Copywriting

Writing formulaic copy month after month

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A couple weeks ago, I got on a call with a long-time reader, who works as an in-house copywriter.

This is part of an illuminating practice I’ve taken up, of actually interacting with people who read my emails and buy my courses.

Anyways, this reader, who has been working as a copywriter at the same company for four years, said the following:

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The main problem is, each month, the offers don’t really change so I’m writing the same stuff repeatedly.

The only difference is when they have a product launch, I get to write different stuff and set up more flows.

Other than that, it’s quite routine. There’s not much growth for my skill set.

To be honest, I don’t write a lot of copy there, because the copy I write there is quite formulaic and it’s also, not much variation. I don’t get to experiment much with ideas.

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About that:

Gary Bencivenga, widely called the world’s best living copywriter before he retired, liked to quote Al Davis, the coach for the infamously tough, mean, aggressive 1965 Oakland Raiders team.

One time, during a press conference before a game, a reporter asked Davis, “So I guess you’ll just have to take what the defense gives you?”

Davis glared. “We don’t take what the defense gives us. We take what we want.”

Gary Bencivenga, who seems to be as sweet and nice of a man as you can put a hat on, recommended Davis’s tough-guy attitude for copywriters also.

Gary didn’t just take the offer the client gave him to promote. Instead, he took what he wanted — he switched the offer altogether, or reworked it, or added to it — until it was as close to his ideal as he could get it, and many miles ahead of where it had started.

So that’s point 1.

Point 2 is that you’re not Gary Bencivenga. You don’t have his authority, and you don’t command the same deference and respect from clients. That’s normal. Gary, again, was the world’s best, and he had a reputation to match.

The situation is even trickier if you’re an in-house copywriter, working with one company full-time. In this case, the power dynamic shifts even more to your client/employer.

And maybe, when you try to “take what you want” — to rework an offer, or to experiment with copywriting ideas, or to simply do something that will stretch and increase your skills — your client/employer gives you a look and just says, “No.”

What then?

It’s up to you. But one thing you can do is say, “Fine. I’ll do my own thing.”

I’m not saying to quit your job. You can “take what you want” on your own time, with nobody controlling what you do or how you do it. It can give you new skills, experience, extra authority.

And who knows?

If you come to your client/employer next time, and cite a personal success story, instead of just pulling a good idea out of the air, maybe you’ll get a better hearing.

If not, you will still feel more fulfilled, skilled, and stimulated. And you’ll have options, because you’re building your own thing on the side, and taking what you want there.

On the call I had with the in-house copywriter I mentioned above, I heard that this is exactly what he’s doing. He’s hunting and working with freelance clients as well. Plus, he’s started his own email list, and he’s writing to it daily.

Who’s got time for all that?

I don’t know. You almost certainly don’t. Or maybe you do. And maybe, if you want some help with the last part, starting and sticking to writing a daily email, you will like my Daily Email Habit service.

Every day, Daily Email Habit prompts you to write something different.

At the end of 7 days, you already have a bunch of little experiments you wouldn’t have had before. And at the end of 30 days, you can experience a transformation.

If you’d like to experience that transformation as soon as possible, it makes sense to get started today:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

May we please have your attention

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Welcome aboard this Bejakovic Air email from Barcelona to wherever it is you may be right now.

For your safety and entertainment, please pay close attention to this short safety demonstration. Even if you are a frequent newsletter reader, the safety features of this Concord-like newsletter may be different from any you have flown on before.

There are no seat belts on this newsletter. Bejakovic Air only shares ideas that are found to be interesting or possibly useful, with no guarantee of truthfulness or consistency from email to email.

We recommend you fasten yourself to an idea whenever reading this newsletter. Unfasten that idea tomorrow by pulling on the buckle, like so, and consider fastening on tomorrow’s idea to see if it fits more snugly.

The emergency exits of this newsletter are clearly marked. We have 6 exits: two at the front (archive, or delete); two at the back (follow the link, or unsubscribe); and, if you are using a mobile electronic device, you can also swipe left or right, to read other emails in your inbox.

In the unlikely event of an evacuation, press the “Spam Complaint” button above you. Leave all carryon luggage behind so our staff can rifle through it as you leave, and make fun of you once you’ve gone.

Cabin pressure on all Bejakovic Air flights is maintained in a narrow range between “intriguing” and “impossible to parse.”

If we lose cabin pressure or gain too much of it, oxygen masks will deploy automatically. Immediately extinguish all cigarettes, and adjust your own newsletter first before offering to assist with ours.

Thank you for your attention during this brief safety demonstration.

In preparation for takeoff, please make sure your seat is upright and your tray table is stowed away. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy this personal message from our captain:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

A frustration that only grows with each email I write

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Yesterday, I wrote an email with the subject line, “Only open this if you play Wordle.” I guess that drew in some people who rarely read my emails, such as the following reader, who wrote:

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You sold… dog seat belts?

I didn’t know that was an actual product until I saw you mention it.

I’m a dog-owner – should I be concerned? 😧

Anyway, hi, I’m Anastasia.

I’m an e-com email copywriter, and I’m trying to learn how to write (hopefully great) advertorials.

So I came across your video with Chase Dimond where you discussed this concept of ‘horror advertorials.’ Do you have a swipe file with successful examples you wouldn’t mind sharing?

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“OH YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME,” I said.

An ongoing frustration in the running of this newsletter is that, in spite of writing a fairly in-depth email each day, many of which end up repeating stuff about me, most people on my list still known very little about who I am or what I do.

It’s a frustration that only gets more common the longer I’ve been writing this newsletter and the bigger my list gets.

The fact is, I do have a swipe of “horror advertorials.”

I’ve sold it in the past for $100, and just last month, I included it as one of the bonuses to my $997 Copy Riddles program during the “White Tuesday” promo, which also included a “$2k Advertorial Consult” as another bonus.

And yet, I still get questions like the one above. What to do? After my initial childish rush of frustration, I reminded myself this is inevitable, and just a part of how the world works, particularly online.

Some people got on my list only recently. Some miss my emails in their overflowing inboxes. Some don’t get drawn into my emails because I didn’t deliver on the copy front.

Other readers skim because they’re busy or distracted… and still others open, and read diligently, and then forget — because my newsletter, immensely important though it is to me, is really only 2-3 minutes in the day of even my most devoted readers.

In all these cases, the responsibility really lies with me to do something and improve the situation. So:

Regarding my “horror advertorial” swipe file, it’s not something I’m selling at the moment, and it’s certainly not something I’m sharing, if that means giving it away for free — because I’ve had lots of good customers who have paid me good money for the same info.

At the moment, I am selling and promoting my Daily Email Habit service.

You may wonder if you really need DAILY emails. After all, you may already have a website… or ads on Facebook… or you may even send a weekly email. Surely that’s enough???

I’d like to propose to you that your prospects know much less about you than you could ever believe. Shockingly less.

Daily emails can help with that, so you make more sales today, and so you get lodged more deeply in your prospects’ minds, so you make more sales tomorrow.

And if daily emails fail to deliver? If you end up writing daily emails, and most people in your audience still don’t know who you are and what you do?

Well, that just becomes a topic of a new email.

And if you’d like to see how I and a group of other smart folks are transmuting such everyday frustrations, or reader questions, or personal insights into daily emails that both entertain and sell, you can find that inside my Daily Email Habit service. For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Don’t think of an Iranian drone

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A couple nights ago, I rewatched the 1997 comedy Wag The Dog… as research for work.

Robert De Niro plays a political communications consultant. He’s brought in for clean-up after news breaks that the President of the United States has had sex with a 15-year-old girl in a closet behind the Oval Office.

The situation is bad. De Niro needs at least a day to think up a way out of this sticky situation. Fortunately, the President is on a visit to China.

“Keep him there,” De Niro tells the President’s handlers. “Say he’s sick. And say his visit has nothing to do with the B3 bomber.”

“Sir, as far as I know, there’s no such thing as a B3 bomber,” says a White House staffer.

“That’s exactly what I said,” says De Niro.

The rest of the movie is about how De Niro’s character, along with a Hollywood producer played by Dustin Hoffman, orchestrate a make-believe war against Albania (“They seem shifty”), which happens entirely on the evening news.

I thought about this while reading a news article yesterday, titled, “New Jersey drone cluster sightings prompt call for ‘state of emergency.'”

In case you haven’t heard, the state of New Jersey is under attack by swarms of unexplained drones. An FBI official explained:

“Are we concerned there are nefarious intentions that could cause either an actual security or public safety incident? There’s nothing that is known that would lead me to say that, but we just don’t know. And that’s the concerning part of it.”

Could it be Iran? China? Perhaps the Albanians?

