Advertorials

Free 3-step plan to get more testimonials, perform an X-ray of your market, have buyers recommit to what they just bought from you, and possibly even drive more sales

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Here’s a 3-step plan to get more testimonials, perform an X-ray of your market, have buyers recommit to what they just bought from you, and possibly even drive more sales:

STEP 1. Sell an offer.

STEP 2. Offer people a bonus if they buy the offer now.

STEP 3. When people buy, send them an email with the promised bonuses. At the top of that email, paste in the following mystical, secret, wizard-like spell:

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Thanks for taking me up on [the name of your offer].

I’m curious, what made you do it?

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Yes, that’s it.

Yes, I can see your jaw drop and your eyes roll back in your head from mock amazement.

All I can say is, don’t knock it till you try it.

I’ve been doing this all week long with people who took me up on my recommendation for the 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

As usual when I interact directly with people on my list, I’ve been blown away by how little I know, how pale my own imagination, and how rich and surprising it is to go out to my market and talk to them.

You want examples?

I’ve gotten a dozen responses so far, with varying answers to “What made you do it.” Three categories have been prevalent so far:

A. The opportunity of the beast

This being a biz-in-a-box offer, it’s inevitable that people would cite the opportunity of it. Ok, that’s not surprising. But still, it’s different and more insightful to hear it in people’s own words:

#1. “I still don’t plan on leaving my job which I like no matter how successful it is though I might stop working overtime and do this instead once it starts paying. In the meantime it’s not that much of a time commitment that I can’t do both.”

#2. “I like Travis [Sago]’s model of working other’s lists but this method looks equally profitable but might be more helpful in expanding my skills.”

B. A point of differentiation

I hadn’t thought of this one at all, and I didn’t talk about it in my emails. And yet, multiple people brought up the uniqueness of advertorials as opposed to other things copywriters can offer:

#1. “It’s also a point of differentiation since it seems that everyone who hasn’t firmly planted their flag in the email copywriting camp (i.e. most copywriters/marketers) has rebranded themselves as a creative strategist overnight (soon-to-be most copywriters/marketers).”

#2. “Clients who are willing to spend money on advertorials are more serious overall. Meta ads is the bright shiny object that everyone and their dog in law wants rn. But advertorials have been around way longer and sophisticated clients like them a lot.”

C. Because of me

1-Person Advertorial Agency is a great offer, I think its value is self-contained.

And yet, the fact that my readers know and trust me (and maybe even like me???) definitely helps sell the offer, and makes it more credible — even when I say I haven’t used this system myself:

#1. “Plus, as a previous buyer of yours, products you recommend carry more weight than other offers.”

#2. “The fact that you are promoting it. Especially your honesty in saying you have not been taken the course yourself.”

So there you go. Sell something. Then ask people why they bought, and you shall receive.

And now, an important announcement:

The opportunity to get 1-Person Advertorial Agency + the bonuses I am offering is ending tonight at 12 midnight PST.

Along with the core 1-Person Advertorial Agency offer (full details at the sales page below), I am offering the following bonuses:

#1 Horror Advertorial Swipe File, which you can feed to the AI beast so it produces better, or rather, more horrifying advertorials

#2. 26 Rules of Client Management for Copywriters, taken from my Copy Zone guide to the business side of copywriting

#3. Most Valuable Postcard #1: Nota Rapida, which digs into the topic of building long-term relationships with copywriting clients much more deeply

#4. Ghostbuster, Nick Bandy’s 5-stage sequence for reactivating (reanimating?) dead clients or prospective clients

If you wanna get that, you will have to act today. But why not act now, while it’s on your mind? Here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

How to sell innovative products that eliminate a common gripe and are completely different from other solutions the market has tried

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I have a little treasure chest I call the “Horror Advertorial Swipe File.”

This swipe file collects 25 horror advertorials I’ve written in the past, which were responsible for millions of dollars in sales to cold Facebook and YouTube traffic of random ecom products, from dog seat belts to kids vitamins to shoe insoles.

