Partnerships

Free advertorial + no bondage

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Lemme tell you about my recent positioning fail, so that we’re on the same page, or so you can maybe avoid the same:

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been talking to a guy who runs a big ecom business.

He had heard of my “free advertorial” offer and was interested.

We got on a call. At the end, he asked if I would sign an NDA.

I figured it’s harmless. I’ve never revealed any insider secrets from businesses I’ve worked with, and I don’t mind signing a paper to say I won’t do it in the future. I said, “Sure, send it over.”

The NDA arrived. Except it turned out it was not just an NDA. Actually, it was a noncompete agreement as well, and how.

First, the contract was asking me to agree I would never work with any of the dude’s competitors.

When I refused that, the dude took the offending clause out. He put in a new clause that said I could never use any knowledge or insights gained via working with him with any other clients.

I politely bowed out.

As with everything else in my life, this is my fault.

I didn’t really make it clear to this guy how I am going into this whole “free advertorial” thing.

I’m not a copywriter looking for work. In fact, I might very likely farm out the work to one of the copywriters I am coaching inside my ongoing advertorial cohort, and simply copy chief them to make sure the result is up to my standard.

Rather, I’m going into this “free advertorial” deal as an investor. I’m looking to partner with business owners, contribute valuable assets, tangible and intangible, which I own and will continue to own and have control of, and take a cut of any profits we generate together.

I am certainly not willing to put myself in a situation of voluntary bondage to anybody.

If you’re a copywriter looking to graduate to a new level, and partner with businesses instead of serving clients, I’m sharing my positioning fail with you because you might somehow benefit from my experience.

And if you are not a copywriter, but own an ecom store yourself, or if you know somebody who owns an ecom store, my low-pressure, low-risk, zero-bondage offer still stands. You can find out more about it here:

https://bejakovic.com/do-you-want-a-free-advertorial-for-your-ecom-brand/

Why I chose my 2 (or maybe 3) Daily Email House partners

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This last Saturday, I wrote in an email that I’m looking for two “Daily Email House partners.”

My offer was, “Come and write interesting and valuable content inside my Daily Email House Skool community. You can promote my offers, your offers, or anybody else’s offers, and we split the profits from your posts 50/50.”

I’ve since found my two partners, and I’m also talking to a third guy who might be a good fit.

I once applied for a copywriting job I didn’t get.

The guy who posted that job ended up creating a video where he walked through why he hired the guy he ended up hiring, and he sent it to everybody he didn’t hire.

That video has since made me a lot of money, and I was always grateful to that non-client for taking the time to enlighten me.

I want to do something similar today. Here’s why I chose the two partners I chose, and why I am considering the third guy as well:

#1. All three have email lists and all three email daily

(I’ve seen they can write, they know how to run promos, and they are comfortable with selling. Very relevant since my Skool group is all about making money via writing daily emails.)

#2. All three have courses and offers they can legitimately promote to my audience

#3. All three have their own Skool groups that they are actively running

(A Skool group is not a sales page or a sales email, and while copywriting and marketing knowledge is helpful, it is not sufficient or even necessary for creating good group content.)

My point being:

Yes, there is value in partnering with people who have assets.

That said, you are dramatically more likely to be taken seriously as a partner if you are coming at it not as a newbie hoping to be given an opportunity, but as an “equal” bringing an opportunity.

And before you have a chance to throw up your hands in exasperation:

“Equal” is a matter of perception. You don’t need a certificate to turn you into a “business owner,” “investor,” or “chief of a Skool community.” In the words of Dan Kennedy:

“While you’re sitting in the bath, anoint yourself. Sprinkle some water in your head and call yourself a life coach…”

… or, I would add, list owner, or Skool group owner, or offer owner.

You can set up an email list and start emailing it for free if you want.

You can set up a Skool group for $9 a month.

You can launch an offer even if nobody buys, and even if you haven’t created any deliverables yet.

You can experiment, learn, and practice.

Within two months, nobody will be able to tell you were once a beginner, and not so long ago.

My personal preference for where to start, if you are just starting, is with an email list.

Nobody knows how big your email list is. You can write for years even if nobody’s reading (don’t scoff, I did it). Of course, you can also be proactive and energetic, and start making money with your very first email.

One way or the other, it’s a completely different thing to to approach a potential partner when you have your own assets, when you have real-world expertise, when you know you don’t need the partner, even if you’d like to work with them.

If this resonates with you, get started today.

If you wanna do email, all you need is email software. My recommendation, and what I myself am using, is Kit. It’s not perfect, but nothing is, and out of all the email software I’ve tried, it’s the most acceptable. You can try it yourself with a 14-day free trial here:

https://bejakovic.com/kit

P.S. If you sign up for Kit with the link above and actually use it to send out your first email, forward it to me. I have some bonuses with your name on them.

Looking for two Daily Email House partners

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I’ve got a free Skool group called Daily Email House.

It recently crossed 500 members.

Last winter, I ran an auction in the group and the winning bid (by the “Fractional CMO Whisperer,” Nick Bandy) came in at $31k.

I am now looking for two partners for Daily Email House, to help me run the group and to share in the profits.

If you are interested, you can find more details here:

https://www.skool.com/daily-email-house/looking-for-two-daily-email-house-partners

How to make sure women won’t cheat on you when you’re going steady

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Yesterday I wrote an email in which I talked about my current dating model:

I go out on a date with a girl. If we have fun and I like the girl, I propose a second date. If that still goes well, then I go over to her house, sit her down on the couch for a serious conversation, and propose “going steady.”

(At this stage, there’s no ring yet because I reserve that for marriage and marriage comes later.)

After I sent out yesterday’s email, a reader replied with a question I’ve seen before in various forms:

“John… How do you ensure you find out if these women you ‘go steady’ aren’t cheating on you? Just handshake?”

Handshake is a bit too formal for my romantic soul, but the basic idea is there.

I go out with women I reasonably feel I can trust based on what I know of them so far, and I’ll offer to “go steady” with a woman only after we’ve been on a first date or two or three and it’s gone well.

If you’re a regular reader of mine and you’re shaking your head right now, wondering how in the world you have missed this important email in which I talked about my dating life, fear not.

You didn’t miss anything.

Yesterday’s email was not really about women and dates and going steady, but rather about business owners and partnerships I’m doing with them, in various forms, whether that’s emails written on spec (did some of that last year)… or auctions I run and manage for others (did one earlier this year with Derek Johanson)… or my current offer of a free advertorial for ecom store owners (I just delivered the first such free advertorial).

Whenever I write about some such deal, I get a variant of the question above:

“Hey John how do you track sales and make sure how much money these partners of yours have made via your partnership? How do you know you’re getting paid what you’re due? Do you have access to their bank accounts and tax statements and phone records, or are you using some clever affiliate tracking platform, or do you just hire a private investigator to make sure they aren’t cheating you?”

The short answer is, I don’t know.

I take a leap of faith and I see how it goes.

I do protect myself a bit, by not engaging in marriage with somebody I have just met, but instead proposing we have a “first date,” usually in the form of a small and very tightly defined project, something that won’t drain me of too much time or energy if it goes bad.

If that goes well, then we might have a second or a third date, and eventually I will go over to their house and sit them down on the couch for a serious conversation.

There’s a bigger question here.

Rather than just “How do you make sure you get paid what you’re due,” the bigger question is, “What kind of a life do you want to live?”

My personal answer to that is that I want to live a life that doesn’t involve being constantly suspicious of others or chasing in debts.

I also want to live my life thinking that, for every person out there who might actually cheat me once every Halley’s comet, there are four or five people who I could immediately find in their stead who would be happy to partner with me and be honest and fair with me.

I don’t think I’ve ever written an email in which I talked about the idea of “abundance.”

The word has unfortunately gotten tainted by hucksters.

But the fact remains, you can choose to live in a world of scarcity or a world of abundance. Making the mental switch from the first to the second takes a bit of effort, and it takes time before the mental model starts to produce material results. But it is a choice, and one you can make, and get results from.

This entire discussion, by the way, goes back to the one guy I’ve learned the most from over the past couple years.

That guy is Travis Sago. The analogy above, between dating and business partnerships, is Travis’s analogy. So is the idea of offering commission-only deals rather than doing client work that you get paid for upfront. So is the idea of doing a small test project to get a sense whether you can trust people or not.

Travis’s Royalty Ronin outlines dozens of ways that Travis has personally used his wits to make tens of millions of dolalrs online, dozens of ways that people like me have learned from Travis and have made good money with.

But the bigger idea of Ronin is that idea of organizing life in a way that suits you, really suits you, and recognizing the world really can be a place of abundance, including for you.

If you wanna give Ronin a try, Travis offers a free 7-day trial:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you sign up for the trial and then decide to stay on past the 7 days because you can see the value for you inside Ronin, write me a message and let me know. I have several bonuses with your name on them.

How much it costs

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Last week, I wrote an email about 10 things that are working for me right now. One of the 10 was the following:

#6. Making a coaching offer that consists of a down payment to get started, and the rest conditional on success

I’m working with a few people on this arrangement right now. It makes selling easier. It makes delivery easier. It makes me more motivated. It makes coaching clients more motivated. It allows me to charge more than I might otherwise. I’m waiting to find out what the downsides, if any, might be.

I’m also making a new offer right now.

I’ve made an agreement to write an advertorial for a client.

I’m inviting copywriters to join me and work alongside me as I do this.

You get my help with writing an advertorial following the 1-Person Advertorial Agency system.

You get my help tracking down, vetting, and closing a client (or partner business) using the two client-getting methods in 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

Plus, I’m promising to keep working with you and giving you my support and input until you get to $10k from advertorial work.

So how much it costs?

$5k.

The destination we’re headed to is advertorials that you can reasonably make $2k+ with the right clients, and that take max 1-2 days each to finish.

If you get just one such gig a month, I figure it’s worth $24k over the next year.

$5k is a reasonable investment to fix that.

That said, I am committed to getting you to where I say I will get you.

That’s why I’m breaking up the $5k as follows, so I have a stake in the outcome I promise to get you:

* $2k to start

* The remaining $3k when you make your first $10k from advertorial work

If you’re not completely appalled by the above numbers, and if you want to find out if this opportunity could be a fit for you, reply now. We start next week.

Off-market affiliate deals

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I’ve been lurking on Facebook lately, doing research for my low-ticket funnel. That’s how I came across an interesting new offer for coaches and consultants:

1. We will build out a low-ticket funnel for you, for free

2. We will run traffic to it, for free, using our own money

3. We will drive buyers who come through this funnel to a sales call for your high-ticket coaching or consulting offer

4. We only take a cut when you close a deal

I don’t know how well these guys are doing.

But I do know another company that effectively has this same business model.

It’s a company I used to write copy for back in the day.

They didn’t advertise that this was their business model, but since I was a copywriter for them, I know that that’s what they did.

They started out with real estate investing gurus who had high-ticket coaching programs, and then graduated to more general bizopp coaching offers.

I happen to know that they were making a killing back when I was working with them. They only seem to have gotten bigger since.

My point for you is:

Affiliate marketing is great.

It allows you to promote and profit from offers, without having to go through the massive trouble of creating and delivering those offers.

Affiliate marketing also sucks.

Most of the available affiliate offers are no good, and the few good ones have a ton of other people promoting them.

The solution to this dilemma is to roll your own off-market affiliate offers, like the guys above.

In other words, to find people who have good offers, or the makings of good offers, but who aren’t promoting them adequately, and who certainly don’t have affiliate programs…

… and then make some sort of a deal with them to promote them adequately, using your own skills and resources.

(And better yet, to put yourself in toll position, so you get the unique right to promote this off-market affiliate deal, while others only look on with wonder and envy.)

If this is something that interests you, you can go off on your own right now and start doing.

I really hope that’s what you will do.

But if you want some support and help for this kind of stuff, my best recommendation is the Royalty Ronin community, which in many ways is a community of people who are rolling their own off-market affiliate deals, using various techniques and approaches.

In case you wanna find out more, you can sign up for a free 7-day trial here:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you sign up for Ronin and make it past the first 7 days, write me and let me know. I’ve got some bonuses with your name on them.

SICTFOY: Last call for Ghostbuster Sequence

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This is the last email I’m sending to promote Nick Bandy’s Ghostbuster Sequence before the price doubles.

I was gonna be clever and use as my subject line Nick’s nuclear option followup, which Nick says works “TOO well,” a 7-word message that ultimately goes back to negotiation coach Jim Camp.

Fortunately, I caught myself in time.

If you wanna find out what Jim Camp’s 7-word message is, you can try to guess what SICTFOY could possibly stand for.

Or you can simply get the entire Ghostbuster Sequence, in which case it makes sense to act immediately, so you don’t have to pay double what everybody else will be paying, starting a few hours from now.

Speaking of Jim Camp, here’s an inspirational message I heard him deliver once:

“When someone says no, that’s just no for now. It’s not over until we want it to be.”

If you wanna get Ghostbuster Sequence, and reanimate “mostly dead” or even “all dead” conversations, and get more clients and do more deals, starting with what you’ve already got, and not take silence for a “no,” or a “no” as the end, then here’s where to get your fix:

https://bejakovic.com/ghostbuster

P.S. If you do get it before the deadline, forward me your receipt. I will personally send you a bonus of equal real-world value, my Secret of the Magi. It sells for $54 on my site right now, and tells you the biggest secret I’ve learned about opening up (not following up on) conversations that lead to business partnerships.

Flakebuster

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A couple weeks ago, I wrote an email with the subject line “Nasty followup.”

That was about a potential auction partner who was stringing me along. He kept pushing off the test for our potential auction, first to next week, then the week after that.

I sent that potential auction partner a slightly snarky message, hence the “Nasty followup” subject line.

My potential auction partner didn’t get offended at my slightly snarky message. He replied to me in a cheerful way. But once again, he told me to push off our auction test until the end of what is now last month.

At the end of last month, I followed up with him again.

At this point, he didn’t reply any more. A few days later, I followed up again. He still didn’t reply.

And then last night, I was going through Nick Bandy’s Ghostbuster Sequence v2.0, which Nick just rolled out yesterday to existing buyers.

Of course v2.0 is bigger than v1.0, but I was genuinely impressed by how cool of a product it is now.

Nick includes some sample case studies in the back. I picked out a message from one of those case studies and sent it to my mostly dead potential auction partner.

And you know what?

After two+ weeks of silence, the dude got back to me! Amazing! Exciting! Incredible! He wrote me to say:

“Hey buddy! Let’s do next month?”

… in other words, more flakiness, more maybe, more mañana.

I’m telling you this for two reasons:

1) I wanna be transparent about the realities of 1-1 follow-up.

Sometimes you send one message after months, and the deal gets immediately and magically done. Ch-ching!

Other times, like here, you get somebody who is a flake to keep stringing you along. But if it’s a partnership worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars (as this has the potential to be), it warrants at least sending some messages to push it along or to find out for sure it will never happen.

2) After I got the “Let’s do next month?” reply, I sent Nick Bandy a message. I told Nick his next offer should be about converting people who keep saying “maybe” into people who tell you a clear yes/no. Working title, “Flakebuster Sequence.”

I’m glad I wrote Nick, because he gave me a great recommendation. He suggested I send his “Stage 7” message next, which I called the “Mr. America” technique in my email earlier today.

