Two proven ways to run a city or a newsletter

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

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

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.

===

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

Sexy firefighters running around for nobody’s entertainment

It’s 8:45am as I start writing this email. Right now, off my balcony, I can see a tremendous show.

I live next door to a fire station, and the firemen are doing a public demonstration on the street in front of the station.

​​They are dressed up in their sexiest firefighting suits and they are running around two smashed up cars, one of which is burned to a crisp. The cars were placed there earlier in the morning, inside of a fenced-in area, so the firemen could show how they cut a car open and rescue somebody inside.

Like I say, it’s a tremendous show. Spectacular. My 6-year-old self would have given up a year of eating KitKats in order to see it.

And yet, as I watch this show off my balcony, there’s a total audience of about a dozen adults gathered on the street.

I mean, it’s 8:45am. People are either at home or on their way to work or stuck in the prison of school. Besides, it’s not a busy street. And as far as I know, this demonstration was not advertised anywhere — again, I live right next door.

You’ve probably heard the words of the godfather of modern advertising, Claude Hopkins. Hopkins said, “No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration.”

True, but:

The most famous example of a dramatic demonstration was Elisha Otis. Otis changed the landscape of American cities when he demonstrated his crash-proof elevator — to the masses milling about the New York Crystal Palace Exposition, which attracted 1.1 million visitors.

When Claude Hopkins himself created the world’s largest cake to promote Cotosuet, a kind of early margarine, he made a deal with a giant new department store which had just opened in Chicago.

​​The cake would go smack dab in the middle of the grocery department on the fifth floor. ​​Hopkins then ran big ads in all the Chicago newspapers to advertise the fact.

​​Over the course of a week, 105,000 people climbed the four flights of stairs to see that cake.

And when master showman Harry Houdini did his straitjacket escapes, while hanging upside 150 feet in the air, with only his feet tied to a pulley on the roof of some building, he made sure to hang off the building of the town’s main newspaper, guaranteeing a front page story the day before his show. Houdini did all these public escapes at exactly 12 noon, when lunchtime crowds could assemble.

Point being, as Gary Halbert might put it:

Advertise your advertising.

But maybe you say, “Yeah yeah but how? How exactly do I advertise my advertising?”

I gave you three examples right above. If that ain’t enough, here’s a fourth:

The waiting list for my future group coaching program on email copywriting. The waiting list serves as a waiting list, for sure. But it also serves as advertising for the actual advertising I will do when I do make that group coaching available. Very meta.

If you are interested in writing emails that people actually like reading and that they actually buy from, then you might be a good fit for my future group coaching. Or you might not. ​​In case you’d like to find out more about it, the first step is to get on my daily email list. Click here to do that.

Invest in your 1000 true high-paying fans

On February 1st, I got an email with the subject line, “Invest in your newsletter.”

“I sure like the sound of investing,” I said to myself. “And I do have a newsletter.”

The background is this:

I had recently signed up for Beehiiv, which is something like Substack, only you have to pay a monthly fee for it.

Beehiiv was created by Tyler Denk, who was an early employee at Morning Brew. Morning Brew is now a $75+ million business, based around a daily email that covers the day’s business news.

I signed up for Beehiiv because I’ve started a Morning Brew-like newsletter. It has nothing to do with marketing or copywriting, and it’s in a different format than what you are currently reading.

So that’s the background. Now that we’re caught up, let’s get back to that February 1st “Invest in your newsletter” email.

Tyler of Beehiiv was writing me that email to give me the opportunity to pay him $499 for his course on starting a newsletter.

So I did.

​​I sent Tyler $499 and I got access to this course, called Newsletter XP. And I got to listen to a bunch of big people in the newsletter space, including Morning Brew’s founder and CEO, share their ideas experiences on content strategy and growth and newsletter monetization.

People in this “newsletter operator” space don’t seem to be as miserly as people in the direct marketing space about sharing ideas that are normally behind a paywall. In fact, Tyler encouraged people to tweet the most valuable ideas they got from his Newsletter XP course.

I don’t tweet, so let me email you the most valuable idea I got from this course.

This most valuable idea came in the next-to-last session. One of the guests in that session was Codie Sanchez.

​​Codie runs Contrarian Thinking, a newsletter with some 250,000 subscribers, about buying and selling businesses. She’s built an eight-figure info business off the back of that newsletter, plus maybe several other 7-figure businesses also, plus I guess even the newsletter itself pays her well since she can promote relevant money-related offers.

And maybe most impressive of all, Codie has done all this since corona started.

Anyways, here’s what Codie said that I found most valuable:

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I sort of believe your 1000 true fans — Kevin Kelly talks about this — they’re actually the fans you should charge the most to. Because they are your biggest fans. And where most people screw up when they do paid products is they launch their first product for $10 a month. Their 1000 true fans buy it for 10 bucks. They have cultivated this group of people who buy too low priced of products, which doesn’t allow you to create a real business which can further serve them.

===

That’s it. That’s the most valuable idea that stuck with me from the first time going through Newsletter XP.

I’m thinking about it as I work on building up, and monetizing my other newsletter.

Maybe it’s something you too can think about if you are creating an audience, a list, a newsletter, whatever. Maybe you can think of it as the difference between salting the soil in your garden, just because salt is cheap and easy to get, or investing a bit of time to plant a walnut tree that actually takes root and provides shade and fruit for you and yours for years to come.

But enough of the Magic of Channeling Warren Buffett.

Unrelated to the core of this email, if you want to invest in copywriting skills, which can help if you are building up an audience or an email newsletter, I have a quick, compact, exercise-based course on that. For more info on it:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Fully patented Most Valuable Email

I’d like to announce I have just drafted and am about to submit US patent application 16/573921.

​​My patent application only states the proven and the incontestable, which is that my Most Valuable trick fulfills the three main criteria for a patentable invention. Namely, my Most Valuable Email trick is:

Patent Criterion #1: Novel

​​While the underlying persuasion idea I write about in Most Valuable Email is as old as magic, my use of this idea in daily emails is novel. As copywriter Van Chow wrote after going through Most Valuable Email:

“I love this course, I bet some money to see if it still talks about boring stuff like AIDA or PAS. But I was surprised, I had never heard of this concept before.”

Patent Criterion #2: Non-obvious

​​I have used the Most Valuable Email trick hundreds of times in my newsletter and yet it continues to surprise. For example, copywriter Cindy Suzuki wrote after learning the Most Valuable Email trick:

“You know that moment people get epiphanies and the entire world looks different? I’m feeling that way about your writing now. You’ve helped me unlock something I didn’t know existed. So incredible.”

Patent Criterion #3: Has a concrete, practical application

​​The Most Valuable Email trick produces interesting emails, but it also produces more concrete, practical results, such as money. In the experience of copywriter Ivan Orange, who went through Most Valuable Email:

“I want to take the opportunity to tell you that the day after I read MVE, I sent my list a first [MVE trick] email, using an idea from one of your swipe file emails. That day I sold one of my courses, which made me make 5 times more the investment in MVE, so I’m looking forward to keep improving in this technique and make many more sales.”

As soon as my $900 application fee is accepted and my patent application is approved, I plan to vigorously prosecute any and all copywriters, marketers, or small business owners infringing on my Most Valuable Email patent and writing Most Valuable Emails without a license.

​​Fortunately, I will have the full force of U.S. government and their thousands of patent lawyers on my side in that fight.

Of course, my goal is not to stop the spread of the Most Valuable Email trick. Most Valuable Email is most valuable for a reason, and it’s not only most valuable for me.

​​At the same time, I do want to control the spread of this powerful and novel idea, and I want to be rewarded properly for this invention. That’s the reason for my imminent patent application.
​​
​​Anybody can buy a license to learn to safely and legally use the Most Valuable Email trick, and the license fee is very reasonable, $100.

If you would like to buy a Most Valuable Email license, you can do so at the page below.

​​I also have a special offer, good for 24 hours only. Buy a Most Valuable Email license and also reply to this email, and I will tell you how this email relates to the Most Valuable Email trick, beyond just promoting my Most Valuable Email course.

You have until Tue, Apr 11, 2:31 EST to do so.

​​If you’ve bought a Most Valuable Email license already, of course this offer applies to you as well. But you do have to write me and ask, and before the deadline.

To get your own Most Valuable Email license:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

The disciplined, professional, hard-working beggar

On my way to the gym, there’s a Mercadona, a local Spanish supermarket. In front of the entrance to the Mercadona, kneeling on the ground, looking serious and professional, there is almost always one specific beggar.

This man is large and strong. He has a neatly trimmed mustache. I guess he’s around 45 years old.

He usually wears a button-down shirt. He also has a little sponge down on the ground so he can kneel more comfortably. Sometimes, he has a drink next to him — from what I can tell, ice coffee.

When old women go inside Mercadona, this man will kneel and hold on to their dogs while they do their shopping. When the old women come out, they give him their loose change. One time, an old woman gave him a whole packaged chicken.

This man shows up early. When I go for my morning walk before work, he’s already on a bench next to Mercadona, waiting for the store to open up. He also seems to have a little part-time job setting up the chairs, tables, and parasols of the bar next to the Mercadona.

If you’re wondering how it is I know so much about this man, it’s because he is there most days, and for many hours a day. If I ever walk outside my house and around the corner to the Rambla del Poblenou, I inevitably see this man and what he is up to — which is usually waiting stoically for somebody to give him money, and for the workday to end.

I don’t know this guy’s history. I also don’t know how much loose change or raw chicken he manages to pull in a given week. I guess he’s doing okay since he keeps showing up. Still, I can’t believe he’s doing GRRRREAT.

And if you need some sort of takeaway from that, then let me come back to a fundamental point I’ve already made, over and over, year after year in this newsletter. And that’s the fact that you can pretty much do the same work, and get paid drastically different amounts of money for it.

The Mercadona beggar is disciplined and professional. He puts in the hours. He provides a real service to people — an opportunity for charity, plus the bonus of dog-sitting. He even hustles a little. He’s not satisfied simply coasting on his knees, ice coffee in hand, so he’s struck some sort of deal for extra work with the bar next door.

You might think I’m joking. I’m really not.

​​This guy works as hard and as long as most office workers. And many office workers work as hard and as long as most self-employed service providers. And many self-employed service providers work as hard and as long as most business owners.

And yet, there’s a vast difference between what people in each of those groups tend to earn. And vice versa. There’s a vast difference between what you can earn if you cater to people in each of those groups.

Maybe this makes no sense to you, or maybe you think it’s entirely impractical.

In that case, you will almost certainly not be interested in my offer today, which is my Most Valuable Email training. This training is only right for you if:

1. You’re willing to write an email to your list most days, preferably every day

2. You are interested in writing about marketing and copywriting

And by the way, just because Most Valuable Email requires that you write about marketing or copywriting, it in no way requires that you write to people who primarily define themselves as marketers or copywriters. In fact, it might be better to think of another group that you could write those same emails to, and get paid much more money as a result.

In any case, if you are interested in Most Valuable Email, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

6 weeks of Times New Roman

6 weeks ago, I switched over the font for my newsletter from some web-optimized sans serif font to ugly, old-school Times New Roman. So far, I’ve had two people write in and complain.

One reader said Times New Roman hurts his eyes when he reads my emails in dark mode. Another reader said my newsletter now reminds him of long, factual 2000s websites and the font change made him scroll to the end without really taking anything in.

Has Times New Roman hurt my newsletter?

Like I’ve written recently, I had a record month last month, so it doesn’t seem to have hurt sales. More softly, I keep getting thoughtful and courteous replies from readers, even if it’s sometimes just to say that they’re not fans of the new font.

And the point?

If you read emails from marketers who write daily emails, it’s common to read messages that effectively say, “Heh, it works for me, you can either like it or leave.”

So rather than ending my email with another “Heh it works for me” message, let me tell you the two reasons why I decided to change my newsletter to Times New Roman in the first place. This might be genuinely useful to you, beyond just the satisfaction of agreeing or disagreeing with my attitudes and my personal font choices.

Reason one I switched fonts was that I had a phrase by marketer Dan Kennedy echoing in my head. Dan was softly croaking into my ear, and saying how you want to create a sense of place for your audience, a door that they walk through, which separates your little and unique world from everything else outside.

You might think this is just another way to say, be unique, have a brand, different is better than better.

And sure, that’s a part of it. But a key part of what Dan is saying is that this sense of place should be consistent with the kind of influence you want to have on your audience, and that it should permeate everything you do, beyond just fonts, beyond logos, beyond color choices.

Still, this might sound vague and fluffy to you. You might wonder whether this kind of “sense of place” stuff has a role in the hard world of results-based marketing.

That’s for you to decide.

I’m just putting the idea out there for you, because it influenced me. If you really want an argument for it, then I can only refer you to the authority of Dan Kennedy himself, who helped guide and build up Guthy-Renker, the billion-dollar infomercial company, and who influenced and educated more direct marketers and copywriters than probably anybody else in history, and who was himself responsible for hundreds of direct marketing campaigns and many, many millions in direct sales.

So that’s reason one for the font change.

Reason two is that switching my font to Times New Roman was an instance of my Most Valuable Email trick in action. Yes, this little trick goes beyond just email copy, all the way to font choice, in the right context. If you’d like to make more sense of that, you can find out all about my Most Valuable Email course on the following page:

🦓

https://bejakovic.com/mve

The case against reading books

One of the first-ever emails I wrote for this newsletter, back in August 2018, was about magician Ricky Jay. Jay was widely considered one of the best sleight-of-hand artists in the world.

Why write about a magician in a marketing and copywriting newsletter?

My feeling is that magic, as practiced by top performers like Ricky Jay, is about controlling the audience’s attention, about painting mental pictures, about entertaining, about building curiosity, all the while guiding people to a tightly controlled desired outcome — the magician’s desired outcome.

​​With some small tweaks, that also sounds like the job of a copywriter, or more broadly, any persuader.

Back in August 2018, Ricky Jay was still alive. He died a few months later. He left behind an enormous collection of magic artifacts — posters, books, handbills, paintings, personal letters — from some of the most bizarre, mystical, and skilled magicians, jugglers, acrobats, learned animals, con men, and sideshow freaks of all time.

After Ricky Jay died, his collection was broken up into four parts. Just the first part, auctioned off in 2021, brought in $3.8 million.

Today, I came across a little video of Ricky Jay talking about the books in his collection. And he had this to say:

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There are probably more books written about magic than any other art form. Literally thousands and thousands of books. And I’ve collected thousands of books in my life about magic technique.

But I believe that the real key to learning is personally. It’s almost like the sensei master relationship in the martial arts. That the way you want to learn is by someone that you respect showing you something.

There’s a level of transmission and a level of appreciation that’s never completely attainable just through the written word.

===

I agree. If you can find somebody you respect, and you can get them to agree to teach you personally, you will learn things, and at a level of depth that you could never learn otherwise.

So go find a  sensei. But—

What if you can’t find one?

Or worse, what if you find a sensei, and, in spite of your best pleading and cajoling and stubbornly hanging around, he just says no? What if he’s too busy, too cranky, too secretive?

In that case I suggest being your own sensei.

Because books are great. I’ve read two or three of them, so I know. But there’s a level of understanding that’s never completely attainable through the written word.

Anyways, that’s my entire message for you for today. Except, if you want some help becoming your own sensei, take a look at my Most Valuable Email course.

​​Yes, Most Valuable Email is a bit of a how-to guide to a specific technique of email copywriting. But more than that, it’s a framework, a magical one in my experience, for becoming your own sensei. More info here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Become a snowflake newsletter owner

I’ll tell you what a snowflake newsletter is in a moment. But let me set it up first, with something surprising that happened to me last night:

I got in a taxi last night. I’m in Croatia, and my driver was local, and very white.

“Good evening,” he said. “Where are we going?” In just those few words, it was obvious he was from the coast town of Split, one of the strongholds of Croatian national identity.

I told the man where to drive. As he took off, he put on some music — that was the surprise.

It was some kind of solo stringed instrument. The only way my western ears could describe it was “oriental.” After a few moments, I leaned forward and asked the driver what music he was playing.

“It’s Persian,” he said. “If you’d prefer, I can put on some jazz.”

I’m visiting family for a few days and jumping around town all day long. I’ve taken a cab probably 15 times in the past 5 days. Each cab ride I’ve taken has featured an entirely different kind of soundtrack:

Romantic 1960s crooners from Yugoslavia… James Brown humping and groaning… Croatian folk music with little mandolins and bass fiddles… generic 2023 pop music… techno.

Last December, a guy unsubscribed from my list. I often check the “unsubscribe reason,” hoping to find something good. This time I was rewarded. The guy wrote as he unsubscribed:

“I’m getting too many emails overall… I get 50+ per day so I’m only going to stay on the lists that I want to read daily”

Too many emails today, right? Too crowded? Too late to get in?

I’ll make the exact opposite claim. Right now is the best time to get in.

Previously, I’ve called this snowflake positioning.

The classic marketing book Positioning is all about how great it is to be unique, how great to be first. But you don’t need to be either, not globally. You just need to be unique and first to a small number of people. And that’s very doable.

The fact is, there’s an unimaginable tonnage of humans in the world today. They are all easy to reach. What’s more, all of them have slightly quirky and unique tastes, even if, for example, they all fall into the broad category of taxi drivers. Or direct marketers. Or online business owners.

Here’s what I’ve found:

With a little bit of luck, and simply by showing up today, tomorrow, and the day after, some of the 8+ billion people in the world will join my newsletter. And of those, some will become customers, for a long time, worth hundreds of dollars, or maybe thousands of dollars, or maybe even tens of thousands of dollars. That’s started adding up to a nice sum of money for me each month.

The same can be true for you. Assuming you can muster a little bit of luck, and you can manage to show up today, tomorrow, and the day after.

The sooner you get started, the sooner you can turn this into a nice living. That’s why I say right now is the best time to get in.

Anyways, since you are on my email list, there’s a good chance you are interested in marketing and copywriting topics.

Maybe you’d also like to write about those topics, and not just read about them. In that case, let me remind you of my Most Valuable Email training.

I only recommend you get Most Valuable Email if you are writing, or want to write, about marketing and copywriting.

By the way, I wouldn’t necessarily suggest you write to an audience of copywriters, but that’s a topic for another day.

Still, if you do want to write about marketing and copywriting for an audience of marketers, business owners, or maybe curious taxi drivers — then this course can show you one type of email that has been most valuable to me.

Most Valuable Emails have given me all kinds of hard benefits — including sales and list growth and valuable endorsements. But the greatest benefits of writing these Most Valuable Emails have been soft — the fact that they make me better each time I write them, and that they make it fun and easy for me to stay motivated today, tomorrow, and the day after.

My Most Valuable Email is available today, and will be available tomorrow, and the day after. ​​But you’ll get most value out of it if you get it today, and if you start applying it today.

In case you’d like to get started:

https://bejakovic.com/mve