Business Ideas

Copy Riddles rolls into town again

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“Advertising is like learning — a little is a dangerous thing”
— P.T. Barnum

And with that quote, I would like to announce that my Copy Riddles program has once again rolled into town and pitched its tents down by the old horse track.

If you have been on my list for a while and know what Copy Riddles is and you know you want in, then you can buy your ticket now, by following the link below.

If you have not been on my list for very long, or you don’t know what Copy Riddles is about, then grab your cotton candy and settle into your seat and get ready for a show.

Over the coming days, I will be advertising Copy Riddles heavily. With a spectacular show involving clowns, elephants, and burning rings of fire, I’ll be explaining what Copy Riddles is and why you might want to get it, and get it before 12 midnight PST this Sunday.

Because a little advertising is a dangerous thing. And as P.T. Barnum’s ghost can testify, I am very averse to danger.

If by chance you are ready to join Copy Riddles right now, or you’re just curious about it:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Copywriting is a crazy business, but it’s not unlike any other business

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A few weeks ago, a reader named Ferdinand wrote me to say he has written a book, but he is afraid to advertise it because he’s not sure it’s any good. Would I be kind and selfless enough to take a look and tell him if it’s ok to put out?

I was kind and selfless enough to respond to Ferdinand, saying that I charge people a great deal of money to review copy and content — but good on him for trying.

That was a mistake.

Because yesterday, I got a second email from Ferdinand. He said he didn’t get the precise response he was looking for with regard to the book. And that’s okay. But he still wants to bother me a little bit.

Would I give him a job? Any kind of a job? The pay doesn’t matter, as long as it’s consistent. He knows he can do more than what he’s currently doing, and copywriting is his dream, and he wants to chase it…

This reminded me of a scene in the King of Comedy.

Robert De Niro plays a wannabe standup comedian. He’s a big fan of a late-night talk show host played by Jerry Lewis.

One night, as Jerry is leaving the studio and getting into a cab, De Niro pushes his way through the crowd and jumps into the cab with Jerry.

Jerry is startled, even frightened. But De Niro reassures him. He just needs to talk for a minute. Right now, he’s working in “communications” but by nature he’s a comedian. His stuff is dynamite, it’s his dream, he just needs a break…

Once Jerry’s heart rate comes down a bit from the scare, he gives De Niro some practical advice:

“Look pal, gotta tell you… This is a crazy business, but it’s not unlike any other business. There are ground rules. And you don’t just walk on to a network show without experience. Now I know it’s an old, hackneyed expression but it happens to be the truth. You’ve got to start at the bottom.”

No?

You don’t like that old, hackneyed expression?

You want something a little more “hustle culture”-y, a little more Tim Ferriss-y? Ok, try this on and see if it fits:

In my experience in the direct response industry, it’s always a lousy idea to ask for a job. Even if you’re starting at the bottom. It’s much better to put yourself in a position where people ask you to work with them. In the words of Claude Hopkins, offer a privilege, not an inducement.

Are you still with me? That’s surprising. But in that case, you might get value from other emails and essays I write. In case you want to read them, you can sign up to my daily email newsletter.

My best Ben Settle impression

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Spanish copywriter Iván Orange, who bought my Most Valuable Email course, reports:

===

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.

Hope you are very well John, I keep reading you.

Iván.

===

Let me do my best Ben Settle impression and say:

Not everyone gets results like this.

Before ever writing a single email using my Most Valuable Email trick, Iván built a large email list, products that people want to buy, and credibility in the industry.

For reasons that are ultimately beyond me, most people will never do the groundwork Iván has done and build up the same kinds of assets for themselves, so they too can be in a position where they can send one email and make $500 in return.

But wait.

I’m not done imitating Ben or negative striplining you.

I make lots of promises for my Most Valuable Email course. But in spite of Iván’s experience above, making 5x ROI in the first 24 hours is NOT one of those promises. Not because you cannot use my MVE trick make sales, But because it’s overkill. If all you want to do is to make quick and short-term sales, there are easier ways to do that.

On the other hand:

If you want to grow your email list… create interesting products that people want… and build up your credibility in the industry… all with an email copywriting trick you can learn in under an hour… then those are promises I do make for MVE.

Whatever the case, get your lovin’ here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Isla de Muerta positioning

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I recently rewatched the original Pirates of the Carribean movie, and I was reminded of the dreaded Isla de Muerta.

It’s a mystery island, maybe just a legend, where Captain Barbossa docks his ghostly Black Pearl, and where he keeps the cursed treasure of Hernan Cortes.

But don’t bother searching for Isla de Muerta on a map. Don’t make the foolish mistake of ever trying to sail to it yourself.

Only those who already know where the island is can ever find it.

That’s just like the positioning that A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos has.

​​I listened to Parris on a recent episode of the Chris Haddad podcast. I have stopped listening to marketing and copy podcasts. But whenever Parris makes a new public appearance, once every few decades, I make sure to listen, and probably multiple times.

Because Parris is the one person in this industry that I have learned from the most and that I have modeled the most.

I’ve learned copywriting tricks and tactics from Parris.

I’ve learned mindset and attitude and work practices.

And I’ve learned business of copy strategies.

Which brings us back to Parris’s positioning. Here’s how Parris explains his positioning, including why he gives talks so rarely:

“No website, no business card, not on social media, unlisted number, gotta know somebody who knows somebody to get to me and then maybe I’ll work with you. If I give all these talks it goes against my positioning. It looks like I’m trawling for work.”

In other words, if any ambitious business owner wants the marketing treasures hidden inside Parris’s head… well, that business owner has to have worked with Parris before, or at least know somebody who has.

This kind of positioning might seem entirely impractical to you right now.

And Parris himself admits he hasn’t had this positioning in the early days.

In fact, he kicked off his freelance career by going to Kinko’s, printing out hundreds of copies of a sales letter selling his own services, and then standing outside of a direct marketing convention, trembling with fear and handing out his sales letter to anyone who would take one. That landed him his first five clients.

Still, if you are interested in learning from the most successful people, then there’s no denying Parris is among them in the direct response industry.

And his “mystery, maybe just a legend” positioning might be worth using as a bearing to take you where you want go eventually go. The same way that Captain Jack Sparrow uses his crooked compass, which won’t point north, to track down Isla de Muerta.

Anyways, on to my Most Valuable Email offer.

Parris once, and only once, held a paid and public training. It included a bunch of super valuable bonuses, including a document titled, “A technique for improving your writing overnight.”

Parris advised his copy cubs, and anybody who paid for his training, to copy this document by hand three times.

Why?

Reason one — or so I suspect — was that the document laid out some important writing advice.

Reason two was that this document used my Most Valuable Email trick.

Like I’ve written before, I haven’t invented this trick. A few very smart and successful marketers have long used it in non-email media.

But nobody has used it in emails as often, and with such good results as I have.

If you are curious to learn this mysterious, maybe legendary trick yourself, then get out your broken compass, jam your tricorn hat onto your head, and set sail for this horizon:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Pity poor Dan Kennedy and his chauffeured luxury sedans

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I’m at the airport as I write this, sitting and staring out the big windows at the still-dark tarmac. Next to me, there are a bunch of people standing and waiting in queue at the gate, just because the gate is there to be queued at.

​​They’ve been at it for over 15 minutes now. I have better ways to use that time.

Besides jotting down my notes for this email, I want to buy a ticket for the Gatwick Express. When I land, that train will take me from London’s Gatwick airport to the heart of the city, in about 30 minutes, for about $20.

This will be drastically faster, cheaper, and more convenient than taking a cab.

It’s one of the luxuries of being me. Imagine on the other hand being poor Dan Kennedy, who has built up a marketing persona around a stable of race horses, $18k consulting days, and speaking on stage with Donald Trump.

Dan, if he ever would travel to London, could never take the quick, cheap, and easy Gatwick Express. In Dan’s own words:

“Even if there’s a free shuttle bus to take me from a hotel a short distance to a convention center, I can’t be seen riding it; I must arrive in luxury sedan, driven by a chauffer. Even if I am tempted to immediately jump on the phone and return a call to someone who has inquired about making a deal, someone I’m eager to do business with, I can’t. I must let our process do its work; I must have my assistant schedule a phone appointment. I can’t do such things any more than diet and exercise guru Richard Simmons dare be seen at McDonalds wolfing down a Big Mac and a super-sized mountain of fries or Martha Stewart be seen at the mall in cheap sweat pants with stains on them and dirty sneakers.”

There are undoubtedly advantages to a strong, recognizable, and unchanging public persona. But there are drawbacks too.

Whatever. That’s not the real reason why I bring up Dan Kennedy today.

The real reason is that Dan’s statment above ties very nicely into my Most Valuable Email course. The underlying idea in Dan’s quote above is the same as the core idea I’ve built the entire MVE course around.

And no, this core idea is not about building a showy and rigid public persona. It’s not about becoming restricted in what you can do, because people have come to expect that you only drive in luxury sedans and respond to business inquiries a week late.

The Most Valuable Email course is about something else entirely. In fact, it’s about something wonderfully useful in case building up a showy and rigid marketing persona doesn’t sit very well with you.

In case you are curious:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

High-quality content is a bad investment for most businesses

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In a recent newsletter, media watcher Simon Owens wrote that high-end, narrative podcasts are a bad investment for most businesses. Cheap, conversational podcasts are a much smarter bet. This made my long and I believe quite attractive ears perk up.

Why is producing high-production-value, valuable content such a bad idea? Simon shares his own experience:

But here we are just two years later, and most of the narrative shows are gone from my own podcast feed. The transition occurred gradually. I’d find myself looking forward to new episodes of the conversational podcasts, whereas listening to the scripted ones just felt like homework. My mind would drift during crucial plot points, which meant skipping back several minutes so I could regain my narrative foothold. In many cases, the narrative series I listened to died off after a single season, and I just didn’t have the energy to try out new ones. Today, only four out of the 23 shows I regularly listen to hinge on a storytelling structure.

Simon says, of course there is still some space for fancy narrative podcasts like Serial, and there will always be some audience. But for most businesses, investing in this kind of content is a losing game.

Like I said, my ears were very perky after reading this.

“What if it’s not just podcasts?” I said to myself. The question is not about complex storytelling versus unscripted conversations. The question is whether your content feels like homework or not.

Or maybe the question is really this:

Is the high production value you put into your content helping your case — or actually hurting it? This might be something to think about if you have a podcast, or a YouTube channel, or — an email newsletter.

But here’s something else to think about:

People don’t just sign up to conversational podcasts. Not just like that. Nobody sets out looking for a random and unknown person to listen to.

No, people initially start listening to conversational podcast because the podcast is recommended by somebody… or because a snippet of it is surprising or fun… or, most likely, because the podcaster has some kind of standing, authority, or status.

Which brings me to my Most Valuable Email training.

It’s about an email copywriting trick. This trick produces surprising content. Content which gets recommended and shared by readers to other potential readers. And which builds up your perceived standing, authority, and status, by you doing nothing more than writing valuable emails regularly… which don’t feel like homework to read.

In case you have an email newsletter around marketing or copywriting, or want to start one, this Most Valuable Email training might be a good investment. To find out more about it:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Blackjack positioning

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Al Ries and Jack Trout invented the term positioning. They then wrote a book with that title. In it, they say positioning is a hook in your prospect’s brain from which you can hang your product.

Fine. That’s once you’ve got an established position.

But how do you get that hook in your prospect’s brain? Throwing a clothes hanger at somebody’s head will only make it bounce off.

What you need instead is a spear. Something with a very small, very sharp point, which can pierce your prospect’s thick defenses (his skull) and lodge in the soft gray matter inside.

When people talk about positioning, they often talk about taking control of a part of the market. “We want to be the Apple of dog nail clippers.” Meaning, we only want a sliver of that market that’s willing to spend like crazy.

That’s one way to do positioning.

This is the flip side. Instead of thinking about cutting down your market… think about cutting down your product and its functionality.

Once upon a time, Perry Marshall was an experienced and capable online marketer. But that’s a floppy, blunt object, incapable of piercing any skull.

So Perry dropped all his copywriting knowledge… funnel building knowledge… positioning knowledge… and became “The AdWords Guy.” At least to people who had never heard of him before. His business exploded, way beyond his previous success.

Because it can be easier to sell a fragment of the thing rather than the whole. At the same price. Or even for more.

Many people rebel at this. No wonder. Our minds work additively. If you have A plus B plus C, then that’s worth at least as much as A alone, right?

Not in positioning.

Positioning math is more like blackjack. You know how the game goes. You keep getting cards, trying to get as close as possible to 21. But if you ever go over, you’re BUST. You lose.

Same thing with positioning. Keep adding ideas to your position, and you will go BUST. You will lose. And you don’t need to go over 21 ideas either.

So swallow your pride — or fight your client’s pride. The dealer will offer to deal you more cards. Wave him off. One, sharp, deadly idea. No more.

And now a confession:

I used to have a daily email newsletter on copywriting, marketing, and persuasion. No more. From now on, it’s a newsletter on positioning. For today only. Click here to subscribe.

The career-ending consequences of working with bad prospects

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In an email a few months ago, I recommended illusionist Derren Brown’s book Tricks of the Mind. That’s because the book gives you 90%-of-what-you-need-to-know summaries of persuasion topics like magic, cold reading, hypnosis, and NLP.

But there’s more to this book.

For example, there’s one scary but instructive story in Brown’s book that sticks out in my mind. It’s not really about any of those persuasion topics, but about dealing with prospects, particularly bad prospects.

The story starts out back in the day, when Derrren Brown used to perform stage hypnosis at universities.

Brown is English and he performed in England. So it’s little wonder that during one show, a very drunk university girl stumbled to the stage to take part in Brown’s hypnosis act.

Brown quickly realized the girl is sloshed. He told her to go back to her seat, because he knew drunk people make poor hypnosis subjects. The girl grumbled and cursed but did as she was told.

Later, Brown was called over the PA. The girl was found unconscious somewhere. An ambulance had been called.

Even though Brown had in no way hypnotized the girl, he was told by university staff to try to awaken her as if she had been in a trance.

Brown gave it his best shot, putting on an act to appease the people around him. Unsurprisingly, his dehypnosis had no effect on the unconscious girl.

The girl was loaded into the ambulance and taken to the hospital. There she had her stomach pumped. She almost died.

Of course, she had had way much too much to drink, and that’s why she had passed out.

Now here’s the scary question that Brown ponders in Tricks of the Mind:

Had the girl really died, would Brown and his stage hypnosis be blamed? After all, when the girl was found unconscious, it was assumed Brown’s dark arts might have had something to do with it.

And if that’s the case, then how much worse would things be if Brown had allowed the drunk girl to actually participate in the stage show?

Would he have had to deal with police inquiries… with bitter lawsuits from the girl’s family… with denunciations in the press? Would his act, his career, and maybe his name be ruined, possibly forever?

I think the point stands whether you do stage hypnosis, or hawk info products, or just sell yourself and your services.

And the point is to know which characteristics make a bad prospect — or subject — for whatever it is you do. And when you spot a prospect with any such characteristics, the point is to tell this guy or gal, without regret or malice, to go back to their seat, and to get far away from you.

Of course you don’t have to take my advice. And you don’t have to learn anything from the Derren Brown story above.

You can learn from your own experiences if you want to.

As for me, I’ve long ago decided on strict criteria for prospective clients, customers, and even prospects. If you’d like to see some of those criteria, you can get started by signing up for my daily email newsletter.

The biggest egos in the world

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One morning in 1985, actor Val Kilmer staggered to his bathroom and got ready to shave. He squinted because of how sleepy he still was. But then he spotted something in the mirror that shocked him awake.

In the middle of Kilmer’s chest a perfectly round bruise, the size of a 50-cent piece.

“I didn’t drink,” Kilmer said to himself. “I didn’t fall during the night. What could stab me like this in the chest?”

After a moment, the realization hit him.

The night prior, Kilmer had gone out partying with a bunch of Navy pilots. He was about to start shooting Top Gun, and he was trying to get into the role of Iceman.

The real Navy fighter pilots liked Kilmer a lot.

“You’re the actor that we’re most like,” they kept yelling the whole night. “You got good hair!”

And each time the fighter pilots said this, they emphasized their point by stabbing their fingers into the middle of Kilmer’s chest. That’s how he got the bruise.

Kilmer later said,

“The only egos bigger than actors are rock stars. And the only people beyond that are fighter pilots. They have the biggest egos on the planet.”

My point being, in spite of how it might look in the insular direct response world, email copywriters do not have the biggest egos in the world. Likewise, copywriting and marketing newsletters, podcasts, and books are not the most valuable things to read and study if you want valuable ideas, stories, and inspiration.

I recently made a list of 10 sources where I get ideas for my daily emails.

Most of these sources were predictable, or I had written about them already in emails prior.

But there was one source that I haven’t really talked about much.

And that’s analyses, documentaries, and original material about entertainment I love. Analyses and background info on Looney Tunes cartoons… William Goldman screenplays… Farside comics… and of course, Top Gun. For example, The Val Kilmer story above came from Danger Zone, a feature-length documentary about making of Top Gun.

So that’s my advice for you for today:

Think about your favorite movies, books, TV shows. Read about how they were made, or track down a documentary that saves you from reading.

You will get great ideas you can apply to your business, and in the most enjoyable format, since you will be digging into something you love.

And if you happen to love Top Gun:

I can’t recommend that Danger Zone documentary enough. It’s fascinating, and not just if you are a die-hard Top Gun fan. The documentary shows how complex it is to produce an hour and a half of seamless entertainment… how many specialists are involved… how much thinking lies behind seemingly simple decisions… how many layers of persuasion go into even a jockish, commercial, fantasy flick like Top Gun.

In case you are interested, you can find Danger Zone on YouTube in two parts. Here’s part 1:

The trouble with selling prostitute interviews you gave away for free

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About six months ago, I wrote an email about a prurient new obsession I had developed with the YouTube channel Soft White Underbelly.

Soft White Underbelly features thousands of in-depth interviews with people on the outside of mainstream society:

Drug addicts… homeless people… prostitutes… escorts… child abuse victims… inbred Appalachian families… gang members… a high-level mob boss… a strychnine-drinking Pentecostal preacher… a conman who ran real-estate frauds totaling in the tens of millions of dollars.

Then, a couple days ago, I read that YouTube had demonetized Soft White Underbelly.

​​SFU videos are still available to watch on YouTube. But they won’t come with any ads, and so they won’t make any money for Mark Laita, the photographer behind the Soft White Underbelly channel.

I tried to do some back-of-the-envelope math for how much money that actually was.

Over the past 30 days, Soft White Underbelly had a bit more than 12M views. Using the low-end rate of $3/1k YouTube views, that comes out to $36,000 over those 30 days, or about $430k per year.

That’s a sizeable chunk of cash to disappear from one day to the next.

My point?

I guess I could tell you the same old story, one you’ve probably heard a million times before:

Don’t rely on anybody else’s platform. Have your own platform — such as an email list — which you control.

The trouble is, Mark Laita already has that. He has his own site, where you can subscribe for $8/month to get all that stuff that’s on YouTube, plus some “exclusive content” in the form of more videos exactly like the stuff that’s on YouTube.

The welcome video to the SFU YouTube channel invites you to subscribe on the paid site. And in that video about being demonetized, Mark also tells people who can afford to do so to get the paid subscription.

Will that replace the income from YouTube?

I have my doubts, for several reasons. The most important reason is this:

It’s hard to sell the exact same thing you’re giving away for free. It’s even harder to sell it there’s a bunch of your free stuff still lying around.

That’s just human nature.

Laziness. Entitlement. Plus, a bit of common sense. If there are already thousands of prurient Soft White Underbelly videos on YouTube, most of which I haven’t watched, why should I pay to get a few more each month?

But here’s what I would tell Mark Laita, and maybe you, if you’re in a similar situation:

This is not really a big problem.

Because it’s easy to sell a slightly different thing to what you’re giving away for free. You can even sell almost the exact same thing, only renamed and repackaged in a sexy way.

So for example, Mark Laita has thousands of video interviews. Instead of selling more of the same, he could repackage some of that content in a different ways:

* He could sell a coffee table book of photography — stills from his videos. (He already has these photos in the videos themselves.)

* He could sell transcripts, packaged up as fancy printed books, or low-end kindle ebooks.

* He could create “themed documentaries” which are really his different videos pasted together. The effect of absentee fathers… the drug scene in east LA… massage parlor confessions.

Of course, there are also many other things Mark could sell congruently on the back end of his YouTube Channel. The above are just a few ideas for things he could sell with practically no additional thought or work.

So like I said, that’s my advice for you too, in case you create a lot of content, which isn’t making you money direct now.

Take that free content, repacakge it, rename it, and stick a (preferably large) price tag on it.

People will buy it, and get value out of it, even if you gave it away for free before.

Of course, maybe you are too close to your own content to see how it could be repackaged or renamed in the most sexy and profitable way. You might be able to find some good ideas on that in my free daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up for it.