I’ll wait a couple days and then do exactly as Nick says, and maybe even report on the results of it.

But by the time that happens, it will be too late for you, at least if you’re looking to get Nick’s Ghostbuster Sequence (v2.0!) before the price doubles, today at 8pm EST.

Yes, you will still be able to buy Ghostbuster Sequence next week. But why spend more? And why wait? Mañana, mañana, mañana…

Ghostbuster Sequence is a set of copy-and-paste messages that can be worth a pirate ship’s worth of gold bullion to you, starting right now. If you wanna get the lot today before the price goes up forever, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/ghostbuster

P.S. If you do get it before the deadline, forward me your receipt. I will personally send you a bonus of equal real-world value, My Secret of the Magi. It sells for $54 on my site right now, and tells you the biggest secret I’ve learned about opening up (not following up on) conversations that lead to business partnerships.

Doubles your clients, affiliate partners, list swap deals, and possibly dates

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Today I’d like to tell you about a special deal on a plug-and-play mechanism that doubles your clients, affiliate partners, list swap deals, and possibly dates.

To be honest, this plug-and-play mechanism is very likely to more than double your clients, affiliate partners, list swap deals, and possibly dates.

But I didn’t want to scare you or get you suspicious by making outrageous promises right out the gate, like saying that this plug-and-play mechanism triples, quadruples, or quintuples your clients, affiliate partners, list swap deals, and possibly dates.

Would you like to know what I’m talking about?

F.U.

I mean, Follow-Up.

(What did you think I meant?)

The fact is, if you have any kind of a way right now to start conversations with possible clients, or affiliate partners, or list swap deals, or dates, then I am certain you have had prospects and leads who have dropped off somewhere along the way.

That is normal.

What is not normal, or is at least a little bit odd, is that email marketers and email copywriters who will happily lecture you on the importance of emailing daily, of regular followup, when done behind the cover of a broadcast email software, are repelled and horrified by the idea of sending a direct 1-1 message to reengage a prospect who has dropped off or has failed to respond.

The fact is, business owners are busy. Business owners are forgetful. Business owners are lazy (yes, it’s absolutely true).

If a business owner you’ve been talking doesn’t reply to you, odds are excellent it has nothing to do with you or your proposal or offer. Odds are also excellent that they will eventually reengage if you keep following up with them, and they might even be grateful to you.

And yet, people don’t follow up.

I mean, will you run off right after you read this email and follow up with all the disappeared clients, affiliate partners, list swap deals, and possibly dates you’ve talked to over the past 6 months or a year, before the conversation went cold?

I’m guessing not. Why is that?

I have my own theory. If you like, I’ll share it in a subsequent email.

But not today. Today I have for you the best deal in the history of 1-1 followup deals, which will soon disappear.

I’m talking about Nick Bandy’s Ghostbuster Sequence.

Nick’s Ghostbuster Sequence is a set of 6 simple, plug-and-play templates to follow up with lapsed, forgetful, or disappeared prospects for clients, affiliate partners, list swap deals, and possibly dates.

These templates are proven (check out the sales page below). More than that, they also provide a certain psychological buffer to the intimidating act of 1-1 followup. Here’s what I mean:

1. Simply send what Nick gives you inside Ghostbuster Sequence.

2. If it doesn’t work, put all the blame on Nick and his templates.

3. If it does work, tap yourself on the back for a job well done, and take all the credit.

4. Whether it works or not, move on to the next lapsed prospect, and repeat the process.

Do this and I guarantee you, you will be a richer man or woman for it, and very soon.

Nick’s Ghostbuster Sequence currently sells for $54, which is close to criminally underpriced.

On Thursday, the price will go up to a slightly more reasonable $97.

That’s what I meant when I said this great offer is disappearing. And to give you a little bit of a gentle extra kick before it does disappear, I’ll throw in a bonus of equivalent real-world value.

