Business Ideas

Ultimate SUPER offer

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I got a deal for you today. A SUPER deal. In fact, an ultimate SUPER deal.

A few days ago, I got an email with the subject line, “Hey John.”

“Hello,” I whispered, and I opened up the email. It read:

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Hi John, how’s it going?

I wanted to see if there’s a way we could collaborate and share your work with an audience of over 250,000 copywriters and marketers.

My name is Nicole; I’m the head of partnerships at Infostack.io.

I love what you’re doing, and I wondered if we could talk about including 10 Commandments Of A-List Copywriters in an upcoming writing bundle we’re putting together (titled: The Ultimate Copywriter’s Super Stack)?

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First, let me admit these Infostack people have a smart business model. Years ago, I was actually thinking to start the exact same thing—

Bring together a bunch of people who sell offers online… create a bundle of their offers… get all of them to drive traffic to your event… promote to your own existing and growing list built up via previous events… rinse and repeat as the whole thing becomes more profitable and easier to run.

“Sure,” I told Nicole. “I would love to collaborate and share my work with your audience of over 250,000 copywriters and marketers.”

So that’s what I’m doing today. I am participating in and promoting the Ultimate Copywriter’s SUPER Stack.

The Ultimate Copywriter’s SUPER Stack features a grand total of 14 ebooks… courses… trainings… even two “masterclasses.”

The collected value of the whole bundle is $555.86.

But the actual price it’s selling for during this special event is — well, you guessed it — not $555… not $455… not even $454… but just $49.

Now, I’ll be honest with you:

Aside from Ning Li (Dan Ferrari’s first coaching student and currently the copy chief at Paleo Hacks), I’ve never heard of a single one of these participating copywriters.

They are probably all fine people and very successful at what they do. I’m sure they have lots of value to share. The fact I’ve never heard of them probably just speaks to my crab-like ability to avoid networking.

What I can tell you is that I myself will get the SUPER Ultimate Stack today (the first day it’s available, even to me). I will be going through it over the next few days and selling you on what I believe to be standouts among the included trainings.

Still, you might think that’s a weak and wobbly pitch. So let me get to the meat of this email:

If you do decide to get this Ultimate SUPER stack, I want to guarantee it’s worth your $49 even if you don’t go through a single one of the participating trainings, courses, or ebooks (except my 10 Commandments of course, do read that because it’s great).

And so I’m offering you four FREE and yet SUPER-valuable bonuses. Specifically, I’m offering my:

1. Copywriting Portfolio Secrets ($97 value)

In this training, I show you how to build up your copywriting portfolio in the fastest and most efficient way, so you can start to win copywriting jobs even today. I show you the best way I’ve found to win 4- and 5-figure jobs I REALLY wanted, even when I wasn’t qualified for them, and how you can do it too.

I previously sold this training for $97. But it’s yours free, SUPER free, if you take me up on my Infostack offer, which also includes my…

2. No-Stress Negotiation For Well-Paid Copywriters ($100 value)

This guide outlines my 7-part negotiating system, which I adapted from negotiation coach Jim Camp. This system kept me sane while I still regularly interviewed and worked with copywriting clients. Follow these seven principles, and you will end up making more money, working with better clients, and being able to stick to it for the long term.

I only offered this guide once before, as part of the $100 Copy Zone guide, which also featured….

3. How To Get Set Up On Upwork

This free bonus is an excerpt from a short self-published book I wrote once, How to Become a $150/Hr Sales Copywriter on Upwork: A Personal Success Story that Almost Anyone Can Replicate. It tells you how to actually get set up on Upwork — the details of your profile page, your description, your title.

If you combine this bonus with the two bonuses above — Copywriting Portfolio Secrets and No-Stress Negotiation — you have a great shot of winning a job on Upwork by the end of this week, or even today.

And finally and most spectacularly, my SUPER Ultimate bonus stack also includes…

4. Dan’s Timeless Wisdom (priceless, or $25k+)

Between August of 2019 and March 2020, I was in Dan Ferrari’s coaching group. As you might know, Dan started out as a star copywriter at The Motley Fool, and went on to become one of the most successful, most winning, big-money direct response copywriters working today.

