Newsletters

The end of newsletters

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Well, the end of my newsletter.

No, not this one. This one will keep going, as long as I keep needing therapy and as long as I keep refusing to trust anyone else with the task.

But as of today, I have decided to stop publishing my health newsletter.

I started that newsletter in January 2023. I published a new issue every week until this week — some 120k words in total.

Researching, writing, and publishing all that word-tonnage took up 300-400 hours of my productive waking time over the past 15 months.

And yet, I’m closing the old heap down. My reason is simple:

I couldn’t get my health newsletter going as a business. And rather than thinking about what I’ve already invested into it, I’m thinking about the time, money, and effort it might still take to turn it into something.

It’s not simply a matter of persistence, either. Because knowing what I know now, I’m not sure my health newsletter would ever turn into something, even if I were to persist.

I could tell you my arguments for that, or my predictions for the future of newsletter businesses.

But instead, I’ll share something by someone much more invested in newsletters than me. That someone is Scott Oldford.

Over the past year or two, Scott bought up dozens of newsletters and newsletter-related businesses with the goal of creating a newsletter roll-up. And then, here’s what he found:

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Our model originally with newsletters was to create lead flow for the companies that we owned inside of our portfolio.

As time went on we ended up a little further away from that model than I’d like to admit.

We attempted to monetize in many different ways and in the end we realized that keeping it with its original intent was a much better strategy.

[…]

We realized that the cost of running a media company at scale simply did not make sense and majority of the costs were actually from attempting to make it a direct-profit driver instead of a value-driver for the dozens of businesses we own and eventually hundreds of businesses we will own.

In short — newsletters and owned media makes a lot of sense. However, I believe the opportunity that people see isn’t the true one.

The real opportunity? Owning your audience.

===

For me at least, it’s the end of newsletters as a business.

​​On the other hand, I will be looking for a business to start or grow, one where a newsletter could be a valuable tool.

Maybe you’re lucky, and you already have a business like that. Maybe you even have your own owned audience. But maybe you’re not doing anything with it.

If so, you’re not alone. I’m always amazed by how many businesses have email lists of tens of thousands of leads or even buyers — that they never do anything with.

If you want my help or advice with that, hit reply and we can talk.

​​Or if you don’t want my help, and you want to profit from your email list all by yourself, here’s how to start writing a newsletter that complements and feeds your business:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Is the daily email marketplace glutted?

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I’m on the Amtrak from New York to Baltimore, sitting the wrong way, away from the direction of travel, bouncing up and down as trees and warehouses zoom by me. It’s not a great time to write a daily email.

​​Fortunately, a long-time reader fed me a good email prompt a few days ago. He wrote:

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For a while now, I’ve been feeling like I’m inundated with emails from copywriters, marketers and direct marketing companies.

Until a few months ago, I took pleasure in reading everything.

Now I don’t anymore.

[…]

Lately, I enjoy reading newsletters about what is happening in the world, novels, history books, detective stories, and business history textbooks.

I hope this metamorphosis of mine is normal.

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My reader’s message sums up the concept of the sophistication of the marketplace, as described by legendary marketer Gene Schwartz, in the experiences of one person.

A man will enter a specific marketplace. He will be new, interested, and engaged by just about everything there.

In time, he will become more selective, more skeptical, or even leave that specific marketplace altogether.

Is this a problem?

​​Is it a vote against ever starting a business in general?

​​Or is it a vote against starting a daily email newsletter right now?

Of course not.

The fact is, there are uncountably many humans alive on the planet right now. You only need a tiny number of them to be interested in what you are writing or selling right now to do very well for yourself and your business.

It’s much like a direct mail sales letter, which will typically only get a 2% response rate, even when mailed to a highly qualified list of prospects.

98 out of 100 targeted, pre-selected prospects won’t get the sales letter… or won’t bother to read it all the way to the order form… or won’t be persuaded to buy.

Only 2 out of 100 will actually respond and send in any money.

And yet many big fortunes over the past century have been built on those 2%.

The same applies to you today, with even more extreme numbers.

That said, it is undeniable that different formats – email newsletters as opposed to video courses as opposed to books — will attract different kinds of people, and in different mindsets and stages of sophistication.

In my experience, he more serious and successful people are, the more likely it is that they read books.

