Offers

“A-list copywriter vaccine”

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A certain Dr. Frankenstein, who is a genetics professor at Stanford University, claims he has invented a “superhero vaccine.”

Dr. Frank took genetic material from an an Olympic athlete as the basis for his vaccine.

And what does the vaccine do?

“It gives you a body-wide genetic upgrade,” says Dr. Frankenstein. He claims that the jab will make heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and liver disease a nonissue in the vaccinated.

I don’t know about you, but a genetic upgrade sounds great to me. I’d love to have the muscles, stamina, and Alzheimer’s resistance of an anonymous Olympic athlete, all with just a one-time visit to Dr. Frank’s offices.

In fact, this superhero vaccine matches 3 of my 4 criteria for the ideal offer.

It’s irresistible and promises escape… it’s easy… and it’s urgent.

After all, old age and diseases are certainly coming. And I don’t want to be left behind as the only non-vaccinated, aging weakling in a population of vaccinated superheros.

Of course, there is one element of the ideal offer missing with Dr. Frank’s jab. And that’s perceived safety.

In fact, the reactions I’ve read so far are a rehash of Jeff Goldblum’s speech from Jurassic Park:

The lack of humility before nature that’s being displayed here staggers me… Don’t you see the danger inherent in what you’re doing here? Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet’s ever seen but you wield it like a kid that’s found his dad’s gun.

It’s a reasonable attitude.

But who of us is gonna be that reasonable once a number of daring souls opt for the superhero vaccine… and report amazing results about overflowing energy, perfect memory, and more lustrous hair?

Perhaps you see where I’m going with this. So I won’t drag the point on.

Instead, let me remind you that my Copy Riddles program is open right now.

I think of it as an “A-list copywriter vaccine.” Because it gives you the irresistible promise of a brain-wide copywriting upgrade… through a quick and easy process… based on the winning sales bullets of A-list copywriters.

And there’s a certain matter of urgency. Because Copy Riddles is only open until this Sunday, July 4, at midnight PST.

“Uff, I don’t know,” you might say. “It sounds kind of risky.”

In that case, let me tell you that a small group of daring souls have already gone through Copy Riddles.

They all survived. And here’s what one of them, an Agora copywriter by the name of Vasilis Apostolou, has to report:

I’ve taken every popular course out there. I’m talking about the most popular courses from A-list copywriters. Obviously, I’ve read, listened and watched a lot about bullet writing.

But I can say with 100% confidence that John has put together the best course on bullets, bar none.

I learned a lot from the course that I use for all types of copy: From subject lines to hour-long interview style promos.

I wish I had John’s bullet course when I was starting out. It would have saved me tons of frustration… and shaved months off my learning curve.

In case you’d like to find out more about the A-list copywriter vaccine:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

You too can profit from mooches, singers, and bon bon eaters!

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“I’m always amazed that people seriously believe that they can make $1,000 a week stuffing envelopes. Evidently, greed and the ‘something for nothing’ ploy are too much for the bon bon eater to resist. What the mooch doesn’t know is stuffing envelopes is a sophisticated, highly mechanized operation that is run by legitimate businesses that specialize in mass mailings. The possibility of them using a bon bon eater is not only remote, it’s a joke. As a biz-opper, you look at bon bon eaters as a joke — a profitable joke.”
— Biz Op: How To Get Rich With “Business Opportunity” Frauds And Scams

Thanks to a reader named Lester, I found out about the book Biz Op, written by one Bruce Easley in 1994.

Biz Op claims to be an inside look at how Easley made a killing by cheating, lying, and scamming his customers, often in violation of state and federal laws.

“Yeah right,” I said.

“Why would anyone publicize that information if it were really real? Even if Easley wasn’t afraid of the legal consequences and the retribution of his burned “mooches”… why not turn his confession into a business opportunity itself, and sell people ‘The Lazy Way to Riches’ for $197… instead of selling a book about defrauding people, through a regular book publisher, for a few bucks apiece?”

I don’t know the answers to any of that. But I have no more doubts that Biz Op the book is legit.

There’s the fact that Easley was written up in the NY Times (“You too can be a successful criminal!”).

There are his appearances on daytime shock shows like Donahue.

But most of all, there’s the book itself.

It’s got insider jargon I’d never heard of. Like mooches (any sucker dumb enough to hand a bizopper his or her money)… bon bon eaters (stay-at-home moms who respond to envelope stuffing offers)… and singers (relatives you pay to pick up the phone and act as social proof for your biz op).

And then there’s all the familiar detail of the marketing approach and the copy. In a nutshell, Easley’s biz op offers were:

1. Irresistible (a promise of riches outside your normal grasp, and an opportunity to escape your current life)
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2. Easy (you don’t have to do anything… or the work will be trivial)

​3. Safe (there’s a money-back guarantee plus all these other people say it’s a great opportunity)

​4. Urgent (somebody else in your market is interested and we need to tell them by tonight if it’s them or you)

I saw a YouTube video recently of Magnus Carlsen, the current world chess champion.

Carlsen was shown different positions on a chess board. Each time, within a few pieces being put on the board, he recognized the position as part of some famous historical chess match. He even recognized the setup from the chess scene in the first Harry Potter movie.

My point is that there’s value in knowing the history of your field. That’s why I’m telling you about Biz Op the book.

Don’t scam people. But there’s value in studying mooches, singers, and bon bon eaters. Because Easley’s 4-part checklist above is the essence of what makes for a good direct response offer.

Make your own offer as close to that as you can… without lying, cheating, or breaking any laws… and you’ll have a real shot at profit.

At least that’s my theory. Which is why I organized my own offer as I did.

I’m talking about my Copy Riddles program. For the right person, it should be irresistible (“breakthrough copywriting skills in 8 weeks or less”)… easy (“just follow the instructions and do the exercises”)… and safe (“there’s a guarantee, plus all these other people say it’s great”).

And what about urgent?

Well, Copy Riddles is open until this Sunday, July 4, at midnight PST. After that, it won’t be available for months.

So if you want to find out about this exciting opportunity before it becomes unavailable…

https://bejakovic.com/cr

When sex doesn’t sell

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The cover of Gary Halbert’s Killer Orgasms! book has a photo of Gary’s topless girlfriend.

I took that photo, censored it with a thick black bar over the nipples, and put it into the sales letter to my bullets course, now called Copy Riddles.

There are a couple reasons for that:

One is that this book was instrumental to Copy Riddles coming into being.

Killer Orgasms! was the first place where I found the “source text” behind bullets, so I could see how A-list copywriters like Gary do the magic they do.

But that’s not the only reason I have the photo in there.

Because sex sells, right? If you associate sex with your offer, it makes people buy more?

Maybe… or maybe not.

It might actually backfire.

Like I wrote yesterday, our attitudes towards other people are mixed.

In a situation of fear and danger, we love nothing more than to be in the middle of the herd. There’s safety in numbers.

But in a situation of attraction and mating, we hope to seduce by being exceptional. We hope to be seen as the maverick, roving the hillsides alone. Others are just meddling competition in this case.

At least that’s what some scientists hypothesized back in 2009. So they ran some experiments. And they showed this common-sense logic to be true.

They found that, sure, sex can make your offer sell better… if your offer is about standing out.

But sex can hurt your sales if your offer involves a strong appeal to community and belonging.

Which was relevant to me.

Because I initially planned to sell Copy Riddles with a stronger appeal of support, community, etc. I wound up minimizing that, and amping up the exceptionalism talk:

“Discover how you can OWN bullets more quickly than you would ever believe… and set yourself apart from the masses of other marketers and copywriters.”

But who knows? Maybe all this jiggering won’t do anything.

Or maybe it will even hurt. After all, if a female reader sees this same topless photo and the surrounding “set yourself apart” copy, it might be a turnoff rather than motivating.

But whether I suffer or not, the underlying idea is worth keeping in mind:

Your prospects’ frame of mind influences whether they want to belong or to be unique. And perhaps, this can influence your sales.

We will see what it does in my case. Because as of today, I am reopening Copy Riddles.

The first round kicked off in March. I’ve had very positive feedback about it. I’ll write more about that over the next few days. (Signup will be open until this Sunday.)

In the meantime, if you’d like to check out the Copy Riddles sales page for yourself, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

“Huge Hack if YOU Sell 5k-250k products or programs”

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Two months ago, in a private Facebook group, I saw a post by a well-known real estate investing guru:

Huge Hack if YOU Sell 5k-250k products or programs.
We found a LEGIT funding company that will finance your customers.
VERY Easy qualifications:
620 credit score
40k in income
They will pay you 100% up front of what ever you charge, and the customers payments to them will be fractional to anything they pay you!
We have literally 3 folded our income with them overnight.

The guru was offering to make an introduction to the company, and he didn’t reveal their name. In fact, I still don’t know.

But just yesterday, I saw that Flippa (the online business marketplace) has partnered with a company called Yardline.

So now, if you’re looking to buy an online business through Flippa, assuming you can jump through a few hoops, then you can get 250k from Yardline to finance your purchase.

I’m not sure what kinds of terms Yardline offers.

​​All I can say is that if I were looking to buy a business, I’d look for investment partners directly, rather than going through a company like this.

On the other hand, if you do sell a high-ticket offer, and you target people for whom that much money is an issue, then Yardline and similar companies might be something to look into.

​​If I’m reading the Facebook post above correctly, it sounds like an easy way to grow your income without changing your offer, your marketing, or really anything else inside your company.

Plus I think this is jut a bit of curious industry news. Because a few days ago, I speculated whether the direct response industry is at a “Netflix moment.” In other words, if we’re at a kind of tipping point, where things go mainstream.

I don’t think the emergence of companies like Yardline is any kind of hard proof of this. But it is another data point for you to consider… when you think about which direction you want to take your own career or business.

And if you want more direct marketing industry news and predictions:

I write a daily email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

My shame-filled run at becoming a U.S. Park Ranger

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I used to be a real sucker for direct response offers. For example…

One day in high school, I was leafing through the classifieds in the local paper. And one ad made my eyes pop out:

“Get a job as a U.S. Park Ranger. Beautiful work, solid pay. Results guaranteed or your money back.”

For context: I hated high school. I had no ambition of going to college. And I didn’t like people.

“So you’re telling me I can get paid to commune with bears among the hush of the redwoods?” I squinted at the ad. “Hell yes!”

If I remember right, the cost to become a U.S. Park Ranger (as per the classified) was something like $60. That was money I didn’t have… but I begged, borrowed, and stole enough to get it. What did it matter? I could pay it all back with my first U.S. Park Ranger salary. It was guaranteed.

A few weeks later, my “Become a Park Ranger” kit arrived in the mail.

It consisted of a thick binder with study materials and instructions on how to apply for the 3x/year government test procedure that was the first step to becoming a park ranger.

Huh?

A thick binder? Studying for a test? On the off chance that maybe in a year, I could get paid to walk around Yosemite, away from the horrors of high school?

My heart sank. This is not what I had signed up for. And my beautiful $60… where did it go? I called up the company, and with a trembling voice, I asked if I could get a refund.

“Did you take the Park Ranger test already?” the other end asked.

“Uhh… no?”

“Well, that’s the condition for our refund guarantee. Take the test, and if you don’t pass, we will give you your money back.”

I think I buried my “Become a Park Ranger” kit in the back yard that night, so it didn’t remind me of my shame, failure, and lost money.

But who knows. Maybe I will still get $60 worth of story out of it. Because it’s a good illustration of an idea I recently got from marketer Rich Schefren:

“Your offer is not only ‘You pay me x and you get y.’ It’s also what your customer has to do with y to get the outcome.”

Maybe that sounds trivial. After all, the first thing you’re taught in copywriting school is that people don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole in the head. And nobody wakes up at 3am, sweating because they don’t have enough newsletter subscriptions, right?

Well, it might be basic. But how many of us actually abide by these rules when we create offers?

Of course, one way to use this is simply to promise the redwoods and the bears, and to make no mention of thick binders and exam procedures.

​​Trouble is, you need a real sucker to fall for that. And even then, it’s hard to build a repeat business.

So that leaves you with the other option. Which is to actually reduce as much as possible the time and effort that your customer has to invest, post-purchase, to actually get the result he is after.

​Not only will this make for an easier sell… not only will it produce satisfied customers who come back for more, over and over… but it also means folks will pay much more, right up front. Even if they have to beg, borrow, and steal to do it.

Anyways, here’s my offer to you:

Do you want to become a better marketer or copywriter? Tough, isn’t it?

Well, if you sign up to get my email newsletter, I take all the weight off your shoulders. I do the research about the best ideas… I find the entertaining and appealing stories that make these ideas slip easily into your brain… and I package it all up and send it to you every day.

Best part?

You don’t even have to read anything! Just open up my emails when they arrive and stare at your screen for a few seconds. Your marketing and copywriting IQ will increase automatically. Results are guaranteed. To sign up, please send me $60 in cash and then follow the instructions given here.

Your advice on this rough draft?

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Could I get your advice on something?

I’m trying to figure out a way to get people intrigued enough to listen to a new podcast interview (published earlier this month), which I myself just listened to.

The trouble is that the interview is with somebody very famous in the marketing space — so famous in fact, that I’ve written about him twice in only the past 10 days.

So here’s what I’m thinking to do. Rather than talking about this famous guy, I’m thinking to craft a message about a powerful promise:

“How to create products your audience loves, feels invested in, and is ready to buy, sight unseen”

This is something that’s revealed in this podcast interview.

​​The basic idea is to get your prospects to participate in the making of your product. That’s the “WHAT,” which is already familiar to a lot of people. But here’s where the extra insight lies:

It’s super important HOW you ask people to participate in that co-creation.

Do it right, and you get helpful feedback and eager new fans… do it wrong, and you get a bunch of skeptics and most probably a product failure.

Once I talk about that, I would then I would finish my message by saying something like:
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“And that’s what’s you can find inside this podcast interview blah blah here’s the link.”
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So that’s my current rough draft. If you have any advice for me, please write me an email and let me know.

And if you think it might be helpful to listen to the actual interview before you give me your feedback, the link is below. But be warned — this interview is rather short (~20 mins), a little fanboyish, and it covers stuff you might already know. If that doesn’t deter you:

https://ilovemarketing.com/influence-brand-new-insights-into-the-psychology-of-persuasion-featuring-the-godfather-of-influence/

A little direct response gem, or a dirty trick?

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Once upon a time, deep in the direct response mines, I found a little gem in two sales letters from Gary Bencivenga.

It reminded me of my childhood tennis coach, who claimed he would wear the same t-shirt four days in a row. One day, the standard way… next day, inside-out… third day, front-to-back… fourth day, you get the idea.

Well, Gary’s two sales letters did something similar.

The first sales letter ran with the headline, “Do you make these mistakes in job interviews?” The offer was a book, Interviews That Win Jobs, for $49.95.

But typical to good DR marketing, Gary’s sales letter also offered several bonuses. Bonus one, How to Answer the 64 Toughest Interview Questions (“selling nationally for $49.95!”)… bonus two, Red Hot Cover Letters… bonus three, Get a Job NOW!… bonus four, Negotiate Your Best Compensation Package.

Then there was a second ad of Gary’s I found.

The headline read, “Job hunting? How well can YOU answer these 64 toughest interview questions?” The offer was a book, 64 Toughest Interview Questions, for $49.95.

But typical to good DR marketing, Gary’s sales letter also offered several bonuses. Bonus one, Interviews That Win Jobs (“selling nationally for $49.95!”)… bonus two, Red Hot Cover Letters… bonus three, Get a Job NOW!… bonus four, Negotiate Your Best Compensation Package.

I don’t know. Maybe Gary wore the other two bonuses inside-out and front-to-back also. I just haven’t found those ads yet.

My point being, if you hit upon a hot market, you can use and reuse your main offer and your bonuses to blitz your market. This way, you can often get more of a response than you would with just one ad and one offer.

And if you don’t use Gary’s trick all at once, you can do what Dan Kennedy calls a reverse:

When your offer starts to flag, take the free bonuses and make that the paid system you’re selling… and take the old system you were selling and break it up into free bonuses.

But maybe you don’t think this is a little gem. Maybe you think it’s a low-down dirty trick… selling people what you used to give away for free… and giving away what you used to charge for.

But what to do? Such is human nature. You have to play these kinds of games if you want people to value what you’ve got. As a clever Spaniard once wrote:

“And as all men know, what costs but little, that we rate but low.”

Here’s something I suspect you will rate but low:

I write a daily email newsletter. It’s where I put the most interesting and valuable ideas I come across related to persuasion, marketing, and copywriting. Here’s where you can sign up, for free.

My prediction about the future of direct response hits

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“The next Tesla may even hire creators to evangelize the company or at least, serve as a paid marketing channel. Creators are essentially media companies now, which means that the creators of tomorrow will operate a lot like the New York based publications of yesteryear.”
— David Perell

My email yesterday looked at some fancy science, and made a simple point:

A hit product is the result of chance. The first few raindrops of popularity determine which spots in the product landscape become lakes, and which ones deserts.

I think this leads to a few conclusions. One is that, just because a product (or an offer) was successful before, this doesn’t necessarily mean it is worth studying. It might have become successful due to chance more than any intrinsic quality or real demand. And vice versa. You clearly cannot count on the quality of your product as your only key to success.

So what can we do about this?

One option is simply to put out lots more offers. This will increase your chances of getting at least one big hit.

And then there’s the fact that early buzz seems to be crucial to long-term success. Which to me suggests that street teams.. astroturfing… or influencer marketing are really where much of your marketing efforts should go.

And that’s what David Perell is saying in the quote above. Media-savvy businessmen like Elon Musk are already using creators as their main marketing channel. And the “next Tesla” will probably do more of the same.

But hold on a second. Tesla? That’s a whole other country from the direct response businesses I normally talk about.

After all, if some guy in 1995 got a sales letter from Gary Halbert about a book on killer orgasms… he probably didn’t go down to the local bar to ask his buddies if they knew anything about this orgasms book, and if it’s worth the $39.95 Halbert was charging for it.

In other words, people chose traditional direct response offers in a more independent way than they choose cars or movies.

But as I’ve written before, I feel that’s changing. In the same way that traditional brand businesses are becoming more direct response savvy… traditional direct response businesses are discovering the power of having a brand. So the same reality of what makes a big hit matters for modern DR businesses too.

The way I see it, that means you’ve got two options:

One is to become a creator yourself, because businesses will need you more and more.

The other is to hire creators or influencers to promote your offers, so you can create enough initial buzz to make it a hit.

That raises the question of who to hire and when and what they should say… All interesting questions. I’ll talk about that another day. And if by some strange circumstance you want to hear what I have to say then, you can subscribe to my email newsletter.

Experts are baffled: The magic ingredient that makes a hit

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Back when Jim Morrison and The Doors released their first album, they were a bunch of movie school bums whose biggest ambition was to become as big as the cult LA band Love.

Who remembers Love today? Not many. But hundreds of millions know Jim Morrison and Doors hits like “Light My Fire” and “Hello, I Love You.”

This global success might never have happened. But The Doors, bums that they were, spent weeks calling up the local LA radio station, requesting that cool new song, Light My Fire.

​​The song eventually became a local hit… then a national hit… then the album became a hit… and then The Doors became the next big thing.

Maybe you can do the same. At least that’s one conclusion I drew from a mind-opening article by Duncan Watts.

The article is titled “Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?” You can find it on The New York Times Magazine site, and it’s worth reading from beginning to end. But if you’re pressed for time or attention, let me summarize it for you:

Conventional wisdom says the success of a book or a song or a movie is based on two things. One is the product itself. The other is what the market wants at that time.

And the conclusion, based on this conventional wisdom, is simple. If anybody fails to predict what will become successful, he is either too dumb or too lazy to read the writing on the wall.

Well, Watts had his doubts about this. So he set up a clever experiment to test it out. I won’t rehash the full details of how the experiment ran. The gist was it involved looking at which songs became popular among nine different segments of 14,000 people.

People in one segment had no information about how popular each song already was. People in the other eight segments knew how popular each song was, but only within their own segment.

This setup allowed Watts to test two ideas:

1. The most popular songs will be roughly as popular in the different segments.

2. The same songs will float to the top in the different segments.

Both of these hypotheses turned out to be very false.

First, in the eight “social influence” segments, the most popular songs became way more popular than in the “no social influence” segment. And the losers were more thorough losers.

​​Maybe that’s not so amazing. But get this:

In the different “social influence” segments, different songs became the most popular. And this wasn’t a minor reordering. A song could be no. 1 in one segment and no. 40 in another.

Watts explains this in a blindingly obvious way:

People do not make decisions independently of other people. The world is too complex… we usually don’t know what we want… and we often get more value out of a shared experience than out of the “best” experience.

All this means that small, random differences in initial popularity can have a massive impact in what becomes a hit and what doesn’t. That’s what Watts calls cumulative advantage. The rich get richer. And who gets rich initially? Well, that’s a coin toss.

This explains my Grinch story from yesterday. Chuck Jones had to pitch the Grinch 25 times, not because industry experts are too dumb or closed-minded to see the potential that was there… but because it’s genuinely impossible to predict what will succeed.

Randomness is the magic ingredient that determines a hit.

But what about The Doors? And what about direct response marketing, where decisions are more likely to be independent? And is there anything positive we can conclude from all this?

I believe so. But this post is running long already… so if you’re interested in more on this, I’ll finish it up tomorrow.

Offer flu

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Today, I want to quickly warn you about a dangerous pandemic that’s cutting down hundreds or even thousands of bright and eager entrepreneurs. It’s called offer flu, and it was first discovered by marketer Travis Sago.

According to Travis, offer flu starts with the following warning symptoms:

1. You think your whole sales success depends on your reputation (or you think you cannot be successful without a reputation)

2. You can’t make any of your ads work, or you need high-tech webinars, segmentation, or funnels, just to barely turn a profit

3. If you replace your product or your company’s name with your competitor’s, you find your marketplace doesn’t notice or doesn’t “give a crap” (Travis’s words)

The concerning thing is that offer flu is highly contagious. The more people you are exposed to who have offer flu… the more likely you are to contract it yourself. And that’s a terrible thing.

Because in the final, deadly stages of offer flu, you become incapable of saying anything unique. You start spouting out gibberish power words — 7-figure! Blueprint! Inner circle! — and yet you can’t stir any kind of response from the marketplace.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that, for those lucky few who are naturally immune to offer flu, or the even rarer birds who have received both shots of the exclusive offer flu vaccine, life is pleasant and easy.

Travis says that, if you don’t have offer flu, you can even put your offer in a simple Word doc… send this to the right people… and get back an enthusiastic “Hell yeah, I want this!” along with free money in your PayPal account.

If, that is, you don’t have offer flu. So how can you protect yourself from this crippling disease?

The cure, in two words, is “specificity” and “problems.” But if you want the full 2-shot vaccine, I suggest you listen to Travis’s “Natural Offer Flu Cures” course. It’s free, and it’s available in the “Videos” section of his Facebook group, right here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/milliondollaroffermojo