A-List Copywriters

For people who could write great sales letter leads, hooks, and angles (today!)

by

… if only they could fight their way through the maze of copywriting books, courses, frameworks, templates, customer research, contradictory advice, newsletters and blogs and posts by experts, gurus, and charlatans…

I’d like to present a merciful guide to leads, hooks, and angles that actually pull, based on the strength of the copy alone, called:

“How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes”

The backstory behind this guide:

Well actually, you can read the backstory below.

In brief, it involves the mystery copywriter who built up a $125-million company… a personalized gift in the mail, which brought back a thank-you note and a check for $2,000… and an offer that normally sells for $97, but which is available to you for the next two days, because you happen to be a reader of this newsletter, for only $7.

A warning about the following page:

It’s a sales page.

A warning about that warning:

Don’t dismiss the following page just because it’s a sales page. It’s well-worth reading, whether you decide to buy the offer or not.

That’s because this sales page is both interesting, at least if you have any interest in copywriting and direct marketing… and because it’s valuable, if you write copy or hope to ever write copy, for your own business or for clients, and you want to have that copy produce results.

A final word about the following page and the offer that’s on it:

I’m not an affiliate for this offer. I don’t get paid whether you buy it or not. I can tell you i did buy this offer myself, for my own purposes, several weeks ago, before I ever had any plans on promoting it to you.

And the reason I’m promoting it to you now, without getting paid, is because I think it’s both interesting and valauble, just like the following page, which is live for the next 48 hours and ticking:

https://bejakovic.com/fascinations

A-pile vs. B-pile marketers

by

A few days ago, I exchanged some emails with a business owner who was in a bad way.

“At the moment,” he said, “I’m feeling a bit like Halbert sitting in the dark trying to figure out what to write in that sales letter to get the power back on.”

If you don’t know the story of Gary Halbert, he was a well-known direct marketer and a better-known copywriting guru.

In the early days of his career, Gary was not very successful.

He would often spend his family’s utilities money to pay for stamps for sales letters to market some new scheme.

Those sales letters went out into the world. What came back were orders and some money, but never as many orders or as much money as Gary would have liked. Sometimes not even enough to cover the utilities bills.

The story goes that Gary was sitting in his kitchen one night, in the dark, with no water because he hadn’t paid the bills.

He was sick and tired of the stress and the visible signs of failure all around him.

And then — because that’s what makes a good story — the lights came on. Not in the kitchen, but in Gary’s head.

Gary had his moment of genius.

He figured out a new product and a new way to market it.

The result was a major success — millions of new customers and a multi-million dollar company, built on the back of one good, I mean, perfect, sales letter.

Now that I’ve told you this story, I’d like to propose that it’s proof that Gary Halbert was what I call a B-pile marketer.

We know of Gary today because his “sitting in the dark” moment actually produced a success. But it equally could have produced yet another failure. In fact, more than equally, because new direct marketing tests fail more than they succeed.

Had that happened, maybe nobody would know of Gary Halbert today, just like we don’t know the millions of other B-pile marketers who repeatedly failed and eventually disappeared. ​
​​
Compare this to marketers I’m calling “A-pile.”

A-pile marketers aren’t well-know either, but that’s because their story is not as dramatic. There’s no “sitting in the dark” moment. Instead, they build large, stable, cash-spewing businesses that work year after year, without ever being at risk of having the lights turned off.

What’s the difference between the A-pile and the B-pile?

Hark unto me, Buckwheat:

The difference is a marketing strategy that has the highest chance of being successful — of bringing back lots and lots of orders and lots and lots of money.

It’s a strategy that Gary Halbert must not have known early in his career. Or maybe he knew it and was just unable to practice it. I know for a fact — because I heard Jay Abraham say it — that it’s something Gary didn’t apply even later in his career, when he shoulda known better.

Maybe this proven, stable, cash-generating strategy went against Gary’s romantic and heroic nature.

