Creating Content

Everything is copy

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I woke up this morning to see an email from one of my most dedicated readers, copywriter Carlo Gargiulo, who wrote:

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Hi John,

Are you ok?

I didn’t get your email yesterday!

I hope you are okay and it is just a technical problem.

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I appreciate the concern. I am indeed okay. As for my non-email yesterday:

In the 5+ years of this daily email newsletter, I’ve missed sending an email only two times, yesterday being one.

On both occasions, my email service provider, ActiveCampaign, wasn’t working properly, and their support team didn’t fix the problem in time or even get back to me.

But like Nora Ephron’s mother used to coldly say whenever little Nora came home, crying about some injury or insult:

“Someday this will be funny, and you will write about it. Everything is copy.”

I’m still not finding the situation funny, but it has actually become copy.

The good news is that my non-email yesterday forced me to do something I had been planning to do for years, and had still planned to put off for a couple of weeks — and that’s to move out of the dingy and leaky-roofed hotel Olivia Campo, aka ActiveCampaign.

And so, I’m writing you today from my comfortable new email home on Convert Kit Lane. I’m still moving in and so it’s a mess around here, but at least I have a place to sleep.

As for my email yesterday, the one that will never be sent, it announced that today I will actually be starting a new promotion.

It’s for the “work alongside me” offer to build up your list via ads, with my feedback and help. I revealed a bunch of details about that offer in my non-email yesterday, but I will save that now for the official announcement later today at the usual time.

Thanks for reading. And now, I’ll go do some more unpacking.

A dirty rotten scoundrel’s secret to making a living online

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I recently watched a dirty little movie called Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is set on the French riviera. It stars Michael Caine as Lawrence, a dapper English scammer who charms rich and corrupt women for large sums of money… and Steve Martin as Freddie, a classless American jackass who milks the pity of any woman for tiny bits of money.

It’s been a few days since I saw the movie. The following monologue by Caine’s dapper scammer is what’s stuck in my mind:

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Freddie, as a younger man, I was a sculptor, and a painter, and a musician.

There was just one problem. I wasn’t very good. As a matter of fact, I was dreadful.

I finally came to the frustrating conclusion that I had taste and style, but not talent.

Fortunately, I discovered that taste and style are commodities that people desire.

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Like I said, this stuck with me. Maybe it will stick with you too.

You don’t have to scam anybody — that’s not what this is about.

But what Caine says about taste and style is true. They are commodities that people will pay for.

The amazing thing is that whatever your taste and style — ahem, obscure and campy 80s comedies — there are people out there who will appreciate it. And thanks to the miracle of the Internet, it’s easy and affordable to find such people.

I rely heavily on this, simply curating ideas, articles, movie scenes that I find interesting or funny or outrageous.

You can do the same. You can use your own taste and style, and simply share ideas that somehow impressed you or stuck with you.

That’s all you need to do, and you can be successful.

But if you want to do something a little bit extra with those ideas that impressed you or stuck with you, you can apply what I call the Most Valuable Email trick.

The result will be something that goes beyond what most other people will ever do.

In case you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Double up and triple up

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As this email goes out, I will be hosting the training on how I do it, meaning how I write and profit from this newsletter.

I had to cut a lot of possible content from this training.

​​A bunch of worthwhile ideas didn’t make it because I wanted to keep the training tight. I wanted to share only the absolutely most core, valuable advice I would give myself five years ago at the time I was starting this newsletter.

But what about the rest of the content? What about the stuff that I had to cut out?

Let me tell you one idea I won’t talk about on the training, but which has been something valuable I do unconsciously, and should be something I do a lot more of consciously:

Everything you do should serve double or triple or quadruple purposes.

I think this is a good life philosophy in general. But since this newsletter focuses on marketing and making money via writing, let’s talk about that, with the example of this “How I do it” training:

1. I announced this training two weeks ago.

2. Since then, I’ve been collecting ideas to talk about on the actual training. I’ve also been collecting examples, case studies, illustrations to bring up on the training.

3. Some of those ideas and examples made it into my daily emails over the past 10 days.

4. On the other hand, some of the ideas from my daily emails over the past two weeks will go into this training, even though I hadn’t planned it initially.

5. Once it’s over, this training will be relevant and useful to me as a kind of business checklist, because it’s helped me crystalize my thoughts on many things I had been doing well without being aware of them, some I had been doing poorly while tolerating.

6. This training might become a lead magnet down the line. I might turn into text or keep it as is, give it away, in whole or in part.

7. Or perhaps I will turn this training into a paid product, or a bonus for some other offer. I’m sure to take ideas from it… or stories that I tell… or questions that come up… or the format itself, or even topics that I planned but didn’t end up including… and use those in the future in a different format.

That’s what I mean when I say double up or triple up the uses you get out of everything you do.

Emails become courses… and courses become books… and books become podcast appearances… and podcast appearances become emails… which in turn become live trainings, which become bonuses…

I think you get the idea.

I’ll leave you here for tonight. Because I gotta go. I still have lots to do before the training tonight.

In the meantime, if you want to see doubled-up or tripled-up content in action, check out my 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters.

That book was motivated by an email I wrote in this newsletter… some of the content first appeared as emails… some of the book content was later repurposed to emails. And all of it has been driving high-quality readers to my list for the past three years. Like a reader joined my list a few days ago and wrote me to say:

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I’m writing to tell you that I absolutely loved your book 10 Commandments Of A-List Copywriters.

I found it so captivating that I was hooked page after page and just couldn’t put it down without completing the entire book in one sitting.

And I came away wanting so much to be able to write like you. So much that I caught myself being even a little jealous (sorry!).

So I’ll go about incorporating the many ideas that I have learnt from your book.

===

To get this doubled-up, tripled-up book:

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

3 most not-boring emails I wrote this year

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A few days ago, I sent out an email with the subject line, “A primer on worldbuilding.” I got a reply to that email from Howard Shaw of Chester Toys, a UK toy wholesaler that’s been in business for 60 years. Howard wrote:

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Don’t ask me why, but I just felt like replying….

‘​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​John Bejakovic ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​- never a boring email.

I always learn something or receive a nugget to ponder on.’

Anyways, all the best for the festive season and may 2024 be good to you.

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I followed up with Howard to ask if I could use his comment in an email. ​​He said he would be offended if I didn’t. So here we are.

“Yah great for you and Howard,” I hear you saying. “Quite the love-in. But what about me? Where’s your ‘not boring’ email now? I don’t see anything particularly interesting or valuable so far today.”

True. It’s hard to write something not-boring every day.

​​I know, because I just spent the past one-and-a-half hours going through the 360+ emails I’ve written since the start of this year.

Most of my past 360+ emails I just scrolled through. I vaguely remembered writing them. They did their purpose at the time. But I certainly didn’t need to reread them.

However, some emails I did reread.

A few of those made me chuckle.

And a very few made me stop and think.

The emails that made me stop and think weren’t the ones that got the most replies and praise from readers.

​​They weren’t even the ones that made the most sales.

But looking back from today, at the end of the year, these top emails were somehow most interesting to me, as ideas that I should remember or practice, or because they sparked a change in how I how do marketing or how I write.

Over the course of the entire past year, I noted down 14 such top emails.

I then narrowed them down even more to the most not-boring 3, using myself as a sounding board.

In case you are looking for some not-boring emails, you can find them below. Don’t read any of them. Or read just one. Or read all three if you have got the time and stamina.

And like Howard says, all the best for the festive season to you.

How to become in-demand in your niche even if you have no contacts, portfolio, or good sense

Why the bathroom is a great place to negotiate

10 lessons from the ClientRaker promo

How to come up with 2-3 good email ideas each day

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Last night, I was sitting on the couch when my ex-girlfriend came over from the kitchen.

It’s an odd situation. We’re broken up. But we still live together. And we’re on good terms.

“Are you writing your email?” she asked.

I looked at her like she’s crazy. “No, I did it this morning. I’m done for today.”

She nodded. “What’s tomorrow’s email going to be about?”

“Who knows,” I said.

“So how will you write it then?”

“It will be very, very hard,” I said with mock sadness.

​​But like I explained to my ex last night, it’s never really very, very hard, because I have a large and growing list of email ideas in my BEJ journal.

If I ever don’t have something fresh to write about, I can always reach into my journal. I find this resource so valuable that I even created a course once, Insight Exposed, all about my obsessive note-taking and journaling system.

But that’s not what I want to share with you today.

Because today, I didn’t reach into my journal for this email’s topic.

Instead, I did what I often do when I don’t have a clear idea of what to write.

I opened a new text file and started a list. I titled it daily10. Under that title, I came up with 10 possible ideas for today’s email, without discarding even ones that are not really good.

It took me all of 5 minutes.

Not all the ideas were ones that I will turn into an email. But of the ten, one was promising and three were good.

A couple of these possible email ideas I liked better than telling you about my ex and my daily10 process.

​​But since the reason I came up with those ideas in the first place was that daily10 process… I thought I would put those better ideas on hold and tell you about this valuable way to quickly come up with 2-3 good ideas for your daily emails.

So now you know.

And if you ever thought you suffered from “writer’s block”… well, now you also know that it’s really just an excuse not to sit down and write down 10 possible ideas, even if all of them are bad.

But enough inspiration. On to sales:​​

In a convoluted way, my email today is an example of my Most Valuable Email trick in action.

I hope I haven’t given too much away. Maybe I have.

​​But if there is still something that you think you can learn about the Most Valuable Email trick, then you can get educated via the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

What it’s like to be… faced with AI eating your job

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Question:

What’s the worst thing you can ever say to a TV weather woman?

Answer:

“That’s not what my app says…”

I’ll tell you in a second how I found out that riveting bit of information. But first:

At a recent gathering of copywriters in London, I saw several attendees hang their heads and say, “As we all know, it’s been a rough year for many copywriters.”

I kept quiet because I didn’t want to expose my ignorance and absence of rough year.

​​I don’t work with clients any more. And my year has been fine.

What exactly has been rough on copywriters who do work with clients?

Is it the economic climate? AI taking copywriting jobs? Too much competition from the glut of would-be copywriters who entered the field over the past few years?

I felt it would be tactless to ask. So I kept quiet.

But back to the weather woman. I found out that the best way to piss off such a one is to say, “That’s not what my app says.”

I found that out because I’m dipping my toes into a new podcast, called What It’s Like To Be.

The podcast features interviews with people in different professions, so you can find out what it’s like to do their job. The last episode was TV weather woman Lacey Swope, who works for News 9 in Oklahoma City, the world epicenter of extreme weather.

I had no particular interest in hearing what it’s like to be a TV weather woman. But I’m glad I listened.

Because in many ways, weather womaning turns out to be a profession very similar to copywriting.

For example:​​

The job of being a TV meteorologist requires two separate skills — the technical skill of divining the weather, and the presentation skill, you might even say sales skill, of being friendly and cute on TV.

But wait, there’s more.

Weather meteorologists have for years been under threat by apps and websites that give the masses by-the-minute weather info. And the TV weather people who are surviving and thriving in spite of it are all—

… well for that, I will point you to the podcast itself.

You can find the podcast episode at the link below.

It’s worthwhile listening if you’re working as copywriter, and wondering what the future might bring, and how you can best prepare for it.

TV weather men and weather women been there, maybe a decade earlier. You can lean surprisingly practical stuff by listening to Lacey Swope and thinking how to apply her experiences and attitudes to your career.

And if that’s not enough to get you to click through and listen, then I will tell you the reason I started listening to What It’s Like To Be in the first place.

It’s because it’s the new podcast of Dan Heath, who is one half of the Heath brothers team that wrote the book Made to Stick.

​​So if you want to hear how somebody who literally wrote the book on effective, viral, long-lasting communication organizes and structures his content, then here ya go:

https://www.whatitsliketobe.com/2246914/13858315-a-tv-meteorologist

PS. Thanks to everyone who joined me and Kieran for the the storytelling presentation earlier today. I feel it went well. But I honestly never know when I’m presenting. If you were there live, I’d love to know what you thought of it. Write in and let me know.

How I’m building a sales page in publick

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Two days ago, I released my Simple Money Emails course for the world to buy, even though the beast doesn’t have a sales page to promote it.

And you know what?

People did buy, even with no sales page.

But I bet more people would buy in the future if I actually were to have a proper sales page, one that explains the value of this course… and that answers questions prospects might have… and that assures them they are not being “had” but are in fact making a smart decision.

The trouble, as I wrote two days ago, is that I’ve been waiting for months for this sales page to magically write itself… but that hasn’t happened.

So I had an idea, which is just to write the sales page piecemeal, in publick, one email at a time.

I’ve done this once before, for the Influential Emails training I put on two years ago. It started out with just a headline, the details of the actual offer, and a “BUY NOW” button. I fleshed it out every few days, using stuff from my daily emails.

It ended up working great. Why not try it again?

So this morning, I took the core of my email from two days ago, about the actual SME offer along with a testimonial, and I put that onto a fresh page on my site. I added in a headline and the barest bit of deck copy.

Done. For now. ​​

In the future, I might write an email about how this course is unique… address objections I get from people… talk about how it’s taken me a good number of years to distill my experience into the simple idea at the core of this training… position myself against alternatives out there… hit you with some tear-jerking motivation copy to get going now… and all that can then be fitted into my existing minimal sales page, one block at a time.

If you’re curious about what’s actually inside the Simple Money Emails training, you can find it at link below. ​​And if you need a bit of an extra reason to click, here’s what Paul Morrison, who has helped marketing legend Ken McCarthy put out 11 of his most recent books, had to say about SME:

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I’m glad you wrote this email soliciting feedback for your course. I’ve been meaning to send you a testimonial ever since first going through it.

Put simply, this course is probably the most straight-forward and practical approach to writing emails I have yet to come across.

I valued it so much that I printed the pages out and keep them next to my desk for regular study.

(As a point of comparison, next to your course, on my desk, are Ben Settle’s Skhema Book, and Daniel Throssell’s Email Copywriting Compendium — I’m sure you likely have both of those courses yourself — and I now consider these three documents my personal “email writing bible”.)

For anyone who is struggling to actually get started writing emails for their biz (especially daily emails) I think Simple Money Emails takes the cake, and I couldn’t recommend it enough.

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If you wanna see a sales page being built in publick, or better yet, if you want to buy Simple Money Emails so you can start writing daily emails for your business, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Why I don’t write to my “old self”

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“… the 30-oared ship of Theseus, the Athenians constantly removed the decayed part of her timbers, and renewed them with sound wood, so that the ship became an illustration to philosophers of the doctrine of growth and change, as some argued that it remained the same, and others that it did not remain the same.”

It’s become popular online advice to say, “Write to your old self.” Solve the problems that you yourself had two months or two years ago.

I believe I first heard Rich Schefren say this years ago, but it’s become widespread since.

I don’t do it this way. I don’t write to my old self. Two reasons why:

First, find it hard to move forwards while looking backwards — it gives me seasickness.

Second, I frankly don’t remember who I was two years ago, any more than I can guess who I will be two years from now.

Instead, what I do, and what you can consider doing too, is to write to myself today. I write about what I find interesting, motivating, valuable-sounding right now.

For example, in my email yesterday, I wrote about very high-ticket back-end offers. Why? Because I sense it’s something I should be doing today, or at least in the next few months.

Of course, among the ideas I find interesting many have to do with tennis gossip, identifying plants in the wild, or my own health.

I don’t write about those. I make an effort to choose among all the many ideas I find interesting, motivational, and valuable-sounding, and I only write about those that can also be interesting to people who tend to read this newsletter.

Still, the starting point is always what I find interesting, today, now.

In case this idea resonates with you, I can tell you there are some benefits to doing it this way, at least in my mind:

It’s fresher, more honest, less preachy than writing to my old self.

It can be more valuable to readers — because I’m writing based on my current experience and emotions, rather than on fading or faulty memories.

Ultimately, by focusing on ideas that can make me better, rather than what made my old self better, it makes this newsletter better in the long term, and benefits my readers if they stick with me.

Maybe this doesn’t do anything for you. But then again, maybe it resonates with you on some level.

And if it does, and if you’d like to do something similar, then consider using my Most Valuable Email trick. It’s a way to take ideas that interest or intrigue you, play with them, and make them interesting to your readers, too. For more information on MVE:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

The next era for freelancers, full-time writers, and solo creators

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I woke up this morning, the sun shining into my eyes, an eager French bird chirping outside my window because it was almost 7am.

I groaned and realized it’s time to get up and get to work. In a few hours’ time, my friends, still asleep in various bedrooms around this cave-like Paris AirBnb, will wake up too. And by then, I will have to have this email finished.

I can tell you now, it won’t be easy.

I struggled during the night with a comforter that was too hot, a mosquito that wouldn’t shut up, and the effects of the first glass of alcohol I’ve had in months. The result is I’m tired this morning, and my brain is more foggy than usual.

“Let me read some stuff on the Internet,” I said. “Maybe that will help.” And lo — the email gods rewarded me with an article full of valuable and relevant ideas I can share with you today.

The article came from Simon Owens, somebody I’ve written about before in these emails. Owens is a journalist who covers the media landscape in his Substack newsletter.

Two interesting bits from Owens’s article:

1. The recent collapses of new media companies like Buzzfeed and Vox have left thousands of journalists, writers, and clickbait creators without a job. It’s not unlike the situation in the direct response space a few years ago, after Agora got into legal trouble and it put a chill on the whole industry.

2. The owners of media outlets and info businesses are realizing that freelancers just aren’t worth it. From Owens’s conversation with one such business owner: “Not only were they expensive to hire, but he also had to waste a lot of time editing their work so it met his quality standards.”

So if traditional employee-based companies that pump out content are failing… and if entrepreneurs are starting to realize that freelancers are a bum deal… where does that leave us?

You might say it leaves us with the creator economy — with all those unemployed journalists, writers, and clickbait creators going out and starting their own Substack or TikTok or OnlyFans.

​​Maybe so. But it’s harder to make that work than your Twitter feed might make you believe. From Owens’s article again:

“I’m on record as being an optimist about the future of the Creator Economy; I think we’re at the very early stages of an entrepreneurial media explosion. But at the same time, I’m a realist about how damn hard it is to launch and build a sustainable bootstrapped media business, especially as a solo operator. Not only can it require years of financial runway, but it’s also difficult for a single person to juggle a variety of tasks that include content creation, marketing, and business development.”

So? Where does all this really leave us?

Owens says it leaves us in a brave new world of partnerships, cooperatives, and jointly-created products. He gives examples of how each of these is already being done by people who create content and have an audience, and who are trying to monetize that content and audience, beyond just the work they can do themselves.

If you are running or want to run an info publishing businesses, or your own creator studio, then Owens’s article is worth a read. It might give you an idea that might mean the difference between failure and success in what you do.

And if you are currently a freelancer, or even a full-time employee at a marketing-led business, then Owens’s article is worth a read also, if only for an uncomfortable but possibly life-saving glimpse into what the future might bring unless you adapt.

In either case, if you are interested, here’s the link to Owens’s piece:

https://simonowens.substack.com/p/the-next-era-for-bootstrapped-media

It took me 40 minutes of fruitless research to write this email

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A few days ago, I got a frustrated question from reader Ron Abrahams:

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I have been writing emails, twice a week, for seven months.

I keep a file that contains a chart of titles, date sent, and brief summaries, and a file of all the content I have written. A friend told me that at some point it will make sense to write a book based on my emails.

A month ago, just as I finished one I thought something sounded familiar. I went back to my chart and sure enough, I had already written that five months earlier. Some emails are a different angle on a perspective, this one was almost the same. This one I could not use. Besides, the first one was much better.

Is there anything I can do to avoid this again? I mean, you write every day. How do you do it?

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First off, good on Ron for writing regularly for seven months. ​And in answer to Ron’s question,

​​I don’t do anything to avoid writing about the same idea twice. Because it’s not a problem. Quite the contrary.

As I’ve written in an email before, the problem is if you have a good idea and you don’t repeat it enough.

But maybe, like Ron above, you still feel that accidentally repeating yourself is a problem.

Maybe you even feel frustrated or embarrassed that you’ve done it in the past, maybe recently.

In that case, I would like to tell you that’s also not a problem. Rather it’s an opportunity, for a new email.

Somebody somewhere once said, nothing bad ever happens to you if you write a daily email. Meaning, every fumble you make, every annoyance that happens to you becomes a new topic for an email. And people actually appreciate it.

A couple days ago, I wrote about being annoyed by a reader repeatedly replying to my emails with, “write more about advertorials more on.” That email about being annoyed drew more nice replies from readers than I’ve gotten in months.

But nice replies aren’t money. So let me tell you about money.

I read once that Larry David, back when he was the show runner for Seinfeld, would fly out a new batch of NYC-based writers to LA at the start of each season.

David would squeeze these writers for for their frustrating and embarrassing stories of NYC life. By the end of the season, when the writers and their stories were all used up, David would fire them and ship them back to New York. He would then hire a new batch of NYC writers, with new stories of frustration and embarrassment.

Larry David is slated to make $1.7 billion thanks to his Seinfeld syndication rights. That’s a lot of money, because stories of frustration and embarrassment resonate widely.

But let me wrap this email up. It’s taken me an ungodly amount of time to write, and I’m worn out.

That’s because I spent 40 minutes earlier this morning fruitlessly searching for the article where I read that thing about Larry David. I searched for the article because I wanted to get the facts just right, and maybe even share the quote with you.

But I couldn’t remember where I’d read the article, and no amount of googling or scanning the New Yorker website would help.

To make things worse, I have a cold, so I kept sneezing and running to bathroom to blow my nose.

Each time, I came back to the computer to continue my fruitless Larry David search for a few minutes before the sneezing kicked in again. And nothing.

In the end simply had to tell you what I remembered of it out of my head. Oh well. At least it formed a bit of content for the email.

In entirely unrelated news, there’s my Most Valuable Email training..

If you enjoyed today’s email and found it valuable for your email writing, then there’s a pretty, pretty, pretty good chance you will like Most Valuable Email too.

For that, go here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/