Direct Marketing

Dumbledore question

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For the past week, I have been promoting Hogwarts of Influence, which is what I’m calling three increasingly large bundles of my offers, at fantastic prices with fabulous terms, meant to turn you into a persuasion wizard of greater and greater power.

Inevitably, I’ve gotten questions along the way.

In the interest of making more sales and maybe setting your mind at ease, let me answer some publicly. A long-time reader and customer writes:

===

I want to grab the Dumbledore Level for the Core Promise replay please.

One thing I can’t to confirm first: I’m already a DEH subscriber at $30/m. I joined before you raised the price. Will my existing subscription stay at that rate even after I’ve completed the 2 free years?

Just want to make sure I’m not losing the price I’m on.

===

Yes. If you are currently subscribed to Daily Email Habit at less than the current price of $50/month, you will get that same price when the free time from the various Hogwarts levels expires (2/6/24 months at the Hermione/Snape/Dumbledore levels, respectively).

Moving on. A completely new reader who has never bought anything from me writes:

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A few questions on the replay/sales page, specifically the Hermione level:

1– I’m not clear on what a “Copy Riddles Round” actually is. Is this ONE discursive email, a SEQUENCE of such helpful email template/prompts, a MONTH’s worth of such email contents, or what exactly? I’m new to your world and haven’t really learned about this idea of riddles yet, though I’m intrigued.

2– For the “Daily Email Fastlane” I assume this is a digital product like a mini-course with a video or two? At least there must be example emails from the 3 clients of yours? How many example emails? Sounds awesome, but again it’s hard to assess value if you don’t quite know the scope of what you’re getting.

3– And the 2 months of DEH … are those delivered as distinct one-month sets of 30 emails, for example? Or would I be added to the service on a given day and then receive the “next” 60 days? Is there always a specific “theme” to each month? Is there somewhere on your website where I can actually see one or two daily examples perhaps?

===

Much like a 2-month old infant, who thinks the entire world is caused and controlled by himself, I forget that there are people on my list who haven’t heard me describe my offers dozens of times, and who aren’t as familiar with them as I am.

As for Copy Riddles and Daily Email Habit, I actually have sales pages that describe what these offers are in gruesome detail, including a wall of glowing testimonials for each offer. You can find them here:

Copy Riddles – https://bejakovic.com/cr​

Daily Email Habit – https://bejakovic.com/deh

As for the two “rounds” of Copy Riddles I’m making available inside the Hermione level, this is simply a small, self-contained segment of the full Copy Riddles program.

And as for Daily Email Fastlane, it is a recording of a paid live training that I gave a while back.

There are no emails included from the 3 ultra-successful coaching students I profile, and in fact I’ve kept them anonymous.

What I talk about is commonalities about things like 1) how they write their emails 2) which segment of their market they go after 3) the kinds of offers they make.

Finally, a second long-time reader and buyer writes in to ask:

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I just saw Copy Riddles on the Dumbledore tier bonuses, so I wanted to ask.

Is there a deadline on the offer?

Because I was saving up money to buy Copy Riddles, to help level up my hook game for creative strategy work.

Please let me know if possible.

===

Of course there is a deadline. Nothing and I mean NOTHING sells like a timed deadline.

I just haven’t announced the deadline yet, but I am announcing it now.

This Hogwarts of Influence offer, including the giant bundle, favorable price, and magical payment terms, is disappearing this Wednesday, June 24, at 12 midnight PST.

I’m not sure if my answers to the reader questions above clarified this offer or not.

In either case, you can find the full details of what’s on sale, and for how much, at the following link, though not for much longer:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw

My biggest and most generous offer of the year

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Lesson (maybe) learned:

A few months ago, I ran an auction for the “behind the scenes” details of auctions I have and will be running.

As a bonus to that auction, I buried the most attractive part of the offer, which was the opportunity to ride shotgun with me on a future auction, and split the profits.

The low interest that auction got showed me the error of my ways. Or so you might expect…

… because maybe I’m making the same mistake again.

Yesterday, I launched a promotion for which I’m bundling my most attractive offers, at the most attractive terms I am going to make in 2026 and maybe through 3036.

But I launched this promo, as I often do, spur of the moment. And I made my most attractive offers, at the most attractive terms, available as free bonuses to a small core offer.

I’m currently sitting at the Barcelona airport, waiting for my delayed flight to London.

If the delay keeps getting worse, I’ll revamp the offer page to highlight what this offer is really about.

But whether or not I do that:

If you’ve ever been tempted to try out my Daily Email Habit service… if you’ve been curious to the point of irritation about what the Most Valuable Email trick is that I keep teasing… or if you have told yourself that one day you will invest in my Copy Riddles program, then you won’t get a better opportunity than I’m offering now.

For more details:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw/

Announcing: PWYW recording of last night’s Core Promise workshop

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Last night, I hosted the inimitable, unrepeatable, wonderful Core Promise Workshop and Q&A call.

To start, I had a bit of a presentation where I broke down, as economically as I could, the two components of a good promise, and why they are often at odds with each other.

That was all right because I got to use, as examples, the 5-Oscar-winning thriller Silence of the Lambs and the Silvester Stallone flop, Stop or My Mom Will Shoot.

Then came the fun part, where I ran through a buncha audience member questions, including:

#1. What core promise a copywriter should make when selling his or her services (hint: don’t sell your services)

#2. How to research what promises to make in an entirely unfamiliar professional industry where you know nobody (no, my answer was not “go on Reddit”)

#3. How to make your promise unique if you cannot (or refuse to) guarantee specific performance outcomes like “we will 3x your LTV”

#4. How to structure a core promise for a paid community

So altogether, a fine evening. And then, once I finished, I checked my email. I saw a message from one of my more dedicated readers, who had registered for yesterday’s call. She just wrote:

“I slept through big promise call…”

Unfortunately, the moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on. Yesterday’s workshop was live, and is over.

But thanks the wonders of space-age technology, there is a recording. As I announced a couple days ago, I am only making this recording available as a paid offer.

How paid?

Well, you can choose three levels at which to pay for this recording:

1. The Hermione Granger Level

2. The Severus Snape Level

3. The Albus Dumbledore Level

Each level comes with its own set of magical and mystical bonuses, meant to turn you into a persuasion wizard of greater and greater power. If you’d like to see the levels, and what’s on offer:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw/

Gary Bencivenga’s ultra secret A-list offer tactic

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Today I want to share with you an ultra secret A-list tactic I spotted legendary copywriter Gary Bencivenga using.

This tactic is not about copy. It’s in the offer.

I found it many years ago, back when I was learning copywriting by hand-copying ads. I spotted the following:

Gary once ran an ad to sell report A.

He also offered a free bonus, report B, which he said was “selling nationally” for the same price that report A was selling for.

Ok, so far, so standard.

But because I’m a bit of a direct response sleuth, I found that Gary was also running a second ad.

This second ad sold report B.

In that ad, Gary also offered a free bonus, report A, which he said was “selling nationally” for the same price that report B was selling for.

With this one tactic, Gary doubled his front-end offers. Plus, his bonuses were perceived as more valuable because he could say “selling nationally for $19.99” rather than “valued at $19.99, by my mother.”

So the offer tactic is to do like Gary, and sell your free bonuses in addition to your main front-end offer. It will force you to make a better, more attractive bonus, which will have higher perceived value than a bonus that you never officially sold. Plus you might actually make sales and get more customers.

“YAAAAWN,” I hear you say. “Bejako, you might not realize this, but I am an extremely loyal reader of your newsletter. That’s how I know that you already shared this ‘ultra secret A-list tactic’… let me check my notes… aha, yes, you shared it back on February 21, 2021. Don’t you have anything NEW for me today?”

Fine. I do have a NEW corollary to Gary Bencivenga’s ultra secret A-list offer tactic.

It is this:

If you do ever offer free stuff, for whatever reason, then sell it afterwards.

What? Yes. That’s it. It’s pretty basic, but powerful. The principles and reasons why are the same. I just want to highlight that:

1. Just because you offered something for free once, that doesn’t mean you cannot sell it later.

2. You probably have a ton of stuff that you’ve given away for free in the past, and are dismissing the real value of that.

Anyways, that’s my NEW marketing tip for today. It’s a marketing tip I myself am going to apply. Because tomorrow, I am putting on a FREE Core Promise Workshop and Q&A Call.

Free Free Free…

… if you decide to be there live tomorrow.

Not so free immediately afterwards, for all the reasons I listed above.

If you need a reminder of what this is all about, here are the details:

Tomorrow, Tuesday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, I will hold a Core Promise Workshop and Q&A call.