If that’s your nature, too, then maybe this strategy won’t be right for you either.

On the other hand, if you’d like to keep the lights on, and keep the orders flowing, without having to produce a moment of genius, you can find this strategy described in detail in chapter 3 here:

https://bejakovic.com/a-pile

“No-fooling” secret to writing opening lines that get read and copied

by

Yeah, I bet you want the secret. I’ll tell you, but it won’t make sense unless you read the following first.

Last Friday, I sent an email about a photo I found on Twitter of a guy hand-copying my emails. To which I got a reply from an online entrepreneur with a 200k-strong audience, Kieran Drew. Kieran wrote me:

===

Guilty confession: I handcopied a fair few emails from your bonus doc in SME.

When I write my emails, I always go back to my inbox to see how you started your last few too. I still find the opening lines hard and I’m yet to see anyone do them as well as you do.

===

I heard something similar about my opening lines from a friend who runs a successful niche magazine (hi Radu). He told me he keeps my emails for their opening lines, as inspiration for openers when he needs to write something.

I never thought writing an opening line was some special superpower of mine. But like they say, once is an accident, twice is a positioning statement.

So I thought about what I do with the opening line of each of my emails. Really, it’s the millennia-old advice from legendary direct marketer Joe Sugarman:

“The purpose of the first sentence is to get you to read the second sentence. Nothing more, nothing less.”

You probably knew Joe Sugarman’s advice. You probably even follow it, and think you do it well. And maybe you really do it well. But maybe you don’t, not as well as you could. The trouble is, it’s easy to fool yourself.

I thought a bit more about my opening lines.

The only other secret that came to mind, besides the Joe Sugarman advice, is that I’ve spent a good amount of time learning to write sales bullets.

​​I’ve analyzed how A-list copywriters start with factual and dull source material… give away the relevant parts of it in their bullets… but leave out just the right thing to make you pull your hair out from wanting to know the secret.

It’s transformed how I write. Because it means there’s a way to learn to write copy in a way that you cannot fool yourself:

You start with the same source material A-list copywriters used to write their own bullets… write your own bullet… compare it to theirs… and see just how much tighter, more specific, and more intriguing theirs is.

The good news is, you don’t have to despair for long. Repeat this process, and soon enough, the A-listers tricks and tactics and skills start to seep into your own head, and people start saving what you write as examples of intriguing and specific and tight copy.

And on that note, I will remind you of my ongoing offer for Copy Riddles Lite.

The full Copy Riddles program teaches you how to write sales bullets, using the no-fooling process I described above.

Copy Riddles Lite is a tiny slice of the full Copy Riddles program, proportionately priced.

Copy Riddles Lite gives you a taste of this process, and gives you an opportunity to try yourself against legendary A-list copywriters like Gene Schwartz, David Deutsch, and Clayton Makepeace. That’s a valuable experience whether or not you choose to upgrade to the full Copy Riddles program.

I’m making Copy Riddles Lite available until tomorrow, Thursday, at 8:31pm CET. If you’d like to get it, it’s available here (no sales page, just an order form):

https://bejakovic.com/crl

Announcing: Copy Riddles Lite

by

Starting today, and ending this Thursday, I am offering something I’m calling Copy Riddles Lite.

Before I tell you the what of Copy Riddles Lite, let me tell you the why:

I realize that $997 — the price of Copy Riddles — is a big investment. Even if you have the money, it can be an obstacle. And if you don’t have the money, then it’s a real obstacle.

So my goal is twofold. First, to show you the Copy Riddles way, so you can experience it yourself, and see for yourself that Copy Riddles is a worthwhile investment, if you have any ambition of owning high-level copywriting skills.

Goal two is that Copy Riddles Lite is supremely valuable as a standalone training. If you cannot afford the full Copy Riddles course, or you can afford it but you decide for some unfathomable reason that you do not want it, then Copy Riddles Lite has value on its own, and much more than what I am charging.

Now we get to the what:

Copy Riddles Lite includes one of the 20 rounds included in the full Copy Riddles program.

I specifically chose a round that comes early in the full Copy Riddles program, on a copywriting topic that most people know of… but very few do well.

The round is composed of two parts, in which you practice writing sales bullets, and compare what you wrote to what an A-list copywriter wrote starting with the same prompt.

In the first part of the round, I also give you my analysis of the fine points of how A-list copywriters do their magic.

In the second part, I show you this aspect of copywriting in real practice, in real live ads, headlines, body copy, emails, content.

Two more things inside Copy Riddles live:

The full Copy Riddles program also includes 3 bonus lessons. I included one of those bonus lessons in Copy Riddles Lite as well.

The full Copy Riddles program also includes references to some of the best places I’ve found for the A-list sales letters and the source material they were selling. I’ve included that in Copy Riddles Lite as well.

So if after going through Copy Riddles Lite, you don’t wanna pay me for the full Copy Riddles program, and you want to cobble it together yourself, you can.

I only want to sell you the full Copy Riddles if 1) you experience the value in Copy Riddles Lite and you want more and 2) you value your time and my expertise enough to pay me the remainder, rather than attempt to replicate it yourself.

And now for the price:

Copy Riddles Lite contains a little less than 10% of the total content of the full Copy Riddles program, so I’ve priced it at a little less than 10% of the total price.

You can get Copy Riddles Lite for $97 today, tomorrow, or on Thursday.

If you go through and decide you want the full Copy Riddles program, I also include a coupon code, good for a limited time, for the full value of Copy Riddles Live to apply to the full Copy Riddles program.

I’m launching this offer today on a whim. I will close it this Thursday, Feb 1, at 8:31pm CET.

​​I have no idea if I will ever open it again. I may or I may not. That’s not just a bluff. If you’ve been on my list a while, you’ll know I have had plenty of one-off offers, never to be repeated, for reasons of my own.

All that’s to say, if you’re interested, you can buy Copy Riddles Lite below. The link will take you to a bare order form, and no sales page. If that don’t deter you:

https://bejakovic.com/crl

The most famous copywriter, real or fictional

by

On Dan Heath’s new podcast, “What It’s Like To Be,” I heard Dan asking a TV meteorologist, a criminal defense lawyer, a forensic accountant, all the same question:

“Who’s the most famous meteorologist/criminal defense lawyer/forensic accountant, real or fictional?”

This got me wondering who the most famous copywriter might be, real or fictional.

I had a gut feeling. I double-checked via simple Google search, by looking at the total number of results.

As far as real copywriters go, there’s really only one possible option for a copywriter that a rando off the street might know.

​​That’s David Ogilvy.

There’s something about the pipe, the smart suits, the English disdain, the French castle.

Sure enough, Ogilvy was the only real copywriter who has more than 1M indexed Google results about him.

As for fictional copywriters, it depends on who you consider a copywriter.

Don Draper, the creative art director from the TV show Mad Men, clocks in at over 2M Google results.

But was he really a copywriter or more of an idea man? I’ll let you decide.

Meanwhile, the most famous, fictional, 100% copywriter that I’ve been able to find is Peggy Olson, also a character on Mad Men, who only gets around 220k Google results.

Should we stop there? Oh no.

It turns out several celebs out there have a copywriting background… but are not today known as copywriters.

One of these is novelist James Patterson. Before Patterson set out to write 200 books (and counting), he was a copywriter and later the CEO of J. Walter Thompson, one of the biggest and oldest ad agencies in the world.

Patterson has 6M+ Google results to attest to his fame.

And if we’re already going with celebrities who have copywriting in their history, and maybe their blood, then we get to the most famous copywriter of all time, real or fictional, live or dead, even though nobody nowhere would identify him as a copywriter.

I’m talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald worked for a time as a copywriter before becoming the author of the quintessential great American novel, The Great Gatsby, and later a topic of almost 13M Google results.

So there. Now you know. And now you might ask yourself, “What did I just read? Did I really need this in my life? How did I wind up at the bottom of this email?”

If any of those questions is flitting through your head, let me point out that interest in famous people seems to be hardwired into our brains.

Tabloid writers and sales copywriters know this fact well, and they use it over and over and over. Because it works to draw attention and get people reading, day after day.

That’s a free lesson in copywriting.

For more such lessons, including ones that you might not be able to shrug off by saying, “I guess I knew that,” you will have to buy my Copy Riddles course.

The whole big idea behind Copy Riddles is the appeal of famous people — at least famous in the small niche of direct response copywriting.

I mean, on the sales page, in place of a subheadline, what I have is a picture featuring Gary Halbert, Gary Bencivenga, Stefan Georgi, and Ben Settle, all of them celebrities in the micro world of direct response, all of them paid off on that page as being integral to the course.

If you’d like to buy Copy Riddles, or if you simply want to read some gossip about famous copywriters, then head here and get ready to be amazed and shocked:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Is this the most immoral email ever written?

by

Or is it the most sensible, the most practical, the most revolutionary thing you will read today?

To find out, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Is your business or career a source of annoyance or frustration instead of a source of pleasure and fulfillment?

2. Have you become tense and irritable because of the incessant, nagging demands made upon you by others?

3. Do you remember my email from last week, the one where I had a little story from Drayton Bird, about how he and Gene Schwartz independently wrote the exact same ad headline, word-for-word?

Well I tracked that ad down. By the tone of it, I guess it’s the Gene Schwartz version.

This ad sells a book — “the most immoral book ever written?” — which was initially published in 1937, then went through a lot of reprints, then went out of print, and was finally resurrected in the 1960s by Gene for his mail-order book-selling empire. Gene is still supposed to be the guy who has sold the most books by mail in history.

I invite you to check out the full ad on the page below. If, after 10 days, you do not believe that Gene Schwartz’s masterful cold reads can dramatically transform your marketing, you may return the ad and owe nothing. Otherwise I will bill you for $0.00 plus postage. Click the link below and then read the page that opens up:

https://bejakovic.com/most-immoral

Newsflash: Gary Bencivenga endorses the Copy Riddles approach

by

I went for my morning walk just now, and I was listening to the Gary Bencivenga seminar on my headphones.

If you don’t know Gary, he is an A-list copywriter whose star shines brightest on the Copywriters Walk of Fame.

Gary’s sales letters mailed out tens of millions of times. They made him and his clients millions of dollars.

Before he retired, Gary was better at this than anyone.

An executive at Rodale Press, a big direct response publisher, said that Gary never lost a split-run test when going up against other top copywriters. An executive at Phillips publishing, another major direct response company, said that Gary had more winners than anybody else.

When Gary decided to retire, he put on a $5k/person farewell seminar where he shared all his best secrets. I’ve listened to the recordings of this seminar from beginning to end three times so far.

And yet, the following amazing story never managed to pierce that ball of lead that sits on my shoulders. Not until today.

Gary was talking about the first time he had to compete against the legendary copywriter Gene Schwartz, and try to beat a control that Gene had written for Rodale.

“I didn’t want to be overly influenced or depressed,” said Gary. So he didn’t look at Gene’s copy before starting his own.

After Gary finished his first draft, he decided to finally take a look at Gene’s stuff.

“I was so depressed,” Gary said. Gene’s copy was so much stronger.

But remember what that Rodale exec said? Gary never lost a split-run test for Rodale, not even against the great Gene Schwartz.

Here’s what Gary ended up doing:

I said, the only way I’m going to have a way of competing with Gene is if I figure out what he’s done to get these bullets.

​​So wherever his bullets came from, I would read the same page. I would learn from him just by mimicking what he had done.

So I said, “This bullet that he came up with came from chapter 3, page 4. What is the original source of this?”

And he taught me so much, just by studying his copy and by looking at the product itself.

I was able to beat him, but it was really his package too in a way, because I learned the technique.

Here’s a confession that’s not secret:

​​This approach to learning the technique of copywriting is what lies at the heart of my Copy Riddles program. I got the idea for that from another legendary copywriter, Gary Halbert.

And now, that same Copy Riddles approach has been endorsed by three big names — Gary Bencivenga, Parris Lampropoulos, and Ben Settle — all of whom have said publicly that this is the way they learned copywriting technique.

You can follow this approach yourself, right now, for free. Just like Gary did.

First, find a collection of winning sales letters written by a-list copywriters.

Second, get the product they were selling. You might have to stalk Amazon, eBay, used book sites, and online repositories.

Third, when you get both the sales letter and the out-of-print book in your possession, go bullet by bullet, and tease out how the A-list copywriter turned lead into gold.

Of course, you can also take a shortcut. You can take advantage of the fact that I’ve already done all this work for you, and that I’ve packaged it up in a fast, fun, mostly-done-for-you ride I’ve called Copy Riddles. To find out more about that:

https://bejakovic.com/cr-3/

It’s not throat clearing, it’s persuasion magic

by

Back in 2017, I signed up to Ben Settle’s $97/month Email Players newsletter. ​Only years later did I think to ask myself the $6,953 question:

​What did it?

​​What put me into that hypnotic trance and got me to finally pull out my credit card and pay Ben, after I’d read hundreds of previous Ben Settle emails, without taking action?

After spending an hour digging through my email archives, I found it.

​​It turned out to be an email in which Ben talked about a Dan Kennedy idea, using a bunch of Dan Kennedy examples and Dan Kennedy arguments.

Because that email ended up sucking me into Ben’s world and getting me to hand over an estimated $6,953 to Ben, I’ve studied it in detail. I’ve found many interesting things inside. Let me tell you about just one of them.

​​In spite of being a rehash of Dan Kennedy content, Ben’s email starts out like this:

===

Recently, I made a special trip to my office to retrieve all my Dan Kennedy NO BS Marketing newsletters.

The first issue I ever got was the September 2002 issue (front page has a picture of a dwarf stuck in a airplane toilet…) I’d just started learning copywriting a handful of months earlier. And, I remember the “back page” of that particular issue having a profound effect on my mindset at the time — and has through all these years, as it’s kept me healthily paranoid and uncomfortable no matter how good things get.

I just re-read it, and everything he said was true then, and is even more true now.

What was that back page about, exactly?

===

To the uninformed (as I was for many years), this opening might look like a classic example of throat clearing — of the rambling first two reels of “Lost Horizon” that should simply be burned.​​”Get to the action already!”

Of course, Ben isn’t simply rambling on or clearing his throat. He is performing a bit of persuasion magic. Specifically, he is setting the frame.

I won’t spell out what frame Ben is setting. I think it’s obvious enough.

I will just point out this setting the frame stuff applies equally to daily email as to any other communication you might be performing.

For example, here’s a frame, albeit a different frame from the one Ben was setting, in a sales bullet by A-list copywriter Jim Rutz:

* Incredible but legal: How you can easily pay Mom’s medical bills with her money and deduct them from your taxes. (page 77)

Once again, I believe the frame is obvious. But if you want a spelled-out explanation of that particular frame, you can find it in point 6 of round 20A of my Copy Riddles.

As I said yesterday, Copy Riddles might look to the uninitiated like it’s only about writing sales bullets.

But with a bit of thinking — or without it, and simply with a bit of practice — Copy Riddles is really an education in effective communication. ​​
​​
In case effective communicating is what yer after, you can find out more about Copy Riddles at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Spewing inappropriate things at Kim Krause Schwalm

by

A while back, I asked my readers which of my emails first came to mind. One reader (not sure he wants me to share his name) had this to say:

===

The first one that jumped out of my memory was “How Copywriters can avoid ham-handed segues that get them eaten alive.”

The first time I read this email, I printed it out.

And to this day, I read it frequently.

Sometimes even multiple times.

It pretty much shaped the way I write now.

The other day I was reading an email from Kim Krause Schwalm that started with a fascinating story.

It sucked me in and kept me scrolling down, begging for more.

And as you might expect now, she jumped into a straight pitch with no transition whatsoever.

Man, I was spewing…

“No, Kim. No, not you. Why?”

I found myself saying some inappropriate things to a person whom I highly respect.

And gues what? I went to reread your email and laugh like a maniac.

The way I see it… It’s like conducting an instant hypnotic induction, then smacking the sh!t out of the person and forcing him to snap out of it.

===

That “ham-handed segues” email is archived on my website. You can find it and read it if you like.

It talks about how copywriters often perform a clumsy bait-and-switch from their fascinating story to their self-interested sales pitch.

Even the best fall into this trap sometimes.

In my ham-handed email, I told a story of an unnamed A-list copywriter who did this bait-and-switch on me, and had me yelling at my laptop. And my reader above had the same frustrating experience with Kim Krause Schwalm.

So how to avoid ham-handed segues?

Get ready. Because the sales pitch is coming. Let me build it up for you. Here it is:

You can find out about that in my Most Valuable Email training.

Because the “ham-handed segues” email uses my Most Valuable Email trick. (And I’m not using that trick in today’s email, in case you’re wondering.)

If you want an explanation of how and where the “ham-handed segues” email uses the Most Valuable Email trick, you can find that in the Most Valuable Email Swipes. That’s a collection of 50 of my best MVEs, which I give you along with the core training of the course.

Look up #10 in that swipe file, and you get an explanation of the trick in action.

Plus as an added benefit, you will learn how to avoid ham-handed segues that get you eaten alive, or worse, spewed upon.

To get Most Valuable Email now:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Buy my 10 Commandments book

by

This past November, copywriter Dan Ferrari sent out an email with 38 lessons to mark his 38th birthday. Lesson number 9 read:

9. People love commandments. A little copy “trick” I don’t see used often enough is to create a commandment and then repeat it over and over again, like the chorus to a song. Here’s an example… “remember: commandments always equal higher conversions.” If this were a sales letter, that would be the chorus line.

I haven’t promoted my 10 Commandments book for a while. So let me do it now.

Buy my 10 Commandments book.

​​Why? Because it’s great. Here’s a testimonial — or more specifically, a four-star review, which is as negative of a review as I’ve gotten so far:

“Short and very pertinent. Loaded with the names of hugely successful giants of the copywriting world and the titles of their successful books. I read the book on Kindle and highlighted many great bits of advice and the names of the great writers sharing advice. If you write ad copy for a living or hope to do so, buy this book.”

As the reviewer above says at the end of his 4-star review:

Buy my 10 Commandments book. At least if you write ad copy for a living or hope to do so.

Maybe you’re still not convinced.

​​So let me tell you that the book contains a commandment by Dan Ferrari. Dan is one of the smartest and most successful people in the copywriting world right now.

Over the past decade, Dan has made himself a lot of money by writing copy for some of the biggest direct response publishers. He has a long string of controls, even when going up against other top pros. As a result, he was voted the no. 1 direct response copywriter in a recent ranking some dude put together.

So that’s another reason why you should buy my 10 Commandments book.

Maybe, maybe you’re still not convinced.

In that case, I can tell you my 10 Commandments book costs only $5. It’s by far the cheapest of my offers, and outside of any future Kindle books I may one day write, it’s also the only thing I will ever sell for under $100, at least outside special launch prices.

Are you starting to feel the refrain coming on? I’m feeling it. And it goes like this…

Buy my 10 Commandments book.

​​You can do it at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments