Emails

A non-zero amount of sales

by

This morning, I woke up to a ThriveCart sale notification.

“What’s this?” I said. I ripped it open like Dudley Dursley ripping open his 36 Christmas presents.

The notification revealed its secrets, and told me the new sale I made:

===

Emails That Did Well – $79

===

“Emails that did well” is an offer made earlier this week, in one email only.

After I made that offer and sent that email, I got a reply from expert email marketer and superior fractional CMO Nick “Jolly” Bandy, who wrote:

“Actually laughing my ass off reading this. So you are selling the SAME bonus stack as last week… without the main offer…for the same amount of money…and this will most likely make a non-zero amount of sales.”

Yes, it’s pretty much like Nick says, minus the laughing.

I first offered “Emails That Did Well,” plus all the free bonuses eventually included with it, as free bonuses to an affiliate offer.

After the affiliate offer closed, I offered the same bonuses for $79, which happened to be the price of the affiliate offer.

And I made a non-zero amount of sales as a result. As for how non-zero?

That’s for me to know and you to find out, at least if you have gotten yourself access to my Emails That Did Well document.

But before I send you to a page that outlines all the details of that offer and possibly entices you to buy it, a bit of marketing insight:

The first email I ever wrote to my list on the topic of positioning came in 2020.

In that email, I compared your positioning to a spear, which needs to have a very small and very sharp point, in order to pierce your prospect’s thick defenses (his skull) and lodge in the soft gray matter inside.

The thing is, if you fuse together several very small and very sharp points, they lose their “very small” and “very sharp” qualities.

Your positioning becomes less like a spear, small and sharp, and instead becomes more like an iron, flat and heavy.

An iron will hurt somebody if you throw it at their head, but it won’t pierce anything or create any kind of new understanding.

In short, positioning is not additive. A plus B plus C is not always greater than A alone, and often it is less.

That’s why a non-zero amount of people have taken me up on the Emails That Did Well offer.

If you’d like to get that offer, so you can find out how well that email has done so far, and to keep track of my other successful emails, now and in the future, here are the full details:

https://bejakovic.com/announcing-emails-that-did-well/

On average I write 3.4 good emails a month

by

Over the past 8 years of running this daily newsletter, I have had a long line of big-name direct marketers and A-list copywriters come and go as subscribers.

Along the way, many have had good things to say about my abilities as an email copywriter. My favorite is from Joe Schriefer, who at the time was the copy chief at Agora Financial, one of the biggest imprints at one of the biggest direct response publishers. Joe wrote me one time and said:

“Just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy reading your emails. I think you’re one of the best email writers out there!”

I’m telling you this to set up the following shocking and quite depressing fact:

Even though I write and send an email every day, I on average write only 3.4 good emails a month.

Here’s how I know:

Earlier this year, I finally did something I shoulda done on day 0 of starting this newsletter. I created a new Google Doc, and I named it “Emails that did well.”

Ever since, when an email stands out in terms of results — usually sales made, but sometimes for other reasons, like getting a lot of qualified leads, or opening an unexpected new door, or simply getting an unusual amount of engagement — I put it in this document, along with a short summary of the results that made me think the email did well.

Over the past 5 months, since the end of January, I have put 17 emails into the “Emails that did well” document. By my math, that works out to 3.4 emails a month. That’s barely over 10%.

What about the remaining ~90% of emails I write?

I reckon they are doing their work still, and are moving some of the people somewhat closer to the hole, as marketer Travis Sago likes to say.

Still, fewer than 10% of my emails appear to be outstanding in terms of their impact. (For the record, none of these “Emails that did well” is a “cart close, last call” email. “Cart close” emails work great, but for reasons other than the copy.)

Would you like to know which of my emails did well this year?

Would you like to have running access to the emails of mine that do well in the future, for as long as I keep writing this newsletter?

If you would, I’ll make you a deal:

I’m currently promoting Lawrence Bernstein’s Lead Gen Legend. This is a massive swipe file of winning lead gen copy and set of special reports on lead gen, which Lawrence normally sells for $379, but which he is making available for $79 during my promo, because that’s the deal I made with him.

I bought Lead Gen Legend myself earlier this because I was sold on it myself, without thinking to ever promote it as an affiliate.

