Leads

How one copywriter gets hired without making explicit offers

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It’s 8:52am as I write this, and I’m sitting on the terrace of my AirBnb in Bologna, where I arrived just last night.

Crickets are chirping in nearby trees, swallows are circling overhead, and the sun is rising in the cloudless sky.

It’s very pleasant on the terrace at the moment, though that will change soon. It’s supposed to get up to 36 degrees today, or 97 if you do Fahrenheit.

I’m trying to take advantage of the bit of day before the city turns into a furnace, so let me just share with you a reader experience with client-getting.

A while back, in my Daily Email House group, long-time reader Carlo Gargiulo, who works as a senior copywriter at Metodo Merenda, wrote about how he had moved his newsletter to Substack. I asked Carlo why he did that and how it went. He replied:

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I also chose Substack because I want to write purely informative emails. They’re actual articles designed to help readers apply what I’ve taught them.

At the core of these articles (emails) are always the principles you shared with me in Most Valuable Email.

Readers love learning and putting into practice tips to improve offers, copy, etc.

And the interesting thing is that—without making explicit offers—I receive emails from entrepreneurs who want to hire me to write emails, Facebook ads, and landing pages.

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Is it the magic of Most Valuable Email that gets entrepreneurs reaching out to hire Carlo without him even offering?

Is it the magic of Substack?

Is it some combination of the two?

I don’t know.

But if you are looking to get copywriting clients, and if you don’t like the dynamic of you pitching yourself, and the world ignoring you, then hearken to what Carlo says. It’s worked for him, and it might work for you, if you only put it to use.

Substack as far as I know is free.

Most Valuable Email I know for sure is not free.

But at the moment, you can effectively get Most Valuable Email for free, as part of my Hogwarts of Influence event.

I’m bundling together a bunch of my offers, at various levels of craziness, meant to turn you into a persuasion wizard of greater and greater power.

Most Valuable Email is available at the “Snape” and “Dumbledore” levels, along with so many other bonuses to make any of the individual items effectively free.

If you’d like to find out more before this offer vanishes in a puff of magical smoke:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw/

My selfie with the Pope

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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.

How I’d get advertorial clients without Upwork, cold outreach, or a network

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A couple months ago, I got back on Facebook in a BIG way. What I mean by that is that I started spending a few minutes there every couple days or so.

I was lurking, and trying to see what offers I would get pitched by the Facebook ad algorithm. (I was and am planning on launching my own cold traffic funnel, and wiser heads than mine say that you gotta do your research ahead of time.)

That’s how I came across a pretty, pretty brilliant offer.

It’s a dude who is running an ad… telling you he will write an ad to beat your best performing ad… and if he doesn’t succeed in beating it, he’ll give you all your money back.

(The offer started at $97 and has been going up each time he sells out the slots he’s got for the month. It currently sells for $247.)

From what I can tell, the dude has been running this since last November.

He has had 67 people take him up on it so far.

Out of those, he’s been able to beat their best ad 61 times, while refunding people 6 times.

In true Gary Bencivenga fashion, his landing page is FULL of social proof resulting from this challenge, including the refund requests from the 6 refunders, all of whom were complementary to his skill and business model.

Do you think that, out of any of the remaining 61 people whose best ads he beat, he got any long-term clients who are now paying him thousands of dollars a month?

My guess is yes.

I’m telling you this because right now, I’m promoting a cohort iI will run, starting next Monday, May 1st. The cohort will involve writing advertorials and getting clients who will happily pay for those advertorials.

So far, a few dozen people have expressed interest in this. I’ve been talking to them, or rather, emailing with them. I asked them for more information about where they’re currently at.

A few people have told me that they are either sick of looking for copywriting clients on Upwork or via cold outreach… or that they don’t have time or interest in looking for clients at all, and would rather outsource that to me.

I’m sorry to say, in that case, this cohort is not for you.

For one thing, I’m offering to help and advise with getting clients, not do it in your stead.

For another, the client-getting methods we will be using are the ones outlined inside the 1-Person Advertorial Agency course, which are (gulp) Upwork and cold outreach.

(The good news is, Upwork is where I got my biggest advertorial clients, and the way of cold outreach that 1PAA teaches is likely to be more effective and efficient than your usual kind.)

Still, if you hate the idea of Upwork and cold outreach for getting advertorial clients, then I just gave you a working alternative above. Spelled out, it goes like this:

1. Create a landing page with a headline that says something like, “FREE advertorial for your ecom brand”

2. On that landing page, explain your deal, which is basically that you will write them a free advertorial if they will pay you a commission in case of success

3. Explain who it’s for and not for (eg. must have a working cold traffic funnel, must be making at least X sales per day, must not be currently under investigation by the FTC, etc.)

4. Get people to fill out some kind of a form with whatever details you want from them in order to decide if you want to work with them, or to invite them on a screening call

5. Run super basic ads on Facebook for $20 a day to advertise this landing page

6. Update your landing page with proof as you get it

I’ve kick-started my own advertorial agency by reaching out to my list and network. Maybe that will be enough to get me all the advertorial clients I will ever want. Or maybe i will eventually tap out that demand, in which case I will do exactly what I wrote above, with that Facebook advertising strategy.

But if you like, you can beat me to it, and get your name out there in the world, and get clients who pay you for advertorials in the process, by doing what I just told you I would do.

In any case, the countdown to my advertorial cohort continues. Here are the high-level details:

I’ve made an agreement to write an advertorial for a client.

I’m inviting copywriters to join me and work alongside me as I do this.

You get my help with writing an advertorial following the 1-Person Advertorial Agency system.

You get my help tracking down, vetting, and closing a client (or partner business) using the two client-getting methods in 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

Plus, I’m promising to keep working with you and giving you my support and input until you get to $10k from advertorial work.

We start next week. In case you’re interested, reply now.

Birthday bash offer

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I wrote a long email just now. Until I realized I was burying the lead.

So I told myself what I often tell coaching clients – split up the damn thing into two emails. One for today, one for tomorrow.

Here’s one for today:

Today is my buddy Kieran Drew’s birthday.

As you might know, Kieran is a big name in the online creator space. He has a Twitter following of 205k people, a newsletter audience of 30k people, and 6-figure launches every few months.

To celebrate his birthday, Kieran has prepared a special bundle of his most popular offer, High Impact Writing, with his second-most popular offer, the Viral Inspiration Lab.

I imagine that anyone on my list who wanted to get High Impact Writing got it back in March when I promoted it. But I’ve been wrong before.

If you don’t yet have High Impact Writing, I endorse it fully. And now is a good moment to get it because you can effectively get the Viral Inspiration Lab for free.

Plus!

Over the next month, Kieran will also hold a series of private interviews as a special thank-you gift for people who buy HIW now, as well as people who have bought HIW before.

The interviews will be with five successful writers Kieran knows, including A-list copywriter David Deutsch… email copywriter Chris Orzechowski… and yours truly, Bejako the Slow.

If you’re interested and you want to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/hiw​​

So long, Sparkloop

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Last year, I wrote several emails in which I recommended Sparkloop, a paid newsletter-recommendation platform.

As you might know, the promise of Sparkloop is quality newsletter subscribers, who will actually engage with your newsletter, all in a completely hands-off manner.

That’s the promise. Here’s the reality:

Sparkloop did grow my list, with a bunch of previous newsletter subscribers, who in theory should have been a good match for my health newsletter.

Plus, Sparkloop allows you to screen for subscribers engage with your newsletter via either clicks or opens, and to get rid of everyone else. As a result, my open rates stayed consistently high.

Sounds good, right?

But around December, cracks started to appear.

I regularly ran in-newsletter polls in my health newsletter. They weren’t getting a lot of participation. I also ran a survey outside the newsletter, on my website. Exactly one person filled that out. I put out a relevant, low-ticket offer. I got no buyers.

Everything I just told you happened with my health newsletter. But it’s backed up by an experiment I ran with Sparkloop on this marketing newsletter.

That experiment was small but perhaps indicative.

It involved newsletter subscribers that I vetted even more closely than I was doing for my health newsletter, both for source and for engagement. And yet, none of those vetted Sparkloop subscribers have bought anything from me, in spite of being on my list for months. None of them has even opted in for the free training am putting on at the end of this month.

The point I want to make is something that’s easy to forget if you’re a marketer:

A name is not just a name. An email address is not just an email address.

It matters how people find you, first interact with you, with what intent, and in what frame of mind.

Of course, this matters for whether they choose to engage with you in the first place. But it also persists over time, even if they somehow decide to give you a bit of their attention to start with. That’s obvious as water in the real world, but it’s easy to forget in the marketing world.

Conclusion:

So long, Sparkloop. Like everything else in life that sounds too good to be true, you were in fact too good to be true.

You might wonder what I will do to grow my list now that I have axed Sparkloop.

I have special plans for my health newsletter.

But for this marketing newsletter, I plan on going back to the three warhorses that have gotten me probably 80% of my total subscribers, and probably 99% of my best subscribers.

If you would like to know what those three warhorses are, come join me for that free training at the end of this month. On the training, I will talk about how I write and even profit from this newsletter, and how you can do it too if you’d like to do something similar.

The training will happen on Monday January 22, 2024 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. I will send out a recording if you cannot make it live, but you will have to be signed up to my list first. Click here to sign up.

“Too many single moms” in my Facebook DMs

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Due to some client work I’ve been doing lately, I’ve been forced to go back into the cobweb-laced haunted house that is my Facebook account.

Each time I tip-toe my way along the creaky floorboards there, I see dozens of new friend requests pasted on the walls, all from people I don’t know from Adam’s off ox.

Occasionally, I go on binges of approving those friend requests.

Last week, I logged in and saw a message from a guy with an Italian name, whose friend request I must have approved some time earlier. My new friend wrote:

“Thanks for accepting my request man, I appreciate that! I noticed you’re into personal development. I have a quick question if you don’t mind.”

Personal development? I replied to say, sure. And I went about my day.

Since I don’t have any notifications enabled anywhere, I forgot all about it until I logged in to Facebook a few days later. And there was my friend’s quick question:

“Are you currently using online dating apps?”

That escalated quickly. ​​With just 7 words, this Italian stallion was quickly nearing “unwelcome pest” territory.

​​I replied with a professional and elegant “no.”

I thought that would be the end of it. But I was wrong. The next time I logged in, a follow-up was waiting for me:

“Too many single moms or not matching with the type of women you truly desire?”

At this point, like a hot 24-year-old girl who has lost interest in a boring Tinder chat, I stopped replying. But I did check his profile. It turns out he sells some kind of service to get you matching with the type of women you truly desire.

This got me wondering. Even if this guy’s presumptuous marketing approach is successful in hooking somebody, who is he gonna get?

A long-term, devoted customer or client?

Or somebody who will ghost him at the very first turn in the road?

My guess is the second.

That’s not a game I ever want to play, and not one I advise to you either.

A sale is never just a sale, and a client is never just a client.

My advice is to think actively about the relationships you build, the long-term potential of those relationships, or if you like, the lifetime value. That’s really my biggest and most valuable conclusion after having worked with hundreds of clients, many of who paid me $100, a few of who paid me $100k or more.

And on that note:

Until this Wednesday, I am promoting Steve Raju’s ClientRaker training.

ClientRaker is all about finding high-quality, long-term, devoted clients. Without sliding into anybody’s DMs, without embarrassing yourself, and without offending or annoying people who are no prospects of yours to begin with.

In case you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/clientraker

Mysteries of the mind

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Yesterday I started listening to a four-and-a-half hour long presentation titled, Best Life Ever. I did it because the guy speaking, Jim Rohn, has been billed, by no less an authority than genius marketer and influence expert Dan Kennedy, as being a master storyteller.

Dan says that Jim Rohn built his long and very successful career on zero practical content, great stories only.

So that’s what I expected to find. Fantastic fluff. Zero real substance.

And yet I was surprised. In the first twenty minutes, I already found the content genuinely insightful. I felt that Dan was underselling it. Take for example the following. With a smile, Rohn says:

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The day the Christian Church was started, a magnificent sermon was preached. A great presentation. And if you’re a student at all of good communication, it was one of the classic presentations of all time.

And this sermon, this presentation, was given to a multitude. Meaning a lot of people. But it was interesting.

The record says, when the sermon was finished, there was a variety of reaction to the same sermon. Isn’t that fascinating? I find that fascinating.

It said some that heard this presentation were perplexed.

Now I read the presentation. It sounded pretty straightforward to me. Why would somebody be perplexed with a good, sincere, straightforward presentation?

Best answer I’ve got: They are the perplexed. What other explanation is there? It doesn’t matter who’s preaching.

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Rohn’s point is that there are some mysteries of the mind.

Why are some people inspired to take action? Why do others never take action? Why are some people perplexed? Why do others mock and laugh?

You can try to figure it out. So did Rohn, once upon a time.

“I don’t do that any more,” he says in his talk. “I’ve got peace of mind now. I can sleep like a baby. Not trying to straighten any of this out any more.” It’s just mysteries of the mind.

Did you find that insightful?

I did. But maybe I’m just very easy to dupe into feeling like I’ve had an epiphany. Doesn’t matter who’s preaching.

Or who knows. Maybe Rohn is such a good storytellers that even in those first 20 minutes, he managed to prime me for being easily influenced.

In case you’re a student at all of good communication, this guy was one of the classic presenters of all time. To see why, watch a few minutes of the following:

 

Dentists vs. copywriters: Who wins the better customer battle?

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Here’s a new perspective I found insightful, about who you sell to. Maybe it can save you some headache and even failure:

A few days ago, I was talking to a newsletter strategy consultant. He was telling me about his own newsletter, and the paid advertising he is planning for getting paid subscribers to it.

I won’t name this guy — I’m not sure he would want me to — and I won’t reveal the kinds of people he will be targeting with his ads — not so relevant to others but maybe very valuable to him.

So what’s left?

What’s left is the people he will not be targeting with his ads. And this I believe is relevant whatever your actual business is.

The newsletter expert said he will not be targeting independent newsletter creators. Why? Because, as he told me, they are “a little short term and flaky.”

How could it really be any other way?

If somebody has no employees, no office, no expensive and custom equipment, no contracts to fulfill, and in general no obligations, what’s keeping them going if things ever get bad? The answer is nothing.

That’s why it’s in general better to sell to, say, dentists, who are tethered by a million hooks to their businesses, than to, say, copywriters, who can decide from today to tomorrow to close their laptops and go work as a park ranger or to maybe roast coffee for a living.

That’s not to say you can’t make money selling to people who are a little short-term and flaky. But it exposes you to more risk, and it limits what you can sell and for how much.

That’s something to keep in mind whether you sell to other businesses (hopefully, chained and burdened dentists) or direct to consumers (hopefully, people with an unavoidable problem or an all-consuming obsession).

Last point:

​​I found an interesting new newsletter recently.

This newsletter gives the perspective of somebody who manages to profit from short-term and flaky independent newsletter creators. That somebody is Scott Oldford, who has been buying up independent newsletters and then investing in them and scaling them up. Scott writes about his adventures here:

https://investing.scottoldford.com/

Guy rebuffs my attempt at cross-promotion

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A report from the trenches:

I’m working on growing my health email newsletter, which I launched a few months ago.

One part of what I’m doing is reaching out to other newsletters to offer to cross-promote. I’ve been contacting newsletters of a similar size to mine, who share some common elements with mine:

– sent out weekly
– news-related
– “proven” — make an emphasis on providing references or sources
– is made up of actual paragraphs of text that people read, rather than just a collection of links

I’ve had a few people take me up on my cross-promotion offer. But one guy, whose weekly newsletter is for people who want to “stay on top of the current issues and that like to read more than just bulletpoints,” was not interested in my offer. He wrote me to say:

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I don’t think this partnership would work out, basically because I’ve done it before and the clicks were very, very low. Also, I don’t think there’s a great overlap in the content of our two newsletters.

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As Dan Kennedy might say about that first reason, if we all stopped doing something if the first time was a fail, the human race would soon die out. There’d be no more babies born.

But what about that other reason? About content overlap?

It’s very sensible to only sell competitive duck herding products to competitive duck herding enthusiasts.

But most offers are not that one-dimensional.

The “world’s greatest list broker,” Michael Fishman, was once tasked with finding new lists to promote an investment newsletter.

Michael suggested a list of buyers of a product called Big Money Pro Golf Secrets. The publisher of the investment newsletter said, “We’ve tried golf lists before, they don’t work for us.”

Michael said, “No problem. It’s not a golf list. Think about who would buy a book called Big Money Pro Golf Secrets. I don’t care if it’s Big Money Pro Flower Secrets. Anybody who would respond to that language is somebody whose door we want to knock on.”

Point being, if you have something that’s not as narrow in appeal as duck herding, there are many dimensions along which you can expand your market, beyond the obvious topic or content or promise of what you’re selling. ​

​ By the way, Michael Fishman is somebody worth listening to. I’ve read and watched and listened to everything I could find online by the guy. I make a habit of occasionally searching the Internet to see if anything new has cropped up.

If you want a place to start, here’s a great interview that Michael Fishman did with Michael Senoff of Hard to Find Seminars:

https://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Michael_Fishman_Interview.htm

The royal way to grow a list

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Yesterday, King Charles III and Queen Consort Camila went for a drive to Bolton Town Hall in London. Birds chirped, armed guards looked on tensely, and crowds of well-wishers and paparazzi pushed around the fences, trying to catch a geek of the aged couple.

Nothing really remarkable there. It’s just another pebble in the mountain of news coverage about the British royal family over the past year.

The news coverage continues, because people look at the royals as a symbol of something ancient, enduring, quintessentially British.

That’s kind of amazing if you think about it.

Charles III is the fourth English monarch from the house of Windsor, which is only 105 years old. Before that, it was called the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in reference to its original German domains. The name was changed during World War I. The image of a bunch of goose-stepping Germans running the UK was too threatening.

How did the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha get to rule the UK? Well, they replaced another German house that ruled the UK, the House of Hanover.

The history of Europe, and really of the world, has seen this pattern over and over. Conquerors and adventurers, foreign princes and stranger kings, appear from somewhere far away and take control of a large and well-trained population.

I read about this in David Wengrow and David Graeber’s Dawn of Everything. The two D’s say the key is that a population has been well-trained and disciplined to obey rule. Who rules doesn’t matter very much at all.

You might be starting to feel a little uncomfortable, and worry that I’m about to preach anarchy, or talk about political revolution.

Quite the opposite. I’m preaching monarchy, and talking about long-term business stability.

Via your list. Specifically, via growing your list with the best prospects, the kind who will buy and read and do what you tell them to do.

I listened to a Dan Kennedy seminar yesterday. Dan said how his best customers were always the martial arts guys — because they had been trained and selected over years to be disciplined.

I remember when pick-up coach RSD Tyler did a list swap with the dreamy fitness coach Eliott Hulse. Eliott said how the buyers he got from the RSD list were fantastic customers, because Tyler’s whole message was self-improvement and taking responsibility and putting in the work.

I’ve even experienced this same phenomenon myself. Back in 2021, I did a list swap with Daniel Throssell. I couldn’t believe how many sales I got from new subscribers who came from Daniel’s list. And that’s with a hidden sales page I had at the time, and without pitching anything myself. It was simply because Daniel has trained and prepared his audience so well.

So there you go. If you want the best leads and future customers, do it the royal way.

Find a market — or an audience — that’s already been disciplined.

It sure beats the hard work of taking an unruly mass, devising new laws, and trying to beat those laws in over the course of generations.

Ok, so much for monarchy.

Now, let’s talk old-time religion. Specifically, my 10 Commandments book. To find out more about that, or maybe even to spend $5 and get some valuable discipline in return, go here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments