Business Of Copy

How to slowly become an A-list copywriter

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Gary Bencivenga, who is often called the greatest living copywriter, didn’t start out so great.

In various places, he’s admitted that he was quite mediocre for a good number of years.

So how did Gary rise to the very top, and make himself millions of dollars in royalties and fees in the process?

Well, he got better.

Much better.

Very slowly.

In fact, one inspiring piece of advice from Gary B. is to simply make yourself 1% better as a copywriter every single week.

How to do this? Here are a few ideas, all of which I personally practice:

First, read. About marketing, copywriting, or persuasion. (Right now, I’m reading E. Haldeman-Julius’s The First 100 Million.)

Second, write. For clients, and for yourself.

Third, spy. Each day, read one successful sales letter for a few minutes. Spend another few minutes hand-copying some other ad.

Do all this every day,  and you can reasonably say you’re getting a 1% boost in your copywriting skills every week.

And here’s the thing:

1% a week compounds.

So at the end of the year, you aren’t just 52% better… you’re 68% better. At the end of 2 years, you’re 181% better. And at the end of 5 years, you become so valuable that the sun itself starts to melt and implode when it catches a glimpse of your skills.

Or not. But if you get 1% better each week, and you keep it up, you will eventually become one of the very best in this field.

But you do have to get started.

Because this compounding thing works best when you give it time. And every week you miss will cost you big a few years down the line.

And here’s one last tip:

If you’re fairly new to copywriting, it’s possible to get better much faster than 1% a week. I’d estimate about 1,000% in 60 days’ time.

Specifically, I’m thinking of CopyHour, a program which combines all 3 of the steps I’ve listed above.

In case this is something that interests you, better act fast. And not only because of compounding. Enrollment for CopyHour is currently open, but it will be closing at the end of this weekend. Here’s the link for more info:

​http://copyhour.com/​

An important reminder for clingy copywriters

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A few days ago, I got carried away.

A potential new client contacted me. “Would you like to write daily emails for us?” he asked.

“Sure I would,” I said. “And I’d like to do more than that for you.”

Then I threw in a kitchen-sinkful of copywriting and marketing services I could provide along with the daily emails. The problem was that at this early stage, I didn’t really know what this client’s actual needs are. In other words, I was pitching instead of selling, as Ben Settle puts it.

Normally, I don’t get this needy or clingy.

But sometimes, it gets away from me.

A few days after this happened, I read something related by direct response copywriter Jason Leister.

I think it’s an important reminder for all copywriters, including myself, who can get carried away when a great new opportunity appears on the horizon. Jason writes:

“Over the years, I’ve come to hire clients very slowly. If you work with clients, consider hiring them SLOWLY. (You are hiring them, remember that. You’re in the driver’s seat of your business, not anyone else. They’ve got the “money” but you have the thing for which they are willing to part with that money. Money is everywhere, YOU are not.)”

Jason then describes what this means practically in his business.

I think it’s worthwhile reading for all freelance copywriters.

If you want to read Jason’s complete email including the practical bits, simply write me and I can forward it to you. Or you can head over to Jason’s site, where he publishes his daily emails with a few days’ delay. Here’s the link:

https://incomparableexpert.org/dailyjournal/

The secret to triggering Upwork’s recommendation algorithm

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One day, I got an invitation to interview for a job on Upwork. The invitation read:

“I’d like to invite you to apply to my job – and I found you by looking up something related to sex and gender. Please review the job post and apply if you’re available.”

The job itself wasn’t interesting to me.

What was interesting was this mention of “sex and gender.” You see, just a day before, I had added a new item to my portfolio.

This portfolio item was titled, “Daily Emails for a Dating & Men’s Health Guru.” It talked about how I had written all these emails about dating, relationships, and sexual health for a big ClickBank seller.

This was the only mention of “sex and gender” in my entire Upwork profile.

And that’s why I think your Upwork portfolio is the secret to triggering Upwork’s recommendation algorithm.

Sometimes, those recommendations happen when clients are looking for specific keywords, like in the situation above.

But in my experience, new portfolio items mean more job invitations overall, even for jobs that don’t have to do with the portfolio item you just added. It certainly doesn’t happen every time, but I’ve seen such a bump in invitations often enough to think it wasn’t just chance.

And here’s the beauty of your Upwork portfolio: you can put anything in there.

Of course, you should only put in actual writing projects that you’ve done. But it can be on Upwork or off Upwork, it can be paid or done on spec (ie. for no money), it can be professional or a school project — whatever, as long as it’s relevant to a potential client who is looking for a copywriter.

And if you want to know how I write those Upwork portfolio items that trigger the Upwork recommendation algorithm, you’re in luck.

I describe it all in detail in my new book “How To Become a Top-Rated, $150/Hr Sales Copywriter On Upwork.”

And what’s more, you can now get this book for free. At least that is, if you act by midnight tonight PST.

In case you’re interested, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book

A sewer drain leading straight into the Upwork gold vault

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The Bank of England holds about 400,000 bars of gold.

It’s the second largest gold reserve in the world, after the New York Federal Reserve.

And though it’s worth over £100 billion, nobody has ever managed to break in and steal even one ounce.

Well, almost nobody.

Back in 1839, the Directors of the Bank started receiving anonymous letters.

The letters announced a man would meet them inside the vault at an hour of their choosing.

Finally, the Directors agreed to test out what was going on.

So, one night, they gathered inside the vault.

And waited.

And waited.

And then, at the appointed hour, they heard a noise.

It was coming from underneath their feet.

And the next thing they knew, a couple of the floorboards moved, and a man climbed out.

He was a sewerman who, during repair work, discovered that an old sewer drain led straight to the floor of the Bank of England gold vault.

It turned out the sewerman never stole anything — they counted all the bullion — though he sure could have.

So he was rewarded for his honesty with a gift of £800 — about £80,000 in today’s money.

I bring this curious story up because I’ve got a monumental announcement:

I’ve just published my guide to becoming a top-rated, $150/hr sales copywriter on Upwork.

This prestigious tome is like a sewer drain straight to the Upwork gold vault.

It contains the best insights I’ve gathered over the past 4 years freelancing on Upwork.

And while most of the book is not particularly glamorous (hence sewer drain), I certainly wish I’d had this guide when I was starting out. It would have helped me make a lot more gold shekels early on and save myself a lot of frustration and headache.

I’ll give an example of just one such story tomorrow.

For now, if you want to grab a copy of my Upwork guide, you can get it as a Kindle book on Amazon. Plus…

You don’t even need to reward me in any way for my sewerman honesty.

That’s because if you act in the next 36 hours or so (12 midnight PST on Wednesday), you can get this book for free. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book

Honeymoons on Hog Island

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There’s a tense scene early on in the James Bond film Casino Royale.

Jimmy, dressed in khakis and a black button-down shirt, sits down at a high-stakes poker game.

He keeps winning. By the end of the night, he even wins himself the keys to the bad guy’s Aston Martin, and indirectly, to the bad guy’s sexy wife.

Exciting stuff.

And set in a beautiful location, on an unnamed tropical island.

The real-life location of this scene is a private island in the Bahamas, currently worth about $2 billion. The island features exclusive casinos and some of the world’s most expensive hotels (including the The Atlantis, which offers a room for $25,000 a night).

Merv Griffin owned the island at one point, and reality-TV star Donald Trump was a major investor. All of which begs the question:

What’s the name of this magical place?

Why, I’m surprised you don’t know it. It’s none other than…

Hog Island.

Ok, it’s officially Paradise Island now, since around 1959.

But it certainly was Hog Island originally, until big tourist development started up, and the then-owner decided it was time for a rebranding.

Come to Hog Island — your wife is already here

The point being that names matter.

It’s hard to imagine James Bond paying a trip to Hog Island, even if it were packed with dangerous women and beautiful cars. It’s equally unlikely that even with the fanciest hotels and most romantic beaches, Hog Island would ever seem like an acceptable destination for a honeymoon.

But here’s something else to notice:

“Paradise Island” isn’t a terribly creative name. Yes, it’s good enough to sell an island in the Bahamas. But it wouldn’t do much to promote a rocky, rainy, wind-swept isle off the coast of Scotland.

All of which, I think, has some practical applications.

For example, if you are starting out as a freelancer on Upwork, you may be tempted to spend a lot of time on your profile page. Which title should you give yourself? What should you say in the description?

Sure, those things matter, just like the name “Paradise Island” matters. But they are only one part of the total picture of Upwork success and they won’t win you jobs by themselves.

So what to do?

I’ve got lots of advice on the “positioning” part of getting on Upwork. But I can also tell you about the entire process of becoming a $150/hr freelance copywriter. In fact, I’m putting together an entire book on the topic right now.

It will be out in another couple of weeks. And then I will put it up on Amazon.

If you want to sign up to get notified when it’s out, mix yourself up a Vesper martini, unholster your Beretta, and take aim at the deadly link below:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

The four horsemen of the Upwork apocalypse

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A friend asked me about Upwork recently.

He wanted to know, are there red flags for job listings? In other words, are there some jobs you should never apply for, because the clients are guaranteed to be trouble?

And lo, I had a vision.

Four horsemen. Each more awe-inspiring than the one before.

Now these four horsemen do not bring death, pestilence, famine, and war. But they do bring frustration, low wages, uninteresting projects, and stress. Let me tear open the four seals of my upcoming Upwork Bible, and tell you about them:

1. The blue banana horseman

Riding on a perfectly normal job listing, this horseman carries a banner. And on that banner, it is written:

“Add the words ‘blue banana’ at the top of your application so I know you read this whole thing.”

This horseman is very clever. And he’s too clever by far for any decent freelancer. If you engage with him, be warned, it will end in frustration.

2. The waffle horseman

This horseman arrives in a cloud of mist.

In his hand, he carries a waffle. That’s because he doesn’t know what he wants, or he cannot express it. So his job listing is ominously broad:

“Looking for an expert to help me grow my business through marketing. You need to know video editing and design and copywriting. Added bonus if you’re good at Excel.”

What this horseman is really saying is, “My business isn’t profitable yet. But heavy is my burden of small, confusing tasks. Come inside my empire and you will be rewarded meagerly.”

3. The pied pier horseman

This horseman can be recognized from afar by the symbol blazing on his chest. It reads:

“Rewrite this paragraph to prove to us you’re right for this job.”

The pied piper horseman does not do this because he’s trying to cheat you or get something for nothing. Instead, it’s because he thinks of freelancers like lemmings: small, requiring tight corralling, and incapable of independent thought.

Beware of following the pied piper horseman, because he will lead you over the cliff into uninteresting, menial work.

4. The grim reaper horseman

The Upwork grim reaper does not hold a scythe in his hand. Instead, he carries an hourglass, which has just run out of time. This horseman has a tight deadline, requiring an 8,000-word VSL, which needs to be done by this Thursday. And he needs you to start work on it NOW.

If you allow this horseman to wrap you up in his raven’s wings, expect untold stress to descend upon you. At least until Thursday, and possibly even later.

Now these creatures and others haunt the Upwork job listings page.

They are not evil. But neither are they righteous clients.

I advise you to stay away from them, and focus on better work. And as for that Bible I mentioned at the start:

You might like it if you are wandering through valley of Upwork. It will show you how to avoid the unrighteous clients, and to stay on the path that leads to the light ie. high hourly rates. To get notified once I complete this book (in the next week or two), inscribe your name on the following:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

Cross-dressing for negotiation success

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“No, I wear men’s suits. I got this out of a bin.”
— Michael Scott, Dunder Mifflin Inc.

Here’s an inadvertent but brilliant negotiation lesson from the TV show The Office:

Michael Scott, the regional manager, is about to have a salary negotiation with one of his employees, Darryl. Michael is dreading the negotiation, and he’s preparing with some awful negotiation tactics he got from Wikipedia. But when the actual negotiation starts, it all falls apart quickly.

Darryl states his demands.

Michael lamely tries to refuse, and then:

Darryl notices that Michael is wearing “lady clothes.”

Could it really be that Michael is dressed in a Hillary-like women’s pant suit?

Let’s see.

The buttons are on the wrong side.

There are no pockets on the pants.

And the label inside the jacket reveals it’s made by the MISSterious label.

The thing is, though unintentional, this is straight out of the book of expert negotiation coach Jim Camp.

One of Camp’s tenets was:

In a negotiation, only one person can feel unokay, and that person is you.

In other words, contrary to conventional wisdom, you don’t want to dominate or lord over the other person when you negotiate. Not if you want a negotiation outcome that sticks. Instead, you want to make the other person feel okay — with themselves, and with the interaction.

One way to do this is to be unokay yourself.

For example, by accidentally dropping your papers all over the floor.

Or forgetting your briefcase at home and asking for a pen and paper.

Or, as Michael did, by inadvertently dressing in a women’s pant suit.

Does it work?

Camp used to swear by it. And by the end of the The Office episode, Michael winds up getting a raise for both himself and Darryl. As he says, “win-win-win.”

Personally, I haven’t tried these unokay gambits myself. But the underlying message — make the other person feel okay — is something I regularly use when talking to potential Upwork clients, and it’s served me well.

If you want to know more about my Upwork strategy, including how I got to be a top-rated sales copywriter on the site and how I get paid $150/hr, then sign up below. I’m currently putting together a book about my Upwork experience,  and if you sign up, I’ll let you know when the book is out. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

How Slack got too big to racially profile

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A few days ago, an Iranian guy studying in Canada gut kicked off messaging platform Slack.

U.S. companies are not allowed to do business with people from Iran, and somehow, Slack picked this guy out even though he was based in Canada.

Who cares?

Everybody. Slack is valued at over $7 billion, and the story of the Iranian guy quickly went viral and made the front pages of news aggregators, under accusations of racial profiling.

That’s incredible, when you think about the history of the company.

Slack started as an offshoot of a failed game company run by a guy named Stewart Butterfield.

Glitch, the game they were developing, never went anywhere. But they took their internal messaging platform and turned it into a multi-billion dollar business.

And this isn’t the first time Butterfield has done this. He had another failed game before Glitch, and another side-project that emerged from that game which became a successful company. You might have even used it yourself — it’s Flickr, the photo sharing platform.

So what’s the point?

Well, it’s simply the attitude of pivoting to what the market actually needs.

As it is for tech entrepreneurs like Stewart Butterfield, so it is for copywriters, or even information marketers.

For example, when I got started on Upwork as a copywriter, I was trying to focus on writing autoresponder sequences. I think the title on my Upwork profile read “Email copywriter for soap opera sequences.”

There wasn’t that much demand. However, people started hiring me to write cold emails, even though I didn’t even know what the hell those are. So I become a “Cold email specialist.”

I eventually moved on from cold emails (I don’t believe they work well, and when they do, you don’t need a copywriter). But then lots of clients started hiring me for advertorials and writing Ben Settle-style daily emails, so I pivoted again. I’m currently selling “Hype-free sale copy (Emails, Advertorials, and Sales Letters).”

What does this mean for you?

If you’re looking to build up your freelancing career on Upwork, get going now. The market will quickly tell you which services you should offer, which ones you should drop, and which skills you should develop.

And if you’re looking to maximize your Upwork success, from a guy who gets paid $150/hr and has a 100% job satisfaction rating, check out my upcoming book. It won’t make you a Slack-like success. But with the info inside and with a little dedication and work, you will soon be an Upwork force to reckon with.

For more info, check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/