Inside his coaching group, Dan dispensed copy critiques, marketing advice, and mystical koans to help his coaching students get to the next level.

​​At some point, I had the bright idea to start archiving the best and most valuable things that Dan was saying. I got 25 of them down, and they are all included in this document, which has until now only been shared with Dan and his coaching students.

(By the way, I never tallied up the exact and rather painful amount of money I paid to Dan for the coaching. It was north of $25k. I do know I made it all back, and then some, in just the first two months after I stopped with the coaching, thanks to just one tip I got from Dan.)

So there you go. If you want the Ultimate Copywriter’s SUPER Stack for its $555.86 worth of value, yours for just $49…

… or if you want my add-on bonuses for their glorious $25,197/∞ value, yours free…

… then here’s what to do:

1. Buy the Ultimate Copywriter’s SUPER Bundle at https://bejakovic.com/infostack

2. You will then get an automated email from ThriveCart with a link to a special, members-only page on my site where you can access the four free bonuses above.

Important:

​​Infostack’s bundle offer is live now and will go on for a week, but I will only be promoting it until this Friday at 8:31pm CET.

That’s how long my offer with the bonuses above is good for. Your ultimate SUPER purchase of this bundle has to come before Friday at 8:31pm CET to get my bonuses. So if you know you want them, why not get them now?

Business opportunity: Coat of Arms email address

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This morning, as all mornings, I got up, opened the balcony doors, sat down on the couch, and started looking at new subscribers to my health newsletter. That’s an ugly addiction I formed in the first few months of my new newsletter, thanks to an early success.

I was doing the same back when I had only a couple hundred subscribers, when one morning, I saw that the CEO of the Oura Ring company had signed up to my newsletter.

Like a crypto fiend, I’ve been checking my new subscribers ever since, hoping for that same fix.

But while my subscriber list keeps growing, I’ve never found another new subscriber of the same caliber. Still, I make a point every day to look up anyone with a custom domain name.

Today, I got a signup from, let’s say, bill@shackleford.com. The “bill” part is not real, but the domain is. I checked it out so you don’t have to. Here’s what I found:

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Find your @shackleford.com email address

Swap out your generic email address for a professional and clear your firstname@shackleford.com email. Grab yours now.

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The price for this professional and clear service? $35/month.

What a great business idea.

I mean, stamping out another email account if you already have website hosting is free. These guys charge $35/month for it!

But is this still an opportunity? Won’t all these family name domains be taken?

I think the opportunity might still be there. I did the lightest bit of detective work and looked up grinell.com, which according to a census site is a last name of comparable frequency to Shackleford.

The domain is for sale. I don’t know for how much. But I can imagine that, across the entire universe of mildly common last names, you could find at least a few dozen or a few hundred .com domains that you could acquire for a reasonable price.

“Great,” you might say, “and then I have a stupid grinell.com domain. How would I possibly persuade any Grinells to actually use my custom email address?”

That’s the beauty of my plan. Because that entire marketing funnel has already been done for you, some 60 years ago.

I’m talking about Gary Halbert’s Coat of Arms letter. You could even use the original product — a framed report about the history of the Grinell family name — as a kind of loss leader to get people onto your email address subscription.

(Incidentally, if any Bejakovics are reading this right now who would like to get their very own firstname@bejakovic.com email address, write to me. It’s just $35/month, and I will tell you all I know about the illustrious and warlike Bejakovic clan, going two generations back.)

Maybe your greed glands have been set a-workin’ by my Coat of Arms plan.

But maybe you’re wondering what I’m on about.

So let me say that the bigger point of my email today is that key appeals, ones that worked 60 or 160 years ago, are most likely still around.

The specific products, the ways to satisfy those appeals might change.

But people’s desire for locking down and celebrating their family heritage… for free money from the government… for getting rich in real estate… for manifesting their thoughts into reality… all those worked a century ago, and they will still work today.

Don’t like any of those appeals?

Then let me tell you about another appeal that worked a century ago, which still works today.

That’s the appeal of new, money-making skills. For a specific way to get yourself a particularly lucrative set of such skills, more quickly than you might ever believe, I’ll refer you to the page below. It’s also courtesy of Gary Halbert:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

7 ways to grow your Twitter following from somone who has never done it

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Along with this daily marketing newsletter, I also have a weekly health newsletter, which I started in January.

Then around April, I started a Twitter account, under a pseudonym, to go along with the health newsletter.

I’ve been posting daily on Twitter for maybe 4 months now. It’s been absolutely worthless in terms of any organic traffic to my health newsletter, or even any engagement on Twitter itself.

I could blame the Twitter algorithm, or simply tell myself to be patient. But it’s not either of those. Instead, the fault lies with the content I put on Twitter — earnest, factual, “should” info, as in, “you should care about this… but you really don’t.”

I have no interest in investing any time to grow my Twitter following, or in changing my approach. What I’m currently doing on Twitter is useful to me as a kind of notepad. Plus I have other ways to grow my newsletter.

But yesterday, I did make a list of 7 types of content I believe would do much better on Twitter, and could get me a growing, engaged audience, perhaps quickly.

I’m sharing this list below because, frankly, it’s also a good lineup of content to put into your daily emails. So here goes, along with a quick “daily email” illustration of what I mean by each category:

1. Inspiration. “There has never been and will never be a better day than today to start an email newsletter.”

2. Tiny tips and tweaks that feel meaningful. “Listicles should either have 7 or 10 items.”

3. Sensational news, or news framed in a sensationalist way. “Breaking! Rob Marsh of The Copywriter Club wrote me directly last night to ask if I want to go on their podcast.”

4. Human stories. “Being slightly inhuman, I’m drawing a blank here.”

5. Personal opinions, particularly if they are dumb. “If you send fewer emails, people will value each of them more.”

6. Predictions, particularly if they are overconfident. “We will see a billion dollar newsletter company in the next year. 100%.”

7. Hobnobbing — referencing, resharing, commenting, agreeing or disagreeing with positions of people who have bigger follower counts than you. “Yesterday and today, Justin Goff sent out two emails about doers vs. spectators. I’m telling you about that because…”

… as I once wrote, I was lucky to read a specific issue of the Gary Halbert Letter, very early in my marketing education. That issue was titled, “The difference between winners and losers.”

In that issue, Gary said with much more vigor what Justin said in his two emails yesterday and today, which is that spectators can never really know what it is to be a player.

Like I said, that influenced me greatly, very early on, in very positive ways. It’s probably the reason why I managed to survive and even succeed as a copywriter and marketer.

It’s also why I profited so much from another Gary Halbert Letter issue, the second-most valuable Gary Halbert issue in my personal experience, which laid out a recipe to develop a specific money-making skill.

In case you’re curious about that money-making skill, or which Gary Halbert Letter issue I have in mind, or in case you yourself want to survive and succeed as a copywriter or marketer, then read the full story here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

An evergreen way to create a spectacle

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At 10 minutes before 12 noon today, I hurried down my street and turned to the Rambla del Poblenou.

It’s Sunday today, and people were out and about, strolling down the sycamore-lined street.

​​As I neared the main intersection in front of the Aliança de Poblenou building, which is the very heart of the neighborhood, the strolling crowds grew more dense and then jammed to a stop.

I stood around for a couple minutes, waiting expectantly.

Then at noon exactly, I saw a group of about two dozen men get in a circle, facing the center of the intersection. ​​All were wearing the same uniform — blue shirts, white pants, black sashes tied tightly around their waists, yellow and red bandanas around their wrists.

The men formed two rows. The ones in the outer row were pushing the ones in the inner row towards the center of the circle. The ones in the inner row were holding up their hands into a kind of team salute.

And them, four other men started climbing up — first up the backs of the outer row men, then over the inner row men.

The new climbers scrambled onto the shoulders of the inner row and then stood up, their arms on each other’s shoulders for balance.

Meanwhile, one more set of four was already clambering up the backs of the people on the first storey… up onto the shoulders of the men in the second storey… and then standing up to form a third storey.

This repeated until the team had formed a human tower, six storeys high, with men at the bottom, young women occupying the middle storeys, and kids wearing helmets at the top.

It’s a Catalan tradition, the castell. Since this weekend is the Festa Major de Poblenou, the yearly celebration of the neighborhood, it was a good time to perform the castell.

Today’s performance reminded me of two things:

First, I thought of Harry Houdini, dangling upside down from the building of the town’s main newspaper at 12 noon and writhing to escape a straightjacket… and second, I thought of Claude Hopkins, dreaming up the world’s biggest cake on the fifth floor of a newly opened department store in Chicago.

In a word:

I thought of spectacle, which happens to be one of the more valuable marketing skills you can have.

So how do you create spectacle?

Some of it is operational. Again, today’s castell happened on Sunday at 12 noon, on a central intersection, and was well advertised. A spectacle is no spectacle unless there are people around to see it.

But once you take care of the operational stuff, you still have the “content” of the spectacle.

How do you do that? How do you create something spectacular in content?

​​I will only point out the obvious from today:

Imagine two storeys of human beings… maybe three.

​​Ho-hum.

But six? And kids up top, 30 feet in the air, looking mildly terrified as the whole thing sways and shivers under the human tonnage?

If you think about that a bit, you will be able to extract a reliable, evergreen way to create the intrigue necessary for the content of a spectacle, which will work even if you’re not Catalan and don’t have a team of castellers to form a human tower.

But on to my offer:

If you want me to spell out this way to create intrigue, you can find it inside Round 3 of my Copy Riddles program. And you can find many more such ways.

Because Rounds 3-6 of Copy Riddles are actually all about creating intrigue.

It takes that many rounds, because this is a big part of what marketing and copywriting is. Most things are not spectacular on their own. It’s the marketer’s or copywriter’s job to take mundane elements, combine them in predictable ways, and create something sexy and new and intriguing.

If you go through Copy Riddles, you will start to exercise your own spectacle-conjuring faculties.

​​Plus, you will see how some of the best copywriters in the world dun it, and learn a thing or six from them.

​​For more info on Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

My frustrating experience shipping alcohol overseas

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This morning, I wired money to Daniel Throssell for his share of the Copy Riddles sales made over the past week. But I wanted to send Daniel something more than just an email notification of a wire transfer.

I know Daniel has this message in his signoff:

“Fan mail, death threats and gifts of expensive whisky can be dispatched via messenger kangaroo to:”

“All right,” I said. As a first step, I found an article, “24 Best Alcohol Delivery Services in Australia.”

I went to the website of one of those 24 best alcohol delivery services in Australia.

I added a bottle of Oban to my cart.

Five years ago, I visited the Oban distillery in Oban, Scotland. It was a rare highlight of an otherwise miserable trip, plagued by cold, food poisoning, and a terrifying ride in a van down the wrong side of the road.

Those memories flooded back as I filled out the form with Daniel’s PO Box and my billing details. I clicked the “Is this a gift?” option, and I wrote a little note to Daniel, explaining why exactly this whisky.

​​I pressed the button to get to the final order page… and… and… loading… almost there… still loading… loading…

I tried again. No.

I tried from beginning. Same thing.

I tried a different browser. It wouldn’t work.

I contacted their support. But nothing I did or they advised would get the order complete or my bottle of 14-year-old Oban on the road.

I exhaled to calm myself. I’d wasted a good 40 minutes fighting with one of the best alcohol delivery services in Australia. “It’s okay,” I told myself in a cheery tone. “I’ve learned something!” I made my way down the list.

The next among Australia’s 24 best alcohol delivery services also sold Oban. But since this was a site that specializes in “business gifts,” the bottle cost 40 dollars more.

I stared hard at the screen. I grunted. Fine.

I filled everything out once again, including the gift message about why exactly this whisky.

Only, once I’d written that message out, I got a notification that it would cost me an extra $5.95 to have the gift card with the message included. I stared in confusion at this notification, and then I got furious. “Oh no you don’t!” I roared. “That’s the straw that broke this donkey’s back!”

I closed down this second website, and I moved on to number 3 on list of the 24 best alcohol delivery services in Australia. My nerves were starting to fray.

The third site did not sell Oban at all. So much for my carefully crafted note to Daniel, explaining why exactly this whisky. But at this point I didn’t care. I was entirely fixated on shipping something brown, in a bottle, with alcohol in it, to Daniel’s PO Box.