It’s free & you can ​Register Here​.

I’ll share the most important parts of:

* What makes a good promise

* The importance of being clear over clever

* Choosing a promise that sounds credible

And we’ll end with a Q&A session to answer your Core Promise questions.

Don’t forget to register so I can send you the details.

See you there.

The opportunity seeker’s way to success

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I’m a bit stressed as I write this. It’s Saturday morning. Tomorrow and Monday I’m going on a mini-vacation. Also on Monday, I have a deadline for the advertorial I promised to deliver to my first client/partner in years.

The advertorial that’s due Monday is, err, 75% of the way done?

I have a bunch of research, a bunch of notes, and a bunch of very rough AI drafts. Still, I’m far from having something I can give to the client. And I have today to finish it.

In moments like this, I ask myself, “Why do I do this to myself?”

And the answer comes, “Because I would never get anything done otherwise.”

I have long had this theory that everybody who succeeds in direct marketing is an opportunity seeker at heart.

Opportunity seeker = somebody who chases bright shiny objects, much like a bee that flits from flower to flower.

I think the business owners and the copywriters and everybody else who somehow makes it in direct marketing are first and foremost opportunity seekers, meaning that they get sucked in by marketing that promises you hot new riches now, even if you have no time or money to invest and cannot count past 5.

I myself am a veteran opportunity seeker.

It started in high school when I responded to a direct response ad in the back of a newspaper, which promised a lucrative and enjoyable new career (forestry service), without any qualifications, presumably even without finishing high school.

I have since spent tens of thousands of dollars buying various stuff that promises to be a hot new opportunity.

You might think I’d know better by now. I don’t know better.

Anyways, here’s my point for you:

If, like me, you are an opportunity seeker, then make it work for you. Take the psychological levers that you know can be pulled to make you act, and pull them yourself.

At the heart of every opportunity pitch are three words:

1. NEW

2. OPPORTUNITY

3. NOW

The NOW is why this opportunity wasn’t available yesterday, and why it won’t be available tomorrow. It’s enforced in opportunity marketing via scarcity and, more typically, urgency.

You can enforce NOW on yourself in the same way, by setting deadlines for yourself, like I did with that advertorial I told you about.

(Of course, for a self-imposed deadline to be meaningful, you need some kind of public accountability, like clients or customers who are expecting stuff to be delivered.)

The OPPORTUNITY part boils down to the idea of SOMETHING FOR NOTHING.

The fact is, we will all have to work in some way until the day we die. Even if you make all the money in the world, you will still have to invest and manage and secure that money.

But nobody wants to hear that. I certainly don’t.

So I embark on projects that promise to be bolt-on opportunities, things I can work on for a bit, get up to speed, and then simply profit from for the rest of my life, without sacrificing anything I’ve already got. Of course, it never really works out that way, but so what? It gets me moving.

And the NEW, of course.

If you’re an opportunity seeker like me, the familiar and old hat becomes invisible to you quickly.

This is where the danger lies, because the familiar and old hat is really what works, while something genuinely new is very likely to fail, or at least to fail when you try to set it up.

The way I deal with this is to introduce novelty WITHIN familiar and old-hat structures. Such as for example, daily emailing.

I’ve been doing this daily email every day for almost 8 years now.

Commitment and discipline, right? No. Novelty.

I never know what I’m gonna write about. It kind of stresses me out and excites me each morning. Today’s idea came (of course) during the shower.

So there you go:

1. Look at the marketing that’s working on getting you to move.

2. Figure out what done it.

3. Then apply it yourself in some way, to achieve whatever success you want to achieve in life.

Are you an opportunity seeker like me?

Do you want novelty? Do you want something for nothing? Do you want a reason to do it now?

If so, then daily emails might be for you. Like I told you, they work for me.

There’s public accountability. There’s the excitement of something new each day. And there’s something for nothing in the form of all the collateral content that gets produced, which you can feed into courses, books, paid newsletters, templates, apps, IP, which you can sell forever, without ever touching it again!

If you wanna get started with daily emails, today, I got a hot new opportunity for you:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Clever lead gen spotted in teddy bear email

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These days, one of the only people whose emails I read regularly is marketing legend Dean Jackson.

Dean has this folksy, cheerful, teddy bear public persona.

He talks slowly and patiently, like he’s your friend, with his arm around your shoulder.

He makes everything into an accessible analogy — “would you like a cookie,” “vending machine vs. slot machine,” “more cheese, less whiskers.”

Dean’s public persona masks the fact that the man is really the fountain of dozens of innovative marketing ideas that have become so widespread online that we don’t even think somebody had to invent them. But somebody did, and that person was Dean.

Anyways, I noticed something in a recent Dean email. Says Dean:

“On Wednesday, at Noon ET, I’m doing a live Book Titles Workshop & Q&A call.”

That might not seem remarkable unless you know one of Dean’s businesses is 90 Minute Books, where they interview you over 90 minutes and then turn that into a book you can use for lead gen.

So how does Dean’s Book Titles Workshop fit in?

Simple.

First, it gets the right people to raise their hands, so they can be identified, tagged, and followed up with. (Dean’s audience is small, brick-and-mortar biz owners, and the workshop is for the few among them who are thinking about having a book.)

Second, to those who actually show up, the workshop gives a small but meaningful win.

With Dean’s help, those people will walk away with a book title, something they can see, feel, hold, treasure, cherish, and talk to others about.

Of course, they still don’t have the book. After they have the book title, Dean’s service is the natural next step.

This is worth doing yourself.

You might have a big service or an expensive offer.

A proven strategy to sell that is to do what Dean is doing.

Help people take the very first step, however tiny, towards the big outcome you ultimately provide.

For one thing, it will help you identify leads. For another, it will give the people who take the first step a quick win, a feeling of inspiration, and momentum they will want to keep.

Let me apply this lesson myself.

The most important part of your marketing message is the promise you make. That’s equally true whether you’re selling a service, coaching, a course, or yourself as a person of trust and influence.

Based on my 1-1 work with dozens of online business owners, I can tell you that most business owners DO NOT DO A GOOD JOB with the core promise they are making in their marketing.

Next Tuesday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, I will hold a Core Promise Workshop and Q&A call.

It’s free & you can Register Here.

I’ll share the most important parts of:

* What makes a good promise

* The importance of being clear over clever

* Choosing a promise that sounds credible

And we’ll end with a Q&A session to answer your Core Promise questions.

Don’t forget to register so I can send you the details.

See you there.

Want investors bidding to purchase your newsletter?

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This is for you if you own a newsletter, email list, Skool community, or Facebook group… and if you would ever consider selling it.

I’ve got a network of thousands of business owners, online investors, and ordinary folks who want to speed up the time it would take for them to make money online.

Many of them would love to purchase your email list, newsletter, or community, if you would be open to selling it, whether because you have bigger priorities, or because your passion has moved elsewhere, or simply because you need the cash.

Crucial point #1:

These are folks who will treat your newsletter or community right if they purchase it.

The people in my network realize that money online is made via long-term relationships, value, and trust.

They will do right by your audience and make the ongoing experience for your audience great.

In short, your folks will be in good hands if you decide to sell.

Crucial point 2:

I can make sure you are paid fairly and even generously.

Selling normally means having to talk to a dozen potential buyers, many of who try to lowball you or haggle you into the ground.

What I’m offering instead is to run an auction, and get investors to compete with each other, and reveal what they are willing to pay, and do it publicly, in a way that gets other bidders to reveal what they would pay as well.

So do you want investors bidding to purchase your newsletter, email list, or community?

If you do, reply to this email.

It doesn’t oblige you in any way.

We’ll just talk about what you have, and if I can help you find a new home for it, and get you paid generously in the process.

Emotional reactivity in email promos

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Last Wednesday, I started a new, possibly doomed email promo.

My goal was to get 5 people into the 1-Person Advertorial Agency Cohort.

My offer was help with copywriting, help with getting clients, up to and including making $10k from advertorial work.

My price was $5k.

Like I said, I started promoting this on Wednesday.

By about Friday, I was hating it.

A few dozen people had responded to express interest, most of them before I had publicly announced the price.

After several days of email back-and-forth, nobody had signed up. Some people had opted out. Some had stopped responding. The others had questions, doubts, or concerns. The nerve!

I spent a part of my Friday fantasizing of simply closing down this whole thing, and focusing on writing my own advertorials rather than trying to persuade anybody to join me. “I’ll show them!”

Fortunately, I have been here before.

Instead of lashing out at the world, I simply kept promoting the offer to my list, answering questions from the people who had expressed interest, and honing the 1-1 sales process bit by bit.

On Saturday, one person joined. Yesterday, four more people joined, including one guy (a long-time reader and buyer) who only responded to the “Final Call” email I sent out.

In sum:

I wanted 5 people. I got 5 people. $10k collected over the past two days, with another $15k due when I get people to the result I promised.

I’m telling you this because, besides running this advertorial cohort, I’m also coaching several business owners on how to make money with their email list. And making money with your email list means email promos.

I’ve recently seen, on a couple different occasions, people getting frustrated due to a lack of results, shutting down their promo after just a day or two, and scrapping the offer.

I know how it feels. I’ve been there. In fact, like I just told you, I was there last week, ready to shut down my own promo and scrap the offer.

Maybe now that I’ve told you that it happens to me, you will be able to recognize it in yourself as well.

It’s helpful to label it. (“Emotional reactivity” is not a very elegant term, but it’s what I call it.)

It’s also helpful to remind yourself that, now that you’re in the middle of the promo, it’s probably not a good time to make dramatic decisions, like killing the offer, or slashing the price, or promising tons of new deliverables that you hadn’t planned on initially.

Rather, the middle of the promo is a time for talking to your audience, clarifying your offer and your positioning, and making the best out of what you’ve already got.

From time to time, I like to promote Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin community. From time to time, I like to reiterate that Travis’s Ronin is the best deal in Internet Marketing right now. From time to time, I cite some cool or fundamental thing I’ve learned from Travis.

The fact is, this entire “advertorial cohort” promo wouldn’t have happened without the many things, big and small, I’ve learned from Travis and the courses and trainings and regular posts he puts up inside Royalty Ronin.

Everything, from the very concept of this promo, to the offer structure, to the pricing, to how I promoted it, to the fact that I didn’t give up in frustration after a few days of no results… all of that comes from stuff I can trace directly to Travis.

Travis offers a week-long free trial for Royalty Ronin. I’ve gotten a metric ton, and 100k+ worth of income, due to what’s inside Ronin. Maybe you will too. If you wanna give it a try:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you do make it past free trial and stay inside Ronin, write me an email and let me know. I have some bonuses with your name on them.

Tonight: Manna for Marketers live gameshow

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Tonight at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, I’ll step in front of the camera, with my best Alex Trebek mustache and grey suit, to host the first and last Manna for Marekters gameshow.

“Manna for Marketers” is a live implementation workshop for the influence ideas from the 10 Commandments book.

I’ll show you how I’ve consciously applied the “10 commandments of Con Men etc.” in my biz, in expectation of this workshop.

Plus, I’ll offer my help and input if you want to raise your hand live on the call, and ask me how to apply any of these commandments to your biz (or life).

And, because listening to me rattle on for a long time is not fun for anybody, I’ll run “Manna for Marketers” like a gameshow.

The whole thing will be structured like Jeopardy (hat tip to reader René Kerkdyk for this idea), with quiz questions, answers, a final winner, and a big prize for the winner.

If you took me up on my Tour de Commandments offer last week, I sent you a link already for today’s Manna for Marketers call.

Yes, there will be a recording in case you can’t make it, which I will put into the already-existing bonus area. But considering the live gameshow aspect, and the big prize for the winner, I hope to see you there live in a few hours.

And if you didn’t take me on the Tour de Commandments offer, you can still join Manna for Marketers.

It’s an Obvious Adams thing, but if a promo did well because of the bonuses (and there’s no denying that Tour de Commandments was a success because of the bonuses), then it makes sense to get more use out of that.

And why wait?

That’s why today you can get an get an entry ticket (and the subsequent recording) for the Manna for Marketers gameshow, plus all other exciting bonuses I offered last week, for $97. Here’s all I’m including:

1. “Manna for Marketers” live gameshow and implementation call

2. “3 lessons after $18,487 spent on running Amazon book ads”

3. “40 Pages to Authority: A $1k article series”

4. “How I made an extra $1404.53/month in Amazon royalties at the push of a button”

5. “The best direct marketing book of the past 15 years”

6. “The best course on selling via email I have personally found”

7. Influence Riddles Vol. 1

If you wanna take me up on this offer, here’s where to go:

https://desertkite.thrivecart.com/manna-for-marketers/

P.S. If you do take me up on this offer today, pay attention to the thank you page. It will have the Zoom link for tonight’s gameshow.