Structure Of Copy and Content

Don’t rape your audience

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Today’s post is on the subject of email marketing, a rather milquetoast topic. The hook, though, is jarring — rape.

I didn’t think of that hook. Instead, it comes from William Goldman, somebody I’ve mentioned often in these emails.

Goldman was first a successful novelist and later a successful Hollywood screenwriter and then again a novelist.

Along the way, he also wrote a non-fiction book called Adventures in the Screen Trade. I read it a couple years ago. It’s a combination of memoir and an insider’s look into Hollywood as it was in the 60s and 70s of the last century.

Somewhere in the Adventures book, Goldman talks about the most important part of a screenplay — the beginning. And it’s here that he writes the following:

“In narrative writing of any sort, you must eventually seduce your audience. But seduce doesn’t mean rape.”

Goldman is contrasting movie writing to TV writing. At the beginning of a movie, Goldman says, you have some time. You can seduce. Things are different in TV land — you gotta be aggressive, right in the first few seconds. Otherwise the viewer will simply change the channel.

I had never thought about this difference. But it makes sense. And it makes me think of…

Sales copy, which is definitely on the TV end of the seduction/rape spectrum. Just think of some famous opening lines of blockbuster VSLs:

“Talk dirty to me”

“We’re going to have to amputate your leg”

What about email copy? Much of it also opens up in the same aggressive way. Here are a few opening lines I just dug up from recent sales emails in my inbox:

“MaryAnne couldn’t take it anymore:”

“In 1981, a dirty magazine published an article that had the potential to make its readers filthy rich.”

I always assumed this is just the way good copy is — VSLs or emails or whatever. Of course, that’s not true.

When I actually look at some of my favorite newsletters (and even some successful sales letters), they don’t have an immediate and aggressive grabber. Instead, they build up and work their way into their point — without rambling, but without aggression either.

The difference comes down to the relationship you have with your list. Some businesses, including some businesses I’ve worked for, have little to no relationship with their list. Each email they send out is like a random infomercial popping up on TV — if it doesn’t capture attention right away, it never will.

But some businesses have a great relationship with their list. They can afford to take the time to light the candles and pour the wine and stare seductively at their reader across the table. In fact, if they didn’t, things would seem off.

Is it possible to go from one style of email marketing to the other?

I believe so. In my experience, people tend to mirror your own emotions and behavior. That means you’ll have to take the first step if you want things to change. Rather than waiting for your list to have a better relationship with you… start seducing, and stop trying to rape.

Now that we’ve warmed up the conversation:

I also have a daily email newsletter. You can subscribe for it here. And if you do subscribe, I promise to… well, I won’t go there.

The time I forgot how to write emails

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And finally:

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

The structure behind every story ever told

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

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

It turns out no.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About my failure to write the story of Tom Torero

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I was tearing my hair out and gnashing my teeth and shaking my fists at the sky.

​​Ok, maybe it wasn’t that dramatic but things were really bad. I spent a long time trying to come up with an example to illustrate the “Icarus” story template — and I still had nothing.

And then I had this brilliant idea. I would write about pickup artist Tom Torero.

​​Tom went from a shy, nerdy, anxiety-ridden Oxford student… to a professional pickup artist, living a life of confidence, adventure, and freedom… to finally being doxxed, deplatformed, and driven to suicide this past December.

​​Pretty Icarusy, right?

But here’s the thing. Maybe you notice I am sending this email out later than usual.

​​That’s because I spent an unholy amount of time trying to tell Tom’s story. But I couldn’t do it right, not without running into pages of text, completely obscuring the Icarus structure I was supposed to be illustrating.

​​After hours of fruitless work, crushed and defeated, I raised my fist up at the sky one last time, shook it weakly, and then gave up. All I can do now is report on my failure to write today’s email.

So remember there is such a thing as a canonical Icarus storyline. It can be represented graphically by /\.

And also, remember to be mindful of what details you include in your stories.

There are details — like the oversized brown corduroy pants that Tom used to wear, which emphasized his girlish hips and his narrow shoulders — that can give your story sticking power.