I also have outlines of 6 common “horror advertorial” structures found in this swipe file, which I realized and formalized only after writing dozens of these advertorials.

These structures are broken up by the kind of product that’s being promoted and the kind of market problem, for example:

* Everyday need – innovative product that eliminates a common gripe – completely different solution to what they’re currently using

* Acute, annoying problem – science breakthrough packaged into technology

* Unaware of ongoing problem – no good solution – finally a good solution

I even followed one of my own advertorial structures recently when writing up the case study of the $31k auction I ran last month. (I followed the first structure above, of the everyday need and the innovative product that eliminates common gripes with previous solutions like launches, webinars, and sales calls.)

Yes, ecom advertorial structures can be a a great fix for writing boring and literal (version 1 of my case study) and turning the same into exciting and mysterious (version 2), even if you’re writing an entirely different-seeming format (case study/lead magnet versus cold-traffic advertorial).

I’m telling you this because I’m currently promoting the 1-Person Advertorial Agency, which I claim is the hottest opportunity for copywriters in 2026.

Yesterday, I wrote about the “quality” or lack thereof of the copy that this system produces.

I’m putting “quality” in quotes because the real quality is not whether the copy sounds like AI or not (AI does the heavy lifting, and you then polish), but whether it sells or not – and it sells.

In any case, I got a reply to yesterday’s email from Sam Bradbury-Butler, who is both a reader of this newsletter and the creator of the 1-Person Advertorial Agency system. Said Sam:

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I would say a John Bejakovic level writer is likely to get John Bejakovic level advertorials out of the system. The better you know a market, your skill as a writer and the better the examples you feed it, the better an advertorial you’ll get. There’s also no reason why you couldn’t use a John Bejakovic advertorial as the base structure and rhythm of your advertorial if you have his swipe file (!!)

Since there’s a final layer of editing we do, the final product comes down to the writers judgement and skill. AI lays out the proven pieces, and we come through and polish by hand (which I show in the program).

That said, the biggest benefit of the system isn’t that you can make an AI write better than JB but that you can pump out advertorials of a very high quality fast that have the highest possible chance of making an ecom brand (and YOU) a large amount of dosh on each one.

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I was unclear on the bit where Sam says folks could benefit from having my Horror Advertorial Swipe File, and how that fits into his AI workflow. I asked Sam to elaborate. He did:

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After we’ve done our research and designed our ‘argument’ based on the avatar’s beliefs, we use a proven advertorial swipe to become the ‘blueprint’ for the structure and rhythm of the piece. So if someone was to use one of your swipes as the model for their advertorial, it would follow the same structure but written with the stories and language of the researched market and specifically about the product of focus.

For anyone who loves your Horror advertorial style (me included) it’s a great way to create this style of page and then make it your own.

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When I initially promoted the 1-Person Advertorial Agency last summer, I didn’t include any bonuses, because I figured nothing I had could materially contribute to the already overflowing cup of value included in this offer.

This second time, I have come up with a few bonuses that make it even easier or more likely that you will see success, and quick, if you decide to go the 1-Person Advertorial Agency route.

I am now throwing in the Horror Advertorial Swipe File into the mix. The total list of bonuses, if you invest in 1-Person Advertorial Agency, before 12 midnight tomorrow, Saturday is this:

#1 Horror Advertorial Swipe File, which you can feed to the AI beast so it produces better, or rather, more horrifying advertorials

#2. 26 Rules of Client Management for Copywriters, taken from my Copy Zone guide to the business side of copywriting

#3. Most Valuable Postcard #1: Nota Rapida, which digs into the topic of building long-term relationships with copywriting clients much more deeply

#4. Ghostbuster, Nick Bandy’s 5-stage sequence for reactivating (reanimating?) dead clients or prospective clients

Btw, did you catch the deadline above?

It’s tomorrow, Saturday, at 12 midnight PST.

I have other stuff to get to, and so I’m ending my promo early, even before Sam and company completely close down their order page.

If you want the bonuses above, you will have to act before 12 midnight PST tomorrow, Saturday. Or why not act now, why it’s on your mind? Here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

If you have ambitions of copywriting mastery…

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A long time reader and professional copywriter writes in to ask about 1-Person Advertorial Agency, which I claim is the hottest opportunity for copywriters in 2026, and which I’ve been promoting all week:

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John, be honest… is the copy the system spits out for the advertorials any good?

Because compared to your advertorial copy, I don’t know, man.

I looked at the advertorial samples on the sales page, and one of them pretty much reads exactly like AI.

That second-to-last paragraph in the joint pain advertorial especially… it made absolutely no sense.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me being picky.

I just wanted to get your opinion before I consider pulling the trigger.

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Is the copy any good?

I can’t say. I haven’t used the 1-Person Advertorial Agency system myself. But I think the proof is in the pudding.

Does it matter if professional copywriters say it reads like AI?

Or is it more important if it’s making sales to cold traffic, and both the business and the copywriter are making bank?

As for the results of the copy this system produces — the 30% boosts in conversions, the millions of dollars worth of resulting sales, the $49k paychecks — I trust Sam Bradbury-Butler and Thom Benny, the two guys who created this offer. That’s why I’m promoting this to you full-throat.

If you have ambitions of copywriting mastery, I think that’s a noble goal to strive after.

All I will say is it’s much easier to get good as a copywriter if you have successful clients… if you are working on real projects… if you can see sales coming in hourly or minutely… if you have opportunities to test and get results on your tests every day.

Ultimately that’s what this opportunity is about:

Get clients, get results, get paid.

If that’s something that interests you, either so you can take your ample earnings and chill in your ample free time, or so you can take your client relationships and use them to turn yourself into the next Gene Schwartz, here’s where to get at this opportunity, before it closes in a few short days:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

Will the advertorial opportunity get saturated?

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Yesterday, I started promoting 1-Person Advertorial Agency, which I claim is the hottest opportunity for copywriters in 2026.

Today, I made some sales. I also got some questions. Here’s a layup:

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My furry little mittens are intrigued, enough to make me interested in creating a lucrative side hustle so I don’t have to rely on overtime from work to pad my pay packet. I am not working in the business or copywriting space but if this works for beginners then I think it would work for me. My question though, is do you think this would get saturated given places aren’t capped?

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“Will it get saturated” is a natural question to ask with any “hot” business opportunity, even a niche one like this.

The glib answer is to do some back of napkin math:

There are an estimated 280 million ecommerce businesses worldwide. Even if only 1% are a good fit for this (it’s likely more), and if a staggering 1,000 people end up buying and applying this program (probably way less), there will still be 280 clients to go around for everybody who gets in on this opportunity.

That’s all probably true and even an underestimate. But who was ever persuaded by numbers? For sure not me.

So lemme tell you a better way to look at this situation, meaning my way to look at this situation.

The real opportunity here is not to get dozens or hundreds of clients, and to keep hunting after more and more clients.

The real opportunity here is that advertorials that increase front-end conversions are a way to get your foot in the door with two or three really good long-term partners, who are able and willing to pay you hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars over the long-term.

I speak to this from experience. Five+ years ago, I was actually writing lotsa advertorials for ecommerce clients.

The results were just like the sales page for 1-Person Advertorial Agency claims:

Dramatic boosts in conversion rates and ability to scale on cold traffic. A lot of demand.

All in all, it was fine work, and well paid, even though it took me 4-5 days to do what can now be done in 45 minutes.

But even at the nice rate I was getting paid per advertorial, the vast majority of the money I made with those clients, and in fact the vast majority of the money I’ve ever made from copywriting — I’m guessing over 90% — came via commission-only emails I wrote to the buyers’ lists of those clients.

You don’t have to write emails if you don’t want to.

My point is simply, once again, to get yourself into a place where “saturation” becomes completely irrelevant to you, because you have formed a tight and codependent bond with a few clients. Once you’re making them and yourself a lot of money, you really don’t care what everybody else might be doing because your clients/partners would never think to go somewhere else.

To help you get there, I have decided to add in a few bonuses to the already overflowing cup of value that’s included inside 1-Person Advertorial Agency. Specifically:

#1. 26 Rules of Client Management for Copywriters, taken from my Copy Zone guide to the business side of copywriting.

Inside Copy Zone, I put the section on Client Management before Client Acquisition. As I explain in there:

“It might seem like we’re jumping ahead. But in my copywriting career so far, the biggest mistakes I’ve made and the biggest opportunities I’ve squandered were not due to being ignorant of some secret technique for client acquisition. Instead, they were due to choosing the wrong clients.”

#2. Most Valuable Postcard #1: Nota Rapida, which digs into the topic of building long-term relationships with copywriting clients much more deeply.

#3. Ghostbuster, Nick Bandy’s 5-stage sequence for reactivating (reanimating?) dead clients or prospective clients. As Nick says on the sales page for Ghostbuster:

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I’ve been ghosted after:

* The client replies

* I reveal my rates

* The client sends a job offer

* The client funds the first milestone

* And even AFTER getting paid and receiving a review from the client!

And it really doesn’t matter how good of a salesperson you are, or how amazing your first message was. People. Just. Ghost. It happens to everybody. But it doesn’t have to KEEP happening.

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… and while Ghostbuster can certainly help you turn interested but ghosty prospects into actual clients, it’s even more valuable in that last case, where you’ve already done some work for a client, it went great, and then they ghost you for reasons of their own (it happens).

That’s all if you get 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

Like I said, there’s a sales page for that offer, but rather than send you there, I’ll send you to an email-style advertorial, a piece of sales copy masquerading as content, which I wrote about this offer yesterday, and which will allow you to get a good idea if this offer is for you or not:

https://bejakovic.com/announcing-son-of-sams-1-person-advertorial-agency/

Announcing: Son of Sam’s 1-Person Advertorial Agency

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Today, you can get your furry little mittens on the 1-Person Advertorial Agency, which I believe to be the hottest opportunity for copywriters in 2026.

The background:

Sam Bradbury-Butler is a rare beast, an actual, living freelance copywriter who is doing GREAT, both in 2025 and even in these few days of 2026.

Sam’s been working with various ecom clients over the past few years. He has made millions for them by producing (rather than writing) advertorials, and he’s getting PAID as a result.

How paid?

This January 1st, just 11 days ago, Sam got paid over $49,900…

… for one month’s work, or rather, for one month’s results…

… for just ONE client. And Sam’s got a buncha clients.

How Sam does it, and how you can do it too, is what you can find out on the sales page below.

It lays everything out in gruesome detail.

In short, 1-Person Advertorial Agency is a copywriting-business-in-a-box, and it shows you, step-by-step, with nothing held back:

* How Sam gets advertorial clients who have never heard of him before, without flexing his portfolio or client results…

* How he stamps out advertorials that convert on cold traffic, in as little as 47 minutes (AI does the heavy lifting, Sam double checks and polishes)

* How he swings performance deals rather than retainers (performance deals = more money, less workee)

… and, most important, HOW YOU CAN DO THE SAME. I mean that.

The classical business opportunity pitch is always, “… with no experience needed!”

Well, as you can see on the sales page below, that’s actually true here.

One zero-experience dude named Maceo took Sam’s advertorial printing press and made his first $100k as a copywriter.

Another zero-experience dude named Tom took this system and, within 4 hours, produced an advertorial that increased conversions for an ecom business by 30%.

As Sam himself says:

“If I had no case studies and zero clients… I would spend the next 30 days using this system to write an advertorial every day for brands I liked and send it to them offering to test it free of charge.”

Of course, if you do have some experience, it won’t hurt, and who knows, it might even help. In fact, if there were one thing that can lure me back into copywriting, this 1-Person Advertorial Agency might turn out to be it.

This is only the second time this program is being made available.

I promoted it the first and only other time it appeared, last August. Back then, it was only open with 30 spots, and it sold out in something like 12 hours after I wrote about it to my list.

That’s to say, this is a legit untapped opportunity, which not a lot of people know about, but which you can properly benefit from.

If you wanna find out more about it, or better yet, get started with it today:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

How I would eat ecom copywriters’ lunch… with some fava beans, and a nice chianti

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Over the past year, I have had an ungodly number of people sign up to my list who bill themselves as ecom copywriters.

Typically, the main service these folks offer is email marketing for ecom brands.

Makes sense to me.

Even though I am currently promoting an offer titled 1-Person Advertorial Agency, and though in the past I made good money writing advertorials for ecom clients, that money pales in comparison to the money I made writing emails, for those same clients, on a profit-share basis.

The thing is, I only got a chance to write those profit-share emails because I was already writing advertorials for these clients, and because their entire customer flow, and the success of their future offers and funnels, depended on the front-end copy I was writing.

Which brings me to the following 7-step plan that I would follow today, blindly and with 100% commitment, if I were bent on eating the lunch of all those email-writing ecom copywriters:

1. I’d find ecom businesses that are running paid traffic (easy enough with Facebook ad library, but more below on how to do this in a smart way). I’d look for a business that’s sending traffic straight from their ads to the product page.

2. I’d write an advertorial (or three) for such a business, and I’d do it for absolutely free. (Why not? It’s an investment of a couple hours that could pay back literally hundreds of thousands of dollars over time.)

3. I’d put the advertorial in a Google Doc, and format it nicely so it can function as a live piece of copy. I’d send this to the biz owner. I’d tell them it’s theirs to use, and there’s nothing to do but simply clone the Google Doc (to make sure I don’t mess with it) and redirect a bit of traffic to it to see how it performs against their base funnel.

4. I’d follow up until I get either a “Leave me alone” or a “Damn this worked great, can you write more like this?”

5. If it’s a “Can you write more like this,” I’d say sure. And then I’d make the business owner the following sociopath offer:

“I will write advertorials for you ongoing, for FREE (bear with me here), IF you will let me write emails for you, for FREE also. Just pay me a share of the profits I generate for you on the back end, after the money’s already in your Stripe account.”

6. If I get the objection that they already pay an ecom copywriter to write their emails, I’d politely say, “Fire them. I will do it for free, for just for a share of the profits I make you, unlike those people who charge you whether you make money or not. Plus, I’ll help you scale your ad spend with my advertorials, so we both profit.”

7. If they’re already working with an ecom copywriter who’s getting paid on a profit-share basis, I’d say, “Fire them, because they aren’t writing advertorials for you for free. I will, plus I’ve already proven that I can write copy that sells your offers on cold traffic, which is way harder than email.”

… and to make all this manageable in just a few hours of work a week, I’d use the AI Advertorial Toaster that Thom Benny and his protege Sam are giving away on their 1-Person Advertorial Agency workshop, which happens this Wednesday.

For reference:

It used to take me 4-5 days to write an advertorial.

Sam’s AI Advertorial Toaster pops up a near-good-enough advertorial waffle pretty much instantly. It’s why Sam can bake up and serve an advertorial, one which will convert on cold traffic, in under an hour now, instead of the 4-5 days it took me back when I worked with clients.

It’s also the reason why Sam has been able to write 20+ such advertorials per month, and why he’s pulled in over $50M for clients over the past year alone.

Last point:

Also on the 1-Person Advertorial Agency training, Sam is giving away his Ad Reanimator process, for identifying and contacting clients who are a perfect fit for advertorials — ecom businesses who had a long-running ads that recently died. (Advertorials make those ads come back to life.)

If you are an ecom copywriter already, and if your livelihood is writing emails for clients, maybe a cold chill passed down your back just now. After all, I’m advertising a recipe for someone to come and take your livelihood away, potentially by the end of this week.

The only thing I can tell you is, if you’re currently not offering advertorials to your email clients, there’s nothing stopping you from doing so, using Sam’s Toaster and the instruction manual he provides for it.

Not only will you protect yourself against competition sneaking in and taking your email clients away from you, but you have a chance to make a lot more money, whether you simply want to charge your clients for your advertorials, or do a revshare deal like I lay out above (again, it’s how I made most of my money).

And if you’re not an “ecom copywriter” yet, it is a legit opportunity right now, even if you have little experience to speak of.

In either case, Thom and Sam’s workshop is happening this Wednesday. For more info, or to sign up before it’s too late:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

Announcing: 1-Person Advertorial Agency

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This Wednesday, Thom Benny and his protege Sam will hold a workshop titled 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

As you might know, Thom is an ex-Agora copywriter who now co-runs a fintech company and coaches copywriters on the side. And as for Sam, he is a copywriter who:

1. Drove $50M worth of sales with advertorials he has written for ecom clients, on cold traffic, over the past year alone

2. Takes less than an hour to write one of these suckers, and can churn out 20+ of ’em a month, because he’s getting AI to do much of the work

3. Is finding it easy to get good new clients, because he makes them an offer to reanimate their once-performing, recently dead ads.

And that entire system, everything that makes this possible, is what Sam will be sharing on this workshop:

The AI setup… how to tweak what the AI gives you so it actually converts on cold traffic… plus how to get clients who see the benefit of such advertorials and are happy to pay you generously. (Says Thom, “$5,000-$10,000 per project, delivering in just days, not weeks”).

For reference, Thom wasn’t gonna promote this workshop via affiliates. I insisted and nudged and insisted some more until he said ok.

In case you’re wondering why I’m eager to promote Thom and Sam’s workshop, it’s because advertorials are a kind of copy that I used to write a lot of for clients.

I know the effects advertorials can have on an ecom funnel. One client I worked for dropped in one of my advertorials into his existing funnel, and could immediately scale ads from $2k a day to $12k a day.

I also know the demand for such work. I recently had an ex-client write me to ask if I’d write advertorials for his new business. Another client, the CEO of an ecom brand, once paid me $2k to give him a brain dump of how I write advertorials.

That’s why I’m promoting this workshop to you in the short time that remains.

I was gonna offer bonuses because that’s what you do when you promote somebody else’s offer.

But frankly, Sam gives you everything you need on this workshop, including how to get clients, how to produce advertorials, and how to make them convert so clients keep hiring you and paying you.

And the deal on this workshop is frankly ridiculous.

This “1-Person Advertorial Agency” is a legit business-in-a-box. You don’t come across those so often. When you do, it’s the kind of thing that typically sells for $5k or $50k upfront, plus often sort of unpleasant monthly licensing fee.

For whatever reason, perhaps because selling trainings is not their main business, or because the opportunity is so big and so live, Sam and Thom are not stretching this out into a weeks-long course, but are delivering a one-day workshop that lasts a couple hours, and still gives you everything you need.

What’s more, they are not selling this workshop for $5k or $50k, plus monthly fees, but for $199, one time.

For the full info on this workshop, or to sign up before this business-in-a-box disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

Where it’s at: Two narrow columns and a PDF

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One of the rare daily email newsletters I read more often than not is by Jason Leister.

Jason used to be a direct response copywriter. He used to write about getting and managing copywriting clients. He’s since moved into stranger waters, where he talks about raising his 10 kids, living off the grid, “unplugging from the matrix,” and manifesting your desires.

All right up my alley, minus the 10 kids.

But let’s talk turkey:

Each Monday, Jason sends an email called Monday Hotsheet. It’s a bunch of curated resources — interesting articles, tech, videos that Jason has come across.

That’s pretty normal.

What was weird is that Jason used to send the Monday Hotsheet as a PDF that he’d link to in his email. Even weirder, the PDF was formatted in two columns, like some insurance brochure.

I liked to read through Jason’s Monday Hotsheet but I always chuckled at the experience. Who does PDFs any more? And in two columns like this?

Well, I guess I manifested something myself, and I should have been more careful about what I asked for.

Because Jason for some reason recently switched Monday Hotsheet to be simply delivered in his daily email, and in just one measly column.

I found myself disappointed. From one week to the next, Jason’s Monday Hotsheet looked cheaper, much less valuable and interesting.

Suddenly, I asked myself if I need another weekly email the curates useful and interesting resources online? I feel like everybody from Arnold Schwarzenegger on down has one of those. I ain’t got time for all these curated valuable resources.

A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos once got a tin pot and a wooden spoon. He then started banging on the tin pot with the wooden spoon while jumping up and down on his couch and chanting, “Format beats copy! Format beats copy!”

(Fine. The part with the wooden spoon and the tin pot I made up. But all the rest of that story is true, except the jumping up and down.)

Parris was specifically talking about the format of sales copy.

Once upon a time, you could take a proven sales letter, format it to look like a magazine or an article or a newsletter issue (the print kind), and you might get a 2.5x bump in response. Format beats copy: Ain’t no copy in the universe that’s gonna get you that kind of a bounce, not when you already have top copywriters working for you.

This holds just as well for info products, whether you give ’em away or charge thousands of dollars for them.

Yes, people should only want the truth, and nothing but the truth. Yes, it shouldn’t matter whether you deliver the truth on a 3×5 index card, or in a 3-ring binder, or a never-to-be-repeated secret performance in an amphitheater in the middle of some remote forest.

It shouldn’t matter, but it does matter.

So my point for you today is, think about the format in which you will deliver your truth.

And if you’ve already delivered your truth, and nobody much cared, or they cared at first and then they dropped off… then think about format again.

Rather than coming up with a new message, you might be able to keep the message and simply deliver it as a 2-column PDF, or whatever else feels unique and different and valuable in your industry.

And sometimes, simple word choice is enough to change the format. Or at least be a major part of it.

Take for example my Daily Email Habit service. At bottom, it’s delivered as a daily email. I could have simply said, “Hey, would you like to sign up for a new set of daily emails, and pay me $30 a month for the privilege?”

Maybe some forward-thinking people would have taken me up on this. But i don’t think it would have worked nearly as well as calling Daily Email Habit a service, which happens to be delivered by email, for your convenience.

Speaking of Daily Email Habit, if you’d like to find out more about this valuable service, or even try it out yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Announcing: Horror Advertorial Swipe File

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A couple weeks ago, right after I ran a classified ad in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter, I got an email from a new reader:

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I just joined your list from Daniel Throssell’s classified ad and really love your Quick and dirty email training, especially because the companies you talk about pertain to ecom.

Was wondering, do you have any other ecom focused resources? Will gladly pay for them.

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I wrote back to ask the guy what he is doing and what specifically he is looking for.

It turns out he has a Shopify jewelry store in the affirmation niche. And he asked:

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Do you have a swipe file of story-based advertorials? Will gladly pay for it!

I noticed you talked about you using the story based advertorials in your story sells bonus as well.

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The background, as you might know, is, that between 2018 and 2021, I wrote dozens of front-end advertorials — basically mini sales letters — all following the same “horror story” structure. These advertorials were parts of cold-traffic funnels that, by my best estimate, brought in over $15 million in cold-traffic ecommerce sales.

The funnels that featured those horror advertorials are no longer running. Of course, I do still have the original copy. I haven’t ever sold it or shared it before. But I’m no longer taking on clients to write advertorials. So I asked myself, why not sell what I got?

I wrote back to the guy to say he could have a collection of my horror advertorials for $100.

He agreed and PayPaled me $100. Later that night, I drove to an empty parking lot behind an abandoned factory, and I dropped off a leather bag filled with my advertorials for him to pick up.

​​Well, not really. I just sent them to him via email.

But then, sitting on my couch with pen in hand, I had one of those Obvious Adams moments. If one person believes he can get value from a swipe file of story-based advertorials… maybe a second person also might? Or maybe even a third?

I’ll see.

Because right now I am making a collection of 25 of my horror advertorials for $100 to people on my email list.

The offers promoted by these advertorials include everything from anti-mosquito bracelets, bamboo fiber paper towels, fake diamonds, dog seat belts, stick-on bras, and kids’ vitamins.

Is it worth buying this horror-filled swipe file?

​​It depends.

A few days after I clandestinely dropped off the leather bag of advertorials in the abandoned factory parking lot, the jewelry store owner wrote me to say:

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I’ve been going through your advertorials and they’re incredible to study. Off the top of your head, do you have an idea of which ones stood out in terms of sales/performance?

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The fact is, success in these horror advertorial funnels was due more to the offer than the copy. A good/scary advertorial couldn’t reliably sell a bad/bland offer for very long. On the other hand, a good offer worked even without an advertorial, with an ad that went straight to the product page.

But combine a good offer with a good advertorial and the result was often a big success, and one that could last for years.

I don’t have exact sales numbers for any of these advertorials. But I definitely do know which ones ran for a long time, which ones sold well both on the front end to Facebook and YouTube traffic, and and on the back end via email.

So if you get this swipe file of 25 advertorials, I’ll also sense you a little welcome letter where I describe which of these advertorials were part of long-running successes, which advertorials I think are particularly strong, and which ones might be worth modeling for other reasons.

In this same letter, I also included a quick description of the overall structure of these horror advertorial funnels.

Speaking of funnels:

I encourage you NOT to buy this swipe file if you are simply looking for more swipe file content to hoard, or if you have no experience running cold traffic and are looking for a miracle in that department.

It only makes sense to buy this if you already have a functioning cold-traffic funnel — either for your own business or for a client’s business.

In that case, dropping in a horror advertorial into your existing funnels can help you get much more out of that cold traffic. That’s what happened with that kids’ vitamins advertorial I mentioned above. That client managed to profitably scale from $2k/day to $12k/day in daily ad spend by adding in one of my horror advertorials to their existing funnel.

Last thing:

If you do buy this swipe file, I have a special free (“free” as in no money) mystery offer for you. I will tell you about that offer in the email that delivers the zip file with the advertorials. Again, this offer will only be relevant if you already have a working cold-traffic funnel. In that case, even though this offer is free, it might easily be worth a few thousand dollars to you.

I am making this swipe file available until this Sunday, March 27 2023, at 12 midnight PST. After that I will take it down.

If it turns out there’s not much interest in this swipe file, I will drag the beast to the back of the house and quickly put it out of its misery. On the other hand, if it turns out there is interest, I will think about how to expand this and charge more for it.

In any case, if you want this swipe file, you will have to be on my list first, and before the deadline. To get on there in time, click here and fill out the form that appears.

If you have an ecommerce business, then I’d like to talk to you

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If you have an ecommerce business, and you want to make more front-end sales, increase your ad spend profitably, and make more money from your current customer list, then I’d like to talk to you.

I haven’t talked much about this over the past year — but these are things I know about.

My longest-running client, back when I still did client work regularly, was an 8-figure ecommerce business.

I wrote dozens of cold-traffic funnels from them, from snout to tail, including a unique front-end format I called the “horror advertorial.”

That client was consistently making up to 2,000 front-end sales each day, using a bunch of my “horror advertorial” funnels. Another client of mine went from $2k/day to $12k/day in daily ad spend by adding in one of my horror advertorials to their existing funnel.

I’ve also done email marketing for ecommerce businesses. I’ve worked with 8-figure direct response supplement businesses and tripled results in their email funnels. I’ve managed two 70,000-person email lists and pulled out free money for them out of thin air, month after month.

All that’s to say these are things I know about.

So if you have an ecommerce business, and you want my help or advice, then get on my email list. And then write me, and we can start a conversation.