warm up your own mind to the possibilities that are out there.

You can charge people decent money — maybe even indecent money — just for the privilege of being able to buy from you.

Of course, you do have to offer something in return — exclusivity, top-level service, a community.

Who knows? Maybe this is even a way you can charge for the marketing you give away now. Such as your daily emails, for example.

And with that, let me remind you of my Simple Money Emails program.

This program teaches you how to write emails that people want to read, and that they buy from.

I’ve only sent these kinds of emails to prospects for free.

But maybe you can not only use use these kinds of emails to make sales, but charge for them as well, by combining them with the idea above.

Whatever the case may be, if you’d like to find out more about Simple Money Emails:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Celebrity-ashtray-of-the-month club

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I was doing some research yesterday. I wanted to find an old ad. Instead, I found the Bone of the Month Club.

Throughout the 90s, the Bone of the Month Club was advertised with dozens of placements in US magazines and newspapers.

​​For a yearly membership of $79.95, you or your dog could get a dog treat or toy delivered in the mail, every month.

This got me curious. What other of-the-month-clubs were out there?

Two minutes of research dug up the usual suspects: book, movie, gadget.

But two more minutes dug up real headscratchers:

Potato-of-the-month club (new variety of potato each month)… crossword-puzzles-of-the-month club (gotta catch ’em all)… and a monthly “BoneBox,” which, unlike the Bone of the Month Club, actually delivers mystery animal bones to your door each month.

Right now, I’m also reading about Julien’s, an auction house for the stuff of celebrities, dead and living.

Julien’s auctioned off everything from a lamp made from a taxidermied armadillo and given by Gene Simmons to Cher (price: $4,000) to the Fender guitar Kurt Cobain played in the Smells Like Teen Spirit video (price: $4,000,000).

It turns out there’s a booming market for such celebrity stuff. And often, the more personal, intimate, sticky, slimy, smelly the celebrity item, the more people will pay for it.

​​Hence my idea for the celebrity-ashtray-of-the-month club.

You might think I’m joking. You’d only be partly right.

There’s a bigger marketing and business point here. I think it applies to everyone who wants to be successful and to do so with minimum stress and work.

I’ll make you a deal right now:

Write in and tell me what you collect. It can be anything. No judgment. From small to big, from formal collecting (stamps, sneakers, silver coins) to informal collecting (copywriting courses, pickup lines, or countries you’ve visited).

In turn, I’ll write you back. And I’ll tell you the bigger point behind my email, and how you can use it to create a longer-lasting, more cash-spewing business.

Exotic dancer turns down a client

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Today I was talking to the owner of a successful Facebook ads agency. She said something interesting about a potential client she turned away.

I asked if I could reprint what she told me in my email and use her name.

She refused. At least the name part.

“Never ever name me,” she said. “Not my real name. Give me a cool name, some exotic dancer’s name.”

So let’s call her Misty Mirage.

And yes, you now have the right to feel I catfished you into reading this email, because this is as close to exotic dancers as this story is going to get.

You have every right to close down this email or even to unsubscribe in frustration.

But you might still want to read on, because what happened was short but steamy.

So Misty Mirage was talking to a potential client today. They were talking about a private dance, aka. a Facebook ads campaign that Misty would run.

Except, the guy didn’t have the money to pay Misty her usual exotic rate. He was trying to negotiate some kind of payment plan.

Normally, Misty would try to accommodate a broke but nice client and still do a little dance for him. But perhaps because of the alignment of the stars and the moon, today she refused.

​​As she told me:

“Normally I would have tried to help this dude for free, and done a ton of work, and then he would have ended up disappointed and so would I. Because it wouldn’t have worked without a lot of effort and a lot of money. If this guy doesn’t have the money to pay me, he’s not gonna have the money to run ads properly. So I told him, ‘Can’t do it for you.'”

I’ve previously suggested choosing clients and customers by asking yourself, “Would I bet on this person? If I could only get paid if they end up successful, would I still take their money upfront?”

I still think this is a good question to ask. But apparently it’s not good enough.

Like Misty’s case shows, even successful business owners will do work for free just to be nice.

Maybe it’s not always “free” free work.

​​But it’s free work nonetheless — selling their products or services for cheaper than they could sell them, or giving away consultations or good advice, or simply not charging for all they do or all the time that they invest.

I know I’ve done it in the past. Sometimes I still catch myself doing it. Maybe you’re doing it too.

So I’m here to tell you, it’s okay to stop.

​​It’s okay to say no.

​​It’s okay to send people away, even if they’re nice, because they simply have too many pieces missing for you to really help them. It can be genuine charity. And it will also help your business.

And now:

Since I love to apply the ideas I write about, I would like to announce that tomorrow I will give away something for free.

But it won’t be anything of my own.

It will be a free, time-limited bonus for anyone who has bought my Simple Money Emails course. This free bonus is currently selling for as much as Simple Money Emails sells for. But you get it for free, if you are a Simple Money Emails buyer.

More info on that tomorrow.

But if you’d like to get Simple Money Emails today, both because it can show you how to write steamy, burlesque-like emails like this one, and because you want tomorrow’s free bonus, whatever it may be, then head on over here:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

Affluent quests

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This morning. Coaching call.

The guy I’m coaching writes a daily email. Makes a lot of money. Has had two or three successful careers before turning to online marketing.

As an aside, today he mentioned an email that he sent to his list last week. It was about his own imposter syndrome.

Admitting to imposter syndrome wasn’t any kind of pandering or fake vulnerability.

He genuinely felt doubts when a new client, much more successful than him and with a much bigger business than his own, came to him for advice and guidance, and offered to pay him multiple thousands of dollars per month for it, for a six month engagement.

“That email got a lot of response,” my coaching student said.

I’m not surprised. And I imagine that the people who replied to him were his best prospects.

After all, the most highly qualified, highly credentialed people are the ones to most acutely feel a mismatch between their public image — success and achievement — and the inner reality — doubts, confusion, time needed to figure it out.

This includes even the top achievers, the ones who repeatedly get results.

Marketing tip:

In his No B.S Marketing To The Affluent book, direct marketing legend Dan Kennedy says the affluent are on a search, a life and lifestyle quest.

Dan gives five dimensions to this quest. But most of all, says Dan, the affluent are on a quest for competence.

So keep that in mind if you’re trying to sell to the upper end of your market. The high achievers. The Mavericks, rather than the Gooses of your audience.

As for me:

Maybe you’d like to work with me one-on-one?

Next week, I’m wrapping up coaching with the high-achiever above.

​​Right at the start of our work together, I told him that he didn’t need more than a month of my feedback and time. After all, his emails were already fun and interesting. His copy was dialed in. And he was making lots and lots of sales.

And yet, he still wanted to get my feedback on his copy, because he wanted to get better at what he’s doing, and to learn something new. About that, he told me this morning:

“It’s been amazing. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve had sales. Mostly little tips and tricks that I opted in for, so I feel fulfilled.”

I don’t do a lot of one-on-one coaching.

​​After next week, it will either be zero people, or one person, depending if I find somebody who is a good fit.

​​In case you’re interested, hit reply, and we can talk.

Pick one of these 3 niches

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Less is often more when it comes to marketing education.

Example:

I’ve heard marketer Travis Sago say he was once selling a biz op training, about providing some sort of marketing service to businesses.

The first iteration of the training didn’t work out well — Travis had to spend too much time helping his students figure out what niche of businesses to go after.

After it was all over, Travis took stock.

He paced and paced the floor of his laboratory, deep into the night.

And then, in the early morning hours, he had an epiphany:

For the second iteration of the training, Travis simply took out the niche selection part.

Instead, he made niche selection a part of the marketing and application process. When you signed up for the training, you had to pick one of three niches to be in.

Result:

Much easier delivery of the training, and much better results for the students.

I bring this up because I have my Daily Email Fastlane coming up on Thursday. This is a workshop about sending daily emails for your personal brand.

It’s the first time I’m ever offering this workshop.

I have learned a lot from Travis Sago, and I plan to learn from him here as well. So I will not be covering how to pick a niche in Daily Email Fastlane.

Instead, for anyone who does not yet have a niche, but is considering writing daily emails for themselves, my advice is to pick one of these 3 niches for your daily emails:

1. Personal interest

2. Previous experience (preferably, something you got paid for)

3. Make money

You can mix and meld these. My daily emails started out as #1 (interest in persuasion, influence, and personal development)… moved into #2 (talking about copywriting and marketing, based on the work I was doing for clients)… and I’ve since introduced #3, how to get adequately rich so you can live life on your own terms. Which brings me back to Daily Email Fastlane.

The above advice about niches holds whether or not you decide to join me for Daily Email Fastlane. If you want to write daily emails and build a personal brand based on those emails, pick one of the 3 niches above.

But if you want my advice on topics that are a bit further down the daily email road, then consider actually joining me for this workshop.

I will talk about 3 daily emailers I have coached. Each of them fits primarily into one of three categories above. And each built a nice lifestyle business, with one daily email at the center of it.

The deadline to sign up for Daily Email Fastlane is this Wednesday, at 8:31pm CET. If you know you want in, and you want to make sure you don’t miss the deadline, here’s where to go now:

https://bejakovic.com/daily-email-fastlane

Four chapters more important than new customers

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Yesterday, I was flying from Girona, Spain to Zagreb, Croatia. It was not a pleasant flight. I tried to distract myself by opening up a valuable marketing book I’ve been reading:

Ice To The Eskimos, or, How To Market A Product Nobody Wants

I’ve been at this book for a couple of weeks already. I’m a very slow reader, which means I’ve just started chapter 5.

“Finally,” I said to myself as I started reading. “Now we’re getting into the sexy stuff, getting new customers!”

But that’s a classic mistake I was making.

Sure, the chapter 5 stuff sounded sexy.

But there were 4 chapters that the author thought were more important to write about before that.

The author of this book is Jon Spoelstra. Spoelstra was a sports marketer who was brought in to boost sales at the New Jersey Nets back in the 1990s.

Here was Spoelstra’s first and most important lesson:

Back in the early 90s, the New Jersey Nets were the worst team in the NBA. They had no stars. They even had no kind of home team advantage — New Jersey residents support the New York Knicks. To top it all off, there was a legitimate curse on the franchise.

The owners brought in Spoelstra to try to turn things around.

They told him to devise a strategy to lure people from Manhattan to buy Nets tickets. After all, Manhattan is so rich and so near, and so full of people hungry for entertainment.

Spoelstra refused.

He called it his Ulysses Method.

Spoelstra plugged up the owners’ ears with wax. He lashed himself to the mast of the Nets ship, so he would not be tempted to heed the siren song that leads to certain ruin, trying to woo customers from a sexy segment of the market where he just. could. not. win.

Instead, Spoelstra focused on unsexy New Jersey. Result:

The Nets went from zero sold-out games the year before Spoelstra was hired, to 35 sold-out games a few years later.

During the same time, the Nets also managed to increase revenue from local sponsorships from $400k per year to more than $7 million per year.

How Spoelstra achieved this is clever and worth knowing, and Spoelstra’s book is worth reading.

But none of it would have mattered much if not for the basic Ulysses Method.

I’m telling you this because I needed being told this myself.

When I first read Spoelstra’s chapter about the Ulysses Method, I impatiently sped through.

“Sure of course makes sense. But not really relevant to me. I am in no danger of chasing after markets where I can’t win.”

A few days passed. With a bit of space and time, I slowly realized Spoelstra’s warning applies very directly to me, and to stuff I’m trying to do now.

So I’m sharing the Ulysses Method with you now, because maybe you can use it as well.

All right, on to my offer to you for today:

If you feel you never learned the fundamentals of copywriting, and you’ve just been winging it based on what you’ve observed others doing, then my Copy Riddles program might be the fix you’re looking for.

Copy Riddles covers the A-Z of copywriting in 20 individual rounds.

Each round covers a specific copywriting topic or technique. The topics and techniques get progressively more sophisticated and rarefied as the 20 rounds go on.

But just like with Spoelstra and his Ulysses Method, the most important stuff is right there in rounds 1 and 2.

Internalize just those two rounds, or have them internalized for you, simply by following the Copy Riddles process, and you will be ahead of 95% of the people who call themselves professional copywriters, including many who make a good living at it.

For more info on Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Should you write emails that attract your target audience?

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In a few hours, I’m to board a plane to sunny Andalusia in the south of Spain. Before then, there’s still the gym, packing, and of course, this daily email to write.

Fortunately, a reader sends in a timely question:

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I have a (copy)riddle that’s been on my mind for a while now…

I have a tiny list of 40 people I want to grow and use to get copywriting clients.

Now… Should I keep writing to them about copywriting and marketing, or should I switch to something else that would attract the people I want?

Just because if I keep writing about copy, it is going to attract mainly copywriters and not the business owners I want, right?

What are some of your thoughts on this one?

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When I first read this question, I felt it was either the world’s most gingerly tossed softball or some kind of setup.

Should you, or should you not, write emails that attract your target audience… hmm… let’s see… and it’s a copywriter asking me this…

Clearly, the answer is yes, right?

Yes. If you want people in a specific market to read your emails, you should write your emails in a way that attracts those people.

That’s what I replied to the reader above.

But then I thought a bit more. And the following question popped up in my mind:

Over the past 5 years, how many copywriters have started email lists with the goal of attracting clients?

And of those, what percentage have ever managed to get a single paying client from their email newsletters?

My guess for the first question is, thousands. My guess for the second question is, fewer than 5%, and maybe fewer than 1%.

So maybe there’s more to this question than meets the retina.

That’s why I’ll talk more about this on the free training I will put on at the end of this month, about how I do it, meaning how I write and profit from this newsletter you are reading now.

Because I have gotten copywriting clients via this newsletter, multiple times.

​​I’ve also gotten lots of one-time-gig, ongoing-job, and even partnership offers that I turned down, because I had enough work or because I wasn’t taking on clients at the time.

And yet, I’ve written many more emails about copywriting and marketing than I have about the troubles of being an online business owner… and my prime directive has never been to write in a way that attracts my ideal clients.

I’ll talk about this on the training, and I’ll work to make it interesting and valuable to you too, whether you’re hungry for clients or you simply want to write your own email newsletter for other reasons.

Once again, the training is free. It will happen on Monday January 22, 2024 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. You will have to be signed up to my list in time to get on the training. If you’d like to sign up to my list, click here.