Newsletters

The owner smiled when I tried to speak Spanish… but when I switched to English!

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Yesterday, I stepped into the beautiful Librería Nobel — Nobel Bookstore — in Almería, Spain.

“Buenos días,” I said as I entered.

The owner, who stood behind the counter, smiled at me politely and returned my greeting. He didn’t recognize me at first. So I changed tack.

“Hola Rafa,” I said and then switched to English. “How are you?”

A look of surprise spread across his face. “John! Coño! What are you doing here!”

The owner of Librería Nobel is one Rafa Casas, who I’ve written up before in this newsletter as a Spanish A-list copywriter.

Not only is Rafa a skilled copywriter who has helped a bunch of clients make money, but he’s building up his name in true A-list style.

Along with his bookstore and his client work, he now runs two coaching programs, one to help Spanish-speaking business owners get set up online with their digital marketing, and another called Circulo Copy where he mentors a number of Spanish-language copywriters, including some well-known names.

This was the first time I was meeting Rafa in real life. But I have known him online for a while.

Rafa first got on my email list in 2021. He then went through my Copy Riddles course, back when I was still offering live weekly Q&A calls.

At that time, I ran a weekly contest for the best answer to one of the week’s Copy Riddles. Rafa won the first contest ever. (Among the three books I offered him as a possible prize, Rafa wisely chose my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.)

Then some time in 2022, I interviewed Rafa for my Copy Zone guide to the business side of copywriting. His story of getting started writing daily emails about books while his bookstore was locked down — and then turning that into paid client work — was both interesting and impressive.

We also had a short-lived language exchange after I moved to Spain.

He’s even translated my 10 Commandments book to Spanish, and we will be putting that out soon, as soon as the cover designer gets back to me.

Point being:

I started out this email newsletter with the vague aims of having a sandbox in which to practice copywriting and marketing, as a possible source of samples to show clients, and as a way of maybe winning some client work, back when I was still hungry for that.

And my newsletter has delivered on all those fronts.

But it’s also produced a bunch of amazing opportunities and outcomes I never could have imagined when I got started.

It’s resulted in great new relationships both online and in real life… people doing me solid favors without ever being asked… cool free stuff shipped to my front door… speaking opportunities… and even the occasional note from people who tell me that what I’m doing has actually changed the course of their life for the better.

If you want, you too can have something similar. At least that’s my claim, one I will work to pay off on the free training I’m hosting in a few days’ time.

The training will cover how I write and profit from this newsletter that you are reading now.

It will happen on Monday January 22, 2024 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. But you will have to be signed up to my list first. Click here to do so.

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:

===

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.

Free training on how I do it

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As I mentioned at the tail end of my email yesterday, I will put on a free training soon, specifically on Monday January 22, 2024 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST/1am east Kazakhstan time (+1 day in case you are in Kazakhstan).

This training will be about what I’ve learned while running and writing a personal daily newsletter, the one you are reading now.

I started this newsletter 5+ years ago.

It’s been great to me in many ways, most of which I could never have anticipated.

It’s also been bad in a few ways, and I’ve found some ways to deal with those.

And then, there have been certain things about this newsletter about which I have been stubborn and bullheaded, and this resulted in me making much less money and having much less objective success than I might have had otherwise.

Some of those things I’ve changed in time.

Some I still refuse to change, for reasons that make sense to me.

So if you’re curious about the good, the bad, and the stubborn, you can join me for this free training, where I’ll share all about it.

This training can be relevant if you want to write a personal email newsletter for any reason.

It can be particularly relevant if you also work with clients.

I started out as a freelance copywriter. I know there are many folks on my list who do something similar, related to marketing or writing. But I also know that on my list there are other folks who work with clients too, including designers, coaches, IT consultants, corporate trainers, even lawyers.

This training can be relevant and useful to you in all those cases, as long as you’re open to the idea of writing your own newsletter.

My newsletter has given me a second source of income besides client work and the stability and peace of mind that come with that… standing and status in the little corner of marketing industry in which I work… the satisfaction of building something for myself… connections with smart and very successful people… and both a perceived and a real improvement, and a pretty massive one, in my professional skills and expertise.

If you want something similar, then join me for the training, where I will share what I do now, what I have learned over the past five years, what I wish I had done differently.

If you’d like to join, you’ll have to be on my list first. Click here to sign up.

The popping of the newsletter bubble

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A couple weeks ago, I signed up to a weekly newsletter that aggregates interesting links and online resources. At the top of the welcome email and in every email since, this newsletter says:

“Want to sponsor the newsletter and reach 9,000+ startup founders, designers, developers and tech enthusiasts? Just reply to this email to get in touch.”

So far, some of my best list growth results have come via classified ads I’ve run in other newsletters. And I like this new newsletter, and the recommendations they send out.

So I wrote to inquire about reaching 9,000+ startup founders, designers, developers and tech enthusiasts. How much?

It turns out the newsletter offers various packages, ranging from $300 per issue (main sponsor at the top) down to $60 (quick shout out at the bottom).

I calculated how much this newsletter is making per issue if each of the ads slots is filled. It comes out to $880 per weekly issue.

In other words, in the ideal scenario, the guy behind this newsletter makes about $3.5k per month, and it’s probably significantly less in reality because not all the ad slots are filled all the time.

Over the past few years, there’s been a lot of excitement, hype, and buzz about newsletter businesses. Thousands of newsletters have started up. Maybe tens of thousands. Inevitably, it’s led to a bubble.

Just as inevitably, most of those newsletters will not persevere long enough to succeed and become self-sustaining businesses.

All of which means today is the best time ever to start a newsletter — if you have a back-end business that a newsletter can promote and support, so you can be in it for the long term.

Not only will a newsletter help you recruit leads for your main business, and convert them, and retain them.

But pretty soon, you will be able to buy other newsletters that are folding. For cheap, you will be able to become the owner of vetted lists of self-selected, engaged readers or even buyers, who have expressed interest in what you offer.

In fact, the great newsletter poppening might already be under way.

I recently started listening to the Newsletter Operator podcast by Matt McGarry and Ryan Carr. Over the last few episodes, I’ve heard stories of such newsletter acquisitions, ranging from newsletters of a few hundred to a few thousand subscribers or more.

Of course, in order for the acquisition of a competitor newsletter to make any sense for you, you must have your own newsletter already set up and humming.

You must have somewhere to send those new subscribers, and you must be able to confidently tell them, “Of course, you can unsubscribe if you like. But if you liked [insert name of stupid and dull competitor newsletter], you will love [insert the name of your amazing and fun newsletter].”

All of which leads me, with the force of irrefutable logic, to my ongoing offer, the done-for-you newsletter service.

I’ve been talking about this done-for-you offer for the past few days. I will talk about it tomorrow still, and then I will shut up, at least on this particular topic.

If this offer is something that interests you, you can find more info below:

https://bejakovic.com/announcing-done-for-you-newsletter-service/

Announcing: Done-for-you newsletter service

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Really, I already announced my done-for-you-newsletter service yesterday, at the bottom of my last email.

But nothing is truly announced until you write an email with a subject line that starts with “Announcing.”

So here goes:

The background is I’ve been writing a newsletter in the health space for the past year.

​​In that space, I’ve seen lots of both new and established companies, which either don’t have a newsletter or have a terrible one, for various reasons ranging from unreadable layouts to offensively infrequent sending to tear-inducing dullness.

I thought, with my email marketing and copywriting and newsletter-creating experience, I could go and help these companies.

I could come up with a new concept for a newsletter for them, and give them ideas for ongoing content that would be interesting to their readers and valuable to the company.

But “concept” and “content ideas” are not easy to sell, at least in my experience.

So I thought I could offer the entire package.

Problem:
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I don’t want to write another ongoing newsletter, particularly if it’s not for myself.

Solution:

I do have this first newsletter, the one you are reading now, with hundreds or maybe thousands of writers who might be interested in a job.

I figured I could hire one or a dozen such writers from my list, coach them, monitor them, crack the whip on occasion, and guide them to make sure they provide quality work, so that everybody’s ultimately happy — the company, the writers, me.

That’s still pretty much the plan.

But I decided, as an experiment, to offer this done-for-you newsletter service to my marketing list first.

Here’s what to know:

1. This service is meant for you if you have a business already but no newsletter or, let’s be honest, a terrible newsletter.

​​This is for you if you have customers and an offer that’s selling, whether a product or a service.

​​Like I wrote yesterday, a newsletter can be an easy, profitable, prestige-building way to get more people into your world, to get more of them to buy what you sell, and to keep them around until you sell the next thing. And with my done-for-you newsletter service, you don’t have to do anything, except pay me to get it all done for you. ​​

2. This is not for you if you have nothing to sell. There’s nothing wrong with starting a newsletter if you have nothing to sell. But that’s just not the kind of client I’m looking for for this done-for-you service.

3. This is also not for you if you already have a newsletter, and you want my help growing your newsletter. My take is that, if you think you have a newsletter growth problem, what you really have is a monetization problem.

As you might be able to tell from my tone above, I’m not desperate to find clients for this service. I have enough money and other plans and opportunities. I even debated for a good while about offering this at all.

At the same time, it would be great to find a business I could genuinely help.

​​I like this newsletter game, and I find I’m good at it.

​​It would be great to have the experience of starting new newsletters and helping them succeed, without having to 1) create the offers to make the newsletters pay off and 2) do the writing myself. That experience was the reason I did decided to offer this in the end.

If you are interested in this done-for-you newsletter service, and if you fall into group #1 above, then write me and we can start a conversation.

I’ll talk about this offer over the next few days and then I’ll shut up about it.

​​If the offer turns out to be successful and the delivery enjoyable, I’ll take it to that health niche I was originally planning on targeting.

​​And if it’s not enjoyable or not successful, then I’ll lock it up in the cellar, along with my Most Valuable Postcard (locked up since 2022, next up for parole in 2038) and my “Win Your First Copywriting Job Workshop” (locked up in 2021, life sentence, not eligible for parole).

For now, this done-for-you newsletter offer still stands. If it’s got you excited, write me, and we can talk.

Edward Bernays, Dana White, and possibly you

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The UFC is one of the two sports promotions I follow. And so I know that earlier this week, UFC president Dana White teased potential fights that will happen next April at UFC 300, a milestone number for the monthly MMA event.

White says that UFC 300 will make fight fans “lose their minds” because of the caliber of the fights he will organize.

That’s the kind of problem the UFC faces these days: coming up with bigger and more exciting fights, and figuring out where to bury all the cash that these fights produce.

Today, the UFC is by far the dominant player in the sport of MMA.

​​The company is worth an estimated $12 billion.

But back in 2005, the UFC, already a decade old at the time, looked like it might have to fold.

They’d had a few successful fights that did well on pay-per-view. And yet, financially, the UFC was not successful or sustainable as a business. It looked like the company would go bankrupt if it had just one or two more lackluster events.

So how did we get from near-bankrupcy at UFC 50… to a $12 billion valuation at UFC 300?

I’ll tell ya. But before I give you the answer, it’s worth thinking about what you yourself — as a marketer, or a business owner — might do in the situation that the UFC was in back in 2005.

Would you run ads on TV hyping up upcoming PPV fights?

Would you send direct mail to subscribers of martial arts magazines, and try to sell recordings of your previous events?

Would you hire celebrities to come sit cageside to build up public interest?

None of those were what saved the UFC from ruin.

Instead, the owners of the UFC did something clever.

They didn’t try to sell their core product at all. Instead, they created a second product, and they promoted and sold that.

Specifically, they created a reality TV show, called The Ultimate Fighter. It showed a bunch of guys, living together in a house, training and bickering and competing with each other for the right to get a six-figure contract for the regular UFC promotion.

The show was a huge success. It drew lots of viewers. It became profitable in itself. It converted many of those new viewers into PPV customers.

The Ultimate Fighter saved the UFC. And then next year, with the next season, The Ultimate Fighter did it all over again.

Now, you are probably nowhere close to bankruptcy. But the point still stands:

You can tap into a popular format or medium. You can use that popular format or medium create a new offer that’s easy to promote… easy to sell… keeps people in the loop… builds your standing and reach… warms prospects up to your main business… and keeps them engaged even after they buy your core offer.

It’s a proven playbook to get traffic, conversion, and retention all in one.