This website did not have a “Is this a gift?” option. So not only would there be no note, but perhaps the receipt would go along with the present.

Tacky?

“Efficient!” I told myself, my teeth clenched together, my eyes darting from side to side.

I entered my credit card details, cackled as I watched the order go through, wiped the sweat off my brow, and started to finally relax. And only then did I realize the sun was starting to go down — and I still hadn’t written my daily email.

So no point or takeaway to today’s email. Who’s got time for a takeaway?

Only thing I can perhaps highlight is how dogged I was in making this purchase, in spite of obstacles put in front of me — frustration, time, effort, and even insults by that “business gifts” website.

My point is not that I’m a uniquely determined personality. My point is that this is how people normally shop for stuff they want.

If you haunt copywriting lists, you will hear expert and non-expert copywriters tell you how important it is to reduce friction… to spend time crafting your headline… how good copy matters! And it’s true, at the margins, and at scale, hundreds of sales per day, or thousands, or tens of thousands.

If you play at that level, you will have to get everything right.

But odds are good you are not playing at that level. And so you don’t have to get everything right. You just have to get basic psychology right, and apply it correctly and consistently. People will still buy.

And on that note, consider my Most Valuable Email training. It won’t teach you basic psychology directly, but it will give you a framework for getting basic psychology downloaded into your brain, day after day, by applying the Most Valuable Email trick correctly and consistently.

This might sound confusing, but I can’t explain it better without giving away stuff that I charge for in the course.

All I can tell you is that lots of people have gone through this Most Valuable Email training before, many have praised the approach, and quite a few have benefited from actually implementing it. In case you’d like to learn more:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Would you look at this table of contents and give me your thoughts?

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In my email yesterday, I posed a kind of persuasion riddle based on the movie The Sting. I asked, “Can you identify this persuasion strategy?”

I got a buunch of responses. Some were flat-out wrong. Some were part of the way to the answer I had in mind. But only one or two people got all the way there.

That’s good.

It makes me feel hopeful about the book I’ve been planning.

I talked about it a few times already. The tentative title is “10 Commandments of Hypnotists, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Con Men, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Spirit Mediums, and Stage Magicians.”

I decided to sit down today and write up a possible table of contents for the book. In case you’re curious, you can find my proposed 10 Commandments below, along with a representative quote to give you a flavor of what each chapter will be about.

Commandment I: Thou shalt mind the event boundaries

“The bathroom is a great place to negotiate.”

Commandment II: Thou shalt flip the script

“I don’t even know you!”

Commandment III: Thou shalt pace and lead

“Give me your hands.”

Commandment IV: Thou shalt push and thou shalt pull

“Get off me, jeez.”

Commandment V: Honor the magical number seven

“This purple telephone was a gift from four graduate students, two of whom were passing their major course and failing their minors, and two of whom were passing their minors and failing their majors. The two who were passing their majors and failing their minors passed all. The two who were passing their minors and failing their majors, passed their majors and failed their minors. In other words, they selected the help I offered.”

Commandment VI: Thou shalt set the frame

“Can 31 Pages Transform Your Financial Destiny? It seems rather remarkable.”

Commandment VII: Thou shalt interrupt your adversary’s pattern

“Every man you’ve ever known, loved, and trusted has lied to you.”

Commandment VIII: Thou shalt take the winding path

“I’ll tell you about that in a second, but first…”

Commandment IX: Thou shalt agree and amplify

“Is this what you want? Bunch of fucking losers. Fucking Rocky is your hero. The whole pride of your city is built around a fuckin guy who doesn’t even exist. You got fuckin Joe Frazier is from here, but he’s black, so you can’t fuckin deal with him, so you make a fucking statue for some 3-ft fuckin Italian you stupid philly cheese-eatin fucking jackasses. I hope the cheese melts your faces off.”

10. Remember that you’re playing a numbers game

“As a marketer you only have one power, and that’s to anticipate what people are going to think.”

I’m trying to anticipate what you might think of this book.

So let me know if any of these chapters sounds too obvious, too obscure, or could be replaced in your opinion by something that’s more interesting or relevant.

Keep in mind my goal is to say something fresh and new — I don’t want to rewrite Cialdini’s Influence. That book is great, but it’s been written, and I don’t need to rewrite it.

And if you found yourself made curious or even excited by my outline for this book, feel free to write in and tell me that also. It’s always good to get a bit of extra motivation for the work ahead.
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Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I already have one 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

If my second 10 Commandments book above sounds interesting to you… there’s a good chance you will like my first book. Here’s where you can get it, for a rather staggering price:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Why I’m happy to give up more than half my profit by promoting Daniel Throssell’s sale

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Yesterday, I gave a little breakdown of the structure of my Copy Riddles sales letter, and then advised people to get on Daniel Throssell’s list, and buy Copy Riddles via Daniel’s affiliate link.

​​Reader Jakub Červenka, who runs an info publishing business in the men’s sexual health niche (something I used to write for in my freelance days), asks a logical question:

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John,

since you are sharing so much about the structure and the thought process behind your pages (thank you!) could you, perhaps in one of your next emails, explain why are you pushing people so much to buy through Mr Boycotted (😉) efforts?

I understand that you value your readers and relationships you so carefully build, but the second part is – this is still business, no?

And in my opinion, making more money is better than making less money…

So, telling your list about the sale once, twice… great, they have been told, if they didn’t buy, their mistake, you told them. And reminded them.

But why are you giving up half of your profit (I am guessing) by constantly promoting Daniel’s sale?

I know even with commission you pay him you take home more than from your original price, but still…

The obvious answer to me would be some kind of promo of his offers in the future, but it doesn’t seem to be the case from what I think of Daniel’s business model so I am curious and probably many more of your readers are too.

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The numbers are actually less favorable than Jakub says.

I’m actually making slightly less for each sale of Copy Riddles via Daniel’s promo than I did the last time I sold this course myself. That’s due to the $200 discount I am offering Daniel’s readers… plus the affiliate commission I’m paying to Daniel.

That said, I continue to happily send my own readers to buy through Daniel’s list for following three reasons:

Reason #1. I agreed with Daniel to make this $200 discount exclusive to his list. At the same time, I want to make sure that anyone on my list who might actually want Copy Riddles buys at this same discount.

​​If that means nagging on and on about getting on Daniel’s list, and possibly losing money over a full-price sale that might come in the future, so be it.

The ultimate goal, like Jakub says, is valuing my readers. I want to make it an absolute certainty in my readers’ minds that I’m playing square with them and treating them right.

It’s only business, but the way I choose to play it, which is for the long term.

Reason #2. Daniel has been good to me over the years, He promoted me to his 5k-person list back when I had a list of fewer than 300 readers, and on several subsequent occasions. He has spoken well of me, driven subscribers my way, and helped me make sales.

And now, he’s hyping me up to his own list, which he values equally as much as I value mine, and he’s sending new buyers my way for a very expensive course. It’s simple gratitude to pay that back in an earnest way.

But if you need a more mercenary explanation, then consider…

Reason #3. Top copywriter Chris Haddad, who also runs an 8-figure Clickbank business, once said, “Your job is to make your affiliates money.”

Why make your affiliates money? Because it’s your job. Because it’s how you get paid this month, and next month, and the month after that.

I don’t know whether Daniel and I will ever do another JV promo in the future. Maybe we never will. But maybe we will collaborate in some less formal, more indirect way.

Or maybe I will have other JV partners and affiliates. Whatever the case, it can’t hurt to let it be known that, just like with my readers, I treat my partners squarely and work to help them make money.

So that’s my thought process on continuing to send people to Daniel’s list, even after I could squint and say, I’ve done enough.

That said, I won’t send you to Daniel’s list now. It’s simply too late.

The special discount I promised Daniel ends at noon PST today, less than an hour from now. As far as I know, Daniel won’t send more emails before now and then.

If you’re not on Daniel’s list, then I assume you weren’t interested in Copy Riddles right now. That’s okay. I’ll work to get you interested in the future.

But if you are on Daniel’s list, and you would like to get Copy Riddles before the $200 discount disappears, then rummage through your inbox right now… find Daniel’s most recent email… and follow the instructions at the end of it. If you’re serious about owning copywriting skills at a high level, it will be well worth it.

Business opportunity for an honest, reliable businessman or woman

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Consider the following classified ad, which ran thousands of times across the US:

“BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY: For an honest, reliable businessman with $20,000 to invest for a large return. References exchanged.”

Now ask yourself…

How does this classified ad make you feel? Take a moment right now to look inside yourself:

Are you suspicious and wary?

Or are you excited, and eager to know more?

Or are you perhaps disappointed, because this business opportunity doesn’t apply to you for some reason?

Perhaps you don’t have $20k to invest? Perhaps you don’t think of yourself as a businessman? Perhaps… you suspect you are not fully honest?

Like I mentioned a few days ago, I’m reading a book called The Big Con. It’s about conmen, working complex, months-long schemes some 100 years ago, who took their rich marks for millions of dollars in today’s money.

One way that these “big con” grifters would rope in their marks was by running the above classified ad in local newspapers.

If you dig into the 17 words of the ad above, you will find a surprising amount of deep psychology.

Today, I want to focus on just one of those words. That’s the word honest. From The Big Con:

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But the mark must also have what grifters term “larceny in his veins” — in other words, he must want something for nothing, or be willing to participate in an unscrupulous deal.

If the mark were completely aware of this character weakness, he would not be so easy to trim. But, like almost everyone else, the mark thinks of himself as an “honest man.” He may be hardly aware, or even totally unaware, of this trait which leads to his financial ruin. “My boy,” said old John Henry Strosnider sagely, “look carefully at an honest man when he tells the tale himself about his honesty. He makes the best kind of mark…”

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I’m not sure what my point is by telling you this. I found it fascinating on some level, and I wanted to share it.

Perhaps you can consider it a public service announcement, warning you to take heed if anybody ever appeals to your inherent honesty.

Or perhaps it’s simply to soothe your conscience a bit, and to tell you that if you suspect you are not as honest as you might be, then in fact you’re probably more honest than the norm.

Whatever the case, it’s worth paying attention to business opportunity ads, whether “legit” or entirely fraudulent, like the ad above.

That’s because business opportunity ads appeal to some of the most powerful human drivers, and often get responses like no other copy ever could.

I experienced this first-hand a few years ago, when I first started looking at old business opportunity ads, and when, as a lark, I started introducing some business opportunity language into my own emails.

In particular, I once sent an email in which I claimed to have a new business opportunity, and I invited responses from people who wanted to know more.

I got swamped by replies.

I never followed up on these replies, for reasons of my own. But the demand for that offer is there, and it’s very real.

What’s more, taking advantage of this demand does not require any dishonesty, but would genuinely help business owners who are currently in distress.

Maybe this all sounds fairly abstract. If so, you can find the business opportunity I am talking about described in full detail in the swipe file that goes with my Most Valuable Email course — specifically, MVE #12.

If you actually apply the idea in MVE #12, it could be worth much more to you than the price I charge for the Most Valuable Email training. And you might find other valuable business ideas in that swipe file. As reader Illya Shapovalov, who bought MVE last month, wrote me to say:

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By the way, I printed out the MVE swipe file. Almost every day, I sit down to study and analyze it a bit. But every time, I just get sucked into the content itself! 😂 Learned a bunch of new stuff without even intending to do so. Thanks for that too.

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Here’s your opportunity to to invest for a large return, references exchanged:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Do you have a wonderful product that’s underpriced or underappreciated?

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Last month, I promoted Steve Raju’s ClientRaker training. It was grand. I got a buncha new buyers for Steve, and in the days following Steve’s first live call, I got a buncha happy subscribers writing in to thank me for turning them on to such a valuable training.

Eventually, the ClientRaker chatter died down. But then this past Monday, long-time reader Kevin Wood wrote me to say:

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It’s about a month later, but I’ve only been through 2 of the Client Raker calls. So far it’s one of the most mind-blowing trainings I’ve been through. Beyond the technical steps of using ChatGPT, the mindset shift has been the biggest thing so far. Like how much positioning matters, the types of industries to target, why not go after whale clients. A lot of these thoughts have never entered my mind before, so it’s super inspiring in that way.