“There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States,” said the Pentagon press secretary, “and there’s no so-called mothership launching drones towards the United States.”

So you’re saying it could be the Albanians…

Look, I’m just fooling around. I’m certainly not claiming there are any parallels between the current drone situation and Wag The Dog. As far as I know, there’s no evidence that the drone situation is any kind of ploy to cover up some new atrocity being committed by people in power as we speak.

(See what I did there?)

All I really want to do is to introduce you to the powerful concept of a “frame.”

A frame is all the stuff that goes on in your head before, after, and around a specific message. A frame is how the phrase “SHUT UP!” can be interpreted in your head as an insult… a joke between friends… a cry of surprise or disbelief… a sign of mental breakdown… and probably 10 other things, all depending on the context.

There’s a guy named George Lakoff, who is a real-life version of Robert De Niro’s character in Wag The Dog.

Lakoff is a professor of linguistics at Berkeley, and he has long advised Democratic candidates on messaging and communication.

Lakoff believes that frames are such powerful and valuable communication tools that he wrote a guidebook, all about how to use them in politics, which he titled, “Don’t Think Of An Elephant.”

Because you can activate a frame even if you seemingly deny or negate that frame.

Frames are definitely an interesting topic, and it makes sense to actively play with them in high-stakes situations like political messaging.

But in everyday life, it can be exhausting and paralyzing to try to “control the frame,” as pick up artists like to say.

Fortunately, it’s not necessary to be constantly aware and constantly in control of the frame as you go about your life.

Because you can simply adopt a frame which will always serve you well.

That frame is that everything that happens works in your favor and is there for your benefit.

It works in politics, and in daily emails too, where it’s often expressed by the maxim, “Nothing bad ever happens if you write a daily email.” Everything becomes fodder for the content beast.

If you’d like to see how I and a group of other smart folks are taking our everyday frustrations, thoughts, and even stupid news items, and turning them into daily emails that both entertain and sell, you can find that inside my new service Daily Email Habit.

I’m not saying this service could transform your life, or be the equivalent of hitting the lottery. The people who subscribe to Daily Email Habit have reported good results, but nothing so far that would lead me to say this is the one thing you will ever need in your life for success, happiness, and contentment.

And that’s the concerning part of it.

For more info on Daily Email Habit:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

For sale

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Today I’d like to tell you about my Daily Email Habit service.

I’ve been promoting this offer for a couple weeks now, usually at the tail end of my emails.

But from time to time, it’s good to stop the infotainment and just sell. So.

Daily Email Habit is for you if you’ve been convinced over the years that:

– a regular online presence is valuable

– email, ancient though it is, is more resilient and independent than social media platforms

– there’s a good number of people out there who actually enjoy receiving and reading emails, even daily, as long as those emails are not just drily and selfishly selling, the way this email is

Daily Email Habit is a new service I’ve come up with to help you take advantage of these facts, by helping you start and stick with your own consistent daily email habit.

Daily Email Habit is delivered as a daily email, with a new prompt each day — a specific “puzzle” to mull over and answer in your own email, along with a few “hints” if you need them.

I choose each day’s puzzle based on my experience writing this newsletter for the past 6+ years, my work with clients over the past almost decade, and the totality of close to 3,000 sales emails I’ve written in that time.

Each daily email puzzle is chosen both to make your emails interesting and different day after day, and to slowly but surely flip the many small switches that ultimately lead to a sale.

My initial guess at why Daily Email Habit would be useful to people was “time saving.” And it has been that way for some subscribers, but the major benefit seems to have been something else.

Here’s James Carran, a published author, poet, ghostwriter, the owner of a Twitter account with 100k+ followers, and the writer of several email newsletters, including the daily Carran’s Cabin. James subscribes to Daily Email Habit, and he said about it:

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I really enjoyed the email prompt today and it did indeed lead to a very different email than I’d have written otherwise. And some useful thinking.

I can already sense this is going to be a great process. Perhaps not so much for reducing time (though it will do that) as making it more interesting for my readers. I wrote a better email than I otherwise might have done.

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One final thing that can be curious, useful, or motivating to you if you join Daily Email Habit. Here, let me give it in James’s words again:

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And as a bonus, you get to watch John Bejakovic eat his own cooking by using the prompts in the emails and seeing how he applies it… Which is another round of education right there.

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I’m not guaranteeing the fact, but most days I myself use my own daily email puzzle to kick off my own email.

In that way, Daily Email Habit is like the “riddles” in my Most Valuable Email and Copy Riddles programs, if you know those.

Basically, Daily Email Habit, in combination with this newsletter, serves as a series of prompts to get you to practice and implement, and then an opportunity to compare what you’ve done to what somebody with a lot of experience would do based on the same prompt.

This is not a way of playing, “Mine is better than yours.” It’s simply a way of learning, getting new ideas, and being inspired to try different things.

At the moment, I’m still offering Daily Email Habit for the Charter Member investment of $20/month. At some point, I’ll increase that, but if you join now, you’ll be grandfathered in even when others have to pay more.

If you have any questions about Daily Email Habit, hit reply + ask away.

Otherwise, if you would like to see an example daily email puzzle as delivered each day in Daily Email Habit, or to have the opportunity to sign up for this service:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Wickedful

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I like to go see movies without knowing anything about them other than they’re playing at my local movie theater. I don’t want to know the genre, the actors in it, the plot summary, the reviews.

“Let them surprise me,” I say with a magnanimate sweep of my hand, as I hand over my 7 euro at the box office.

And so this Wednesday, I went to see Wicked. I only knew it had something to do with the Wizard of Oz. But I was surprised to find it’s three hours long, and a musical of the kind I don’t like, and a heavy-handed morality play to boot.

I emerged from the theater several years older, no wiser, and looking desesperately for something, anything, a little shred from this ordeal that I could reclaim for my daily email.

And there was something.

In between all the unendful singing, Wicked also has bits of dialogue. And the dialogue regularly makes use of a little word-trick. Each time it happened, it put a smile on my face and lightened the heavy burden of watching this movie.

I won’t spell out exactly what this word-trick is. But perhaps you can guess? I’ve tried to use it myself numerious times in this email.

My point for today is that it makes sense to make up and use your own words, terms, slang, even if it’s nonsense, or silly. It lightens the burden of reading (or watching) otherwise valuable but dry material.

You might shrug at that. Perhaps it’s because you’ve heard this advice before. Perhaps it’s because you think it doesn’t apply to you, and the serious business you are engagified in.

So there’s a bigger and to me much more interesting point I want to share with you. But I will save it for my email tomorrow. It’s not that humor is important, though it is. It’s not that it can be done in every field, even if your field is accounting for mortuary offices.

Rather, the point I want to share with you is a surprising idea I heard recently in the crypto space, which applies much more broadly, to business and perhaps to life.

Maybe you think that’s a grand claim. I can only promise to pay it off tomorrow.

Meanwhile, if you would like to learn a different trick, one that can lighten the burden of reading AND writing daily emails, you might like the enfollowing:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

What’s happening in my business: CENSORED

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Today I had planned to write an email about changes I’m making to this little online info publishing business, and my plans for the coming months and next year.

But then I stopped and censored myself.

There was a quote echoing in my head. It said:

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One of the greatest clues I ever had was working at Mercedes-Benz. My most successful clients — STFU. They were, “Lid on it, black box.”

So many times, they would buy a very nice car — I’m talking an SL 65 — but they wouldn’t drive it to their workplace. They would just keep it for their other place, down by the beach house, hinterland property, like it wasn’t part of their public thing.

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That quote came from business coach and Internet marketer James Schramko. James has been in the industry for a few decades, and has coached big-name, multimillionaire marketers like Ryan Levesque (ASK Method), Patt Flynn (Smart Passive Income), and Kevin Rogers (Copy Chief).

James says it took discipline, but in time he’s learned to keep a “cone of silence” around what he and his clients are doing and planning. He says not sharing his best ideas is what makes him valuable to his clients, and it’s also intensely valuable to him.

Is what James is saying true? Is it right?

I don’t know. Maybe it is. I can imagine the opposite also, that giving away your best ideas is the smart way to go, because ideas are ultimately cheap, while things like relationships and reputation are really where value lies.

But the concept behind this newsletter has always been to share ideas that are first of all interesting and second possibly useful. “True” or “right” is not something I obsess over. I like to try things out and see how they fit. And so — my plans are CENSORED, at least in this email.

The past few days, as I roll out my Daily Email Habit service in private, I’ve been sharing links to content that is “not predictable” for a newsletter like mine.

The link I’m about to share is quite predictable, because it’s James Schramko’s podcast. It’s predictable both because James is part of direct response world, so it’s normal I would link to him, and because his podcast episodes cover (seemingly) standard industry topics.

But maybe something more is going on?

I don’t listen to podcasts by business gurus and I had no intent on listening to James’s podcast either.

And yet, each of James’s past 5 podcast episodes, ever since I got on his email list, got me sucked in, and ultimately gave me interesting and possibly useful ideas I didn’t have before.

Maybe it can do the same for you? If you’d like to try it out:

https://www.jamesschramko.com/list-all

The unpardonable sin in daily emails

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> be me
> get email yesterday
> feel sucked in by the subject line because it’s the same as the name of a paid training i’m thinking to create
> read email
> interesting opening, about how the author wrote something that got a whole lot of reader engagement and replies
> get to the takeaway
> “Vulnerability”
> feel face drop, groan
> close email and vow never to read another of the author’s emails again

An A-list copywriter, Robert Collier, once wrote that the unpardonable sin in nature is stagnation, standing still.

Another A-list copywriter, Jim Rutz, once wrote that the #1 sin in ad mail is being predictable.

It applies to daily emails as well. The #1, unpardonable sin in daily emails is stagnant, predictable content. That’s why a point of my personal philosophy, which may resonate with you, is to do anything but be predictable.

Right now, I’m in the middle of rolling out my new Daily Email Habit service to people who expressed interest and got on priority list.

While I do that, I have no paid offers to promote.

So let me take the next few days, while the rollout is happening, to share some unpredictable pieces of writing.

I mean “unpredictable” both because these pieces of writing contain surprising ideas presented in insightful ways… and because you wouldn’t expect to have them shared inside of a newsletter like this one, about direct marketing and online businesses.

To start with, here’s something I read two years ago that still pops up in my mind pretty much every week.

The title of it is When Magic Was Real.

The idea that sticks with me is that magic — real magic, not stage magic — is real, and is “the product of belief x belief.”

If you want to read something surprising, insightful, and maybe mind-altering:

https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/when-magic-was-real

How to prepare for a future in which people can’t think

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I was talking to a friend today. She has a kid who is 11. The kid has to go through a rigorous set of state-sanctioned exams that will determine his future education, career progression, and I suppose retirement community.

“It’s crazy!” my friend said. “Who even knows what will happen in the future?”

I have no kids and am generally clueless about what’s going on in the world. “Huh? Future? What are you talking about?”

“AI!” she said. “What will kids have to learn? How will that even look?”

I read an article by Paul Graham a couple weeks ago. I’ve written about Graham before in these emails. In a nutshell:

Graham is a kind of modern-day renaissance man — a painter, computer programmer, businessman, and investor. This last one is what he’s best known for.

Graham cofounded Y Combinator, the early-stage investing firm behind companies like Airbnb, Coinbase, Stripe, Twitch, Instacart, Reddit. Thanks to his stake in these companies, Graham is worth north of $2.5 billion.

Along with his many other activities, Graham also writes interesting online essays. He wrote a new one a few weeks ago.

In the future, predicts Graham, not many people will be able to write because AI has made it unnecessary.

Is that bad? In Graham’s words:

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Yes, it’s bad. The reason is something I mentioned earlier: writing is thinking. In fact there’s a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing. You can’t make this point better than Leslie Lamport did:

“If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.”

So a world divided into writes and write-nots is more dangerous than it sounds. It will be a world of thinks and think-nots. I know which half I want to be in, and I bet you do too.

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Is Graham right about writing?

I don’t know. I have heard said that 2,500 years ago, smart people were making the same argument AGAINST writing, saying that it weakens critical thought and makes the mind flabby.

I can only report my personal results, today, in 2024.

Writing, at least in my case, causes me to think more and make distinctions I wouldn’t make otherwise. Plus, I even find it kind of enjoyable. And there’s no doubt that thanks to writing, I’ve achieved a level of influence I could never have achieved otherwise.

I am telling you this because I’m finally ready — with two days’ delay — to start rolling out my new Daily Email Habit service.

A key idea behind Daily Email Habit is that there’s value in writing.

And so this service is designed to help you start and stick with the habit of writing a daily email. A big part of how it does this is by giving you a new constraint each day, and narrowing the scope of what to write about.

At the same time, Daily Email Habit is designed NOT to narrow the scope so much that you end up filling out a template. There’s value in writing, and it’s something you cannot get by outsourcing your daily email to a template — or to AI.

I will start rolling out Daily Email Habit tomorrow.

If you’ve already written me to express interest in this new service, there’s nothing more you need to do.

But if you haven’t written me yet, and Daily Email Habit sounds like it might be useful to you, then write me and tell me what you like about this service. I will then add you to the priority list, so have a chance to try out Daily Email Habit sooner rather than later.

Mickey Mouse promos for Mickey Mouse reasons

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Today, being November 18, is the birthday of Mickey Mouse. I bet you weren’t expecting that?

Mickey made his first public appearance in Steamboat Willy, which premiered on November 18, 1928, at the Colony Theater in New York city. And so, November 18 became Mickey’s birthday.

I only found this out today because from time to time I like write emails on the topic of, “On today’s date.”

But actually Mickey’s birthday fits perfectly to something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while. That being:

Lots of businesses run promos around big and generic holidays — Black Friday, Valentine’s, Labor Day.

Some businesses try to get cute with it, and run promos for small but generic holidays — Mickey Mouse’s birthday is an example.

I guess that’s fine, if you are Ford Motors or the local gym chain.

But if you have anything like a personal brand, or want to build personal authority and a personal relationship with your list, then in my mind it’s much better, more convincing, and more effective long-term to run promos that tie into you, your business, or your customers.

The occasion for such personal promos doesn’t have to be huge (“I’m getting married!”) or cataclysmic (“I’m getting divorced!”).

It can be modest and frankly trivial — my “Most Vivian Event” from a couple months ago comes to mind, where I decided (and failed) to run a promo in honor of a reader who wouldn’t buy from me.

As long as you think up a personal occasion and reason to your promo, it builds a connection to your audience while selling at the same time… it makes your promo unique to you and uncopyable by others… and it feels more credible and real than “because Black Friday” or “because Steamboat Willy!”

I’m in the middle of launching my Daily Email Habit service. Of course, it’s turned out to be more work than I had anticipated just to put it in front of the first few people. Once I solve all the issues still facing me, I plan to promote this offer through the rest of this month.

But now that I’ve already written this Mickey Mouse email about Mickey Mouse promos, it feels like a shame not to run a promo myself, my Mickey Mouse reasons notwithstanding.

So I have a special offer for you, which I’m calling the “Better Than Mickey” Promo-in-a-Box.

In short:

If you have a list and an offer, I will come up with a personal, congruent, sexy promo strategy for you — a “Promo-in-a-Box.”

This is something I’ve done dozens of times for my own list and while I was a coach inside Shiv Shetti’s PCM mastermind. I’m estimating a few hundred thousand dollars in extra sales that would not have happened otherwise.

Here’s how this “Better Than Mickey” process will work, if you’re game for it:

1. You and I will get on an onboarding call, so you can tell me about your list, your offers, and your business.

2. I will go away to my cave and conjure up a “Better Than Mickey” Promo-in-a-Box that involves a congruent occasion, a sexy offer (without requiring creating new products), and copy angles (to tie it all together).

3. We will then get on a second call, and I’ll walk you through the promo strategy, answer your questions, and make sure this is something you will be happy to run and can actually implement on time.

I am only opening up two spots for this “Better Than Mickey” Promo-in-a-Box. I’m not sure I will ever offer this deal or anything like it again.

The price is $500.

I can tell you this is a small fraction of what I used to get paid inside Shiv’s mastermind to deliver exactly this kind of custom promo strategy. (I won’t say exactly what small fraction, because that’s Shiv’s business as well as mine.)

I’m asking just $500 because frankly this isn’t about money. While it doesn’t pay for me in terms of the work involved (at $500 or more), I like finding out about new businesses, and strategizing these promos. And I figure that I’ve limited my exposure by just offering two spots.

More relevant for you:

If you have a list and an offer, then running a successful promo can net you thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. Paying me $500 for my experience and help, to make sure it happens and that it goes well, is in my mind a no-brainer.

If you’re interested in this “Better Than Mickey” Promo-in-a-Box, hit reply and tell me so. I’ll take it from there.

Again, I’ve only opened up two spots for this, and I am only responding to hand raises that express interest before tonight, Monday, November 18, at 12 midnight PST.

Yes, it’s for Mickey’s birthday, and for Mickey Mouse reasons. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m stubborn, and that I stick to deadlines like a koala to bamboo. Or maybe like a mouse to cheese. In any case, if you want your own “Better Than Mickey” Promo-in-a-Box, I suggest you act now.