Email Marketing

Learning from hecklers and refunders

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Comedian Norm MacDonald once started a standup show when a heckler in the audience yelled out:

“Hey, you’re not very funny!”

The crowd, all of whom where there to see Norm, started booing the heckler. One guy yelled, “Toss the asshole out!”

Norm calmed the crowd down. “Now hold on,” he said. He wanted to understand what exactly happened. And he started talking to the heckler.

“So you go, ‘I’m gonna pay money to go see this dude…’ I want to understand what exactly happened. At some point in your life, you thought I was funny.”

The past couple days, I promoted Andrew Kap’s book, 3 Words I Used To Sell 100,000 Books. I even gave away a couple free bonuses to people who bought that book.

A lot of people took me up on the offer. They wrote in to say thanks for turning them on to Andrew’s book, and to ask for the bonuses I had promised.

Among all these people was one guy who first wrote me with proof of buying the book and then, before I could reply with the bonuses, wrote me a second message to say:

===

I gave back the title, I’m sorry. Didn’t really apply to me. Don’t want to scam you for the bonuses.

Sorry, really like your stuff though.

===

It’s standard daily email operating procedure to shame people who refund stuff or who say they can’t get value out of a valuable offer. It’s even common to toss them off your list.

But I thought, good on this guy for realizing eventually this doesn’t apply to him… and even more so for having the decency to write me and say so.

Still, just like Norm, I told myself, I want to understand what exactly happened here.

My email went out at 8:34pm.

My reader read my email and got excited. He bought the book immediately. By 9:00pm, he got the confirmation email from Amazon, forwarded it to me, and asked for the bonuses. Even though, as he realized over the next few minutes, this book or the bonuses or the promises didn’t really apply to him.

How exactly does this happen?

Clearly, the promo nature of my email had something to do with it. The deadline… the disappearing bonuses… the exciting, opportunity-like promises of it all.

But here’s the point, the message from this email:

Those things — deadlines, bonuses, exciting promises — are rooms in the house of persuasion. The house itself is built on a foundation. And that foundation is either stable and strong, or shifting and weak.

The foundation is trust. In my case, trust built up by daily emailing.

That’s how people find out in the first place about offers I create and deadlines I set. That’s how they get excited about the disappearing bonuses I announce and exciting promises I make.

Getting people to trust you like this is nothing mysterious or difficult.

It’s just a matter of consistency.

Like I said, in my case, that’s via daily emails. For years now. And though my offers change, and daily email topics change, and even my own attitudes change, there’s still some consistent core that people can rely on and trust.

You can do the same.

The longer you do it, the better. But it doesn’t have to take years to build up trust. It can be done in months, weeks, days, or sometimes even hours, if you say the right things.

But it all starts with saying something, and then doing so again, in some regular, consistent way.

My introductory offer — the least expensive course I offer — is an introduction to writing daily emails, called Simple Money Emails.

I’ve used the techniques in this course to write quick emails for clients that made lots of money.

But more importantly, I’ve used them for myself to create long-running relationships that lead to trust, engagement, and urgent sales like the above.

If you’d like to find out how you can do something similar, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Daily bloodletting

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Bloodletting used to be standard medical practice. Today, bloodletting might sound stupid or even barbaric, but way back when, it really seems to have helped people.

Here’s a passage about an army captain who experienced some insult that made him so furious that his friends couldn’t make sense of what he was saying:

“The regimental doctor, when he came, said it was absolutely necessary to bleed Denisov. A deep saucer of black blood was taken from his hairy arm and only then was he able to relate what had happened to him.”

That passage is from War and Peace, by Russian count Leo Tolstoy.

​​Between 1902 and 1906, Tolstoy was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times but never won once.

Somebody who did win the Nobel Prize is American journalist Ernest Hemingway.

​​Hemingway wrote many things, but he never wrote the following passage, which is often attributed to him:

“It is easy to write. Just sit in front of your typewriter, open a vein, and bleed.”

That quote is probably attributed to Hemingway so often because he was famous and because in the end he killed himself. Hemingway’s life and death go well with the sentiment that writing is hard, draining, even destructive to the writer.

But I would like to give you that other perspective on that passage, the medical bloodletting perspective.

Each day, before I write my daily email, I’m filled with a mess of ideas, emotions, reactions, and confused plans. I’m also restless because I feel I haven’t accomplished the one thing I set myself as a task for absolutely every day.

After I write my daily email, I function more normally. People can understand me better if I talk, I can make some kind of plans about the future, and I feel the satisfaction of having accomplished something concrete that day.

In other words, daily emailing has the benefits of medical bloodletting, or maybe journaling.

Except daily emailing also has the added benefits of building up an audience… producing content that can be repurposed for books, podcasts appearances, or courses… and of course, driving readers to sales or other types of actions.

Speaking of which:

In a few days’ time, I will host a free training.

The training will cover how I write and profit from this newsletter that you are reading now.

It will happen on Monday January 22, 2024 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. But you will have to be signed up to my list first. Click here to do so.

Followup on the zero-handclap unsubscriber

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Yesterday, I wrote an email about a zero-handclap unsubscriber. This was a guy who unsubscribed from my list, and as the “reason why” he wrote that my emails are boring.

Rather than muttering in private that my emails are so not boring — so not! — I featured this guy’s comment publicly in an email. And then I turned it around in some way to sell my Simple Money Emails course.

​​To which I got a bunch of single-handclap responses. Here’s a sampler:

#1: “Funny because when you sent out that email yesterday about managing clients’ mailing lists I reflected that you would be the exact person I’d turn to if/when I have a mailing list. Your emails are very smart and very well written while also managing to seem understated.”

#2: “I’m enjoying these stories (and the clever way you turn them toward highlighting your offerings). I can see why Kieran Drew thinks so highly of you!”

#3: “What a great transition :)”

#4: “Lol. Really enjoyed this one. Also, SME is excellent.”

#5: “‘Zero-handclap’ made me LOL :-)”

Nice right? But wait, there’s more.

I’m sharing these nice replies with you for two reasons.

Reason one is that I also got a reply from a successful marketer, who has given me many good tips before. He wrote that he had once interviewed a super-successful speaker who shared her secret with him. She told him:

​​”Always write and talk about Positive Topics and people. Let the negative stuff drag competitors down.”

I’m sure this is solid advice, which will never lead you wrong.

At the same time, I have found that sharing frustrations, doubts, and even occasional outrage not only entertains people, but can create greater trust over time.

But you probably knew that. After all, this is the century of being told to be authentic and vulnerable.

That’s why I’ve got a second and much more important reason I shared the replies above with you. But one reason per day is all you get, so I’ll tell you this second reason tomorrow. You’ll want to be there — I’ll make it worth your while.

Meanwhile, if you enjoyed yesterday’s email, or today’s email, or are wondering what might be coming tomorrow, then I can recommend my Simple Money Emails course. It will show you how to write simple emails like this that keep readers reading, and that make sales in the process.

Plus, like my reader above wrote, “SME is excellent.” If you’d like to find out more about it:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Unsexy, neglected, mistreated email lists

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Yesterday I was listening to a Dan Kennedy seminar where Dan says, in his typically tactful fashion:

===

There is no magazine out there — you can check the newsstand — there is no magazine called, Wives In Sweatpants and Sneakers.

There’s all sorts of unimaginable fetishes. But that is not one of them. There’s just not a lot of interest in that.

That’s their business.

===

Dan’s point is that what business owners have gotten used to, they no longer find exciting. It also means they also don’t notice the bad stuff any more.

The past week, I was promoting a done-for-you newsletter service.

I figured no qualified leads would respond, since I write so much about email marketing and making money from email. If there’s one thing I’m known for, it’s probably that.

Surely, business owners who manage to track down my email list — in spite of my best efforts to hide it — surely such business owners also think email marketing is sexy and are already doing sophisticated email stuff in their own businesses.

I was wrong.

I got readers reaching out to me who have large, successful businesses.

Some of them have email lists of tens of thousands of people, made up of customers, who have never been mailed.

Others send out an email here and there… make good money each time they send out that lonesome email… and don’t think or know to do it more often.

And one person, who wasn’t replying to the done-for-you newsletter service, but who did take me up on the Newsletter Consult I did last month, followed up yesterday to say:

===

Thought I’d follow up after our recent discussion, which was much appreciated.

So went ahead and ran a one-month birthday sale for a 2-YR subscription at a $1K discount. Don’t think we have done a sale in 5 years, nor one for a 2 year sub duration.

With 4 days yet to run, we have so far generated $18K in sales with 4 people subscribing for the 2-YR plan and 1 other taking up a (full priced) annual sub.

Not bad considering I only mentioned it as a PS in the twice a week email alerts, plus December is historically a slow month for sales here. This has been our best December to date!

I plan to send two more such alerts this week and have been pondering what to write in case we might be able to tip one more cheerful soul over the edge.

===

The results above are clearly not common.

The person who wrote me offers a yearly subscription costing multiple thousands of dollars… has lots of credibility built up over a long time… and can now make an extra $18k with an “oh by the way” casual throwaway in a PS, after a 5-year promo hiatus.

But uncommon details aside, the point still stands:

You might have that beautiful email list, wearing sweatpants and sneakers around you. Maybe you’ve been looking at it for years, and maybe you’ve stopped appreciating how just how sexy it really can be.

I figure that’s as much my fault as yours.

Clearly, I’m not doing a good job putting forward offers to help you get more value out of your email list.

I’ll work on fixing that in 2024.

Meanwhile, it’s mid-December. It’s almost the holiday season. Who the hell wants to work?

I do. So I have a quick, band-aid offer for you right now:

If you have a business and are making sales… if you have an email list and have been neglecting and mistreating it for too long… then I offer you my 1-hour “Extreme Makeover For Email Lists” session.

One hour, to hear what your business is about, who your customers are, what you offer them, how you currently mail them.

I will then tell you the quickest and easiest buttons to push to make money from your list, in the future as well as now. Maybe I can even help you pull out some thousands of dollars from your email list by the end of this month.

I’m limiting this offer to three people, the first three qualified people who reply.

Price is $300.

I will not be offering this again, at least not at this price.

In case you are interested, hit reply, tell me who you are, and I can send you the payment link.

Advanced email copywriting tricks for sale soon

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This week I’m promoting my Influential Emails training. This training is something I’ve made available only once before, live, back in 2021, the Year of the Ox.

But starting next Thursday, and lasting at most until next Sunday, I will make Influential Emails available once again.

Over the y​​ears, by keeping track of when and why I’ve bought from other people’s via email, I discovered it makes good sense to send out regular emails telling your audience what exactly it is you are selling, without any frills, funniness, or flippancy.

​​So here’s whats inside Influential Emails:

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1. The recordings of the three Influential Emails live calls, which all lasted around 2 hours.

2. Edited transcripts of all the calls, in case would rather read than listen to me talk.

3. Call 1 covers 5+ of my advanced email copywriting tricks, including the “Five Fingers” storytelling strategy, S. Morgenstern transitions, and the “Sophisticated Slapstick” structure that makes trivial or even silly things sound funny or profound.

4. Call 2 breaks down four emails I wrote to this list, shows you how I wrote them from snout to tail, and highlights the techniques from Call 1 in action. This second call also includes a lighting-round training, 15 Unique Things I Do To come Up With Ideas and Create Content.

5. Call 3 includes brutal and merciless copy critiques of a dozen emails I got from attendees of the original Influential Emails training. You see what I thought was good in these emails, and more importantly, what I would change to make each email more effective for 1) making sales and 2) being more influential/interesting/memorable.

6. There are also two bonuses. The first is “Mystery Screenwriting Insights For Copywriters.” The core of this is a special, never-produced screenplay from my favorite screenwriter, William Goldman, overlaid with my analysis of the writing tricks Goldman used, and how copywriters can apply the same.

7. The second bonus is “My 12/4 Most Influential Emails.” This is a micro swipe file, including 12 of my most influential emails, along with the background of why and how each email ended up influential. Plus, I’ll give you the four more emails, written by mysterious others, which had the biggest influence on me.

Over the coming days, I will have more to say about Influential Emails, specifically who it’s possibly for and who it’s definitely not for.

If you do decide you want to get Influential Emails, you will have to get on the waiting list. And in order to get on the waiting list, you will first have to get on the list to get my daily emails. Click here to do so now.

I stand accused of pulling the prat-out on a reader

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A few months ago, I wrote an email about the “prat out,” a technique used by con men to get their marks salivating and eager for larceny.

​​I sent that email out and then also put it on my bare-bones, zero-images, black-and-white website. And I forgot all about it.

Until this morning that is, when I got the following message from a new reader, who wrote:

===

Im now about six years into designing and developing websites.

Your website just fucked my mind.

I was reading a book by Iceberg Slim, he talked about the prat out.

I had no idea wtf that was and found your article.

After reading, i realized that you just pulled the prat-out on me and I’m now much more ready to give you my money. You sneaky fucker.

But i forgive you because you just taught me how much can be done with just words.

I haven’t left your website for an hour. I’m fascinated by what you do with just words. Nothing else is needed. The words create the colors, images and shapes in my head.

As a designer, its blowing my mind how much can be done with words alone and it has opened my mind to all kinds of new possibilities.

Thank you man.

===

No, thank you, kind anonymous reader who wrote in with a testimonial.

I bring this up 1) to feature a flattering testimonial and to encourage more of the same from other readers, and 2) to explain why I have not really been selling much of anything over the past couple weeks.

There are multiple reasons actually.

One is that I made enough money for my modest standards very early this month, thanks to the affiliate promo that Kieran Drew did of my Simple Money Emails course, and the new readers who came in the wake of that promo.

Another reason is that I have found that most of my sales do come via promotion events, whether that be a new launch, or me promoting an affiliate offer for a limited time, or somebody else promoting my offers for a limited time.

So one lesson I’ve learned is to regularly have such events if I hope to keep paying for rent and my daily supply of lentils and canned sardines.

At the same time, I’ve learned to cut myself some slack, and not force myself to shoehorn every daily email into a promotion of one of my existing offers.

​​Linking to something like an Amazon book (yesterday) or simply inviting a response (Sunday) keeps more of my readers reading to the end, and makes it more interesting for me since I can write about a broader set of stuff.

So in case you were curious why I’m linking to random stuff recently, now you know.

That said, it is important to remind readers of my offers from time to time so they can’t use the excuse, “Oh I didn’t even know!” to not buy.

And today, following a testimonial in which a reader says I pulled the prat-out on him, is a particularly good time to remind you of my best selling course, in terms of copies sold at least.

In case you’re curious, you can find out all about it here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Take your likes to the bank

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A couple days ago, I sent an email about an email trick to get more engagement. To which, I got a response — an engagement!

The response came from Jakub Červenka, who runs an info publishing business in the men’s sexual health niche.

First, Jakub just replied to tell me he liked that email about engagement. Then we got into a bit of an email conversation. Then he told me about the trouble he was having with his Facebook ad agency.

And then he wrote:

===

So I learnt I am decent marketer and cannot let go of this part in my company.

Also, started writing daily emails again recently and looking at the mails I am writing now and I did year ago… it is as if 2 different people wrote them and that makes me happy.

And this is the main reason I am writing this to you, John, I think me improving so much is lot thanks to you. Yours is the only newsletter that I read almost daily and is amongst the 3 that survived my brutal opt-out-from everything. I don’t mean this to sound bad, I bought your Copy Riddles, Most Valuable email, your 2 pump-postcard newsletter and your latest Sales emails training.

I like all your courses, a lot, probably best spend money in copywriting courses, but still I think I learn most from your daily emails – probably due to the fact that it does not seem like I am working, I enjoy reading your stuff and it is small bites daily.

Keep up the good work,

Your grateful student and zealous reader,

Jakub

===

I once had a reader write in to tell me he always skips the quoted parts of my emails, the parts in italics that start with ===.

In case you also skipped what Jakub wrote, I can tell you it was a testimonial, with good things to say about my courses and in particularly about these emails.

And here’s something I’ve noticed about getting nice testimonials like this:

It rarely happens that somebody writes in just because they want to tell me how great they think one of my courses is, or how great I am.

Yes, it does happen from time to time. But it’s kind of like finding a Black Lotus in hundreds and hundreds of packs of Magic The Gathering cards — valuable yes, but also rare.

A little more common is when I explicitly ask for feedback on a course or training, and offer an incentive to reply.

People then reply in a pack. But even then, it’s not an overwhelming number of responses, and not everything I get is a great testimonial I can feature.

Really, the bulk of the good testimonials I’ve gotten, and that I’ve featured in emails and on sales pages, came like Jakub’s message above.

They came as an “oh by the way” that people tacked on when replying to one of my emails that had to do with an entirely unrelated matter. It’s been a steady drip-drip over the years that’s eventually filled up several buckets.

It’s popular to say in the direct response world that only sales mean anything, and that you can’t take your likes to the bank.

Except you kind of can.

True, a great testimonial like Jakub’s above is not cash. I can’t go and buy cans of beans and bags of rice with it today.

But a good testimonial is like a check, and eventually it will clear. Somebody somewhere will eventually be converted into a new and loyal customer because of testimonials like Jakub’s above. We all look to others when making our own decisions.

So my point is, if you work to increase engagement with your emails, you will get more testimonials, and you will be able to take those to the bank, in time.

Of course, for that to happen you do have to feature your testimonials so people can see them.

Sales pages are one place.

But really, emails are the main place, because emails are kind of the headlines for your sales pages.

Which brings me to the my latest Sales emails training, as Jakub put it, aka my Simple Money Emails course.

I’m probably giving away too much in these emails and I’m probably killing some sales for my courses like Simple Money Emails.

Maybe I will fix that in time.

For now, if you want to see how I’ve used emails to make (up to) tens of thousands of dollars in sales per day, and still kept readers coming back tomorrow, then Simple Money Emails will show you, and will show you how you can do it too. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

I was wrong yesterday, and I will do it again

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Yesterday, I talked to the self-proclaimed dinosaur of direct marketing, Brian Kurtz, about doing a presentation to his Titans XL mastermind.

Brian and I agreed that I’d give a talk to his group some time early next year. The topic will be… email, of course, but more specifically, engagement in email.

(I’ve been told by various people that I should take all the different tricks I use to tease out and engage my readers and put them together into a training. So that’s what I will do in front of Brian’s group.)

This morning, as I was standing in the shower, pretty much the entire presentation came together in my head.

I carefully stepped out of the shower, toweled myself off not very well, and tiptoed to a notebook to write all the ideas down.

I won’t share the whole thing here — you’ll have to be there in Brian’s Titans group when I give it live.

But I will tell you one way I spark and kindle engagement.

It’s something you can do today. It’s something that might not come naturally to you, but that you can force in the interest of creating more interesting content.

And that’s to be wrong.

The more often you are wrong, the more engagement you will get.

For example, yesterday I wrote an email about “The most famous copywriter, real or fictional.”

I did so knowing that, whoever I named, I would be certain to omit others. And I got replies telling me so:

#1: “The world famous rapper Lil Dicky (Dave Burd) was also working as a copywriter before he became a rapper. He even has an episode about it in his HBO show Dave.”

#2: “Elmore Leonard also has copywriting background. His novels are amazing.”

#3: “Salman Rushdie – 8.34 million results :)”

#4: “Did you know that Chandler also becomes a copywriter in season 9 of Friends?”

I did not know. Any of that. But now I know.

You might say these replies aren’t pointing out that I’m wrong. And you might be right.

The replies above are all helpful, playful, looking to complete my incomplete message from yesterday.

But I still say the same underlying psychology of correcting somebody who’s wrong applies.

​​In fact, I insist on it.

And if you don’t agree with me, then you can always hit reply and tell me so.

Meanwhile, you might like my Most Valuable Email course. Why? Because it’s most valuable.

I know a thing or two thousand about writing daily emails. That’s one of the reasons I can go in front of an experienced group like Brian’s Titans mastermind and still tell them something new.

And one thing I know is that my Most Valuable Email tricks produces emails that I personally find most fun to write. And maybe most fun for readers to read.

​​​If that turns you on, here’s how you can start writing your own Most Fun Emails in an hour from now:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Hotel Octavia Campo: New room available

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This morning, I rolled out of the creaky hotel bed and stumbled across the dusty, cavernous old hotel room, past the sink, to the small table in the corner, which barely held my typewriter.

Suddenly, somebody started rapping on the door.

“Open up! Open up right now!”

I opened the door to find Octavia Campo, the wife of the hotel owner.

“If I told you once,” she said as she pushed her way past me, “I told you a thousand times!”

I rubbed my face and took a deep breath. “Good morning, Octavia.”

“Don’t good morning me,” she barked. “All night long, clack-clack-clack from your room. All my other guests are complaining! I told you a thousand times! This is a residential hotel! No typewriters! No work allowed here!”

I reached for my Tommy Bahama shirt. And then I walked over to my typewriter, and started to fit it in its carrying case.

Octavia Campo kept railing. “While you’re staying in my hotel” — here she pointed at her chest — “you will not be making any money! This isn’t some brothel, some butcher shop! I only want respectable guests here, who come to sleep and that’s it!”

“I understand completely,” I said. “I’ll take my typewriter now. And I’ll send a boy later for my clothes.”

Octavia’s face got tomato-red. “Good!” she said. “And don’t come back! I don’t want your kind in my hotel! You don’t care how you ruin the reputations of others!”

And that’s pretty much how I checked out of Hotel Octavia Campo… and checked into the shiny and new Bedazzling Happiness Towers, down by the beach, where the guests are free to do what they like in their rooms, and the air is fresh.

Maybe you’re wondering what I’m on about. Well, about that:

Starting a week ago, I’ve been writing and sending my new, daily health newsletter. I’ve been writing and sending it from Hotel Octavia Campo — aka ActiveCampaign.

But then this morning, I got a note from ActiveCampaign telling me that my email from yesterday was not sent. Why? Because it contained an affiliate link.

The note I got from ActiveCampaign wasn’t as shrill as I tried to make Octavia Campo sound. It even offered suggestions for some workarounds.

But still, it was more than I was willing to tolerate.

So I spent about a half hour this morning to move my daily health newsletter to shiny and new Beehiiv, the platform I already use for my weekly health newsletter. I’m not really sure why I didn’t do this in the first place.

In time, I might even move this marketing newsletter over to Beehiiv, because I’m so fed up with ActiveCampaign, and so satisfied with Beehiiv — Bedazzling Happiness.

You might think I will promote Beehiiv at this point, using — gasp — an affiliate link.

But no, and not just because ActiveCampaign might throttle me for doing so.

Today I have a special, one-day, newsletter-related offer to celebrate my move to Bedazzling Happiness Towers.

As you might know, I’m planning to launch a newsletter-related community soon, all about how to publish, grow, and monetize a newsletter.

I haven’t decided exactly how that will look, what it will cost, and what it will include.

But I know it won’t be nearly as one-on-one and as generous as the following offer:

Today only, I’m offering a 1-hour consult at a price I would never offer it otherwise, $100.

This consult is for you if you already publish a newsletter, and want to grow it or monetize it better… or you do not yet publish a newsletter, and you want help in picking a niche, a concept, or a content strategy.

I am willing to sit with you, listen to you, answer your questions, offer my feedback and experience and advice, based on what I’ve learned writing this daily marketing newsletter over the past five years, my weekly health newsletter over the past year, and my daily health newsletter over the past week.

I want to help you succeed with your newsletter, or succeed more. I will share whatever information you can squeeze out of me in an hour, I won’t hold anything back, and I will give you my best ideas.

The only reason I am offering to do this, and at such a low price, is because 1) I’m in a good mood thanks to (at least partly) moving out of Hotel Octavia Campo, and 2) as research and prep for that newsletter community I’m planning.

Speaking of:

If you take me up on this 1-hour consult, I will also apply it to that future community, so you get one month of it for free.

Today’s offer won’t make me rich, and it will require me to work. So I’m limiting it to the first three people who take me up on it.

The cart link is below. If you send me the $100, we can then figure out a time to get on the call that works for both of us.

And if the link below isn’t working, that means three people already signed up, and I’ve turned this offer off.

So in case you’d like in, best move now and move fast:

https://desertkite.thrivecart.com/goodbye-octavia/

What’s wrong with affiliates?

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Story time:

10 years ago, my friend Sam and I naively decided to become Internet marketing millionaires.

Somehow we found Andre Chaperon’s Tiny Little Businesses course.

We rubbed our hands together, and envisioned that in six months’ time, we’d be sitting at the beach, drinking margaritas, occasionally leaning over to our laptops to see how many more thousands of dollars had rolled in over the past 15 minutes.

Andre’s TLB told us to pick a niche, find a product we could promote as an affiliate, then build a list using that affiliate product as the offer.

Sam and I followed this recipe to a T and beyond.

We spent weeks picking out the perfect niche (hard gainers, skinny guys who want to put on muscle but can’t).

We did market research to find out the pain points, motivations, and language used by our target market (it helped that both Sam and I were both in our target market, tall and hopelessly skinny).

We found the perfect affiliate offer to promote, a quality program, fairly expensive, with a good sales page. It would make it easy to pay for ads with even a few sales.

I had seen that the owners of this offer had previously worked with affiliates.

But when the time came to promote them, I couldn’t find the form on their site to sign up as an affiliate.

I wrote to the owners to ask about it. A reply came back:

“Thanks for the interest. But we’ve actually paused taking on new affiliates at the moment. It doesn’t really work for our business.”

First, there was a moment of shock. Then my blood pressure shot up.

I may or may not have fired back an email, explaining to this guy that he doesn’t know how business is done online… that this is free money that he’s saying no to… that a new customer is the most valuable thing a business could ever get, and that’s what I’m offering to bring him.

Very rightly and very wisely, the offer owner did not respond to my stupid email.

Those were the early days of my marketing career. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that a businesses would not want to sell offers (particularly info products, with no marginal cost) to somebody new, with no effort involved.

“What’s wrong with affiliates?” I asked myself. My newbie brain simply couldn’t handle it.

As you can guess, Sam and I never recovered from this setback. Our dreams of a drunken 4-hour workweek on the beach vanished like receding waves in the sand.

But that was a long time ago. I’ve learned a lot about marketing and online businesses since then. I’ve heard and seen many other successful marketers say they do not work with affiliates. And today, I can tell you…

I still don’t really get it.

I mean, what could possibly be wrong with affiliates? Why would anybody ever say no?

Over the past few months, I have had two affiliates promote my stuff.

Daniel Throssell promoted my Copy Riddles course back in September.

Right now, Kieran Drew is promoting Simple Money Emails.

During both promos, I rolled out of bed each morning to find thousands of dollars worth of new sales, dozens or hundreds of new subscribers, and somebody with standing in the industry going out of his way to say nice things about me and my products. Here’s a few bits from Kieran’s email yesterday:

===

SUBJECT: The best email writing course I’ve ever taken

B – E -J – A – K – O – V – I – C

The reason I’m shouting letters over Zoom like a Croatian spelling bee is because my friend asked for my favourite newsletters.

I always recommend this guy. People always sound skeptical. It’s not quite the standard Ben Settle or Justin Welsh you hear chucked around in our space.

But out of the hundreds of lists I’m lurking on, John Bejakovic’s emails glue me to the screen the most, and keep me coming back for more.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say he’s the best email copywriter you’ve probably never heard of.

[… Kieran goes on to explain the offer, course plus two free bonuses, and then he says:]

Yes, this is an affiliate link.

But I’ve taken his course 5 times in 5 months. It’s an hour read yet every time I come out noticeably better at copy. Few courses have that effect – which is why I’m promoting it.

===

Who would not want endorsements like this?

​​Aren’t affiliates just the greatest thing in the world?

But maybe you are wiser and more perceptive than I am.

“Kinda cherrypicking there, ain’t you John? Both Kieran and Daniel are pretty atypical cases.”

Maybe.

They do both have a list that they email regularly. They have both built a bond with that list, and authority and trust. And more.

They both cultivate discipline in their readers, rather than preaching the gospel of the 4-hour workweek. They both, explicitly or implicitly, repel people who aren’t down with their message.

In short, both Kieran and Daniel have spent time building up a quality list and emailing themselves into a healthy, respect-filled relationship with that list. And now I get to benefit from it.

I’m not sure what my point is, except:

1) Great affiliates are great, and

2) If you want to be a great affiliate, start a list today. And if you already have one, email it more often, starting today.

And if you don’t want to be anybody’s affiliate, but you simply want to have the opportunity to sell any reasonable and helpful offer you decide to create, start a list today. And if you already have one… well, you know where I’m going with this.

In fact, you probably knew all this before. But if hasn’t clicked yet, or if something is still holding you back, here’s a course that has helped others before you:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/