Copywriting

When 4.9 is bigger than 5

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It finally happened — I got my first 4-star review for my new 10 Commandments book.

Part of me is of course annoyed — “How dare you” — but a part of me is also relieved. The book has had 26 reviews so far, all of them 5 star.

My average ranking has now tanked from a perfect 5.0 to a more reasonable 4.9.

This brought to mind a Gary Halbert bullet:

* Almost foolproof contraception: It’s over 99% effective but… so new… most people have never even heard about it!

Unless you’ve been through my Copy Riddles program, you might wonder what this new and unheard-of form of contraception is. That depends, like Bill Clinton said, on what the meaning of “is” is. But I will tell you this:

The secret Gary is talking about is actually 100% effective.

The question then becomes, if Gary’s “almost foolproof contraception” is actually 100% effective, why did Gary knock it down to “99%”?

I mean, isn’t 100% better than “over 99%”?

Isn’t “foolproof” more attractive to the foolish, which includes all of us, than “almost foolproof”?

The answer is no, not in the strange way the human brain works, which master copywriters like Gary intuitively understood and additionally proved by experience.

It’s another one of those bits of elite copywriting you would never pick up on by looking at the finished copy alone.

In order to figure out that Gary’s “over 99% effective” is not an ordinary fact, but a bit of A-list wizardry, you need to peek behind the curtain.

That’s the basis of my Copy Riddles program.

And about that, here’s a quote from copywriter Kevin Orellana, who is going through Copy Riddles now for I believe the fourth time, and who won last week’s Copy Riddles bullets contest:

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Being a Copy Riddles customer has been one of the best decisions I’ve made!

I’ve actually been going through Copy Riddles since 2021 and till this day, I still get new insights from it.

===

If Copy Riddles had a rating, it would be over 4.99. For more info on this program:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

What really makes for a good sex scene?

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As of last night, I’m about halfway through a 3-hour-long movie, titled Nymphomaniac, Volume 1. (There’s also a Volume 2, with more hours.)

I’m only halfway through it because I can only watch it in 25-minute increments. The movie is dark (literally, full of brown and black frames), heavy-handed, and worst of all, filled with gratuitous, very unsexy sex scenes.

I’m telling you this because, though you can’t tell it from Nymphomaniac, sex in movies can apparently be sexy.

Back in 1980, Francis Ford Coppola, best known as the director of the Godfather (volumes 1 and 2, each many hours long), was making a movie that was to feature a sex scene.

Coppola, who is a bit obsessive about making his movies good, tasked a UC Berkeley PhD student named Constance Penly with phoning up hundreds of famous and influential people to find out 1) which sex scenes were the best and 2) what those sex scenes had in common.

Would you like to know also?

Should I tell you?

I don’t know. Maybe I should, maybe I shouldn’t…

All right, here goes:

After hundreds of interviews and many hours of uncomfortable sex scene watching, Penley had her answer. The best sex scenes had two things in common:

1. The sex wasn’t supposed to happen, because of some big difference between the sexers

2. One or both of the characters were under threat of death

Penley gives the example of the sex scene in the original Terminator movie, between the characters of Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese. He is a rebel soldier from 45 years in the future, sent back in time. She is a woman of the present, being hunted by a cyborg assassin. Sarah and Kyle have sex, and apparently Penley thought it was hot.

(Incidentally, the Skynet future of the Terminator movies, which both Kyle Reese and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cyborg assassin are sent back from, was set in 2029.

That was distant back in 1984 when the Terminator came out, but it’s near to us now. And it looks like we’re right on track.

I saw a video just yesterday of an AI conference in China in which a woman was kickboxing with a humanoid robot that looked like it was trained on thousands of hours of UFC footage. For demonstration purposes, the robot was tuned to a setting of “Not Kill.”)

But back to those good sex scene criteria. What is it about these two criteria specifically?

I realized what makes a good sex scene is just like what makes a good promotional sales event — there’s a time-limited window and a real cost for not acting during it.

