List Building

How and why I might write a Substack newsletter

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Got a question three nights ago:

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You’ve written about the “newsletter economy” over the last couple of months. I’m on a few Substacks. Substack has this inbuilt mechanism where if you subscribe to a Substack then you get a pop-up which says, “Oh you might like these three or four as well.”

I’ve come at my newsletter growth from a sort of copywriting angle. I’m on Aweber which doesn’t have that functionality. I can see how that would be quite useful to have because it instantly gets people on your list.

Quite a lot of Substacks are growing quite quickly because of it. I’m thinking, is there a way to replicate that functionality somehow outside of Substack? How should I be thinking about growth more generally? Am I missing a trick perhaps by not being on Substack?

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My feelings: it’s absolutely worth getting on Substack. You can get free, large-scale access to readers… email readers… recent and eager email readers.

In fact, I’ve been thinking about getting on Substack myself. But I feel there’s a right way and wrong way to do it.

The wrong way is to write a bunch of daily emails like the one you’re reading right now.

Daily emails like this one definitely work — people will gladly read them and buy from them. But it’s not how I would go about writing a Substack newsletter, at least if I were going for massive organic growth.

I suspect — based on previous experience — that emails like this would lead to blowback from Substack readers and other Substack newsletters, or worse yet, to simply being ignored.

So that’s what I would not do.

If you are curious what I would do, and what I might actually end up doing, both to grow my list on Substack and to monetize it, you can find that out if you sign up to my Insights & More Book Club. Because the question above came up on the last Insights & More call, which I recorded and posted inside the members area.

The doors to the Insights & More Book Club closed tonight. I only open them every couple of months at the start of a new book, because it doesn’t make sense to have people join midway. If you’d like to be advised the next time the doors open, sign up to my email list, because it’s the only place where I make my book club available.

How to reduce your business’s cost-per-lead by 80%

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Assuming that you’re running ads to get leads…

And assuming that you’re running ads, say on FB or Twitter, via your business’s page or account…

Then let me share something obvious, but maybe very lucrative.

​​It comes from Dan Krenitsyn, who did growth at places like BuzzFeed, The Information, and The Telegraph, and who now leads strategy at the product, content, and operations team at Meta/Facebook. ​​Dan says:

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This might not be relevant for everybody because I worked at more traditional media companies like The Information and Telegraph.

But we tapped into the idea that people follow people. They don’t follow media companies per se.

We started running pretty much all of our acquisition ads from writers’ personal Twitter accounts and Facebook accounts.

I don’t know if the platforms still allow you to do that. For a while, that basically reduced our CPLs by something like 80%.

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I don’t know either if the platforms still allow you to run ads like this. But the basic point stands:

It’s much easier and cheaper to get quality engagement if you sell yourself first, rather than if you sell a brand or a product first.

That’s not to say selling a brand or a product is not the right thing to do in certain situations.

​​But if you’re looking for organic growth, for cheaper paid growth, for easier sales, for an audience that will keep listening to you, even if you occasionally get lazy or falter in your message, then sell yourself first.

You might say it’s ironic I’m telling you to put yourself first in an email in which I say almost nothing about myself, share zero personal stories, and point to no status-building items from my own history.

Fair point. My only answer to that is what I already said above.

​​If you regularly put yourself first in your marketing — John Bejakovic daily newsletter, issue #1586 — then you can occasionally fail and it won’t matter. You can fail to tell people how great you are, and how important your message is, and that people should stay tuned because it’s only gonna to get better. And your audience will still read, listen, click, and maybe even sign up to your daily email newsletter.

Why good customers hate going to museums

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I was reading an article a few days ago about the oldest living aristocratic widow. Just my kind of material:

Lady Anne Glenconner is 90 years old. She served as maid of honor at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, and was lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth’s sister. She was also wife of Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner, who seems to have been a rich, eccentric, and volatile man.

This insight from Lady Anne about her husband caught my eye — it might be interesting if you are ever trying to sell yerself, or something you created:

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“He couldn’t bear to be static,” Glenconner told me. “He always wanted to be rushing around changing things, buying things. We had thirty Lucian Freuds at one point, and he sold them all. I once said to him, in a rather pathetic way, ‘You don’t seem to mind making these collections and then selling them. I like the things I have collected.’ And he said, ‘Oh, no! Once I’ve had them, and the opportunity to look at them, I want to be on to something else.’ “Tennant “hated going to museums,” Glenconner added. “Do you know why? Nothing’s for sale.”

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I think the point is clear, so I won’t insult you by spelling it out all over the place. Instead, let me tell you something personal:

I have nothing for sale today. It’s worse than a museum around here.

I’m changing, revamping, restructuring, and repositioning what I do with this newsletter.

Notice I don’t say, “with this business.” As I’ve said many times, and will continue to say, I’ve never looked at this newsletter as a business first, even though it’s gotten to a place of making me a neat and tidy source of income.

Today, I closed off my Copy Riddles program. I made more money with it over the past 24 hours than in any 24-hour span since I launched it. That’s because it’s never coming back as a standalone course.

So nothing for sale today. But I do have an offer. And it’s to get onto my email newsletter. Yes, it’s a little like a museum on there right now. But I will have new things for sale again one day soon, and my email newsletter will be the only place where you can get that. If you’d like to be in the right place at the right time, sign up now for my newsletter.

The disciplined, professional, hard-working beggar

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On my way to the gym, there’s a Mercadona, a local Spanish supermarket. In front of the entrance to the Mercadona, kneeling on the ground, looking serious and professional, there is almost always one specific beggar.

This man is large and strong. He has a neatly trimmed mustache. I guess he’s around 45 years old.

He usually wears a button-down shirt. He also has a little sponge down on the ground so he can kneel more comfortably. Sometimes, he has a drink next to him — from what I can tell, ice coffee.

When old women go inside Mercadona, this man will kneel and hold on to their dogs while they do their shopping. When the old women come out, they give him their loose change. One time, an old woman gave him a whole packaged chicken.

This man shows up early. When I go for my morning walk before work, he’s already on a bench next to Mercadona, waiting for the store to open up. He also seems to have a little part-time job setting up the chairs, tables, and parasols of the bar next to the Mercadona.

If you’re wondering how it is I know so much about this man, it’s because he is there most days, and for many hours a day. If I ever walk outside my house and around the corner to the Rambla del Poblenou, I inevitably see this man and what he is up to — which is usually waiting stoically for somebody to give him money, and for the workday to end.

I don’t know this guy’s history. I also don’t know how much loose change or raw chicken he manages to pull in a given week. I guess he’s doing okay since he keeps showing up. Still, I can’t believe he’s doing GRRRREAT.

And if you need some sort of takeaway from that, then let me come back to a fundamental point I’ve already made, over and over, year after year in this newsletter. And that’s the fact that you can pretty much do the same work, and get paid drastically different amounts of money for it.

The Mercadona beggar is disciplined and professional. He puts in the hours. He provides a real service to people — an opportunity for charity, plus the bonus of dog-sitting. He even hustles a little. He’s not satisfied simply coasting on his knees, ice coffee in hand, so he’s struck some sort of deal for extra work with the bar next door.

You might think I’m joking. I’m really not.

​​This guy works as hard and as long as most office workers. And many office workers work as hard and as long as most self-employed service providers. And many self-employed service providers work as hard and as long as most business owners.

And yet, there’s a vast difference between what people in each of those groups tend to earn. And vice versa. There’s a vast difference between what you can earn if you cater to people in each of those groups.

Maybe this makes no sense to you, or maybe you think it’s entirely impractical.

In that case, you will almost certainly not be interested in my offer today, which is my Most Valuable Email training. This training is only right for you if:

1. You’re willing to write an email to your list most days, preferably every day

2. You are interested in writing about marketing and copywriting

And by the way, just because Most Valuable Email requires that you write about marketing or copywriting, it in no way requires that you write to people who primarily define themselves as marketers or copywriters. In fact, it might be better to think of another group that you could write those same emails to, and get paid much more money as a result.

