Copywriting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what’s inside? I’ll tell ya.

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

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

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

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

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

A man, a woman, a gun, and some crickets

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Picture the scene:

It’s dark.

Crickets are chirping.

A beautiful school teacher is moving quickly around her empty and isolated prairie house.

She’s undressing after a long day.

She gets down to her white chemise. She turns around from her closet to her bed and— SHRIEK!

She sees there’s a man sitting there in the dark, hands crossed on his chest.

“Keep going teacher lady,” he says with a hint of menace in his voice.

The school teacher stands there, breathing heavily, her hand at her chest, with a look on her face that says, NEVER.

The man slowly reaches over, picks up a gun, and points it at the school teacher.

“Don’t mind me,” he says coldly. “Keep on going.”

The woman looks down at her chemise in shame. She starts to untie the top. Now her face seems to be begging the man to let her stop.

But the man is obviously enjoying the show. He looks the woman up and down while still keeping the gun pointed at her.

The woman continues to undress. She’s now down to just her britches. She holds her chemise against her body to keep some dignity.

The man takes a deep breath.

“Let down your hair,” he says.

She does. The chemise drops to the ground and she’s just left in her one-piece underwear.

“Shake your head,” the man says.

She does. Her hair falls across her face.

The man doesn’t say anything more. Instead, he just gestures with the gun. He wants the woman to do away with the remaining underwear also.

She hesitates. There’s a mixture of fury and resolve on her face. Eventually, with decided movements, she starts to untie and unbutton her underwear.

She stands there, almost naked, with the underwear barely on her shoulders, ready to slip off.

The crickets keep chirping.

The man lowers his gun. Slowly, he takes off his gun belt. He stands up and walks to the woman.

He reaches inside her untied underwear.

The woman can barely control her fury.

“You know what I wish?” she says with her teeth clenched.

“What?”

“That once you’d get here on time!” And she puts her arms around the man and they kiss.

As you might know, that’s a scene from the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

It’s the first time we see the character played by Katharine Ross, the school teacher who was Sundance’s lover and who accompanied Butch and Sundance all the way down to Bolivia.

I’m using this scene to express an idea by Mark Ford, which is itself an expression of a much older idea:

“Ideas in and of themselves have little value. The value lies in the way they are expressed. New ideas are never new. Nor are they the product of a single mind. Rather, they are the particular articulation of general ideas that are in the common marketplace of ideas, repeated endlessly until one particular articulation catches fire. Remember this when you have a new idea that you are excited about. If you want to have it accepted, you must be willing to express it in dozens of different ways.”

A man and a woman in love. Not new.

A man and a woman in love, meeting after a long absence and hungrily reaching for each other. Not new.

An apparent rape, which turns out to be a man and a woman in love, meeting after a long absence and hungrily reaching for each other. That’s something you win an Oscar for, which is what happened to screenwriter William Goldman after he wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Whatever. Maybe you see where I’m going with this. And maybe you don’t. If you don’t, then I guess I’ve done my job, and that job ain’t easy. As A-list copywriter Jim Rutz said once:

“You must surprise the reader at the outset and at every turn of the copy. This takes time and toil.”

Do you see where I’m going now? I want to make sure that you do, so let me spell it out:

I write a daily email newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and influence. If you’d like to be surprised on occasion, and maybe get exposed to some valuable ideas as well, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

My frustrating personal experience reading a well-known marketer’s email a few days ago

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A few days ago, a well-known marketer sent out one of his daily emails. I don’t to make it sound like I’m trying to make my name by repeatedly picking on people with bigger audiences than me, so let me just use an impenetrable alias for this guy. We can call him Gavin Juff.

So Gavin sent out an email a few days ago. The subject line read something like, “The one thing all successful copywriters have in common.”

But then, Gavin opened the body copy of his email with a long and I assume interesting personal story.

I say I assume it was interesting, because I just scrolled through it, looking for that “one thing” payoff.

And you know what? The payoff was, in effect, “We all make mistakes, and it’s okay.”

I rolled my eyes at this.

The fact is, Gavin was actually sharing a worthwhile point. The fact is, he put in a good amount of effort to illustrate his point with an (I assume) interesting personal story. And the fact is, it took me all of three seconds to open his email, scroll to the end, and feel he had wasted my time.

So there you go. That’s my personal story of a frustrating recent experience. I’m not sure what valuable point you can take away from that. Perhaps it’s something like:

“Excessive use of proven direct response techniques in personal daily emails can be more of a liability than an asset.”

Or maybe it’s something like:

“Make sure the transitions between your copy sections (including from subject line to body copy) are congruent and adequately prepared.”

Or maybe it’s just something like:

“The number one problem with daily email copy is a preachy, old-hat takeaway. But if you have to make such a takeaway because it’s actually true and important (like in Gavin’s case above), then sell something else in your subject line. Such as, for example, yourself and your frustrating personal experience.”

Anyways, I realize I haven’t done much to educate you in this post. I will try to do better in the future.

In case you would like to get my daily emails, and witness me trying to educate you more on the fundamentals of email copywriting and persuasion and influence more broadly, click here and follow the instructions.

Today is a possible keyframe moment in your life

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About two months ago, I reconnected with an ex-girlfriend I had not talked to for over 5 years, pretty much since the day we broke up.

She seems to be thriving now. Maybe because of that, she wrote me a short email this summer to wish me a happy birthday. We exchanged a few more short emails and she suggested we get on a call and catch up. So we did.

It was an oddly pleasant and chirpy call that lasted over an hour.

I’ll tell you one detail from the call that stands out in my mind.

It turns out that in those five years, my ex started her own law office.

“I didn’t want to do it,” she said, “even though it was always the plan. Actually, in a funny way you were responsible for why I did finally do it.”

The “funny way” was this:

Back when we were together, my ex and I used to play-plan, and talk about sharing an office together one day. She could have one room, where she could write serious real estate contracts, and I could have the other room, where I could write serious dog toothbrush advertorials. We could share the coffee machine and the secretary.

It was a nice idea in my mind, and I guess in her mind as well. Because, as she told me during that oddly pleasant and chirpy call, it was this memory that made her finally decide to get the office and to start her own law practice.

All this popped up in my head today when I learned of a new word, watashiato:

“Watashiato: n. Curiosity about the impact you’ve had on the lives of the people you know, wondering which of your harmless actions or long-forgotten words might have altered the plot of their stories in ways you’ll never get to see.”

Watashiato, the word, comes from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. That’s just a blog by some guy, who’s inventing new words for feelings and experiences most of us have, but cannot put a finger, or tongue, to.

And that’s it. That’s all I’ll share with you today. That new word, plus The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, plus the quick personal story.

I did have more to say about this, including talking about keyframe moments.

But I saved that for people who are signed up for my email newsletter, and who get these emails live, instead of getting these emails archived on my website. In case you would like to join them, click here and possibly enter into a strange new area of your life.

The strategy of hypocrisy and scoundreldom

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Mark Ford once shared the following personal story in his newsletter, which has rattled around in my head for years:

AJ is one of the most brilliant marketing minds on the planet. We became acquainted almost 40 years ago when my boss at the time got into a joint venture with him.

The deal made both of them a lot of money, but it ended badly when they argued about dividing the spoils. AJ’s behavior after that was reprehensible. I was so disturbed by it that once, at an industry event, I actually challenged him to a duel. He declined.

Years later, we reconnected. I was still angry with him – but before I had a chance to bring it up, he said, very casually, “But of course I’m a hypocrite and a scoundrel.”

The moment he said that, I forgave him.

Maybe it’s the gossip in me, but I’ve always wondered who this brilliant marketing mind is in reality.

I have my own theory.

Maybe you do too, or maybe you know the true back story. In any case, the following two points stand:

1. The direct marketing world attracts many morally bankrupt characters, some of whom are very smart and very effective at what they do.

2. You can’t really tell much from the outside. The whole thing about marketing is presenting an attractive facade to the world, including of your own self.

And by the way, playing consumer advocate, which is kind of what I’m doing with this email, is just another way of dressing up that attractive facade.

Having said that, I would now like to sell you on signing up for my daily email newsletter.

You might rightly wonder why, having primed you to be guarded and suspicious, you should listen to anything I have to tell you now.

The fact is, people can be very good at presenting an attractive facade to the world — for a while. But it becomes hard to do it week after week, month after month, year after year. That’s why daily emails are one way to get a peek behind that facade, and see who is morally bankrupt, and who has some money in the moral bank.

And besides, you might get some good ideas about copywriting or marketing or persuasion from my daily emails.

Whatever the case, if you’d like to sign up, click here and fill out the form that appears.

Free info on free reports

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Copy Riddles member Andrew Townley takes advantage of the Copy Oracle privilege to ask:

I was listening to a Dan Kennedy program today that got me thinking about all those direct mail “free reports.” I was wondering if you had a source of any guidance on how to build one. I remember Parris describing the process somewhere on a podcast or something, but I can’t find it now.

The background, as you might know, is this:

A-list copywriters like Dan Kennedy and Parris Lampropoulos are experts at selling newsletters. Newsletters are a direct marketing staple because they are great for the publisher. Money comes in like clockwork, on your own schedule, without any added selling of your vague and broad and cheap-to-produce subscription offer.

For those same reasons, newsletters are a suspect deal for the subscriber. Many potential subscribers instinctively feel repulsed at the thought of paying good money, every month, for a “cat in the bag” piece of content, whether they are eager to consume it or not.

Enter free reports. Free reports are one effective strategy that guys like Dan and Parris use to overcome the resistance of skeptical newsletter buyers. The recipe is simple:

1. Go through your past content (newsletter or really anything else)
​
2. Find the sexiest stuff. It can either be a single bit of info, or a small number of related items you bundle together.

​3. Put that sexy stuff in its own little package.

​4. Give that package a sexy and mysterious new name.

​5. Repeat as many times as your stamina will allow. I believe one Boardroom promo offered 99 free reports along with a newsletter subscription.

When you think about it, this is really just the same work that a copywriter would do normally. Look at what he has to sell… figure out the sexiest parts of that… highlight it in the sales material, and of course, make it sound as sexy and as mysterious as possible.

And now for the pitch that probably won’t convince you:

I write a daily email newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and persuasion.

But like I said, that probably won’t convince you to sign up.

So let me take my own advice, and offer you a free report when you sign up:

“Become a Repositioning Specialist”

This report shows you how to start a profitable repositioning business, with your own home as headquarters. In case, you want this report, follow these steps:

  1. Click here and sign up to my free daily email newsletter
  2. When you get my welcome email, hit reply and tell me you want the free report

A new way to acquire copywriting skills while reducing emissions by over 80%

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Today I have a new pasta recipe for you:

Boil the water, throw in the pasta, cook as usual for two minutes. Then turn off the stove. Put a lid on your pasta and keep it in the hot-but-no-longer boiling water until the usual cooking time.

It’s called passive cooking and apparently it works just as well as your usual “stove’s on” way of cooking pasta, while reducing emissions by 80%.

Whatever. I’m just sharing this recipe with you because 1) it’s trending on the Internet, and I’m a trendy guy and 2) because I went to the page that explained this pasta cooking recipe and saw something interesting.

The passive cooking page is on the Barilla site. Barilla is a brand of pasta. And yet, on that page of the Barilla site, it says the following:

DOES IT WORK ONLY WITH PASTA BARILLA?

Of course not! We chose to study the process, adapt it to our classic product range and provide all the information to adopt this method. But helping the planet goes beyond our brand. So, with a few tweaks, you can try Passive Cooking even if you choose products from other brands.

This is interesting — and smart. It goes back to something I heard once from A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos.

Parris said how many sales letters go from problem => my offer and why it’s just what you need!

“How convenient,” says the reader after reading this. “All this time, while you were pretending to be talking about me and my problem, you were just leading me by the nose until you could start hawking your stupid brand of tortiglioni.”

A much better way to do it, says Parris, is to go from problem => broad category of solution => why your specific solution is a great or really the best choice within that category.

“It works with any brand of pasta! Of course, you might have to tweak a few things, do a bit of light multivariate calculus, and risk a beating from your hungry spouse — but really, any brand will work! Or of course you can just go with Barilla because we’ve done all the work for you.”

Which brings me to my Copy Riddles program:

IS COPY RIDDLES THE ONLY WAY TO TRANSFORM YOUR COPYWRITING SKILLS?

Of course not! I chose to study actual, million-dollar copy of A-list copywriters, present it to you in fun bite-sized pieces, and provide you all the information so you can practice each A-list copywriting technique yourself.

But effective copywriting goes beyond Copy Riddles. So, with a few tweaks, along with a few thousand hours of effort and a few tens of thousands of dollars of investment in books, courses, and coaching, you can try to acquire the same copywriting skills in different ways also.

Or you can just get Copy Riddles.

In case the pot’s boiling, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Using Stefan Georgi in your copy

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“It might take some figuring out to do it to where people aren’t pissed at you and you do it right, but I think this could actually be a home run thing that just absolutely CRUSHES it.”
— Stefan Georgi

So now let me ask you:

What is it?

What is Stefan talking about in the quote above?

I’ll give you a hint:

It’s a little gimmick, which Stefan advises you to use to start off your ad and VSL copy. It ties into that all-powerful driver of action, curiosity. And additionally, it creates a feeling of insight.

No? you don’t know the gimmick Stefan has in mind? Let me give you one more hint:

It starts with the letter R…

Then I…

Then D…

Then another D…

All right, fine — it’s riddles. In a recent video, “Using riddles in your copy,” Stefan advises using riddles in your ads and VSLs.

Why riddles?

Because riddles — “How many months have 28 days?” — consistently go viral on social media.

And what Stefan and many other smart marketers like to do is to camouflage their sneaky sales pitch and make it look like something — a riddle, for example — which you might want to consume for your own ends, and not for theirs.

And now, let me throw off my cloak and hold up my wizard staff, and with a blinding light shining from behind me, admit in my deep and resonant voice that this is exactly what I’ve done with this email.

Because the underlying idea Stefan is recommending — people enjoy riddles, so give ’em riddles — is at the core of my Copy Riddles program.

My goal was to make Copy Riddles fun. So I covered up the teaching, the learning, and the transformation bit in what I call copy riddles, hence the name of the program. ​​Did it work? Here’s what copywriter Cindy Suzuki, who joined Copy Riddles a few days ago, thinks about it:

Hi John,

I am having a blast with copy riddles so far. It feels like a game. I love it when learning is actually fun. Was on the fence until the last day, and I’m so glad I bought it 🙂

Cindy

If you like fun and games, and maybe some sales, then don’t join Copy Riddles. But see if you can sign up for my email newsletter. You can get started on that puzzle right here.

Can you help me find this piece of copy?

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Today, I logged into Facebook for first time in over a year.

It felt like I was sneaking into an abandoned and decaying warehouse late at night.

A peeling poster on the wall screamed at me, “YAY! A page you manage has been updated!”

I had ghostly friend requests from people I have never heard of and new message requests that sounded gruff at best (“do you write advartorials”).

I sneaked around that abandoned warehouse for a few minutes, peeking into a few cardboard boxes and looking under the broken tiles on the ground.

It became clear I wouldn’t find what I had come looking for.

I quietly made my way towards the exit and closed the private browser tab behind me. I’m not sure if this will have any real effect on Facebook tracking each step I make, but psychologically it was an important step to feeling I had left that dusty, dark, and desolate warehouse behind me.

But like I said, I didn’t find what I was looking for.

Maybe you can help me find it. If you can, I promise to give you something in return.

I was looking for a post by the Note Taking Nerd. This post was an in-depth analysis of a landing page for a vertical jump offer, which I guess was running on Clickbank.

I read this post a few years ago – I guess 2018 or 2019. I thought it was brilliant, and I saved it to my computer.

Only problem is, that was my old computer, which is now gathering its own dust in its own abandoned warehouse in a country far away.

So if you either have this post saved by chance, or if you can find it somewhere and send me a screenshot of it (don’t make me step into that dusty darkness again) then I will give you a free copy of a training I will prepare some time soon.

I know that promise sounds very vague. Here’s what I can tell you now:

This training will be about a fundamental element of making your message sticky — and a fundamental element of making all your copy, and all your writing more persuasive, without resorting to anything obvious like hype or fear or greed.

I will be charging for this training, but like I said, you will get it for free, if you can somehow get me a copy of that Note Taking Nerd post.

And if you’re not interested in that offer, you might be interested in something completely different:

I write a daily email newsletter. It’s been called “the most underrated list in copywriting.” In case you’d like to find out why, you can try out my newsletter for one day, for free, no credit card required, by taking advantage of this special offer.

The secret reason I still stick with copywriting after all these years

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Here’s a confession:

I’m not in this field because of the money or supposed freedom that copywriting brings.

Sure, that’s why I got into it in the first place. And I guess if I didn’t make any money, or if the work conditions sucked, I might move on to something else.

But the real thing that keeps me going in copywriting, that sucks me in and fascinates me, is learning more about myself and about other people.

Because it turns out that direct response marketing is an incredible lens to allow you to see inside people’s psyches, and what they really respond to.

Case in point:

Joe Sugarman of BluBlockers fame once told a story about his cousin, who was a psychiatrist. The cousin was hired by the San Diego Chargers, an American football team.

The Chargers wanted to find out what separated football superstars from the rank-and-file of all the others players. After some MK-Ultra type research, Joe’s cousin figured out there were two personality types who became superstars. They were either:

A. Egomaniacs

or

B. Deeply religious

“And when you really think about it,” Joe said, “what did they have in common? A very strong belief in either themselves or in a higher power.”

I’m not here to tell you to believe in yourself, or in a higher power.

I’m just here to point out am important fact in case you ever want to sell something:

If the thing that sets superstars apart is that they believe, either in themselves or in God, then what does that say about everybody else? What does it say about the 99.9% of people in any field who are not superstars?

They don’t believe. Or at least they don’t have anything focused to believe in.

And mercenary thought it might sound, smart marketers have been taking advantage of this lack of belief to sell trillions of dollars worth of stuff.

Because smart marketers give prospects something to believe in. An external thing… and yet, a thing that doesn’t require religious feeling or faith in the supernatural.

That thing is called the mechanism.

The mechanism is usually described as “how the solution works.” And it is that. But it’s really much more. It’s hope and belief in something outside yourself.

Of course, after a century-plus of creative mechanisms — cold showers and hyperventilation, buttered coffee, adaptogenic mushrooms — you can’t just hold up a bag of rocks and say, “Here, believe in this.”

You gotta come up with a mechanism that threads the thin line between exciting and exotic and believable and achievable.

I got a mechanism for you. It’s called “The John Bejakovic Letter” and it’s been called the most insightful newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and influence. In case you’d like to sign up for it, click here and follow the instructions.