Direct Marketing

My new personal best: 2,030 days

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Yesterday, I got a notification from Gumroad to report on a new sale of Gasper Crepinsek’s ChatGPT Mastery program, which I’ve been promoting for the past few days.

(The deadline for ChatGPT Mastery is tonight, in less than 12 hours, at 12 midnight EST.)

A bit of behind the scenes:

I have an “LTV” spreadsheet, in which I write down every bit of money that comes in via my newsletter, so I can keep track of which of my readers are responsible for my income.

The email address of the person who bought yesterday was familiar to me… but I didn’t know their name.

I searched in Gmail. It turned out this person signed up to my list back in 2019.

(That’s why I remembered the email address. I probably had 5 people on my list total at that time, and I was obsessively checking who opened my email each day.)

Since then, this person (whose name I still don’t know) never replied to any of my emails, and never bought anything that I promoted.

Until now, almost 6 years later.

I previously had a case study — a previous personal best — of 775 days from the time somebody signed up to my list to the first time they bought something I was promoting.

2,030 days definitely beats it, and makes for a new personal best.

I’m telling you this for two reasons.

First reason is a bit of kick, if you still need it, to start or stick with daily emailing. Maybe you haven’t gotten started yet. Or maybe you are now, like I was then, checking your email opens, and finding that, yeah, maybe people read, but they never reply, and they certainly don’t buy nothing.

They will, in time, if you only keep at it.

Second reason is that I shared this new personal best inside my Daily Email House community yesterday. And Maliha Mannan, who writes over at The Side Blogger, and who is also promoting Gasper’s ChatGPT Mastery, wrote:

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Funny coincidence: yesterday I made a sale and the person who bought has been a subscriber since 2021 and never bought anything from me until yesterday 🤘

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Coincidence… or maybe not?

Maybe ChatGPT Mastery is just an exciting offer at the right time, which is attracting even people who have been quiet for a long time?

You can decide for yourself, if you like. (If you don’t, the deadline will decide for you.) To help you do that, here’s my original email, explaining why I’m endorsing and promoting ChatGPT Mastery:

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Today I’d like to recommend to you a 30-day program called ChatGPT Mastery, which is about… mastering ChatGPT, with the goal of having a kind of large and fast horse to ride on.

Here’s a list of exciting facts I’ve prepared for you about this new offer:

#1. ChatGPT Mastery is a cohort course — it kicks off and ends on a specific date — that helps you actually integrate and benefit from AI.

The idea being, things in the AI space are changing so fast that anything that came out even a few months ago is likely to be out of date.

And rather than saying “Oh let me spend a few dozen hours every quarter researching the latest advice on how to actually use this stuff” — because you won’t, just like I won’t – you can just get somebody else to do the work of cutting a path for you through the quickly regenerating AI jungle.

#2. I myself have gone through through ChatGPT Mastery, from A-Z, all 30 days, during the last cohort.

I didn’t pay for it because I was offered to get in for free.

I did go through it first and foremost for my own selfish interests — I feel a constant sense of guilt over not using AI enough in what I do — and only then with a secondary goal of promoting it if I benefited from it enough. So here I am.

#3. ChatGPT Mastery is created and run by Gasper Crepinsek. Gasper is an ex-Boston Consulting Group guy and from what I can tell, one of those hardworking and productive consulting types, the kind I look upon with a mixture of wonder and green envy.

But to hear Gasper tell it, he quit his consulting job to have more freedom, started creating info products online like everybody else, realized he had just bought himself another 70 hr/week job, and then had the idea to automate as much of it as he could with AI.

He’s largely succeeded — he now spends his mornings eating croissants and sipping coffee while strolling around Paris, because most of his work of content creation and social media and even his trip planning have been automated in large part or in full.

#4. Before I went through the 30 days of ChatGPT Mastery, I had already been using ChatGPT daily for a couple years. Inevitably, that means a good part of what Gasper teaches was familiar to me.

Other stuff he teaches was simply not relevant (I won’t be using ChatGPT to write my daily emails, thank you). The way I still benefited from ChatGPT Mastery was:

– By having my mind opened to using ChatGPT for things for things I hadn’t thought of before (just one example: I did a “dopamine reset” protocol over 4 weeks, which was frankly wonderful, and which ChatGPT designed for me, and which I got the idea for while doing ChatGPT Mastery)

– By seeing Gasper’s very structured, consulting-minded approach to automating various aspects of his business, and being inspired to port some of that to my own specific situation

– With several valuable meta-prompts that I continue to use, such as the prompt for generating custom GPTs

#5. The way you could benefit from ChatGPT Mastery is likely to be highly specific to what you do and who you are.

The program focuses on a different use case every day. Some days will be more relevant to you than others. The previous cohort covered topics like competitor analysis, insights based on customer calls or testimonials, and of course the usual stuff like content and idea generation, plus hobuncha more.

If you do any of the specific things that Gasper covers, and if you do them on at least an occasional basis, then odds are you will get a great return on both the time and money and that ChatGPT Mastery requires of you, before the 30 days are out.

Beyond that, ChatGPT Mastery can open your mind to what’s possible, give you confidence and a bunch of examples to get you spotting what could be automated in what you do, plus the techniques for how to do it (I’ve already automated a handful of things in what I do, and I have a list of next things to do).

#6. The time required for ChatGPT Mastery is about 15-20 minutes per day for 30 days. The money required is an upfront payment of $199.

I can imagine that one or the other of these is not easy for you to eke out in the current moment.

All I can say is that it’s an investment that’s likely to pay you back many times over, in terms of both time and money. And the sooner you make that investment, the greater and quicker the returns will come.

#7. If you’d like to find out the full details about ChatGPT Mastery, or even to sign up before the cohort kicks off:

https://bejakovic.com/gasper

How to get a one-time course to maintain its value

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Dr. Kiran Agarwal, who is both a practicing GP in London and a stress-management coach, writes in with a legit question (or actually 3) about my ongoing promo of ChatGPT Mastery:

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Thanks for introducing Gasper – I am interested as you are supporting him.

A couple of quick questions- is this specific for chatGPT? or prompts can be used for any other AIs?

And why would you not let it write your daily emails? Is it because you like writing them or anything else?

As things are changing so fast in AI space, how will this one time course maintain its value after a couple of months?

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Kiran’s third question is really the most interesting, but let me answer the first two quickly:

1. ChatGPT Mastery is specific to ChatGPT. That said, I imagine the prompts would work in any other chat-like AI tool like Claude or Gemini.

2. I get value out of writing emails beyond just the money I make from them, or the fact that they’re sent out. Plus, I don’t think that anybody or anything can get my own tone and ideas exactly right.

That’s why I wouldn’t let AI write my emails, and why I wouldn’t hire a copywriter to write my emails either.

3. Like I said, this question is the most interesting. Sure, it’s fine to find out how to get the most out of ChatGPT today… but what about in July? Or August? Or next year?

I checked the sales page for ChatGPT Mastery, and there was nothing about this question. So I wrote to Gasper Crepinsek, the guy behind ChatGPT Mastery, to find out what he has to say.

Gasper got back to me with the exact response I was hoping for:

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If someone wants to take the course again, I will simply add them in the future run.

I want to build long-term customers. My whole goal is to keep adding to the course and people who put the trust early will get everything I add locked in at the initial price they paid.

===

I think what Gasper is doing is super smart. I say that having done the same with my Copy Riddles course back when I ran it as a cohort course.

I allowed people who joined Copy Riddles in previous runs to join future runs for free. It bought me a bunch of goodwill, created customers who are still with me years later, plus it produced some great case studies and testimonials from people who got more on the 2nd or 3rd run than they did the first time around. He who has ears, let him hear.

Also, let him hear this:

The deadline to join ChatGPT Mastery is tomorrow, Thursday, at 12 midnight EST (not PST, the way I do).

If you’re on the fence, it’s time to make up your mind one way or the other, otherwise the deadline will make up your mind for you.

If you want more info to help you make up your mind, here’s my initial email, detailing why I’m endorsing and promoting ChatGPT Mastery:

===

Today I’d like to recommend to you a 30-day program called ChatGPT Mastery, which is about… mastering ChatGPT, with the goal of having a kind of large and fast horse to ride on.

Here’s a list of exciting facts I’ve prepared for you about this new offer:

#1. ChatGPT Mastery is a cohort course — it kicks off and ends on a specific date — that helps you actually integrate and benefit from AI.

