Business Of Copy

Business advice I wish somebody had given me seven years ago

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Last year, while writing the sales page for my Copy Riddles program, there came a time in the copy when I had to talk about myself.

I shifted in my seat, coughed a little, and shrugged my shoulders.

“What exactly would you like to know?” I said to the blinking cursor. “I’ve been working as a copywriter for several years now. Each year, it’s been getting better and better. And that’s pretty much it.”

If I ever had a copywriting client tell me something like this, I would get angry. ​​​”Tell me some specific accomplishments,” I would say. “Something soundbite-worthy. You don’t have to have saved the sea cows. It just has to sound good.”

In the end, on that Copy Riddles sales page, I managed to weasel my way out without saying anything about myself — the course is not really about my authority, after all.

I’m not trying to sell you Copy Riddles right here. I’m just trying to share a bit of advice that I wish somebody had shared with me seven years ago, or really, any time before this year. The advice is this:

1. Start a new Google Doc right now

2. Name it “[your last name] – status”

3. Whenever anything even remotely impressive happens to you business-wise, add it to this document right away

And that’s it. But maybe an example will help.

This entire week, I’ve been promoting my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

And it’s been working. The book has sold a few extra copies each day.

As a result, it’s been climbing from its usual place on the Amazon best seller lists. It peaked at one point yesterday, while being ranked higher than both Gary Halbert’s Boron Letters and Dan Kennedy’s Magnetic Marketing.

So this is what I added yesterday to my “BEJ status” document:

“My 10 commandments book has been ranked higher among Amazon bestsellers than Gary Halbert’s Boron Letters and Dan Kennedy’s Magnetic Marketing.”

You might think this is cheap. You might think it’s transparent. You might think it’s shady.

To which, all I can do is shift in my seat, cough a little, and shrug my shoulders.

The fact is, you might not think you have any accomplishments. But if you make sure you write down every even marginally status-building thing that happens to you, pretty soon you will have a whole encyclopedia of little soundbites that you can feed to clients and customers and prospects.

And who knows, when you look over your growing collection of marginal accomplishments, maybe you will even start to impress yourself.

As for me, I’m gonna keep promoting my 10 Commandments book for a couple more days. Because yesterday, a long-time reader and customer named Gregory wrote me to say:

Okay. I finally bought it. This email got through to me. Not sure why since you’ve mentioned it so many times but there you have it…
Thanks John!

Looking forward to digging into it this week.

Maybe there is still some untapped demand in my list.

And who knows. With your help, maybe I can reach new heights on the Amazon bestseller list — for example, selling better than that clown Malcolm Gladwell, with his stupid Tipping Point. At least for an hour.

In case you wanna help me get there:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

How to get access to the most elite opportunities and most exclusive clubs

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In case you’re the type who wants access to the most elite opportunities and most exclusive clubs, here’s an instructive story:

Carter Burwell is an American film composer. He has scored dozens of big-budget Hollywood movies, including The Big Lebowski, Being John Malkovich, No Country For Old Men, and Twilight.

But Burwell is not just a film composer. He has has a very colorful history.

Even before the age of 20, Burwell was already a trained animator, a would-be rock star, a factory worker, a would-be architect, and a self-taught computer programmer.

And then one day, after seeing a help-wanted ad in the New York Times, Burwell got hired as chief computer scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Lab, working for Nobel prize winner James Watson, codiscoverer of the structure of DNA.

How did Burwell get inside this elite and exclusive club? From an article about Burwell I just read:

“Burwell wrote a jokey letter in which he said that, although he had none of the required skills, he would cost less to employ than someone with a Ph.D. would. Surprisingly, the letter got him the job, and he spent two years as the chief computer scientist on a protein-cataloguing project funded by a grant from the Muscular Dystrophy Association.”

My point is not to write jokey application letters or cold emails.

It’s certainly not to compete on being cheaper than other options.

My point is simply to be immensely lucky, the way Burwell obviously is.

And in case you’re shocked and possibly outraged by that point, then let me rephrase it in a more how-to way:

Figure out how to weigh the odds so heavily in your favor… that you can be sure you’ve won, long before the coin has been tossed in the air.

That’s an idea from A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos.

It’s a bit of personal philosophy that Parris practices. It’s how he keeps getting access to the most elite copywriting opportunities, and working with the most exclusive clients.

Maybe you want some examples of what this means in practice.

You can find those in my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters, specifically chapter two, which is all about Parris’s “stack the odds” idea above. That chapter also ties in nicely to the Carter Burwell story above. Si te interesa:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The strategy of hypocrisy and scoundreldom

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Mark Ford once shared the following personal story in his newsletter, which has rattled around in my head for years:

AJ is one of the most brilliant marketing minds on the planet. We became acquainted almost 40 years ago when my boss at the time got into a joint venture with him.

The deal made both of them a lot of money, but it ended badly when they argued about dividing the spoils. AJ’s behavior after that was reprehensible. I was so disturbed by it that once, at an industry event, I actually challenged him to a duel. He declined.

Years later, we reconnected. I was still angry with him – but before I had a chance to bring it up, he said, very casually, “But of course I’m a hypocrite and a scoundrel.”

The moment he said that, I forgave him.

Maybe it’s the gossip in me, but I’ve always wondered who this brilliant marketing mind is in reality.

I have my own theory.

Maybe you do too, or maybe you know the true back story. In any case, the following two points stand:

1. The direct marketing world attracts many morally bankrupt characters, some of whom are very smart and very effective at what they do.

2. You can’t really tell much from the outside. The whole thing about marketing is presenting an attractive facade to the world, including of your own self.

And by the way, playing consumer advocate, which is kind of what I’m doing with this email, is just another way of dressing up that attractive facade.

Having said that, I would now like to sell you on signing up for my daily email newsletter.

You might rightly wonder why, having primed you to be guarded and suspicious, you should listen to anything I have to tell you now.

The fact is, people can be very good at presenting an attractive facade to the world — for a while. But it becomes hard to do it week after week, month after month, year after year. That’s why daily emails are one way to get a peek behind that facade, and see who is morally bankrupt, and who has some money in the moral bank.

And besides, you might get some good ideas about copywriting or marketing or persuasion from my daily emails.

Whatever the case, if you’d like to sign up, click here and fill out the form that appears.

How to bombard copywriting clients with extra value at no extra effort

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A Copy Riddles member named Nathan, who asked me not to share his last name for (I’m supposing) financial reasons that may become obvious if you read on, once told me his bullet-based recipe for pleasing and impressing clients:

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I love what Harry said. I do something similar:

– I familiarise with the content I’m promoting eg. eBook
– Develop the big idea
– Write as many bullets as I can – as quick as I can
– connect them all to the big idea and edit based on your training
– Sprinkle them throughout my copy

Then, as a bonus to my client… I hand them the best bullets and tell them they’re free “Twitter” posts. Sometimes it’s around 30-40 bullets I end up handing over.

Clients love it as they feel like they’ve been bombarded with extra value. And it took no extra effort.

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About a month ago, I wrote about how I survived the first few years of my freelance copywriting career. I had work on and off, I made enough money to survive, but it was hardly the promised “barefoot writer” lifestyle.

​​All that stuff about business owners being desperate to find good copywriters — and being desperate to throw good money at good copywriters — well, I realized that was just hype.

Except it’s not.

I experienced first hand it really is true. There are successful business owners who are desperate to find a good copywriter, and to pay him or her well — if only they could locate the underground dens where such good copywriters burrow.

As I’ve written before, I got into this lucky position a few years ago; Nathan discovered it earlier this year. He wrote me to say:

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As you know, I went into a full-time copywriter role around six months back (as with a mortgage and kids, I can appreciate the reliable income). I’m excited to share that I’ve been headhunted to a more prominent company and will start the new copywriting role at the end of this month — with a hefty pay rise.