Also, learning how to use ChatGPT the “Steve Raju” way makes me feel dumb in a good way. Like, there’s no way I would have figured or even thought of the approaches he takes. And this is after going through other AI courses and trying out a few different AI writing tools. It’s shifted how I use ChatGPT in general, not applying his client methods yet.

Anyways, it’s the best money I’ve spent on a course this year and that’s without applying it for clients yet, or finishing the course. So, thanks.

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Like I wrote at end of the ClientRaker promo…

I would promote something like Steve’s ClientRaker every week if I could. But there are not a lot of ClientRakers and not a lot of Steve Rajus hidden out there.

Not a lot… but there might be some.

Steve and I started talking back in June, when I sussed out interest in a training about charging higher prices for your offer.

Turns out Steve didn’t need my help with that, beyond me telling him that what he’s offering definitely sounds more valuable than what he’s charging for it.

But if something has worked once, it’s worth going back to again. So since I connected with Steve in this way, let me try it now with you:

If you’re selling something wonderful — a course, a training, even your services — that you feel is underpriced, then write in and let me know.

Or if you have a great offer that not a lot of people know about, write in and let me know that as well.

I’m not promising anything specific in return, except an open ear and maybe some encouragement that yes, indeed, you should charge more starting today, or yes, indeed, you should take obvious steps to get more people exposed to your great offer.

But who knows, maybe it will turn into something more. Maybe we can work together directly in some way. Or maybe I can help you indirectly in some way. But it won’t happen unless we first talk.

It’s up to you, and to your decision to reply to this email, preferably right now.

I was wrong about being a pity-seeking loser

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On the sales page for my Most Valuable Email course, I once wrote:

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People love stories that show vulnerability — from the guru who’s already made tens of millions of dollars. But stories of vulnerability from the panhandler in front of the supermarket? People don’t love that so much.

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Turns out I was wrong. People do love stories of vulnerability from people who haven’t achieved anything — as long as those people make their plea on Facebook or Twitter. From an article I just read, “The rise of pity marketing”:

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Two weeks ago, at the start of the Edinburgh Fringe, an actor named Georgie Grier posted on Twitter to say only one person had turned up to her one-woman preview show, attaching a picture of herself crying with the caption: “It’s fine, isn’t it? It’s fine…?”

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Within hours, Grier had thousands of replies to her Tweet, including from other, more successful comedians, encouraging her to keep going and saying they had bought tickets to her show. The next night, Grier played to a packed room.

The article I read gives other good examples to make the case that being a pity-seeking loser on social media is now a viable business strategy. The article wraps it up with the following observation:

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Is it real success if you had to publicly declare yourself a failure to achieve it? Those who opt in to pity marketing seem unconcerned, given it can yield major (if short-term) returns.

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Phew. This gives me a bit of a lifeline.

Because I find pity-seeking revolting, both in myself and in others. I want to continue my war on it.

But how can I, when it clearly works, and I was wrong to say it doesn’t?

Well, I’m shifting my angle of attack. My hope lies in the key phrase above, how pity marketing can create “major (if short-term) returns.”

Because there’s no way in hamfat that pity seeking can truly be a reliable strategy for the long term.

In the current moment, pity seeking seems to be viable in general.

And in the current moment in your career, whatever it is that you do, you might post on social media that you have no readers/audience members/customers/clients/sales/whatever. And if you also post a video or a pic of yourself, red-eyed and teary, you might draw sympathy and maybe even a short-term spike in business.

But it’s not something you can do every day.

No, for every day, you need another strategy.

Because the pity reservoirs in most people get depleted pretty quick.

But the reservoirs for being amused, surprised, taught something cool and new, benefited directly and indirectly, well, those reservoirs run very deep.

There might be multiple strategies that allow you to tap into those deep reservoirs over and over again.

I know of one such strategy, which I can personally recommend. It’s my Most Valuable Email trick. In case you’d like to find out what that is, so you can start using it today, tomorrow, and the day after to grow your audience and influence and income while making yourself into a better and more skilled person:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/