Copywriting

Anatomy of a penis pill business success

by

In early March of this year, I was listening to some Dan Kennedy seminar when Dan casually mentioned a penis pill company, out of Scottsdale, Arizona, that Gary Halbert used to write for, and that got busted by the Feds in the early 2000s.

I did some research.

​​I couldn’t find evidence connecting GH.

​​But I did find an NBC News article that said there was a company, called C.P. Direct, out of Scottsdale, Arizona, that sold “more than $74 million worth of pills that it claimed would enlarge penises or breasts, make the consumer taller or hairier — even sharpen his or her golf game.”

C.P. Direct got busted in 2002.

But they didn’t get busted for bogus claims, ineffective product, or lack of proof or evidence.

Instead, they got because of forced autoship and not giving people refunds.

The NBC News article concluded that “C.P. Direct would likely still be selling its pills today if it hadn’t illegally charged customers’ credit cards without reauthorization.”

Well, maybe.

Or maybe not.

Maybe if C.P. Direct had run a more legit business, at least in terms of not actually stealing from people, then there wouldn’t have been much of a business at all.

Maybe they would have had such high refunds and low reorders that even Gary Halbert’s magic front-end copy couldn’t save them.

And vice versa.

Just because Gary Halbert, if he did write the front-end copy for C.P. Direct, did create $74 million worth of sales of herbal supplements — “guaranteed to induce gross physical alterations of the human body” — well, that doesn’t mean that the copy was any good.

​​Maybe Gary’s copy was a total flop, but the fact that C.P. Direct could milk hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars from every naive customer, against the customer’s will, made the business profitable nonetheless.

My point being, there’s a lot of number porn out there, people who (truthfully) claim their copy has sold millions of this and trillions of that.

Or you can see ads that keep running in Newsmax or on Taboola, month after month.

But the fact is, the advertising you might be copying and studying from might not be great advertising after all. Even if it’s got hard numbers to back it up.

​​Well, at least it’s not great, unless you are also willing to copy the rest of the business, shady and illegal practices included.

And now the big question?

Are you happy with your size? Breasts or penis? If you’d like to increase and improve what you have, completely naturally, then join thousands of other satisfied readers and sign up for my email newsletter.

Never start a relationship with a commission-only arrangement

by

A few days ago, I shared a Jeff Paul sales letter that tells the story of how Jeff dug himself into a deep hole, with $100k worth of debt, living in his sister-in-law’s basement, without a job, humiliated, scared, and unable to provide for his wife and two kids.

What happened to Jeff? How did he get trapped in this hole? In Jeff’s own words:

I got talked into a 100% commission job with a company in Philadelphia, while my wife and children were living here in Chicago. I stupidly allowed the company to talk me into moving my family to Philly, uprooting them from the only home they knew, away from Peggy’s large and close family, and all the kids’ friends.

Here’s the killer. Two weeks after Peggy and the kids moved into the home I bought with our last nickel, I found out the company was going under. Shutting the doors. Without paying me one cent of the six-figure commissions they owed me. (Because they weren’t paying me, and like an idiot I believed their lies of future money coming, I was using credit card advances to live on.)

I don’t know how true this story is in Jeff’s case. But it rings true enough, based on my experience.

I don’t mean I’ve ever racked up $100k of debt by accepting a commission-only job. But I’ve never made a single cent from such a job. And not for want of trying.

I’ve had three client arrangements that were commission-only from the start.

In each case, there were lots of stupid meetings, wasted weeks or months of time I could have spent on others things, and even free work that I did. And I never saw a cent from it.

Maybe it’s just been bad luck. Or maybe it’s the reverse of my “Why royalties are good for everyone” argument.

If a client has never paid you anything, and feels they never have to pay you anything until you make them some money, maybe they don’t take the project seriously. They become eager to drag their feet, or to have things done exactly how they imagine it, or to pursue dumb ideas, instead of taking your expert advice into consideration.

So what’s the point?

Well, all this is not to say commissions or royalties aren’t great. Or that commission-only arrangements can’t be great.

The fact is, the most money I’ve made to date from copywriting came from a commission-only arrangement.

But it came from an existing client, who had paid me a lot of money already for other work I was doing for him. The commission-only project was a bonus on top of that other work. ​​

On the other hand, whenever I started a new client relationship with working only on commission, it’s lead to nothing except the stress and hassle of eventually having to call it off — with the client being offended that I don’t want to keep working for them for free.

So should you just say no when somebody makes you a commission-only offer?

In my experience, it’s certainly better than saying yes.

​​Of course, you can also try to spin it a little. Set yourself up with a better deal than zero. But that’s a conversation for another time, and perhaps, for another Jeff Paul sales letter. In case you want to join that conversation, whenever it does happen, sign up for my email newsletter.

An Internet stranger offers to pick my brain

by

A couple days ago, an Internet stranger wrote me to say he’s “pretty open” to having me do some free work for him.

He had seen a podcast I had done about ecommerce advertorials. He’s in the dropshipping space, is interested in advertorials, and would love to get on a call to “pick my brain for a few minutes.”

When I read this, I just raised my eyebrows. “Sounds like a great opportunity to do some free consulting,” I said to myself.

I replied to the guy to say I’m not taking on any client work at the moment, but if he is interested in hiring me, I can let him when I am taking on client work in the future.

And then I took a moment, and I lit up with satisfaction. Not because the guy was asking for something valuable for free, while offering nothing in exchange. I was just happy with the way I instinctively responded.

Here’s why this might matter to you:

Last autumn, I wrote an email where I said, never do anything for free. Especially give out advice.

The thing is, I have done things for free since. Including doling out free advice. Even in situations where I could have asked for money. Even though I knew what I was doing was not smart.

My point is this:

It takes time for a new dam to change the course of a river.

In my life, I’ve often found myself making personal development resolutions, working on them earnestly, not achieving much, or not a damn thing, and then getting exhausted and discouraged and quitting.

And then one day, once I had forgotten all about it, I found to my wonder and surprise that the change I wanted had happened somewhere along the way.

In time, I’ve grown to accept this slowness of change. I’ve stopped being frustrated about it. I’ve found it’s even something you can use to motivate yourself.

It was Bill Gates or Tony Robbins or Kermit the Frog who said something like, most people overestimate what they can achieve in one year, and underestimate what they can achieve in five.

Progress is not linear. It’s often not visible. Don’t let that stop you. At least that’s my free advice.

For more free advice, and more valuable things I don’t do for free, sign up for my email newsletter.

How to come up with email topics your list will love to read and not buy from

by

I just got home from a beautiful, sunny, morning walk. Not only is it Sunday morning, but where I am right now, it’s Easter, which means the streets are blessedly empty. Just the sun, trees, birds, and occasional whining cat are out and about.

I got home filled with positive impressions and opened my laptop. YouTube asked — resume video?

Suddenly, a weight settled on my shoulders.

​​I have a habit of leaving music playing when I go out of the house. It happened this morning too, until YouTube paused it at some point. Now it was asking if I want to continue.

My finger lingered over the resume button. I could see the next song that would play. It was both appealing and repulsive:

Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street.

I’m telling you all this as an example of a real problem I’ve noticed in my life.

​​My mind is becoming a closed garden, with songs I have known before and humor and ideas I have known before as the only plants that have a chance to take root.

I’ve listened to Baker Street, by my estimate, some 13 million times in my life. Do I need to listen to it again? No, in fact, it’s become irritating. But do I want to listen to anything else, anything new? Not really.

I don’t have a solution to this problem.

​​Perhaps you have a solution for me.

Or perhaps you don’t. Perhaps just have the same problem, and feel a little excited that at least one other person shares your problem.

Or perhaps not even that. Perhaps you don’t have this problem at all, but you just found it curious to read that somebody could experience such a deep life crisis around the topic of Baker Street.

If any of these is true, then I guess I’ve done my job.

Because when I opened up my laptop, closed down YouTube (sorry Gerry), and got to work, I made a list.

​​It was titled, “10 problems I have in my life right now.”

Making this list wasn’t depressing. In fact was a relief to get it out of my head and on to the page.

#8 was the “closed garden” problem above.

#6 was that I have no email topic for today.

​​Well, at least that problem’s solved for now.

So maybe you can do the same. If you have to come up with ideas, topics, or content, start by making an honest list of problems you have in your life. And then pick one of those problems and write about it.

​​It always does well for me when I send out an email like that.

“You mean you make lots of sales like that?” you ask.

What, have you been reading my “10 problems” list?
​
​​The answer is no, if you really must know. I don’t make sales like that, but that’s because I don’t have enough offers to sell. That’s a real problem in my life. Well, at least until I turn it into a topic for another email. If you want to read that when it comes out, or if you’re interested in copywriting and marketing, sign up to my email newsletter.

Selling drugs to kids

by

IN ONLY SIX MONTHS, that formerly desperate man bought a $385,000 house with half down, and became a millionaire in less than a year. He also bought a vacation house, put away enough to cover his kids’ college educations, easily stopped his bad habits, and attained complete personal and financial freedom… all accomplished automatically, without effort or willpower!

That’s the back envelope copy from a direct mail sales letter written by one Jeff Paul.

​​Jeff was a student and protege of Dan Kennedy, and this sales letter is actually selling Dan’s Psycho Cybernetics program.

I’m sharing this copy with you for two reasons:

First, because I want to point you to Info Marketing Blog. It’s got a few decades’ worth of brilliant direct response ads, and smart and interesting commentary. And if you need proof of that, the guy who runs Info Marketing Blog, Lawrence Bernstein, was called out as a valuable resource during Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar by Gary Bencivenga himself.

Second, there’s a masterful marketing and copywriting lesson in those two sentences of copy above. It’s right there at the end:

“… automatically, without effort or willpower!”

When I look outside at the people I know… and when I look inside, at my own feelings and frustrations… I find this is what we all really really want, deep down.

Peace. No effort. Definitely no struggle, and no demands on our willpower. No opportunity for it to go wrong. Instead, all done automatically, by some mechanism outside of us.

That’s why smart marketers like Dan Kennedy and Jeff Paul, and millions of others like them, make those promises.

And if you want to sell, in big numbers, at high prices, you should make these promises too.

Only be careful those desires you stimulate in your sales copy don’t seep into your own subconscious.

Because in my experience, life is all about effort, about exerting your willpower, about getting things done yourself instead of sitting around and wishing they could be done automatically.

How exactly do you reconcile selling something to people that you wouldn’t consume yourself? It seems a little like going down to the elementary school each day to sell drugs to kids, while being religious about never allowing that filth near your own family.

I don’t have a good way to reconcile these things for you. But facts are facts. And if you want to see some market-tested facts, here’s Jeff Paul’s complete sales letter. It’s worth reading. So much so that I’ll even talk about it tomorrow.

Sign up for my email newsletter if you want to read that when it comes out. And here’s the link to the sales letter if you want to get a head start.

https://infomarketingblog.com/wordpress/jeff-pauls-greatest-story-selling-ad/

Should you specialize as a copywriter? Maybe you should generalize

by

I talked to a successful business owner a short while ago. We got on the topic of Alex Hormozi’s book $100M Offers, and the exposure it’s brought to Hormozi.

“You know, you should put out a book like that,” I said to the successful business owner.

“Yeah man, for sure,” he laughed, “but who’s gonna do it?” And he looked at me and blinked expectantly.

I’ve mentioned before in this newsletter my immensely profound observation that business owners are busy. So even when some super valuable opportunity comes up, they might not be able to devote their time, heart, and brainpower to it.

My point for you is:

There’s a lotta fawning out there over the value of specialization for copywriters. But there’s equal value in generalization.

So if you’re a copywriter, then start providing solutions to business owners… instead of offering them a piece of the puzzle.

Propose the book… write the book… get it edited… get the cover designed… get the formatting done… write up the marketing materials… put a bow around all of it. And charge the business owner for all these steps.

Generalize, and you will soon be swamped with client work. And you’ll be praying for somebody somewhere to come and offer you some solutions… to make your own busy workdays a little less busy.

Last point:

I am putting together a guide about the business side of copywriting, called Copy Zone. It’s not out yet. But if you’d like to get notified when I do release it, sign up for my email newsletter here.

Cow Tools

by

“We give up. Being intelligent, hard-working men, we don’t often say this, but your cartoon has proven to be beyond any of our intellectual capabilities… Is there some significance to this cartoon that eludes us, or have we been completely foolish in our attempts to unravel the mystery behind ‘Cow Tools’?”
— Reader, California

Maybe you’ve heard about Cow Tools. It’s a cartoon that appeared in October 1982. It showed a cow, with some strange implements in front of it. Beneath, the caption read, “Cow tools.”

Cow Tools was done by Gary Larson, as part of his The Far Side comic, which was syndicated in newspapers around the U.S.

Larson’s The Far Side was well-known for its strange and even absurd humor. But Cow Tools missed the mark and left a buncha people confused, or worse. Hundreds of them wrote messages like the above to Larson, asking for an explanation and maybe some peace.

“Off days are a part of life,” Larson likes to say, “whether you’re a cartoonist, a neurosurgeon, or an air-traffic controller.”

Here’s something else Gary said:

In the first year or two of drawing The Far Side, I always believed my career hung by a thread. And this time I was convinced it was finally severed. Ironically, when the dust had finally settled and as a result of all the “noise” it made, Cow Tools became more of a boost to The Far Side than anything else.

So in summary, I drew a really weird, obtuse cartoon that no one understood and wasn’t funny and therefore I went on to even greater success and recognition.

There you go. If you’ve been looking for a permission slip to get going with your own bit of daily content — a cartoon, a dirty limerick, a newsletter email — then I don’t think you will find a better one than the story of Cow Tools.

​​The message is clear. When your thing is good, good. And when it’s not good, even better.

By the way, would you like to get the next issue of The Bejako Side? It’s my own daily cartoon strip. Actually, newsletter. Sometimes off, sometimes it hits the mark. If you’re curious, you can sign up for it here.

Sales copy written by hallucinatory voices

by

True story:

An otherwise healthy woman, identified only as AB, suddenly started hearing voices in her head.

The year was 1984. The place was England.

The voices reassured AB they were medical professionals trying to help her. They even gave AB some convincing secret info to prove their claims.

But AB concluded she was going insane. She went to a psychiatrist and was prescribed an antipsychotic medication.

The voices stopped. AB, relieved and happy, went on holiday.

​​But then the voices returned. They told her to head home. They sent AB to an unknown address. It turned out to be a medical center specializing in brain scans. The voices told AB to get one of those brain scans on her own noggin.

AB’s doctor was initially reluctant — brain scans are expensive and the woman was crazy — but in the end, AB got her brain scan. And then another.

It turned out that, even though she showed no symptoms, she had a large tumor inside her skull.

One brain surgery later, and the tumor was removed.

After AB regained consciousness following surgery, the voices told her, “We are pleased to have helped you. Goodbye.” AB never heard from them again, and she continued to live a normal and healthy life.

AB’s psychiatrist, who wrote up this report, said that his colleagues fell into two camps:

Group one thought this was proof positive of benevolent telepathic communication.

Group two thought AB was a big ole grifter, and that she was inventing this story as a way of getting free access to the UK’s health services (AB wasn’t born in the UK, but she had lived there for 15 years before this case).

The psychiatrist offered a third explanation. Even though AB wasn’t manifesting any symptoms, it’s likely that the large tumor in her head made her feel somehow off. It’s possible that her unconscious started slyly gathering relevant information and making its own diagnosis. Eventually, this erupted in AB’s head as hallucinations.

I find this third explanation plausible. And I bring it up for two reasons.

First, it meshes well with how I imagine my sense of self. And that’s a flimsy wooden raft, floating on the surface of a dark and deep loch.

Reason two is that this might help reduce your workload.

Because writing is work. But you know what’s not work? Having ideas pop up in your head without any effort.

For example, I sometimes just “visit” what I want to write. I look over the topic and any research I might have collected. I then go do other stuff and allow the monsters under the surface to digest that information.

For me, there’s no work. I don’t have to do it. All I have to do is simply write it down.

Maybe you can try the same. Just put a lump of an idea into your head. Then go about your day. When you start hearing voices, calmly reach for a writing apparatus and take dictation. And when the voices finish, don’t forget to say thank you, and invite them to visit you again.

“Sign up,” a voice in your head is saying right now. “Sign up to this guy’s email newsletter. He has interesting and valuable things to say.”

What’s that? You say you want to sign up to my email newsletter? Well, I don’t usually do this, but all right. Here’s how you can get in.

The time I forgot how to write emails

by

Today I’d like to tell you about the time I forgot how to write emails.

In the interest of keeping this story under 130,000 words, let me just give you four quick snapshots:

1. Friday, Oct 22 2021. I’m walking along the sea in Opatija, Croatia when I have a bright idea.

All these people have been telling me I’m so good at writing emails. So why don’t I finally offer a training on how I write emails?

​​Yes! I take out my phone, and write down a bunch of ideas for the offer, the sales page, and the actual content of the training.

Later that evening, I send out an email about it. Then I watch in wonder as thousands of dollars start to pour into my PayPal account from people who trust me enough to preorder this training.

2. Two weeks later. I’m sitting at my desk, head in hands, a pained grimace on my face. I’m staring at the pages of notes I’ve taken in preparation for the training, which is now called Influential Emails. But all I see are a bunch of half-baked ideas and vague fluff.

I start to despair that I will be able to give people their money’s worth. And the deadline is nearing.

3. Thursday, Dec 2, 2021. The Influential Emails training has completed. It consisted of me talking about a bunch of writing techniques, which I’d unconsciously used for a long time, but which I’ve now identified and given names to, such as stacking… layering… S. Morgenstern transitions… and bait-and-switch email closes.

According to the feedback I get, people loved the training. I’m amazed and very happy with how well it went.

4. The gray, rainy weeks and months that follow. Real despair sets in. After the Influential Emails training, whenever I sit down to write one of my daily emails, I am filled with confusion and doubt. Instead of writing spontaneously and enjoying the process, I hesitate.

“Should I stack something here? Or add another layer to the email? Maybe I could take out this whole section and replace it with an S. Morgenstern transition?”

Each email takes forever to write. I hate the process. And from what I can see in terms of engagement, people don’t love reading the results either.

I curse that Influential Emails training that I gave. “Why is fate like this?” I ask out loud, but nobody answers. I wish I could forget the techniques I have identified so I could enjoy writing my email newsletter again.

Let’s cut the story off at this point so I can tell what I just tried to show you. It’s the last of the six canonical story formats.

This one is called the Oedipus format. It goes like this: \/\. ​​Start high… go low… then go back up… and finally end down, way down.

And now that I’ve told you that… and now that you know about all six canonical story formats… maybe it’s best if you forget all about it.

Because these story formulas are fun to learn about. But they are not good to consciously follow. At least in my experience.

From what I’ve seen and tried myself, when you consciously write according to a formula or recipe, something feels wooden and off. And people can sense it, particularly in an intimate setting like daily emails.

Besides, there are a lot of fun stories that work well as anecdotes, which don’t fit any of these canonical structures, not unless you really give it some brutal massage.

So if you wanna have fun writing, and produce something that’s fun to read… then forget about the canonical story structure formats. Let them sink into the darkness of your subconscious, and let them guide you from there.

But if you really insist on conscious guidelines to help you write better stories, then remember the higher-level points I brought up over the past few days.

Be mindful of where you start your story… where you end it… what details you choose to include, what you omit… and of course, make sure there is drama, conflict, contrast, twists and turns of some kind.

Do this, and you won’t need an exact recipe. Your brain will surprise you with how creative you can be. And you’ll even enjoy the process.

And finally:

For more structural advice you can enjoy and then forget, sign up to my email newsletter.

The structure behind every story ever told

by

A poor, motherless, neglected boy is sent off to wizard school, where he discovers himself to be this generation’s—

“Oh what the hell is this?” I said to myself. “What did I get myself into? Is this some cheap Harry Potter imitation?”

It turns out no.

Late last year, I took one of my slow and creeping steps through my ever-expanding to-read list. I picked up a copy of A Wizard of Earthsea.

It turns out the book was published in 1968, 30 years before the first Harry Potter book.

The story might be familiar to you — and not just because of the Harry Potter similarities. It goes like this:

1. A poor, motherless, neglected boy is sent off to wizard school.

2. There he discovers that he has immense wizarding talent, and the promise to become his generation’s greatest and most powerful wizard. As a result, his hubris and his recklessness grow.

3. While abusing his still uncontrolled wizard skills, the boy lets an evil shadow into the world. The shadow almost kills the boy and leaves him scarred for life. The boy runs around the world, trying to escape the shadow and the evil that it brings.

4. Finally, the boy gives up running. He turns to face the shadow. He confronts it. And in so doing, he confronts his own dark side, and sets the world aright again.

The reason why this story might sound familiar to you is because it’s basically every story ever told. Well, at least it’s every story ever told in every fairy tale, every Disney movie, every Marvel movie, every Bruce Willis movie, every rags-to-riches sales letter, and every “horror advertorial” I have ever written.

The story template is called “Cinderella.” Maybe you can see why. It goes down-up-down-up and can be represented graphically by /\/.

Over the past few days, I’ve given you a lot of these canonical story templates. They started out simple — just a single / or \. Then two. Now three.

The bigger point is that in any good story, you gotta have contrast, emotional manipulation, surprise, twists.

In fact, that’s why you will often not see the typical rags-to-riches story, as I described it in my first email in this series. The contrast and drama in / is just not enough. Things are bad, then they get better, and then they get best. People feel let down. Where’s the conflict? It sounds too easy and too predictable.

You don’t want predictable. So give people twists and drama.

Which is a lesson I should take myself — this mini-series on canonical story types is starting to get predictable. So I will end it tomorrow, with the sixth and final canonical format for storytelling… along with a bit of storytelling advice that you might find to be a surprising twist.

If you want to read that when it comes out, you can sign up for my newsletter here.