In any case, if you are interested in Most Valuable Email, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

The royal way to grow a list

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Yesterday, King Charles III and Queen Consort Camila went for a drive to Bolton Town Hall in London. Birds chirped, armed guards looked on tensely, and crowds of well-wishers and paparazzi pushed around the fences, trying to catch a geek of the aged couple.

Nothing really remarkable there. It’s just another pebble in the mountain of news coverage about the British royal family over the past year.

The news coverage continues, because people look at the royals as a symbol of something ancient, enduring, quintessentially British.

That’s kind of amazing if you think about it.

Charles III is the fourth English monarch from the house of Windsor, which is only 105 years old. Before that, it was called the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in reference to its original German domains. The name was changed during World War I. The image of a bunch of goose-stepping Germans running the UK was too threatening.

How did the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha get to rule the UK? Well, they replaced another German house that ruled the UK, the House of Hanover.

The history of Europe, and really of the world, has seen this pattern over and over. Conquerors and adventurers, foreign princes and stranger kings, appear from somewhere far away and take control of a large and well-trained population.

I read about this in David Wengrow and David Graeber’s Dawn of Everything. The two D’s say the key is that a population has been well-trained and disciplined to obey rule. Who rules doesn’t matter very much at all.

You might be starting to feel a little uncomfortable, and worry that I’m about to preach anarchy, or talk about political revolution.

Quite the opposite. I’m preaching monarchy, and talking about long-term business stability.

Via your list. Specifically, via growing your list with the best prospects, the kind who will buy and read and do what you tell them to do.

I listened to a Dan Kennedy seminar yesterday. Dan said how his best customers were always the martial arts guys — because they had been trained and selected over years to be disciplined.

I remember when pick-up coach RSD Tyler did a list swap with the dreamy fitness coach Eliott Hulse. Eliott said how the buyers he got from the RSD list were fantastic customers, because Tyler’s whole message was self-improvement and taking responsibility and putting in the work.

I’ve even experienced this same phenomenon myself. Back in 2021, I did a list swap with Daniel Throssell. I couldn’t believe how many sales I got from new subscribers who came from Daniel’s list. And that’s with a hidden sales page I had at the time, and without pitching anything myself. It was simply because Daniel has trained and prepared his audience so well.

So there you go. If you want the best leads and future customers, do it the royal way.

Find a market — or an audience — that’s already been disciplined.

It sure beats the hard work of taking an unruly mass, devising new laws, and trying to beat those laws in over the course of generations.

Ok, so much for monarchy.

Now, let’s talk old-time religion. Specifically, my 10 Commandments book. To find out more about that, or maybe even to spend $5 and get some valuable discipline in return, go here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The sales secret of Man on Wire

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Last night, in a desperate hunt for a movie to watch, I turned to the Rotten Tomatoes 100% Club. That’s a list of some 370 movies that have had uniformly positive reviews — a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.

This led me to Man On Wire, a 2008 documentary about a man named Philippe Petit. In case you haven’t seen this movie, the gist is:

Petit was a tightrope walker. And obsessive.

Back in 1968, when he was just 18 years old, Petit hit upon the idea of walking on a wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center.

Problem:

The towers hadn’t been built yet. So Petit spent the next six years scheming, practicing, and waiting in preparation for his audacious August 7, 1974 walk between The South and North Towers, which lasted 45 minutes.

But here’s a question that maybe immediately pops into your head, as it did into mine when I heard about this stunt:

How exactly do you stretch a wire across the two towers? The wire weighed 200 kilograms, or about 450 lbs. Petit was doing his setup clandestinely, in the middle of the night, while hiding from security guards, so helicopters and cranes were out of the question.

So what the hell do you do?
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​​You can’t just hoist the wire up from the ground — it’s a 400 meter drop (over 1,300 feet). You can’t just toss the heavy wire across the 40 meters (130 feet) that separate the corners of the two towers.

A hint comes early in the movie.

You see a silhouette of a man packing things into a bag. It’s supposed to represent Petit.

Along with other unrecognizable equipment, the silhouette gives away something familiar — an arrow.

The fact is, one of Petit’s henchmen shot an arrow with a bow from one tower to the another. And that arrow had a fishing line attached to the end of it.

They used that first fishing line to pull across a slightly sturdier string.

Then they used that string to pull across a strong rope.

And finally, they used the rope to pull across the actual wire, which like I said, weighed as much as an adult melon-headed whale.

Maybe see where I’m going with this.

Because when I saw this in the movie, a lightbulb went off in my head.

“I know this technique!” I shouted in the darkness.

But not from tightrope walking. I know this technique from sales. I first read about it in one of Gary Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullets. Gary called it one of the “the most powerful master strategies I ever learned.”

You can find the explanation of this sales technique below. But not just that.

You can also find lots of inspiring personal stuff about Gary at the page below. Such as for example, that for a long time, Gary was such a bad copywriter that he considered giving up and becoming a mailman. He even went to the post office to pick up a job application.

The only reason Gary stuck with copywriting, the only reason he persevered and eventually became so successful, the only reason we know of him today, was that he was told at the post office that they are not hiring at the moment, and when they do start hiring again, thousands of prior applicants will be ahead of Gary in line.

So Gary stuck with copywriting and marketing.
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And one of the biggest things that Gary learned in the years that followed, and used in all his copy and marketing, from his sales letters to his olive oil business, was this “Man On Wire” sales technique. In case you are interested:

http://marketingbullets.com/bullet-15/

Do you have an email list in the health space?

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If you have an email list in the health space, then I’d like to talk to you.

I’m starting a new project/email list, something to do with health. I’m looking to get people onto that list, and relatively fast.

So yesterday, I made a list of 10 ideas to do just that.

I got through the first 9 ideas pretty easy, just by thinking about assets I already have or paid traffic channels I would be interested in trying.

But then I paused for a moment. And I thought, “What about my marketing and copywriting list? How could they help me with this project?”

This really should have been my #1 idea. But as we non-native English speakers like to say, better to late than never to happen.

So if you have a health list, then I would like to talk to you and maybe strike some sort of deal.

My offer isn’t fully formed, but some of the options include:

1. You promote my new list for free because you love me so much. (Just kidding. I wouldn’t expect that, nor would I want it.)

2. I pay you for a solo ad or a mention in your newsletter or something like a classified ad.

3. I run a promo to your list where I sell something and I give you all the money I earn, and I just keep the names. (I saw Bob Bly promoting this idea once.)

4. We do some kind of barter. I give you consulting, coaching, or even (gulp) copywriting in exchange for traffic from your list.

5. I give you an IOU. Say you agree to drive people to my list now. In exchange, we could agree that I drive people to your list when I get to 5k people on my list, and then again when I get to 10k or 20k names.

Or really, I’m open to other arrangements if you have something in mind. It will depend on how big and engaged your list is, how you would be willing to help me promote, and how good of a fit I imagine it would be for the project I am starting.

But what about urgency? You gotta have urgency, right? Why should you act now?

I don’t have any urgency for you.

This health project is something I am invested in mentally right now. If anything, it’s urgent for me and not for you.

Maybe you can take advantage of that.

Because the fact is, I will stay open to these kind of deals as long as I continue this health newsletter project. But I might get more selective about who it makes sense for me to do these kinds of deals with, and on what terms.

But that’s all in the future. Right now, I am very, very open to any kind of suggestion or proposal.

So if you have a health list, and you are curious whether we could do some kind of deal together, then write me an email and we can start a conversation.

Ben Settle’s secret three-act content strategy revealed

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A few days ago, I sent out an email with the subject line:

“Ben Settle emergency emails in support of Copy Riddles?”

That email officially had the highest open rate of all my emails over the past 10 days. I don’t know if that was because of the subject line. But for my own reasons, I will run with it and pander to your apparent tastes, by telling you a three-act Ben Settle story:

Back in 2016, Ben released a tiny Kindle book titled, Persuasion Secrets of the World’s Most Charismatic & Influential Villains.

The villains book turned into a sleeper hit.

As I write this, the book has 286 Amazon reviews and an Amazon ranking of 42,849. From what I know of Amazon publishing, that means the book continues to sell 4-5 copies every day, six years after its publication.

I reckon the villains book didn’t make Ben a tremendous pile of cash, not directly, not compared to other parts of his business.

But it almost certainly got him a large and constant new source of highly qualified leads. And it certainly gave him positioning and exposure in the direct response industry.

For a while, everyone associated Ben with the villains concept. It truly made him unique. And this probably led many more highly qualified leads trudging towards his hut, banging on his door, and demanding to be sold something.

So what did Ben do next? Perhaps you know act two. In 2018, he released Persuasion Villains, volume II.

Act three came in 2019. That’s when Ben released Persuasion Villains, volume III.

Which brings us to the present day and a tweet I came across a few days ago.

The tweet was written by one Matt Koval, who was apparently a big face at YouTube for over 10 years. Koval was the one whipping those early and confused YouTubers into the all-consuming media machine that YouTube has become.

Anways, Koval was tweeting in response to some YouTube influencer’s new video, and he wrote:

“One of the earliest pieces of content strategy advice we used to give at @YouTube was to try and turn your viral hit into a whole series – and it’s great to see @RyanTrahan do just that. It’s a TON of work, but no doubt a huge boost to his channel.”

But really, what is Koval’s “series” idea more than the standard DR practice of testing out different sales appeals in your ads? And then doubling down on the winners, for as long as they continue to pay for themselves?

As far as I know, Ben isn’t releasing any more villains books. This probably means he has milked this franchise to the point where putting out a new villains book isn’t worth the opportunity cost.

But maybe you’ve had a hit idea that you haven’t milked dry yet. Whether in your YouTube videos, Kindle books, or email subject lines. So rather than trying to be creative and have an all-new hit, turn your proven hit into a series.

In other news:

As I write this, I only have one Kindle book out there, my 10 Commandments book.

The 10 Commandments book hasn’t been as much of a success as Ben’s original villains book. But it has sold a lot of copies, and it continues to make sales. More importantly, it continues to drive highly qualified prospects to my email list.

And who knows? Maybe I will take my own advice.

Maybe I will lumber up the mountain, get a few more stone tablets of copywriting commandments, and write a second installment in this series.

Meanwhile, if you still haven’t read volume I, here’s where you can get your very own copy:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Daily email battleship

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One of the most eye-opening and mind-expanding collections of direct response insights I know of is an interview with Michael Fishman.

For context:

During Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar, the only person to get up on stage and present, besides the great Gary himself, was Michael Fishman.

Gary was an A-list copywriter.

Michael was an A-list list broker. (A-list list broker broker?)

In other words, while Gary’s expertise was to come up with creative words…

Michael’s expertise was to find creative lists of people to send Gary’s subtle sales letters to.

But what’s that? You say there’s not much to be creative about in choosing lists?

Well, that’s why that interview was so eye-opening and mind-expanding.

Sure, some of Michael’s work was routine. He had to keep a close eye on which lists were interested in related topics… which lists were hot… which lists were made up of recent, eager buyers, spending good money.

But sometimes, list picking was much less routine. Some of Michael’s work involved a real leap of insight and intuition.

For example:

One offer that Michael worked on is Boardroom’s Big Black Book. This was a typical Boardroom book of secrets — what never to eat on a Greyound bus, that kind of thing.

The Big Black Book​​ was many hundreds of pages long, and it was sold through a sales letter filled with fascination bullets.

And yet, get this:

Michael had the idea to promote the Big Black Book to a list of buyers of manifestation audio course, sold on TV through an infomercial.

Totally different products… totally different markets… totally different formats for marketing… totally different everything.

So why did Michael recommend this manifestation list and why did the list end up working?

That’s the crazy thing. Because this list was made up of buyers of a product called Passion, Power, and Profit.

Get it?

​​Big Black Book… Passion, Power, and Profit.

Michael had the insight that some buyers really respond to alliteration in the name of the product. That’s why the BBB offer turned out to be a good fit for the PPP list.

Like I said, eye-opening and mind-expanding.

This brings me to my offer to you for today:

It’s a little game that you and I can play. I call the game Daily Email Battleship.

This is how you play:

Sign up to my email newsletter. When you get my welcome email, hit reply and write me the names of all the daily emails newsletters you are subscribed to.

I’m not talking about just copywriting and marketing. Anything. Magic, manifestation, or medicine. Any topic or person or business is okay, as long as they email, more or less daily.

And then:

1. If you tell me a newsletter I also subscribe to, it’s a direct hit. I will tell you that. So if you write me to say, “I am on Ben Settle’s list,” I will write back and say, “Great, so am I.”

2. But if you tell me a daily email newsletter I don’t subscribe to… I will counter. And I will tell you a newsletter I subscribe to, which you don’t subscribe to.

3. And if I can’t do that, because you are subscribed to more novel and interesting daily email newsletters than I am, then you win.

And as your prize, I will tell you why I am collecting these email newsletters, and what this has to do with the Michael Fishman story above.

This information might be valuable to you. Or it might just feed your curiosity.

In any case, if you’d like to play, the opening shot is yours.

Cheap, easy, and definitely worth it

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A few days ago, I sent out a George Foreman-themed email asking for testimonials. Either for my newsletter and products… or for me personally.

I got back some good responses. Just what I was hoping for. For example, copywriter David Patrick wrote me to say:

“If John is behind anything, then I’m sure it’s going to be good. In fact, he may very well be the best thing to happen to America… at least when it comes to persuasion and influence! No, really!”

Others wrote in to say that I’m not only the best thing for America, but “maybe even the world”… that I am a “vital resource”… and one person, who shall remain unnamed, wrote in all seriousness with:

“John Bejakovic and persuasion. You can’t beat that. He made me like cats. Even though I used to hate them and they used to hate me. So he’s a great person to find out about a new product that’s about persuading stubborn prospects. Or cats.”

I also got less flamboyant, perhaps more useful testimonials. I will drip those out in good time, in upcoming emails and sales pages.

For today, I just want to point out something obvious that you might already know, but that I had to learn. In fact, I didn’t learn it until only a couple years ago, when I was writing a VSL for a get-rich-in-real-estate guru.

In one of his content videos, this real estate guru talked about his “buyers list” — the list of people you can flip a house to.

But a buyers list is so much more than that, the guru said.

​​He then rattled off all the connections, employees, business opportunities, sources of funding, and personal relationships that resulted from his list, and from the personal emails he would send to them on occasion.

“Huh, interesting,” I said, a dim light slowly flickering to life in my head.

​​Time passed. I stared into space.

​​The light flickered a little brighter. “Ohh… yeah… I get it now!”

Because it’s not just a “buyers list” that can do all that. It’s the same with any email list, when it’s built right and managed right.

The fact is, my newsletter list has given me — often without me even asking — business partners… JV partners… copywriting clients… consulting clients… free products… insider tips and valuable ideas I wouldn’t know about otherwise… job offers… podcast appearances… mastermind appearances… and many, many new relationships with people, some of whom even became my friends, mostly online, but in real life as well.

Like I said, I had to have somebody point this out to me. That a list is a relationship, and that it’s good for a lot more than just a certain kind of one-way traffic.

Maybe you’re amazed I could be so dense.

But I am far from a natural when it comes to promotion or marketing or business. And yet it doesn’t matter.

You can find a spot for yourself, and be successful in time, even if you’re not a natural showman, salesman, or “scheme” man.

Lots of people have walked the road before you. Many of them are willing to point out, sometimes even for free, just where you should put your feet to take the next step to success.

Such as for example, starting and running your own email list. It’s cheap. Easy to do. And it’s definitely worth it.

If you want to see, how I do it, sign up to my list. You might learn something about copywriting and marketing and business along the way. Here’s where to get started.