The idea being, things in the AI space are changing so fast that anything that came out even a few months ago is likely to be out of date.

And rather than saying “Oh let me spend a few dozen hours every quarter researching the latest advice on how to actually use this stuff” — because you won’t, just like I won’t – you can just get somebody else to do the work of cutting a path for you through the quickly regenerating AI jungle.

#2. I myself have gone through through ChatGPT Mastery, from A-Z, all 30 days, during the last cohort.

I didn’t pay for it because I was offered to get in for free.

I did go through it first and foremost for my own selfish interests — I feel a constant sense of guilt over not using AI enough in what I do — and only then with a secondary goal of promoting it if I benefited from it enough. So here I am.

#3. ChatGPT Mastery is created and run by Gasper Crepinsek. Gasper is an ex-Boston Consulting Group guy and from what I can tell, one of those hardworking and productive consulting types, the kind I look upon with a mixture of wonder and green envy.

But to hear Gasper tell it, he quit his consulting job to have more freedom, started creating info products online like everybody else, realized he had just bought himself another 70 hr/week job, and then had the idea to automate as much of it as he could with AI.

He’s largely succeeded — he now spends his mornings eating croissants and sipping coffee while strolling around Paris, because most of his work of content creation and social media and even his trip planning have been automated in large part or in full.

#4. Before I went through the 30 days of ChatGPT Mastery, I had already been using ChatGPT daily for a couple years. Inevitably, that means a good part of what Gasper teaches was familiar to me.

Other stuff he teaches was simply not relevant (I won’t be using ChatGPT to write my daily emails, thank you). The way I still benefited from ChatGPT Mastery was:

– By having my mind opened to using ChatGPT for things for things I hadn’t thought of before (just one example: I did a “dopamine reset” protocol over 4 weeks, which was frankly wonderful, and which ChatGPT designed for me, and which I got the idea for while doing ChatGPT Mastery)

– By seeing Gasper’s very structured, consulting-minded approach to automating various aspects of his business, and being inspired to port some of that to my own specific situation

– With several valuable meta-prompts that I continue to use, such as the prompt for generating custom GPTs

#5. The way you could benefit from ChatGPT Mastery is likely to be highly specific to what you do and who you are.

The program focuses on a different use case every day. Some days will be more relevant to you than others. The previous cohort covered topics like competitor analysis, insights based on customer calls or testimonials, and of course the usual stuff like content and idea generation, plus hobuncha more.

If you do any of the specific things that Gasper covers, and if you do them on at least an occasional basis, then odds are you will get a great return on both the time and money and that ChatGPT Mastery requires of you, before the 30 days are out.

Beyond that, ChatGPT Mastery can open your mind to what’s possible, give you confidence and a bunch of examples to get you spotting what could be automated in what you do, plus the techniques for how to do it (I’ve already automated a handful of things in what I do, and I have a list of next things to do).

#6. The time required for ChatGPT Mastery is about 15-20 minutes per day for 30 days. The money required is an upfront payment of $199.

I can imagine that one or the other of these is not easy for you to eke out in the current moment.

All I can say is that it’s an investment that’s likely to pay you back many times over, in terms of both time and money. And the sooner you make that investment, the greater and quicker the returns will come.

#7. If you’d like to find out the full details about ChatGPT Mastery, or even to sign up before the cohort kicks off:

https://bejakovic.com/gasper

Why I didn’t build a list in the copywriting/marketing space

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Yesterday I mentioned how a while back, I followed Travis Speegle’s MyPeeps program to build up a new email list of dog owners via paid ads. To which a long-time reader wrote in to ask:

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Just curious, John, how come you didn’t build a list in the copywriting/marketing space? I’m using a different process myself that will help me build a list with a combo of content + paid ads so curious to hear how come you don’t try to grow your existing list.

===

Good question.

First off, I frankly don’t want to build a “copywriting” list.

I haven’t primarily been writing about copywriting for, I don’t know, the past two+ years, ever since I stopped working with copywriting clients, and maybe before then.

I have been writing about persuasion and influence and psychology on the one hand, and online businesses and marketing on the other hand, and random other stuff that I find funny or interesting on the third hand.

But the real question is why not build up this existing list, and why start a new list instead?

I thought about it. I came up with a few reasons, ranked here from most logical and therefore least likely to be true, to least logical and therefore most likely to be true:

#1. I wanted to do a demonstration for the people inside the implementation group I ran when I first promoted MyPeeps. I didn’t want people who were building up their own lists to throw up their arms and say, “Of course you can do it because you have all these assets I don’t have!” A new list would make the demonstration cleaner and more persuasive.

#2. I was genuinely thinking to do this dog list as a side business of its own (I still think it could be viable). The list building implementation group I ran seemed like a good moment to kick that off.

#3. My simple opportunity-seeking mindset, which lives at the core of my person, and which says it’s more exciting to start something new and risky than to toil away on something familiar and proven.

#4. Because it’s simpler to run ads for a new, impersonal list than an existing, personal list. About that:

Like I said, I ran a 4-week implementation group for the people who bought MyPeeps when I promoted it as an affiliate.

In that group, I could see people running ads to build up their own personal lists.

AND IT DID NOT WORK.

Not because paid ads are a scam, or because Travis Speegle’s MyPeeps course doesn’t deliver.

Travis lays out very simple and yet very proven process to make paid ads work for list building, whether it’s your own personal list or an anonymous list of dog owners.

The reason it didn’t work for many people is because they refused to follow a crucial step in Travis’s process.

In fact, even when I pointed out to people they were skipping this crucial step, they nodded at me, smiled in appreciation of my looking out for them, and then turned around and continued to do exactly what they had been doing, which was skipping this crucial step.

What is this step?

Travis’s MyPeeps course describes is very well in module 1 and again in module 5.

If you would like to build up a new list, or to grow your existing list, you can find full info on Travis’s MyPeeps below:

https://bejakovic.com/mypeeps

P.S. If you have bought MyPeeps, forward me your receipt. I’ll share with you the recordings of the calls and my own notes that I initially did inside the implementation group last year.

And if you’ve already sent me your receipt, check inside the bonuses area that I gave you access to.

I’ve added a “DO YOU MAKE THESE MISTAKES IN PAID ADS FOR YOUR PERSONAL LIST?” document in there (very subtle, I know). It highlights the crucial step so many list owners are skipping when creating ads to promote their existing personal list, and explains how you can maybe avoid doing the same.

My advice on actually building an email list

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A diligent reader writes in with a familiar question:

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Hi John,

From what I’ve seen, Daily Email Habit helps you with your already existing email list, right?

My question is, do you have any course or advice on actually building an email list first. Correct me if I’m wrong about the Daily Email Habit.

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The diligent reader above is absolutely right. Daily Email Habit is about emailing your existing list.

List building is not my forte or my focus, and therefore I don’t sell a course on it.

But last year, I did promote Travis Speegle’s MyPeeps course, all about how to build a large, engaged email list.

I bought Travis’s course myself before promoting it. I thought the content was great. I ended up promoting it to my list and even running an “implementation group” on the back of it over 4 weeks.

As part of this implementation group, I started a new list (dog owners, since I’d done a lot of client work in this space once upon a time)… I went through Travis’s training… and I followed what Travis advised to the letter.

The result for me personally were new, qualified email susbcribers at about $0.60 a name.

If you are looking to build a list, then MyPeeps is my recommendation for how to do it quickly, on a budget of $10-$20 a day, so you end up with subscribers who actually want to read what you have to write and buy what you have to offer.

If you’d like to find out the full details on MyPeeps, or start building an engaged email list today:

https://bejakovic.com/mypeeps

P.S. Within that implementation group, I did three live calls with the participants.

I also had an 8-page document of notes I personally took from Travis’s course.

If you do decide to sign up for MyPeeps, forward me your receipt, and I will hook you up with the recordings of those calls and my own notes, to help you get more out of this course and to do it more quickly.

Basic tip for doing live webinars/workshops

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A few days ago, copywriter GC Tsalamagkakis posted the following question in my Daily Email House community:

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I have a retainer for whom I’m writing paywalled articles about coding with AI, creating custom agents, etc.

Starting next week, we’re going to start doing live webinars/workshops based on those very articles.

This will be my first time presenting–except for one time for a hackathon in 2019 where we secured a podium spot because our presentation was full of memes and our app had the right amount of buzzwords like ‘blockchain’–so I was wondering if you have any basic tips or good-to-knows.

===

My basic tip or good-to-know is illustrated by the fact that I’ve forbidden myself to eat chocolate, because I’m much like a dog.

I can eat chocolate until I get sick from it, and even then, I’ll keep eating.

Logic says there would be some off-switch, some kind of negative feedback loop, some mechanism to say, “No, now is enough.” But logic is wrong.

That’s really an illustration of the fundamental marketing truth, that there’s great value in selling people more of what they have already proven to buy and consume.

I think of this a little differently from the way you may have already heard the idea.

For example, and this is in answer to GC’s question above, I sell the same kind of paid content as I do free content, which people already consumed to buy the paid content.

In other words, the books I’ve written, the courses I’ve created, the live trainings I’ve put on, and charged anywhere from $10 to $1,000, are all as stuffed as I can make them with personal stories, analogies, case studies, pop culture references, jokes, profiles of interesting and influential people, and occasionally completely irrelevant but fun asides — just like my daily emails are.

Problem:

At least in my experience, it’s hard to come up with a bunch of really good stories, analogies, case studies, jokes, pop culture references in one sitting, or even two, or even 10.

Much more effective, and much faster and easier long term, at least when it comes to creating new offers, is already to have a bunch of good stories, analogies, case studies, jokes, pop culture references lying around, which you can repurpose.

The way I personally get there is writing daily emails, which have the rather magical Triforce of:

1. Converting new prospects into customers…

2. Continuing the relationship with existing customers and helping them get more value out of what they already bought, and…

3. Creating, or helping create, high quality new offers one email at a time.

That’s to say, if you want to start putting on live webinars or workshops in the near future, or if you want to create a course, or write a book, or create a pinup calendar, then start writing a daily email today.

You will have instant fodder, usually of a very high quality, when it’s time to sit down and create that other thing.

That’s my basic tip or good-to-know for today, along with the fact that, if you haven’t yet started writing daily emails, or have started but haven’t been able to stick to it, then I can help, or rather, my Daily Email Habit service can help. For more info on that:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​

What it’s like to finally sell Guinness

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My friend Biff recently texted me to say he had been listening to the What It’s Like To Be podcast, which I’ve written about often in these emails.

That podcast features interviews with people in different professions, with the goal of finding out what it’s like to do their job.

(As is often true of these kinds of podcasts, the host is somebody famous or influential, who has decided to do a pet project. In this case the influential person is Dan Heath, author of the book Made To Stick, which I’ve also written about many times in this newsletter.)

Anyways, I had not been listening to the What It’s Like To Be podcast for a while – there’s too much damn stuff to listen to.

I felt guilty after Biff wrote me to say he had heard some good episodes lately.

So at the gym two days ago, I put on the latest episode, to find out what it’s like to be… a barman.

A barman is apparently what in Ireland they call a bar tender. Except not really, because a barman also acts as a kind of standup comedian as well as a therapist or self-esteem coach, which U.S. bar tenders are typically not certified for.

But let me get to the point of today’s email, the valuable message that can maybe make you millions of cents or even dollars:

The barman — name, Brian Wynne – said that his pub has been around for 30 years. But in spite of it being an Irish pub, in Dublin, they didn’t sell Guinness until three weeks ago. He explained:

“We’ve been open since ’96 and we put our first Guinness tap in three weeks ago. We make an equivalent porter. When I say equivalent, I mean it’s vastly superior, of course, but I can’t say that. I’m sure your lawyers will have a go at you for allowing me to say that kinda thing.”

Dan Heath then asked Wynne how Guinness is doing after the first three weeks. Wynne replied:

“Oh, it’s outselling everything else we have. You spend 20 years explaining to people why we don’t sell Guinness ’cause our products are superior and more Irish. You make jokes about it. I have so many anecdotes and lines all built up about the sale of Guinness, which we don’t have, and then we do have it in…”

… and it outsells everything else, without even trying.

I wanted to share this with you because it’s a truth that goes far beyond the Irish pub.

I thought to myself, as I listened to Wynne while doing my fire hydrant exercises, how many online business owners find themselves in same position?

They work to create a “vastly superior” product… they turn themselves into the equivalent of a barman who educates and jokes and soft-sells… they show up day after day in front of their prospects… and yet, sales still a fraction of what they could be, if they only sold what people already really wanted, ie. a Guinness instead of their no-name vastly superior equivalent.

Do with that what seems meet.

As for me, I’ll take me to do some market research. I’ll even offer you a trade:

Hit reply to this email and tell me the last digital info purchase you made. It could be a course… some live training or coaching… a new newsletter or membership you subscribed to… or an ebook (except Amazon kindle ebooks, that’s too broad for my purposes).

I’m curious to find out what you’ve already spent money on, and maybe I will start selling the same.

And in return?

I’ll reply to you and tell you my own latest digital info purchase. (It’s not Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin, I promise that.) I will tell you that it’s an ebook, that I paid $209 for it (yes, there are no missing decimal points in there), and that I have so far taken 9 pages of notes from it.

I’m not sure it will be as useful for you as it has been to me, but if you’re curious to find out what it is, you know what to do.

Last call for Ronin bonus offer

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The past two weeks, I’ve been promoting a free trial of Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin membership, and I’ve been giving people who took me up on that a bundle of bonuses I’ve created.

I’m ending this promotion tonight at 12 midnight PST.

I will promote Ronin again in the future because…

– I myself am a member or Ronin (paid in full for the next year)

– Considering all the stuff inside (Travis offers $12k worth of real-world bonuses) I think it’s a honestly a great deal, probably the best deal out there right in any direct marketing-adjacent space

– I believe Ronin can be immensely valuable for many people in my audience, whether coaches, copywriters, or course creators, if they were to join and implement just an idea or two that are shared inside

So why stop the promotion?

Well, expose human beings to anything constant — even incontestably good things like compliments, security, or free money — and people soon stop responding. Our strange neurology means we need constant contrast to see, hear, feel, think, and pay attention. Otherwise things become literally invisible.

And so I’m ending my current promotion of Travis’s Royalty Ronin. After tonight, the bonuses I’m offering just for giving it a free trial will disappear, only to be found behind the paywall.

If you have already signed up for a trial of Ronin, forward me your confirmation email from Travis, the one with “Vroom” in the subject line.

And if you have not yet taken Ronin for a week’s free spin, you can do so before tonight at 12 midnight PST and get the following 4 bonuses:

1. My Heart of Hearts training, about how to discover what people in your audience really want, so you can better know what to offer them + how to present it.

2. A short-term fix if your offer has low perceived value right now. Don’t discount. Sell for full price, by using the strategy I’ve described here.

3. Inspiration & Engagement. A recording of my presentation for Brian Kurtz’s $2k/year Titans XL mastermind.

4. A single tip on writing how-to emails in the age of ChatGPT. I’ve been thinking to develop this idea into a Most Valuable Postcard #3, because it’s valuable way beyond just how-to emails. For now, if you’re curious, you can read the core of it in this bonus.

If you’d like to give Ronin a week’s free try, and get four bonuses above, which have your name on them, as my way of saying thanks for taking me up on my recommendation, then here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

The death of infotainment

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A few days ago, an interesting comment popped up in my Daily Email House community. Gasper Crepinsek, who helps entrepreneurs adopt AI, wrote about his current content strategy:

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“So for now… whenever I feel like sharing value, I just share it with my audience directly (despite the current thinking on X that VALUE is bad, INSIGHT is king). I have actually found that people are converting even when I do make a “value / tutorial” sequence paired with soft selling approach. But that is the topic of another post.”

===

This caught my owlish eye. It made me think back to the old Dan Kennedy chestnut — whatever becomes a norm leads to normal, average results… and normal, average results put you right at the poverty line.

There’s no denying that infotainment — stories, analogies, insight — has become the norm. Maybe not in every niche just yet, but among course creators, coaches, Internet marketers most definitely yes.

Curious fact:

Gasper is not the only one defying the infotainment norm with success.

As another example, take marketer Derek Johanson, the creator of the CopyHour course.

Derek has been at the Internet marketing thing for a long while, 12+ years.

I know for a fact Derek can write typical infotaining emails because he has done it in the past.

But a while back, he moved to writing very how-to, practical, almost tutorial-like daily emails, which run in series that cover different topics from week to week. I’m guessing it’s because it’s working better for him.

My own consumption of newsletters and marketing advice bears out this move from infotainment.

I’ve noticed I practically never read the infotainment part in the newsletters subscribe to any more. Instead, I just scroll down to see the practical takeaway, and maybe the offer.

Granted, I’m a rather “sophisticated” consumer of email newsletters (meaning, I’ve been exposed to a ton of them, particularly in the copywriting and marketing space, over the past 10+ years of working in this field). Still, that just makes me a kind of owl-eyed canary in a coalmine, and maybe points to a bigger trend that will be obvious to others soon.

But I hear you say, “A craving for fun and entertainment is a fundamental of human psychology! It can’t ever die, you silly canary!”

No doubt. Just because infotainment is dead, or at least dying at the moment, doesn’t mean it won’t come back, like a feathery fiend out of its own ashes.

From what I’ve seen, the mass mind moves in a pendulum, a swing between two poles, in this case infotaining and how-to content. Right now, I think we’re on a down-swing away from the infotainment pole.

That said, I realize I have been violating the very point I’m trying to share with you, by telling you this observation in the context of a story and my own predictions, instead of telling you how to to write how-to content yourself.

Old habits die hard.

I will fix that tomorrow. For real. I’ll tell you how to write a how-to email in an age where ChatGPT can adequately answer any how-to question.

Meanwhile, I would like to remind you of my ongoing, but not for long, promotion of Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin membership.

It’s finally time to bring this promotion to a close. I will end it this Sunday, April 6, at 12 midnight PST.

I will certainly promote Royalty Ronin again in the future, maybe even every month. So you might wonder what exactly this Sunday deadline means.

I have been giving a bonus bundle to people who signed up for a week’s free trial of Ronin. After Sunday, this bonus bundle will go away, or rather, it will go behind the paywall. I will no longer give it to people who do the free trial, but who end up signing up and paying for Ronin.

If you’d like to kick off a week’s free trial to Ronin before the the trial bonuses disappear, you can do that at the following link:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. My bonus bundle, which I have decided to call the “Lone Wolf and Cub” bonus bundle, to go with the “ronin” theme, currently includes the following:

1. My Heart of Hearts training, about how to discover what people in your audience really want, so you can better know what to offer them + how to present it.

2. A short-term fix if your offer has low perceived value right now. Don’t discount. Sell for full price, by using the strategy I’ve described here.

3. Inspiration & Engagement. A recording of my presentation for Brian Kurtz’s $2k/year Titans XL mastermind.

I say “currently includes” because I will probably add more bonuses to this bundle, once I remove it as a bonus for the Ronin free trial and make it a bonus for actual Ronin subscription.

But if you sign up for trial now and decide to stick with Ronin (or you’ve already joined based on my recommendation), I’ll get you the extra bonuses automatically in the course area.

Why I ignore a great way of selling more monthly memberships

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A long-time reader writes in with a great marketing suggestion, which I won’t be applying any time soon:

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Yesterday, on my lunch break, I watched this great YouTube video: “Storytelling & Marketing for Musicians & Teachers w/ Master Copywriter John Bejakovic.”

I found it very interesting.

Then, a suggestion occurred to me: you could add a monthly bonus (such as a 30-minute video, a written lesson in the form of an article or a podcast episode, etc.) to all Daily Email Habit subscribers.

The subscription could be even more attractive.

It’s just an idea and I wanted to tell you about it because in the company where I work – every time we add an exclusive bonus to the monthly memberships – the number of subscribers grows.

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Like I said, adding bonuses to a recurring offer is a great marketing suggestion. If I were working with clients, which I’m not, I would advise them the same.

That said, I have no plans and even less interest in committing to creating more content on a schedule.

I like writing this free daily email. That’s about where it stops.

I don’t want to promise prospects a regular paid newsletter, podcast, weekly call, monthly article, video, or really anything else, even if gets me more subscribers and pays me more money.

(I’ve done it before — a paid monthly newsletter, a group coaching offer with a weekly call — and I quickly ran away.)

Does that mean I’ve renounced creating new content?

Clearly no, as I happen to be writing a book, and I have plans to start writing a new one as soon as this one is finished.

Does it mean I’ve given up on selling recurring offers?

Again no. My Daily Email House community, small as it is, doesn’t make any promises beyond being a meeting place for business owners who write more or less daily emails. (More generally, there are ways to make recurring offers that aren’t built on content of the person selling them.)

I’m not sure whether this email can be useful to you in any way, except maybe to validate how you yourself might be feeling.

And about that:

Over the past week, I’ve been promoting Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin membership. One of the reasons I’m personally inside Ronin, and willing to 100% endorse it to others, is that I feel validated by the underlying philosophy of Ronin. As Travis wrote inside the Royalty Ronin community a few days ago:

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Ronin have one focus:

Stop selling our life.

We have many tools to do it, but don’t forget what we are building.

A life that is our OWN.

Not one owned by a banker, clients, expectations of others, or even the squeals of the lil dipshit that sits on our shoulders:-)

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Incidentally, you might be interested to know that Travis makes most of his money via his “back-end agency,” and not by teaching others how to do Internet marketing.

He teaches inside the Ronin community, without a schedule and without obligations, because he enjoys it (that’s the reason for the chatty, three-hour Zoom calls he puts on from time to time).

If you resonate with the philosophy above, you might get value from the many tools inside Royalty Ronin to help you live life on your own terms. For more info on that:

​https://bejakovic.com/ronin​

P.S. If you’ve already signed up for a trial of Royalty Ronin via my link above, forward me Travis’s welcome email — the one with “Vroom” in the subject line.

I have a small but growing bundle of bonuses, including my Heart of Hearts and my Inspiration & Engagement trainings, which are waiting for you as a way of saying thanks for taking me up on my recommendation.

If you’re struggling to sell continuity…

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This morning, I got a DM on Skool from a business owner in Australia, who wrote:

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Hey John, I saw you promoting Ronin, how’s the signups going on your side? I’ve sent a couple of emails but only 50 odd clicks which is pretty low. I’m finding it a challenge to convey the real value of what Travis teaches without sounding like a scammy hypester!

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The background is that the past few days, I’ve been promoting Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin membership program. It’s a membership I’m personally signed up to, as is the business owner from Australia above who wrote me this morning.

So far, I’ve sent 4 emails to promote Ronin. I’ve had a few hundred people click through, but I have only had a handful of people sign up for the free trial.

I’m not bothered by that result.

Travis’s community is after all built around Travis, and selling my audience into a paid community built around a person they don’t really know is a tough ask.

Plus, Royalty Ronin is very expensive, and I figure people are wary of signing up for a $300/month subscription, even if they get a week’s free trial to make up their minds.

I keep cheerfully promoting the free trial of Royalty Ronin because 1) every day, I’m still getting more people to opt in, and 2) even if a few folks decide to stay signed up past the trial, it’s going to be long-term good for me and good for them.

That said, I thought it was actually a curious choice from Travis Sago to start selling Royalty Ronin as a per-month subscription (something he only started now, as far as I know).

That’s because I remember one training of his, and the question of continuity programs came up. Travis explicitly shared his philosophy, which was “Don’t sell continuity.”

That doesn’t mean you can’t get paid recurring month-to-month. It simply means how you price and position your existing offer (yes, the one you’re selling via continuity) in the audience’s mind.

Travis had a small, counterintuitive twist for making recurring sales, which gets you a bunch of money up front as well as more people to pay you month-to-month than if you just offer a monthly subscription.

If you yourself have a continuity program that’s not making as many sales as you like, this info could be gold for you. Or it might be something you choose to ignore, the way Travis seems to be doing now, for reasons of his own.

In any case, if you’re already signed up for a trial of Royalty Ronin, you can find this recurring-income-without-continuity tweak inside the “$1k a Day in 1 Hour a Day” training in the Ronin course area.

And in case you haven’t already signed up for trial of Ronin, but you would like to see what it’s about, and whether it’s worth your time and attention, then here’s more info on the membership from Travis himself:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you’ve already signed up for trial of Royalty Ronin via my link above, forward me Travis’s welcome email, the one with “Vroom” in the subject line. I have a small but growing bundle of bonuses that’s waiting for you as a way of saying thanks for taking me up on my recommendation.