But it’s not just the “head hunting” and “pay rise” that is the exciting part…

Is that my old job don’t want to lose me, so they’re going to contract me to keep writing for them… And…

The marketing manager (who also recently moved to another organisation) is contracting me to write for her as well.

All of this means I’m more than doubling my income.

Why this success? I don’t think it’s because I’m better than any other copywriter. Honestly, I think it’s because I read what you, Daniel and Ben say… I trust it… And I put it to practice.

You already know how important your bullet course has been for my journey, but the value you share in every email (just like this one) I treat with as much respect as any piece of information I’ve paid for.

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I’m not sure if you got the kind of value from this free email that Nathan is talking about. Perhaps you didn’t.

But perhaps you did. And perhaps you even want the information I charge for, so you can go through it, put it to practice, and even profit from it. In that case, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Copywriting is a crazy business, but it’s not unlike any other business

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A few weeks ago, a reader named Ferdinand wrote me to say he has written a book, but he is afraid to advertise it because he’s not sure it’s any good. Would I be kind and selfless enough to take a look and tell him if it’s ok to put out?

I was kind and selfless enough to respond to Ferdinand, saying that I charge people a great deal of money to review copy and content — but good on him for trying.

That was a mistake.

Because yesterday, I got a second email from Ferdinand. He said he didn’t get the precise response he was looking for with regard to the book. And that’s okay. But he still wants to bother me a little bit.

Would I give him a job? Any kind of a job? The pay doesn’t matter, as long as it’s consistent. He knows he can do more than what he’s currently doing, and copywriting is his dream, and he wants to chase it…

This reminded me of a scene in the King of Comedy.

Robert De Niro plays a wannabe standup comedian. He’s a big fan of a late-night talk show host played by Jerry Lewis.

One night, as Jerry is leaving the studio and getting into a cab, De Niro pushes his way through the crowd and jumps into the cab with Jerry.

Jerry is startled, even frightened. But De Niro reassures him. He just needs to talk for a minute. Right now, he’s working in “communications” but by nature he’s a comedian. His stuff is dynamite, it’s his dream, he just needs a break…

Once Jerry’s heart rate comes down a bit from the scare, he gives De Niro some practical advice:

“Look pal, gotta tell you… This is a crazy business, but it’s not unlike any other business. There are ground rules. And you don’t just walk on to a network show without experience. Now I know it’s an old, hackneyed expression but it happens to be the truth. You’ve got to start at the bottom.”

No?

You don’t like that old, hackneyed expression?

You want something a little more “hustle culture”-y, a little more Tim Ferriss-y? Ok, try this on and see if it fits:

In my experience in the direct response industry, it’s always a lousy idea to ask for a job. Even if you’re starting at the bottom. It’s much better to put yourself in a position where people ask you to work with them. In the words of Claude Hopkins, offer a privilege, not an inducement.

Are you still with me? That’s surprising. But in that case, you might get value from other emails and essays I write. In case you want to read them, you can sign up to my daily email newsletter.

FREE REPORT BY RENO AD WIZARD REVEALS 20 AMAZING SECRETS THAT CAN MAKE YOUR BUSINESS GROW LIKE CRAZY ALMOST OVERNIGHT!

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A couple days ago, I sent out an email about the “Man on Wire” sales technique. Even though I saw that technique in a movie, I remembered reading about it in one of Gary Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullets. I searched online, and found that bullet.

But I also remembered reading about this sales technique in a drug- and sex-filled tabloid, or tabloid-like publication, which formed my first shock exposure to direct marketing about 10 years ago.

I searched online, but I couldn’t find the relevant issue.

No matter. Because as part of this search, I did find something else. It’s potentially the most valuable thing I will ever share in this newsletter.

Here’s a fact you might or might not know:

“The REAL money in most projects comes from the strategy… and not just from clever copy.”

