Direct Marketing

A few weeks ago, I ran a promo for a new offer by Vasilis Apostolou, who styles himself online as The Copy Nerd. I wrote a lot about Vasilis in those emails, but in a nutshell, the man is:

* A former Agora copywriter

* Now an in-house copywriter at Advanced Bionutritionals, a big direct-response supplement company

* In a small and exclusive group of “copy cubs” that gets to be directly mentored by the reclusive A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos, somebody I have personally learned the most from, both directly and indirectly, when it comes to copywriting

* Himself mentoring a small group of younger copywriters

Anyway, Vasilis put together an offer based on a part of his own working process, which he called Million Dollar Hook Machine. I gave Vasilis some tips and advice about positioning and pricing this offer. I then promoted it to my list.

It went well.

After the promo was over, Vasilis wrote up the the details of how well it went, along with his conclusions, in a post in my Daily Email House community, under the headline, “John helps pay for my house.”

I am reproducing Vasilis’s post as-is below, both because it is flattering to me, and because it might be genuinely useful to you too. Says Vasilis:

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Less than two months ago, I started my email list.

And less than two weeks ago, I released my first offer.

I promoted it to my list, and John promoted it to his list as an affiliate.

In case you read John’s email from the other day, we sold about $7.5k worth of courses through his promotion.

Half goes to John. Half goes to my (wife’s) pocket.

I also sold about $2.5k directly to my own list, which had only 70-something people on it.

So in total, I made about $6k.

Not bad for something I’m doing part time. (Daily emails take less than 10 hours per week. Putting together the offer took about 20 hours over a few weeks.)

By the way, $6k is enough to pay my rent for a few months.

Which means the promise of the “Daily Email House” is true.

At least for the next few months.

And it’ll probably stay true for as long as I keep emailing my list and making offers, which I plan to do.

I’m writing this post to thank John for a few things, on top of being my first and only affiliate.

1. He convinced me to start my list

It was John’s insistence, through his daily emails, that finally made me start one.

And already, that tiny list has paid my rent for a few months.

It also got me a job offer.

(I said no because I’m not interested in getting a job, but it’s still proof that daily emails create opportunities you wouldn’t have otherwise.)

And I’m pretty sure that when I have time to offer consulting and mentoring again, I’ll have people interested in those too.

2. He made me charge more

Initially, I wanted to sell my offer for $47 or less.

This was despite people who had seen it telling me it was worth thousands of dollars.

And John insisted I should charge more.

Eventually, I settled on $297, which I think is a sweet spot for courses/tools.

Had I sold my offer for $47, the launch would have made me a fraction of what it did.

3. He gave me an affiliate case study

After this launch, I can now approach other potential affiliates and say:

“John Bejakovic promoted this offer to his list and generated $7.5k in sales.”

That’s a hell of a lot stronger than “wanna promote my course?”

So thank you, John.

For the affiliate sales, obviously.

But even more for repeatedly telling people to start a list, email it every day, make offers, and charge enough for what they sell.

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A few things I’d like to highlight:

1. Vasilis has a list of 70 people, and yet he made $2.5k from his list directly during this launch. That’s $35 per subscriber. Those numbers won’t stay that high as his list grows but… damn.

2. He hadn’t been mailing for years before making this offer, but less than two months.

3. He basically packaged up a bit of his own daily work process, put that into a shiny box, slapped a sexy name on it, and sold it.

If you have an email list of marketers or copywriters and you want to promote Vasilis’s offer, you can write him at vasilis@thecopynerd.com. He says he’s planning to relaunch his Million Dollar Hook Machine sometime this month.

And if you have valuable skills and a work process that you could package up into an offer, and a list, however small, then write me at john@bejakovic.com. I’d like to help you have a dramatically more successful offer launch, and maybe even promote your offer myself to my list.