I am promoting it now because I think it’s great, like everything else Lawrence sells, and a sweet deal at just $79.

At the same time, I’ve learned a bit or two during these 8 years of running my own newsletter.

That’s why I’m also including the following three bonuses to Lawrence’s core offer:

FREE BONUS #1. Emails that did well

I’ll give you access to my “Emails that did well” document, now and in perpetuity. You can see which of my past emails did well and why. And as I update the document, you will see which future emails have done well. In a way, it’s a swipe file of outstanding email copy, from, as Joe Schriefer would say, “one of the best email writers out there.”

FREE BONUS #2. Core Promise Workshop and Q&A call recording

I recently sold this workshop recording for $97, along with some bonuses. It’s yours free (minus the bonuses) if you get Lawrence’s Lead Gen Legend for $79.

FREE BONUS #3. “Perfect Lead Gen Offer”

Not my idea. Also not a specific offer template you can swipe. Rather, a simple but counterintuitive process for figuring out what offer to make in your lead gen ads to maximize lifetime value and minimize ad costs.

If you want it, or at a part of it, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/leadgen

P.S. To get $300 off the regular $379 price of Lead Gen Legend, put in the coupon code BEJAKO on the cart page. Lawrence has these instructions on the page itself, but it’s a bit hidden, and some people have written me in confusion about it.

My selfie with the Pope

by

Two days ago, Tuesday, around 6:45pm, I snuck out of my house.

The streets were quiet and full of police.

There was no traffic, just people clustered in bunches along the curbs.

I waited for a while to watch a cavalcade of police motorcycles and two black and tinted vans drive by in the direction of Montjuic, where the Barcelona Olympic stadium is.

Then I started walking in the same direction.

Like I wrote last week, the Pope came to Barcelona this Tuesday.

I made plans with my friends Sanda and Victor to meet at the Olympic stadium and to participate in the drama of tens of thousands of people watching and cheering just some guy (I’m not Catholic).

It turned out that there wasn’t any drama. It was all very orderly. There were no giant crowds outside the stadium, even though the Pope was supposed to speak there in a little more than a half hour.

It also turned out we needed to register in advance to be allowed into the stadium. In other words, we weren’t getting in. We could just peak inside and see the promised tens of thousands of worshipers in there already, singing chipper and modern Christian rock songs, and waiting for the Pope.

So we couldn’t get in to see the Pope. Oh well.

It was a beautiful afternoon, and Montjuic is a beautiful place.

So Sanda and Victor and I decided to walk to a nearby pool (famous from photos of high divers during the ’92 Olympics) and get a drink.

And as we headed up the street, within the first few steps, on a little stretch where there was nobody else on the curb with us, another cavalcade of police motorcycles and black cars slowly came our way.

Except this time, one of the black cars had its window rolled down.

There was the Pope, about 15 feet away from us.

He saw us and waved. I guess it’s what popes do, but I still felt special, seen. I instinctively smiled and waved back.

So that’s my selfie with the Pope.

I don’t use my phone much. Even if I did, it would have taken lightning reflexes to pull it out and to grab a selfie with me in the foreground and the Pope waving in the background.

That’s ok. This email is effectively painting that picture for you, and serving the same purpose of gloating about something noteworthy in my life.

Like I said, all this happened two days ago.

I didn’t write about it yesterday because — and here’s the marketing lesson for today — you shouldn’t hide your new offers.

I’ve seen a problematic behavior among several people I am coaching.

It’s particularly problematic because it’s a behavior I also engage in.

It goes like this:

1. I come up with a new, potentially risky offer.

2. I write an email that doesn’t refer to this offer in any way in the subject line, the lead, or really the body of the email.

3. I then stuff the offer at the end of the email.

4. More often than not, I throw up my hands in frustration that nobody (or very few people) took me up on my offer, and I scrap the whole thing.

That’s kind of what I did two days ago.

I wrote an email about Dean Jackson… and how great Dean is… and about a lead gen method Dean has.

At the end of that email, I put in an offer for what I am calling the Core Promise Workshop and Q&A call, which is free and is happening live next Tuesday.

I sent out that email in the evening two days ago (right around the time I was hanging out with the Pope).

Result:

By the end of the evening, 6 people had registered for the call. Not even the Pope could save me.

I checked the stats again the next day.

21 people in total had registered by now. Better, but still, less than 1% of my list. For a free, live workshop, one where I’m offering to answer your questions and help you come up with a new core promise for your business.

Am I such a loser?

Are my readers losers?

Is this new offer a loser?

Or is it just that I really really worked hard to bury the lead?

That’s why yesterdays email was just the offer.

It’s my fix, my deal with myself, why I allow myself from time to time to bury a new offer like I did two days ago. My deal with myself is, if I ever bury it one day, I have to put it front-and-center the very next day.

In fact, yesterday’s email was just the tail end of the previous day’s email, with the copy completely unchanged. Even though I had this selfie with the Pope to tell you about.

Result:

66 registrants so far. Meaning, the second email brought in twice as many people as the first.

Which is good, and it supports the point I made to you above. I think I can do still better though. So let me remind you:

The most important part of your marketing message is the promise you make. That’s equally true whether you’re selling a service, coaching, a course, or yourself as a person of trust and influence.

Based on my 1-1 work with dozens of online business owners, I can tell you that most business owners DO NOT DO A GOOD JOB with the core promise they are making in their marketing.

Next Tuesday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, I will hold a Core Promise Workshop and Q&A call.

It’s free & you can ​Register Here​.

I’ll share the most important parts of:

* What makes a good promise

* The importance of being clear over clever

* Choosing a promise that sounds credible

And we’ll end with a Q&A session to answer your Core Promise questions.

Don’t forget to register so I can send you the details.

See you there.

Once more, yesterday didn’t work out as I planned

by

Early this morning, I got back to Barcelona following a 2-week trip that spanned 5 countries.

Diligent readers of this newsletter know that last weekend, as part of this trip, I missed a layover flight, which led to an almost 12-hour, cross-country, cross-corn-field bus ride.

Yesterday, I missed a second layover flight, which led to a 17-hour total trip to get back to Barcelona.

As I sat at Frankfurt airport, uncertain that I would make it back at all before the “airport curfew” struck, and faced with the prospect of spending the night at an awful airport hotel and then another day at the airport, I swore to myself I would never ever travel again, or in fact ever leave the house.

I bring this up because I got a question recently from a long-time reader and customer by the name of Jordan:

===

This one might be a bit meta, but how did you start traveling and how do you travel so much? Did you start before having the income from this newsletter or after?

I’m also looking to travel more and I’ve found it intriguing how others do it. your insights are always very unique though.

===

I don’t feel I travel very much these days, certainly not compared to how I did a few years ago, when I was living in Airbnbs for almost 2 years straight. I got burned out after that, and it took me a couple years to develop any interest in taking a trip further than the local grocery store.

I also don’t really have all that much to say about “how to travel.”

I personally had zero obligations or restrictions when I decided to uproot and start living like a high-class hobo. I also had good money to support this lifestyle, which was pouring in via freelance copywriting work, a year or so before I made a first dollar from this first newsletter.

Since Jordan flatters me by saying my insights are always very unique, let me share the one possibly unique thing I can say about traveling a lot.

It’s something I experienced personally, and something that I also heard confirmed when I had a quick call once upon a time with now-dead pickup coach Tom Torero, whose worldwide travels dwarfed anything I ever did or would ever want to do.

Possible insight alert:

If you travel intensely for extended periods of time, particularly to places where you don’t know anybody or have no right being, you have to have a routine, and ideally you have to have something productive to do most days, like a job.

… which is ironic, because I imagine most people want to travel so they can get away from their routine, and because they don’t want to work.

But such is the human mind.

We have a few basic needs. The rub is that among those basic needs, we have ones that are diametrically opposed to each other, such as the need for novelty and the need for stability. If you swing too far to either pole, it leads to craziness and eventual breakdown.

The thing is, you don’t need a tremendous amount of daily productive work to keep you grounded and sane.

For me, writing this daily email does it. Plus, like Jordan says, writing this daily email has had the nice knock-on effect of generating an income, and even introducing me to people online that I ended up meeting in real life on my travels.

I got a course that shows you how to write daily emails like this one to your own list. If you’d like to find out about it:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

What I really think about open rates and subject lines

by

Course creator Matt Giaro, who helps folks monetize their skills and knowledge online, writes in with a softball question to help me out while I travel:

===

A pretty simple one that might be a bit “too educational”:

What’s YOUR process of writing subject lines?

e.g, What comes first, the egg, the subject line, the chicken, or the email body?

PS: Enjoy your trip 🙂

===

In a zero-drama nutshell, I almost always write my subject line…

… let me tease you for a minute…

… this is gonna be super valuable…

… AFTER I’ve written the body of the email. The egg comes after the chicken. As I say inside my Simple Emails course, after I explain how to open up an email, eg. how to roast the chicken:

===

Subject line tip #2: Write your subject line after your email body.

I am talking about the subject line after I talked about opening your email, because that’s how I actually work.

I find it very hard to come up with a subject line out of thin air, and if I do come up with one that I feel is good, I’m most likely fooling myself. What I do instead is first write my email, then go back and pull out different phrases or ideas or facts that could go into the subject line.

===

Beyond this, I don’t have a tremendous amount to say about writing subject lines, either in my own daily work, or inside Simple Money Emails.

In fact, I have just one other tip, which I think is much more important, and which is much more universal, than the one above.

This second tip explains why some copywriters insist that subject lines are super important, and determine the success or failure of your email…

… while other copywriters say that subject lines don’t matter all, and even make a show of sending their emails out with silly or flat subject lines, without any apparent detriment.

If you’d like to find out what my other subject line tip is, and more generally, if you’d like to find out how to write effective daily emails that make sales today and keep readers reading tomorrow, then:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Everything you ever wanted to know about me, but were afraid to ask

by

In a couple hours from now, I will be setting off for the “Real Stockholm Tour.”

I’ve been in Stockholm for a day and a half so far. I have seen the posh and pretty center… the cute and cobbly old town… and, thanks to a boat ride I took with lots of tall and blonde Swedes, an island named Vaxholm, one of over 24,000 that form the Stockholm archipelago, which starts in the city and stretches for over 60km. I never knew that Sweden was basically Earthsea.

I’m here for the next week with a large fraction of my lifelong friends — a flatmate I lived with for 6 years, 10+ years ago in Budapest; a “daygame wing” I’ve known for 12+ years and have spent hundreds of hours with on the street; and a college friend and former housemate I’ve known for close to 25 years, since our time at UCSC, who I’m living with again after all that time.

Somehow we all assembled here, in part by luck and in part by strategy.

Today, like I said, it’s time for the real Stockholm tour.

Unlike the pretty, posh, or pristine that we’ve seen so far, the real Stockholm tour will consist of getting a burek — a Balkan pastry — somewhere in the suburbs and then seeing other and realer parts of this enormous though not tremendously populated city.

I’m telling you all this because frankly I don’t have a lot of time or mental space to write a different kind of email this morning. Which ironically, is my takeaway for you today.

If you write dailyish emails, but you find yourself without a lot of time or brain power, you can always simply tell people where you are right now, what’s going on, why you are either braindead or pressed for time, and then lead into your offer.

In my experience, readers enjoy those kinds of emails a lot. And such emails serve their purpose of keeping people reading to your offer and beyond.

Speaking of:

I will be traveling for a while still, even after Stockholm. I will have interesting things to promote and possibly interesting ideas to share during that time. But I expect I will also find myself again in situations like I am in today, without a lot of time or creativity.

Email marketing side tip:

Another good kind of email to write in a time or brain crunch is a Q&A email.

To help me do that, would you send me your questions?

It can be questions about anything I am qualified to talk about, including email marketing, copywriting, or online businesses.

It can also be questions about things I am eminently not qualified to talk about, such as climate change, weight loss, or raising children.

Or if there are things that you always wanted to know about me personally, but were afraid to ask, now’s your chance.

I don’t promise to answer all questions in a future email, but I do promise to read and honestly consider them.

And who knows, if you write me, you might find your name under the bright lights of this newsletter in a few days’ time, along with my best or most entertaining answer to what you ask.

The only way to have that happen is to hit reply right now, think what you most want to know from me, and then send me a email carrier pigeon, straight to my hotel room in Archipelago Central. Thanks in advance.

How I would eat ecom copywriters’ lunch… with some fava beans, and a nice chianti

by

Over the past year, I have had an ungodly number of people sign up to my list who bill themselves as ecom copywriters.

Typically, the main service these folks offer is email marketing for ecom brands.

Makes sense to me.

Even though I am currently promoting an offer titled 1-Person Advertorial Agency, and though in the past I made good money writing advertorials for ecom clients, that money pales in comparison to the money I made writing emails, for those same clients, on a profit-share basis.

The thing is, I only got a chance to write those profit-share emails because I was already writing advertorials for these clients, and because their entire customer flow, and the success of their future offers and funnels, depended on the front-end copy I was writing.

Which brings me to the following 7-step plan that I would follow today, blindly and with 100% commitment, if I were bent on eating the lunch of all those email-writing ecom copywriters:

1. I’d find ecom businesses that are running paid traffic (easy enough with Facebook ad library, but more below on how to do this in a smart way). I’d look for a business that’s sending traffic straight from their ads to the product page.

2. I’d write an advertorial (or three) for such a business, and I’d do it for absolutely free. (Why not? It’s an investment of a couple hours that could pay back literally hundreds of thousands of dollars over time.)

3. I’d put the advertorial in a Google Doc, and format it nicely so it can function as a live piece of copy. I’d send this to the biz owner. I’d tell them it’s theirs to use, and there’s nothing to do but simply clone the Google Doc (to make sure I don’t mess with it) and redirect a bit of traffic to it to see how it performs against their base funnel.

4. I’d follow up until I get either a “Leave me alone” or a “Damn this worked great, can you write more like this?”

5. If it’s a “Can you write more like this,” I’d say sure. And then I’d make the business owner the following sociopath offer:

“I will write advertorials for you ongoing, for FREE (bear with me here), IF you will let me write emails for you, for FREE also. Just pay me a share of the profits I generate for you on the back end, after the money’s already in your Stripe account.”

6. If I get the objection that they already pay an ecom copywriter to write their emails, I’d politely say, “Fire them. I will do it for free, for just for a share of the profits I make you, unlike those people who charge you whether you make money or not. Plus, I’ll help you scale your ad spend with my advertorials, so we both profit.”

7. If they’re already working with an ecom copywriter who’s getting paid on a profit-share basis, I’d say, “Fire them, because they aren’t writing advertorials for you for free. I will, plus I’ve already proven that I can write copy that sells your offers on cold traffic, which is way harder than email.”

… and to make all this manageable in just a few hours of work a week, I’d use the AI Advertorial Toaster that Thom Benny and his protege Sam are giving away on their 1-Person Advertorial Agency workshop, which happens this Wednesday.

For reference:

It used to take me 4-5 days to write an advertorial.

Sam’s AI Advertorial Toaster pops up a near-good-enough advertorial waffle pretty much instantly. It’s why Sam can bake up and serve an advertorial, one which will convert on cold traffic, in under an hour now, instead of the 4-5 days it took me back when I worked with clients.

It’s also the reason why Sam has been able to write 20+ such advertorials per month, and why he’s pulled in over $50M for clients over the past year alone.

Last point:

Also on the 1-Person Advertorial Agency training, Sam is giving away his Ad Reanimator process, for identifying and contacting clients who are a perfect fit for advertorials — ecom businesses who had a long-running ads that recently died. (Advertorials make those ads come back to life.)

If you are an ecom copywriter already, and if your livelihood is writing emails for clients, maybe a cold chill passed down your back just now. After all, I’m advertising a recipe for someone to come and take your livelihood away, potentially by the end of this week.

The only thing I can tell you is, if you’re currently not offering advertorials to your email clients, there’s nothing stopping you from doing so, using Sam’s Toaster and the instruction manual he provides for it.

Not only will you protect yourself against competition sneaking in and taking your email clients away from you, but you have a chance to make a lot more money, whether you simply want to charge your clients for your advertorials, or do a revshare deal like I lay out above (again, it’s how I made most of my money).

And if you’re not an “ecom copywriter” yet, it is a legit opportunity right now, even if you have little experience to speak of.

In either case, Thom and Sam’s workshop is happening this Wednesday. For more info, or to sign up before it’s too late:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

10 hacks for writing daily emails

by

I’ve been writing daily sales emails, first for clients and then for myself, since 2017. In that time, I estimate I’ve written 3,000+ such emails. I have learned a thing or a thousand in the process. Here’s 10 of ’em, selected for impact and ease of use:

1. Write a 1-2-3 outline. Point 1 is your opening. Point 2 is your takeaway. Point 3 is your offer. Each point should be a few words to a sentence max. If you cannot express what you want to say in 3 points and each point in max a few words, your email will turn out a mess with startling probability.

2. Repurpose the headlines of long-running but little-known sales letters as your subject lines. One of my most successful (notorious) ones:

“Start a profitable repositioning business… with your own home as headquarters”

3. If you are ever in a horrible crunch for time or brainpower, you can always write a super basic email using the following format:

– Where you are right now

– How you are feeling

– Why you are short of time/brainpower to write a better email

– Why you’re writing an email nonetheless (and make this into a net positive for you reader)

– A link to your offer

An email like this can be just 150-250 words. It’s something you can do in 5 minutes or less, even if you’re brain-dead at the time.

4. Reuse content you’ve already written in other emails (eg. my point 3 above), or in your courses, books, blog posts, comments on Facebook, comments on Reddit, letters to your grandma.

5. The #1 most powerful editing tool is the delete key. If something isn’t quite working, take it out instead of trying to fix it.

6. If you have written a cliche, either take it out or “lampshade” it — exaggerate it and draw even more attention to it.

7. If you have written something your reader already knows, either take it out or acknowledge your reader already knows it, and explain why you are still talking about it.

8. Writing ungrammatical gets people to pay more attention, to notice and remember you more, and maybe even to be amused. It sometimes also draws replies from very intelligent people, replies which can be profitably put to work in future emails.

9. Just about anything can be a daily email topic. If it doesn’t look like it, it’s because you’re not looking close enough. Look closer.

10. It’s helpful to restrict yourself in terms of topic, style, core idea you want to get across, etc. It saves time and makes your emails more impactful and surprising day after day. For help with that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

This kind of email drives more sales than the average

by

Here’s a free marketing tip for you:

If people are buying, it makes sense to advertise the fact.

In the many promos I’ve run within this email newsletter, I’ve always found that when I write an email in which I share a message from someone who’s just taken me up on the promo offer, it drives more sales than your average sales email.

As an example:

Since Monday, I have been running a little promo, the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, for my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

That promo is ending today at 12 midnight PST.

The whole idea behind the promo has been to pile on the bonuses. The little time I’ve had to write emails has been eaten up by spelling out what exactly people get inside the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

And so, though people have been buying, I haven’t had time to advertise that fact. Lemme fix that now. Here are a few messages I got from readers who took me up on this offer over the past 24 hours.

First, from email marketer Logan Hobson, who lives in Japan:

===

Alright John,

I got 5 copies of “Book” coming to Japan.

Yes, even though I could have ordered them from Japanese Amazon and gotten free shipping with Prime (which is cheaper here than in the US), rankings and sales on the US Amazon have more impact for you so I ordered them from my US Amazon account.

===

Second, from copywriter and marketing consultant Chuck Gibson:

===

John,

Receipt attached.

I, of course, already have the book, but not printed copies. But it’s the bonus intrigue that hooked me. Very interesting offer.

And a cool way to get your Amazon sales up. Now I have copies to give to certain protégés.

===

And third, from a reader who I’m guessing doesn’t want me to share his name:

===

Alright, you got me. This is the worst possible time for me to spend any more money since I have to go on a multi-country trip in 45 days and gotta save as much as possible.

Frankly I don’t even KNOW what I’ll do with every book, Maybe leave one in every Airbnb I stay at as a parting gift? That would be funny but anyway, your bonuses are always amazing and they will be great companions for all the travels.

===

As a result of the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle and of dedicated readers and customers like the above, the paperback copy of my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters has jumped from an Amazon book ranking of 1,016,096 at the start of the promo to a current ranking of 75,795.

In the process, it’s leapfrogged such industry standards as Mark Ford and John Forde’s Great Leads, Brian Kurtz’s Overdeliver, and Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Direct Marketing.

So much for the education/demonstration part of this email. Now for the sales.

Like I said, the chance to get the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle ends tonight. If you have taken me up on this offer, check the bonus area I gave you access to, and you will find the following:

#1. Copywriting Portfolio Secrets (Price last sold at: $97)

In this training, I show you how to build up your copywriting portfolio in the fastest and most efficient way, so you can start to win copywriting jobs even today. I show you the best way I’ve found to win 4- and 5-figure jobs I REALLY wanted, even when I wasn’t qualified for them, and how you can do it too.

I previously sold this training for $97. But it’s yours free inside the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, which also includes my…

#2. No-Stress Negotiation For Well-Paid Copywriters (Price last sold at: $100)

This guide outlines my 7-part negotiating system, which I adapted from negotiation coach Jim Camp. This system kept me sane while I still regularly interviewed and worked with copywriting clients. Follow these seven principles, and you will end up making more money, working with better clients, and being able to stick to it for the long term.

I only offered this information before as part of the $100 Copy Zone guide, which also featured….

#3. How To Get Set Up On Upwork

This free bonus is an excerpt from a short self-published book I wrote once, How to Become a $150/Hr Sales Copywriter on Upwork: A Personal Success Story that Almost Anyone Can Replicate. It tells you how to actually get set up on Upwork — the details of your profile page, your description, your title.

If you combine this bonus with the two bonuses above — Copywriting Portfolio Secrets and No-Stress Negotiation — you have a great shot of winning a job on Upwork by the end of this week, or even today.

#4. Dan’s Timeless Wisdom (priceless, or $25k+)

Between August of 2019 and March 2020, I was in Dan Ferrari’s coaching group. As you might know, Dan started out as a star copywriter at The Motley Fool, and went on to become one of the most successful, most winning, big-money direct response copywriters working today.

Inside his coaching group, Dan dispensed copy critiques, marketing advice, and mystical koans to help his coaching students get to the next level.

At some point, I had the bright idea to start archiving the best and most valuable things that Dan was saying. I got 25 of them down, and they are all included in this document.

(By the way, I never tallied up the exact and rather painful amount of money I paid Dan for the coaching. It was north of $25k. I do know I made it all back, and then some, in just the first two months after I stopped with the coaching, thanks to just one tip I got from Dan.)

#5. Copy Riddles Lite (Price last sold at: $97)

Copy Riddles Lite includes one of the 20 rounds included in my full Copy Riddles program. The round is composed of two parts, in which you practice writing sales bullets, and compare what you wrote to what Mel Martin (as well as several other A-list copywriters) wrote starting with the same prompt.

Do this, and you very quickly realize how much skill went into Mel Martin’s bullets. Fortunately, you also very quickly manage to leech some of that skill from Mel Martin, without spending the months and years of agony it took him.

And once you get a taste for Martin’s skill, then the next step is natural:

#6. “How to Turn Fascinations into Fortunes: Copywriting Secrets To Fascinate, Captivate, And Dominate” (Price last sold at: $97)

Lawrence Bernstein, “the world’s most obsessed ad archivist,” once hunted down a collection of all of Mel Martin’s million-dollar ads for Boardroom, along with other control-beating ads Martin had written for the New York Times book division.

Lawrence then printed out the ads, stuffed them in an envelope, and mailed the collection to Marty Edelston, the founder and CEO of Boardroom.

Did Edelston get a kick out of seeing those old ads that helped build up Boardroom? He sure did.

Marty Edelston was so grateful for these ads that he sent Lawrence a thank-you note, along with a check for $2,000.

If you’d like to see these ads yourself, and study them, and model them for selling your own products, then Lawrence put them together into a collection he called “Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes.”

Lawrence got $2,000 as a thank you for putting together this collection of ads. He then sold this collection for $97.

But you don’t have to pay $2,000, or even $97 for “Fascinations Into Fortunes.”

I’ve made a special deal with Lawrence so you can get “Fascinations Into Fortunes” free, along with Copy Riddles Lite, as part of the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

#7. “How I made an extra $1404.53/month in Amazon royalties at the push of a button”

This report outlines a hack, which involves the push of a button — literally, that’s all there is to it — and which made me an extra ~$1.5k per month in Amazon royalties. I used this hack once, over the span of a few months, or rather a few weeks. I made money with it. And I never used it again.

I’m not saying anybody else should use this hack. I’m not saying anybody else should NOT use it either.

All I’m willing to do is to tell you what this hack is, why I’m no longer using it myself, and how you can try it out yourself, if you so choose, to make easy money off Amazon.

And that’s it.

Those seven bonuses, with a real-world value of $386, counting just what they sold for previously, are what you get if you’ve already taken me up on the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

And if you haven’t yet taken me up on it, here’s how you can:

1. Get five (5) paperback copies of my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

2. Forward me your Amazon receipt.

I will then set you up with the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

The deadline is tonight at 12 midnight PST. After that, no more bonuses — I am merciless about this. To get in while the doors are still open:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

10 books I could not write from content I’ve created recently

by

I have a habit, 10 daily ideas, that I got from James Altucher.

It’s the first thing I do each morning after turning off the meatlocker like air-conditioning in my apartment and brushing my teeth.

This morning, the topic was “10 new books I could write from the content I’ve been writing about lately.”

It’s a prompt I come back to from time to time. I go through emails I have written recently, and ask myself how I could generalize them, or combine them with other emails have written, and turn them into a book or a course or whatever.

Here’s what I came up with today:

#1. “101 Magic Words”

I already got 5: “Rosebud,” “One,” “Big,” “Black,” “Love.”

#2. “Mystery Merchants: How To Create And Profit From Curiosity”

Everything from Robert Collier to Novak Djokovic.

#3. The nature of reality

Ok that’s not a title, but it’s the core idea, and one I come back to a lot in these emails, including a few times over the past few weeks (“Amputees needed,” “The dark side of social proof”).

#4. Overcoming procrastination/avoidance/resistance to doing what’s needed

I try to distance myself from this topic and from the people who seek out such info, but the fact is I’m one of them and that’s why I find myself writing about it repeatedly.

#5. “How to be an effective teacher”

Certainly not by writing a book titled “How to be an effective teacher.” But I have written a lot, including recently, about how to get people to pay attention, to understand, to accept, to remember, to apply information.

#6. “Online Info Business Quick Start Guide”

Yeah, I won’t be writing that, but I could, since I have content that would definitely fit into such a book.

#7. “Influencers, or what really happens when somebody has a platform”

This is connected in my mind to #3 above, the nature of reality. I’ve written about the strangeness having an audience, and, when you think about it, the equal strangeness of being in somebody else’s audience. Not a practical topic, but interesting to me.

#8. “How To Choose A Niche”

Again, this won’t be happening, but it could.

#9. “Consumption & Digestion”

Related to #4 above. I have an entire training on this, which I’ve sold for good money before. But some part of that training, plus a few recent emails, could become a book as well.

#10. “Flip The Script”

Oren Klaff unfortunately already wrote a bad book by this title, which is a shame, because I find the topic very interesting. I know I could develop it with lots of examples, from different disciplines and different eras (I wrote an email once about a 4th-century B.C. greek general who “flipped the script” to keep assassins from his bedside and poison from his cup).

I don’t know what will come from these ideas. Maybe something. Maybe nothing. In any case, there’s no lack of opportunities.

The point is, if you are writing emails daily, generating a bit of content regularly, this can serve multiple purposes.

It can make you sales today.

It can build a relationship with readers so they keep reading tomorrow.

And it can be repurposed next week or month into a book that gets you lots of new subs to your list, or to a course that gets you lots of new dollars under your mattress.

That’s why my subject line today was “10 books I could not write” rather than “10 books I could write.” Because the idea is, these books will already have been written — by somebody, not me, at least not in that moment. All I really have to do, in that moment, is the editorial work of pulling together that writing and adding a cover on it. And of course, reaping the benefits.

It can be the same for you.

It happens bit by bit. Within a few weeks of daily action, you already have resources that you can do something more with.

But you do gotta take some action though. Maybe even now.

If you want my help in starting and sticking with the habit of writing daily emails, so you can make sales, and grow a relationship with readers, and have the building blocks of future books and courses:

https://bejakovic.com/deh