Pricing – Desert Kite

How to make a $5 offer easy to sell

July 27, 2026 by John Bejakovic

This morning, I shut off the cart and concluded my Daily Emails 101 experiment. Results:

* 155 sales

* About 65 first-time buyers

* A sales page conversion rate north of 33%

In my book, that makes this Daily Emails 101 experiment a success.

What done it? Is the usual threesome? An amazing list of dedicated readers and customers… an irresistible offer… my hypnotizing copy?

Yes, yes… but I would like to wager, there’s something else as well.

The price of Daily Emails 101 was just $5.

That alone won’t do it. There are plenty of $5 offers that don’t sell a single copy. So price alone ain’t it.

What is it is that, most of the time, I sell things that are $197 or $997 or $5k.

Yes, $5 is genuinely cheap, particularly for all I was giving away with Daily Emails 101. But $5 is extra cheap if you’ve been on my list for weeks, months, or years, and you’ve seen me promoting other, much more expensive offers with success. Human beings live by contrast.

My point for you today is two-part.

One part is to raise your prices. Once again, people live by contrast, and if you have at least some expensive offers, it makes everything else easier to sell.

The other part is that once you’ve raised your prices, to remind your readers of your high prices regularly, and to justify those prices, so that, whether people buy or not, they know you and your high prices are for real.

Speaking of:

Today, I would like to tell you about my Copy Riddles program. Copy Riddles sells for $997 and has been for years. Several hundred people have bought it and gone through it, some when it wasn’t yet priced at 997, many at $997.

Copy Riddles is the best thing I sell.

I created it 5 years ago, back when I was still orienting this email list to copywriters alone. The sales page for Copy Riddles reflects that.

The fact is though, Copy Riddles is a course in effective communication and persuasion, and it is relevant to if your business involves written communication of any sort.

I would love to repackage Copy Riddles in industry-specific versions tailored to investment fund managers who communicate with investors via reports… to trial lawyers who need to craft persuasive arguments… to carpet cleaners and HVAC installers who do their own marketing.

Maybe one day. For now, if you are interested in learning how to persuade using words, based on hundreds of millions of dollars of tested advertising, in a way that ensures these insights get burned into your brain rather than slip in one nostril and out the other, then take a look at the Copy Riddles sales page.

Yes, you might have to put in a bit of brain work to see how this program targeted at copywriters could be useful to you in what you do.

That’s the cost.

The payoff you can get for that cost is to be the first in your industry to download this proven influence and persuasion knowledge into your brain, and have first-mover advantage for months or years over all your competitors, at least until I create that specific version of Copy Riddles for your industry.

If you’re interested in the full details on Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Announcing: “Emails that did well”

July 8, 2026 by John Bejakovic

Last week, I was promoting an affiliate offer and throwing in a Santa-sized sack of free bonus gifts to boot. To which I got an email from a reader who wrote:

“What if all I want is your email bonus? Will you sell me just that?”

That email bonus is called “Emails that did well.” It was the first and maybe foremost of the bonuses I was offering.

This first and foremost bonus consisted of perpetual access to a private, behind-the-scenes document I have created for myself and keep updating a few times a month, called “Emails that did well.”

In “Emails that did well,” I note down which of my emails stood out in terms of results, and how.

In a way, it’s an ever-expanding swipe file of rare, outstanding emails from yours truly, in case you want to know which of my emails to model because they genuinely worked. (Like I wrote last week, only about 10% of my emails produce outstanding results.)

And if you didn’t want the affiliate offer I was promoting last week, but you do want “Emails that did well,” why, yes, I will sell it to you.

I will sell it to you for $79. And I will also include the all the remaining bonuses I was offering last week (you can find them listed in the PS below.)

Maybe you’re wondering how I have the cheek to sell the bonuses I was giving away for free just a few days ago.

Simple.

First off, I believe these bonuses are worth what I’m asking for them and more.

Second, I have done this exact strategy in the past and it worked great. I first gave away valuable free bonuses and later sold them, for a price that seemed unimaginable, and made a nice bunch of sales. If you need a marketing and info publishing lesson for today, let that be it.

And if you want more valuable marketing insights, you can find them inside “Emails that did well,” and the bonuses I’m including.

If you’d like to grab “Emails that did well” and my 5 free bonuses, ho-ho-ho your way over to the following page:

https://desertkite.thrivecart.com/emails-that-did-well/

PS. Here are the free bonuses I am including if you get “Emails that did well” for $79 today:

FREE BONUS #1. “Core Promise Workshop and Q&A call” recording

I recently sold this workshop recording for $97, along with some bonuses. It’s yours free (minus the bonuses) if you get Lawrence’s Lead Gen Legend.

FREE BONUS #2. “Perfect Lead Gen Offer”

Not my idea. Also not a specific offer template you can swipe. Rather, a simple but counterintuitive process for figuring out what offer to make in your lead gen ads to maximize lifetime value and minimize ad costs.

FREE BONUS #3. “How to get copywriting clients a dozen at a time”

A recording of of the call I did with Dawn Apuan, grilling her on how she has been able to become the resident copywriting guru in multiple business masterminds, and rake in dozens of clients at a time.

FREE BONUS #4. A lazy, ‘mom & pop’ ad template to add 3-4 buyers to your email list every day, at a slight profit”

Nick Bandy’s lazy but effective way of creating ads to get people to buy his low-ticket front-end offer and get on his email list.

This is part of Nick’s $500 training on running a low-ticket funnel, but it’s just as applicable if all you wanna do is run lead gen ads.

It’s yours free as part of this Lead Gen Offer, though you will have to additionally opt in to Nick’s list to get it.

FREE BONUS #5. “The second coming of Gary Bencivenga” ad and landing page

A few months ago, I found a guy who was running an ad on Facebook… telling you he will write an ad to beat your best performing ad… and if he doesn’t succeed in beating it, he’ll give you all your money back.

The offer started at $97 and has been going up each time he sells out the slots he’s got for the month. It currently sells for $247. It was a brilliant, modern application of the classic Gary Bencivenga agency ad.

I’m planning to model this same approach to get advertorial clients. If you’d like the ad and the landing page copy, they are yours as part of this bonus bundle.

To get “Emails that did well” and all 5 of these bonuses:

https://desertkite.thrivecart.com/emails-that-did-well/

How much it costs

May 28, 2026 by John Bejakovic

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.

First time ever, I signed up for a free challenge

May 18, 2026May 18, 2026 by John Bejakovic

Last week, I got an email from direct marketing legend Dan Kennedy himself!

Ok, probably not Dan himself.

For one thing, Dan is famous for not exposing himself to the digital crack that is the Internet or even having an email account.

For another, a buncha people in my Daily Email House community have lately expressed displeasure with Russell Brunson of ClickFunnels, who bought Dan Kennedy’s business a few years back, for firing the copywriters and replacing them with AI (presumably for emails going out in Dan’s name also).

Anyways, here’s what “AI Dan” wrote me:

===

That was the first time anyone told me I was grotesquely underpriced.

In my experience since, almost everybody is.

Not because the market will not pay more. Not because the work is not worth more. Because of what is going on between their ears.

For five days starting May 18th, I am going to show you exactly what changes when you cross from six figures to seven.

Not inspiration. Not theory. The actual system.

Day 1: Add a Zero

Day 2: Add a Comma

Day 3: Faster Than You Think

Day 4: The Marketing Machine

Day 5: Dan Kennedy Day

90 minutes a day. Completely free.

I have charged $19,400 for a single consulting day. The Seven Figure Academy, where this material was first taught, required a significant four-figure investment to attend.

This challenge costs nothing.

===

I don’t think I’ve ever, in my life, signed up for a challenge before. But I signed up for this.

For one thing, I’m working on my Art of Charging More book, and I’m constantly looking for more ideas (and case studies and stories) that I can include.

For another thing, I suspect I myself could be charging 10x what I charge. (Advising others to charge more is one thing. Doing it yourself is another.)

For a third thing, it’s Dan Kennedy. Live. And Dan is the guy I’ve quoted the most in this newsletter and learned the most from, both directly and indirectly, when it comes to direct marketing, copywriting, and running a personality-first biz like this newsletter.

I’m telling you all this because my new philosophy is to take people along when I do something.

Day 1 of Dan Kennedy’s free challenge is today. It’s happening live at 7pm CET/1pm EST/10am PST.

Dan and Russell say it’ only happening live, with no replays.

Is that true?

I have no idea. But I do know for a fact that Dan believes that the only hope you have of selling at a distance is to deliver such a tonnage of sales content that the audience gets themselves into a state of gullibility.

I’m telling you this to warn you.

I don’t know what Dan is selling on the back of this challenge.

He’s sure to be selling something.

That doesn’t take away from the fact the guy is the most experienced person in the world today when it comes to direct marketing, and that this challenge is going to be valuable whether you buy whatever Dan ends up selling or not.

At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

If you wanna join me, live tonight, to hear what Dan has to say about charging more:

https://bejakovic.com/dkchallenge

Coaching is dead

April 18, 2026 by John Bejakovic

I’m reading a book called Million Dollar Consulting, by Alan Weiss, in which Weiss makes the claim in a subhead that “Selling is dead.”

A few pages later, Weiss tells the story of how he got started as a consultant:

===

When I was fired and thrust out on my own with about 250,000 independent consultants around around me in the United States, I asked myself how I could stand out. I decided to write and speak, since those are my strengths and you build on your strengths.

[Weiss decided to write an article with a contrarian take on a then-popular methodology, titled, “Quality Circles Are Dead.”]

The quality movement adherents besieged the magazine. I was so stunned, I called the editor to apologize.

“Kid,” he said, “I want you to write an article like this for us every month, and I’ll pay you $50 for each one.”

“But they hated it,” I pointed out.

“They read it,” he pointed back.

I wrote for 72 months, opposing every flavor of the month and program du jour extant. I became known as “The Contrarian.” And that name has stuck to this very day.

===

I’m reading Weiss’s book because the core message of it is to stop selling your time, and to start selling the value of the outcomes you deliver.

It’s a simple enough message, and one that everybody is willing to accept with their prefrontal cortex.

But go beyond that into the other parts of the brain, and the neural activity changes.

I’ve been talking to various business owners and marketers. Almost all of them fail to sell the outcomes they provide, and instead fall into the trap of selling a 16-page PDF, or a welcome sequence, or coaching once a week, every week, for an hour over Zoom.

The trouble is, PDFs are dead. Welcome sequences are dead. And coaching is really, really dead.

Yes, I am playing along with Weiss’s contrarian thing. But I also happen to believe what Weiss says about outcomes, and specifically, that coaching really is dead.

I’ve been working with a number of people this year. Some of the outcomes I’ve promised to deliver and problems I’ve promised to solve for them:

* Build them up into a name on the Internet, and help them make $31k in the process

* Help them define a new offer that sells 3-5 times copies per month for $1k+

* Increase the money they make from their email list to $1 per subscriber per month

In all these cases, what I’m actually delivering is some Zoom calls, some support by email, some copy critiques, and a lot of listening and occasional talking.

All of that could really be bundled up and called “coaching.” But I can tell you it’s been much more enjoyable and easy to sell it not as a bunch of Zoom calls and email support and some copy critiques, but as an exciting and lucrative outcome.

Maybe you offer coaching or some other form of dead deliverable that your audience doesn’t seem to value correctly. Maybe you also have an email list. Maybe you have a problem, or things just aren’t working right, and you suspect that coaching is dead, or deliverables are dead, or email is dead.

If so, reply to this email. I don’t offer coaching, but we can talk, and maybe I have a way to solve your problem, or to help you get to an outcome that you’d be ecstatic over.

It costs you nothing to tell me about your problem. You take not the slightest risk. You cannot possibly lose anything. And you can gain much.

Price increase case study: “fucking swimming in sales over here!!!!”

April 13, 2026 by John Bejakovic

Last month, I ran the Price Increase Promo Challenge. One of the people who took me up on it was Chris Howes, who runs Creative Strings Academy, an online music school.

Over the past few days, Chris ran his price increase promo for a course he delivered last year and sold for $30. This morning, Chris wrote me with the results:

===

JB- I’m fucking swimming in sales over here!!!!!

63 sales of the $30 product based on PIP (“get it before it goes up to $67”) Remember I originally sold 74 of them at the launch in December. That’s almost as many as I sold the first time. So thats $1900.

Tons of the original 74 buyers bought the new Pentatonic Patterns PDF and Web App. And lots of the new buyers also bought the new thing at checkout as upsell.

We did about $1500 on that product. Which i will split with my developer and he will be super happy, because that is a good payday for the few hrs of work he put in, and now it’s launched evergreen.

And then I had sales of other upsells on the checkout pages as well…. which I didn’t even remember to add until the last minute.

I want to try to sell everyone who bought something on joining the membership tmrw or this week, because every new member gets a free private lesson with me, which what could be a better way to follow through and implement?

So I probably earned about $3,000 – thrilled to tell my wife that – and I want to use the sequence I created as the new opening welcome sequence for people into my list, and/or start running ads and promotions to the funnel somehow. because I think I’m onto something that resonates with my audience.

So, yeah, thanks John. You kicked my ass in a good way.

===

So much good stuff in what Chris writes above. Specifically:

1. A higher priced asset he can use to sell his other offers more easily in the future…

2. A proven funnel he can run more traffic to (welcome sequence or maybe even cold traffic)…

3. 67 new buyers who make for new leads for his continuity offer or coaching if he wants to make that available, possibly leading to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars more…

4. Higher overall perceived value of his own expertise and products (yes, people do judge a book by its cover as well as its price)…

5. Something nice to tell his wife…

… plus $3k for himself and about $750k for his developer. That’s not Pablo Escobar cocaine money, but getting paid $3k to also get a bunch of new leads and some new assets in your business sounds like a good deal to me.

All in all, that’s 6 benefits of running a promo, or more specifically, a price increase promo for an offer that sold pretty well once upon a time.

The Price Increase Promo Challenge is over. I have no plans to run it ever again. But if you have a list, and an offer, and if you would like my help making more money from your list and offer, hit reply, and maybe we can work something out.

How long will it take me to pay back Nick Bandy?

April 8, 2026 by John Bejakovic

Last December, I ran an auction in my Daily Email House community. The offer on auction was my endorsement and promotion, as much of it as needed to pay back the winner the entire winning bid.

The winning bidder in that auction turned out to be Nick Bandy.

The winning bid turned out to be $31k.

I got very lucky with Nick being the winner of the auction:

Nick already has a sizable email list. He’s got an automated way of growing that list with new subscribers every day. He writes great daily emails. He’s got a suite of info products. He’s got personal authority in the form of his day job as a fractional CMO at a reverse mortgage company. Plus he’s kind of a cool guy, who tends to spend much of the day in his bathrobe.

And yet, since December, you haven’t heard me endorsing or promoting Nick all that much.

Since December, what Nick and I have been doing together has all been behind the scenes.

In case you’ve got an email list yourself, what I’m about to say can be valuable to you:

If you wanna make good money from your list, and if that list is not tens of thousands or or hundreds of thousands of subscribers strong, it’s unlikely you will get to where you want to go without higher-priced offers, meaning at least something that sells for $500+, and preferably for $1k or more.

I told Nick that. He agreed. And so we’ve been working on one or more high-ticket offers he can sell, that match his experience, skills, and taste.

Progress has been slowed by the fact that Nick has many other lucrative and attractive things to do.

There’s his steady fractional CMO gig.

There are his personal obligations like his daily emails and Skool community.

And then there are exciting side projects like partnerships he recently finagled with a local roofing business (database of 30,000 customers and 100,000 leads)… a YouTuber with 300k subscribers… a skydiving business with a 30k+ customer list… and more.

I’m telling you all this because Nick is currently in the middle of a price increase promo for one of his offers, Ghostbuster Sequence.

If you do anything online — client work, or you have your own email list, or you have a personal brand — I recommend to you to get Ghostbuster Sequence.

Not because I have to pay Nick back $31k.

Ghostbuster Sequence sells for $54 right now. At that price, it would take a ridiculous number of sales for me to pay Nick back.

Instead, I’m recommending Ghostbuster Sequence because of its fundamental value.

Ghostbuster Sequence gives you a simple, easy, and effective system for doing followup, which is a success-multiplier habit that everybody pays lip service, to but that almost nobody teaches or gives practical recommendations on.

Following up means you can get way more out of way less — whether that’s leads, referrals, potential partnerships, etc.

Following up was instrumental in Nick’s own success, both back when he hunted for clients and today, when he’s interested in partnerships like the ones I listed above.

Nick has written down his followup system inside Ghostbuster Sequence, for you to use as-is.

Like I said, Ghostbuster Sequence currently sells for $54, but, in part due to my instigation, Nick is raising the price to $97 tomorrow, Thursday, at 10pm EST.

If you get it before then, you save yourself some money. You have a chance to put it to work sooner rather than later. Plus, you get a free bonus that sells for $54 on my site right now:

Secret of the Magi, which tells you the biggest lesson I’ve learned about how to open up cold conversations that lead to business partnerships, whether client work, or JV deals, or sponsorships.

For all that, here’s where to go, before the opportunity disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/ghostbuster

Today: PIP Challenge kickoff

March 18, 2026 by John Bejakovic

This morning I chuckled as I prepared the SOP for my PIP Challenge kickoff call.

In case that’s too many acronyms for you, “PIP” in this case stands for Price Increase Promo.

Starting later today, and lasting the next 3 weeks, I’ll be running a challenge with a group of list and offer owners.

I’ll personally help them run a promo to increase the price of one of their offers in a way that 1) makes them look good to their audience and 2) maybe even makes them money.

An “SOP” I imagine you know. Just in case, it stands for “standard operating procedure,” a corporate term that basically means, “how to”.

Like I said, I chuckled today while preparing the PIP SOP. That’s because, along with dutiful sections like “Which product,” “Which price,” “Which occasion,” “Which emails to send,” I also included several examples of price increase promos I’ve run, like:

* The time a broke and unmotivated reader asked for a discount, and I used that as the occasion of finally raising the price of an underpriced offer

* The “MVE 2: Judgment Day” promo I used to re-launch (and increase the price of) my Most Valuable Email program

* The time the FTC asked a federal judge to hold “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli in contempt of court, and I did a quick (and extremely lucrative) price increase promo on the back of it

At this point, my PIP SOP is pretty simple. But I still found myself asking questions and articulating answers that I hadn’t thought of before.

I know I’ll be using this SOP myself for future price increase promos I run to my own list. And as I’m going through this Price Increase Challenge, and working directly with people on their live price increase promos, I will be filling it out with more examples, more detailed answers, more templates, etc.

The PIP SOP is only available to the folks who join me for the Price Increase Promo Challenge, a select group I’ve named the Email Promo Pioneers, Class 1.

My Price Increase Challenge kicks off later today, Wednesday, at 8pm CET/3pm EST/12 noon PST. In case you are interested, here are the details:

===

Here’s my offer to you today:

* Magically boost the overall value of your business…

* Manifest an asset you can use to make easier future sales of all your offers…

* Raise your status in the eyes of your audience…

* Make yourself more interesting to affiliates…

… and maybe even make some money!

About that make money part, master copywriter Robert Collier once wrote that the most sales-making headline he ever found was:

“Before The Price Goes Up!”

That’s is precisely how I’m offering to help you achieve all the outcomes above.

Specifically, over the next 3 weeks, I’m offering to personally help you plan, run, and profit from a “Before The Price Goes Up!” promo to your email list.

Like Collier says, a price increase is a great way to make some sales.

But it has lots of other knock-on benefits, such as a boost in status… a higher-value asset that you can use to sell other offers more easily (via bonuses, or simple anchoring)… and creating something that affiliates might suddenly become interested in.

If you decide to join me over the next few weeks, I’ll help you overcome such insurmountable hurdles as:

* “But I don’t know which offer I should increase the price of! I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot or worse yet in the knee!”

* “But what will people think! How can I possibly increase the price in a way that doesn’t make me look stupid, greedy, or both? Surely there is no way to increase price in a way that makes me come out looking solid to my audience… right? Right???”

* “But what new price should I choose? It’s impossible to decide. The options are infinite…”

In case you didn’t pick up on it, I’m being a little bit sarcastic.

Yes, there are some questions you should ask yourself before running a price increase promo. But a promo like this is not tremendously complex, and there’s not all that much you need to know in advance.

Yes, I will help you make decisions about the questions above, and give you my advice and input and encouragement along the way. (I’ve run a bunch of price increase promos, some very successful, some less so.)

But that’s the smaller reason why you might want to join me now.

The bigger reason is simply to make sure you actually do this price increase now, instead of putting it off indefinitely… because you’re scared of making a mistake, or in the words of Joe Karbo, because you’re too busy making a living to make any money.

Speaking of money:

I’m calling this the Price Increase Challenge.

And I’m charging a sky-high, one-time fee, with an asterisk, to participate in this Price Increase Challenge:

$250*.

Two hundred and fifty dollars.

That’s a quarter of a thousand dollars.

A lot of money.

Yes, the usual arguments apply. If you have an email list and an underpriced offer, it will very likely be worth it to you to pay $250, and much more, to run a price increase promo now instead of in 6 months from now, or never. I listed all the reason why at the top.

But there’s also the asterisk.

The asterisk is there because I don’t really want your money.

What I really want is for you to run this price increase promo and to reap the benefits of it.

That’s why, if you join me for this challenge, and if you pay me $250 upfront, I will refund you the entire $250 if you actually run your price increase promo within 3 weeks of this Wednesday, when this challenge will kick off.

In other words… get my personal help and advice… get accountability… get the benefits of a price increase, including possibly making some money… and win all your money back. Recoup 100% of your capital, and make some nice interest too.

Oh, and you get the coveted title of Email Promo Pioneer, Class 1.

If you’d like to join me for this Price Increase Challenge, hit reply to this email, tell me you want in, and I’ll get you started.

Announcing: Email Promo Pioneers, Class 1

March 16, 2026 by John Bejakovic