A-List Copywriters

Why piling on the benefits can weaken your bullets

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File this one away under “psychology behind advertising.” Let’s start with an example bullet:

“Why adding improvements to your home can lower its value!”

This is a bullet written by Gary Halbert for a book on selling your home in a buyer’s market. The following is the relevant passage in the actual book:

“If your interior designer has used your home to make a personal artistic statement, that’s great while you’re living there but don’t expect it to translate well when you’re trying to sell. Rather than overdecorating or overrenovating, try to create a neutral canvas onto which a potential buyer can project his tastes.”

So what’s the psychology here? Well, I covered it all in today’s lesson in the bullet. The point is that Gary could have gone lots of different ways twisting the above source material… but he chose the one above.

There’s a fundamental rule of human nature hidden behind that decision. And it’s something you don’t want to ignore if you’re writing sales copy, and you’re judged on results.

Anyways, today’s lesson of the bullet course is out and done. To get future lessons before they also disappear, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/bullets-signup/

How women can write more exciting bullets (even if the source material is boring)

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See if you can answer the following question:

If you’re a man, do you know why you should never wear a gold bracelet to a job interview?

No? But you’re curious? Well I’m not surprised.

Because that bullet/fascination was written by one of the greatest copywriters of all time, Gary Bencivenga.

​​Gary was selling a book by Benci-Ventures, his own tiny publishing company, about how to succeed when you search for a new job. So what’s up with the gold bracelet?

Well, the secret behind that is the same secret behind my subject line. Because it’s true. It is possible for women to write more exciting bullets… even when the material they are working with is deadly dull.

How?

I talked all about this in today’s issue of my bullets course. If you’re new to these parts, maybe you need an explanation of what the bullets course is, and how you can join (for free). Here’s where to start:

https://bejakovic.com/bullets-signup/

The “Rollie Hall bullet amplifier” for getting richer as a copywriter

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Two days ago, after my email about Gary Halbert’s “crucial bullet secret,” a reader named Bob wrote in and asked:

“If you don’t mind, care to share any new-ish wellness-related bullets or ads that you like?”

I got to thinking a bit. And a newish sales letter popped into my mind. It doesn’t have any bullets… but it does have fascinations, embedded and then revealed in the copy itself.

One of the fascinations hidden in this sales letter illustrates what I call the “Rollie Hall bullet amplifier.”

This is not a new technique, by the way. A-list copywriters have been using it for decades… and it’s all based on a fundamental quirk of human nature, which people have been exploiting for millenia.

Do you want to know what the “Rollie Hall bullet amplifier” is? Unfortunately, it’s something I only revealed inside my bullet writing course, which is going on right now. If you’d like more information about this course, or even to sign up (it’s free, after all), take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/bullets-signup/

The hidden structure of the best bullets. 2 parts needed. Here’s how you could have gotten both

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Over the past few weeks, while looking over dozens of bullets written by A-list copywriters, I realized the best bullets have a hidden 2-part structure.

I think being aware of this can help anyone write more powerful bullets… and become a top-tier copywriter in general.

For example, one bullet by Parris Lampropoulos that had this structure was so powerful it became the headline for Parris’s entire promotion. And the promotion went on to beat the control.

I covered both parts of this hidden structure in today’s lesson of my bullets course. You could have gotten that lesson for free, had you been signed up.

But it’s still not too late. Because I’ll be covering other bullet topics in the coming days… including special cases of both of those “hidden structure” parts.

In case you’d like more info about my bullet course, or even to sign up, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/bullets-signup/

Halbert’s crucial bullet secret (almost unknown among copywriters)

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In his “Killer Sex” promotion, Gary Halbert wrote the following bullet:

“The two almost unknown secrets (one mental, one physical) men need to know to have rock-hard erections… at any age! (These are crucial secrets to improving a man’s sex life forever.)”

Now if you are a man… be honest. This bullet has you curious. How could you not be? “Almost unknown”… “need to know”… “crucial secrets.” What are they??

Well, I hate to break it to you. I tracked down the original book. Gary’s two secrets are not very exciting, and they are certainly not unknown.

But I’m not here to mock the value of this info. What I’m interested in is how Gary made his bullet so sexy that the payoff was almost guaranteed to be a letdown. Because if we can figure out Gary’s trick, can use it for our own promotions — whether they have genuine payoffs or not.

Now if you ask me, there’s one big thing that Gary did. And I spelled this out in today’s lesson of my free bullets course.

That lesson has been mailed out, and is no longer available. But if you’d like to sign up for the course, so you get future lessons as they come out, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/bullets-signup/

How A-list copywriters stab you in the heart, and then twist the knife

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Here’s a fascination/bullet written by Boardroom’s “secret weapon” Mel Martin:

“How to travel free on luxury cruise ships. Lots of passengers you meet on board are doing it but never tell you. Page 367”

There’s a lot of hidden psychology in this bullet. Martin uses the first sentence to stab the reader in the heart… and he uses the second sentence to then twist the knife, and to make the wound permanent.

How exactly does he do it?

Well, that’s something I looked at in detail in today’s lesson of my bullets course. That lesson is done and passed. But the course keeps marching on. And it’s still free to sign up for — if you do it now.

For more info, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/bullets-signup/

BEJ cage match: Derek Johanson vs. John Carlton

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Over the past 24 hours, I got two interesting emails in conflict with each other.

The first email is from Derek Johanson, the guy who created Copy Hour. Derek’s email is about how much of direct response copy is “over-the-top bad,” with claims of “effortless” results. Or as Derek puts it, “pop a pill, overnight success type stuff.”

Derek’s message is that we can and should do better.

Then there’s an email that John Carlton sent. Carlton probably needs no introduction. But if you’re new to direct response, then know that John Carlton is one of the most successful and influential copywriters of all time. He writes:

“Most humans are a walking shrink session, with all their deepest and most humiliating secrets just spewing off of them all the time. […] Most folks just stumble through life half-asleep. Too caught up inside their own heads to realize what’s actually going on at the meta-level. […] Knowing this, you automatically have an enormous advantage in all negotiations. Something to put in your tool kit, anyway.”

Of course, both Derek and John are right. Most direct response copy is pretty awful. And that’s because, if it works, it probably speaks to your prospect’s deepest and darkest insecurities.

Prod at somebody’s insecurities… and you’ll see him at his most grateful, passionate, engaged, hopeful, and willing to spend money.

But are you doing your prospect a service in this way?

You can claim you are. Obviously he responds intensely… and you might be able to help.

Or you can claim you are not. After all, you are poking into a wound and making sure it never heals.

So what’s the conclusion?

I think it’s a personal choice you have to make. And I think it runs deeper than just how ugly and hard-hitting you are willing to make your copy.

Should we look for acceptance and gratitude of what we have, like a cow on a pasture? Or is there value in endless striving, like a hamster in a wheel?

I have my own esoteric opinion on this matter. But that’s getting into quirky stuff… and it’s probably not why you signed up for these emails.

Still, this topic is something to keep in the back of your mind as you navigate your own career. If you come clean to yourself with your own feelings about it, you might find yourself both more successful and more at peace with what you’re doing. “Something to put in your tool kit, anyway.”

Anyways, maybe you want more stuff like this. Maybe you are afraid to miss out on good ideas. Or you just want to always improve, and are looking for any good way to do so.

In that case, you might like to subscribe to my email newsletter on persuasion and marketing. Here’s where you can do that.

This bit of advice made an A-lister’s career

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During a recent interview, A-list copywriter Parris Lampropolous shared a story from early in his career.

Back then, Parris was writing his first magalog.

A magalog, as you might know, is a format for sales copy that mimics a magazine. It was a popular way to sell newsletter subscriptions back in the 90s and 2000s, before the Internet started to have its finest hour.

A typical magalog had a main “message from the editor” that ran the length of the “magazine.” It also had a dozen sidebar articles on individual topics.

How to write all this shit? It seems like a huge amount of work, and it’s hard to know where to even start. And that’s how it seemed to Parris back when he had to write his first magalog.

So Parris asked his mentor, Clayton Makepeace, for advice. And Clayton told Parris writing a magalog was simple:

You start by writing a bunch of fascinations, aka bullets, based on the content you are selling.

Some of these fascinations will have weak payoffs. In other words, there’s a good chance the reader will be disappointed when he finds out the “secret.”

So those weak fascinations stay “blind” fascinations, and just go into the sales pitch that is the message from the editor.

But some fascinations will have great payoffs, real forehead-slapping stuff. Those fascinations become sidebar articles, and reveal the secret.

And Clayton also told Parris the following:

The first few pages of the magalog are all good content… then it shifts to being 50/50 sales and content… and by the end it’s all sales pitch.

That’s all it takes to write a magalog.

So that’s what Parris started to do, with great success. He went on to have magalog controls at major publishers like Boardroom… and some of those magalogs earned him $1M+ in royalties. In the interview, Parris said this bit of advice on how to write a magalog made his career.

“Great for Parris,” you might say. “But how am I supposed to use this info with today’s copy formats?”

I’m glad you ask. Because it seems to me the magalog advice maps neatly to writing emails to promote an information product.

​​Start with fascinations… write an email for each fascination… reveal the rare good payoff… keep the fascination with a weak payoff blind.

And if you run a campaign that’s got a deadline (and why wouldn’t you), you can even follow the magalog structure of keeping the first part of the sequence all good content… then 50/50 content and selling… and finally all teasing and pitch.

But that’s not all. You might be able to use this magalog advice for other copy formats too.

For example, tomorrow I’ll share how you can use it in a sales medium you’ve probably never heard about… the rare and elusive kindlealog.

If you’d like to read that article, you might like to sign up for my email list. It’s where my articles appear first, and with no fascinations kept blind, even the most underwhelming stuff. Click here if you’d like to sign up.

Weapons-grade copy that carries a wallop

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Most rocks on earth contain 2 to 4 ppm of uranium. The worst that a uranium-bearing rock can do is split your head open.

But take many tons of rock, and cook it down to nothing. What you get is “weapons grade” uranium-235. Less than a kilogram of that stuff was enough to wipe out Hiroshima and about 80,000 people.

I bring up this gruesome fact to show you the power of distillation.

​​I started this email with a draft of 200 words. I’ve managed to cut it down to about 100. Because as John Caples said:

“Overwriting is the key. If you need a thousand words, write two thousand. Trim vigorously. Fact-packed messages carry a wallop.”

If you want to subscribe to my fact-packed email newsletter, click here.

 

How to create a selling style people love to read

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Let’s talk about the infamous Arthur P. Johnson.

I say “infamous” because the man was as unlikely as anyone ever to become a successful sales copywriter.

Johnson graduated from Swarthmore College with highest honors. He then went to Oxford University for a graduate degree. He had ambitions of becoming a poet, and a backup plan of becoming an academic.

Yet, through a chance runin at a bar with a former classmate, Johnson gradually got sucked into the world of direct response. He first worked at the Franklin Mint, writing copy for collectibles (a good education — how do you sell something with no obvious benefits?).

He next worked in product development at another collectibles company. Finally, even though he did not want to write copy any more, he stumbled into freelance copywriting. And that’s when things really took off.

Johnson wrote controls for a number of major publishers, including Boardroom and Agora. He made himself a fortune in the process.

He was so successful he made it onto Brian Kurtz’s Mount Rushmore of greatest copywriters, along with Parris Lampropoulos, David Deutsch, and Eric Betuel.

And here’s the lesson. When Arthur P. Johnson was asked what he attributes his success to, he said the following:

“I think that I’m able to sell products in a more entertaining way than a lot of other people are. I think that being entertaining while you are selling is a big key to success in a very crowded marketplace these days, because you really have to buy people’s attention.”

Johnson did most of his work in the 90s and 2000s. But this lesson, about having to be entertaining to sell, is even more true today than it was back then.

I’m proof of this.

Not with these emails, where I rarely sell anything.

But starting earlier this year, I’ve helped move hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ecommerce products.

​​I’ve done it by writing emails, much like this one, that tell some kind of story or share a joke or just a funny picture. And those emails most often link to advertorials I also wrote… which contain more of the same — stories, fake personal confessions, and light humor (so I think).

The thing is, I’m not particularly entertaining in real life, or when writing things other than copy. In other words, all this entertainment stuff can be learned by rote.

So how do you learn it?

Two ways:

First, start paying attention to the books, shows, emails, and movies you yourself find entertaining.

Second, read or re-read Commandment IX of my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

No, this chapter is not a how-to for writing entertaining copy. But it will give you some successful examples of such copy that are running right now.

Plus it will even give you some advice on who and what to study if you want to get better at entertaining in your copy.

And once you start to entertain in your copy, expect people to comment on how interesting your writing is. Expect to have them say how they look forward to hearing from you. And most of all, expect to have them buy — as long as you’ve got anything to sell.

Speaking of which, I happen to have something to sell tonight. In case you don’t yet have my 10 Commandments book, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments