One Man Businesses

“If you’re a copywriter and you don’t do consulting…”

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On the last day of the copywriting conference in Gdansk, A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos gave his second talk.

As part of the talk, Parris said something encouraging and nurturing:

“If you’re a copywriter and you don’t do consulting — let me put this delicately – you’re a fucking idiot.”

In my email from a couple days ago, I asked readers what they know that they could sell.

I got a lot of responses to that email. Most of the ideas I heard I thought were very sellable. A few I was ready to pay money for then and there.

I wonder what will come of all those ideas. I hope many will in fact turn into something. And maybe Parris’s encouraging and nurturing words above will help somebody transform their sellable knowledge into cash.

If you’re a copywriter… or you like the idea of offering consulting, but something is blocking you… you might like my daily email newsletter. I occasionally share ideas which you might find valuable. Click here to sign up.

The fastest, but certainly not the newest, way to cash

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Day 3 of the copywriting conference.

​​You can’t make an omelette without cracking two to three eggs, and you can’t go to a copywriting conference without getting your brain scrambled with hundreds of different ideas, stories, pitches, open loops that never get closed, jokes, not-jokes, cliches, and important takeaways.

Let me pull it together for a moment and tell you about the fastest way to cash. It’s not the newest way to cash. In fact it’s not new at all. I’m sure you’ve heard about it. But maybe you need a reminder.

Yesterday, one of the speakers, Adam Urbanski, said the fastest path to cash, in his experience, is to sell what you know.

The day before, Barry Randall, who I wrote about in my email yesterday, said something similar.

Barry said that what he does is, learn something, keep it simple, and then sell it. On the other hand, what most other people do is learn something, complicate it, and then get stuck.

I’m not sure those are Barry’s exact words. In spite of 51 pages of notes so far, I didn’t write that bit down. I’ll have to seek him out today and confirm it.

Meanwhile, I have a deal for you:

Sign up to my email newsletter.

When you get my welcome email, hit reply and tell me what you have learned that you can sell. I genuinely want to know.

In return, I will reply to you and tell you a practical tip to make your presentation better if you ever do sell that knowledge you have in your head.

This tip is something that popped up in my head yesterday during Adam Urbanski’s presentation.

Adam’s presentation was excellent and very effective. But I believe with a small tweak it could be even more effective.

​​I won’t seek out Adam today and tell him that — nobody wants an unsolicited critique. But if you like, hit reply, tell me what you have learned that you can sell, and I will tell you what I have in mind.

If you consider yourself a paid traffic expert

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If you consider yourself to be something of a paid traffic expert, or you want to be seen as such, I’ve got a lead gen/business idea for you.

​​I’m giving away this idea. You’re free to use it. In fact, I hope you do.

Here goes:

1. Start a newsletter. Call it “Classified Growth” or something sexy like that.

2. Go around, finding other newsletters that sell classified ads. There are hundreds or thousands of such newsletters, but they are not organized, and they often do not make it known they sell ads. You might have to email them and ask or suggest it.

By the way, I’m not talking about big featured ads like you can find inside Morning Brew, which have a big photo and hundreds of words of copy, and which are really intended for rich brand advertisers. Databases of newsletters offering those kinds of ads already exist.

​​I’m talking about small, classified-like ads, 100 words max, no picture, which can be integrated into the content of a newsletter, which are likely to cost a few hundred to maybe a thousand or so dollars, and which are perfect for advertising to get dedicated newsletter readers. As far as I know, there’s no source to tell you where to find those.

3. Each week, send out a new issue of your newsletter. Publish the latest classified ad opportunities you’ve found, and link to a page where you keep a running list of all the previous classified ad opportunities you’ve found.

4. Add in a little intro paragraph to each issue with your own voice so people know who you are. Casually mention any status-building things that happened to you or to your newsletter over the past week.

5. To grow your newsletter, do a good job implementing 1-4 above for four weeks, then email me and I will promote your newsletter to my list for free. I’ll also give you the contacts of 10 other people with sizable email lists who are likely to promote your new newsletter for free.

6. After you start getting people onto your newsletter, to monetize, sell your own consulting services or products or community, or sell ads, or sell affiliate offers.

The cons of this:

You’re likely to attract people who are at the early stage of newsletter growth. This means they are unproven and uncommitted — they might fail or quit.

​​And if they do succeed, they are likely to outgrow your newsletter and focus on other newsletter growth strategies that are easier to scale. That’s why I say this makes sense if you want to offer services or products around paid traffic and can use this as a lead-gen method.

The pros:

There is clearly demand. I would subscribe and read this newsletter each week, and others would too.

​​There are literally thousands of people with newsletters hoping to grow, and hundreds more joining every day. And since we’re talking about paid traffic, you’re likely to attract a serious segment of that audience, who might even have some money to spend.

So that’s my business idea for you. Again, I hope you run with it, because I would love to see it happen.

I’m currently working on growing two newsletters — the one you’re reading, and a second one that’s still in a bit of stealth mode, about a health topic.

In the past, to grow various newsletters I’ve had or have, I’ve run Facebook ads, solo ads, Twitter ads, paid “recommendations” like they have on Substack, banner ads, and classified ads in other newsletters.

The classified ads in other newsletters win in terms of quality of traffic.

The problem is, classified ads take time and are not scalable, but a resource like the one I describe above could help.

​​At the same time, it could help you build your own list, quickly, with highly qualified and valuable leads, that you could then monetize into submission.

Speaking of which, if you do launch the above newsletter, you’re likely to have more success selling your services or products if you drive your readers to a second, daily email newsletter like the one I write each day.

If you’d like to see how I do that each day, so you can model what I’m doing to make money, you can sign up to my newsletter here.​

Two proven ways to run a city or a newsletter

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I was sitting by the Seine two days ago, part of a trip to Paris with friends. One of my friends looked up and said, in a kind of mock frustration, “All the buildings around here are so beautiful. Don’t they ever get tired of making beautiful buildings?”

Apparently they do. In fact, that same day, we went to visit something very ugly.

In the middle of Paris, on a square lined by elegant, classical architecture, sits the Pompidou Center.

If you look at the back of your refrigerator, where the coils and pipes and wires collect cobwebs and dust, scale that up to a building the size of a sports stadium, paint the different pipes and coils blue and green and red, then you get the Pompidou.

The Pompidou is a cultural center — exhibition spaces and galleries and stages and a huge public library.

It looks shockingly ugly today. ​I suspect it looked much worse to the eyes of Parisians who saw it being built in the 1970s. One of them called it the “incinerator absorbing all the cultural energy and devouring it — a bit like the black monolith in 2001.”

And yet, people stream into the Pompidou.

In its first two decades, the place attracted 145 million visitors. ​​Five years ago, in 2017, the last year I could find numbers for, the art museum inside the Pompidou had 3.3 million visitors. Untold millions more rode the free escalators to the top of the building to look at the Eiffel tower and Notre Dame and Montmartre, all nicely visible from the roof.

In other words, the Pompidou, ugly though it may be, is also a full-blown success. It’s doing what it’s designed to do, giving masses of people access to art, serving as a kind of new focal point in the city, renewing Paris as a cultural destination.

All that’s to say, there’s two ways to run your city:

One is to give visitors what they want – what they are expecting and demanding, what they have seen on postcards, what they initially came for.

The other is to do something shocking and new — because you have a new agenda for your city, or simply because you got bored of doing the same stuff you’ve done in the past.

The first of course is the more safe, more proven way. But both can work — as proven by the Pompidou.

As I mentioned above, I’m traveling right now. I’ll be away from home for next couple weeks, until May 19.

When I get back home after my trip, I will most likely open up enrollment for the group coaching on email copywriting I announced last month.

Which brings me to my point for this email. The two ways to run a destination city are also the two ways to run a profitable email newsletter.

One is to give readers more of what they came for, what they say they want, or that your research says they want.

The other is to do what you yourself want, what serves your purposes, your desires.

Both can work. But it’s good to be clear with yourself as to what you specifically are doing. This makes your job easier and makes you more effective over the long term.

When I do open up enrollment for the group coaching, I will only do so to people who have signed up to get (and stay) on the waiting list.

If you’ve done this already, there’s nothing more you need to do right now.

On the other hand, if you are curious about this group email coaching, then the first step is not to get on my waiting list, but to get on my main email list. That’s the first requirement I have for all people enrolled in this coaching. To sign up, click here and fill out the form that appears.

The next era for freelancers, full-time writers, and solo creators

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I woke up this morning, the sun shining into my eyes, an eager French bird chirping outside my window because it was almost 7am.

I groaned and realized it’s time to get up and get to work. In a few hours’ time, my friends, still asleep in various bedrooms around this cave-like Paris AirBnb, will wake up too. And by then, I will have to have this email finished.

I can tell you now, it won’t be easy.

I struggled during the night with a comforter that was too hot, a mosquito that wouldn’t shut up, and the effects of the first glass of alcohol I’ve had in months. The result is I’m tired this morning, and my brain is more foggy than usual.

“Let me read some stuff on the Internet,” I said. “Maybe that will help.” And lo — the email gods rewarded me with an article full of valuable and relevant ideas I can share with you today.

The article came from Simon Owens, somebody I’ve written about before in these emails. Owens is a journalist who covers the media landscape in his Substack newsletter.

Two interesting bits from Owens’s article:

1. The recent collapses of new media companies like Buzzfeed and Vox have left thousands of journalists, writers, and clickbait creators without a job. It’s not unlike the situation in the direct response space a few years ago, after Agora got into legal trouble and it put a chill on the whole industry.

2. The owners of media outlets and info businesses are realizing that freelancers just aren’t worth it. From Owens’s conversation with one such business owner: “Not only were they expensive to hire, but he also had to waste a lot of time editing their work so it met his quality standards.”

So if traditional employee-based companies that pump out content are failing… and if entrepreneurs are starting to realize that freelancers are a bum deal… where does that leave us?

You might say it leaves us with the creator economy — with all those unemployed journalists, writers, and clickbait creators going out and starting their own Substack or TikTok or OnlyFans.

​​Maybe so. But it’s harder to make that work than your Twitter feed might make you believe. From Owens’s article again:

“I’m on record as being an optimist about the future of the Creator Economy; I think we’re at the very early stages of an entrepreneurial media explosion. But at the same time, I’m a realist about how damn hard it is to launch and build a sustainable bootstrapped media business, especially as a solo operator. Not only can it require years of financial runway, but it’s also difficult for a single person to juggle a variety of tasks that include content creation, marketing, and business development.”

So? Where does all this really leave us?

Owens says it leaves us in a brave new world of partnerships, cooperatives, and jointly-created products. He gives examples of how each of these is already being done by people who create content and have an audience, and who are trying to monetize that content and audience, beyond just the work they can do themselves.

If you are running or want to run an info publishing businesses, or your own creator studio, then Owens’s article is worth a read. It might give you an idea that might mean the difference between failure and success in what you do.

And if you are currently a freelancer, or even a full-time employee at a marketing-led business, then Owens’s article is worth a read also, if only for an uncomfortable but possibly life-saving glimpse into what the future might bring unless you adapt.

In either case, if you are interested, here’s the link to Owens’s piece:

https://simonowens.substack.com/p/the-next-era-for-bootstrapped-media

Work on your business and not on delegating, systems, or automation

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Two nights ago I finally finished the 40-page pamphlet I’d been reading for three months, titled Leading With Your Head. It’s about the use of misdirection in magic. It ends with this:

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Tape your performances in front of an audience (either audio or video). Sit down and take notes. What works best for the audience? What doesn’t work (that you thought would)? Is there dead time you can eliminate? What needs to be improved? Keep the material that works, and concentrate on improving the weaknesses. Don’t fix what isn’t broken. It’s simply an excuse to avoid addressing more serious problems. Rehearse your improvements, then repeat the whole process again.

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It’s popular advice to say, work on your business, not in it.

The typical meaning of this is to delegate, build systems, automate the work. I’m sure that’s fine.

But there are ways of making a living — like my own — that are not about hiring and managing other people, not about scaling endlessly, and certainly not about automation. After all, what’s the sense in getting a magic-performing robot to go on stage and perform your magic show for you — if performing magic is what you like to do?

“Work on your business, not in it” is good advice. But in my personal case, I like the meaning above, the one from Leading With Your Head.

Plan and reflect, in addition to performing. It makes you better at what you like to do, and is in fact fun and enjoyable in itself, at least in my experience. And in my experience, it can be profitable too.

Last June 9th, I did an instance of this kind of working on my business. I opened up a text file on my computer and made a list, “10 things I’ve learned to do well over the past year.”

Item no. 2 on the list was “2. write [what I later came to call Most Valuable] emails.”

A couple weeks later, because of that small observation, I created a live training about Most Valuable Emails.

A month later, based on the surprising sales of the swipe file of Most Valuable Emails I offered at the end of the live training, I decided to create a standalone Most Valuable Email course.

I was hesitant — I figured anybody interested had already seen my presentation and wouldn’t buy. But again, I was surprised.

​​4.7% of my list bought the Most Valuable Email course during the launch. And interest hasn’t dropped off since, but has in fact gone up.

​​To date, 5.3% of my list has bought Most Valuable Email, though my list has grown by over 41% since last September, when I first launched the MVE course.

Great, right? — when you look at it from the perspective of how a typical info product sells. 2% or 3% of a qualified list is considered good.

But on the other hand, it also means 94.7% of my list has not yet bought Most Valuable Email.

​​Perhaps this includes you too.

There are many legit reasons why you might not want to buy Most Valuable Email. I list some of them right in the deck copy of the sales page.

On the other hand, there are also several legit reasons why you might want to buy Most Valuable Email. I list those in the deck copy as well.

In case you’d like to read that, and see and decide for yourself whether Most Valuable Email could be most valuable for you too, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve