Consumption

The structure of a $995 course that sells itself

by

Yesterday was the first day of a new course I’m taking, “Ultraspeaking Fundamentals L1.”

It’s a cohort-based course, delivered live over Zoom, which gets you better with public speaking in 15 sessions over 5 weeks, 3 to a week.

There are two parallel cohorts. I’m in cohort 34A, which has over 50 people inside. I’m guessing the other cohort has similar numbers.

The price tag for this course is $995. If you assume 100 students for the 5 weeks, that’s $100k in revenue, I’m guessing 95% of which is profit.

Sounds like a pretty nice education business. And if you ask me, it all comes down to the unique way it’s organized and run:

1. After a bit of waffling up front by a team of two coaches — really previous students who are probably getting paid something, but not much — the 50+ attendees are broken up into small “pods” of 3 participants each.

2. The pod members self-organize so one of the participants becomes a “pod leader.” The pod leader basically shares on his or her screen the day’s instructions from the Ultraspeaking course area, keeps time, and hits play on a couple of videos that walk through key concepts.

3. The pod members then take turns playing little games that build up core public speaking skills.

For example, yesterday mainly consisted of “rapid fire analogies”:

You get a sequence of randomly generated analogies — “a bicycle is like ice cream because…” — and you have a few seconds to both read out the prompt and to complete the analogy in some way before the new prompt pops up.

The point is not to come up with a clever analogy (“because they make childhood sweet?”) but to develop the core speaking skill of staying in character, and to authoritatively say whatever stupid thing you have to say (“because they both have wheels”) so that it looks like you know what you’re talking about, even if you don’t.

4. The two coaches who waffled at the start roam around the pods and offer occasional “expert” feedback.

5. But really, this entire experience is largely prerecorded, almost entirely student-run, and from what I can tell so far, fantastic.

I’m sharing this with you in case you also sell information, or rather, transformation.

The fact is, regardless of how good the information you sell is, it’s 100% useless unless your students put it into practice in some form.

If on the other hand you’re looking to sell transformation, it makes sense to think about how to bake that into your product. As Ultraspeaking shows, this doesn’t have to spend a ton of your money or time to make this happen. But it’s not just about making the course more transformative.

In my case, after I heard how Ultraspeaking was organized, it was a very easy sell, even at that $995 price tag. Also, I imagine most of the 100+ people who are going through it with me right now will be very happy with the investment, and will go on to proselytize for the company.

Compare that with a $995 pure information course, which typically takes a lot of selling, both before and after, and which even so the majority of buyers will not complete or do anything with, and will only think back on with a mixture of guilt and regret, regardless of how good the info inside is.

That’s something to think about, again, if you sell information or transformation.

In entirely related news:

My offer for you today is Most Valuable Email, about an email copywriting trick that is not stories… not personal reveals… not controversy… not conflict… not contrarian points of view.

Instead, the Most Valuable Email trick is something entirely different, something that I would do from here til doomsday, every day, if the email marketing gods forced me to use just one kind of email without ever changing.

Part of Most Valuable Email is a set of Most Valuable Email Riddles in the end of the course, in which I give you a prompt, invite you to apply the Most Valuable Email trick, and then compare your answer to an answer I provide.

That set of riddles is a bit of experience and transformation that I baked into the course. But really, the whole point with Most Valuable Email is that the value of it is when you take the MVE trick and apply it to your own emails, every day, or every week, or however often you want to charm your audience and make yourself into a more valuable marketer.

As course creator and email marketer Rafa Casas wrote after going through Most Valuable Email the first time:

“Thanks for the course. It’s true that it can be read in an hour, but it needs more resting time and practice to get the full potential out of it. Which is a lot.”

If you’d like the full info on Most Valuable Email:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Dead for 34 months — now alive again

by

I’ll pay off that provocative subject line in a second. First, let me set it up so it has a chance to have an impact on you:

Two days ago, I was listening to a new episode of Dean Jackson’s “More Cheese, Less Whiskers” podcast.

Dean is a legend in the marketing space. In this episode, he was basically having a live consult with a real estate agent turned coach.

The real estate agent/coach runs an 6-week cohort program, helping other agents to get their first transaction. The program features the usual recorded content plus live weekly calls. About that, here’s what Dean said:

===

Part of the thing about a live cohort is that it’s kind of synchronous consumption, that they are there and they’re physically present, and it’s easier to consume than while they’re sitting and could be watching Netflix.

You know what I mean. That’s always going to be more — it’s easier when things are synchronous and scheduled to actually get them done, then even with the best of intentions, to get yourself to self-directedly take that kind of action.

===

This made my pointy Vulcan ears perk up.

Because it’s a bitter pill to swallow:

You can create a really great course, with all the info inside that people need to succeed, but most people who buy will simply never even get through the first lesson. Of those who do, most won’t get all the way through to the end of the last lesson.

That makes it hard to profit from the course.

Yes, there are creative ways to encourage people to consume courses all the way to the end, or to get value even while consuming only a tiny part of the course. I’ve used many such tricks in my own courses.

But the fact is, nothing really compares to simply changing the format and not selling a “course” at all, but instead selling a live experience, happening in real time, shared with other people. In other words, running a live cohort, like Dean is talking about.

I can speak to this from my experience selling my Copy Riddles program over the years.

When I started Copy Riddles, I ran it as a cohort 2-3 times a year.

The lessons were delivered daily by email, and were necessarily synchronous.

More importantly, I had live weekly calls. Those calls where an opportunity for Copy Riddles members to come together, to see me there and feel that this is happening live, and to ask questions.

Plus, I featured a weekly “Best Bullet” contest, which was both fun for participants and also reinforced that week’s course content by showing why some bullets work better than others.

Small wonder that a disproportionate number of enthusiastic testimonials and impressive case studies I’ve gotten for Copy Riddles have come from people who went through the program in those live cohort days.

I’ve been thinking about this over the past few weeks in the lead-up to the “Unannounced Bonus” promo I’m currently doing for Copy Riddles.

The offer I’m making during this promo is already the most valuable offer I’ve made for Copy Riddles. But I decided to pull out all the stops.

I haven’t run Copy Riddles as a live cohort program since September of 2022. That’s 34 months ago. (You see where this is going?)

I also won’t ever run Copy Riddles as a live cohort in the future.

But I will resurrect the live cohort and run it one last time as part of this “Unannounced Bonus” promo.

No, I won’t be delivering Copy Riddles via email again. It still remains a course in the course area, so you can easily access it now or in the future.

But I will be doing live weekly calls for Copy Riddles members.

These calls will be an opportunity to ask me questions about writing bullets, about copy in general, or really anything else, as long as it’s interesting.

They will also be an opportunity to submit your bullets for the weekly contest and win recognition and prizes.

Most importantly, these calls act as a reason to go through the course content now, to get a bit of motivation and accountability by being a part of a group of people who are all doing the same as you, and to make it easier for you to own those million-dollar copywriting skills this program can give you — and to own them in just the next few weeks, instead of never.

Of course, the live cohort is only part two of the offer for this “Unannounced Bonus” event.

Part one is free lifetime membership to Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine so you can get your daily direct marketing vitamin, the way A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga advises.

Lawrence only makes this lifetime membership offer available rarely. When he made it available last year, I paid $997 for it. But you can get it for free as part of this week’s promo event, which ends this Sunday at 12 midnight PST.

If you’d like to act before the deadline takes the matter out of your hands:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

P.S. If you’re already a Copy Riddles member, the Ad Money Machine lifetime membership applies to you too. So does the offer of joining for the live cohort — just write me and tell me that you want in so I know to add you.

And about going through Copy Riddles a second (or third) time, here’s copywriter Yago Bader Galarza, who joined a couple times in the live cohort days:

===

The course is amazing, I’ve completed it twice now, and I’d say the second time I learned even more than the first.

I think it’s super-valuable to go through it periodically, trying to do the exercises from different angles forces me to be more creative and I can really see my improvement from launch to launch. I would love to sign up a third time and continue to learn from it.

In a world where most courses are hard to consume (and I think almost every copywriter has a pile of unfinished courses) Copy Riddles is a breath of fresh air that I recommend to everyone I know all the time. So thanks for creating it and looking forward to doing it again.

===

A simple way to get course buyers to consume and profit from your info

by

Until tonight at 12 midnight PST, I’m promoting Kieran Drew’s new offer “Productize Your Knowledge.” Kieran’s launch of this offer will stretch into next week, but I am offering two extra bonuses only if you buy and send me your receipt by 12 midnight tonight.

For example, a long-term reader and customer named Ricky (not sure he wants me to share his last name) forwarded me his receipt last night and wrote:

===

I picked this up tonight. Thanks for offering it with some bonuses, I’m looking forward to the 3rd Conversion training (that’s the bonus that led me to pick you over others, FYI).

===

3rd Conversion is a training I put on last year, about how to get people not just to buy, but to consume and implement your info products. The goal is to take one-time buyers and turn them into people who actually profit from your info, so they get their money’s worth, and so they buy from you again.

All in all, 3rd Conversion features 19 techniques to encourage consumption and implementation. All 19 are “live” techniques, in the sense that I use them regularly myself.

Some of these techniques are involved, some are basic. But even the basic ones can make a big difference.

I’ll tell you a basic one right here, as a teaser. It’s simply to “re-sell” course buyers on the course, inside the course itself.

In other words, I continue the same kind of stuff, inside the course, that I did in my emails and on my sales page to get people to buy. For example, when new customers go inside the course area for 3rd Conversion, they actually see the following testimonials from previous customers:

“JOHN this was one of the best trainings I’ve been a part of. I cannot express how excited I’ve been and I’m already reworking my presentation’s overdue slide deck.”

— Jeffrey Thomas, in-house copywriter at MarketingProfs

“I just wanted to drop you a quick note to say how much I absolutely loved your live class. It was perfectly timed for me, especially since I’m putting out my own offer for a done-for-you course blueprint. Your presentation was not only engaging but also such a clever demonstration of your course content in action – I was taking mental notes the whole time! (And trying to resist writing everything down lol)”

— Antonet Vataj, owner of Ann Vee Marketing

“Finally got the chance to use what you taught in the 3rd Conversion training. And it went great. I did a workshop on influential and persuasive storytelling, and I modeled it according to what you taught. First time I’ve done a workshop and after sending the recording getting replies about how much people loved it.”

— Pete Reginella, email marketer and copywriter

The goal of this “re-selling” is to get new buyers once again excited about what they bought and intrigued about consuming it, as opposed to overwhelmed or disgusted by the task of watching a bunch of videos or reading a bunch of pages of how-to instruction.

I last sold 3rd Conversion for $197.

The other bonus I’m giving away until midnight tonight is my Most Valuable Postcard #1, about the most important number to focus on if you wanna have a successful business selling products or services or a mix of the two. Really, this is about more than a number — it’s about a philosophy that impacts everything you do, from how you get leads/traffic, to how you sell them, to what you deliver to them.

I last sold MVP1 for $100.

When you put those two bonuses together, you get a total of $297 of real-world bonuses, which happens to be the price that Kieran is selling his PYK for during the launch. (If you happen to already own both my 3rd Conversion and MVP1, but you get Kieran’s PYK through my link, then I will make sure you get another bonus bundle of equal or greater value.)

As for Productize Your Knowledge itself, Kieran does a thorough job explaining what it is on the sales page below. Two things I’d highlight:

1. This is not a collection of “secrets” about how to create a course. Rather, it’s a proven mechanism to take what you know or do already and turn it into an info product people want to buy.

2. If you buy during this launch, Productize Your Knowledge is an implementation group more than a course, because Kieran running an 8-week live bootcamp after the launch, where you get support, community, and accountability as you develop your info product.

For all the other details on Productize Your Knowledge, there’s the sales page below. Again, if you want my bonuses, read over this sales page, make up your mind, and forward me your receipt before 12 midnight PST tonight:

https://bejakovic.com/pyk

The fiction business

by

The last week or so, I’ve been spending a lot of time obsessively checking how my new book is doing on Amazon. This morning, in a bout of such checking, Amazon offered to show me its “Movers and Shakers: Our biggest gainers in sales rank over the past 24 hours. Updated frequently.”

This is something I had long wished for but didn’t know existed — a kind of first derivative of sales, what’s selling better lately, what’s moving up in the ranks quickly?

I checked the Kindle store. Unfortunately, there are just two pages of movers and shakers for the entire Kindle store, as opposed to movers and shakers across subcategories.

And what is moving and shaking in the Kindle store?

The same damn stuff as always.

Out of the 100 top movers and shakers, 99 are fiction books, mostly romance novels and literotica. Exactly one is a non-fiction book, Mark Manson’s Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, which, based on its promise alone, might as well be classified as fiction.

This made me think of something I heard Dan Kennedy say in one of his closed-door, multithousand-dollar, info marketing seminars. Said Dan:

===

Many people make the mistake of thinking we’re in the non fiction business. Big mistake. We’re in the fiction business. First of all, remember that most of your customers never do anything with most of what they buy from you, therefore, their experience is fictional, not non-fictional. [The small audience of top info marketers laughs, but Dan continues.] Laugh if you want. I’m being very serious. They’re having a fictional experience. They actually believe they’re doing something. they are not, but they think they are doing something.

===

If you sell information online, this is a very bitter pill to swallow, and in fact, it’s one that I keep refusing to swallow.

Which is dumb, because why argue against Dan Kennedy, who basically made everybody who has been successful in the info publishing business?

But I keep hoping and in fact working on getting people to not just buy my stuff, but to actually consume it, and ultimately, to put it to use and to benefit from it. It’s slow going, but it gives me hope and a goal to look forward to.

Anyways, as I say in the conclusion of my new 10 Commandments book, I hope you will apply the 10 principles I share in that book in your own business and personal life.

I’ve worked hard to make the book both interesting and practical, with new distinctions to help you actually get traction, putting to work good ideas that you may have heard of before but haven’t done anything with. Of course, you might also come across commandments that are entirely new to you. Put those to work as well.

And on that note, I’ve gotten a few more reviews after writing my dirge about having just one review a few days ago. Here’s a review from Maliha Mannan, who writes over at The Side Blogger:

===

As someone who makes an offer almost daily via email, it’s essential that people like me, and also buy from me. This book is full of ideas for doing just that. I read it too quickly, so I plan to read it again soon (it’s a tiny book but packed with curious ideas that you should take a minute to fully comprehend, appreciate, and implement). I see it becoming one of those books I read at least once a year. It’s that good!

===

In case you too would like to get a copy of my new non-fiction book:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

Cooling out course buyers

by

A reader named Tom (not sure he wants me to share his last name) replied to my email yesterday with a thoughtful comment that could make somebody good money:

===

I was reading today’s email about the customer who wanted the refund, and I started wondering if maybe there was a simple fix that could have saved you, him, and the people you were promoting for a lot of hassle.

Direct response teaches all these ways to build trust, harness momentum, overcome objections, frame value, reverse risk, etc, but I don’t see anywhere near as much focus on post-purchase persuasion – the buyer’s remorse mitigation bit where you tell them “you made a good decision – you weren’t duped.”

This is especially important for anything relatively high-ticket that needs a lot of persuasive leverage to get to over the line, and I think for those guys the hand holding and reassurance is not only more necessary, but probably has a lot of surplus value.

I think of it as “warming down” from a very emotionally charged, high-energy conversion ramp. As a copywriter you get so used to pushing the buttons and architecting the momentum that it’s easy to lose sight of what an emotionally and cognitively demanding experience the conversion process can be for the prospect (as in it uses emotional and cognitive resources, not that it’s high friction).

For me at least the takeaway is that the post-purchase excitation window is one of the most vulnerable and high-intensity moments of the entire arc, and that stepping in at that point (in the right way) can be one of the most valuable forms of nurture out there. By properly architecting a post-purchase nurture/wind down sequence, even for affiliate sales, you can 1. avoid refunds/months of avoidable back-and-forths 2) feel better about the sale (happy customers etc), 3. build trust, rapport and good will in a way that increases engagement, sales, and LTV of your list.

Anyway, I’m not sure I’m not stating the painfully obvious, but as I read today’s email that jumped out, and I thought I’d try and articulate it.

===

As you might or might not know, since I’ve only mentioned the fact about 14 million times, I’m about to publish a book about the commonalities between con men, pickup artists, copywriters, etc.

I bring this up 1) to build a bit more buzz about the book and 2) because Tom’s use of the term “warming down” to describe a process for avoiding a post-purchase blowup.

Con men, who have more skin in the game than most copywriters, particularly more than freelance copywriters who work on one-off projects, call this process “cooling out a mark.”

Con men know that when you get somebody’s money, there’s still work to be done, so that the mark doesn’t go to the police. Crazy thing is it can be done. A mark in a good con doesn’t go to the police because he doesn’t even realize he’s been conned.

I’m not advising you to fleece, scam, or con people. I am advising you to take common human psychology seriously.

Like Tom writes above, we — marketers, copywriters, online business owners — have all learned how to amp and rile people up emotionally, up to the point where a sale is made.

We might think that, since we sell good products, ones as advertised, a sale is really all we need to do. Once people are faced with the good product — ta da!

Except what you sell, good or bad, is secondary, while what your customer feels and perceives is primary.

Tom gives some good ideas for how to “cool out” your course buyers so they don’t end up regretting the emotional spike that led them to a purchase.

I’ll give you one more idea, which is simpler and more universal.

It’s simply to keep writing daily emails, in which you inevitably keep promoting the same offer in new ways.

Ongoing daily emails resell people on what they bought, encourage them to actually dip in and consume it and benefit from it, and show you’re not a con man who is simply presenting a sexy front so you can swipe people’s money and then run to the horse track to gamble it all away.

So this entire email is really for the people who already subscribe to my Daily Email Habit service. If you needed one more reason to write daily emails, or to benefit from Daily Email Habit, or to believe in me as somebody who is looking to help you, then you’ve got it.

And if you’re not a Daily Email Habit subscriber, but you can see the value of sending daily emails, then here’s how to do it more quickly and easily:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

“… which is really important yada yada”

by

Yesterday, I made available my 3rd Conversion training for 36 hours. It’s about how to get people to consume and implement your info product, so they actually get value out of it beyond just the thrill of a purchase, and so they tell others about you, and buy more stuff when you create it.

Today, I got a question about 3rd Conversion from a course creator:

===

I have just rewritten all my course slides and gearing up to rerecord them and to then release V2.

One of the things I’ve done is finish every lesson with a hook for the next lesson.

So something like “but what we haven’t covered is this and that which is really important yada yada. That’s what we’ll look at next, see you there.

Is this the sort of thing your training teaches? But many other tips like that?

===

I don’t wanna razz this course creator because what he describes is endemic, and I too have been guilty of it.

But if you care about creating long-term customers from one-time buyers, and you want people to consume your info product, and get value from it, it takes active thought and work.

Just piling up a bunch of solid info, and at the end of it effectively saying, “…and there’s more, and it’s really important yada yada,” is typically too little, too loose, too late.

That’s not to say that “handing people IOUs,” as I like to call it, is never a good idea. But:

1. There are better places to hand out IOUs than at the end of a lesson

2. There’s more important stuff to do at the end of a lesson than to hand out an IOU

I’ve only made 3rd Conversion available once before, as a live training last November. To the people who took me up on that training, I also gave a free bonus document that I called, “Encyclopedia of Consumption & Digestion, 1st edition.”

This “Encyclopedia” includes 19 techniques for encouraging consumption and digestion, along with descriptions and illustrations of each technique, some of which I went over during the live training, some of which I didn’t.

I can tell you that technique #14 talks specifically about giving out IOUs… while technique #17 and #19 are about more important stuff to do at the end of a lesson, at least if you want to encourage consumption and implementation.

If you’ve already gotten 3rd Conversion from me, you will find the “Encyclopedia of Consumption & Digestion, 1st edition” as a bonus in the course area.

And if you haven’t yet gotten 3rd Conversion, you still have a few hours to get it and the bonus “Encyclopedia of Consumption & Digestion,” until 12 midnight PST, tonight.

This will be the last email I send about it.

If you need some help making up your mind, here are a few comments I got from people who attended the 3rd Conversion training live.

#1. From Jeffrey Thomas, in-house copywriter at MarketingProfs:

“JOHN this was one of the best trainings I’ve been a part of. I cannot express how excited I’ve been and I’m already reworking my presentation’s overdue slide deck.”

#2. From Folarin Madehin, freelance copywriter:

“The 3rd Conversion call was great, John! But I already expected that going in. I know you said to look at the training as more than a checklist, but that’s what was most on my mind, lol. ‘Here’s a list of stuff I can check to make products more awesome!'”

#3. From Antonet Vataj, owner of Ann Vee Marketing:

“I just wanted to drop you a quick note to say how much I absolutely loved your live class. It was perfectly timed for me, especially since I’m putting out my own offer for a done-for-you course blueprint. Your presentation was not only engaging but also such a clever demonstration of your course content in action – I was taking mental notes the whole time! (And trying to resist writing everything down lol)”

#4. From Shakoor Chowdhury, digital marketer:

“I gotta also say the way you [a list of stuff I’ve done in the past to get people to consume my courses and trainings] makes you an effective teacher and I think there is a lot to be said about the way you teach compared to traditional schooling which teaches us nothing because there is no incentive to listen and no incentive to use it or use our own initiative to ’test ourselves’ like you have done…”

“I normally get bored easily, but you were able to keep my attention throughout the entire training with minimal distraction, mainly through [some of the techniques I used inside the actual 3rd Conversion training to encourage people to consume it]… perhaps the ’tiktok generation’ has some hope after all.”

#5. From Pete Reginella, email marketer and copywriter:

“Finally got the chance to use what you taught in the 3rd Conversion training. And it went great. I did a workshop on influential and persuasive storytelling, and I modeled it according to what you taught. First time I’ve done a workshop and after sending the recording getting replies about how much people loved it.”

If you’d like to get 3rd Conversion before it disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion

Don’t rely on copy for this

by

Yesterday, I got an interesting course creator question from Gasper Crepinsek. (For context, last week I promoted Gasper’s ChatGPT Mastery, which is delivered as a 30-day email-based course.) Gasper wrote:

===

How do you go about writing cliff hangers to the next email (that open curiosity loop)?

We already have a pretty high completion rate on the course but I want to make it even bigger. And this seems like a way that could potentially help.

===

This reminded me of a time I heard A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos during a Q&A. Somebody in the audience asked, “What kind of copy would you write to address the objection, “I need time to think about it?'”

Parris, who is as skilled and as knowledgeable a copywriter as there is, said he wouldn’t rely on copy to do this. Instead, he said he’d use the structure of the offer itself – a deadline, a limited number of spots, etc.

And so it is with my answer to Gasper’s question.

Gasper is ultimately how to tease content in a sexy way ie. how to write sales bullets.

I have an entire course about how to write sales bullets. It’s called Copy Riddles. It’s great. If you want to learn how to tease people so they pay you for the information you’re selling, then Copy Riddles is the way to go.

But when it comes to the much harder task of getting people to consume how-to info they’ve already paid for, or to complete a course, or to watch a training all the way through — and to actually get value out of it — then I wouldn’t rely on sales bullets, or on open loops, or on copy in general.

Instead, I’d rely on the structure of the course or info product itself.

I created on a training last year all about this.

It’s called 3rd Conversion, and it’s about turning one-time buyers into long-term customers by getting them to consume and digest your info products.

I’ve only offered 3rd Conversion once before, as a live training last November.

But if you like, can get your own copy of 3rd Conversion right now.

Taking a page from Parris’s book, there’s a deadline, tomorrow, Sunday at 12 midnight PST to act. After that, 3rd Conversion goes back into the vault to wait for the next four-planet alignment.

If you need some help making up your mind, here are a few comments I got from people who attended the 3rd Conversion training live.

#1. From Jeffrey Thomas, in-house copywriter at MarketingProfs:

“JOHN this was one of the best trainings I’ve been a part of. I cannot express how excited I’ve been and I’m already reworking my presentation’s overdue slide deck.”

#2. From Folarin Madehin, freelance copywriter:

“The 3rd Conversion call was great, John! But I already expected that going in. I know you said to look at the training as more than a checklist, but that’s what was most on my mind, lol. ‘Here’s a list of stuff I can check to make products more awesome!'”

#3. From Antonet Vataj, owner of Ann Vee Marketing:

“I just wanted to drop you a quick note to say how much I absolutely loved your live class. It was perfectly timed for me, especially since I’m putting out my own offer for a done-for-you course blueprint. Your presentation was not only engaging but also such a clever demonstration of your course content in action – I was taking mental notes the whole time! (And trying to resist writing everything down lol)”

#4. From Shakoor Chowdhury, digital marketer:

“I gotta also say the way you [a list of stuff I’ve done in the past to get people to consume my courses and trainings] makes you an effective teacher and I think there is a lot to be said about the way you teach compared to traditional schooling which teaches us nothing because there is no incentive to listen and no incentive to use it or use our own initiative to ’test ourselves’ like you have done…”

“I normally get bored easily, but you were able to keep my attention throughout the entire training with minimal distraction, mainly through [some of the techniques I used inside the actual 3rd Conversion training to encourage people to consume it]… perhaps the ’tiktok generation’ has some hope after all.”

#5. From Pete Reginella, email marketer and copywriter:

“Finally got the chance to use what you taught in the 3rd Conversion training. And it went great. I did a workshop on influential and persuasive storytelling, and I modeled it according to what you taught. First time I’ve done a workshop and after sending the recording getting replies about how much people loved it.”

If you’d like to get 3rd Conversion, before it disappears:

​https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion​

The Secrets Of Growing Up

by

I’m in my home town of Zagreb, Croatia, lying on the bed of my AirBnb as I write this.

A moment ago, I was looking around the room, determined to find something to write about. But what?

The strange ceramic crucifix on the wall, which looks like a starfish?

The mysterious unlit match on the ground?

The flowering white orchid by the window?

None of it was good enough.

So I got up off the bed and started rifling through a basket of tourist brochures and city maps in the corner of the room.

It turned out there were a bunch of old books in the basket as well. Among them was what I was looking for:

A 1996 gem called, “The Secrets Of Growing Up: Advice For Boys.”

The cover shows a manic- and aggressive-looking ruffian of about 14, pumping his fist in triumph.

I flipped through the book. A few section headings jumped out:

“What is petting really?”

“From the first tiny hairs to a real beard”

“Can muscles be sinful?”

I broke out in a light sweat, remembering the horror and awkwardness of my teenage years. These days, whenever I wish that I were younger again, I have to remind myself how bad things were back then.

But really, The Secrets Of Growing Up is such a quaint throwback.

There’s a section describing musical styles for boys to consider: techno (“the more BPM, the better”)… grunge (“the terms ‘punk’ and ‘grunge’ mean the same — garbage”)… and hip hop (“the rapper pays much attention to his artfully rhymed texts”).

I guess The Secrets of Growing Up was a useful book in its time?

It must have been. It was published in German originally, then translated to a bunch of different languages and republished in countries across Europe, including Croatia.

But who would possibly need or want or buy such a book today?

There was a time when there were real secrets, or at least taboo topics. Access to information was limited, scattered, restricted.

That’s not true any more.

Over the past few decades, and culminating today with Perplexity and ChatGPT, whatever you want to know or do, you have the information available instantly, for free, wherever you are.

But will you actually bother to seek out the information?

Will you actually consume it when it’s served up to you?

And most of all, will you act on it, and benefit from it?

I’m telling you this in case you KNOW how to write marketing emails… and if you already KNOW the value of doing so.

If that’s the case, do you need another email copywriting equivalent of “The Secrets Of Growing Up?”

My guess is no. And if you suspect I’m right, I’d like to point you to my Daily Email Habit service.

It’s not more information on how to write emails.

In the words of marketing agency owner Eric Mann, who signed up for daily email habit a few weeks ago:

===

Thanks for the DEH – without it and the fear of missing out on getting one more day in a row – I’m sure I wouldn’t be doing this at all.

The content isn’t nearly as difficult as I imagined, I assume because I read so many daily emails from so many great copywriters like you and Ben and Daniel T, etc, it almost feels second nature to me now…

It’s the discipline of writing when you don’t have something dripping from your pen – that’s what the DEH solves for me! Thanks again!! 🙂

===

If you’d like to find out more about Daily Email Habit, and get writing for real, today:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

How to use an involvement device to win customers for the long term

by

Yesterday, I got on three calls with three people who expressed interest in my new daily email prompts service.

The last of these three calls was with a media buyer named Sean (not sure he wants me to share his last name), who works at an agency in Colorado.

Sean has bought pretty much every training and course I’ve put out, starting with Copy Riddles back in 2021.

As were getting started with the call, Sean explained how it started:

===

What I really liked about Copy Riddles was that little involvement piece where you have to read the source material and come up with your own bullet that’s close to what the copywriter came up with.

And that involvement advice kept me going through the entire course. It’s probably the coolest course that I’ve done in terms of copywriting. I’ve been dabbling in the copywriting space for 20 years, since I was 15.

===

You can do something like this as well.

Instead of just giving people information, add in an involvement device. In other words, give your customers some sort of safe opportunity to actively practice, not just consume.

The reason to go to this trouble is because your customers will end up going through what you sell them, and will get more out of it as a result.

That’s good for them, and it’s good for you. By my entirely made-up math, an involvement device makes it an estimated 13.471x times more likely customers will buy something from you again. And I think Sean’s custom with my little online business is a good example of that.

If you have Copy Riddles, you know how the involvement device in that program works. And if you don’t have Copy Riddles yet:

I’ve never done a Black Friday promotion, and I won’t be changing that this year.

But I will have a “White Tuesday” special offer on Copy Riddles, starting tomorrow and lasting through Tuesday November 12.

Why White Tuesday?

I just thought it was a funny-sounding zag to everybody’s constant zigging with “Black Friday.”

I did try to find some kind of historical event to tie White Tuesday into… but I only came upon a decree from November 12, 1938, in Nazi Germany, excluding Jews from participating in the economy.

This is most definitely NOT the kind of White Tuesday I have in mind.

Instead, I just mean this event to be a fun, little, completely Nazi-free promo, hopefully with an irresistible offer to get you to try Copy Riddles if have been curious about it but have not jumped in yet. But more on all that tomorrow.

No response

by

Here’s an idea that I’ve found to be true:

If you do a good job getting people to consume and digest your content all the way through, it’s much easier to get great testimonials, ones you can actually feature because they say something substantive, and because they have a real shot of converting others as well.

I bring this up because last night, a copywriter named Pete, who’s been on my list for a while and who has already bought a few of my previous offers, signed up for my 3rd Conversion training, all about consumption and digestion.

When I asked Pete why, and what he’s hoping to get from the training, he replied:

===

Reason I joined is, because I’ve done a few workshops in the past few months that I’ve repurposed as content to sell.

Some people bought, but when I send emails to them to get feedback I get no response.

Which I’m assuming is because they haven’t gone through it.

If they thought it sucked, I’m certain I would hear about it. As negative people usually have something to say lol

===

I’m not sure if people who think an offer sucked usually have something to say about it. I know I like to keep my mouth shut and just go elsewhere.

I’m not saying that’s what happened in Pete’s case, and there’s no reason to think so based on his message.

But I do know what I told you above:

If you do a good job getting people to consume and digest your content, it becomes much easier to get great testimonials, or at least feedback and response of some sort.

And as an example of that, I can tell you that last month, Pete bought my Most Valuable Emails and the stripped-down version of Simple Money Emails. When I wrote to him to deliver the courses, he replied:

===

I stayed up last night to binge read everything in MVE…

And all I have to say is, you’re not charging enough, dude.

After going through Copy Riddles and now MVE, and I’ll likely do the same with SME…

Everything you sell is solid.

Always grateful when I see one of your emails roll in.

===

Today, I’m not selling either Copy Riddles or MVE or SME, though of course if you’d like to give me money for those, you can.

Today, I’m simply trying to tell you it’s the last day to sign up for the 3rd Conversion training.

On the training, I will cover a small number of techniques, ones I’ve used and ones I’ve had used on me, to get people to actually go through your paid courses and ebooks and programs, ideally to the end.

I’m only charging $100 for this training. It’s probably not enough, but I’m doing it because frankly I want to organize this knowledge in my own head.

Doing it live, in front of an audience of people who are genuinely interested and can profit from it, is a good motivator for me.

In other words, money and sales are not main reason why I’m putting this training on.

That said, money and sales can be the main reason why you might want to join me on this training.

Everything in your business — from your ads to your emails to your sales pages (hello testimonials) — becomes much easier if people get value from what you deliver.

And in order for them to have any chance of getting value from what you deliver — beyond just the thrill of spending money on something — they have to consume and digest what you’re selling them.

The deadline to sign up for the 3rd Conversion training is tonight, Wednesday, at 12 midnight PST.

The training itself will happen on Zoom tomorrow, Thursday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. There will be a recording which I will send out after the call, though if you can make it live, you and I both are sure to benefit more from it.

If you’d like to get in before the doors close:

​https://bejakovic.com/3rd-conversion​