So if you do write a regular newsletter, it makes sense to adapt your best content, and turn it into a book. You will often reach great prospects who might be among the 98 out of 100 who would never read your newsletter, at least not today, before they really know you and trust you to have something worthwhile to say.

That was one of the motivations for my 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters book.

​​That book was quick to write. And yet it’s one of the best thing I’ve ever done for my standing in the industry and for attracting quality readers to my newsletter — readers who might never have read otherwise.

For more info on this quick and yet worthwhile book:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The uncertain result of my Newsletter XP promo

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Yesterday, ex-Agora copywriter Thom Benny, who I met up with in Barcelona last month, texted me and asked,

“How is the Newsletter XP promo doing?”

I threw up my arms at this. “How am I supposed to know? There’s a deep fog around the Bejako household, and I can’t see past my own nose.”

The Beehiiv people don’t normally do affiliate deals for this course. I had to ask them over and over to let me promote it.

When they finally agreed, it was a bit of a technical kludge to make it happen. So there’s no affiliate portal. There’s no direct way for me to know how many sales I’ve made.

I saw a buncha clicks. Two people wrote me to say they bought. I wrote my contact at Beehiiv now to ask what the final result was.

But if I had to bet, I would bet I made 3x-4x the money for writing these 7 emails than I ever made for any equivalent campaign I wrote back in my freelance copywriting days.

So let me repeat the core idea I was selling during this whole promo, even though I won’t get paid anything for it now. It’s this:

Start a newsletter. Or start growing a list. Or find another little asset that you can invest into regularly.

It might bear no fruit today. But keep watering it. And you will be pleased and surprised one day soon.

This concludes the first of three affiliate promotions I promised to do over the next few weeks.

The next affiliate promo I will do involves a writing course for business owners who want to build an audience on social media.

I’m going through this course myself right now. And I find myself repeatedly surprised by how well-done and insightful it is.

To make this offer even sweeter, I will add in my own free bonus. It will be equal in price to the actual course I am promoting.

This bonus is a rare training I once put on, after years of research. Several people told me this training has influenced their own writing a lot. But more about all that soon.

How to grow a newsletter by 15k subs in one day

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Today is the last day of my promotion of Newsletter XP, the star-studded course on how to build, grow, and monetize a successful newsletter.

So let me give you a case study from that course. It comes from one Jenny Rothenberg. Jenny was the head of growth at Morning Brew as Morning Brew’s audience scaled from 100k to 2.5M.

Jenny then started her own newsletter growth agency, Smooth Media. She now works with big creators brands. One of these are Colin and Samir. I’d never heard of them but apparently they are big on YouTube. Jenny worked with them to create a video that drove 15k subs to their newsletter in one day.

“Aw that’s just great!” you say. “They probably have millions of followers on YouTube! Come on!”

Sure.

But Colin and Samir didn’t simply create a video that said, “Hey we have a newsletter, come sign up.” Even with a big audience, that won’t drive 15k subscribers in one day.

Instead, they used fundamental human psychology, which you too can use, even if you don’t have a million YouTube subscribers.

There was scarcity (“We’re gonna delete this video in 24 hours”)… a giveaway… a partnership with another big creator… and a completely on-brand, value-prop match between their YouTube channel and what their newsletter was about.

You can do this too, even if you have a following of 99 people. But what if you have no other audience to tap into at all?

Inside the same module of Newsletter XP, you can hear Jenny talk about other ways to benefit from people who do have audiences — on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter.

​​This is part of a bigger discussion that happens inside the course between Jenny, Tyler Denk (CEO of Beehiiv), Alex Lieberman (former CEO of Morning Brew), and Dan Krenitsyn (previously BuzzFeed, now Facebook).

They all have war stories, and they all have unique answers to the question that this module is built around, which is:

“What is your playbook for taking a newsletter from 100→10,000 subscribers in a year?”

If you’d like to hear that discussion and profit from it, I suggest you act now.

I’ve managed to claw out a $200 discount for you from the usual price that Newsletter XP sells for. That discount is good until tonight, Monday Feb 26, at 12 midnight PST. If you’d like to take advantage of this, here’s what to do:

1. Go to the Newsletter XP sales page at https://bejakovic.com/nxp

2. If you decide you want to get Newsltter XP, then use coupon code JB20 at checkout.

3. Make sure the coupon code works — that you see the price drop by $200. This is not my funnel, and if you end up buying at full price, there’s nothing I can do about it.