If you get Nick’s Ghostbuster Sequence before this Thursday at 10pm EST, when the price will almost double, then I will also add in my Secret of the Magi, which tells you just one thing:

The biggest lesson I’ve personally learned about opening up conversations that can lead to business partnerships (and possibly dates).

(I learned this lesson through extensive cold emailing of business owners a couple years ago. Read all about it in the Secret of the Magi.)

With the Secret of the Magi, you can open a steady stream of conversations to either profit from directly, or to feed into Nick’s Ghostbuster Sequence in case the conversation goes cold.

Secret of the Magi currently sells on my site right now for $54, the same price as Nick’s Ghostbuster Sequence, at least before the price of Ghostbuster Sequence almost doubles.

But why pay more?

If you want a plug-and-play mechanism that doubles your clients, affiliate partners, list swap deals, and possibly dates, meaning Ghostbuster Sequence… and a way of opening such conversations to start with, meaning Secret of the Magi… here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/ghostbuster

P.S. Forward me your receipt from Nick and I will get you access to Secret of the Magi. I don’t have a better way to handle this right now.

RSVP

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I have an invitation for you. Here’s what’s happening:

I’ve been talking to Doberman Dan Gallapoo.

As you might know, Dan is a legit A-list copywriter. As in, he’s been hired by clients like Agora not just to write for them… but to start entire new divisions for them.

Once upon a time, Dan actually roomed with Gary Halbert. He’s one of the five or so people in the entire world that Dan Kennedy will pick up a phone call from, any time.

Since 2011, Dan has been writing and publishing a paid print newsletter about marketing, The Doberman Dan Letter. It’s read by the “who’s who” of the DR space.

Dan runs his own direct response businesses, and he still works with clients and partners with other business owners on revshare deals.

He gets these deals whenever he wants, by doing something no other copywriters today are doing, at least none that I know.

Every economic crisis or so, Dan puts together a small group of copywriters and helps them profit from the confusion, uncertainty, and chaos in the market.

The last time Dan did this was during Covid.

With the Iran war leaking out globally, and the AI bubble getting ever larger and ever more taut, right now is a time of proper uncertainty and stress.

Sure enough, Dan is putting together his group again.

He asked if I would help him promote it. I said yes.

If you’re a copywriter, here’s what is basically on offer here:

* Security in an uncertain time

(Dan’s system involves working with profitable businesses, which have been around for years and have large customer database, employees, and often, physical stores. This is not about trying to write emails for some fly-by-night dropshipper who will be here today and gone tomorrow, while you wait to get paid for the work you did last month.)

* Income that’s not capped or tied to your time

* The “one-eyed man” advantage in the land of the blind

* A ready pool of prospective clients, and a unique mechanism to get the attention of those clients and turn them into gigs fast

* A unique mechanism to make money for those clients in a straightforward way, which doesn’t require daily emailing or writing millions of new ad creatives each week

As for those two secret mechanisms, one to get clients, and the other to make money for those clients… they are actually the same:

Direct mail.

Yes, Dan uses direct mail both to get clients, and to deliver for those clients.

The fact is, direct mail never went away. It’s even growing, with smart online-first DTC brands and high-ticket coaching businesses rediscovering direct mail and bumbling their way through it.

You can do the same. Or you can profit from the experience of a master who’s been doing it for decades, at the highest level, and who makes his living by doing exactly what he is offering to personally help others do.

This opportunity is big and new and probably unfamiliar to you.

I have zero hope of trying to sell it to you in this email.

Like I said, I’ve been talking to Dan.

I suggested we create a free pop-up group to share more info about this opportunity.

The idea being, this free pop-up group would be a place for a few good folks to get to know Dan… to find out more about how he gets clients and delivers results with direct mail… and see if it’s something they would want to take on with Dan’s guidance, mentorship, and help.

Dan agreed with me. So we are creating this free pop-up group.

Would you like to join us?