Edward Bernays did it a hundred years ago.

Dana White did it 20 years ago.

You can do it today.

Now, if you’ve been reading these emails for a while, then you can probably guess the popular format or medium I would recommend for all of the above:

An email newsletter.

Odds are, if you’re reading my emails, and if you have a successful business, then you already have your own email newsletter.

But if you don’t, and you would like to, then hit reply. Because as of today, I’m offering a done-for-you newsletter service.

I will have more to say about it in my email tomorrow. But if you want to talk about it now, then hit reply, tell me who you are and what your business is, and we can take it from there.

Chargeback inspiration

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In my email yesterday, I wrote about a chargeback I’d gotten earlier in the day. I asked for advice.

And I got it.

I got advice about possible ways to handle the current chargeback better.

I got good advice on how to prevent it in the future.

I got personal stories and experiences and consolation from others who have been there before me.

I can say I’m honestly grateful to everyone who wrote in. I can also say it’s reminder of something important:

People start email lists to do marketing. To sell stuff. Perhaps to become seen as an authority at whatever it is they do.

But if you do it right, it ends up going way beyond that.

I heard Codie Sanchez talking on a podcast a few days ago. As you might know, Codie runs Contrarian Thinking, a newsletter with some 250,000 subscribers, about buying and selling businesses. She’s built an eight-figure info business off the back of that newsletter, plus maybe several other 7-figure businesses also.

But it goes way beyond that. Codie said that via her newsletter, she’s automatically and without any extra effort also gotten:

– Unique business opportunities
– Financing
– Business partners
– Employees
– Advice and guidance
– Access and connections

My experience has been similar.

I’ve had direct job offers from people reading my newsletter. I’ve had business partnership offers.

People have shared their personal stories with me. I’ve gotten good business advice, from people who are qualified to give it.

I’ve hired people via my list, and I’ve been hired by people on my list.

I’ve gotten insider tips and tricks from people at the very top of the game.

I’ve met some of my readers in real life. We’ve gone to conferences together. I’ve even gotten nice stuff in my physical mail box from people who read these emails.

All of that fell out automatically, as a side-effect of relentlessly, mercilessly, unfailingly writing a 400-500-word email every day, and sharing something I have learned, or something unnerving that happened to me, or a bit of inspiration, or a bit of frustration, like I did yesterday.

I guess you see where this is going. But since this is a marketing newsletter, I will force myself to spell it out:

Start an email list.

Write to it regularly.

Preferably daily.

Good things will happen as a result. And if bad things happen also, you will have a powerful resource in your email list to deal with it.

I have a course about how to relentlessly, mercilessly, unfailingly write a 400-500-word email every day, and to make it interesting for yourself and valuable for your readers. If that’s something you’d like to do:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

Eye-opening stuff following my first newsletter consult

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Yesterday, I fixed my hair and smiled and fired up Zoom.

On the other side of the Zoom tube was the writer and publisher of a free newsletter, which promotes a premium content subscription.

The cost of this premium content subscription?

$2,625 per year. And yet, many individual readers happily pay for this subscription, and a few companies buy 30-40 user packs for their employees.

Eye-opening stuff, when you compare it to $9.99/month paid Substack newsletters, or even to $97/month print newsletters by marketing gurus.

The reason I was on Zoom yesterday was that this was the first of three paid newsletter consults I offered last week.

The reason I offered these paid newsletter consults was that, as I said when I made the offer, it was research for my own projects. I’m thinking of creating newsletter community or mastermind, and I want to know what problems newsletter publishers have.

When I made that offer last week, all three available spots were snapped up in the first ten minutes after the email went out. And as I raced to turn off the cart, a fourth buyer sneaked in.

One of the people who got in, in fact the person I talked to yesterday, said that getting one of the three spots felt like winning the lottery.

Compare this to when I offered free coaching some five years ago, as a way of preparing for a book I was planning to write.

Out of my entire list, just one dude from Germany signed up. I think somebody else scheduled a call and then canceled last minute.

Granted:

Stuff has changed in past four years. My list has grown… I’ve written 1,000+ additional emails… I’ve learned a lot about marketing and copywriting… I’ve worked with several large clients with whom I made a lot of money… and I’ve built a name for myself in the copywriting and email marketing field.

But with or without all that, the point I want to share with you still stands:

You can get paid to do research for your own projects.

​​Or you can get paid for a diagnostic call.

​​Or to learn stuff that you’re interested in learning. Or for content that you’re currently giving away. Or for answering questions that you currently answer for nothing.

Somebody smart said it, and I believe it’s true — it takes as much work to give something away as to sell it.

So why not sell it instead?

If you don’t have the status or the experience yet, then charge a little bit.

If you do have the status or the experience, then charge accordingly.

But pretty much anything you are currently doing for free, you can ask money for.

There’s nobody and nothing stopping you, except your own beliefs of what the market will accept. And those beliefs are often wrong.

All right, on to my offer:

I am not offering any more one-off newsletter consults. But I do offer ongoing coaching about publishing a newsletter — everything from audience selection to zero-cost ways to grow.

My coaching program is expensive. It’s not right for you unless you already have some experience, or even better, an already running newsletter.

If you think this might be for you, reply to this email. Tell me a bit about who you are, what you do, and what the current situation or ambition is with your newsletter.

If I think it could be a good fit, we can get on a call and talk more.

​​Thinking of it now, maybe I’ll take my own advice and start charging for those calls. But that’s in the future.

​​For today, it’s still free. If you’re interested, you know what to do.

Hotel Octavia Campo: New room available

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This morning, I rolled out of the creaky hotel bed and stumbled across the dusty, cavernous old hotel room, past the sink, to the small table in the corner, which barely held my typewriter.

Suddenly, somebody started rapping on the door.

“Open up! Open up right now!”

I opened the door to find Octavia Campo, the wife of the hotel owner.

“If I told you once,” she said as she pushed her way past me, “I told you a thousand times!”

I rubbed my face and took a deep breath. “Good morning, Octavia.”

“Don’t good morning me,” she barked. “All night long, clack-clack-clack from your room. All my other guests are complaining! I told you a thousand times! This is a residential hotel! No typewriters! No work allowed here!”

I reached for my Tommy Bahama shirt. And then I walked over to my typewriter, and started to fit it in its carrying case.

Octavia Campo kept railing. “While you’re staying in my hotel” — here she pointed at her chest — “you will not be making any money! This isn’t some brothel, some butcher shop! I only want respectable guests here, who come to sleep and that’s it!”

“I understand completely,” I said. “I’ll take my typewriter now. And I’ll send a boy later for my clothes.”

Octavia’s face got tomato-red. “Good!” she said. “And don’t come back! I don’t want your kind in my hotel! You don’t care how you ruin the reputations of others!”

And that’s pretty much how I checked out of Hotel Octavia Campo… and checked into the shiny and new Bedazzling Happiness Towers, down by the beach, where the guests are free to do what they like in their rooms, and the air is fresh.

Maybe you’re wondering what I’m on about. Well, about that:

Starting a week ago, I’ve been writing and sending my new, daily health newsletter. I’ve been writing and sending it from Hotel Octavia Campo — aka ActiveCampaign.

But then this morning, I got a note from ActiveCampaign telling me that my email from yesterday was not sent. Why? Because it contained an affiliate link.

The note I got from ActiveCampaign wasn’t as shrill as I tried to make Octavia Campo sound. It even offered suggestions for some workarounds.

But still, it was more than I was willing to tolerate.

So I spent about a half hour this morning to move my daily health newsletter to shiny and new Beehiiv, the platform I already use for my weekly health newsletter. I’m not really sure why I didn’t do this in the first place.

In time, I might even move this marketing newsletter over to Beehiiv, because I’m so fed up with ActiveCampaign, and so satisfied with Beehiiv — Bedazzling Happiness.

You might think I will promote Beehiiv at this point, using — gasp — an affiliate link.

But no, and not just because ActiveCampaign might throttle me for doing so.

Today I have a special, one-day, newsletter-related offer to celebrate my move to Bedazzling Happiness Towers.

As you might know, I’m planning to launch a newsletter-related community soon, all about how to publish, grow, and monetize a newsletter.

I haven’t decided exactly how that will look, what it will cost, and what it will include.

But I know it won’t be nearly as one-on-one and as generous as the following offer:

Today only, I’m offering a 1-hour consult at a price I would never offer it otherwise, $100.

This consult is for you if you already publish a newsletter, and want to grow it or monetize it better… or you do not yet publish a newsletter, and you want help in picking a niche, a concept, or a content strategy.

I am willing to sit with you, listen to you, answer your questions, offer my feedback and experience and advice, based on what I’ve learned writing this daily marketing newsletter over the past five years, my weekly health newsletter over the past year, and my daily health newsletter over the past week.

I want to help you succeed with your newsletter, or succeed more. I will share whatever information you can squeeze out of me in an hour, I won’t hold anything back, and I will give you my best ideas.

The only reason I am offering to do this, and at such a low price, is because 1) I’m in a good mood thanks to (at least partly) moving out of Hotel Octavia Campo, and 2) as research and prep for that newsletter community I’m planning.

Speaking of:

If you take me up on this 1-hour consult, I will also apply it to that future community, so you get one month of it for free.

Today’s offer won’t make me rich, and it will require me to work. So I’m limiting it to the first three people who take me up on it.

The cart link is below. If you send me the $100, we can then figure out a time to get on the call that works for both of us.

And if the link below isn’t working, that means three people already signed up, and I’ve turned this offer off.

So in case you’d like in, best move now and move fast:

https://desertkite.thrivecart.com/goodbye-octavia/

The two kinds of newsletters

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It’s late — I’ve been working until now on a new daily newsletter that I will launch tomorrow. It’s connected to my weekly health newsletter, which I tease occasionally but never reveal.

Inevitably, whenever I launch something new like this, a million and one little niggling things pop up that need to be done.

That’s why it’s late. And that’s why I somehow still haven’t written this daily email.

So let me just share something I wish somebody had shared with me a long, long time ago.

Had somebody told me this, it would have cleared up many confused days and nights of my marketing education.

It would have taken away some worries.

And maybe it would have even made me some money.

Here’s the big “secret”:

There are two fundamental styles of direct marketing/businesses/newsletters.

The first style I will call the Marty style, as in Marty Edelston.

Edelston was the founder of Boardroom, a $100M direct response publisher. He hired the bestest and A-listest copywriters out there, including Gary Bencivenga, Parris Lampropoulos, and David Deutsch.

The second style I will call the Dan style, as in Dan Kennedy.

Dan was at one point the highest-paid copywriter on the planet. He is also somebody who has shaped generations of direct marketers, including Russell Brunson, Ben Settle, and, on a much more modest level, me.

Marty style: intriguing, benefit-oriented, impersonal.

Dan style: intimate, personality-oriented, opinionated.

The Marty style of newsletter features cool how-to insider tips, such as how to ouwit a mugger in a self-service elevator, along with references to outside authorities who revealed that info.

The Dan style of newsletter features a personal rant by Dan about how the sky is falling or is about to fall. It features no outside references because what other authority could you ever need besides Dan himself.

So which style is better?

Or rather, why are there two styles, and not just one, the way we would all prefer?

You guessed it. Because each style can work well, and each style has its drawbacks.

Dan style means you can sell much more easily, and at much higher prices, and people will stick with you for longer.

But your audience is much more limited, and your product is really you.

Marty style means you can reach a much broader audience much more quickly, plus you don’t have to grow out mutton chop mustaches and share photos of yourself sitting on a bull.

But your audience is much less attached to you, and they will pay $39 instead of $399 for the same info.

So which style you choose to follow is really up to you and the kind of marketing/business/newsletter you can stomach for an extended period of time.

Of course, you can also stomach both, which is basically what I’m doing.

I have this newsletter, more on the mutton-chop-mustache, Dan Kennedy side. On the other hand, my health newsletter, including the daily newsletter I’m launching tomorrow, is fully on the “what never to eat on an airplane,” Marty Edelston side.

You gotta figure out what you want to do.

Final point:

If you do decide to go the Marty Edelston, impersonal, benefit-oriented route, then you will likely need copy chops, above and beyond what you will need if you are really selling yourself.

And if you do need copy chops, specifically the kinds of copy chops that people like Gary Bencivenga, Parris Lampropoulos, and David Deutsch have, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr