If you 1) write Facebook ads for clients, and 2) have clients who are paying you right now…
Then I have something that might help you get paid more.
If you’re interested, send me an email at john@bejakovic.com.
Copywriting
Daily Email Fastlane for women
Last night, I sent out an email promoting my upcoming workshop, Daily Email Fastlane. And for a bit, I was pleased by the number of sales that came in as a result.
I actually stayed pleased until this morning.
And then this morning, I got a reply from Adam Silver, an expert in user experience. Adam wrote me to ask:
“Did you hesitate to write ‘handsome mug’ as it doesn’t work for women? :)”
Adam was referring to the way I ended my email last night. I said there will be a recording of next Thursday’s workshop, but if “I can see your handsome mug live on Zoom, that’s even better.”
Suddenly, after reading Adam’s message, I stopped being so pleased with myself.
I hadn’t thought much about that “handsome mug” phrase while writing it. I didn’t think it mattered.
But now that Adam brought it up, I checked the stats.
It turned out that, out of the 10 sales that have come in since yesterday’s email went out, 9 are from men and only 1 is from a woman.
For reference, I normally get a healthy mix of both men and women buying my stuff.
So was this just a coincidence?
Or did that small phrase really kill a bunch of sales that women might have made?
Did I shoot myself in the foot with just two words?
Or… was it the exact opposite? Did those two words actually help me make those other 9 sales?
Because check it:
In emails and in copy more generally, it makes sense to call out your audience.
Maybe everyone in your audience could possibly benefit from your offer. But most people won’t reply unless they feel your offer is somehow uniquely for them.
The trouble is, you probably have lots of different ways to call out your audience. Lots of different ways to slice and dice your market. Lots of different ways to appeal to how people think of themselves.
So what do you do?
Daily emails offer an easy fix to this conundrum. You just call out a new segment every day, and see what works.
And so, I would like to announce I will hold a workshop next Thursday. It’s called Daily Email Fastlane, and it will help women benefit by sending daily emails for their personal brand.
Maybe you think I’m pandering. Maybe you demand to know why specifically women can benefit from this training, and from daily emails more generally.
Here’s why:
It’s my observation that, out of the hundreds of daily email newsletters I’ve subscribed to over the years, in all kinds of niches, the majority are still sent by men. In many niches, it’s a significant majority.
I’m not appealing to your sense of justice here. I’m appealing to your sense of opportunity.
In most markets today, women would have an immediate advantage by sending out daily emails. They would have this advantage by having unique positioning. By being different to what’s already out there. By simple virtue of being a woman.
And if you want more of a sexist, stereotypical reason:
From what I hear, many women are naturally good at building a sense of community, of forming relationships with others, of emotional bonding. More talented than many men in any case, and certainly more talented than me, somebody who has to relearn this kind of stuff consciously, on a daily basis.
But daily emails are all about forming relationships with your audience, and building a sense of community.
So it seems to me that many women would naturally take to sending good daily emails for their own brands… and it seems to me they would benefit uniquely from doing so.
And yet, like I said, it’s still mostly men who take advantage of daily emails.
I don’t know why that is. But I do have a fix for it, or rather a fast lane.
This fast lane is made up of the commonalities I’ve seen in three uniquely successful daily emailers I’ve coached over the past year and a half.
These daily emailers have stood out to me — in terms of the money they make, the stability of their income, and simply in how much they seem to enjoy their business and their life.
All three achieved success via daily emails, in spite of not being women. So imagine what you could do.
If you’d like to join me for this workshop:
Flamboyant, famously homosexual football club chairman
A few months ago, a friend turned me on to a new addiction:
BBC Archive.
Sounds… archival, I know, and as exciting as a dusty library.
But the BBC Archive can be a fascinating look into a completely different time and often into places that have now fully disappeared.
For example, today I watched a BBC report from 1979, asking the question, does English football need investment?
Was a time when football (soccer) wasn’t much of a business. Back then, a couple English First Division team owners had audacious ideas such as expanding the number of seats in their stadiums past the 10k mark, or maybe even introducing functioning toilets.
The BBC interviewed a couple of these team owners and execs, including the director of Watford FC, a guy named Elton John.
“Haha,” I thought. “What a coincidence. This football club bro has the same name as the flamboyant, famously homosexual rock and roll star.”
Except, of course, it turned out that the football club bro was actually the flamboyant, famously homosexual rock and roll star.
Elton John has been a diehard supporter of Watford FC since he was a kid.
After he became rich and famous, he bought his way into the club. He acted as their chairman and director between 1976 and 1987, and then again from 1997 to 2002.
It’s only in my limited, stereotyping mind that it’s incongruent for a football club chairman and a flamboyant, famously homosexual rock and roll star to be one and the same person.
Maybe you’re nothing like me.
Or maybe you’re a bit like me.
In that case, let me share something that’s really been working for me to get a fascinating change of perspective from the usual.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve gotten on Zoom calls with a half dozen or so people who have bought my courses.
I wanted to find out a bit about who they are.
Oh, sure, I knew all about them already, everything I needed to know. I knew they were interested in copywriting, marketing, and my charming and funny personality.
What else is there to possibly know?
Turns out, a huge amount, measured in tons. I won’t list everything I learned here. But let me just say much of it has been as surprising and frankly eye-opening as seeing a 1970s Elton John discussing the plight of football fans who don’t have access to clean toilets.
I’ve also gotten lots of ideas for new offers by talking to my customers over the past few weeks.
Not just via ideas that popped up in my mind while I was listening to people talking. No, the people I talked to gave me specific recommendations and said, “Here, this is what I like to buy.”
So if you’re racking your brains about your next offer, might be time to invest in walking around the virtual bleachers, and talking to a few of the people who are sitting there on Friday nights.
I’ll be applying some of these ideas soon. Meanwhile, I just have a few archival offers, including the best thing I sell, a flamboyant program known as Copy Riddles. For more info on that:
I asked for ideas to fail, and I got ’em
The results are in. Well, some of the results.
Yesterday, I wrote an email asking my readers for ideas. On how I could make more money. And I offered a $100 reward — if I run with the idea and it fails.
Result:
I got a small number of replies so far. Almost all the replies were thoughtful, serious ideas that could legitimately make me more money.
I’ve decided to try out an idea sent to me by Modern Maker Jacob Pegs. I’ll report on the final result of that — $100 or glory — by the end of this month.
The thing is, I would like to do more. Try out two, three, all of the ideas people sent me. All at the same time.
I’d also like to finish that book I’ve been working on for a while. Plus I’d like to go through my existing emails and package those up into even more books.
I’d like to create a couple new courses, or maybe a half dozen. I have ideas for a few workshops as well. Plus I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a community for a while.
I’d like to find new affiliate offers to promote… I’d like to come up with some sort of continuity program… I’d like to build up my list with more people with money.
And that’s just for this little info publishing business.
There’s a whole big world of money-making opportunities out there that regularly calls my attention and tempts me with the thought of cool new projects using skills and assets I already have.
All that’s to say:
I’m a moderately successful dude. And I have a moderately infinite list of possible projects to do, all of which sound cool, all of which which could make me a ton of money, all of which could be good for me in other ways.
But there are people out there who are vastly more successful than I am. And those people have vastly infinite lists of possible projects to do, all of which sound cool, all of which could make them a ton of money, all of which could be good for them in other ways.
You see the problem:
Infinite opportunities…
Finite time. Finite energy. Finite head space.
And that’s pretty much the argument for going to business owners and saying, “Hey. You. How about I just do this for you? Don’t pay me anything. Don’t stress about this at all. I’ll handle all of it. Just, if it makes money, you give me a share?”
These kinds of offers work. I know, because I’ve made them, and I’ve had them accepted.
I can vouch first hand that these offers can collect you — as the party doing the work — a lot of money.
You can go out now and start reaching out to business owners and saying “Hey. You.”
If that works, great.
But if not, then consider Shiv Shetti’s PCM mastermind.
Shiv’s got a whole system for how to find business owners to partner with… how to approach them… what to say to them… and how to deliver on work that makes the business owner free money, which they are then happy to share with you.
Oh, and there’s also coaches inside PCM to help you along. I’m one of those coaches.
If you’d like to find out more about PCM:
https://bejakovic.com/pcm
Birthday bash offer
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
“How do you know?”
Over the past five or so years, I’ve noticed that I:
1. Am listening to the same music, mostly stuff I’ve listened to for decades
2. No longer enjoy going to restaurants
3. Prefer really simple food, prepared simply
4. (If I watch anything at all) watch TV shows I already know, like Arrested Development or Twin Peaks
5. Watch movies that were made up to the year 2000 but not beyond
6. Am no longer interested in traveling
7. Am in particular not interested in traveling to poor places where I can’t have the comforts I’m already used to at home
8. Have a very routinized life — work, gym, reading, walk
9. Am getting more politically conservative
10. Feel I have an explanation for everything — just ask me.
I’m telling you these 10 highly personal things to illustrate a valuable marketing and copywriting tip:
People in your market will often describe their situation with a statement like, “I am getting closed-minded.” I know I’ve been saying this lately as I’ve noticed myself getting older.
Trouble is, “getting closed-minded” is abstract. It’s fuzzy. It can mean lots of different things to different people.
And even to people who might actually agree such a statement describes them, it doesn’t really spark a very strong emotional self-identification.
The fix for this are four simple words:
“How do you know?”
Ask your market these four words.
These four words get to the specifics, the scenes people can truly see, hear, and touch.
This leads to emails and sales copy that hypnotize people.
And if you want to know why that is, just write in and ask. I have an explanation for it — and for everything else you might ever want to know.
The Trick
Yesterday, I was critiquing an email from one of the students in my Write & Profit coaching group.
After a genuinely interesting top two-thirds of the email which talked about Pan Am Airlines, my student concluded his email by saying:
“I’m thinking of putting together a small group coaching program where I get down to the nitty-gritty of this understanding.”
I screwed up my face. “Which understanding was this again?” I asked myself.
I started scrolling back up through the email to see exactly what promise, realization, secret this was referring to, which I had either missed or forgotten.
Of course, your own readers will not read your emails with the patience and diligence of a writing coach.
If your readers find that they are lost as to what you mean, odds are really fantastic that they won’t scroll back up through your copy to figure it out.
Instead, they will simply click away, and they will mentally mark your emails as making them feel dumb. “Note to self: avoid in the future.”
As I told my student, the way to deal with this is to use the Trick.
The Trick takes away confusion. The Trick makes your emails easier to read. In many cases, the Trick can drive sales itself, even if the rest of your copy isn’t as interesting and persuasive as my student’s Pan Am story was.
Best of all:
The Trick really is a trick. It takes all of a few seconds to apply. And if you’re feeling particularly uninspired, the Trick can simply be a matter of formatting, without changing your copy in any way.
For all these reasons, the Trick is an immensely powerful and versatile copywriting tool.
That’s why the best copywriters use the Trick so often, and that’s why I’ve devoted an entire round — round 5 — of my Copy Riddles program to all the different variations of the Trick.
For more information on Copy Riddles and the Trick:
Climate change is bullshit
If you identify as right-leaning, at least in the American sense, then there’s a good chance you already suspect climate change is bullshit.
In that case, I’m not telling you anything new.
On the other hand, if you identify as left-leaning, at least in the American sense, then you should know that “climate change” is in fact bullshit.
The term was a kind of red herring proposed back in 2002 by a Republican pollster, Frank Luntz, in a memo to the administration of President George W. Bush. Luntz wrote:
“‘Climate change’ is less frightening than ‘global warming.’ As one focus group participant noted, climate change ‘sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.’ While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.”
Luntz later distanced himself from this memo and the effects it may have had. But it was too little, too late.
The Bush administration had already taken up the fight for “climate change” at the expense of “global warming.”
Over the course of 2023, they started seeing results.
Climate change gradually became the standard way to talk about the environment — not just in Bush administration press releases, but among news media, left-leaning politicians, and ultimately the general population.
It’s now 20+ years later.
Yesterday was Earth Day.
Mainstream media like the BBC and CNN wrote about the occasion.
So did left-leaning media like NPR and the New York Times.
They all bewailed the fact that not enough is being done. And they all used the term “climate change.”
I have no interest in trying to change your mind one way or another about the environment. I identify as neither right- nor left-leaning, but upright, like a refrigerator.
My point is simply to talk about the persuasion aspect of all this, and to highlight what it means for you.
Because you might think the lesson here is to simply come up with a sneaky new phrase like “climate change” and snap your finger to make your customers, constituents, or even competitors play the game you want them to play.
Not at all. Here’s a story from George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley professor of linguistics and a kind of Democrat version of Frank Luntz. Lakoff wrote:
“I was once asked if I could reframe — that is, provide a winning slogan for — a global warming bill “by next Tuesday.” I laughed. Effective reframing is the changing of millions of brains to be prepared to recognize a reality. That preparation hadn’t been done.”
It’s possible to reframe the minds of thousands of your customers and even your competitors so they play your game… use your preferred language… and fume against you in a way that only serves you and reinforces what you want.
But it takes some preparation to do that.
There are lots of ways to do that preparation. I’m sure many of them are fine. But my preferred one is simple daily emails like the one you’re reading now.
If you haven’t tried writing daily emails yet, I can recommend it.
If you have tried writing daily emails, I can recommend keeping it up.
And if you want some guidance on how to keep it up, and what to put in your emails so you prepare all those minds to recognize a new reality, here’s my “intro to daily emailing” course:
Daily emails for non-creative people in 20 minutes or less
There’s a famous full-page newspaper ad that ran thousands of times with the headline:
“They Thought I Was Crazy To Ship
LIVE MAINE LOBSTERS
As Far As 1,800 Miles From The Ocean”
The lesson from that famous ad is:
If there’s a killer objection your prospect will have as soon as he hears your offer (“Lobsters in the mail???”), it can make good sense to call out that objection before your reader has a chance to think it, right in your headline (“Yes!!! Lobsters in the mail!”).
Today, print advertising isn’t what it used to be. Instead, today we have email. And in my experience, email has become the new headlines for your sales message.
And since you’re still reading, let me tell you that last summer, when I was putting together the training that eventually became my Simple Money Emails course, I asked my readers for input.
One of them, a business owner with a long-running and successful brick-and-mortar business, wrote me to say:
“I’m told that a sales email should be in a story format that tells the story about the client’s fears, concerns, what keeps them up at night etc. Your product or service should solve your prospect’s problem. My challenge is not being creative enough to produce these emails on a consistent basis with relevant content.”
The fact is, you don’t gotta be creative to write daily emails that pull in sales today, and even keep readers reading tomorrow. That’s really a story that people tell themselves because they are thinking too much.
In reality, you can follow the same formula day in and day out. No creativity required. And people will never notice.
I do it pretty much every day. Nobody ever complains. Sales come in. And people read again tomorrow.
If you’d like to find out how you can do it too, take a look here:
Red-hot tip for great names for your new offers
A new reader/buyer writes in with something notable:
===
Hey John,
I found your blog through google a few days ago and I just read the email you sent yesterday about copyhour.
I just purchased trough your link so I was wondering if you could send me access to the Red-Hot Copywriting Secrets bundle?
Thank you!
===
Red-Hot Copywriting Secrets is the name I gave in my email yesterday to the bundle of five free bonuses I’m giving away to people who join CopyHour via my affiliate link.
Here’s why I took note when my reader asked for that by name:
My #1 test for a great name is whether people feed it back to me.
I seed a name somewhere in an email. And if days, weeks, or months later, people still feed that name back to me, I know I’m on to something good.
It’s not a lot of surprise that Red-Hot Copywriting Secrets turned out to be a sticky name. I actually got the “Red-Hot” part from that Gary Bencivenga ad I was talking about in yesterday’s email.
Which is another reason to study and even hand copy old and successful ads like Gary’s. And on that note:
My promo of CopyHour continues, but it will end soon, specifically, tomorrow, Thursday, at 8:31pm CET.
If you join CopyHour before then, I will give you five free bonuses, each of which I previously sold for good money:
#1. Copy Zone (price last sold at: $100). My 175-page, A-Z guide on the business side of copywriting, from getting started with no experience or portfolio, all the way to becoming an A-list copywriter. Only ever sold once before, during a flash 24-hour offer in March 2023.
#2. Most Valuable Postcard #2: Ferrari Monster (price last sold at: $100). A deep dive into a single fascinating topic — code named Ferrari Monster — which I claim is the essence of all copywriting and marketing. Get the Ferrari Monster right, and almost everything else falls into place.
#3. Copy Riddles Lite (price last sold at $99). A slice of my Copy Riddles program, proportionately priced. Try yourself against legendary A-list copywriters like Gene Schwartz, David Deutsch, and Clayton Makepeace — and in the process, implant new copywriting skills into your brain.
#4. Horror Advertorial Swipe File (price last sold at: $100). A zip file with 25 PDFs, featuring the original copy for 25 of my horror advertorials. These advertorials pulled in millions of dollars on cold Facebook and YouTube traffic, and sold everything from fake diamonds and dog seat belts, to stick-on bras and kids’ vitamins.
#5. 9 Deadly Email Sins (price last sold at: $100). 9 lessons distilled from my expensive and exclusive one-on-one coaching sessions with successful business owners and marketers.
When you add all those prices up, you get a total of $499 in free bonuses. This happens to be more than CopyHour currently sells for.
That said, don’t join CopyHour just to get my free bonuses. Join because you decide that you will do the work involved in CopyHour, and that you will benefit from it.
For more info on that, take a look at Derek’s writeup of how CopyHour works:
https://bejakovic.com/copyhour
P.S. If you do join CopyHour, write me and say so. Also write me in case you already have bought via my affiliate link. The affiliate portal only lets me see the first name of who’s bought and not the email. So write me and say you bought, and I’ll send over your bonuses.