Offers

The best argument against money-back guarantees on the Internet

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I was just listening to an interview with Vic Conant, the president of Nightingale-Conant.

As you might know, Nightingale-Conant is a big info publishing company. For decades, they dominated the self-help and sales audiotape market, with lots of big-name gurus on their roster. Their original guru was Earl Nightingale, who influenced Dan Kennedy and everyone on down.

One question posed to Conant was about the most profitable idea he’s used to market his products online or offline. Here’s what Conant replied:

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It’s been this ‘open accounts’ idea. When we advertise, we typically say, “Try this product for 30 days on ‘open account,’ or at our risk for free, basically. We’ll send it out to you, you try it, and we have the risk on our side.”

My dad came up with that idea back in about 1978. We were asking at that time for people to send in $50 and we’d send them the product. And that just wasn’t working to a great degree. We tried this and it worked very well and because of that our business exploded.

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The interviewer, Michael Senoff, asked a clarifying question:

“When someone orders, do they put a credit card down, but it’s not charged until 30 days later?”

Conant shook his head. “No. Typically it’s nothing. Just strictly bill-me-later.”

I thought this was very interesting. Because I don’t offer money-back guarantees on my expensive courses, like Copy Riddles.

​​I certainly don’t give them away for free for 30 days and then work to collect my money.

So should I start? For that… let’s go on with the interview.

Michael Senoff asked the obvious followup question. “They responded well, but how is it on the side of your collections? What percentage have you found you have to go chase money?”

Vic Conant replied:

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We have a very sophisticated collection effort, but it’s basically using guilt. And we’re very sophisticated in picking lists.

In direct marketing, in mail, you pick a list and you test that list. And if you test a list that returns all the products or doesn’t pay, then you don’t use that list any more.

So we tend to use very strong lists like Business Week subscribers, or people that don’t have time to screw around.

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So there you go. That’s the best argument I’ve heard against money-back guarantees on the Internet, at least the way business is typically done.

On the Internet, you’re not testing in slowly to very strong lists of buyers.

Instead, most businesses, including mine, have an open-door policy. Pretty much anybody can find my website, join my list, have the opportunity to buy. There’s no way to know if that’s a serious business owner with no time to screw around… or an unserious opportunity seeker with all the time in the world for screwing both me and himself around.

But still.

If you’re anything like me, your ears perked up at that original question, “most profitable idea,” and Conant’s reply “open account.”

I thought for a bit. Is there any way to do something like that on the Internet?

I realized I already am doing it.

Really, that’s the point of free daily emails such as these.

​​My courses such as Copy Riddles are very expensive.

​​The point of my free daily emails is to demonstrate — expertise, trustworthiness, valuable or interesting ideas. That’s the open account. And then, once you feel comfortable, you have the opportunity to buy into the next level.

I realize that might take a while, maybe much longer than 30 days. That’s okay. I have time, and I have additional arguments and email ideas. Here’s one I will close with today, from automotive copywriter Kevin Cochrane, who bought into Copy Riddles a while back:

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Copy Riddles was a measuring stick for me as a copywriter. John charted a course through the persuasion pathways that separate the pros from the posers. The structure is clear. The examples tie direct response history to present applications. The exercises offered a practical way to test and implement the lessons.
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I write for the automotive retail space, which is watered down by legal teams, compliance guidelines, and plenty of regulation. The course has helped me plunk the guts of what makes a solid bullet into more and more of my work.​​

If you’re hemming and hawing about whether to join, read a week’s worth of John’s daily newsletter as a trial run. You’ll know what to do after. (Hint: the paid stuff in Copy Riddles is even better somehow.) This is the kind of course you’ll refer back to again and again.

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For when you’re ready:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

201 good reasons to get on Daniel Throssell’s list today

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Back in April, I sent an email to announce the last day ever to buy Copy Riddles.

One of the people who replied to that email was Daniel “I just got an entire city boycotted” Throssell. Daniel wrote me to say:

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This is gutsy, I imagine it’s a cash cow for you!

You know, I have been meaning to ask you for a while if I could promote this one as an affiliate. I have always found it an excellent idea for a course.

But this might be a great opportunity now:

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Daniel went on to propose a plan. I’d leave Copy Riddles open for one final promo, to his list only. It was clear we’d both make a lot of money this way.

We went back and forth for a while. But ultimately, I said thanks, but no. It would be a cash grab, and people would feel it.

Daniel and I agreed to leave it at that.

But now, I’ve decided to bring back Copy Riddles.

Yes, like Daniel says, Copy Riddles was previously a steady money-maker for me. And yes, I’ve now increased the price dramatically from what I last sold it for.

But like I wrote a couple days ago, I’m bringing back Copy Riddles for reasons other than a cash grab.

I’m proud of this course. It’s felt bad seeing it collect dust on the shelf.

Plus, ​​I got a dozen or more unsolicited messages about how great a product it is, and some about how not making it available is a crime against people who want to get copywriting skills.

​​I even tried to sell it off wholesale to a new forever home, but that didn’t work out.

So I’ve brought Copy Riddles back.

​​And since Daniel asked to promote it earlier, I thought would be only fair to write him now to see whether he’s still interested. He said yes, under one condition:

That I offer a special price, only for people on his list.

We agreed on a $200 discount from the new Copy Riddles price.

At the same time, I want to give a fair chance to anyone from my own list to get that same discount, since I won’t be offering it again in the future.

So I’m telling you right now:

If you want to get Copy Riddles, and you want to get it for $200 off what it now sells for, then get on Daniel’s list today. Because his email about Copy Riddles, along with the special discount code, will go out tomorrow.

So that’s 200 good reasons right there to get on Daniel’s list today. And if you need one more:

As I’ve written before, Daniel gets results from his email list that nobody I know can match. The stock explanations for Daniel’s success are his storytelling chops, mixed in with his willingness to embrace conflict and self-promotion.

Fine.

But here’s another reason for Daniel’s success you may or may not have thought of:

His offers.

​​Daniel’s offers are how he beat out a dozen other top email marketers during the infamous 2021 Black Friday campaign. It’s how he made the classified ads he ran this spring (mine among them) a big success for everyone involved. It’s why I ended up providing a unique and sizeable discount on Copy Riddles only to people on Daniel’s list.

Not only are Daniel’s offers unique and creative, not only are they pretty much irresistible to his audience, but they end up making his positioning and authority and relationship with his audience only stronger after each promotion.

There’s lots to be learned there. And you can do so for free — even if you don’t vibe with Daniel’s style otherwise — by getting on Daniel’s list and paying attention just to the offers he makes.

So there you go. 201 good reasons to get on Daniel’s list. Here’s the link, in case you’d like to do so right now:

https://persuasivepage.com/

Magic boxes

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Last year, specifically on May 29 2023, I wrote an email about Dan Kennedy’s book The Phenomenon. In that book, Dan says:

“There will always be an offer or offer(s).”

I sighed, hung my head, and finally started adding an offer at the end of each email I sent out to my list.

Not surprisingly, I made more money from my list over the past year than I had in the four years prior.

You probably know to put an offer at the end of your emails. After all, everybody does it, and it’s kind of the point of sending out daily emails.

But what if you don’t have a product or a service to sell yet? Or what if you only have a few bum offers, which your list has stopped responding to every day? Should you still insist on a call-to-action at the end of each email?

I covered one aspect of this earlier this week. I gave you a great Dan Kennedy idea about selling “options” on your shiny future offer.

But what if, for whatever reasons of your own, you don’t even want to sell future options?

Here’s what I’ve found:

There are many ways to drive people to valuable action, even if you have nothing good to sell today.

Example:

My first ever one-on-one coaching student sells a $4k training for dental practices. While she was preparing that training, she was writing emails to a list of dentists. And her emails were falling into a void — zero response or engagement.

On our first call, I told her to make a tweak to her next email, and to put in a “magic box” CTA at the end of the email. The result, in her own words:

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Haha, I like that.

Better ingredients, better emails.

I got my first response to an email today from an owner of a fairly large dental practice here in Melbourne.

Thanks for pushing me in this new direction re trying to wrap things up in magic boxes instead of just getting them nodding along.

Excited for the year ahead 🙂

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I don’t know if that dentist ended up buying my student’s $4k training. But when people do respond, you can start a conversation with them. You can get into their world. You can build a stronger relationship. Often, that translates into sales down the line.

That might be something to keep in mind if you have valuable prospects on your list, but you haven’t yet built much of a relationship with them yet.

Meanwhile, if you’re curious about “magic box” CTAs, I’ll make you a deal:

Reply and tell me the size of your email list. If you haven’t got a list, that’s fine, no judgment, you can write in and tell me that. On the other hand, if you do have a list, or if you have multiple, or if you manage a list on behalf of somebody else, write in and tell me how big your list or lists are.

In return, I’ll tell you how a “magic box” CTA works. There’s a good chance you’ve figured out how it works, but you might still learn a tip or two from me that you hadn’t thought of. And besides, maybe we can get into an interesting conversation.

Announcing new financed payment structure for Most Valuable Email

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This past May I went to the one and only copywriting conference I have ever attended. Trevor “Toe Cracker” Crook, who organized the conference, got up on stage on day two to give his presentation, all about creating outrageous offers.

Trevor had something like 9 points to cover. And then he got into the 10th, which was a pitch for his paid offer, something called Silent Sales Formula.

The structure of Trevor’s offer went like this:

* Access to Trevor’s Own The Casino training (a $5,970 value)
* 3-7 Zoom calls with Trevor for the rest of 2023 ($5,000 value)
* All for an affordable $497 today, and then “9 financed payments of $497 every 30 days”

Trevor made it clear this was not a subscription offer, and you could not hope to cancel after the first month, or really at any other month.

I remember talking to some of the marketers and copywriters after the fact. We were all confused by that payment structure. It seemed to put a kind of anti-demonstration on Trevor’s otherwise excellent presentation about great offers.

It turns out I and the people I had been talking to were probably wrong, and Trevor was probably right.

I say “probably,” going by the other successful marketers I have seen since, offering exactly the same pricing structure:

I saw Sean Anthony do it recently for his High-Ticket Email Conversion Workshop ($590 today + 4 more payments of $590). I saw Justin Goff do it last week for the 7-Figure Email course he was promoting ($97 today + three future payments of $297).

You might think this is just a payment plan.

But for all these folks, there was no option to pay in bulk, and there was not really any talk of the total price. It seems the main reason for this pricing structure is a kind of reverse price anchoring. What you pay today is quite affordable, and the rest… well, the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.

As you might know, I am all about taking effective marketing strategies and putting them into practice.

And so I would like to announce I am stealing this idea from Trevor and Sean and Justin.

I have changed the payment structure for my Most Valuable Email course.

Before, the course was much more expensive than it is today — though still grossly underpriced for the value it delivers.

But I’ve changed all that with my new financed payment structure for MVE.

Now, you can get started with Most Valuable Email for just $97 today + 3 financed payments of $1, each 30 days.

You might not believe me. You might think I’m a joker. You might think I’m trivializing an otherwise valuable marketing idea. So check for yourself.

In order to do that, you will have to click through to the page below… scroll past all the big claims I make about MVE (build your authority, grow your email list, create exciting new offers out of thin air)… skirt the towering wall of testimonials… turn right at my guarantee that puts John Carlton and Gary Halbert to shame… and then click on the “Yes I want to learn the Most Valuable Email trick” button.

You will then see my new financed payment structure in action.

I don’t make any promises about how long I will keep this generous payment option up, but right now it’s there. Check for yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Paid waiting list

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For the first two years of this newsletter, I never made any offers.

Why?

​​Because, like Phineas Gage, who had a steel rod rammed through his eye socket, I apply a different part of my brain when I judge myself than when I judge others.

When I judge others, I yell at them if they don’t include an offer in each email. “Put something, anything, at the end of your email.”

I’ve told people to at least put a link to something free and interesting. And it’s certainly better to end your email with a link than with nothing.

Of course, it’s better still to have a paid offer, and to have the chance to get paid.

But what if you’re creating something big and heavy, something that won’t be ready yet for months or maybe a year?

​​And what if in the meantime you don’t want to get distracted by creating another offer, something quick and cheap… or by finding quality affiliate stuff to promote… or by hawking your mutton as a “consultant”?

I wanna share a story with you. It came from Dan Kennedy’s email newsletter a few weeks ago. You might know Dan as a direct marketing and copywriting genius, but he also had a background in person-to-person sales. And here’s Dan’s bit about that:

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​A story I did not have time to tell in my presentation dates back to my extensive work with a group of retirement communities in Florida. Often, their salespeople had soon-to-be-retirees and seniors on tour who were visiting from up North, had homes to sell, adult children to deal with, etc., and came over for a look while on vacation. They could not immediately be sold a home site.

We invented a series of lesser “things” they could and would buy: first, a 30, 60, or 90 day hold on a particular lot location; if not that, a 30, 60, or 90 day ‘first notification option’ on a location (meaning, if someone else wanted it, they’d be called before that new buyer was allowed to have it). Next, a 3, 6 or 12-month price lock, for a fee. All these fees were credited to purchase but non-refundable otherwise.

​​Three different ‘products’ to be sold when the product could not be sold. The conditional close is better than no close at all. A real sales pro HATES not closing.

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I don’t know about you, but I do know about me, and me was very impressed by this story.

I had heard of people taking free consults, and turning those into paid diagnostic reports.

I had heard of people taking free lead magnets, and turning them into paid front-end offers.

But I had never heard of people taking a free waiting list, and turning that into a source of income — not until Dan opened my eyes.

I tried to think about what’s really going on here, how to generalize this idea. I haven’t figured it out. Maybe you can clue me in.

The best that I came up with is that there is value to your prospect that you might not be charging for now. Access… flexibility… convenience… security… extra value, above and beyond your core offer. These are all things you can sell ahead of time, even before your main thing is ready to sell, or even pre-sell.

Or maybe what’s going on is simply what Dan says at the end. Making a sale is nicer than not making a sale. So think about what you can sell, today, even if it’s just a promise or a future option.

Fortunately, I have an offer to put at the end of my email tonight. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with anything I just told you about. ​That’s also something I would yell at other people about… but that I foolishly allow myself.

But my lack of proper selling tonight doesn’t change the fact that my offer tonight is valuable.

​​In fact, it’s most valuable, if only you spend an hour learning it, and then spend a lifetime applying it. In case you’d like to find out the full story, and maybe buy:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

I’ve caught James Bond stealing, and I would coach him to do it all over again

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I recently watched several old Bond movies, including the first one, Dr. No.

I was surprised by the scene that introduces the debonair Bond, which only happens 10+ minutes into the movie.

Of course, it’s at a high-end casino, at a baccarat table surrounded by women in gowns and men in tuxedos. A beautiful, aristocratic brunette is playing against a man not yet shown on camera. She keeps losing, getting more and more angry, and insisting on playing again.

Her off-camera opponent drawls with a Scottish accent. “I admire your courage, miss…?”

“Trench,” she says with a touch of irritation. “Sylvia Trench. I admire your luck, mister…?

The camera finally shows the handsome secret agent. He’s lighting a cigarette and looking immensely bored. “Bond. James Bond.”

Did you catch that?

“Bond. James Bond.” The most iconic item of Bond legend, along with the 007 designation and the stupid martini.

But even though it’s the main catch phrase people have associate with Bond for decades, it wasn’t his in the first place.

Mister Bond, James Bond, was simply mirroring what he had just heard from miss Trench, Sylvia Trench. You can even say he stole the cool introduction from the poor woman, along with her heart, and then made it his own.

And why not?

Over the past week, I’ve been lucky to draw the attention of a very successful and accomplished business owner, investor, and marketer.

He replied to one of my emails and gave me surprising encouragement and advice, including about creating high-ticket offers. $5k. $10k. $25k. Here’s a bit of what he wrote me:

“High-ticket copy offers are everywhere. I say the best artists steal from everyone to create completely new things that bring great value to the world. You might do just that as you create your value ladder, which I hope you are doing as you read this now.”

I read that yesterday morning, thought about it through the day, and started to apply it last night.

Today, I want to share it with you, in case you too have a list, and maybe even some offers, but nothing yet in what you might consider the high-ticket range.

Maybe like me, you’ve been thinking and waiting to create an offer in those higher price ranges. But like that very successful business owner wrote me, such offers are everywhere. You can mirror them, model them, and make them your own. Starting right now.

And if you want my help with that:

I offer coaching. I promote it as being coaching on writing daily emails. I do that because there’s something sexy to people about the idea of copywriting and email.

But the fact is, with the people I’ve coached so far, the coaching has been as much about creating new offers, or lead magnets, or ads, as it has been about writing emails. But don’t tell anybody that, because for some reason, email copywriting is really the thing that people want to be sold, and anything else might distract them.

I don’t often advertise this coaching program. I don’t often take on new students. I also don’t accept most people who express interest in this coaching.

But in case you are interested, reply to this email. Tell me a bit about yourself — who you are, what you do, who you do it for.

I’ll tell you if I think you’re in a place to benefit from the coaching. And if I think you are, we’ll get on a call to see if it’s a fit. A real fit.

The world’s most handsome email marketer gives me some unsolicited advice

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Two days ago, I started promoting Steve Raju’s ClientRaker training, about getting richer, nicer, classier clients using AI and LinkedIn.

Reader Fotis Chatz, who writes for Ning Li and positions himself as the “World’s Most Handsome Email Marketer” on LinkedIn, bought ClientRaker yesterday.

​​But being excessively handsome is not enough for Fotis. So he wrote in to give me some unsolicited advice about my launch:

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Just bought it.

Your story about him using A.I. is what “got” me. I’m already using FB with a lil bit of success, curious to see what I can do on Linkedin.

Btw, have you considered creating a bonus specifically for this offer? We did it a lot when I was working with Igor (Kheifets). We’d promote an affiliate offer and either give a product of ours that would cover something missing from the offer, or create something from scratch. Great way to make way more sales and win some affiliate leaderboards.

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What Fotis wrote might be unsolicited advice but it’s welcome advice — because I happen to agree 100%. I’m all for creating valuable bonuses, whether for my own offers or for affiliate offers.

I didn’t do it in this case because 1) I’m swamped with other work and 2) because I believe ClientRaker is so attractive that it will sell on its own.

That said, I might create a bonus in the future if Steve ever offers ClientRaker again and if I promote it again. I’ve had several ideas for what I could do, including a training based on the Authority Audits I’ve been doing this week, or another on how to feel comfortable asking for more money.

If that stirs you a bit, I can guarantee you this:

Every time I’ve offered a bonus for an offer, I made sure to also send it to everyone who bought that offer before I did the bonus.

I want to make it a brain-dead simple certainty in your mind that won’t ever be harmed by taking me up on any of my offer early. But you can certainly be harmed by taking me up on an offer late.

In the current situation, if you wait to take me up on this offer, you can miss the current launch window. You may scoff — but life has a way of getting in the way.

And if life does do that, it might mean you won’t be able to get ClientRaker ever — there’s no guarantee Steve will offer it again since he also has lots of things going on and doesn’t need this extra bit of money.

Or you might have to pay more. Because if Steve does run ClientRaker again, I will use all my persuasive skill to get him to double or triple the price.

And most importantly, you will miss out on any new clients you could very conceivably get just by following the simple, paint-by-number instructions Steve lays out inside this training.

If you actually do what Steve tells you to do, and you win yourself a new client or two in the next month that you wouldn’t have otherwise, that can legitimately be worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to you — depending on who you work with and what you deliver.

Point being, if you’re considering ClientRaker, it can make sense to get it now rather than wait. The following page has the full details if you want some help making that decision:

https://bejakovic.com/clientraker

AI bros make $4.20, I make $0.36, it’s still a win

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A couple weeks ago, I read a mostly mindboggling email from Scott Oldford, who has been buying up newsletters and newsletter-related services.

Scott’s email was all about about an AI newsletter he bought recently for some undisclosed sum.

The acquired newsletter has 22,000 subscribers. Its creators have been running Facebook ads to get new readers, and paying $1.40 per new reader.

So far, so grim. But please pay attention to the next fact, because it’s remarkable:

That AI newsletter was making 3x that ad spend right at signup time, right when people opted in, without selling anything.

Did that last line make you pull down your glasses to the tip of your nose, and look at me with suspicion? It should have.

Direct response logic says that if you can acquire a customer at breakeven or slight loss, you’re doing well.

Granted, these newsletter subscribers aren’t necessarily customers, but they are a list of people who are potential customers, and they are certainly valuable as an audience in other ways.

Now let me repeat the rather shocking point again:

These AI bros are building that list of subscribers, not at a slight loss, not at cost, but actually getting paid 3x what they put in to acquire each new reader.

What tricky flamingos. How are they doing it?

Well, that’s my offer for you today. It’s called Sparkloop. It’s basically a network of coregistration partners.

If you’ve ever signed up for a Substack newsletter, you’ve seen this approach in action. Once you opt in, a window of newsletter recommendations pops up. “Would you like some more, sir?” it says. And there on the plate are 3 or 4 or 20 different other newsletters, which you can opt into with just a click o’ the button.

That’s what Sparkloop does as well, except it’s not limited to Substack newsletters only, but it can be integrated on almost any platform.

That’s how those AI bros were making 3x their ad spend right at optin time, without selling anything. They had Sparkloop installed, and they were recommending a bunch of other Sparkloop-network newsletters.

Now a word of disclosure:

I have been using Sparkloop myself. Its little window pops up when somebody signs up to my new health newsletter. I have made money from Sparkloop. But it’s nowhere close to what this AI newsletter is making.

The fact is, I’m not making $4.20 per new subscriber… but more like $0.36, at least on day 0.

Still, money is money, and Sparkloop is helping me offset the cost of ads I’ve been running.

Plus, Sparkloop allows you to promote newsletters inside your newsletter as well, which means that if you email regularly and promote other newsletters each time you email, you can hope to make a buck or two more per subscriber in the very first month.

So there you go. If you have a newsletter, and have nothing great to promote yet… or you’re simply looking for other ways to monetize your email list… then try out Sparkloop. I’ve done it, it works, and I’m happy to recommend it to others.

You can sign up for Sparkloop at the link below. Yes, that’s an affiliate link. Yes, I will get paid if you sign up. No, you don’t have to use this link, and no, I won’t ever know if you circumvent my link and go straight to Sparkloop and sign up there. But in case you don’t want to do that:

https://bejakovic.com/sparkloop

Would you like to take Copy Riddles off my hands?

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A couple months ago, I stopped selling my flagship course, Copy Riddles.

​​Copy Riddles was based on a Gary Halbert’s advice for how to learn to write bullets — look at the bullets written by the best copywriters, look at the book or course those bullets were selling, and see how the copywriter did his alchemy to transmute lead into gold.

I had various reasons for retiring Copy Riddles. I wrote about one of them in an earlier email. But even if I had no good reasons initially, the fact that I’ve publicly announced that I’m retiring the course means I won’t bring it back.

Frank Sinatra retired in 1971. “I have sung my last song for the public,” he said with a sigh. Fans were shocked. But then, 2 years later, Frank came back with a TV special, Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back, and he started touring again.

Ol’ Blue Eyes could get away with that, but you won’t see Ol’ Bejako doing it, in spite of several people writing to tell me that not selling Copy Riddles is a crime. I’ve simply found it easier to keep my word as a general life policy.

At the same time, I’m genuinely proud of Copy Riddles as a course, and there are people who say there is significant tonnage to what they’ve learned about copywriting from it.

So a few days ago, while I should have been washing myself but was instead just standing in the shower and thinking, I had an idea.

Could I sell the rights to Copy Riddles to somebody else?

Like I said, I don’t want to be the one selling it to the public any more.

But there’s clearly demand for the course, even with my absolute lack of promotion of the thing. Maybe somebody else would like to own the rights to Copy Riddles and sell it himself or herself.

With the tiniest bit of work, you could get affiliates lined up — for example, I’ve had Derek Johanson of CopyHour promote Copy Riddles in the past. I’ve had Bob Bly agree to promote it right before I decided to retire it. And Daniel Throssell asked to promote it right after I retired it.

If you’ve already got a list of people interested in copywriting, you could sell Copy Riddles to your list directly — the thing regularly brought in 5-figure paydays for me when I re-launched it every few months, and that’s with my small list that had seen the offer a lot.

Plus, maybe you could even run cold traffic straight to the sales page. I can’t say with any certainty it would be a winner, but I did talk to A-list copywriter Lorrie Morgan recently, and she was telling me what a good sales letter I’d written for Copy Riddles. Plus, I wrote it in an impersonal way, to be convincing to somebody who doesn’t know anything about me personally and who hasn’t read any of my emails.

All these are just ideas.

​​I don’t know if anybody is interested in taking Copy Riddles off my hands, or really how this would work. But I am intrigued by the potential.

​​If you are intrigued as well, and if you are serious about the idea of buying the rights for Copy Riddles from me, write me to say so, and we can start a conversation around it.

How to get Copy Riddles for just $70

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I sat down to write this email a few minutes ago, but I’m siting in an “airspace” cafe. It’s loud and busy, I got distracted. Instead of focusing, I checked my inbox. “Thank God,” I said, “somebody’s writing to me.”

The subject line read, “Piracy on Copy Riddles.” And the body:

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Hello John,

My name is Danica and I’m with Acme Dead Pirates Corp, a copyright protection service. We find and pursue takedowns of pirated copies of digital content on the Internet.

While we were searching for piracy for another client, we noticed infringement on Copy Riddles. I just thought you should know that your content is on many pirate websites. Here’s a sample:

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What followed was a list of sites that apparently have my retired Copy Riddles program at a steeply discounted price. The email ended with Danica’s offer to partner with me and “help you keep your hard earned revenue.”

Since I’m no longer selling Copy Riddles, there’s no hard-earned revenue to protect. And based on what I saw of the pages that claimed to have a map to where the Copy Riddles treasure might be buried (“Call 1.mp3”), I suspect they might be just lying.

But if you’re willing to give it a go, google Copy Riddles, hand over your doubloons to one of these pirate sites and you might be able to get a copy of Copy Riddles, which used to sell for $400, for as little as $70. Dead men tell no tales.

But back to that email I just got:

I don’t know Danica from Eve. It’s possible she represents a legit business. By the way, that business is not really called Acme Dead Pirates Corp. I changed the name because of what I will say next:

Danica’s email reminded me of an earlier email I had written, about online reputation management companies. These companies offer to take down slanderous or embarrassing posts that might have appeared about you on sites like bustedcheaters.com or worsthomewrecker.com.

An investigative journalist named Aaron Krolik found out that a dozen of those reputation management companies pointed to the same 2-3 people. And those 2-3 people were the same ones hosting hundreds of slanderous and embarrassing cheater sites.

In other words, the same people were posting nasty things about you online, then contacting you and helpfully offering to partner with you to take those nasty things down, for a fee of a few hundred dollars.

So consider this a public service announcement about “copyright protection service” cold emails.

Or consider it an example of fraudulent behavior that you might nonetheless want to integrate into your business. I’m not talking about actually scamming people. But the concept of creating your own demand is sound, and it can be done legally and even ethically.

But more on that another time.

For now, if you’d like to get my Most Valuable Email course, before it becomes pirated to oblivion or before I decide to make it walk the plank, look ye here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve