Copywriting

Would you bet on it?

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A few weeks back, I was talking to a successful copywriter, and he mentioned a stupid job he had just finished.

The client was a moron, the product a disaster, and there was little to no hope any of it would sell.

But the copywriter got paid well to write the sales letter. And he did it, and since he’s a good copywriter, he did a good job with the copy. Then he got his money and he moved on.

I used to have that same attitude.

But I don’t any more. Because I found in time that working on hopeless projects is not good long-term policy — not emotionally, not financially, not careerly.

Today, I’d like to give you a different perspective.

These days, when a new opportunity comes my way, I ask myself, “Would I do this if I were getting paid on commission only? Would I bet on it?”

It doesn’t mean that I actually only do stuff on commission. That’s often not practical, and it’s sometimes not even desirable, for me or for the other party.

But if I wouldn’t accept this opportunity if I were getting paid only based on results, if I’m not confident enough that it will be a success that I would bet on it myself, then I don’t do it at all.

I’ve applied this to client work… I’ve applied it to coaching that I’ve been doing over the past year… I will start to apply it to courses and trainings I’m thinking of creating.

Again, it doesn’t mean offering courses for free and hoping to somehow get paid later.

But it’s a valuable thought experiment. If I could somehow track what extra money this imagined course would bring in my students’ lives… and if I knew I could get, say 5% or 10% of that extra money… would that pay me enough?

Often, the answer is no. Even if I could make a super-thorough and valuable course.

Because if that course only attracts people who will never go through it… or who will go through it but never implement it… or who will implement it but who are not in a position to ever profit from it… then the total extra value created out of all of that is a big beefy zero. And 10% of zero is zero.

On the other hand, sometimes I would bet on it.

And if there’s one of my existing courses that I would bet on, that I would sell for only a percentage of future results, if such a thing were feasible, it’s Copy Riddles.

I’d bet on Copy Riddles because some of the previous people who have gone through this training have written in to tell me the results they ascribe to this course.

Some of those results are private because those people asked me not to share them. But some are public, and you can find them on the final page of the Copy Riddles sales letter. If you’d like to see that:

https://bejakovic.com/cr-3/

Remember, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more

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A few days ago, I got a question from a reader:

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Hi John,

What are the differences between “most valuable email” and simple money emails”? Thanks!

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Now get ready for the big bland takeaway from this email, which will probably be as familiar to you as the taxes you have to pay:

Facts and figures rarely persuade, and often they don’t even inform.

For example, I could have replied to my reader’s question above by telling him the facts and figures of my two courses — the prices, the main promises, the intended audiences.

But that stuff is literally in the half page of deck copy on the sales pages for the two courses. This reader knows about those sales pages and clearly doesn’t want to read them, or maybe has even read them, but the facts and figures failed to mean much.

So what to do? Because this is hardly one reader asking about my specific courses. This is how most of us act and think and feel most of the time about most things.

Certainly, if you have customers or prospects, this is how most of them are. They will not read the well-researched facts and figures you send their way, or maybe they will even read, but those facts and figures won’t mean much.

One powerful strategy when facts and figures fail is to stop being so damn linear, logical, and thorough, and to instead make your point in an associative, intuitive, non-linear way.

In other words, instead of facts and figures, give people a metaphor. Let me give you an example:

I recently rewatched the first Matrix movie. To my mind, that movie is the richest source of powerful metaphors that’s come out in pop culture over the past 30 years (and longer, probably going back to the original Star Wars movie). It’s well worth rewatching from time to time so you have it close at hand when writing your marketing material.

But back to my reader’s question and the difference between Simple Money Emails and Most Valuable Email.

My best answer is that Simple Money Emails is like the kung fu, the use of semiautomatic weapons, the piloting of the fighter helicopter that Neo and Trinity and Morpheus can own in an instant with the push of a button thanks to their loading program.

These are powerful and practical skills, which look incredibly cool to the uninitiated, but which ultimately anybody can do and profit from very quickly — in the Matrix, to fight and destroy; with Simple Money Emails, to write quick and easy messages that make money and keep readers reading.

On the other hand, Most Valuable Email is like the little bald-headed monk-child at the Oracle’s house in the Matrix, the one who tells Neo that there is no spoon.

Really, at the core of MVE is a similarly simple but profound idea.

It’s not an idea that is meant for everyone, but only for a small group of pre-selected people.

However, if you can accept this idea and make it your own, you can start to bend reality — including both your readers’ reality, and your own.

This makes it so you ultimately don’t need to rely on the email copywriting equivalents of kung fu or semiautomatic weapons or even fighter helicopters, because the ultimate results happen simply via “inner work” of a sort, by just absorbing and repeating the mantra that there is no spoon.

Now, if you are interested in either of these two courses, I bet you still have questions even after this metaphor. But I imagine you might have a better sense which of the two courses is really right for you.

If you’re looking for practical, result-oriented, quickly acquired skills, then it will be Simple Money Emails.

If you’re looking for mastery and a long-term practice that will take you to places you cannot imagine yet, then it will be Most Valuable Email.

You can get your remaining questions answered on the sales pages for the two courses. In the slightly pompous words of Morpheus:
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“I can only show you the door. You’re the one who has to walk through it.”

Dating and business advice to a needy blackbird

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A few days ago, I was minding my own business, washing the dishes. The weather was warm so I opened the window.

Just as I was in the middle of scrubbing the salad bowl, a little blackbird landed on my windowsill.

“CHEEP,” said the blackbird.

“Oh hello there,” I said. “How do you do?”

The blackbird paced for a moment and then sat down on the windowsill. He seemed to be getting comfortable, which made me frown and pause my dishwashing. And then the blackbird spoke:

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Interesting that you ask that. Very interesting.

Something I am really struggling with at the moment is securing a mate.

I can’t get a mate for my familybuilding services. Even when I catch the eye of female blackbirds, they seem to smell my neediness from a mile away even if I don’t reveal it intentionally.

I wanted to ask:

How would you go about getting a mate if:

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… and then the blackbird listed his unique mate-getting situation, which happens to be the same unique situation faced by all single blackbirds, crows, and seagulls, as well as by all individuals, whether human or avine, who are hoping to go from zero to one in any endeavor that involves selling yourself.

I’ve long ago decided that I don’t want to be in the business of taking people or birds from zero to one.

So I just nodded to the blackbird in understanding, picked him up, placed him on the outside window sill, and closed the window shut.

That said, I do have one piece of advice.

I’m only sharing it because it applies to anybody who is looking to do anything new and frightening, whether they are beginners or much more advanced.

It applies to newbie copywriters looking for their first client… to experienced copywriters looking to send their first email to their own list… to business owners looking to go into a drastically more upscale market and charge 2x or 3x or 10x of what they are charging now.

It also applies to securing a mate. In fact, this piece of advice is something I heard from the infamous pick-up coach Owen Cook, aka RSD Tyler, the villain in Neil Strauss’s book The Game.

Owen was talking about the horrifying prospect of flying up to an attractive and unfamiliar female blackbird, in the middle of a park with lots of other blackbirds around, and striking up a fun and natural interaction.

Perfectly easy if you have total belief in yourself and your worth.

Perfectly impossible if you are overwhelmed by fear and self-doubt.

So here’s Owen’s observation:

“The halfway point between fear and total belief is indifference.”

You can’t go from fear and neediness to total belief and confidence.

But you can go from fear and neediness to indifference.

One way to do it is repeat exposure in a short enough period of time.

Go and cheep at seven attractive and unfamiliar blackbirds today. Each of those interactions might go horribly, though they probably won’t.

But whatever the outcome of the interactions, by the end of the seven, you will realize you are still alive. In fact, you are perfectly fine.

Do this a few days in a row, and those innate survival mechanisms, which underlie both fear and neediness, will begin to get habituated and calm down. You will start to get indifferent. And that’s the halfway point to total belief and confidence.

In other words, if you think you have a neediness problem… what you really got is an activity problem.

That’s all the free advice from Bejako’s windowsill for today.

If you’d like to buy something from me, I can recommend my Simple Money Emails training.

​​No, Simple Money Emails won’t replace the need to actually write and send emails, whether for your own business or for a client business.

But Simple Money Emails can teach you my effective one-two system for writing emails, much like this one, that make sales, keep readers reading, and keep birds chirping. If that’s an outcome you’d like as well:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

13 things mentally strong marketers do

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I will tell you about the 13 things in a second, but let me first set it up with a story:

Yesterday I listened to an interview with Amy Morin, who has created a publishing empire starting with her 2014 book 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do.

​​Morin has since written 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Do… Strong Women Don’t Do… Strong Couples Don’t Do… you get idea.

She has sold hundreds of thousands or millions of copies of her books.

And yet, she said that she never hit bestseller status in the first week after publication.

In fact, the original 13 Things book took a whole year to reach bestseller status.

How did it happen?

A year after Morin published 13 Things, Rush Limbaugh mentioned it on his radio show.

​​”Today I will talk about 13 things mentally strong people don’t do,” Limbaugh said.

But he never got around to it.

That was Monday.

(Are you starting to guess the 13 things that mentally strong marketers do???)

The next day, Limbaugh mentioned 13 Things again. “Yesterday I didn’t manage to get to it, but today I will talk about 13 things mentally strong people don’t do.”

Again the show ran long, and again Rush didn’t talk about Morin’s book or the 13 things inside it.

This went on for the whole week. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday…

(By the way, we are getting really close to the 13 things that mentally strong marketers do. Bear with me.)

Finally, on Friday, Rush managed to list Morin’s list of 13 things mentally strong people don’t do.

​​But by then, bookstores had already sold out of all copies, and 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do had become a bestseller for the first time.

Point being… should I tell you?

​​Well, I might as well, instead of saving it for another email. The 13 Things Mentally Strong Marketers Do are:

1. Tease

​1. Tease

​3. Oh, I don’t know, tease?

​4. How about teasing for a change?

​5. Tease

​6. Tease

​7. Yep, still teasing

​8. I think you now know where it’s going, and that’s teasing

​9. I’ll give you a hint — it’s not giving away the secret. It’s kind of the opposite of that. Can you guess what it is?

​10. Tease

​11. Just in case it’s not clear: Tease

​12. Tease

​13. And tease some more!

It’s not easy to tease to its fullest effect. You might get queasy along the way. You might get bored. You might give in to angry readers who tell you to stop teasing already and tell them the secret or sell them the product already.

That’s why it takes a mentally strong marketer to tease to its full power.

And now that I’ve told you that, let me quickly mention I will rerelease my Insight Exposed training, all about my unique and supremely valuable journaling and notetaking system, some time in January.

For today, all I can offer you is my Most Valuable Email.

I released that training some 15 months ago.

I’ve been teasing it mercilessly ever since in these emails.

I always think I’ve gone too far, revealed too much, or tapped out reader curiosity.

And yet people continue to buy. So I will continue to tease Most Valuable Email and what the Most Valuable Email trick might be. In case you want to scratch the itch and find out:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

More thin content inside

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When my masochistic urges become too strong I like to go into ActiveCampaign and read the “reasons why” left behind by people who unsubscribed from my list.

There’s usually nothing good. Unsubscribers either leave the “reason why” blank or they select the uninspired “I don’t want to receive these emails any more.”

But every few months, I come upon a thoughtful and good “reason why” that I can write a daily email around.

It’s been a long time since the last one, but I finally got a new one a few days ago.

This past Saturday, I opened up the ActiveCampaign Pandora’s box, peeked inside, and saw a custom-made “reason why” from an unsubscriber peeking back at me. It just said:

“Thin content”

The irony is that the email this reader unsubscribed from was less thin than usual.

In that Saturday email, I fleshed out the idea that you are not in the business you think you might be in… I gave specific signposts for creating a business that charges drastically more and that people still eagerly buy from… and I included a personal story (featuring a multimillionaire A-list copywriter) to make the whole thing more memorable and easier to go down.

The fact is, I would write thinner emails than this every day, if I only had more time.

Because over the course of working with dozens of clients as an email copywriter, writing 1800+ sales emails over the past 8 years, and contributing my persuasive share to funnels that brought in uncountable millions of dollars in sales, I have found that you don’t want to make your content very thick at all — if thick means burdened with specific how-to information and step-by-step teaching.

Such thick content does little for your reader except make him feel glutted.

And it does nothing for you — if you happen to sell services or info products — other than producing an occasional “thank you” note from people who will never give you money anyhow.

So what to do instead? How do you write emails that make money?

Well, I could tell you right here. But in the interest of making this email thin, fluffy, and profitable, I won’t. Because the fact is, I’ve created an entire training about what goes into emails that sell and make money.

I’ve told you that how-to teaching is not it.

But if you want to see what is it, you can find it via the page below:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

3 most not-boring emails I wrote this year

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A few days ago, I sent out an email with the subject line, “A primer on worldbuilding.” I got a reply to that email from Howard Shaw of Chester Toys, a UK toy wholesaler that’s been in business for 60 years. Howard wrote:

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Don’t ask me why, but I just felt like replying….

‘​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​John Bejakovic ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​- never a boring email.

I always learn something or receive a nugget to ponder on.’

Anyways, all the best for the festive season and may 2024 be good to you.

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I followed up with Howard to ask if I could use his comment in an email. ​​He said he would be offended if I didn’t. So here we are.

“Yah great for you and Howard,” I hear you saying. “Quite the love-in. But what about me? Where’s your ‘not boring’ email now? I don’t see anything particularly interesting or valuable so far today.”

True. It’s hard to write something not-boring every day.

​​I know, because I just spent the past one-and-a-half hours going through the 360+ emails I’ve written since the start of this year.

Most of my past 360+ emails I just scrolled through. I vaguely remembered writing them. They did their purpose at the time. But I certainly didn’t need to reread them.

However, some emails I did reread.

A few of those made me chuckle.

And a very few made me stop and think.

The emails that made me stop and think weren’t the ones that got the most replies and praise from readers.

​​They weren’t even the ones that made the most sales.

But looking back from today, at the end of the year, these top emails were somehow most interesting to me, as ideas that I should remember or practice, or because they sparked a change in how I how do marketing or how I write.

Over the course of the entire past year, I noted down 14 such top emails.

I then narrowed them down even more to the most not-boring 3, using myself as a sounding board.

In case you are looking for some not-boring emails, you can find them below. Don’t read any of them. Or read just one. Or read all three if you have got the time and stamina.

And like Howard says, all the best for the festive season to you.

How to become in-demand in your niche even if you have no contacts, portfolio, or good sense

Why the bathroom is a great place to negotiate

10 lessons from the ClientRaker promo

The folly of “show don’t tell”

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I wrote yesterday about worldbuilding. Well, here’s an anecdote that built a world:

Some time in the 1960s, artist Norman Daly created a tall and narrow sculpture. Daly taught at Cornell University, and so he placed his sculpture, without any fanfare, in a faculty dining room.

Daly expected his tall and narrow sculpture would spark commentary. Provoke emotions. Engage viewers.

But the sculpture didn’t spark any commentary or provoke any emotions. As for engagement, it did prove to be mildly engaging:

Faculty members interpreted it as a hat rack and treated it as such. Hats hung, they didn’t give Daly’s sculpture another look.

It was then that Daly realized he has to create a whole lot of supporting documentation to make sure his art is interpreted as art.

Point being:​​

It’s popular to say, “Show, don’t tell.” But that’s profoundly foolish.

You have to tell ’em, and tell ’em again, and tell ’em still some more. At least if you are after a given outcome — provocation, status, sales — and if you’re not okay with spending time and effort to create something that can then be dismissed as a hat rack.

I said the story above built a world. And I ain’t foolin’.

The story above was one of a few formative experiences that led Daly to create a whole new, made-up, Iron-Age civilization, including physical objects, works of visual art, music, as well as volumes of scholarship, commentary, maps, and even art catalogues for the whole thing.

Daly exhibited all this in art museums. People came, flipped through the art catalogue, nodded at the curious artifacts, and walked away feeling enlightened about a milennia-old civilization that never existed.

If you want to find out more about Daly’s project, you can do so at the link below.

It can interesting on its own merits.

It can prove useful if you are after crafting your own worlds.

And if you read just the section describing the other formative experience that led Daly to do create all this, it might be valuable if you yourself write or create content.

In case you’re interested, here’s the link:

https://theconversation.com/50-years-ago-an-artist-convincingly-exhibited-a-fake-iron-age-civilization-with-invented-maps-music-and-artifacts-189026

Valuable positioning idea inside

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For the past year, I have been writing a second newsletter, one about health. About ten days ago, on a whim, I changed the name of it.

I’m still not publicly sharing either the old or the new name of my health newsletter, because the CIA asked me not to.

But I want to tell you something curious that’s happened following the name change.

So let’s pretend my old newsletter was named Morning Brew, which it was not. But Morning Brew is a big and popular email newsletter that covers the day’s business news, so you might know it.

My health newsletter’s old name was something like Morning Brew. Cute, possibly clever, with a brandable tinge to it.

But ten days ago, I decided to kill the cuteness, cut the possible cleverness, and go for clarity instead of branding.

As a result, my health newsletter is now called something like, Daily Business Newsletter. Again, that’s not the actual name, but it should give you an idea.

Now here’s the curious thing that happened:

As soon as I made that switch, I started getting organic traffic from Google. Finally — the first organic traffic I got after about 11 months of regular posting of content to my website.

And apparently, it’s high-quality traffic, because these Google-sent visitors are opting in to the newsletter at a clip of about 10-15 per day, double-opting in, and will hopefully be reading and buying in the future.

To be fair, this might be absolute coincidence.

Or, if it’s not coincidence, it might be something that’s not repeatable for anyone else, or even for me.

Or, maybe there’s something there. Maybe it’s an illustration of a valuable positioning idea I read once:

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For many people or products today, one roadway to success is to look at what your competitors are doing and then subtract the poetry or creativity which has become a barrier to getting the message into the mind. With a purified and simplified message, you can then penetrate the prospect’s mind.

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That idea comes from of the best marketing books I’ve ever read. It’s one of the best as long as you read it carefully and slowly, rather than skimming through it to “get the gist.”

And no, it’s not the same book I recommended yesterday, and it’s not written by Dan Kennedy.

If you think you know what this book is, or you want to know, you can find it revealed at the other end of this link:

https://bejakovic.com/lost

How to take trivial, possibly made up facts and turn them into influential emails

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“So what did you learn today?”

My ex (still living together) was sitting on the couch, arms crossed, looking at me sternly.

“Err…” I said, my eyes darting around as I tried to remember some new fact. “Today I learned that… supposedly you’ll be twice as productive if you block off your time for specific tasks.”

Background:

Last week, I was listening to an interview with Codie Sanchez. Codie is a newsletter operator and boring business investor. But at this point in the interview, Codie was not talking about either of those topics.

Rather, she was talking about how she makes her marriage work.

One of Codie’s tricks is that, each day, she and her husband share one thing that they’ve learned that day.

I mentioned this to my ex (still living together). She liked the idea so much that now she grills me at unexpected times about what I’ve learned during the day. I then have to think up something in a panic.

Yesterday, when she asked me this, I had been watching a video by Cal Newport of Deep Work fame. Newport now sells a notebook for planning your workday and blocking off time for various tasks.

​​Newport says — and he’s an authority so why question him — that if you block off your time for specific work tasks, you’ll be twice as productive.

I told my ex this. She again liked the idea. And it developed into a conversation about day planners and productivity and places in Barcelona to go shopping for notebooks.

Here’s the point of all this:

That thing about [time blocking = 2x productivity] is a small, trivial bit of information. I’m not even sure if it’s true. But it was enough of a kernel to start a natural and free-flowing conversation there on the couch. I guess that’s why Codie Sanchez recommends the practice.

It’s not just marriages or exes that this works with.

If you’re ever struggling for daily email ideas, then just ask yourself, “What did I learn today?” ​​Pick something small, concrete, even trivial. Then secrete a bit of personal context or opinion around that, like an oyster around a grain of sand, and within a few minutes, you’ll have something that your audience will enjoy reading and might even get value from.

That’s kind of a micro class in influential email writing.

For the macro version, you’ll have to get my Influential Emails training, which I’ll make available later this week, starting Thursday.

​​You’ll have to be on my email list to have a chance to get Influential Emails. If you’d like to learn something new on Thursday, click here to get on my list.

Advanced email copywriting tricks for sale soon

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This week I’m promoting my Influential Emails training. This training is something I’ve made available only once before, live, back in 2021, the Year of the Ox.

But starting next Thursday, and lasting at most until next Sunday, I will make Influential Emails available once again.

Over the y​​ears, by keeping track of when and why I’ve bought from other people’s via email, I discovered it makes good sense to send out regular emails telling your audience what exactly it is you are selling, without any frills, funniness, or flippancy.

​​So here’s whats inside Influential Emails:

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1. The recordings of the three Influential Emails live calls, which all lasted around 2 hours.

2. Edited transcripts of all the calls, in case would rather read than listen to me talk.

3. Call 1 covers 5+ of my advanced email copywriting tricks, including the “Five Fingers” storytelling strategy, S. Morgenstern transitions, and the “Sophisticated Slapstick” structure that makes trivial or even silly things sound funny or profound.

4. Call 2 breaks down four emails I wrote to this list, shows you how I wrote them from snout to tail, and highlights the techniques from Call 1 in action. This second call also includes a lighting-round training, 15 Unique Things I Do To come Up With Ideas and Create Content.

5. Call 3 includes brutal and merciless copy critiques of a dozen emails I got from attendees of the original Influential Emails training. You see what I thought was good in these emails, and more importantly, what I would change to make each email more effective for 1) making sales and 2) being more influential/interesting/memorable.

6. There are also two bonuses. The first is “Mystery Screenwriting Insights For Copywriters.” The core of this is a special, never-produced screenplay from my favorite screenwriter, William Goldman, overlaid with my analysis of the writing tricks Goldman used, and how copywriters can apply the same.

7. The second bonus is “My 12/4 Most Influential Emails.” This is a micro swipe file, including 12 of my most influential emails, along with the background of why and how each email ended up influential. Plus, I’ll give you the four more emails, written by mysterious others, which had the biggest influence on me.

Over the coming days, I will have more to say about Influential Emails, specifically who it’s possibly for and who it’s definitely not for.

If you do decide you want to get Influential Emails, you will have to get on the waiting list. And in order to get on the waiting list, you will first have to get on the list to get my daily emails. Click here to do so now.