Magic meetup

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I just come home from the inaugural Bejako Barcelona meetup.

A month ago, I sent out an email asking if anyone on my list would like to meet me in Barcelona, where I happen to live.

Some 15 people replied to say yes. (Though one guy said yes from Japan. Hi Logan.)

Of the 15 who expressed interest, 6 said they would come for sure when I set the time, and a couple more said maybe they could make it.

Today, four of my readers actually showed up.

We had a lawyer who quit his job last week to become a copywriter… an info-business owner in the dating space… a creative copywriter who has added direct response to his arsenal… and one author of a soon-to-be-published thriller book.

They were all nice. All smart. All had interesting life stories.

Before, during, and after this meeting, I found myself amazed, once again, that the typing I do in the silence of my living room has real-world effects.

It’s like magic. Money somehow shows up. Opportunities appear. Real-world connections are formed.

All that’s to say:

Start a newsletter.

It’s like magic.

I’m currently promoting Newsletter XP. It’s a course hosted by Alex Lieberman and Tyler Denk, people who started and built up Morning Brew (Alex, then Tyler) and then started and built up Beehiiv (Tyler only).

These guys, and the high-profile guests they feature, know how to start a newsletter. They know what kinds of content gets read. They know how to get more people reading a newsletter. They know how to make money just by sending emails.

If you’d like more magic in your life, and if you want to start a newsletter as a way of creating some magic, then Newsletter XP can be a valuable tool for you.

And until Monday, just two days from now, I’ve managed to claw out a $200 discount for you from the usual price that Newsletter XP sells for. If you’d like to take advantage of this, here’s what to do:

1. Go to the Newsletter XP sales page at https://bejakovic.com/nxp

2. If you decide you want to get Newsltter XP, then use coupon code JB20 at checkout.

3. Make sure the coupon code works — that you see the price drop by $200. This is not my funnel, and if you end up buying at full price, there’s nothing I can do about it.

How to create value from a broke, flaky, uncommitted audience

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This week, I’m promoting Newsletter XP, a course on how to build, grow, and monetize a successful newsletter.

The undeniable star of the Newsletter XP show is co-host Alex Lieberman.

​​In 2015, Lieberman started Morning Brew, an email newsletter covering the day’s business news. Within five years, he built up Morning Brew into a 9-figure company. In 2020, he sold a controlling stake in Morning Brew for $75 million.

There’s a bit in the monetization section of Newsletter XP where Alex is asked to give an example of how he pitched big brands like IKEA on buying six-figure ad packages in Morning Brew.

​​Alex obliges.

He delivers a 1 min 24 second masterclass — the pitch he performed 10 times a day, every day, for three years.

​​His pitch is truly impressive because what he is really selling is an audience of 18-30 year olds, largely broke, uncommitted, and flaky — not an audience any serious business would be excited to advertise to.

And yet, Alex does it with such enthusiasm, cleverness, and conviction, that by the end of his pitch, I bet the IKEA marketing execs were begging him to run their ad, versus the other way around.

Once again, this pitch was how Morning Brew got to tens of millions of dollars a year in ad revenue, before Alex cashed out for $75 million.

You can use Alex’s IKEA pitch to inform your own sales strategy if you want to start a newsletter and you’re bent on selling ads to big brands for a lot of money.

Or, you can use Alex’s pitch to guide where you take your newsletter.

Because you might not be getting into the newsletter business to hang out on LinkedIn and pitch marketing managers 10 times a day.

​​The good news is, Newsletter XP gives you real options for both the ad-supported path to monetizing your newsletter, as well as the no-ad path, where you simply create content you love and get paid well to do it.

It’s all there inside the course.

​​I’m promoting Newsletter XP until Monday, Feb 25, at 12 midnight PST. During this promotion, you can get $200 off the usual price of Newsletter XP. Here’s how:

1. Go to the Newsletter XP sales page at https://bejakovic.com/nxp

2. If you decide you want to get Newsltter XP, then use coupon code JB20 at checkout.

3. Make sure the coupon code works — that you see the price drop by $200. This is not my funnel, and if you end up buying at full price, there’s nothing I can do about it.

Newsletter XP sale

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Starting today and ending next Monday, I am promoting Beehiiv’s Newsletter XP course.

Newsletter XP is hosted by Alex Lieberman, the co-founder of Morning Brew, and Tyler Denk, the CEO of Beehiiv. They teach you how to start, grow, and monetize a successful newsletter business.

Newsletter XP is not cheap. Or maybe is cheap, given the expertise of the people inside this training. Newsletter XP features not only Alex and Tyler, but the operators behind some of the most successful newsletters out there, worth hundreds of millions of dollars when added up.

Whatever your price tastes, whether low or high, if you can afford this course, and if you are serious about starting and running a successful newsletter, then this course is a 100% worthwhile investment.

And besides, I got the Beehiiv people to agree to a $200 discount, only to my readers, only for the next five days, until next Monday, Feb 25, at 12 midnight PST.

If you would like to take advantage of this opportunity:

1. Go to the Newsletter XP sales page at https://bejakovic.com/nxp

2. If you decide you want to get Newsltter XP, then use coupon code JB20 at checkout.

3. Make sure the coupon code works — that you see the price drop by $200. This is not my funnel, and if you end up buying at full price, there’s nothing I can do about it.

The best source of info for starting a successful newsletter

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I checked just now. I first wrote about Alex Lieberman in this newsletter back in June 2020. Here are the first three sentences of what I wrote then:

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In 2015, Alex Lieberman started sending a daily email to 45 friends and classmates at the University of Michigan. Each email was empty except for a PDF attachment. The PDF was made from an ugly Word doc template, and contained a fun-to-read summary of the top business news for that day.

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That email described the beginnings of Morning Brew, a daily email newsletter about business news.

By June 2020, Alex had managed to grow Morning Brew to about $20 million a year in ad revenue.

Later in 2020, Alex sold a controlling stake in Morning Brew for $75 million.

After finding out about Alex Lieberman and how successful he had mad Morning Brew, I got kind of obsessed.

I’d long been interested in running a magazine-like email newsletter. And here was somebody doing it, and making millions off it.

So when I found out that Alex Lieberman was actually hosting a course, all about how to create a successful Morning Brew-like newsletter, I jumped on it.

The course was called Newsletter XP.

It was hosted and presented by Alex and Tyler Denk, who was employee #2 at Morning Brew and who is now the CEO of Beehiiv.

As you might know, Beehiiv is the email service platform that makes it easy to create a Morning Brew-like newsletter, and that’s currently used by newsletter successes like Milk Road (the biggest crypto newsletter)… the Rundown (the biggest AI newsletter)… and Arnold’s PUMP CLUB (the Gubernator’s personal newsletter).

Point being, Alex and Tyler have strong credentials for talking about newsletter success.

And inside Newsletter XP, they do so. They tell you how to create a newsletter if you want to succeed, and perhaps more importantly, how not to create a newsletter if you want to succeed.

Because there have been thousands or tens of thousands of newsletters launched over the past few years. But only a small fraction have become real businesses.

The secrets of the successful are within Newsletter XP.

The course doesn’t only feature Alex and Tyler.

​​It’s also got Codie Sanchez of Contrarian Thinking (8-figure business, wrote about her a couple days ago)… Max Tcheyan of Puck News (40k paid subscribers at $16/month, $70 million valuation)… Kendall Baker (Axios Sports, ~500k subscribers)… and a bunch more people who have been behind the biggest newsletter success stories, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars in value.

I first wrote to the people at Beehiiv last summer, and asked to promote Newsletter XP then.

I didn’t hear back anything.

I wrote again. Still nothing.

But I was not deterred.

​​I kept following up.

Eventually they agreed.

The hook was in! ​​Now that they agreed to let me promote Newsletter XP, I asked to have a discount over the regular price. Because why else would anybody buy now?

Since they had already agreed to let me promote, they agreed to the discount as well. Commitment and consistency for the win.

So starting tomorrow, and ending Monday, Feb 25, at 12 midnight PST, I will be promoting Newsletter XP, at a substantial discount over what it sells for normally.

If you are interested in starting a big-success newsletter, you will want to read my emails starting tomorrow.

And if you’re not interested, you still might want to read my emails, because I will be sharing and teasing the best stuff I personally got this star-studded training.

An incredibly powerful email hook

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Oh boy.

Yesterday’s email, about scarcity as a performance art, brought the replies pouring in.

I feel like I’m in the courtroom scene in Miracle on 34th Street, with postal workers bringing in satchels of mail for proof of how strongly people feel on this issue.