That comes from a Reno, NV ad wizard who is best know as a high-octane, A-list copywriter. But as he will be the first to admit, “The best copywriters remain in demand and at the top of the ‘A List’ because they are also savvy marketers.”

So today I want to share with you a 15-page free report by this Reno ad wizard. This free report can make your business – or your client’s business — grow like crazy almost overnight.

Ignore this report and suffer.

On the other hand, read it and apply it and — well, here’s the deal:

If you want this free report, then sign up to my daily email newsletter. And when my welcome email gets to you, hit reply and tell me you want the report. I will then send you the link. Here’s where to get started.

My best advice for beginner copywriters

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If you are a diligent reader of this newsletter, you will know I have been studying Spanish for the past few months.

So far, one of the best resources I’ve discovered is a YouTube channel, Español con Juan.

The Juan of “Español con Juan” is a Spanish teacher at University College London. He’s very likeable and funny. In his videos, he mostly makes stuff up and jokes around, but then he also sneaks in some actual Spanish language lessons when you’re not looking.

Juan usually only makes videos directed at language learners.

But once, he made a video of advice for Spanish teachers. It had five pieces of advice, including:

* Carry around a ruler (it’s a symbol of authority)

* Laugh at students (they will never make the same mistake twice)

* Line up the chairs correctly (students should not be facing each other but should be facing you — you are the star of the class)

Inspired by this video, I decided to do something equally helpful for beginner copywriters. Here goes:

1. Once you know “features vs. benefits” and AIDA, you’ve learned 99% of that’s worth learning from others. The rest is just practice. Copywriting is common sense, and inspiration comes from within.

2. If you really do want to learn something more, make sure you only look at courses and books that came out in the last ~2 years. Recent trainings like this have will have the newest secrets that haven’t been widely published yet. Everything older than ~2 years is too old hat, and the market has adapted to it.

3. The best thing you can do to attract new copywriting clients is to sharpen your copywriting skills.

4. The r/copywriting subreddit is a great place to learn copywriting and mingle with real, successful copywriters.

5. “Date around” as much as possible with different copywriting clients. A new client is always more exciting and potentially much more profitable than a past or present client.

6. The second-best way to attract copywriting clients is to go around asking, “How do you get copywriting clients?” And to keep asking it. Never stop asking.

7. Likewise, never stop studying. There’s always more to learn, and until you have learned it all, it’s best not to try anything in practice.

8. Do not start an email newsletter before you are ready! You could be inadvertently showing off your lack of skill and experience to clients who might hire you otherwise.

9. You are a copywriter. Industry rates start at $300/sales email, $10k/sales letter. Also, you are entitled to get paid royalties, because you’re the one bringing in the sales.

10. If you are unknown, particularly if you have no skills or experience, then make business owners a risk-free offer. For example, tell them you will charge them nothing upfront if they they test out your copy with paid traffic, or in place of a piece of copy which is currently making them money. The offer is, you only get paid if your copy converts, and if it doesn’t, it’s still a learning experience for you both. Win-win!

So that’s my advice. Follow it at your own risk.

But if you’re feeling a little suspicious, if you have some doubts I’m being genuine, if you wonder if this is really the best advice I can give you, then let me point you to a second set of 10 recommendations for copywriters. They apply equally whether you are a beginner or intermediate or advanced. You can find them here:

​​https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

So stubborn they can’t ignore you

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Yesterday, I spent an hour on Google, trying and failing to find good affiliate health offers to promote for my new health list.

Sure, there are millions of “Bates Motel” health offers out there. They will gladly pay you a large commission if you send a gullible victim their way.

There are also millions of worthwhile health offers out there. But they either have no affiliate program, or they demand that you have a list of ~2M names if you want to become their affiliate.

On the other hand:

Last week, I found myself participating in a “JV Mixer”.

This was an affiliate deal-making event. It was in the Internet marketing and personal development niches, but I’m sure equal things exist in the health space.

This JV mixer consisted of people with 7-, 8-, and possibly 9-figure businesses, including big names that I recognized, all pitching themselves and trying to make their best case for attracting new affiliates to promote their stuff.

My point being, it’s surprisingly hard to find good affiliate offers to promote, at least if you’re starting out. On the other hand, there are big and hungry businesses who can’t find enough affiliates to promote their offers.

See the strange contradiction there?

It’s actually the same thing with copywriting clients.

When I got started as a freelance copywriter, I heard that businesses are starving for copywriters. Business want to throw money at copywriters. But businesses don’t know where to find copywriters to throw money at, or there are just not enough copywriters around who want money thrown at them.

Maybe you’ve heard the same claim. And if you’re a freelance copywriter, maybe you’ve been around long enough to call BS.

And why not? I mean, I got decent copywriting work in those first few years. But I never once saw a desperate business owner, running down the street, grabbing random passersby and pleading, “Are you a copywriter? God I need a copywriter right now! If only I knew where to find a copywriter!”

But as I’ve written before, I eventually discovered that yes, that incredible claim really is true.

I discovered it when I suddenly became to go-to guy for a specific format of copy (VSLs) in a very specific niche (real estate investing). It turned out there really are dozens of business owners, running successful businesses, ready to throw money at a good copywriter, if only they could find one. Fortunately, they found me.

So then the question becomes:

How do you go from one to the other? How do you go from being a scrub searching for affiliate offers on Google… to being part of JV mixers where owners of multi-million businesses try to recruit you as an affiliate?

How do you go from being a starving copywriter mass-applying to jobs on Upwork… to sitting back, and having potential clients emailing you every day, and asking politely if you have some time to talk to them?

There are tricks and tactics to do it. Some are common sense.

Some you can pay for.

Some you can extract from your own experience, if you’ve gone down this road before, like I have in my freelance copywriting career, and now in my marketing and copywriting influencer career.

But the thing is, all those tricks and tactics are secondary.

Because there is just one primary resource if you want to go from scrub to success, from starving to satisfied.

This resource is very plain. Very unsexy. And it’s lying all around you.

But with this resource, you can do without any tricks and tactics.

On the other hand, without this resource, no tricks and tactics will help you.

I’m talking about time. Simple stubbornness. Still being at it tomorrow, and the next month, and in a year from now.

Which is why, if you ask me, it’s not worth even starting a new project if you’re not okay with still being at it in two-three years’ time.

All right, so much for my plea for stubbornness. For today, at least. Tomorrow, I will be back at it, with another daily email.

In case you think if you think my years of experience working with 7- and 8-figure direct response businesses could be valuable for you… you can sign up to my daily emails by clicking here.

 

 

Dan Kennedy corrects a mistake I’ve made in my copywriting career

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Let me tell you a copywriting client experience that still stings:

About two years into my freelancing career, I got the opportunity to write some emails for RealDose Nutrition.

​​RealDose is an 8-figure supplement company, started by a couple of direct marketers and an MD. They sell actually legit supplement products — their USP is right there in the name.

Long story short – I did a good job with those emails. I even tripled results in one of their main email funnels.

Impressed with those results, the CEO of RealDose asked me to write a sales letter next, for their probiotics product.

The only problem was, at this stage of my career, I had never written a full-blown sales letter.

​​What to do?

​​I took Gary Bencivenga’s olive oil sales letter and analyzed the structure. I wrote something that looked nothing like Gary’s letter, but was the exact same thing under the hood.

I gave it to the guys at RealDose. They shrugged their shoulders. They copy seemed okay… but I guess they weren’t sold. Because as far as I know, the sales letter was never tested.

Some time later, I got that sales letter critiqued by A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos. Parris said the body copy was fine. But the hook? The headline and the lead?

Parris used my headline and lead to publicly illustrate what an uninteresting promise looks like. “Are you the first person on the plant to ever sell a probiotic?” Parris asked me. He laughed and shook his head.

I never got another chance to write anything else for RealDose. I always wonder how my career might have gone had I done a better job with that big shot that I got.

I bring this up because today, I made a list of 10 mistakes I’ve made in copywriting career.

That RealDose sales letter, with the uninteresting promise in the headline, was no. 1.

No 4. was that this newsletter, the one you are reading now, is actually the third iteration of my daily email newsletter.

​​I deleted the previous two versions.

Version one was very much like this, and ran for a few months in 2016.

​​​​Some time later, I deleted it because I started writing about crypto marketing.

​​Then in 2018, I deleted that crypto daily email newsletter… and started writing this current iteration, starting over where I had left off two years earlier, and wasting a bunch of time, effort, and opportunity in the process.

So those are mistakes no. 1 and no. 4.

And then there’s mistake no. 7.

Mistake no. 7 is that i didn’t treat my freelancing career as a business for way too long. And when I say that, I might not mean what you think I mean.

For example, I always paid a lot of attention to the prices I was charging clients. And I worked hard on getting those prices higher.

I was also always on the hunt for new leads and new ways of getting leads.

And yet, at the same time, I didn’t ask myself, until way too late, “How can I promote this? How can I make a spectacle out of this? How can I get this offer that I have — meaning myself and my copywriting services — in front of a much bigger audience?”

Maybe what I mean is best summarized by Dan Kennedy, the very smart and successful marketer I’ve mentioned a few times in the past few days. Dan once said:

“Your growth will have less to do with your talent, your skill, your expertise or your deliverables than it will your ability and willingness to create and exploit your own status.”

Dan claims this applies regardless of what business you are in, whether you are selling services or products. In fact, Dan gave the above advice to a guy with a software company.

Which brings me to my offer to you for today.

How would you like a free consulting day with Dan Kennedy?

A daylong consult with Dan normally costs $18k. But you can get it for free.

Well, fine, not the whole thing.

But you can get three highlights of the consulting day that Dan gave to marketer Mike Cappuzzi.

The fact is, I told you one of the highlights of that consult day above. But in case you think a little bit of Dan’s $18k/day wisdom could benefit your business, here’s where you can read Dan’s other two consulting day highlights:

https://mikecapuzzi.com/an-insiders-glimpse-into-a-consulting-day-with-dan-kennedy/

How to get paid extraordinarily for doing ordinary work

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Back in 2019, a banana, taped to a wall, sold for $120,000.

That’s because it was art.

The artist in question, Maurizio Cattelan, became famous for an earlier piece, a functioning solid gold toilet, titled “America.”

America-toilet was first installed at the Guggenheim, where it was used, as intended, by 100,000 people. It was then loaned to a palace in the UK, where it was stolen and probably melted down.

(All this outrageous information was reported by CNN, so you can be sure it’s true.)

And here’s the 24-karat point:

Cattelan could have stayed in his home town of Padua, taping fruit to the wall and talking about gold toilets to anybody who would listen. He probably would have been shunned and mocked.

Instead, he chose to go on the world stage, where he tapes fruit to the wall and makes gold toilets. As a result, he is being celebrated and paid millions of dollars.

Fact is, you often get as much as you ask for. And that even holds in “results-based” professions like sales or copywriting.

You can work for small clients, who give you trouble, pay you pennies, and grumble when they do.

Or you can work for big clients, who appreciate your work, shower you with gold, and treat it like the deal of a lifetime.

And speaking personally, here, lean in:

That’s one of the reasons I recently restricted my Email Marketing Audit to only those businesses who have an email list of 10,000 names or more.

If you have a business, but your list has fewer than 10,000 names right now… there’s no shame in that. But it does mean you might want to start thinking bigger.

On the other hand, if you do have a list of 10,000 names already, and you would like to make much more money from that list, then my Email Marketing Audit might be for you. To find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/audit