Copywriting

Opening the doors of marketing perception

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A few weeks ago, I found myself at an open-air club in Barcelona, talking to Tony the drug dealer.

Tony didn’t speak very good English.

When he couldn’t find the right word, he would shake his fist at the sky and yell, “TEACHER!!!”

In spite of his habit of selling drugs for a living, Tony didn’t do too many drugs himself.

“Just a little ketamine right now,” he told me. “It opens up the pineal gland.” He pointed to the back of his head to illustrate where the pineal gland is.

Now, from my previous readings, I know the the pineal gland is supposed to be the seat of the soul.

If it gets clogged up, then you find it hard to see God.

When it gets cleansed, say with a bit of ketamine, then you start to see the true nature of reality.

Maybe you don’t believe in any of this.

So let me tell you about marketing instead.

I just had my first call with my new marketing and copywriting coach.

Earlier this afternoon, I was thinking to myself how I’m already a pretty good writer and I know a lot about marketing.

I wonder what this guy is gonna be able to tell me,” I thought.

Well, I’ve just had my pineal gland opened.

And I feel like I got a short but powerful glimpse of the true nature of marketing reality.

I had a similar though less powerful experience the first time I started hand-copying successful ads many years back.

There’s such a big difference between reading about copywriting theory online and seeing real ads that actually made millions of dollars.

And there’s an even bigger difference between working on moderate copywriting projects, and seeing behind the curtain of someone who works on some of the most successful current promotions.

So if you’re wondering what this has to do with you, here’s all I can say:

Find​ some way of cleansing your own doors of marketing perception and opening up your own pineal gland.

Maybe you can start by looking at historically successful ads.

Maybe you can find a mentor or a coach, like I’m doing now.

Or maybe you can get a job in a fast-moving and successful marketing organization, where you can get a lot of experience very quickly.

Speaking of which, a past client of mine, Josh Dunlop, got in touch with me a few days ago.

Josh runs a very big and successful photography instruction website called Expert Photography.

I wrote some emails for Josh in my first year as a copywriter. He’s now looking for somebody to hire full-time.

I’m not interested. But you might be. So in case you want to find out more about the copywriting position that Josh is advertising, check out the following page:

https://expertphotography.com/careers/copywriter/

Copywriting and luck

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I just saw a cute video of a frustrated husky.

The husky is having a fit because his owner is pretending to eat one of the husky’s milk bones.

I saw this video in a Reddit post titled, “No, that’s not for you!” The post currently has 21K points and over 200 comments.

​​And the interesting thing is hiding down in one of those comments. It’s a table that somebody put together of the 24 other times this exact same video was posted before.

Those other posts of the same video range from having 29 points and 1 comment…

To having 81.5K points and 938 comments.

Maybe these fake Internet points don’t mean much to you.

So let’s multiply by 10 and change it into cold hard greenbacks. By that math…

The least successful husky post would have earned you $290, enough to buy a Kindle Oasis, Amazon’s “most advanced Kindle ever with a 7” screen and sleek ergonomic design.”

Not bad. On the other hand…

The most successful husky post would have earned you $815,000, almost enough to buy yourself a McLaren Senna, an “extremely track-focused hypercar” and “McLaren’s most calculated masterpiece.”

Keep in mind, the video was the same in both cases.

The substance was identical.

The only difference came down to title (“”WTF, that’s not yours” vs. “GIMME GIMME DARN :(“) and the time of the posting.

In other words, a bit of copywriting…

And a lot of luck.

So what’s the point of all this?

Well, I actually intend it to be inspirational.

Because if you’ve got decent copywriting (can you guess which of the two titles was the winner and which the loser?) and if you simply keep plugging away until you get lucky, then you too might get a husky post that gets tens of thousands of fake internet points.

Or if that’s not your game, maybe you will come up with a for-real offer that makes hundreds of thousands of dollars overnight. If you need help figuring out how to write decent copy to promote that offer of yours, you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Justin Goff and Stefan Georgi critique my advertorial copy

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Do you know the old chestnut about the drunk copywriter?

He was standing under a flashing neon sign that said ADVERTORIAL.

A passing policeman noticed this strange scene.

“What’s going on here?”

“I lost my keys,” said the copywriter.

“Right here, under this flashing ADVERTORIAL sign?” barked the cop.

“No,” the copywriter said softly. “Somewhere out there.” And he waved his arm into the darkness of the night.

Today, I got a copy critique from Justin Goff and Stefan Georgi.

​​Both Justin and Stefan are multi-million dollar marketers and copywriters. And today, they actually critiqued a bunch of different pieces of copy, mine being one of them. They had lots of insightful and valuable things to say.

So for example, I submitted an advertorial I’d written earlier this summer. According to the client I wrote this for, this offer is “profitable at the moment, although not doing crazy numbers.”

Justin was the one who did most of the critiquing for my copy.

“The advertorial copy is pretty good,” he said. “You could tweak it but it won’t bring in a massive win.”

And then he pointed out some opportunities, specifically in the upsell pages and the actual order page. These were things that would take a small amount of work to do, but could yield a 2- to 5-fold increase in profits. At least that’s what the two experts thoughts.

I won’t spell out these proposed changes here.

I just want to point out that if you’re doing a decent job with copy, then that’s probably not where your lost keys are hiding.

I mean, that’s not where your biggest improvements lie.

And that’s why it doesn’t make sense to keep looking for them under the flashing ADVERTORIAL sign, even though the light is best there.

Instead, you might have to wander out into the darkness that is the rest of your sales funnel. ​​In case you want some help with that, and you want to know the advice that Justin and Stefan gave me, you might like my upcoming guide on writing advertorials. To get notified when it’s out, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Copy is never too boring, only too irrelevant

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“Long novels often become best sellers, but even short books of logic rarely do.”
Victor Schwab, How to Write a Good Advertisement

True story I heard today:

Million Dollar Mike Morgan, an A-list copywriter I mentioned a couple of days ago, once wrote a 64-page sales letter.

Mike looked at his creation in horror and thought, “This really is too much. Who the hell would read 64 pages of promotion?”

Back then, Million Dollar Mike worked with copywriting coach David Garfinkel.

David read over the copy, and told Mike to run with it.

Which Mike did. The copy made sales. And afterwards, at an event where he was speaking, Mike actually got to talk to some people who bought the $1k product his sales letter promoted.

“Let me ask you something,” he asked all the folks who had bought. “Did you actually read that whole sales letter?”

All of the buyers did. The whole thing. One even read it twice.

It’s often said that a sales letter is never too long, only too boring. But here’s the problem with that:

If you’re writing to the wrong person, then no matter how long or short your sales letter, how entertaining or deadly dull, you won’t make the sale.

And if you’re not an actual prospect for what you’re selling, you can’t tell whether they will be bored or not.

So what do you do?

Well, you rely on the fundamental basics of direct response copywriting, which have been more or less proven over the last 100 years. And you apply them to your sales copy, blind if you have to.

If you need a primer on these fundamental basics of copywriting, specifically as applied to sales advertorials, then check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

7 low-key marketers who are worth your attention

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Below you will find a list of 7 un-famous men.

Odds are, you won’t know all of them, or maybe even most of them.

At least that’s how it was for me, for a good number of years into my copywriting and marketing career.

Which is odd, because all of these guys are very successful, either as copywriters or marketers or both.

The thing is, most of them don’t do a lot of self-promotion. But I believe they are worth your attention. And that’s why I advise you to track down everything they may have put out into the public sphere, whether paid or not.

​​Anyways, here goes:

#1. Travis Sago

I’ve mentioned this guy multiple times in my emails. He started out as an affiliate marketer 15 years ago, then became one of the leading Clickbank sellers in the “Get him back” space, and today earns millions of dollars by teaching other marketers his clever and very simple techniques.

#2. Dan Ferrari

I’d first heard of Dan as a success story for the Copy Hour course. Since then, Dan went on to be one of the top copywriters at the Motley Fool, and when that wasn’t enough, he started his own marketing agency providing marketing and copywriting to some of the biggest names in the health and financial spaces.

#3. Michael Senoff

Michael doesn’t fit 100% in this list, because he still does a reasonable amount of self-promotion. But as a marketer from a pre-Facebook generation, he might not have crossed your radar yet. My main reason for putting him in this list is that his site is an incredible rabbit hole into other very successful copywriters and marketers you have probably never heard about (it’s through Michael that I first heard of Travis Sago).

#4. Ted Nicholas

Ted Nicholas is supposed to be the most successful direct marketer in history, responsible for $6 billion in sales — more than even Jay Abraham. But he did all of this a generation or two ago, and while he has written several books about his strategies, they don’t get the same adulation that other copywriting classics (eg. Joe Sugarman’s books) get today. Still, do you think he might teach you a thing or two?

#5. Parris Lampropoulos

One of the most successful copywriters of the past several decades and somebody I’ve written about frequently, Parris mostly focuses on his work and doesn’t do almost any self-promotion. But if you search around, you can find a few podcast interviews he’s done — and each is packed with really A-list copywriting secrets.

#6. Million Dollar Mike Morgan

Mike is another very successful copywriter, who has a public online footprint that might even be smaller than Parris has. But if you search around, you might find an offer Million Dollar Mike is running right now (I think it’s still up), where he’s sharing some of his biggest insights and secrets in exchange for a donation to a good cause.

#7. Mark Ford

Mark Ford has written a dozen books about copywriting and marketing, plus he started and ran one of the biggest business and self-improvement blogs on the Internet (Early To Rise). Oh, and he helped Agora become a billion-dollar company. So why is he on this list? Well, because in my experience, in spite of all that Mark Ford has done and all the great info he has shared, many people still don’t know who he is.

That’s all I got for today.

But if you have more questions on how to become a successful copywriter or marketer, you might look here:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

The copywriting commandment that top copywriters all violate

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Q: You go back to the same actors frequently?
A: I have to. It’s a tax thing.
— Christopher Guest on the Charlie Rose Show, 2003

In my opinion, Christopher Guest is one of the most talented entertainers in history.

You know who I’m talking about.

He acted, sang, and played guitar as Nigel Tufnel in This Is Spinal Tap (“This one goes to 11”). He also directed and wrote Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman. He even had a role in The Princess Bride, as the soft-spoken but sadistic Count Rugen.

In spite of all these achievements, Christopher Guest is even more impressive in real life.

For example, he was interviewed on Charlie Rose some 15 years ago.

He was subtle and funny in almost every second of the live interview.

That’s rare.

Because most comedians, even the ones I love the best, are a big disappointment when they have to improvise.

They don’t have the same delivery.

They don’t have good punchlines.

They are simply not very funny, especially when compared to their stage or movie persona.

And this is yet another connection between the world of comedy and the world of sales copywriting. Because one of the biggest and most sacred sales copy commandments is:

“Write like you talk!”

Sure, this is good advice for people who are terrified of writing.

Or for those who are used to writing in a nonsense, corporate tone (“Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion…”)

But “write like you talk” is not something that top copywriters actually do themselves.

Don’t believe me?

Go on YouTube and find some video of Gary Halbert speaking.

See how slow and ponderous the man was. It’s nothing like the crisp, funny, energetic writing in his newsletter.

And that’s not a coincidence.

Top copywriters make their copy more than “just how they talk.”

I won’t give away the secrets of the trade here.

Suffice to say that most copywriters, just like most comedians, simply aren’t that persuasive or funny in real life.

We’re not all Christopher Guest, unfortunately.

Fortunately, there is a simple fix.

It’s called hard work and unrelenting toil.

In other words, if you’re not naturally an incredible storyteller or an irresistible salesman, you can still write top-level copy.

And all it will take are dozens of passes over what you’ve written the first time around, until you revise it into something that really pulls.

Of course, there are checklists and shortcuts that can make your job easier. And if that’s what you’re looking for, then you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

A marketing tactic worth 100 IQ points

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I was at the airport today, waiting in a long, slow-moving line that was supposed to make my life easier.

This line is for holders of EU passports.

I have one of those. So I was in the line. The promise is that, since I was in an EU country holding an EU passport, I’d be able to get through the border check more quickly.

Only one problem.

The EU-passport line had around 40 people in it.

And only one border control policeman dealing with all those people.

Still, all of us EU citizens stayed patiently in the line.

It was only when one intrepid traveler, also with an EU passport, realized that there is a second line for ALL passports — meaning non-EU rabble.

Thing is, there was nobody in that second line.

So the EU-line pioneer crossed over into that second line, got his passport checked immediately, while the rest of us stared in wonder.

Soon though, the rest of us EU-line sheep were fighting to go to the other, non-EU counter.

And this is actually related to a very important — possibly most important — marketing tactic.

Maybe you think I’m talking about social proof.

Or the power of a good demonstration.

Or exploiting unused opportunities.

Nope.

It’s none of those.

Instead, I’m talking about creating a change in perspective.

That first traveler made everybody else see the non-EU line in a new light — not as an embarrassing stigma for random immigrants, but as a quicker way of getting through the hassle of border security.

Change of perspective — a famous computer scientist Alan Kaye has said it’s worth 100 IQ points.

And a change of perspective is also worth 100% increase in sales — if it’s something you can create in your audience.

Don’t take my word for it.

This is the advice (minus the specific numbers) from master internet marketer Travis Sago, who has sold millions of dollars worth of stuff using little more than simple, short emails.

His secret?

It’s something Travis calls “braingasms” — basically a new way of looking at old things.

Ie. a change of perspective.

Says Travis, braingasms/new insight/a change of perspective is the number one way to nudge potential but undecided customers towards towards a completed sale.

So if completed sales are something you would like to see more of, then try changing your potential customer’s perspective:

About their problems…

About potential solutions…

About your product.

And if you want to see some simple ways I’ve personally done this for a bunch of ecommerce products, then you might like the following offer:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Murdered billionaire pedophile secrets

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You can’t beat a royal flush.

That’s not the case with other hands in poker.

Full house… Straight… Four of a kind…

Given the right combination of cards, each of those hands is beatable.

Just as beatable as certain ideas are beatable.

So for example, I once read (in Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick) that during WWII in the US, there were widespread race-baiting rumors that were hurting the war effort.

Some of these rumors said American Jews were profiteering from the national war effort.

Other rumors claimed that black soldiers were stockpiling weapons in advance of massive race riots.

Still other rumors claimed that Japanese Americans being held in internment camps were living high and consuming meat, sugar, and other restricted items.

Trouble is, these kinds of rumors were eating away at the national effort to actually go to Europe and fight in the war.

So how would you combat those rumors?

Well, here’s how you don’t do it:

You don’t try to argue…

You don’t present the facts…

And you don’t harp on about “reality” and “truth” back of it all.

Instead, you come up with a better rumor, and you start spreading that yourself.

So, during WWII, the government agencies in charge of rumor control started publishing posters which depicted Nazi agents going around the country and spreading misinformation about racial minorities.

The campaign was successful. America got united enough to fight in the war. And we now remember that time as a unique moment of righteousness in world history.

Anyways, point being, if you want to fight sticky ideas, come up with more sticky ideas.

Of course, sometimes that’s not possible.

Sometimes you come across a royal flush.

As you’ve probably heard, billionaire pedo Jeffrey Epstein was successfully suicided in his prison cell yesterday.

Epstein was supposed to have info on the sexual perversions of all the powerful people in the world, including Trump, Clinton, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and maybe even Jonah Hill.

This information was too explosive…

The people involved too influential…

And now, Epstein is dead.

How predictable. We will never know the truth. At least that’s the current feeling, even in the mainstream, in spite of the best efforts of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to dismiss this as “rampant conspiracy theories.”

Whatever you think actually happened to Epstein, I think you will have to agree with me:

“Billionaire pedophile murdered because of his secrets” is the kind of story that is an absolute royal flush in terms of stickiness.

No other rumor, including that Jeffrey Epstein was actually a female lizard alien funded by the Illuminati so they can make America a new Islamic state, can dislodge this in the public mind right now.

And that’s why the development of this story is worth watching.

Assuming, of course, that idea spreading is the kind of thing that gets you turned on.

Which it certainly does for me.

And so, if you need help spreading some ideas, which I hope are more positive and less explosive than the whole Epstein drama, then consider the following, non-mainstream guide:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

When freelancer copywriters should lower their rates

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I saw a question a few days ago from a freelancer who NEEDS some money coming in.

Trouble is, she’s thinking of applying for a job, but the client’s budget for this job is less than the freelancer’s normal hourly rate.

(This whole story is happening on Upwork, but I think it applies just as well even if you’re dealing with clients in any other situation.)

And so the freelancer is wondering whether she should apply for the job at her preferred rate…

Or whether she should drop her rate and apply so she’s within the client’s budget.

In the first case, she might not be considered for the job.

In the second case, she might be selling herself short.

So what to do?

Personally, I would take the great white shark approach.

I read somewhere that most shark bites come down to curiosity.

Sharks don’t have hands or any other good way of interacting with random objects they come across in the sea.

Their only real way to figure out what that floating thing is, is to take a bite.

If it’s not according to the shark’s taste, the shark will simply spit it out and move on.

But if it fits the shark’s current appetite, the shark will go to town.

And so with lowering your freelance rates.

My advice is to stick your rates, even when applying for a job that clearly has a lower budget.

Depending on the client, you might get the job, even at your higher asking price.

Or maybe you won’t. Maybe the client will say, “Boy you’re great! And we would love to hire you, but you’re just out of our budget.”

At that point, you can decide, based on your own principles, whether this makes sense for you or not.

Do you want to spit this client out?

Or does it make sense to bite into this job — because you really need the money, or you want the experience, or you want that client relationship?

If you do, then, then go to town, just like a great white shark that’s found a tasty seal.

But don’t just jump in and start making compromises right up front because a client put an arbitrary number as their preferred budget.

That’s my public service announcement for freelance copywriters for the day. In case you have more questions about the business of copy, you might be able to find some answers here:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

How to get really rich in sales and marketing

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I was sitting at the beach yesterday, eating my empanada and trying to mind my own business, when I saw an Indian guy selling beach blankets.

He was talking to a group of women who were interested but not yet decided on buying.

He sweet talked them a little bit.

He answered some questions.

He applied a bit of pressure at the right moments.

Eventually, he convinced them to buy.

He was about to close the sale when the women decided that they wanted another pattern of beach blanket after all.

The guy hung his head.

“No problem,” he seemed to say. And he jogged across the beach for a few hundred yards to get the other pattern from his stash.

He jogged back, handed over the correct blanket, and finally closed the sale.

While I was watching this, all I could think is how much work and skill it had taken for this guy to close this one sale, which probably netted him a profit of a dollar or two.

And it’s just about the same level of work and skill that it would take for a million-dollar deal.

Well, I don’t know about million dollars, but definitely he could be making much more money if he were just selling something else.

And this reminded me of something I’d heard from Craig Clemens.

Craig started out as a direct response copywriter.

He was successful writing in the relationships and dating niche for Eben Pagan (aka David DeAngelo).

Even though Eben and Craig’s dating stuff grew big — around $20 million a year — Craig realized he could be making much more money if he were just in a different market.

So he partnered up with his brothers, and they started Golden Hippo, one of the biggest direct response supplement businesses out there today.

I’m not sure how much Golden Hippo is worth. But I imagine their yearly revenues are in the high hundreds of millions of dollars.

If I see the beach blanket seller again today, I’ll tell him about Craig Clemens and why choosing your market well is key to getting really rich in marketing or sales. And maybe that’s a pointer that you too can benefit from.

On another topic:

If you are looking for advertorials or pre-sell pages that can help you sell supplements or even physical products (perhaps even beach towels), then you might be interested in my upcoming guide on how to write these suckers in ways that convert on cold Facebook traffic:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/