Creating Content

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:

===

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?

===

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

Looks like I’ve won a $1,000 copywriting gig!

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About two months ago, I found out about an exciting copywriting gig:

An online publication was looking for content writers. The pay was $250 per article of about 750 words. Articles could come in a thematic series of 4.

I came up with an idea for a 4-part series, wrote up a nice little proposal, and sent it off to the editor of the publication.

And then, as nothing seemed to be happening, I forgot all about it.

Fast forward to two weeks ago:

The editor wrote back to me to say my idea sounds wonderful. And if I can get her the first drafts by December 16, my articles could be published as soon as January. And once my articles are published, inshallah, I will get paid $1k!

There once was a time, not even so many years ago, when I would have gladly taken on this kind of work without any ulterior motive.

But today, it takes a little something extra to get me excited.

So here’s the something extra:

This online publication is The Professional Writers’ Alliance. From what I understand, PWA is a paid community of freelance copywriters, somewhere under the umbrella of AWAI.

Are you getting a glimpse of my devious scheme?

I write some interesting and valuable content for PWA, and include a byline and a link to my site…

Some freelance copywriter out there reads my content and decides to get on my email list to read more…

I send him a few more well meaning emails and then—

BAM! I sell him one of my offers that might be interesting to freelance copywriters.

All right, writing guest content as a means of self-promotion is probably not new to you. What might be new to you is the following suggestion:

Look for ways to get paid for your self-promotion.

Of course, it’s not always possible, but it is more possible than you might at first think.

For example, did you know it’s possible to get paid to send out your sales letters to your audience, either online or by mail?

In other words, rather than having to pay either the USPS to deliver your stuffed-and-enveloped sales letter… or having to pay Facebook to get eyeballs that will look at your sales page… you can actually get paid each time a high-quality prospect reads your sales pitch?

It’s true, and it’s actually what I will be writing about for the PWA in January.

If you’ve been reading my emails for a while, you probably know this get-paid-to-advertise trick. And if not, I might write more about it in the coming weeks.

To get on my email list so you can read that (beware, I might try to sell you something), click here and fill out the form that appears.

Hot takes are dead… here’s why

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About six months ago, I wrote an email that for some reason I never sent. In that email, I wondered what had happened to James Altucher’s writing.

The background is this:

James Altucher is an online personality, a podcaster and also writer who used to write daily.

James is one of few people whose daily writing I enjoyed reading. Plus I’ve gotten multiple really valuable ideas from James that have transformed how I work.

James used to write regularly on his own site.

But his last post there came on June 15 2021. Since then he’s published a few pieces on other sites including LinkedIn, but his writing has largely disappeared.

There aren’t many people online that I would miss if they got swallowed by a sinkhole.

But James Altucher is one, largely because I’ve found his writing both insightful and valuable.

So I was wondering what happened to his writing and wishing somebody could tell me.

Well, I found out. James revealed it himself on a recent podcast.

Back in August 2020, he wrote an article titled, “New York City is dead forever… here’s why.”

James lived most of his life in NYC, but in that article, he predicted the death of the city based on the effects of the corona pandemic.

That article went very viral. It got a huge amount of readership, and also a huge amount of blowback.

And maybe most painful to James, who used to own a comedy club, “The New York is dead” piece got Jerry Seinfeld to write a trolling response in the lying New York Times in which he only referred to James as “some putz on LinkedIn.”

With all that blowback, and the personal attack by Jerry Seinfeld, James gradually retreated from writing. Maybe he will get his courage back to write daily. Or maybe he won’t.

I’m not sure what my point is. I guess there are many.

Such as, it’s harder to not care what people think that most of us would like.

Such as, don’t pick on people who are known to be combative (New Yorkers as a group, who knew about Jerry Seinfeld).

Such as, writing hot takes can burn you as well. And putting your own attitudes into your writing makes you vulnerable to personal attacks.

If you agree with me on these points, then what can you do?

Well, develop a tougher skin… only pick on people who will take it… or find some other way to get readership and attention than by writing hot takes and sharing your own personal attitudes.

I can’t help you with the skin part or with finding meek targets to pick on.

As for that last part, about other ways to get readership and attention, I can remind you of my Most Valuable Email trick.

A few of the emails I’ve written using my Most Valuable Email trick have gone semi-viral — they got unexpected forwards and shares in the small direct marketing community.

And using the Most Valuable Email trick allows me to write in a way that’s separate from what I believe personally. And yet my readers don’t mind this lack of “authenticity” — in fact, they even seem to enjoy it.

Maybe it’s not too clear how this can possibly be true.

If you’re curious, try out my email newsletter and witness it for yourself. Click here to sign up.

Stolen ideas are worth more than fine gold

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Incline thy ear unto my sayings:

Over the past day and night, I’ve had an unusual influx of new subscribers. I went to check my website analytics.

There was nothing unusual except extra traffic to a post with a weighty and smooth title:

“The 7th pillar of influence”

“Huh?” I said. I couldn’t remember ever writing this. I had no idea what it was about. But I did find the title intriguing so I looked it up. It turns out the “7th pillar of influence” is an email I wrote in very earliest days of my newsletter, back in 2018. I won’t tell you about the content of that email — you can look up the 7th pillar on my site if you like. But I will tell you about that title:

The 7th pillar of influence was a play on T.E. Lawrence’s 7 Pillars of Wisdom, his memoirs of serving in the Arab revolt. I read that book some time ago, but I never did figure out what the 7 pillars of wisdom are. I checked just now. It turns out Lawrence’s title was itself a reference — to the book of Proverbs, chapter 9, verse 1:

“Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars”

Now I betcha that this Old Testement reference in Lawrence’s title is one good reason why we are still talking about his book today, one hundred years after it was written. And perhaps it’s the reason why my email from 4 years ago, archived in the chambers of death that is my website, got some surprise visits today.

James Altucher called this practice plagiarizing.

​​And what else can you call it? Stealing from another text, word for word, without giving credit. And yet, James himself has stolen in this way many times, for the following reason:

Because out of the thousands of documents written over the past 5,000 years, this document has survived. Thousands didn’t.

Religions and philosophies sprung from it. Millions worshipped it.

The text is somehow primal to our experience as humans.

So let me reveal a secret to you:

If you want to instruct or influence people, and you want to find an attractive way to package up your message, then dig through the Book of Proverbs. Find a formulation that has survived thousands of years, and stuff your message in that box.

Perhaps you think it’s foolish for me to reveal this secret. But I find that the more I scatter good ideas about, the more they increase.

On the other hand, the Book of Proverbs also promises blessings to those who sell. So let me sell you a spot on my daily email newsletter. It’s worth more than fine gold. You can pay for it by clicking here.

My recipe for writing a book that influences people and sells itself

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I just spent the morning reading statistics about the best-selling books of the 20th century so I could bring you the following curious anecdote or two:

The year 1936 saw the publication of two all-time bestselling books.

The first of these was Gone With The Wind. That’s a novel that clocked in at 1,037 pages. “People may not like it very much,” said one publishing insider, “but nobody can deny that it gives a lot of reading for your money.”

Gone With The Wind was made into a 1939 movie with Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, which won a bunch of Oscars. Without the monstrous success of the movie, odds are that few people today would know about the book, even though it sold over 30 million copies in its time.

On the other hand, consider the other all-time bestseller published in 1936.

It has sold even better — an estimated 40 million copies as of 2022.

And unlike Gone With The Wind, this second book continues to sell over 250,000 each year, even today, almost a century after its first publication.

What’s more, this book does it all without any advertising, without the Hollywood hype machine, simply based on its own magic alone.

You might know the book I’m talking about. It’s Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People.

One part of this success is clearly down to the promise in the title. As Carnegie wrote back then, nobody teaches you this stuff in school. And yet, it’s really the fundamental work of what it means to be a human being.

But it can’t be just the title. That’s not reason why the book continues to sell year after year, or why millions of readers say the book changed their lives.

This includes me. I read How To Win Friends for the first time when I was around 18. It definitely changed how I behave.

For example, take Carnegie’s dictum that you cannot ever win an argument.

​​I’m argumentative by nature. But just yesterday, I kept myself from arguing — because Carnegie’s ghost appeared from somewhere and reminded me that I make my own life more difficult every time I aim to prove I’m right.

This kind of influence comes down to what’s inside the covers, and not just on them.

So what’s inside? I’ll tell ya.

Each chapter of Carnegie’s book is exactly the same, once you strip away the meat and look at the skeleton underneath. It goes like this:

1. Anecdote
2. The core idea of the chapter, which is illustrated by the anecdote above, and which is further illustrated by…
3. Anecdote
4. Anecdote
5. Anecdote
6. (optional) Anecdote

The valuable ideas in Carnegie’s book can fit on a single page. But it’s the other 290 pages of illustration that have made the book what it is.

In other words, the recipe for mass influence and continued easy sales is being light on how-to and heavy on case studies and stories, including personal stories and experiences.

Maybe you say that’s obvious. And it should be, if you read daily email newsletters like mine. But maybe you don’t read my newsletter yet. In case you’d like to fix that, so you can more ideas and illustrations on how to influence and even sell people, then I suggest you click here and follow the instructions that appear.

High-quality content is a bad investment for most businesses

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In a recent newsletter, media watcher Simon Owens wrote that high-end, narrative podcasts are a bad investment for most businesses. Cheap, conversational podcasts are a much smarter bet. This made my long and I believe quite attractive ears perk up.

Why is producing high-production-value, valuable content such a bad idea? Simon shares his own experience:

But here we are just two years later, and most of the narrative shows are gone from my own podcast feed. The transition occurred gradually. I’d find myself looking forward to new episodes of the conversational podcasts, whereas listening to the scripted ones just felt like homework. My mind would drift during crucial plot points, which meant skipping back several minutes so I could regain my narrative foothold. In many cases, the narrative series I listened to died off after a single season, and I just didn’t have the energy to try out new ones. Today, only four out of the 23 shows I regularly listen to hinge on a storytelling structure.

Simon says, of course there is still some space for fancy narrative podcasts like Serial, and there will always be some audience. But for most businesses, investing in this kind of content is a losing game.

Like I said, my ears were very perky after reading this.

“What if it’s not just podcasts?” I said to myself. The question is not about complex storytelling versus unscripted conversations. The question is whether your content feels like homework or not.

Or maybe the question is really this:

Is the high production value you put into your content helping your case — or actually hurting it? This might be something to think about if you have a podcast, or a YouTube channel, or — an email newsletter.

But here’s something else to think about:

People don’t just sign up to conversational podcasts. Not just like that. Nobody sets out looking for a random and unknown person to listen to.

No, people initially start listening to conversational podcast because the podcast is recommended by somebody… or because a snippet of it is surprising or fun… or, most likely, because the podcaster has some kind of standing, authority, or status.

Which brings me to my Most Valuable Email training.

It’s about an email copywriting trick. This trick produces surprising content. Content which gets recommended and shared by readers to other potential readers. And which builds up your perceived standing, authority, and status, by you doing nothing more than writing valuable emails regularly… which don’t feel like homework to read.

In case you have an email newsletter around marketing or copywriting, or want to start one, this Most Valuable Email training might be a good investment. To find out more about it:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

This email is fresh and I can prove it, but if it weren’t…

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Today is October 4, which marks the 139th anniversary of the first trip of the Orient Express, on October 4, 1883. I’m telling you this for two reasons:

Reason one is that there is something magical about the name Orient Express. It captured the dreams and imagination of the world for the better part of a century.

The mystery train from Paris to Istanbul, stopping at exotic locations like Vienna, Budapest, and the Black Sea port of Varna, featured in Bram Stoker’s Dracula… the James Bond book and film From Russia, With Love… and most famously, in Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express.

So it might be worth thinking a bit about what it was about that name, and the train that bore it, that made it so impactful and sticky.

Reason two is that I want to prove to you, as well as I can, that I’m actually writing this email today, October 4 2022. It’s valuable for readers to feel your content is fresh. But I will make you a little confession:

I don’t always write fresh content. Sometimes, when I am too rushed, uninspired, or simply hung over, I will go and reuse an old email. It’s one of the benefits of having written 1,300+ of them for this newsletter alone.

Whenever I do that, I will select an old email that I still like reading a year or two later. And then I’ll update it. Rewrite it slightly to take out the no longer relevant, and to add in the now relevant.

Whenever I do this, I find I get lots of engagement and positive reactions from readers. And I’ve never once had anybody point out that I’m rewarming last year’s supper.

It turns out I’m not the first to hit upon this idea. Back in 2015, the people at Vox did an experiment. As Matt Yglesias, then editor at Vox, wrote:

“For one week, we asked our writers and editors to update and republish a number of articles — one each day — that were first posted more than two months ago. This is hardly a brand-new idea in digital journalism. But we did it a little differently. Rather than putting the old article back up again unchanged, or adding a little apologetic introductory text to explain why it was coming back and was possibly outdated in parts, we just told people to make the copy as good as it could be.”

Result?

Over 500,000 readers for those rewarmed articles… engagement and exposure to good content that had previously gone unnoticed… and not a single reader writing in to say that Vox was reusing content.

That’s something else to think about, at least if you have a stockpile of old content. Don’t apologize for reusing it. Instead, make the old content as good as you can, today, on October 4, 2022, and then serve that up to your audience.

All right, my mystery train is about to leave the station, so let me say:

This email you just read does not use my Most Valuable Email trick. If you know the trick already, you will see why the content you just read would be 100% incompatible with trick teach in the Most Valuable Email. And if you don’t know the trick yet, and you’re curious to find out more about it, you can do that on the following exotic and mysterious page:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Gratuitous fun to make readers stand up and beg for buttermilk

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For the first 20 or 30 years of my life, I had this serious mental defect where I couldn’t enjoy a good bangemup action movie.

“So unrealistic,” I snuffled. “So predictable.” That’s how I wasted decades of my life.

Thank God I’ve grown up.

​​Because now I can watch and enjoy movies like True Lies, James Cameron’s 1994 action comedy.

​​True Lies stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as super spy/boring suburban dad Harry Tasker, and Jamie Lee Curtis as his stodgy/talented wife Helen.

The initial reason I watched True Lies was the following famous line. It’s delivered by a used car salesman who’s trying to seduce Helen and is unwittingly confiding to Harry about it:

“And she’s got the most incredible body, too, and a pair of titties that make you wanna stand up and beg for buttermilk. Ass like a ten year old boy!”

Which modern Hollywood screenplay would dare have that?

But even beyond the risky dialogue, I was surprised by how fun this movie is. I guess that’s the only word to describe it. For example, as the movie goes on, you get to see:

– an old man sitting on a public toilet, calmly reading a newspaper, during the first shootout between Harry and the bad guy

– Harry riding a horse into an elevator, and an aristocratic couple in the elevator getting whipped in the face by the horse’s tail

– Tia Carrere (the evil seductress in the movie) rushing to grab her purse before the bad guys drop a box with a nuclear warhead onto it

– a pelican landing on a teetering van full of terrorists and sending it crashing off the bridge

– Harry saving the day flying a military jet, perfectly landing the plane on a city street, and then accidentally bumping a cop car

The point is that all these details are what I call “gratuitous fun.”

They weren’t in any way central to the action of the movie… and even the comedic part of the plot could have done without them.

They were just pure, unnecessary fun that made the movie sparkle a bit more. And I guess they helped it become the success that it was, netting almost $400 million in 1994 dollars.

I think the message is clear:

This year, surprise your readers with some gratuitous fun in your online content, in your sales messages, and even your one-to-one business communication.

​​People love James Cameron’s movies. They will love your stuff, too. In fact, you’ll make them wanna stand up and beg for buttermilk. Whatever that means.

And if you are too close to your own marketing to know what “gratuitous fun” might look like… well, maybe you can get some ideas from my own marketing. If you like, you can sign up for my daily email newsletter here.