The issue, in case you missed my emails over the past couple days, is an upcoming livestream by marketers Dan Kennedy and Russell Brunson.

During the livestream, which is set to happen in a couple weeks’ time, Russell will interview Dan, from Dan’s sacrosanct basement workspace. The topic will be Dan’s mind-boggling decision to shut down new subscriptions to his No B.S. print newsletter, starting March 3 of this year.

Real? Fake?

Some of my readers turned detective and wrote in with their findings.

They spotted a detail on the optin page for this upcoming livestream. An image shows Russell, with a mild look of panic on his face, holding a fax from Dan to demonstrate how real this decision is.

The fax has a headline in huge font that reads “SHUT ‘ER DOWN!!!”

Only problem is, the fax also has a small date in the upper right corner, and that date reads 10/24/2022.

Other readers acknowledged that Russell does go for fake scarcity, but defended the man. Some called him a marketing genius. Others just said he does a great job distilling marketing concepts and makes them usable quickly — and it’s up to you to decide what to do with them.

My main takeaway after this whole experience is that industry gossip is an incredible powerful email hook. If, like me, you needed any reminding of that, then let me remind you:

Industry gossip is an incredible powerful email hook.

The only problem I have with anything that’s incredibly powerful is that I bore quickly.

As I said recently on my “How I do it” presentation, I look at this newsletter first and foremost as a sandbox, a playground.

It’s kind of a miracle that it’s turned into a nice source of income and a fountain of good opportunities.

But once something stops being interesting for me, it stops being a topic for this newsletter. So I won’t be writing about this bit of industry gossip, as Dan himself might say, for the foreseeable future.

That said, my playground attitude is not an attitude I encourage anyone else to take.

So if you want to see how two professionals who take their jobs very seriously do it, then check out Dan and Russell’s current “SHUT ‘ER DOWN!!!” campaign.

I continue to promote it with an affiliate link, even though I don’t know if I’ve made any sales, and even though, given that it’s Dan Kennedy, I would promote it without getting paid, simply because I’ve learned so much from the man, and I think you can too.

If you’d like to sign up for that free upcoming livestream, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/no-bs-scarcity

Magic words that bring you status

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Yesterday, I went on Twitter in search of my own name.

What I found was a photo somebody had posted of a densely scribbled page, containing the text of one of my emails.

I squinted and leaned in so far my nose almost touched the screen. It was true.

People are actually copying out my emails by hand as a way to learn email copywriting.

It was a bizarre moment. It reminded me of the first time I printed a black-and-white photograph in my high school’s darkroom.

Take a normal-looking piece of paper, expose it to light for a second, then dump it into a bit of clear, water-like liquid. A picture emerges of something you had photographed days or weeks ago.

It feels like magic, because the ingredients seem so ordinary — paper, light, a bit of water-like liquid.

I’ve been writing this daily email newsletter for 5+ years. At first, I was writing mostly just to practice and then sending my emails out into the void.

After a while, I created an offer. I sent out an email just like the ones I had been sending out. Except this time, money came back at me.

It felt like magic, because it was still the same ordinary ingredients — a bare-bones text editor, ActiveCampaign, the blue “send” button.

Since then, I’ve continued sending the same text-only emails, just words in a text editor. And that’s been good enough to give me status and authority in this field. I got into copywriting some ten years ago by hand-copying issues of Gary Halbert’s newsletter. Today people are copying my newsletter issues by hand.

A few days ago, I announced I’m looking for five beta testers for a 3-month group coaching program.

The goal for this group coaching program is to implement the techniques and ideas I talked about on the “How I do it” call I held on Monday. Write interesting emails… build a list… grow your status… make money.

I announced this group coaching program to the people who were there for the live “How I do it” call, and to the people who signed up for the recording.

And in spite of the fact I once again managed to muck up the tech, so that some people never got the link to join the live call, and others never got the recording, I’ve so far filled three of those five spots. I also have a few people who’ve expressed interest in the remaining two.

But I want to get this sign-up process wrapped up now, so I can kick the group coaching off.

So if you’re interested, hit reply and let me know a bit about who you are and what you do.

I will send you a doc with the full info on this 3-month program, and you can decide if it’s for you or not.

If not, no problem. But if yes, then you can join us, and we will start next week.