Business Ideas

Successful copywriter less interested than ever in writing daily emails

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Last week, I solicited feedback on my Simple Money Emails course, which I offered briefly this past summer.

To which, I got an appreciative but frustrated response from a successful copywriter who’s got a full-time copywriting job, writing for a big direct response business.

I’m not sure this copywriter wants me to share his name, but here’s what he wrote:

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Hey John, thanks for SME. In theory it’s inspired me to pick up daily emails again… but even though I went through the course immediately… I find myself even less interested in writing the dailies! (There was a time when I did write daily emails, for 2 or 3 years, but then I slowed way down and it’s been on-and-off since…)

The reason? I don’t have an offer other than “copywriting services” and so many ideas are re-hashed that I don’t even feel it’s worth discussing them again. Even though I know I should repeat myself and my story… But putting in time to market to a list that hasn’t bought previous offers (books, interviews, and copy services)… and seems interested in free-ideas-as-fellow-copywriters but not as business-owners-in-need… it’s not made me any direct money.

Daily emails and writing certainly improved my craft and speed, which I use for my copywriting work. But to my own list? The effort has taken a back seat. And I wish it hadn’t… but at the same time I see so many copywriters pitching their rehashed whatever that I don’t really want to join them in that.

===

I thought for a moment, searching for just the right words to reply with. When I found them, I wrote back to my reader to encourage him by saying,

“Just shut up and write the stupid emails! If it’s not working, then the problem is with you! The system works if you work it!”

No, actually, I didn’t say any of that, nor did I think it. Because my reader raised two valid points:

1. The number of copywriters writing daily emails has exploded over the past few years

2. If you do write daily emails about copywriting, you are likely to attract a lot of freebie-seeking mooches, or as my reader generously calls them, “fellow copywriters”

There are ways to handle both of these issues head on.

But you can also sidestep both issues entirely.

If you have copywriting skills — or even if you don’t, but you want to develop them by writing regularly — then why not simply write to a different audience than other copywriters/marketers/opportunity seekers?

There are thousands of markets out there and millions of sub-markets.

In many of them, you could be the zebra in George Washington’s menagerie — a never-before-seen animal, with your regular email newsletter, and your intriguing subject lines, and your dramatic hooks. Readers in such a market would be amazed by tricks that copywriters would roll their eyes at.

​​I understand it can be easy, attractive, and even fun to write about what you know, what you’re doing right now, and what you’re learning about. That’s in fact why I write this daily email newsletter.

But earlier this year, I also launched a second email newsletter, about health. It’s about to pass this newsletter in the number of subscribers. And while it’s only made me a tiny bit of money so far, I hope to have it surpass this newsletter in earnings next year.

Anyways, all this is just something to think about if you’re a copywriter who’s resisting the idea of writing daily emails. ​​​​

Something else to think about:
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If you do decide to go into a different market and start a new newsletter, and if you need to actually choose a platform to send that newsletter, then I can recommend Beehiiv. It’s what I use for my health newsletter. It was the best platform I found when I was starting the newsletter earlier this year, and it keeps surprising me and getting better and better.

I pay for the top level of Beehiiv, and I find it a worthwhile $99 each month. But if you wanna give Beehiiv a try, you can do so for free by going here:​​​​​

​​https://bejakovic.com/beehiiv

How Edward Bernays manipulated me, and how he might do it again

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I once wrote an email with the subject line, “How I manipulated you, and how I might do it again.”

​​That email was all about the strategic use of inflammatory words — like “manipulated” — to get people reading stuff they might not read otherwise.

Well, Edward Bernays manipulated me, and I guess he manipulated millions of other people, too.

Right now, I’m reading Bernays’s book Propaganda. It’s been in print for the past 100 years, and it’s still discussed today, though I suspect few people who discuss it have ever read it.

Why do people know and discuss Propaganda? Because of that title. Propaganda. It’s like manipulated. On the one hand repulsive, on the other hand fascinating.

Imagine that Bernays had titled his book Public Relations — which is really what his book is about. Would we be talking about it today, much less reading it?

The answer is no. The proof is that Bernays did in fact write a book called Public Relations. Result?

Propaganda: 2,700+ reviews on Amazon
Public Relations: 74 reviews on Amazon — and I bet most of those only came via Bernays’s Propaganda fame

All that’s to say, hooks matter. And unless you hook someone right away, then all the other thousands of words you might have written won’t matter much.

But you knew that. It’s the oldest bit of advice traded around the copywriting bonfire.

What you might not know is how to write a great hook. How to make it sensational and inflammatory — propaganda for the rest of what you have to say.

About that. As Daniel Throssell wrote recently:

​The skill of coming up with a great hook, and the skill of making it sensational, are almost exactly the same as a tiny, mechanical, supposedly “niche” copywriting skill you probably do not yet possess.

​​But it’s a skill you can find out more about, and even acquire quickly, via the following page:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Shady and petty, or smart personal positioning?

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In 1906, magician Harry Houdini started to research an ambitious book he planned to call The Encyclopedia of Magic.

But the more Houdini worked, the more maniacal and single-minded his focus became — to discredit Robert-Houdin, the great 19th-century magician that Houdini had originally modeled himself after, down to the name.

Even the title of Houdini’s book changed. ​​First it became Robert-Houdin’s Proper Place in the History of Magic… and then, The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin.

Robert-Houdin was a hack, Houdini was effectively saying. Robert-Houdin had managed to fool magicians into thinking he was something great and original, when he was not.

Yesterday, I wrote an email about how negotiation coach Jim Camp snubbed his mentor Dave Sandler.

Sandler was a sales trainer who had influenced much of Camp’s thinking — take a look at their published works — but Camp never seems to have given due credit to Sandler for his influence or ideas.

You might call that — along with Houdini’s attack on Robert-Houdin — petty, shady, or simply inevitable human ego that crops up even among great men.

You might call it that.

But I might call it smart personal positioning.

Hear me out:

It’s undeniable that being unique, new, distinct, never-before-seen is a tremendous advantage to your personal positioning.

The trouble of course is that you’re probably not unique, distinct, or never-before-seen, just like the other 117 billion humans estimated to have ever lived.

​​We’re all quite similar to each other, and we’re all really the outgrowth of our families, friends, neighbors, coworkers, teachers, mentors, living and dead.

That might be true. But like I said yesterday, it’s not really what the human brain responds to.

The human brain responds to contrast. That’s the basis of cognition.

And what bigger contrast is there than saying about yourself, “There was darkness upon the face of the deep… and then there was light.”

So there you go. If you’re looking to improve your personal positioning, work on being more distinct, unique, new.

That’s given.

What you might not have thought about is to make yourself distinct and unique at the expense of the people who helped you get there.

It might seem like one of those unsavory and pointless things done by people who have made it to the top… but I disagree. At least about the pointless part.

People who get to the top often do things that seem unnecessary or even self-defeating — if you’re not in their place.

Anyways, that’s just an idea for you to consider.

I realize today’s message might seem a little dark, but that’s what happens if you want to reach into all corners of human nature. Some are nice and cheery… others are dark and disturbing.

If you are willing to face the dark and disturbing corners of human nature, and maybe even figure out how to work with them to your advantage, then I have an entire sub-training all about that.

That sub-training is Round 19 of my Copy Riddles program. It deals with the dark psychological things that are present in the best sale copy, which go deeper than mere self-interest.

For more info on Copy Riddles, from Round 1 to Round 20:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Jim Camp, plagiarist

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Last week, Ben Settle sent out an email in which he quoted a reader who said the following about negotiation coach Jim Camp:

“… his whole system for the most part comes from Dave Sandler and he never gives him credit, ever that I’ve heard. Now I realize he has done many things to make him an expert but he has never anywhere I’ve heard even mentioned Sandler.”

Ben is a big Jim Camp fan, and has infected many of his readers, me among them, with Jim Camp’s authority.

Ben shrugged off his reader’s comment, and said he had never heard of Sandler.

​​Neither had I. But I looked Sandler up. He was a sales trainer and he died in 1995.

I found a book of 49 of Sandler’s “Timeless Selling Principles.” Most of the rules line up very well with Camp’s system. And some line up exactly.

​​Take a quick look over the specific language in the chapter headings and summaries below, and you’ll see that Jim Camp was in fact taking a lot from Sandler. ​​From the book:

* “Don’t spill your candy in the lobby” [Camp swapped in “beans” for “candy”]

* “The best sales presentation you’ll ever give, the prospect will never see” [taken word-for-word]

* “The bottom line of professional selling is going to the bank” [Camp said “bottom line of negotiation…”]

* “You must be comfortable telling your prospect that it’s OK to say ‘No.’ You must also be comfortable hearing and accepting ‘No.'” [Camp used this pretty much word-for-word, and summed it up with the title of his book, Start With No.]

In that Ben Settle email, Ben wrote, “If you learn something that’s not common knowledge from a particular source it’s good to give credit.”

I’ve read and listened to Camp a lot, but I’ve never read or heard Camp credit Dave Sandler. I’ve heard him mention Peter Drucker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, even Gloria Steinam, but never Sandler. (I checked just now, and Sandler is credited once, among 20 other mentors, at the end of Start With No.)

So now what? Is Jim Camp really a plagiarist? Or did he at least snub an influential mentor by not crediting him enough?

It might be interesting for the gossip, but on a practical level, I couldn’t care less.

As I wrote a long time ago in this newsletter, I’m less interested in attribution than in ideas that work.

Jim Camp’s system works. I know because I’ve used it and seen it work.

But is it really Camp’s system? Or Sandler’s system? Or somebody else’s who came before Sandler? Or some amalgam?

Instead of agonizing over those tough questions, I would like to give you a better, easier question to ponder:

Do you remember any of Sandler’s points above?

​​The real value in this email is those five points, not a dogpile on the topic of whether Camp gave due credit or not.

And yet, I doubt one person in a hundred will remember any of Sandler’s ideas above from this email… while many will remember that I wrote an email with the subject line, “Jim Camp, plagiarist.”

No judgment there. Such is the human brain — wired for human action and drama. You can gripe about it and fight it without effect, or you can simply accept it and work with it.

As I wrote once before, it’s your choice whether you want to be subtle or savage in how you work with it.

What is not your choice is how people’s brains work, and what kinds of messages they respond to.

​​And the most condensed and powerful type of message that people respond to… well, you can read more about that here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

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)?

===

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.

===

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