Offers

PSA: Beware the anti-launxxers

by

This morning at 9am Barcelona time, I wrapped up the Prospective Profit Pricing event for Daily Email Habit.

Since I rolled out Daily Email Habit some 6 weeks ago and only sold it via regular daily emails since, this PPP event served as a kind of launch.

The event lasted for two days and four emails.

62 new people ended up signing up to Daily Email Habit as a result of those four emails.

Considering how small my list is, and the fact that I have been promoting Daily Email Habit pretty much every day for the past 6 weeks, and that I thought demand was near tapped out (there were days in the past weeks when I made 0 sales), I gotta say I’m pleased with how this turned out.

And now, public service announcement #1:

I’ve been seeing a new crop of online marketers who are positioning themselves as anti-launch.

Their spiel is no deadlines, no scarcity, no urgency — “no manipulation!” Just put your offer out there every day, and eventually everyone who is right for it will buy.

I’m not sure if this is just positioning themselves in a contrary way. Or maybe they’re catering to people who have been exhausted by massive affiliate-based PLF-style launches that have to be run every three months in order to generate any income, with a few lonely crickets chirping in the meantime.

In any case, beware their anti-launch propaganda.

It’s ironic, because those same anti-launxxers run plenty of offers with scarcity and urgency baked in — effectively launches, or email promos at least.

But what if they didn’t?

Their core message is still terrible advice if you ask me.

Launches and daily emails are like heads and tails — two sides of a gold krugerand that you can drop into your piggy bank.

Daily emails build desire for what you sell, and overcome objections. Launches, or promos, or whatever you want to call them, give people an undeniable reason to act NOW.

And as for manipulation?

I side with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who said that the only bad manipulation is manipulation that’s obvious.

The fact is, not a single person wrote me during this “launch” to complain about my manipulative deadline and manipulative disappearing bonus. If anything, I got a lot of people who wrote me to tell me they are excited to get started, and that this was the push they needed.

End of public service announcement #1.

Begin public service announcement #2:

I’d like to turn your attention to something free, new, and frankly AMA~ING.

I will write a full email about it tomorrow.

But if you are at all interested in copywriting, you MUST MUST MUST click through below.

Do you ever hear me using such over-the-top and positive language?

You don’t, because it’s almost never warranted, and in fact it usually works against you, by letting people down when they finally see your offer.

Well, not today. If you are into copywriting, you have to click through, and in fact, you have to sign up for what’s waiting for you here:

https://bejakovic.com/back-in-town

Last chance to gamble before the Daily Email Habit price increase

by

Here’s a curious story about looming deadlines:

In the early days of FedEx, founder and CEO Fred Smith took the company’s last $5k and went to Vegas.

FedEx had a fuel bill of $25k. That last $5k wouldn’t be enough to cover it anyhow.

So Smith went to Vegas and played blackjack. He gambled and won $27k. That was enough to cover the fuel bill.

FedEx had survived for another week. And then it survived another week. Eventually, it turned into something big.

Now let me ask you:

Will you gamble $20 on a month of Daily Email Habit?

Will-ye or nill-ye, the price of Daily Email Habit is going up tonight, from $20/month to $30/month, at 12 midnight PST, just three hours from now.

This is the last email I will send before the fateful price increase.

As a reminder, Daily Email Habit is my service to help you start and stick with consistent daily emailing.

Here’s what that means in real terms, from virtuoso-making guitar teacher René Kerkdyk, who subscribes to Daily Email Habit:

===

Just a short raving review:

I just wrote my daily email in 10 minutes going from sheer panic about what to write to a finished email building my expertise and selling my stuff. Thank you, John!

====

I have also created a members-only club, Daily Email House, for business owners and marketers who send more or less daily emails.

Until to-night at 12 midnight, Daily Email House is a free bonus in case you sign up to Daily Email Habit. After that, it will disappear as a free bonus, and rise from its ashes as a new, fiery, paid offer.

All that’s to say, maybe the sales page below is worth a look? And right now? Before the deadline sneaks up on you with its cold, sleep-inducing claws?

If you’d like my help writing your daily emails, tomorrow, and the day after, and then next week, until eventually your daily emailing turns into something big:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Announcing: PPP for Daily Email Habit

by

As I mentioned yesterday, a reader from Brazil gave me the idea to finally increase the price of my Daily Email Habit service.

Daily Email Habit currently sells at the Charter Member price of $20/month. It will sell at that price until tomorrow, Tuesday, at 12 midnight PST.

After that, Daily Email Habit will sell for $30/month.

A sizable increase? A minimal bump?

If you ask me, it’s the wrong way to think about it. I’m calling this my Prospective Profit Price event. It’s really about what Daily Email Habit can do for you, if you simply open each day’s email and follow what it says. Specifically:

#1. Daily Email Habit can save you between 5 minutes to an agonizing hour of your day, each time you sit down to write your daily email.

The main part of Daily Email Habit is a daily “puzzle” or prompt, to get you over the hurdle of what to write about.

If you write every day, getting over that hurdle more quickly adds up — a couple of hours a month on the low end, 10 hours or more on the high.

#2. Daily Email Habit can help make your emails more effective.

The Daily Email Habit “puzzles” are not just random prompts, are not written by AI, and are not pulled out of a hat.

I design each puzzle strategically, based on my experience writing this newsletter, managing client email lists with tens of thousands of names on them, and writing something like 3,000 sales messages in my sales copywriting career.

Spend a couple minutes to come up with your own answer to the daily puzzle in Daily Email Habit, and your emails will have a better chance at making more sales today, and keeping readers around and interested for what you offer them tomorrow.

#3. And finally, if you are not writing daily emails yet, or you’re not consistent with it, then Daily Email Habit can help you start and stick with the habit.

It’s not just that it makes the process faster… or even just that it helps you get better results, so you’re more motivated to stick with it.

I’ve also purposely baked in some “consistency” elements into Daily Email Habit, such as the streak counter, to make it more likely you open up each day’s email, and actually stick with the habit of daily emailing.

And as I wrote yesterday, if you stick with daily emailing long enough, you have a real shot at the kind of money, influence, and opportunities that you cannot even imagine now.

I also have a second reason why you might want to join Daily Email Habit before tomorrow at 12 midnight PST.

As I hinted at last week, I’ve created a members-only club for business owners and marketers who write more or less daily emails.

It’s called Daily Email House. It’s quite colorful and lively inside. The members are interacting, posting ideas, asking questions, and contributing possible answers.

I’m in there as well, both to act as a kind of Jareth-like host, to make sure everybody is having a good time, and to share behind-the-scenes secrets I don’t share in this newsletter.

The House started out as a free bonus for Daily Email Habit. But it will stop being a free bonus for Daily Email Habit tomorrow. After that, I’ll spin it off into its own paid offer, which frankly will cost more than Daily Email Habit costs.

So there you go:

A courtesy notice to sign up for Daily Email Habit, if writing daily emails for the long term is something you do, or want to do.

The deadline, once again, to join Daily Email before the Charter Member disappears, and while you can get inside Daily Email House for free, is tomorrow at 12 midnight PST.

After that, the new, higher Prospective Profit Price kicks in, and Daily Email House stops being a free bonus.

If you wanna take advantage of this opportunity in time, and even to get tomorrow’s Daily Email Habit prompt before it’s gone, head on over here now:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Have you just launched a new offer?

by

If so, great! Now it’s time to start working on your next offer. In the words of James Altucher, “Best way to market your first book? Write your next book.”

Maybe you don’t like that. Maybe you’ll like this better:

Yesterday, a reader forwarded me an email from Jon Morrow. It had the subject line, “How I made $171,000 selling a $1 book.”

First, I didn’t even click to open the email. What’s there to learn? I’m sure Jon didn’t make $171,000 by selling 171,000 copies of a $1 book.

But today, in the interest of writing this email, and being thorough with research, I opened Jon’s email. I even clicked through to the sales page linked at the bottom.

The sales page has the usual screenshots to prove income claims. And sure enough, there’s a screenshot that shows the $160k that Jon’s $1 book had generated at the time of screenshotting. The income breaks down like this:

$8,880 in book sales…

$151,476 in upsells.

Like I said, you might not like the idea of creating a new offer.

But how about 20x the income that you’ll make from your current offer? Do you like that?

That’s the power of a upsells, followup offers, a back end, whatever you want to call it.

Final bit of motivation:

When Prince initially released 1999 as a single, the song bombed. It stalled at #44 on the charts. Then Prince released Little Red Corvette, which made it the Top 10. He then re-released 1999, and it went to number 2 on the charts.

I think you get my point. So let me offer a tip to make your job easier:

You might not like the idea of creating a new offer. After all, you just launched one. I can understand.

Here’s a trick that I use. It’s to constantly drip out content to promote my existing offer… content which I can then turn around and repurpose into a new offer.

It’s one of the unsung benefits of daily emails, done right.

Plus of course, there’s the more sung benefit of daily emails, specifically:

With daily emails, you’ll sell way way more of your current offer than if you simply have it sitting there, and you’ll even sell more than if you simply promote it periodically without daily emailing.

But that’s really another email, for another time.

For today, if you’d like to start and stick with the habit of daily emailing, both to make sales this month, and to gradually build up a new offer you can launch next month, then take a look at my Daily Email habit service, which is designed to help you do exactly that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Did I live up to my 2024 “theme”?

by

Every January 1st, going back four years now, I have a tradition in this newsletter:

I review my previous year and I make some plans for the coming year. Well, last year I tried to skip it, but then a long-time reader called me out on it. This year, I’ll walk the line.

My “theme” last year — theme being a kind of fuzzy goal — was ambition.

Was I ambitious in 2024? Did I live up to the year’s theme? And what was the result?

Well, in 2024 I did a bunch of stuff:

I launched a group coaching program… started a continuity offer… ran a dozen promos… put on some live trainings… had a job for the first time in I don’t know how many years (coaching in Shiv Shetti’s mastermind)… partnered with a couple people on side projects… came second in an affiliate contest for a Dan Kennedy offer that I only wrote about tongue-in-cheek… got on stage once to talk in front of a sizable crowd… appeared on a handful of podcasts… delivered a couple trainings inside other people’s private masterminds… almost finished writing my new book… launched a community… and overall had my best year in terms of income.

Sounds like I done a lot! But it sure doesn’t feel like it.

Early in 2024, I wrote down a list of a dozen+ items of what ambition means to me.

Looking back on that list now, I see I didn’t get anywhere close to achieving any of the dozen+ items.

And not only that, but stuff I did achieve back in April or August doesn’t feel like it counts for anything today. “What have you done for me lately?” some devil inside me is asking. Who knows, maybe that’s what ambition sounds like.

The natural conclusion to all this — not achieving my goals, for the third year in a row — might be to stop setting goals and to learn to be happy with what I got and what I’m doing now.

But I’m not a natural kind of guy. In fact, I’m a rather contrary kind of guy.

Plus, I have a sneaking suspicion that humans need both, goals AND acceptance, cow-like satisfaction AND ambition and yearning.

Besides, it would be kinda boring if I ended this email and simply said, Michael Corleone-like, “Dear reader, you can have my answer now. My goals for 2025 are this… nothing. Not even to make a million dollars, which I would I appreciate if you would contribute to my bank account personally.”

No, I won’t do that. Instead I got some real live themes, or goals, of whatever, for 2025:

#1. Recurring income

After 10+ years of learning and in some ways practicing direct marketing, I’ve finally accepted that most basic direct marketing truth, that recurring income is where it’s at.

At the tail end of 2024, I launched a little continuity offer, and I happily offered people long-term payment plans to get them to take me up on some of my more expensive offers.

I’ve also started keeping track of what share of my income is recurring income. In 2025, I will be looking to grow that.

#2. Less of me

In 2025, I wanna make more offers that are less about me, my results, my authority, my charming personality, and more about, “Does this sound sexy and credible?”

This isn’t about “Taking myself out of the business” or a fantasy about scaling to cold traffic.

Rather, it’s a desire for competence. Frankly, it’s fairly easy to create an offer that sells well to people who are basically buying YOU. It’s much harder to create an offer that sells based on its own merits. I just wanna get better at it. (Like I said, I’m a rather contrary kind of guy.)

#3. Tech

I’m a luddite by nature, though at some point in my life I was a good software programmer. I wrote code for a decade or more and I even enjoyed it much of the time.

I don’t wanna go back to my old career. But like I’ve been saying lately, it’s never been easier to get little tech tools created for you with the snap of your fingers.

I’ve ignored technology for a long time. But in 2025, I wanna do more of that finger-snapping for my own benefit, and who knows, maybe even build something that can be useful to others.

So there you go, my three new themes for 2025. Let’s see how I manage to live up to them in the coming year.

There’s one final January 1st tradition around here. This is the only day of the year that I remember to link to my “Store” page, which lists all of my currently available offers.

Over the 6+ years of running this daily newsletter, I’ve written and created many courses, books, and trainings.

Here are the ones that have stood the test of time and that I continue to proudly sell every day:

https://bejakovic.com/store/

Holy Grail launch party

by

Yesterday, I paid 9 euro to see the Holy Grail. And I did see it, although I walked by it at first without noticing it. I got distracted by the heavy medieval chains on the walls.

After I first failed in my quest to find the Holy Grail, I asked Perplexity to guide me to it. It told me to retrace my steps, to the southeast, in the direction towards Jerusalem.

So that’s what I did. And sure enough, I found it.

The Holy Grail is housed in the Chapel of the Chalice in the Valencia cathedral.

I went there yesterday since the cathedral, which dates back to the 13th century, is one of main tourist attractions in the city.

The cathedral features a museum, ancient Roman ruins under it, and an impressive gothic dome.

Plus, like I said, it houses the Holy Grail.

But is it REALLY the Holy Grail? The cup that Jesus drank from at the last supper? The night before he was crucified? The most holy and elusive relic in all Christendom?

It seems a little implausible. To make it more so, when you see the Holy Grail, it looks like a golden goblet that’s fit for a medieval king.

But a little pamphlet, available at the entrance to the chapel in multiple languages, informs you that:

===

Only the top portion is the sacred relic: a cup in the form of a carefully shaped and polished bowl. The cup is made of a type of veined sardonyx agate that comes from the region between Alexandria and Syria. Without a doubt, it is a Palestinian artifact, crafted in the first century AD. It is an example of a Jewish “Blessing Cup” for the ritual Paschal Supper in the Hebrew tradition, the most important piece in a Jewish family’s treasury.

Archeological studies, historical documents, the testimony of Tradition, recent discoveries about the design and the inscription in the base, comparative analyses with other similar cups around the world, references from the ancient liturgy, various investigations from distinct scientific disciplines, and even the legends of the Grail – all of these indicate it is perfectly plausible that the Holy Chalice of Valencia was in the hands of Jesus Christ at the Last Supper, and that it contained the Most Precious Blood of the Redeemer. In contrast, there is no evidence that counters this position.

===

The pamphlet goes on to tell the history of this stone cup. How it was used in Eucharist services by the early popes, up to the 3rd century… why it left Rome… how it was hidden in the face of the Moorish conquests of Spain… how it finally found its way to the Valencia cathedral… how it was recently used by two Catholic Popes during Mass.

So… is this really the most holy of holy Christian relics? In a little glass display case, behind a rope? In a side chapel where 9 of us were there to see it (I counted)?

I don’t know. I’m not an expert in Christian relics.

But I am an expert in effective communication. And clearly, the Catholic Church, or at least the archdiocese of Valencia, hasn’t done a great job communicating that the Holy Grail is here, if this really be it.

You might think it a bit distasteful to use this as a topic for a daily email, to profane the sacred, and to talk about better marketing for the Holy Grail.

In my defense, it seems the Church agrees it hasn’t done a good job advertising.

There’s a building across the street, which is being refurbished to serve as a Holy Grail information center and museum, to raise worldwide awareness of the Grail’s location, and to increase the number of pilgrims and tourists who come to see it.

But I think an information center, even it were to send out daily emails about the Holy Grail, won’t be enough.

This relic, if it really is the cup that Jesus held in his hands at the final supper, is infamous for being hard to find.

Hundreds of years of popular legend tell us how the best, bravest, and most noble knights went in search of the Grail, and all but a small handful — Galahad, Perceval, Indiana Jones — died or failed on the way.

If the Grail really has been found, and is available for everyone to see, it’s gonna take a giant announcement, an event, a spectacle, fireworks, buildup, in other words, what in marketing we call a launch.

It’s the only way in my mind to resolve the tension between the Holy Grail being sought and not found for hundreds of years… and the Holy Grail now available for tourists to see, for just 9 euro, and in fact not very popular as an attraction.

(By the way, it might be good idea to increase the admission price. I mean, it’s the Holy Grail. Sir Lancelot, despite being one of the greatest knights, quested after it for years and failed at the last step. How can you justify making something that’s so hard to attain available for 9 euro?)

But maybe I should stop giving the Catholic Church advice.

Maybe I should simply take my own advice.

Let me get to a less sacred topic, and remind you of my Daily Email Habit service.

I opened it up a few weeks ago, and have had a steady stream of people signing up since.

For the moment, I’m making it available at $20 a month because I wanted to test it out, polish it, make sure it works for people, take the pressure of myself, and as usual, reward early customers who trust me enough to take me up on my experiments.

I will have an official launch for Daily Email Habit soon, and the price will go up. There will be a big announcement and maybe even fireworks.

But for now, Daily Email Habit is still available at just $20/month, for the reasons listed above. If you would like to test it out, before the whole world finds out about it:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Announcing: “White Tuesday” Copy Riddles event

by

It’s a bright and sunny day outside, I’m in a good mood, and there are still many weeks left until dark and depressing Black Friday.

That’s why I’ve decided to put on a special and time-limited event, which I’m calling White Tuesday, starting today and running through tomorrow (Tuesday), to promote my Copy Riddles program.

I tried to make this White Tuesday offer easy to say yes to. Here’s what’s inside:

#1. White Tuesday Storytelling Secrets

This storytelling bundle has two parts.

The first is a training called Storytelling For Sales, in which I show some of my go-to tricks for using stories in sales copy. I previously sold this training for $200, but it’s yours free for White Tuesday.

The second part of this storytelling bundle is a training called, “Next-level storytelling tricks for emails that sell (no hero’s journey, thank you).”

This was a special presentation I did last year as bonus when Kieran Drew promoted my Simple Money Emails program.

I haven’t made this training available in any way since, and the only way to get it previously was to pay for Simple Money Emails, which sells for $197. It’s also yours free for White Tuesday.

#2. Make The Lights Come On: How Multimillionaire Marketers Use The FREE Formula To Create a “Lightbulb Moment” In Their Prospects

I’ve never sold this before and I’m not sure I will in the future, so I won’t put an arbitrary made-up value on it.

I will say this training has my analysis of the common structure — the “FREE Formula” — I’ve identified in the copy of a few multimillionaire marketers.

These marketers use change in perspective as their main way of selling, rather than big sweaty promises. They do very well for themselves as a result. For example:

One such marketer wrote a “lightbulb moment” 40-page PDF that sold $960,000 worth of coaching services in 2 hours…

… another such marketer wrote an 1,791-word email that made the light come on for me personally, and made me spend a few thousand dollars on this marketer’s offers as a result…

… a third such “lightbulb moment” marketer uses the FREE Formula to convert up to 20% of his (large and woolly) email list.

I figure if you can get even a fraction of these results, this Make The Lights Come On training could be the most valuable of all the bonuses I’m offering (with the possible exception of the next bonus).

But once again, Make The Lights Come On is yours free as part of the White Tuesday event.

(NB. I will deliver Make The Lights Come On as a live email course at the beginning of December.)

#3. $2k Advertorial Consult: 100% nothing-held-back training on how I write advertorials

Over the years of my copywriting career, I’ve written dozens of front-end “horror advertorials” — basically mini sales letters. By my estimate, these horror advertorials have made upwards of 10 million dollars’ worth of sales from cold traffic, mostly Facebook and now YouTube.

I’ve hinted at my process before and and given some examples of finished horror advertorials.

But I’ve never done a full reveal of my process, including the research… my own templates and checklists… the writing… the layout, etc.

Well, never, except once. I agreed to do it once, with one private consulting client, an ecommerce store owner.

I got on a call with this ecommerce store owner… shared all my advertorial-writing assets and secrets… and walked him through my process.

He paid me $2k for that info. All that info — the recording of the call, all the checklists and templates I shared — are yours free as part of the White Tuesday deal.

And by the way, this $2k Advertorial Consult can be relevant whether you are writing advertorials, or if you’re working on just about any other serious copy project that has to convert on cold traffic.

(Also, as part of this advertorials info-bundle, I’ll throw in my Horror Advertorial Swipe File. This is a zip file with 25 PDFs, featuring the original copy for 25 of my horror advertorials, which pulled in millions of dollars on cold Facebook and YouTube traffic. I’ve previously sold this swipe file for $100.)

Putting together elements 1-3 above, you have a real-world value of $2,300, based on just what these programs and trainings have sold for before. Plus you get the “Next-level storytelling tricks” training and Make The Lights Come on for extra sauce.

And there’s one one more element to the White Tuesday event:

#4. The one-time White Tuesday payment plan

You can get started with Copy Riddles, and get the White Tuesday bonus bundle of $2,300 of real-world value, for just $97 today, and then 9 more monthly payments of $100.

This payment plan is there to make it psychologically easier to get started — in my experience, people take up payment plans not because they cannot afford to pay in full, but simply because it feels like a smaller commitment.

But if you need a stronger justification for using the payment plan, then just take one or two ideas from Copy Riddles or associated free bonuses… apply them once a month… and make $100 wouldn’t have made otherwise.

Do this, and the entire White Tuesday Bundle will effectively be free. You will probably even make some extra money to boot. And you will have learned a bunch of valuable stuff that will last you your whole marketing life.

Final point:

I will never be making this White Tuesday Copy Riddles offer again, and I will likely not be doing any kind of Copy Riddles promo for a long time.

If you have been thinking about getting Copy Riddles, but putting it off, I can only tell you to take advantage of this offer now.

I make a point of treating my previous customers well. That means I will only ever move the price up rather than down in the future.

And if ever offer any future bonuses or incentives, all previous customers will be grandfathered in, you among them if you join today.

On the other hand, if you miss this White Tuesday offer, you miss it forever.

All that’s to say, there won’t ever be a better time. If you want to get the full info on Copy Riddles to see if it’s right for you, or to take advantage of this White Tuesday deal:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

P.S. If you are already a Copy Riddles member, the White Tuesday bonuses are of course available to you too.

The storytelling bundle will go into the course area automatically. I’ll invite you to join Make The Lights Come On for free when I open it up. And as for the $2k Advertorial Consult, it’s yours as well — if you write me and say you want it, while this White Tuesday event is live.

 

A critical look at Daniel Throssell, part III

by

In the unlikely case that my newsletter is the only direct marketer-y list you subscribe to, let me tell you some news:

Last week, there was an affiliate contest.

That means that a bunch of marketers all fought to promote the same affiliate offer, all at the same time. Beyond bragging rights, I assume there were also generous prizes for the best-performing affiliates, above and beyond the usual affiliate commissions.

I did not participate in this contest, and I didn’t even pay very close attention.

But I do know that among the people who did participate, there was a selection of A-list copywriters and top-flight industry gurus, with decades or maybe centuries of experience among them, and with big communities and hefty email lists at their disposal.

And yet:

The person who won this contest was a young guy, who apparently lives in the slums of a second-tier city in Australia… who nobody knew of before he started to build his legend online some five years ago… and who only has a modest-sized email list of his own.

That young guy is a certain Daniel Throssell.

I’m on Daniel’s list, and so I can share with you what Daniel wrote about the final results of this affiliate contest:

===

As of the final cart close, I think I had something like 60% of the TOTAL sales (thus meeting my usual goal of ‘more than everyone else put together’) … and somewhere between 8-10x the sales of the second-place affiliate.

===

How did Daniel do it?

I’ve already written a couple emails in past years with my thoughts on Daniel’s successful strategies (hence the “part III” in today’s subject line).

As for this most recent success of Daniel’s, my guess is it has to do with all three elements of the old 40/40/20 formula.

40% of your results comes down to your list…

… 40% down to your offer…

… and the remaining 20% down to the least important part, your copy. But it’s that least important part, the copy, that I want to talk about today.

In fact, I just wanna talk about one aspect of copy, a very mechanical aspect. Because even without paying close attention to this affiliate contest, one thing was notable to me:

Daniel sent 28 emails to his list to promote this affiliate offer.

He sent at least one email each day, as he does every day of the year, and many more emails as the deadline neared.

I’m not on the lists of all the other people who participated in this contest.

But from what I can see, most of the big names who did participate do not write daily emails to their lists outside of this promo. Some of them, including some who said they really really wanted to win the contest, chose not to send daily emails even during the actual promo.

To my Elmer Fudd mind, the conclusion is simple:

Email more, and you’ll make more sales, even if you don’t change a d-d-d-damned thing else.

But that’s not all.

Because if you email more, it’s gonna have a positive effect on that next 40% of your success, meaning your offers.

I defy anybody in the world to argue honestly that Daniel’s high-priced courses — which he gave away as free bonuses for this affiliate promo — would have the perceived value they have if Daniel didn’t send daily emails to build up desire for them… to justify the premium prices they sell for… to highlight all the other people who have bought these courses and praised them.

Anybody can say their course costs a thousand dollars. But that does nothing, unless people believe it, and unless they want it.

As for that other final 40%, your list:

I imagine that most everyone on Daniel’s list is also on at least one other list of someone who participated in this contest.

And yet, the odds are two-to-one (or actually better) that if such a person bought this affiliate offer, they bought it via Daniel.

In part, that comes back to the offer. But in part, it’s about the fact that daily emailing trains and transforms the people on your list.

The people on your email list are not simply “buyers” or “not buyers” — like it’s some God-given caste system you have no control over.

Relentless email followup, done well, takes disinterested or skeptical people and turns them into followers, converts, and partners. Not just anybody’s followers, converts, and partners — yours. That’s a moat that protects your business, even if some other business owner can somehow get the names and email addresses of everyone on your list.

So yeah.

Copy is the least important part of your success.

But in a way, it’s also the most important, via its effect on the perceived value of your offers, and via the transformation it creates in the people on your list. And I think Daniel’s results prove that.

All that’s to say… I don’t know? Email more? Maybe daily?

Yesterday, I announced a new service I’ll be launching over the next 30 days that gives you a new daily email prompt each day. The goal here is to make sending daily emails faster by an hour or two a week, and easier to start with and stick with for the long term.

I can tell you that my email today was based on one such prompt, one that I set myself a few days ago. Yes, I eat my own dog food.

I will be offering first access to this service to a small number of people on my list, based on who I think will be most likely to get value from it.

But my offer from last night still stands:

If you feel daily email prompts are something that could be useful to you, then hit reply and tell me what you like about this idea (do tell me why, because simply replying and saying “yes!” won’t do it). If you do that, I will add you to the priority list, so you have a chance to test this service out sooner rather than later.

My piratin’ days

by

ARRR, I be quite old, much like a giant tortoise. And to prove it, I can tell you I was there when the Internet was first becoming a thing.

Quite naturally, I was also there when a friend in high school first told me you could get music, for free, on the Internet.

For reference, this was back when the only way to listen to the music you wanted, when you wanted, was to hand over the modern equivalent of about $30 for a CD.

“No!” I told my friend in disbelief when he told me about this piracy stuff.

“Yes!” he said. “Any kind of music you want. You just type the name of the song into AltaVista, and you look for mp3 files.”

So I tried it. I remember that the first song I searched for and pirated was The Beach Boys’ I Get Around. It took about three days to download.

Now here’s the head trip:

A short while later, I actually ended up handing over the modern equivalent of about $30 for a CD, The Beach Boys’ Greatest Hits, Volume 1.

I did this even though I had already pirated several Beach Boys hits off the Internet… and even though I could probably get the other ones too, with just a bit of searching.

Now let me make it clear:

1. This email is not an invitation to pirate and salve your conscience by saying you will somehow pay for it later, when you have more money. Piracy, romantic though it may sound, is well known to lead to scurvy and hangings, among other unpleasant consequences. It’s a miracle I survived my piratin’ days and lived to tell the tale.

2. This email is also not an invitation to give away your catchy songs for free, in the hope that people will eventually pay for the album. In fact, my point is kind of the opposite of that.

My point is that format is positioning.

I don’t remember exactly what made me pay for the Beach Boys CD.

I probably rationalized it to myself. I could listen to the music on my stereo instead of the crappy computer speakers… there were songs I might not find online, and they took so long to download… I could take the music with me and play it in the car or at a friend’s house.

There was probably a bit of all that. But really, I imagine my decision was mostly irrational.

The album had a colorful, attractive cover. I had the modern equivalent of $30 burning a hole in my pocket. Plus, I had been well trained over the years to buy CDs, and this was in fact a CD for sale. So I bought, and I was even happy about it.

Here’s my takeaway for you:

If you have free content, you can legitimately repackage it and sell it for good money, even to the people who have gotten much of that stuff for free in another format.

And if you’re selling stuff but not making as much money as you like, then the same lesson applies. Change the format, and you can double, triple, decuple, or even vinguple the prices you charge. People will buy, and even be happy about it.

Because format is positioning.

And if you want my help putting this lesson into practice, well, then read on. Today is the last day I will be making the offer below, because tomorrow we weigh anchor and set sail:

===

I’ve set aside time over the next month to help two business owners to quickly churn up new offers using their catalogue of existing products. The ultimate goal here is to:

* Create something new and exciting for your audience, without creating entirely new products

* Develop a new asset for yourself — a new offer you can reissue in the future with little tweaks or maybe without any tweaks

* Bring in new buyers who might then buy other stuff from you, or get deeper into your world

* Do a bit of work and make back a good deal of money as a result

If you want a specific example:

Last week, I sent three emails over two days in what I called my Shangri-La MVE event. Those three emails ended up selling 22 copies of a $297 course that I had already promoted hundreds of times over the past couple years. $6.5k or so when all the money comes in, and all it took in terms of work was a couple of hours of repackaging content I already had.

I’ve run other such promo events, ranging anywhere from 1-14 days. Some were complete duds, and brought in less money than this Shangri-La event. But others brought in more, well into the 5-figures.

Your specific numbers?

It will depend on how big your list is, the relationship you have with the people on there, and of course your offers.

But with my second pair of eagle eyes scanning over all your assets… and my experience running not only my own “reissue events” but also coaching a couple dozen copywriters who worked on these kinds of promos for clients… you will be more likely to come out of this with a result you can be happy with.

Like I said, I’m talking to a few business owners about this already.

If you’re interested in this offer in principle, hit reply and let me know a bit about your list (size, how often you write, etc.) and your back catalogue of previous hits.

I will be promoting this offer until this Thursday. I want to talk to everyone who’s interested and find the two people I think I am best qualified to help… and then we’ll kick things off.

The biggest secret to building a big audience

by

I’ll tell you about the biggest secret in a second. But I feel I should sneak up on it a little, so it has more impact.

So let me ask you:

Have you ever heard of Leroy Smith? The former pro basketball player, with the story in his past?

Smith attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte from 1981 to 1985, and he played for the UNC team.

After that, Smith turned pro and played for various prestigious basketball teams, including Hemel & Watford Royals, the Westchester Golden Apples, and Kumagai Gumi Bruins.

Yes, those are all real basketball teams. I did not make them up.

In many instances, Smith led these no-name, fourth-tier teams that nobody cares about in various important categories, including scoring, rebounds, and blocked shots.

No? None of this sounds familiar? You haven’t heard of Smith or his accomplishments?

Honestly I’m not surprised.

Really the only reason anybody today has heard of Smith, and that includes me, is that back in 1978, Smith got picked for his high school varsity team over his childhood friend Michael Jordan.

Smith and Jordan were both 15 at the time. But Smith already stood at 6’7, or 201 cm, while Jordan was only 5’10, or 180cm.

When Michael Jordan was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, Smith was there in the audience. Jordan said of Smith, “He’s not any bigger, his game is about the same.”

Meanwhile, Jordan became Jordan. It helped that he had a rhinoceros-sized chip on his shoulder.

“It all started when Coach Herring cut me,” Jordan said. “It was embarrassing, not making that team.”

Jordan spent his sophomore year working hard on basketball. He became more skilled and confident. More importantly, he developed the habits of obsessive self-improvement and discipline and training.

These habits, combined with a growth spurt that saw him add another 8 inches in height, landed Jordan not just on the high school varsity team… not just on the college basketball team… not just in the pros… but made him into the greatest basketball player of all time.

“Business,” I hear you saying, “talk business, Bejako! Michael Jordan is all well and good, but don’t you realize my time is money…”

Fine. Let me hurry my analogy along. I’d like to present to you an idea I heard from marketer Travis Sago:

“The biggest secret to building a big audience is knowing how to monetize a small one.”

Travis’s point is that if every visitor you could drive to your sales page was worth a thousand bucks to you… would you really have a traffic problem?

Would you have any trouble buying traffic?

Would it be hard to get other people as affiliates for your offer?

Would you need to get motivated to write and send another email, knowing that 10 or 12 people – “only 10 or 12 people!” — will click through to your sales page?

I doubt it.

Maybe a thousand bucks per visitor to your sales page sounds ambitious or even unrealistic.

Fine. But if you’re constantly looking for new traffic, or if you think that more traffic will solve all your problems, then I bet you have some room to develop the habit of obsessive list monetization.

Figure out how to monetize your current list better… and not only will it become way easier to kick off that audience growth spurt… but when the growth spurt happens, you’ll have a shot at a Michael Jordan-like career, instead of a Leroy Smith-like career.

And on that note, I’d like to remind you of my ongoing hand-raiser campaign. Here are the details on that, from my email yesterday:

===

I’ve set aside time over the next month to help two business owners to quickly churn up new offers using their catalogue of existing products. The ultimate goal here is to:

* Create something new and exciting for your audience, without creating entirely new products

* Develop a new asset for yourself — a new offer you can reissue in the future with little tweaks or maybe without any tweaks

* Bring in new buyers who might then buy other stuff from you, or get deeper into your world

* Do a bit of work and make back a good deal of money as a result

If you want a specific example:

Last week, I sent three emails over two days in what I called my Shangri-La MVE event. Those three emails ended up selling 22 copies of a $297 course that I had already promoted hundreds of times over the past couple years. $6.5k or so when all the money comes in, and all it took in terms of work was a couple of hours of repackaging content I already had.

I’ve run other such promo events, ranging anywhere from 1-14 days. Some were complete duds, and brought in less money than this Shangri-La event. But others brought in more, well into the 5-figures.

Your specific numbers?

It will depend on how big your list is, the relationship you have with the people on there, and of course your offers.

But with my second pair of eagle eyes scanning over all your assets… and my experience running not only my own “reissue events” but also coaching a couple dozen copywriters who worked on these kinds of promos for clients… you will be more likely to come out of this with a result you can be happy with.

Like I said, I’m talking to a few business owners about this already.

If you’re interested in this offer in principle, hit reply and let me know a bit about your list (size, how often you write, etc.) and your back catalogue of previous hits.

I will be promoting this offer until this Thursday. I want to talk to everyone who’s interested and find the two people I think I am best qualified to help… and then we’ll kick things off.