Bullets

Great headlines and subheads, great openers and closers, great subject lines and postscripts

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At the start of this year, I got a message from Matt Cascarino. Matt is the chief creative officer at FARM, a marketing agency that’s had among its clients the American Cancer Society, the SPCA, New Era (the company that makes Major League Baseball’s official caps), and Kelley Blue Book.

Matt had been going through my Copy Riddles program. And he wrote to say:

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Hey, John…

Bluntly, Copy Riddles is kicking my ass. But in a good way.

Despite my bullets missing the mark in the first nine rounds, I’m learning a ton and referring back to the material to craft sneaky-good bullets for my own communications.

It wasn’t until Round 10B that things began to click. See my three bullets below and the A-listers’ efforts after that. I laid an egg by overthinking #3, but I’m pretty happy with my first two.

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Below this message, Matt had pasted three of his sales bullets that he had written recently.

I took a look.

His bullets were great. Whatever he was doing to learn how to write bullets — hmm, I wonder what that could be — it was working.

For a while now, I’ve been beating on my tin pot and saying to anyone who would listen that sales bullets are the essence of effective sales copy. I’ve also been saying that bullets are as relevant today as they were when Gary Halbert and John Carlton wrote entire sales letters that were really just a pileup of sexy, bizarre, fascinating bullets.

But you might be skeptical when I promote the idea of learning to write bullets, since I sell a program on writing great bullets.

Fortunately, just yesterday (thanks to Thom Benny) I came upon a relevant passage from a well-known guy in this field, Eddie Shleyner of Very Good Copy. Eddie wrote:

“If you can write great bullets, you can also write great headlines and subheads, great openers and closers, great subject lines and postscripts.”

So there you go. Learn to write great bullets, and most other copywriting skills simply fall out as a side-effect.

As for how to write great bullets:

Copy Riddles is in all immodesty the best program to learn to write great sales bullets.

That’s not because I created Copy Riddles.

It’s because Copy Riddles doesn’t just tell you stuff.

Instead, Copy Riddles can do to you what it did to Matt. Get you practicing in a safe and controlled environment… correct you when you are not doing well enough… and within a matter of a few weeks, have you writing bullets that Halbert himself would be proud of.

For more info on Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Announcing: Copy Riddles Lite

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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

AI expert tells you how to learn copywriting

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I’m preparing for the live presentation I’m supposed to give at The Copywriter Club London event on Wednesday.

My flight is tomorrow, and then Wednesday afternoon I’m supposed to perform.

While I’m not yet at full-blown levels of panic, there is still a lot more I would like to do to prepare. I hope that with preparation I can minimize the shock and horror and chance of humiliation when I actually do get up in front of people and talk on Wednesday.

All that’s to say, don’t expect any involved Bejako Baggins emails today. I have to keep today’s email short and to the point.

So let me pull out a bit of credibility I’ve been sitting on for a few weeks.

This bit of credibility comes from Steve Raju, who has transformed himself over the past year from your run-of-the-mill genius into a high-paid corporate AI whisperer.

Though it’s worth noting that, previous to this new AI career, Steve was a direct response copywriter. He even taught copywriting, both on his own trainings and inside Stefan Georgi’s thing.

Anyways, in the middle of a characteristically charming email a few weeks ago, Steve got serious for a moment to give some advice to those who want to learn copywriting:

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Write every day. I never knew a single writer who got better about writing, without umm… writing. Write headlines, leads and closes. Write emails. Write ads. Launch your own offers. Learn what works. And of all the things to learn to write well, learn to write bullets. Best person to learn from? John Bejakovic and his Copy Riddles course. The best course of them all. I’m really not joking.

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I am also not joking when I say that, during the few minutes it’s taken me to put together this email, a wave of nausea has washed over me, caused I suppose by that impending presentation in London.
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So if you don’t mind, I’ll go now and pull my hair a bit and then get back to work on that presentation.

Meanwhile, if you would like to learn to write bullets, so you can learn to write better copy in general, and who knows, maybe even better presentations, then here’s what Steve calls the best course of them all:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

How Edward Bernays manipulated me, and how he might do it again

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I once wrote an email with the subject line, “How I manipulated you, and how I might do it again.”

​​That email was all about the strategic use of inflammatory words — like “manipulated” — to get people reading stuff they might not read otherwise.

Well, Edward Bernays manipulated me, and I guess he manipulated millions of other people, too.

Right now, I’m reading Bernays’s book Propaganda. It’s been in print for the past 100 years, and it’s still discussed today, though I suspect few people who discuss it have ever read it.

Why do people know and discuss Propaganda? Because of that title. Propaganda. It’s like manipulated. On the one hand repulsive, on the other hand fascinating.

Imagine that Bernays had titled his book Public Relations — which is really what his book is about. Would we be talking about it today, much less reading it?

The answer is no. The proof is that Bernays did in fact write a book called Public Relations. Result?

Propaganda: 2,700+ reviews on Amazon
Public Relations: 74 reviews on Amazon — and I bet most of those only came via Bernays’s Propaganda fame

All that’s to say, hooks matter. And unless you hook someone right away, then all the other thousands of words you might have written won’t matter much.

But you knew that. It’s the oldest bit of advice traded around the copywriting bonfire.

What you might not know is how to write a great hook. How to make it sensational and inflammatory — propaganda for the rest of what you have to say.

About that. As Daniel Throssell wrote recently:

​The skill of coming up with a great hook, and the skill of making it sensational, are almost exactly the same as a tiny, mechanical, supposedly “niche” copywriting skill you probably do not yet possess.

​​But it’s a skill you can find out more about, and even acquire quickly, via the following page:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

What 44 percent of all Russian mystics wish you knew about the easiest way to bring them to an explosive death every time! (It’s news to a lot of marketers… see inside)

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The man was was not easy to kill. A mystic, prophet, and natural-born hypnotist who appeared at the court of the last Russian czar, and who, in just a short while, gained enormous influence:

Grigori Rasputin.

After a few years of growing nonsense at the court — nonsense caused by Rasputin’s influence — a faction of the Russian royal family had had enough. They schemed and plotted, and decided in secret to have Rasputin killed.

So on December 30, 1916, Rasputin was served poisoned wine and pastries laced with potassium cyanide. He swallowed glass after glass of the wine and wolfed down the pastries.

He groaned a little, but it wasn’t enough to kill the hearty Russian peasant.

Prince Felix Yusupov then emerged from behind a curtain and shot Rasputin with a pistol. More groaning but the beast still seemed to live.

So Rasputin was then stabbed repeatedly, and eventually dragged to the icy Neva river and drowned there. This finally did the job.

Of course, most people don’t put up so much resistance. I believe even one cyanide-laced chocolate chip cookie would be enough to do me in. But for more resistant, stubborn souls, other options exist.

I bring up the grisly story of Rasputin’s death because I’m about to make an inelegant comparison.

For the next few days, I will be promoting my Copy Riddles course. Copy Riddles teaches you copywriting, or really, effective communication, via the mechanism of teaching you sales bullets.

The reason sales bullets are so good for learning copywriting is that they have to pack an entire sales presentation in just a sentence or two. If you happen to write in the most competitive, sophisticated, stubborn, and resistant markets, this produces miracles/monsters of persuasion such as this:

“What 44 percent of all women wish you knew about the easiest way to bring her to an explosive climax every time! (It’s news to a lot of men… see pages 89-93.)”

That’s a bullet by A-list copywriter John Carlton. Carlton wrote this and dozens of bullets like it to promote a boring book about sexual health for direct response publisher Rodale, whose main business was selling how-to guides about tomato gardening.

Result? from Carlton’s files:

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I had to fight tooth and nail to get this piece mailed. At one point I was screaming at upper level veeps. I wish someone had taken a video of that meeting: there’s all these honchos sitting around the conference table, stunned, and there’s my voice hollering from the little speakerphone. (I never travel to client meetings, and have never met any of these people face-to-face.) Priceless.

It took me nearly a month to convince them to mail the piece as I wrote it. I caused such a fuss that I was actually blacklisted — until the results came in. I slaughtered the control. In fact, I’d hit a nerve in the public, and this piece mailed for over 5 years, despite frequent attempts by other top writers to knock it off. Ka-ching.

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Maybe you have no stomach for screaming at your clients or customers, or for writing explosive sales copy that slaughters the control in the easiest way possible every time. That’s fine. Not everybody is competing on the national stage, like Carlton was, or against other top writers.

On more modest stages, it’s enough to reach for just one or two of Carlton’s deadly persuasion weapons — instead of doing the equivalent of poisoning, shooting, stabbing, and then drowning your poor reader.

I told you it’s an inelegant analogy. But what to do — we’re talking about bullets. And as marketer Ken McCarthy put it once, bullets wound.

In any case, if you want access to the entire secret closet of persuasion poisons, knives, pistols, blunderbusses, mace, shuriken, anvils-on-a-frayed-rope, halberds, and brass knuckles, so you can choose a persuasion weapon or two for your particular purpose, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Newsflash: Gary Bencivenga endorses the Copy Riddles approach

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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

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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:

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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?

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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. ​​
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In case effective communicating is what yer after, you can find out more about Copy Riddles at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

What never to swallow at the start of your newsletter

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No, I’m not talking about swallowing your pride. Read on because it’s important.

​​Last night I was reviewing a newsletter. The newsletter was full of valuable content, but the author didn’t try to sell me on that content in any way. He meant for it to sell itself.

This brought to mind something I heard marketing wizard Dan Kennedy say:

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We sometimes take the attention of the people with whom we communicate with all the time for granted. That they will give us attention because of who we are and our relationship with them. It’s a bad presumption. It was not a bad presumption a decade ago when there weren’t as many of us showing up every day, asking for their attention. But now there’s a lot more of us showing up every day, asking for their attention. And so we gotta earn it, every single time.

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If you’re anything like me, then your brain will try to feed you excuses, all day long, just because it wants to stop thinking. It will say:

“They opted​​ in to my newsletter. They expressed interest. They want to hear what I have to say.”

“They like my persona. They read my emails in the past. They bought stuff from me!”

“​​I’m sure they will read this too. It’s good enough.”

​Don’t swallow your brain’s excuses. ​Don’t take your readers attention for granted. That’s not good enough.

Not if you want the best chance to influence people, to present yourself as an authority, to get your readers to buy or share or do whatever it is you’re after.
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The more closely people read your stuff, the more of your story and your arguments they swallow, the more you manage to spike their emotions in the minutes they spend with your content, the better it is for you. And in a way, for them.

As a Big Pharma salesman might tell you, the most expensive drug is the one that doesn’t work.

And as I, a Big Copy salesman, will tell you, the most expensive 3 seconds for your reader are clicking on your email and skimming straight through to the end because he’s not properly engaged. That’s 3 seconds wasted for nothing.

On the other hand, 3 or 13 minutes reading every word you wrote because you sold it properly ahead of time — that can be both valuable and enjoyable.

So how do you pre-sell your valuable content?

That knowledge is something I don’t pre-sell. That’s something I sell.

Specifically, that’s what I sell inside my Copy Riddles program. In case you’re interested:

Copy Riddles shows you A-list copywriters sell and pre-sell valuable but dry information. But Copy Riddles does much more. It gets you doing the same.

This doesn’t mean you have to go all John Carlton on your newsletter readers.

You can be subtle or savage in the way you pre-sell your content and your information. It’s your choice.

What is not your choice is how people’s brains work, and what kinds of messages they respond to. And the most condensed and powerful way to create messages that people respond to is inside Copy Riddles.

As I mentioned two days ago, this is the last week I am giving away two free bonuses with Copy Riddles. The first bonus is Storytelling For Sales. The second bonus is Copywriting Portfolio Secrets.

Don’t buy Copy Riddles just for the free bonuses.

But if you decide you want to get Copy Riddles, you have until Saturday Jan 21 at 12 midnight PST to get Storytelling for Sales and Copywriting Portfolio Secrets as free bonuses.

After then, Copy Riddles will remain available, but the free bonuses will disappear.

To get the whole package:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

“Why would you ever say anything that’s not awesome?”

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This past summer, I wrote an email about how I was struggling to get through the Dig.This.Zoom course, in spite of having paid $1,200 for it.

Maybe it will turn out the course wasn’t an entire waste of money, because it did provide me with the following quick story:

In one Dig.This.Zoom lesson, Aaron Winter, former copy chief at Motley Fool and guru to super successful Dig copywriters like Dan Ferrari and Austin Lee, was talking about headlines.

​​”So there’s headlines,” Aaron said, “and then there’s… stuff? Content? We reject that. Ideally, they’re all headlines. Why would you ever say something that’s not awesome?”

In slightly clearer words, Aaron was saying that each line of your copy should have as much pull — as much emotional weight and curiosity and benefit, all fused together — as your headline has.

This is the kind of inspirational but vague mysticism that made me start to tune out the entire Dig.This.Zoom course.

Fortunately, Austin Lee, who was on this particular Dig.This.Zoom call, chimed in at this point with some practical advice:

“One of the most fun and educational exercises you encouraged me to do was write a headline for every little section of my outline. I really wrote an entire promo of maybe 26 or 32 headlines all the way down through the offer.”

I bring this up (spoiler alert) because I am promoting my Copy Riddles program. Whenever I do promote this program, I always get some form of the following question:

Is Copy Riddles just about bullets OR about about copywriting in general?

The answer is yes.

As Aaron says above, copywriting is really about your best headlines. And your best headlines are really just your best bullets. Or as Ben Settle put it once:

“Bullets still work, never stopped working, and will always work — When written correct everything ‘comes’ from the bullets, including non-bullet copy or ads where there are no bullets.”

Copy Riddles is now open and ready to turn you into somebody who writes stuff that’s awesome. Whether that’s awesome bullets, awesome headlines, or awesome body copy.

​​In case you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Ben Settle emergency emails in support of Copy Riddles?

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Last night, I sent out an email vaguely threatening you with a bunch of upcoming emails to promote my Copy Riddles program, which is now open for enrollment until this Sunday at 12 midnight PST.

After I sent that email out, I slumped in my chair and hung my head.

“Great, now what?” I said. “Where am I gonna get all those emails? Who’s gonna write all that stuff I threatened them with?”

Beyond the one half-finished Copy Riddles email I had written during my Most Valuable Email presentation, I had nothing.

But then a desperate idea hit me. “I have that useless diploma from the Oregon School of Manifestation… why don’t I apply what they taught me?”

So I closed my eyes, put my fingers to my temples, and started to massage slowly, while sending out vibrations of easily-written emails into the universe.

YOU’VE GOT MAIL, my AOL account suddenly said.

Well, not really. I don’t use AOL. But I did get an email, just a few minutes after I wished for some easy help.

The email came from Ben Settle, and the subject line read:

“Advice to a new Agora copywriter”

This email of Ben’s is full of uncharacteristically detailed and forthcoming advice. If you’re on Ben’s list, it might be interesting to read. I will highlight just one bit, because it serves my purposes here.

A new Agora copywriter wrote in to ask Ben’s opinion on a bunch of stuff, including that bullets aren’t at all important any more.

To which Ben responded:

“Bullets still work, never stopped working, and will always work — When written correct everything ‘comes’ from the bullets, including non-bullet copy or ads where there are no bullets.”

Now I’d like to think Ben wrote this specifically at this moment, just to help me out with promoting Copy Riddles.

After all, the first basic premise behind Copy Riddles is that once you own the skill of writing bullets, you own the essence of intriguing, irresistible copywriting, no matter what format you write in.

The fundamental ideas inside Copy Riddles apply whether you are writing bullets… headlines… subject lines… body copy of sales letters and VSLs… ads… or emails.

In fact, I think Copy Riddles ideas transfer directly if you are writing sales emails, and not just in subject lines. I’ve even made the claim before that sales emails are basically the modern version of “expanded” bullets.

So that’s the first premise behind Copy Riddles.

The second premise is that you go further and faster by doing and experiencing… than by reading/listening/watching and then forgetting.

That’s why Copy Riddles is built around a unique, effective, and, I modestly think, clever mechanism. The mechanism gets those bullets lodged into your head, not just as a bunch of how-to information, but as a skill that you own.

But don’t take it from me. Since we are speaking of new Agora copywriters, a junior Agora copywriter named Harry Thomas went through Copy Riddles during the last run. And he had this to say:

“Honestly, John’s course is brilliant. While the content is bullets-centred, everything inside can be applied to other aspects of copy. Whenever I’m choosing endo subject lines or writing Taboola ads, I’ll write them out in bullet form first, then pick the best ones to use. And this might sound weird, but I can almost feel myself improving in real-time with John’s exercises.”

To get more details on my Copy Riddles exercises or to join while the joining’s good:

https://copyriddles.com/