But there also details — like the many too many details I couldn’t keep myself from including today — that just sidetrack your story.

So learn from my mistake. Be conscious and continent with your detail sharing. Your stories will be more impactful for it — and you will be done writing much sooner.

If you want more advice on storytelling, including about the most powerful story template to use in online selling, you will want to read my email tomorrow. You can sign up to get it here.

I shuddered when I got the email from the Motley Fool… but when the Kindle sales started rolling in!—

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In May 2014, I quit my secure, full-time IT office job and I started spending my mornings writing stock analysis articles for the Motley Fool.

It was great. I was working from home. I was working for myself and doing work I didn’t dislike. I could organize my own schedule, my rates were quickly increasing, and the future was looking bright.

Then in July 2014, just a couple months after my new barefoot writer lifestyle had begun, I got the following email from the managing editor at the Motley Fool:

it is disheartening for us to say that effective today, we will not be able to continue our writing relationship and further this mission together.

This is no fault of your own; it is the simple result of our business model and the corresponding structure we’ve built. It has been our pleasure to work with you, and we hope you consider yourself a Fool for life. We certainly do.

“Well, shit,” I said to myself. “Fool for life, indeed.”

I wrote to the MF editor I had been in touch with. I asked if there was any chance I might be kept on — while hundreds of other writers were being let go. I never heard back.

I wrote to my friend, who was also writing for the MF and who got me this gig. “It sucks,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s not looking good.”

So there I was. I had no job, and I needed money. I had rent to pay, food to buy, plus I had a cat at the time, and maintaining those things in life is not exactly free.

What to do?

Getting an office job again was inconceivable. For one thing, I wasn’t sure anyone would hire me — certainly not the people at my old job. For another, it was just a matter of pride, plus the fact I had always been a bad match for office work.

I looked at my arm, and briefly considered sawing it off. But I soon realized that’s another story, although with the same structure. In any case, losing the arm wouldn’t help.

So I took a deep breath. I gritted my teeth. And I did what I always do:

I made a list of ideas. In this case the list was titled, “10 ways I could make money by the end of this month.”

#6 on that list, between #5 (stealing) and #7 (begging) was “Write and publish some Kindle books.” And that was my start as a Kindle publishing magnate.

I’ve written about this history before. But the gist of it is:

That first month, I wrote three short Kindle ebooks, on three related niche topics. The total word count was around 15,000, and 10,000 of that was reused among the three ebooks.

I sold $285 worth of books in that first month.

The next month, I wrote 3 new tiny books. And then some more. Within a few months, I had a stable of a dozen titles, and I was making a steady income that was getting close to what i was making at my IT job just a few months earlier.

Ta-da! Who needs the Motley Fool? Who needs a stupid office job?

​​I had a found a way to survive and even thrive, working for myself, on my own terms, with “up” as the only direction to go.

​​The end. Well, almost.

Yesterday, I told you about the riches-to-rags story type, which can be represented by \. The day before that, I told you about rags-to-riches, represented by /.

Combine those two, and you get \/ aka the “man in a hole” story type.

“Man in a hole” is a common format for complete stories — like that of Aron Ralston, who sawed off his own arm to survive after being pinned down by a boulder.

“Man in a hole” is an even more common plot element of bigger stories — think James Bond losing $14.5 million in a poker game in Montenegro, because he’s been suckered by the fake tell of the main villain.

Which brings up the following storywriting rule:

It matters where you cut you your story off.

For example, after those first few glorious months, my Kindle sales cratered. It turns out I wasn’t going to make a living selling $2.99 ebooks. So I got into writing sales copy for other business… then a few years later, I got back into Kindle publishing but with a different approach… then I met this guy who told me about crypto and we went to London for a conference…

You know what that’s called? That’s called rambling. It’s definitely not called storytelling.

Human brains want neatly tied-up episodes, and they want the satisfaction of having story elements fit and click.

One powerful mechanism you have to make things fit and click is the stop button. So think of the effect you want to have, and use that to decide where to cut your story off. Speaking of which—

Sign up to my email newsletter. That’s been the point of this entire email. To show you I have something interesting to say about writing and persuasion more broadly, and that I can even be entertaining about it. Are you convinced? If you are, here’s where to go.

Boris and the world’s saddest lamp

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Boris raised the famous golden trophy over his head, and the crowd erupted in cheers and applause.

​​They had never seen anything like this before.

Boris had become the youngest man ever to win the most prestigious tournament in tennis, Wimbledon.

For 17-year-old Boris, the acclaim was nice. The $169,000 prize winnings — equivalent to $446,000 in today’s money — didn’t hurt either.

Throughout the rest of his tennis career, Boris Becker won 48 more tournaments, including 2 more Wimbledon titles.

​​When he retired from tennis, in 1999, his entire career winnings totaled over $25 million. Combined with various endorsements and sinecures, his total earnings came to over $50 million.

But it’s not hard to squander a fortune. And over the years, Becker has worked hard to squander his.

Luxury apartments around the world… expensive divorces… a child begotten in the broom closet of a Nobu in London… by the mid 2010s, Becker’s resources were strained. And his debts were mounting.

Finally, it became too much. In 2017, Boris Becker filed for bankruptcy.

The tennis world, and the world at large, shrugged. It’s hardly a new story — a talented star makes millions in his youth, then squanders it all in middle age. Besides, bankruptcy is not the end of the world. People routinely recover from it.

But then just this past week, things got a lot worse for Becker.

It turns out he has been under criminal investigation for failing to report some of his assets during the bankruptcy hearings.

So now, not only will those assets be seized, but there’s a very real possibility that on Apr 29, Becker will be sentenced to jail time for his bankruptcy jiggery-pokery.

​​He might have to spend the next 7 years in prison… pushing the library cart around, fighting off advances in the shower, and trying to get used to the gruel — no Nobu behind bars!

Yesterday, I told you about the first canonical story type, rags-to-riches, which can be represented by /.

Today is about the second canonical story type, riches-to-rags, \. There are plenty of illustrations of this format. But I had been reading about Becker only a few days ago, and so he popped into mind.

And here’s an extra tip if you are massaging a story, whether riches-to-rags or any other type:

It matters big time where you start your story. Not just for sucking the reader in and getting his attention. But for the total effect.

For example, I could have started today by talking about the struggles Becker experienced only weeks before his first Wimbledon. Or I could have talked about the sacrifices he made as a kid.

Those might be valid places to start — if I were after a different effect.

​​But if the point of my story is to get you depressed and scared about losing everything you’ve got — after all, if it can happen to somebody as talented and blessed as Becker, why not you — then the best place to start is the highest, most pure moment of his career and life.

“Yeah about that,” I hear you saying, “this riches-to-rags structure is kind of depressing. It’s also kind of preachy. Who wants to read this kind of thing? I feel like you’ll just turn people off.”

Fair concern. But the fact is, some of the most influential and powerful stories in human history basically follow this basic riches-to-rags structure.

Adam and Eve had it really good in the Garden of Eden and then—

King Lear had three fair daughters who loved him and then—

And an Ikea lamp had a happy home and—

​Well, maybe you don’t know the most famous Ikea commercial ever.

​​It was directed by Spike Jonze. And people still talk about it today, 20 years after it came out.

​​You can find it below. And if you watch it, you will find a second crucial thing you need to do to make your riches-to-rags story work well.

​​In fact, it’s something I screwed up with my story of Boris Becker above.

​​It’s too late for me and my story in this email. But it’s not too late for you. Watch below and learn. Oh, and sign up for my email newsletter — I will write more about story types tomorrow.

/

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Today I’d like to tell you the story of a boy who became known as Thee-Thee.

When Thee-Thee was just ten years old, his father died. The family wasn’t rich before, but now they were poor. Thee-Thee had to go to work — every day, before and after school, weekends too — to help support himself and the rest of his family.

Thee-Thee kept working. And he kept studying. He finished high school and even some college.

But his first job out of college paid so poorly that Thee-Thee couldn’t afford a meal every night. His budget could just support the room he was renting, occasional laundry service for his two shirts, and dinners only five nights a week. The other two nights he had to go to bed hungry.

But Thee-Thee didn’t stop, and he didn’t quit. He kept working hard and being honest. He made his employers more and more money. And as a result, he himself progressed, further and further.

Thee-Thee started getting paid higher wages. Then he got commissions on the money he was earning his employers. Then he was given shares of businesses he helped grow.

In time, Thee-Thee became rich. He bought an ocean-going yacht. He lived in a palatial house surrounded by flower gardens admired across the state. He died a multimillionaire, back when that was the equivalent of what today is a billionaire.

You might recognize who I’m talking about. It’s a famous marketer and copywriter. Perhaps the most famous and influential of them all:

Claude C. Hopkins.

(Thee-Thee? Hopkins had a lisp. When he introduced himself — C.C. — it came out as Thee-Thee. This became his nickname around the Lord & Thomas offices — behind his back of course.)

I’m telling you the story of Thee-Thee Hopkins for two reasons:

First, because it shows what you can earn — “at a typewriter which you operate yourself, without a clerk or secretary, and much of it earned in the woods” — if you get really dedicated to this marketing and copywriting thing.

The second reason is that Hopkins’s life is a perfect illustration of a rags-to-riches story.

Back in 1995, scientists from the University of Vermont looked at 1,700 popular stories, spanning all eras. The scientists used some fancy computering to analyze all these stories.

The upshot was they found these 1,700 stories all boiled down to just six fundamental structures.

The first of these can be concisely represented by the character /. It is the rags-to-riches story, which I just told you about.

If you’re curious about the other five fundamental story structures, you can go look them up for yourself. Or you can just sign up to my email newsletter.

Because over the coming five days, I will illustrate each of these five other canonical story types in an email. And will tell you some extra storytelling tricks and ideas that can help you also.

So if, like me, you get off on the hidden structure behind everyday things, my next few emails might be interesting for you. And who knows, they might even be profitable for you. As Thee-Thee Hopkins almost said once:

“Our success depends on pleasing people. By an inexpensive test we can learn if we please them or not. And if some guys from the University of Vermont have already done that testing for us, all the better. We can guide our endeavors accordingly.”

In case you want to read those emails when I send them out, here’s how to get a spot on my newsletter.

Sub-format trumps copy

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The point of today’s email may be very obvious to you. But it wasn’t obvious to me, not for a good many years. And yet it’s very valuable — the numbers don’t lie. See if you agree:

​​I recently wrote about Joe Sugarman’s BluBlockers infomercial. It had a candid camera feel – Joe going up to people on the street, giving them a pair of BluBlockers to try, and recording them as they look around in wonder and say, “Wow, it’s so much sharper! Brighter, too!”

What I didn’t write about recently, but found interesting nonetheless, was a presentation given by top copywriter Evaldo Albuquerque. Evaldo was talking about tips and tricks to make an interview-style VSL a big success.

And then, there was an email I wrote a couple years ago about video ads my clients at the time were running on Facebook. The ads were very successful, and more successful than any other we had tried. They were modeled after BBC science videos — using stock footage, with overlaid subtitles that told an intriguing and dramatic story.

A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos likes to say, “Repeat after me: FORMAT TRUMPS COPY.”

The thing is, it’s easy to be shortsighted about what format means. Text sales letter? VSL? Podcast? Magalog?

The three examples I gave you above – Joe’s candid camera infomercial, interview-style financial VSLs, BBC-style stock footage ads — all three are formally video ads. But each is really a unique sub-format of video ads, which makes all the difference in their final effectiveness.

So repeat after me: Sub-format trumps copy. ​​

This brings me to a cool resource I’d like to share with you. It’s a steady source of analysis of some of the most persuasive, interesting, and influential sub-formats coming out today.

I’ll share this resource in exchange for something you can do for me:

Tell me about a unique format you enjoy.

For example, I’ve written recently about the YouTube channel Soft White Underbelly. It has a unique, consistent format across each episode, which I’ve grown to like.

I’ve also written about the Axios email newsletter about world news. It has another consistent format that I like.

So take a moment. Think about about a source of news, entertainment, education, inspiration — whatever — that you enjoy regularly and that has a strong, consistent format that you’ve grown to rely on and appreciate.

Then get on my newsletter if you’re not already on it. And when you get my welcome email, hit reply and let me know what this thing is, and if you want, tell me in a few words why you like its format.

In exchange, I’ll share with you the cool resource I mentioned above, all about interesting and emerging new formats. This resource might be enlightening and even very profitable for you, if you write or invent new DR advertising.

Knock twice before you open this email

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Welcome. First, let me share the traditional greeting:

“Email is great! Yes it is.”

And now, you and I can get started with today’s content:

A few weeks ago, I was rea​ding a New Yorker article. In that article, I came across an interesting idea that’s stuck with me since. ​​I’ll share it with you in today’s email and then we can wrap up this part of our lives and move on to other things.

The article I read was about how good technology is getting at reading our minds, in a very literal sense.

You can now scan people’s brains and have a good idea of how their brains are lighting up in real time.

Combine this with a lot of data of other people’s brains and a lot of fancy software… and we are nearly at a point where somebody can know exactly what you’re thinking… even if you’re just sitting there, eyes closed, doing nothing but smirking.

Anyways, the idea that stuck with me had to do with “event boundaries.” From the article:

He had the class watch a clip from “Seinfeld” in which George, Susan (an N.B.C. executive he is courting), and Kramer are hanging out with Jerry in his apartment. The phone rings, and Jerry answers: it’s a telemarketer. Jerry hangs up, to cheers from the studio audience.

“Where was the event boundary in the clip?” Norman asked. The students yelled out in chorus, “When the phone rang!” Psychologists have long known that our minds divide experiences into segments; in this case, it was the phone call that caused the division.

In other words, neuroscientists now know something that writers have known for millennia:

Our brain loves to create scenes, snapshots, and scripts as a way of making sense of the immense complexity of the world.

This is so obvious that it might not sound like much of a breakthrough. But it has some interesting consequences. Again from the article:

Walking into a room, you might forget why you came in; this happens, researchers say, because passing through the doorway brings one mental scene to a close and opens another.

But perhaps more interesting is the basic influence idea of exaggerating what people already want and respond to.

​​For example, is it any wonder so many religions have strict rules for entering and leaving a place of worship?

When entering the church, dip your fingers in holy water and make the sign of the cross… do not enter or leave the sanctuary while the ark is open… leave the mosque using your left foot while reciting the dua.

And the point of this sermon is:

People want scenes… clearly marked beginnings and endings… so give it to em. Create doors, entrance rituals, dramatic event boundaries.

You will be helping your audience make sense of both you and of their world. They will thank you for it, with their attention, trust, and perhaps even money.

And that all I wanted to say. Except of course the traditional farewell:

“This email is finished! You can sign up here to get more. Yes you can.”

The plagiarism trick of James the Baptist

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James Altucher is a kind of modern day John the Baptist. He rails against college, owning a house, or paying your dues in any industry.

I first heard about him from entrepreneur and copywriter Mark Ford. Mark cares about good writing and interesting ideas. I guess that’s why he’s friends with James.

James has a colorful life history. He has a talent for making and then losing millions of dollars… he’s neurotic and nerdy… at one point, he lived for a year straight in Airbnbs, and owned only 15 things.

But people follow him. Online. Huge audiences.

James also has a podcast. The world’s elite comes to him to promote their causes. He’s interviewed Tony Robbins… Richard Branson… Robert Cialdini… and hundreds of others among the rich and influential.

James interrupts his guests while they’re speaking. He asks out-of-left-field questions. He makes his guests pause. And then relax. And then answer honestly with real insights.

A while back, James published a brilliant idea. It allows you to avoid agonizing over your writing, and create content that’s guaranteed to light up your readers’ minds.

James’s post gives an example of how he got crazy spikes of online traffic using this idea. He spells out exactly how you can use it too. You can use it to write your own popular online content, winning sales copy, or even a bestselling book.

In short, James just shared a way to stop trotting along on a lame copywriting mule… and to start galloping on a copywriting thoroughbred.

I even used this technique to write this email. It’s been a revelation. And I want to share it with you now:

https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/i-plagiarized