Is this a coincidence? Or am I reaching? I don’t think so. I think it goes back to the fundamental and age-old questions that all human minds are always asking:

Why? Why this? Why should I care? Why is it now or never?

And with that, I can finally wrap up my email and point you to the offer I have been working up to promoting. It’s a book, one I’ve written.

The reason I’m promoting it today is that it ties into the question of “why.” In fact, my book has the question of “why” running through it in different ways, from beginning to end. And not just that. It also shows you how to answer that question, implicitly and explicitly, to influence others without being heavy-handed and gratuitous about it.

Would you like to know how?

Should I tell you?

I don’t know. Maybe I should, maybe I shouldn’t…

All right, here goes:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

How to stay off Reddit and improve your productivity

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In short, sign up to my Daily Email Habit service. Explanation plus proof:

I put in a funny image or meme at the top of each DEH email, to make it fun to keep opening up these emails day after day, and to put you in the right frame of mind to write your own daily email.

At least that was my reasoning for putting the funny image or meme in each DEH email. But apparently there are other benefits too. From email marketer Logan Hobson, who subscribes to Daily Email Habit:

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I find the daily meme an extra benefit to DEH. I started noticing that I recognized some of your images from reddit, and I wanted your images feel fresh, so I stopped browsing reddit as much and have improved my productivity, knowing I will receive a high-quality curated meme each day in your email without having to endlessly scroll to find one in the wild.

===

Of course, the goal of Daily Email Habit goes beyond just improving your productivity and keeping you off Reddit. The real goal is to get you writing your own daily emails consistently, both so you make sales today, and so you build up a relationship with your audience, so they open and read your email tomorrow.

And about that, here’s marketing strategist Nick Bandy, who also subscribes to Daily Email Habit, and who has been emailing his list of buyers daily:

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DEH is the biggest ROI I’ve ever gotten on any course or product I’ve ever purchased. It’s incalculable.

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I have a bunch more testimonials from subscribers who praise Daily Email Habit. I also give away a sample 0th Daily Email Habit email, so you get a sense of what it looks like and what you’d be signing up for, including the funny image/meme up top. For all that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Your free tip for bombarding clients with extra value

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A couple days ago, I promised to tell you how a Copy Riddles member got more out of Copy Riddles than he paid for it.

It involves a specific client-herding technique, which comes from a copywriter named Nathan, who asked me not to share his last name (for reasons that will be obvious). Says Nathan:

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– I familiarise with the content I’m promoting eg. eBook

– Develop the big idea

– Write as many bullets as I can – as quick as I can

– connect them all to the big idea and edit based on your training

– sprinkle them throughout my copy

Then, as a bonus to my client… I hand them the best bullets and tell them they’re free “Twitter” posts. Sometimes it’s around 30-40 bullets I end up handing over.

Clients love it as they feel like they’ve been bombarded with extra value. And it took no extra effort.

===

“Huh?” you might say. “Good for the clients… but how is this any kind of proof that Nathan got more out of Copy Riddles than he paid for it?”

Well consider this:

1. Nathan signed up for Copy Riddles when I first launched it, back in 2021

2. He followed the program from beginning to end, and he participated in the weekly Q&A calls and weekly “Best Bullet” contests

3. When I ran the Copy Riddles cohort the next time, Nathan joined for a second time, and did the weekly contests again

4. At that time, he was working as a freelance copywriter. He then got a job as an in-house copywriter, while continuing to do freelance work (where the tip above about bombarding clients with value comes in)

5. After about a year, as a result of his growing skill, experience, and clear dedication to simply working, Nathan got headhunted for a new job with a nice salary increase. But not just that. As he wrote to tell me:

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But it’s not just the “head hunting” and “pay rise” that is the exciting part…

Is that my old job don’t want to lose me, so they’re going to contract me to keep writing for them… And…

The marketing manager (who also recently moved to another organisation) is contracting me to write for her as well.

All of this means I’m more than doubling my income.

Why this success? I don’t think it’s because I’m better than any other copywriter. Honestly, I think it’s because I read what you, Daniel and Ben say… I trust it… And I put it to practice.

You already know how important your bullet course has been for my journey, but the value you share in every email (just like this one) I treat with as much respect as any piece of information I’ve paid for.

All that to say, thanks… Again. And I’m sure there’ll be plenty more times you’ll hear it from me.

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About that “You already know how important your bullet course has been for my journey” part, Nathan gave me some earlier feedback on Copy Riddles, back before I even had a name for it and simply called it my bullets course. Here’s what Nathan told me then:

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John, this course was incredibly fun, motivating and mind blowing.

The daily emails kept me focused on the goal and also acted as a form of accountability.

But to me, it really wasn’t a “bullets” course… this was much MUCH more. It was so in depth that it felt more like a complete copywriting course.

I know you did talk about that in the sales (ie. being able to apply it to all parts of copy) but I had no idea it would be this in depth and useful to me every day copywriting.

The insights into the mindset of A-list writers, the reasons why they say things a certain way and how I can apply the same thought patterns to my own copy… priceless.

===

Right now, I’m running an “Unannounced Bonus” event to promote Copy Riddles. This event is ending tomorrow, Sunday, at 12 midnight PST.

I haven’t been delivering Copy Riddles as a live cohort course for years, but I will do it now one last time. This means an opportunity to get on weekly calls with me and other Copy Riddles members, to get some accountability and motivation, and to participate in the weekly “Best Bullet” contest for the sake of recognition and fun and even some silly prizes.

That “Bullets With Bejako” live cohort is one part of the special offer during this “Unannounced Bonus” promo. Another is a free lifetime subscription to Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine. I paid $997 for this last year, but it’s yours free with Copy Riddles if you get it before the deadline.

As a final inducement, I’m offering a payment plan until Sunday, so you can pay for Copy Riddles over three months.

The payment plan is there to take out the psychological sting of a lump payment. It’s there to allow you to get started today, and maybe do like Nathan — use the training and skills you gain through Copy Riddles to wow some clients, and win yourself some new work, and make your money back from this program before the final payments are even due.

Again, the deadline to join is tomorrow at 12 midnight PST. To get in before this offer disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

“What is the absolutely most important, do-or-die copywriting skill?”

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“What is the absolutely most important, do-or-die copywriting skill? It’s a mechanical skill. it’s not something touchy-feely, empathetic, hard to describe. It’s so important, that if you can do it, you are a great copywriter, you’re 99% of the way there. If you can’t do it, you will never get anywhere. What is that skill?”

That’s a little quiz that Ken McCarthy, who’s been called the “founding father of Internet marketing,” once gave to a room full of info marketers who wanted to learn copywriting.

“I was gonna offer $1,000 in cash to the guy that can get this,” said Ken. “That’s how confident I am nobody in this room knows it, except for maybe a professional copywriter.”

People in the audience started guessing:

“Know your market?”

No.

“Hand-copy great copy?”

No.

“Write every day, practice?”

That’s a good one, but no.

“Get your reader’s attention?”

Another good one, but no.

“List a lot of good benefits?”

Ooh so close, but no.

“Empathize with your readers?”

No.

Finally, somebody in the back of the room:

“Write a sales bullet?”

“Yes!” said Ken. “This is the entire craft of copywriting. And it amazes me how many people have read all the classics, written some great copy, taken thousands of dollars worth of training, met great copywriters, and didn’t realize that this is it. If you can do this, you are in the game. If you can’t do it, you’re outside the stadium, trying to find a parking place, circling round and round. It’s that night and day.”

“Why are bullets so important?” asks Ken. “Because they are the raw material for:”

– bullets (of course)

– headlines

– reasons why

– subheads

– calls to action

– sales arguments

– the order form

– the entire letter

Email marketer Ben Settle, who back in his freelance copywriter days used to write copy for Ken, and who reveres Ken and frequently quotes and references him in his emails, agrees. Says Ben:

“When written correct everything ‘comes’ from the bullets, including non-bullet copy or ads where there are no bullets.”

Which brings me back to my Copy Riddles program, and the “Unannounced Bonus” event I am running for it right now. This event ends tomorrow at 12 midnight PST. It involves:

#1. Copy Riddles, of course, which allows you to own A-list copywriting skills more quickly than you would ever believe

How?

By drilling into you mechanical do-or-die skill of writing sales bullets, and giving you feedback from A-list copywriters, who wrote their own sales bullets starting with the same source material as you did.

(This feedback process is why past customers have called Copy Riddles “the best course I’ve taken, bar none” and “worth every dollar/minute/page.”)

#2. A lifetime subscription to Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine

… which sells for $997 on the rare occasions when Lawrence makes it available at all. $997 is what I paid Lawrence last year for it. (A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga: “I would gladly have paid him ten times, even 100 times its price.”)

#3. The unique and never-to-be-repeated “Bullets With Bejako” live cohort

Many years ago, I used to run Copy Riddles as a live cohort to provide members with greater motivation, feedback, and results that an “asynchronous” content-only course frankly cannot match.

I stopped doing live cohorts for Copy Riddles because they are too much work.

I won’t ever do a live cohort in the future. But I’m doing as part of this “Unannounced Bonus” promo, so you can own those million-dollar copywriting skills in just the next few weeks, instead of never.

#4. 3-Month Copy Riddles Payment Plan

As part of this promo, for the next three days only, you can break up payments for Copy Riddles over the course of three months.

Again, this “Unannounced Bonus” event ends tomorrow at 12 midnight PST.

If you’d like to get in on the game and you don’t want to miss out on this opportunity:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

How I write emails and create offers using Ad Money Machine

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Yesterday I got an email from Robin Timmers, the “largest copywriter in the Netherlands”. Robin just got Copy Riddles during the current “Unannounced Bonus” promo, which comes with a lifetime subscription to Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money machine (normally $997). About that, Robin wrote:

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Hey John,

I got the offer, and I was wondering…

(I’ll start after finishing up CopyHour, which is +-3 weeks left.)

How do you (both in general and specifically you) use the Ad Money Machine?

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Well, it’s about time somebody asked.

I’ll tell ya, and it will be relevant whether or not you get Copy Riddles or Ad Money Machine.

It will be just as relevant if you want to do all the endless and tiring legwork yourself that Lawrence has done on your behalf, and masochistically spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours to find out what best direct response marketers across industries are doing.

Here are four ways I personally use Ad Money Machine:

#1. Subject lines and email hooks

Nobody has called me out on it, but all the subject lines I have so far used during this promo have come from ads and sales letters in Ad Money Machine:

* Copy Riddles customers hit jackpot with “Unannounced Bonus” scheme (“U.S. residents hit Jackpot with ‘Old Vegas’ Casino Rolls”)

* Over $1M ($1,000,000) and 20 years of loving labor went into this brilliant Unannounced Bonus (“£125,000 ($300,000) and 2 years of loving labour went into this sumptuous Centennial Edition of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF DICKENS”)

* Exposed: Gary Bencivenga’s “100x its price” marketing investment (“Exposed: Warren Buffett’s $39 Billion Black Gold Bonanza”)

* The magnificent obsession that produces A-list copywriting skills (“The Magnificent Obsession That Produced The Coffee Favored By Kings”)

* Dead for 34 months — now alive again (“Outlawed For 41 Years — Now Legal Again”)

* Copy Riddles is expensive… or maybe not (“Life is short… or maybe not.”)

* How I write emails and create offers using Ad Money Machine (“How I Make $327 Per Hour Practicing Real Estate”)

The bigger point is that good hooks, and good ways of crystalizing those hooks in words, are eternal. It makes sense to be a student of your market, and other markets, and reuse what’s worked.

#2. Marketing ideas I can port from one industry to another

Just one example: Gary Halbert’s 4 steps for turning $39.95… into $289… into $4,046.

Yes, Lawrence has the front-end ad that Gary Halbert ran in the WSJ, selling a Halley’s Comet commemorative silver coin for $39.95.

But the ad copy was not the story.

The story, which Lawrence got direct from Gary himself, is how those $39.95 front-end orders were turned into $289 sales, and how those $289 sales were turned into $4,046 sales, in 4 simple steps.

In spite of this being Gary Halbert, this 4-step process is perfectly legal and even ethical. It also applies to any field, including info products like courses and memberships. It’s something I have been using in part and will be using much more going forward with the offers I create.

#3. Uncovering core appeals in an industry

Until last year, I ran an email newsletter on the topic of longevity. I regularly went into the Ad Money Machine “Beauty and Anti-Aging” category (~100 winning direct response ads) to search out what appeals sell (“Look 10 years younger in 10 hours”), what words and phrases people respond to (“thinning hair”), and what hooks to use (the French).

#4. Curiosity, entertainment, and inspiration

Like I keep saying, Ad Money Machine is not simply a huge collection of winning direct response ads, with a new ad popping up each day.

What makes me keep going back over and over is Lawrence’s commentary, knowledge, and experience, which put these ads in their fascinating (at least to me) context.

If you’re actually interested in copywriting and marketing… if you’re intrigued by the history of the field…if you are amused by or have at least heard of some of the characters who made it what it is… then Lawrence’s site is addictive.

As just one example:

Last Sunday, I went on Ad Money Machine, looking for a headline I could repurpose for a subject line.

I came across that “U.S. residents hit Jackpot” ad.

But then I started reading Lawrence’s commentary, where he casually mentions that Vic Schwab (author of “How To Write An Advertisement,” one of the best books in the field, and the copywriter behind Dale Carnegie’s “How To Win Friends And Influence People”) helped start a gold and silver coin company.

Lawrence had a post on that as well. So I got sucked in, clicked through, and started reading that instead of writing my email. That’s ok. Not only was it fun and interesting and inspiring, but I learned something (going back to point 2 above) that I will use in the future.

The deadline to get Copy Riddles along with the “Unannounced Bonus” of Ad Money Machine is this Sunday, just two short days away.

As a reminder, I also will be running a live cohort for Copy Riddles, one last time, never to be repeated, as part of the offer for this promo, to help you actually go through the program so you benefit from it and start owning those A-list copywriting skills.

Plus, there’s a payment plan if you want to take out some of the sting of paying in one lump sum. That also goes away on Sunday.

To take advantage of all that before the deadline makes it disappear forever:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

The magnificent obsession that produces A-list copywriting skills

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This morning, I sent an email about a great endorsement for Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine. That endorsement came from the world’s greatest living copywriter, Gary Bencivenga.

(Gary: “I would gladly have paid him ten times, even 100 times its price.”)

A lifetime subscription to Ad Money Machine costs $997, but I’ve made a deal with Lawrence so I can offer it for free as bonus for my Copy Riddles program for this week only. Except…

It’s nice for Lawrence and Ad Money Machine to get this great endorsement from Gary Bencivenga.

But what about Copy Ridddles? Where’s the shining endorsement there?

Unfortunately, I cannot count Gary Bencivenga as a Copy Riddles member. (Gary, if you’re reading, hit reply and we’ll fix that.)

I therefore do not have a glowing testimonial for Copy Riddles the way Lawrence does for Ad Money Machine.

However, I do have the following curious story from Gary.

Once upon a time, a young Gary had to compete against Gene Schwartz, the legendary copywriter and author of the cult book Breakthrough Advertising.

Gary wrote up a first draft to try to beat Gene’s control sales letter. But when Gary compared what he had written to the control, he got depressed — his bullets were so much weaker than Gene’s.

So what did he do? In Gary’s own words:

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I said, the only way I’m going to have a way of competing with Gene is if I figure out what he’s done to get these bullets.

So wherever his bullets came from, I would read the same page. I would learn from him just by mimicking what he had done.

So I said, “This bullet that he came up with came from chapter 3, page 4. What is the original source of this?”

And he taught me so much, just by studying his copy and by looking at the product itself.

I was able to beat him, but it was really his package too in a way, because I learned the technique.

===

That process Gary describes is exactly what Copy Riddles is about.

Copy Riddles gets you competing with A-list copywriters, starting with the original source material they used, and allows you to compare your final result with their final result.

The goal is not to match word-for-word what the A-listers did. It’s certainly not to get depressed about how your copy is so much weaker than theirs.

The goal is to find out what A-list copywriters zoom in on, what they chose to leave out, how they take a dry and technical fact and make it sexy and exciting.

Do this over and over, starting with different source materials, and subtly and quickly, the A-listers’ instincts become your instincts, their tricks your tricks, their skills your skills.

Of course, you don’t need Copy Riddles to do this. You can follow the process and do all the work yourself. Start by digging around the Internet and collecting A-list sales letters…

… then stalk Amazon, eBay, used book sites, and online repositories to find the books and courses they were selling, most of them out of print…

… and when you finally get both the sales letter and the out-of-print book in your possession… go bullet by bullet… and tease out how the A-list copywriter turned lead into gold.

This magnificently obsessive process will 100% work.

I know because I’ve done it. All in all, it took me about three months of time and maybe 100 hours of work.

Of course, if you these results but you want them more quickly and more easily, then that’s what Copy Riddles is for.

Copy Riddles is a fast, fun, mostly-done-for-you ride that allows you to own A-list copywriting skills, following this Gary Bencivenga-approved process.

It’s a process also approved by the couple hundred people who have been through Copy Riddles before you, who say things like:

#1: “There are very few copywriting courses that offer this level of practical value”

#2: “The best course I’ve ever taken, bar none”

#3: “I literally use what I learned in Copy Riddles every day”

#4: “I think most people should start learning about copywriting this way”

#5: “One of the best copywriting courses I’ve done”

#6: “The entire course is an a-ha moment”

#7: “Worth every dollar/minute/page”

If you’d like more info on Copy Riddles, or to grab it before the Ad Money Machine “Unannounced Bonus” disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Exposed: Gary Bencivenga’s “100x its price” marketing investment

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I once heard Gary Bencivenga say—

But wait. First, let me do things properly, and first tell you who Gary is, in the odd case you don’t know, or remind you of the man’s accomplishments, in case you do.

Gary Bencivenga is widely regarded as the world’s greatest living copywriter.

That praise is based not on subjective impressions, but on hard numbers.

An executive at Rodale Press, a big direct response publisher, said that Gary never lost a split-run test when going up against other top copywriters.

An executive at Phillips publishing, another major direct response company, said that Gary had more winners than anybody else.

Gene Schwartz, a legendary copywriter and the author of the bible in the field, Breakthrough Advertising, summed it up by saying there are only four or five true masters of copywriting — and Gary is one of them.

With that intro, let me tell you what I heard Gary say once.

Gary said he advised a client, a publishing company, to purchase a small financial newsletter, lock stock and two smoking barrels, simply because of an enthusiastic testimonial the newsletter had gotten. (The author of that testimonial was a certain Warren Buffett.)

So great, says Gary, is the value of really convincing proof.

Going by that logic, I am hereby putting in my offer to buy Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine — the entire site, all the content, and the domain. I am doing this based simply on the following testimonial, which comes from Gary Bencivenga himself:

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One of the secrets I teach copywriters and marketers who want to be more successful is to be sure they read a great direct response ad every day.

But where do you find an almost limitless supply of great ads to be inspired by?

The best source I have ever found is Lawrence’s site. I’ve been writing copy for more than 40 years now, and I still do my ‘ad-a-day’ thing, just to keep sharp.

I never fail to be inspired with new ideas when browsing through Lawrence’s collection of ads. I would gladly have paid him ten times, even 100 times its price. Investing in your own knowledge is always the greatest investment you can make, and this is one of the smartest ways to do it.

===

I don’t know how much Gary paid to get Lawrence’s daily serving of a great response ad.

I do know I paid Lawrence $97 per month for it for a long time, and then I paid him $997, last year, in one lump sum, for a lifetime subscription.

You, however, can get the same lifetime subscription I paid $997 for, the same subscription that Gary says is “one of the smartest ways” to invest in yourself, and you can get it for free.

You can get it for free as part of the “Unannounced Bonus” promo I am doing for my Copy Riddles program this week, which runs until this Sunday at 12 midnight PST.

For more info on Copy Riddles, or to invest in yourself before this deal disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Over $1M ($1,000,000) and 20 years of loving labor went into this brilliant Unannounced Bonus

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This week, I’m running an “Unannounced Bonus” promotional event for my Copy Riddles program.

Copy Riddles, as you might know, uses a clever mechanism to download A-list copywriting skills into your brain, over the course of a few short weeks.

I’ve been selling Copy Riddles since 2021. I have had a lot of customers go through the program. I have had only glowing feedback.

But I’ve been talking about all that for years. Odds are, you know it already.

So today, I want to share with you the special “Unannounced Bonus” I’m making available if you join Copy Riddles before this Sunday, July 20, at 12 midnight PST.

That bonus is a lifetime subscription to Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine.

I’ve written about Lawrence lots of times in my newsletter — he’s “the world’s most obsessed ad archivist.”

Ad Money Machine is Lawrence’s subscription service where, each day, he shares direct response winners from the past and the present. Two points to highlight about that:

First off, these are not just random screenshotted ads from newspapers.com. As Lawrence says on the Ad Money Machine site:

“I’ve invested over a million bucks on subscriptions and products to keep my name (and aliases!) seeded on direct mail lists.”

The vast majority of these ads, packages, and promos are not available online — anywhere, except inside Lawrence’s membership site.

The reason is that he’s spent the time, effort, and money to get himself on the lists of the biggest and most successful direct marketing companies, so he can see all their marketing — the front ends, being mailed out to specialized direct mail lists, as well as all the mysterious stuff that goes on in the back, to customers only.

Because of this, Ad Money Machine is effectively a collection of “businesses in a box” — the winning ad copy, offers, and funnels across a range of markets, from health, wealth, self-help, along with a bunch of quirky ones thrown in (fishing, stamps, “grass plugs”).

Second off, Lawrence isn’t “just some guy,” and Ad Money Machine is not even his primary business.

For over two decades now, Lawrence has been working as a direct response copywriter and operator, focusing on direct mail.

That means that, when it comes to Ad Money Machine, Lawrence doesn’t just share winning ads and promos. He also puts them in context, using his own decades of experience, and he explains why these ads worked and how they connect to deeper principles of copywriting and direct marketing.

A few bits of feedback Lawrence has gotten about that, from top direct response copywriters and marketers who have paid him thousands of dollars for his ad archives and commentary:

“Brilliant examples, great commentary. This one just gave me an idea for a newsletter we’re about to launch that I think will hit large. I don’t know where you find this stuff, but I’m glad you do.”

— John Forde, A-list copywriter and co-author of Great Leads

“My jaw is literally black and blue from hitting the floor over and over again as I got to see the techniques you’ve uncovered. I never dreamed many of these things were even possible, let alone how easy you’ve made them. The word ‘miraculous’ comes to mind.”

— Ken McCarthy, founder, System Seminar

“If Lawrence has got a product for sale, you should get it!”

— Marty Edelston, founder, Boardroom Inc.

About that last comment from Marty Edelston:

Ad Money Machine normally sells for $97/month. I subscribed to it at that price for over a year, starting in 2023. At that time I even promoted it to my list, for free, without being an affiliate, simply because I thought it’s such a valuable service.

Then back in 2024, Lawrence offered a rare opportunity to buy a lifetime subscription to Ad Money Machine for $997 one-time. I knew I’d keep paying Lawrence monthly for a long time, so it was a no-brainer to take him up on this offer. I paid the $997 and bought the lifetime subscription.

Now, I’ve partnered with Lawrence so people who buy Copy Riddles during this week also get a FREE lifetime subscription to Ad Money Machine, the same subscription I paid $997 for. I also got him to agree to extend the same benefit to previous Copy Riddles buyers.

(If you’re wondering why Lawrence would possibly agree to this, it’s because I’ve made the same deal to his lifetime subscribers — they can get Copy Riddles for free. Being a savvy direct response guy, Lawrence knows the value of growing his list with a bunch of people who are 1) interested in direct response copywriting and 2) have paid $997 to get better at it.)

Over the course of the coming week, I’ll have much more to say about Copy Riddles, about Ad Money Machine, and about Lawrence himself.

But frankly, I’ve never offered a deal this good before, at least if you too are interested in direct response copywriting and want to get better at it. In case you already know you want this deal, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

P.S. If you are already a Copy Riddles member, I sent you an email about how to claim your free lifetime subscription to Ad Money Machine. In case you didn’t get that email, write me and I’ll get you set up.

The great disengagement is here

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A few days ago I saw a trending and curious article, “Are we the Baddies?”

The article was written by a guy named George Hotz, aka Geohot, who is a kind of influencer among nerds. (He was the first to hack the iPhone and later worked at Google, Facebook, and Twitter.)

Says Geohot:

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I signed up for Hinge. Holy shit with the boosts.

How does someone who works on this wake up every morning and feel okay about themselves?

Similarly with the tip screens, Uber algorithm, all the zero sum bullshit using all the tricks of psychology to extract a little bit more from every interaction in society. Nudge. Nudge. NUDGE.

Want to partake in normal society like buying a coffee, going on a date, getting a ride, paying a friend. Oh, there’s a middle man now. An evil ominous middleman using state of the art AI algorithms to extract just a little bit more from you.

===

Geohot goes on to helpfully prophesy that we are doomed.

You might agree with him, you might not.

My point today is simply that Geohot, a tech nerd, wrote this article, that it went viral, and that it had thousands of upvotes across sharing sites and hundreds of comments. Here’s a representative one:

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We should not underestimate the timeless human response to being manipulated: disengagement.

This isn’t theoretical, it’s happening right now. The boom in digital detoxes, the dumbphone revival among young people, the shift from public feeds to private DMs, and the “Do Not Disturb” generation are all symptoms of the same thing. People are feeling the manipulation and are choosing to opt out, one notification at a time.

===

Copywriting legend Gene Schwartz famously talked about “stages of sophistication.” In the shell of a nut:

Over time, each market gets exposed to more and more advertising. As a result, people in that market become more jaded and suspicious.

But it’s okay, says Gene. Because eventually, the market dies and a new market is born out of it. Tony Robbins’s Personal Power collapses in on itself, and out of that comes Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.

The one thing that Gene never talked about is that society as a whole has gone through multiple such death and rebirth cycles.

Once or twice is ok. Three times and people start to notice something oddly familiar. The fifth or tenth time, we all become a little more jaded or sophisticated in general.

And after 150 years of direct marketing, of using “all the tricks of psychology to extract a little bit more,” and dozens of such cycles, society becomes really sophisticated.

And now, with the acceleration that Geohot is talking above, of apps that everybody is using all the time, which are applying direct response insights and techniques at mass, instantaneously, backed by big data and genuine AI… well, welcome to the great disengagement.

Like the commenter above says, this isn’t theoretical, it’s happening right now.

I’m telling you this simply as a kind of warning, or a curious observation of something you might not have spotted yourself yet.

If you want more than a warning, then my best prediction is that when all is said and done, people will still want to connect with other people, be entertained, and maybe learn something new.

In the future, I imagine everybody will be an actor, or a semi-pro soccer player, or maybe a newsletter author, even if the platforms change or no longer exist, and people ignore notifications and stop trusting algorithms.

And if you don’t agree with me, you know what to do — don’t write me and tell me so.

Instead, start your own email newsletter and express your views there, to people who want to hear from you over others, even without notifications and algorithms.

And if you want my help with that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh