Offers

Take “selling your own knowledge” off its pedestal

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Last Friday, while I was selling my Most Valuable Postcard #2, I got a message from a new buyer, Joseph Robertson. Joseph is a marketer and copywriter who, for more than a decade now, has also been publishing Extracted, a magazine for coffee fanatics.

Joseph’s message was very thoughtful. I am reprinting it in full below because it might be useful to a few people, especially to copywriters working with clients:

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Thanks for this opportunity. My first purchase from you. Impressive work.

Several realizations for me…

I’ve come to the point in my personal copywriting-as-career journey where I finally feel like I know myself and what I’m doing, to the point where I don’t feel moved to understand the secret… I’m not searching for a new way to do something, or a new answer, but rather looking for insightful perspectives to augment/enhance my own understanding and work.

And seeing your work has given me the odd realization that there is indeed great value in productizing one’s own understanding of fundamentals, if that presentation helps bring valuable new perspective/ideas to someone else.

I say odd because I think until this point I put “selling my own knowledge” on a pedestal, and just settled into good consistent client work (I haven’t needed a new client in a long time). But that client work has given me an enormous amount of context for developing my way of doing and understanding.

Before you announced this new offer, I’d been thinking deeply and incorporating a new understanding/perspective on structural tension. What you share here fits right in with that very well, naturally, but in a way and with a perspective I don’t think I’d come across on my own. Maybe in time (i’ve been finding the longer I let myself sit with an unknown or a question, the more MY interpretation of the understanding emerges, which is quite valuable).

Anyway. Just felt like I ought to share and express my thanks for your work.

===

Here are my two added shekels:

If you’re a copywriter working with clients, but you don’t yet have your own email list, start one today.

If you have your own list but you haven’t sold anything to it, do like Joseph says above. Productize your own knowledge, and sell that to your list.

There’s little new under the sun. But if you present proven ideas in a way that manages to reach someone, that they resonate with, that they finally benefit from even if they might have heard the idea 1001 times before, then there’s real value in that.

And beyond the money:

I’ve personally found that whenever I sit down to put together a course or a training, I do so because I feel I know that subject fairly well. But by the end of the process, I realize how confused or shallow my previous understanding was, and how much cool stuff I figured out simply by forcing myself to put the course together.

All that’s to say, if you do package up and sell your own knowledge, the benefit can often be way beyond the actual money people might send you.

But of course, the money. Always the money. I gotta get back to work:

Today, I’m still promoting my coaching program on email marketing and copywriting. I include offer creation in that.

In fact, I previously called this coaching program Income at Will, because that’s the ultimate pleasure island that I want this coaching program to take people. But after I wrote an email a few weeks ago about taking out the poetry from what you’re doing, I decided to be more blunt and and simply call this “coaching on email marketing and copywriting.”

The goal of my coaching program is to help you sell more and more easily via email, and who knows, maybe even deepen your understanding of things you thought you knew well.

This coaching program is only right for two kinds of people:

1. Business owners who have an email list and want to use email to both build a relationship with their customers and to sell their products (or their productized knowledge)

2. Copywriters who manage a client’s email list, and who have a profit-share agreement for that work

If you fit into one of the two categories above and you’re interested in my coaching program, write me an email and say so. Also tell me who you are and what your current situation is, including which category above you fit into. We can then talk in more detail, and see if my coaching program might be a fit for you.

Announcing: Horror Advertorial Swipe File

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A couple weeks ago, right after I ran a classified ad in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter, I got an email from a new reader:

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I just joined your list from Daniel Throssell’s classified ad and really love your Quick and dirty email training, especially because the companies you talk about pertain to ecom.

Was wondering, do you have any other ecom focused resources? Will gladly pay for them.

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I wrote back to ask the guy what he is doing and what specifically he is looking for.

It turns out he has a Shopify jewelry store in the affirmation niche. And he asked:

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Do you have a swipe file of story-based advertorials? Will gladly pay for it!

I noticed you talked about you using the story based advertorials in your story sells bonus as well.

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The background, as you might know, is, that between 2018 and 2021, I wrote dozens of front-end advertorials — basically mini sales letters — all following the same “horror story” structure. These advertorials were parts of cold-traffic funnels that, by my best estimate, brought in over $15 million in cold-traffic ecommerce sales.

The funnels that featured those horror advertorials are no longer running. Of course, I do still have the original copy. I haven’t ever sold it or shared it before. But I’m no longer taking on clients to write advertorials. So I asked myself, why not sell what I got?

I wrote back to the guy to say he could have a collection of my horror advertorials for $100.

He agreed and PayPaled me $100. Later that night, I drove to an empty parking lot behind an abandoned factory, and I dropped off a leather bag filled with my advertorials for him to pick up.

​​Well, not really. I just sent them to him via email.

But then, sitting on my couch with pen in hand, I had one of those Obvious Adams moments. If one person believes he can get value from a swipe file of story-based advertorials… maybe a second person also might? Or maybe even a third?

I’ll see.

Because right now I am making a collection of 25 of my horror advertorials for $100 to people on my email list.

The offers promoted by these advertorials include everything from anti-mosquito bracelets, bamboo fiber paper towels, fake diamonds, dog seat belts, stick-on bras, and kids’ vitamins.

Is it worth buying this horror-filled swipe file?

​​It depends.

A few days after I clandestinely dropped off the leather bag of advertorials in the abandoned factory parking lot, the jewelry store owner wrote me to say:

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I’ve been going through your advertorials and they’re incredible to study. Off the top of your head, do you have an idea of which ones stood out in terms of sales/performance?

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The fact is, success in these horror advertorial funnels was due more to the offer than the copy. A good/scary advertorial couldn’t reliably sell a bad/bland offer for very long. On the other hand, a good offer worked even without an advertorial, with an ad that went straight to the product page.

But combine a good offer with a good advertorial and the result was often a big success, and one that could last for years.

I don’t have exact sales numbers for any of these advertorials. But I definitely do know which ones ran for a long time, which ones sold well both on the front end to Facebook and YouTube traffic, and and on the back end via email.

So if you get this swipe file of 25 advertorials, I’ll also sense you a little welcome letter where I describe which of these advertorials were part of long-running successes, which advertorials I think are particularly strong, and which ones might be worth modeling for other reasons.

In this same letter, I also included a quick description of the overall structure of these horror advertorial funnels.

Speaking of funnels:

I encourage you NOT to buy this swipe file if you are simply looking for more swipe file content to hoard, or if you have no experience running cold traffic and are looking for a miracle in that department.

It only makes sense to buy this if you already have a functioning cold-traffic funnel — either for your own business or for a client’s business.

In that case, dropping in a horror advertorial into your existing funnels can help you get much more out of that cold traffic. That’s what happened with that kids’ vitamins advertorial I mentioned above. That client managed to profitably scale from $2k/day to $12k/day in daily ad spend by adding in one of my horror advertorials to their existing funnel.

Last thing:

If you do buy this swipe file, I have a special free (“free” as in no money) mystery offer for you. I will tell you about that offer in the email that delivers the zip file with the advertorials. Again, this offer will only be relevant if you already have a working cold-traffic funnel. In that case, even though this offer is free, it might easily be worth a few thousand dollars to you.

I am making this swipe file available until this Sunday, March 27 2023, at 12 midnight PST. After that I will take it down.

If it turns out there’s not much interest in this swipe file, I will drag the beast to the back of the house and quickly put it out of its misery. On the other hand, if it turns out there is interest, I will think about how to expand this and charge more for it.

In any case, if you want this swipe file, you will have to be on my list first, and before the deadline. To get on there in time, click here and fill out the form that appears.

My secret admirer tries to emotionally blackmail me

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This past Monday, I woke up to find a love letter at the top of my inbox. It wasn’t signed, and it came from a pseudonymous email account. It started:

“Firstly, I want to tell you I love you.”

“I knew it!” I said to myself. “I always had a suspicion that I’m lovable.” I greedily jumped on the next sentence:

“And a very Big thanks to you for sending me daily emails. Those emails are inspiring and motivating. I’ve learnt a lot from them, from copywriting down to productivity and lot more.”

“Of course,” I thought, “those are all topics I write about often. No wonder my secret admirer loves me.”

​​I continued to read. More expressions of admiration followed. My ego blossomed and bloomed. But then, I got to the kicker:

“That’s why I decided to ask you this questions and I need your honest answers. Here are my questions…”

What followed was a series of five very broad “business of copywriting” questions, which it would take me about 175 pages to answer properly.

The fact is, I am a sucker for praise and admiration and inbox-based love. And I appreciated my reader’s message, even though it bordered on emotional blackmail.

But how to answer those very, very broad questions?

I pointed my secret admirer to my blog, which is the archive of these daily emails I send. The fact is, my best answers to all those big questions all out there on my blog, spread out across many pages. But I assume not one person in a thousand will go to my site and read through the 1,490+ emails I have archived there.

That’s not any kind of criticism. Most people have stuff to do and are not irrationally obsessive.

So my marketing takeaway for you is there’s value in simply packaging up what you already have, and organizing it neatly for other people to consume. People will pay good money for a sealed and bow-tied bag of figs at the market, even if those figs come from trees on public land two hills distant.

Which brings me to my Copy Riddles program. One day after I got the above declaration of love from my secret admirer, I got an email from copywriter Esat Akan. Esat wrote:

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I just wanted to let you know I’m having a BLASTTT with copy riddles. It’s so fun and I’m feeling like I’m becoming a better copywriter with each lesson I do. I’m only at lesson 3A I think (intrigue bullets) but I look forward to EVERY lesson hahaha.

===

As I say on the sales page for Copy Riddles, much of what’s inside Copy Riddles is available for free on the Internet.

You can find most of the A-list sales letters I reference inside various free swipe files. And as for the books those sales letters sold, you can find many of them online in free online depositories with a bit of digging.

Once you have both the sales letters and the books they sold, you can compare the two, to find out the hidden tricks and secrets of A-list copywriters — tricks and secrets they might not even be consciously aware of using. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, and in time you will get an incredible copywriting education.

I’m an irrationally obsessive person, so I did this exact thing. It took me about three months of my life and maybe 100 hours of work.

It was very much worth it to me, because I discovered copywriting ideas I hadn’t heard of anywhere else, in spite of having previously spent thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars sharpening my copywriting chops.

Doing the same might be equally worth it to you.

On the other hand, if you don’t feel like spending 100 hours digging up these copywriting secrets, I’ve packaged them up and bow-tied them for you inside Copy Riddles.

Looked at one way, Copy Riddles is expensive. It costs $400 right now.

Looked at another way, Copy Riddles is not so expensive. For one thing, Copy Riddles is sure to go up in price, and maybe soon. Plus, if you think of it as some 80 hours of your life saved, it comes to $5/hr, which is less than the minimum wage in the Czech Republic.

Of course, the question is whether you would want these copywriting secrets in the first place. My best argument is that it took dozens of top copywriters years of experimentation, and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tested advertising, to invent the tricks and techniques that are inside Copy Riddles.

Plus, as Esat says above, the experience of going through Copy Riddles won’t just make you into a better copywriter… but is actually fun.

Is fun self-improvement and education worth paying for? Well, that’s for you to decide. For help making that decision, here’s the full info on Copy Riddles:

​https://bejakovic.com/cr/​

Going where no one has gone before?

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I have this unfortunate flaw in that I wake up every day, thanks to some internal alarm clock, which always rings earlier than I want.

Today it was 6am. I sat around in the dark for a while and then, at around 7, I went out for my morning walk.

At 7am on a Saturday in Barcelona, two worlds overlap.

I walked down the street, turned a corner, and saw a flash of naked ass. A girl was pulling up her leather pants, on the curb next to a small tree and some recycling containers. I guess she had just peed. Her friend stood guard but was facing in the wrong direction, away from where I and a few other people were coming and witnessing the shame. Pants up, the two oblivious girls staggered off drunkenly towards home.

That world, of people who hadn’t yet gone to bed by 7am, is one world.

I kept walking and the beach opened up before me. And the second world, the world of early-rising people, was already busy at work there.

A woman was holding her dog on a leash and yelling at her other dog to stop fooling around because it was time to go home. Two boys were kicking around a ball in the sand. And in the water, thanks to the large and rolling waves — not a common sight in Barcelona — there were some surfers.

Maybe you’re wondering whether there will be any hard “point” to today’s email. The point is this:

Down by the concrete pier that juts out into the Mediterranean, there was a clump of maybe a half dozen surfers. They were all bunched up. The waves were steady there and every 30 or so seconds, one of the surfers would catch a wave.

Meanwhile, further away from the pier, there was another surfer by himself. Every few minutes a small wave crested where he was waiting. The surfer would make an effort at catching it, but it was too small. As far as I saw, he never caught a wave, but he made a show at it.

And then further still, in the middle of the beach, there was yet another solitary surfer. He was bobbing up and down as the sea swelled underneath him. But he didn’t even have a wave to pretend to catch.

I think my point is clear, but if not:

It’s good to be different and distinct. It helps people make up their minds quickly about you. But if you rely on natural forces for motion — waves, money, desire — then you want to put yourself in a place where those things are moving.

It might seem clever and easy to go where nobody else has thought to go. Maybe you will get lucky. More likely, you will just bob around stubbornly in the cold water, while others, just a few feet away from you, have all the fun.

That’s most of my motivational message for you for today. And then there’s still the following promotional material:

My offer for you today is my Copy Riddles program. As I have said before, this program is really about going where the waves are:

– It’s about a proven way to write winning copy that’s been endorsed by A-list copywriters like Gary Halbert, Parris Lampropoulos, and Gary Bencivenga

– It features a bunch of examples from sales letters written to perennial markets, including finance, health, and personal development

– It gets you working alongside some of the top copywriters of all time who, whether by instinct or by design, knew how to tap into human desire where it was flowing

If any of that moves you:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Serves me right for soliciting wishes

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Last month, I sent out an email about a training I want to put together, on how copywriters can create their own offers. I’m still planning to put that training together, and I will have it out later this month.

Anyways, in that email, I asked for input. What’s your current situation… what’s holding you back from creating your own offer… what questions would you wish that I answer if I put this training together.

I got some good responses. But one reader got greedy. He decided to treat me like the genie of the lamp, and he wished the forbidden wish:

“Tell me how to create an offer that’s guaranteed to be irresistible!”

Upon hearing this, I bounced around like an angry djinn, exploding into a million little exasperated stars. “That’s like wishing for more wishes! ‘Guaranteed’? ‘Irresistible’? It cannot be done!”

But then I rematerialized into my human form. I scratched my blue genie head, pulled on my genie beard, and thought for a moment. I reached back into my ancient genie memory, spanning thousands of years, thousands of copywriting books, and thousands of sales campaigns.

I realized there is a way that’s almost guaranteed to produce irresistible offers.

​​At least, I found there’s a common element to all the offers I’ve created which ended up successful. On the flip side, I also found this element was lacking in all the offers which fizzled.

I won’t spell out what this magical element is — not here. It’s something I will reserve for my Mystical Cave of Secrets, aka that training about offers I will put on later this month.

But I can give you an idea of what this element is, using my most successful offer to date, Copy Riddles. If you pay close attention to what I’m about to say, you can figure out what I have in mind.

Here goes:

Copy Riddles is built around a simple bit of advice by the legendary, multimillionaire copywriter Gary Halbert.

Gary’s bit of advice has been endorsed by A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos. Parris said that if you follow Gary’s bit of advice, you’ll learn to write copy and make lots of money. And Parris should know — because he himself followed Gary’s advice, applied it, and made lots of money.

Parris isn’t the only one. Marketer Ben Settle also admitted that he followed Gary’s advice and profited as a result.

And another Gary — Gary Bencivenga, who has been called America’s greatest living copywriter, said he managed to beat a control by Gene Schwartz as a result of following this same approach that Gary Halbert advised, though he arrived at it independently of Gary Halbert.

And what is that bit of advice?

It’s​​ simply to look at sales bullets from successful sales letters, and to compare those bullets to the source in the book or the course or whatever that the sales letter was selling. That’s how you can spot the “twists” that top copywriters use to turn sand into glass, water into wine, lead into gold.

So that’s what I did.

I tracked down both the source material, and the bullets that sold that source material. But not just any bullets. Bullets written by A-list copywriters — including the two Gary’s, including Parris, including many more like David Deutsch and John Carlton — who were all competing against each other in the biggest big-money arenas of sales copywriting and direct marketing.

And then, rather than just creating a how-to course based on the tricks and tactics that I saw these A-list copywriters using in their sales bullets, I created a fun, immersive, exercise-based experience that I summed up in the title of the course, Copy Riddles.

Result? Here’s marketer Chew Zhi Wei, who went through Copy Riddles a while back:

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By the way just wanted to thank you for such an amazing course. This might be one of the most valuable courses that I have ever have the privilege to attend. So much so that I even feel that you’re underselling how much value you’re actually gifting away. Thank you so very very much.

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Is it clear now how to make an almost irresistible offer? I hope it is. And if not, you can find it discussed in more detail in rounds 6-12 of Copy Riddles, with round 11 being particularly relevant.

If you’re curious about all that, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

I’m either a cold-traffic wizard, or a warm-traffic chucklehead

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It was the best of responses, it was the worst of responses. I’ll share the numbers with you below. But if numbers aren’t your thing, then I just want you to spot the puzzling contrast between these two sales events:

Earlier this week, I made 21 sales of my Copy Zone offer during 24 hours, to a coldish audience of about 460 people.

That’s roughly a 4.6% conversion rate, at $100 per sale.

So you can either argue that I’m a wizard at cold sales, since the standard conversion rate on cold traffic is 2%, or you can argue that this was not entirely cold traffic, since these folks came from my ad in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter, which ran with Daniel’s endorsement.

Still, most people who bought from me had never even heard of me minutes before they decided to send me money, and had never before heard of Copy Zone. And yet, 4.6% take rate among these people, at $100.

On the other hand, take a less inspiring example:

At the end of Influential Emails, a training I put on in late 2021, I made a 24-hour-only offer for people to pre-order Copy Zone for $50.

Result:

I had one taker out of around 50 people.

These were highly engaged, current customers who had paid $237 for this Influential Emails training. They had spent hours on the training with me, listening to me talk, and interacting with me. Most of them had also bought other other products from me.

So… that’s a 2% conversion rate, at $50, to a warm or even hot audience.

You can say this is an apples to pineapples comparison. Different sizes of audience… pre-selling versus actually selling… and maybe other intangible, untouchable, and impalpable factors.

But I believe I know exactly what the difference comes down to. And unlike in many situations, I don’t believe it’s a matter of offer, of list, of price point, of selling environment, of prestige.

Instead, it’s a rare instance where it’s really about sales copy, about copywriting technique.

I spent a couple weeks in February going for my morning walk while listening, for the third time, to a course by the “21.7 Billion Dollar Man,” Jay Abraham.

This course sums up Jay’s entire marketing and business approach, from getting more customers and clients, to getting more out of your current customers and clients, to enjoying the process more.

Jay talks about salesmanship throughout, and towards the end, he also talks about copywriting.

There’s one commandment Jay keeps repeating over and over. He then illustrates it with a fanciful example of trying to sell a $100,000 Ferrari with a custom paint job.

Jay’s commandment is not new, and it’s really not a secret. But it was ringing in my ears while I was writing the copy to sell Copy Zone a few days ago.

And it made all the difference, at least if you ask me, between a 4.6% conversion rate to coldish traffic and a 2% conversion rate to warm or even hot traffic. The commandment is simply this:

“Layers upon layers of comparable value, of contrast, of measurable ways you could see the benefit, the intrinsic value, and the worth it had to you.”

Jay uses his characteristic “tripled-up” way of making his point above. For me, the first six words are what really matter and what kept ringing in my head:

“Layers upon layers of comparable value.”

Like I say, that’s not new. It’s not a secret. And everybody should really know it, at least if they pretend to call themselves a marketer or a copywriter.

And yet, you have the fact I didn’t “know” it, not so long ago. Even after I had made millions in sales for my clients, even after I had spent tens of thousands on copywriting trainings and courses, and even after I was billed by others, who should have known better, as an A-list copywriter.

It comes down to the difference between having heard something and really knowing it. You can hear a thing once, twice, 10 times. But it doesn’t mean you really know it.

So now I have a recommendation for you. My Most Valuable Email training.

This training is valuable because of what it can do for you — endorsements and authority and even sales. In fact, by applying the Most Valuable Email trick just once at the end of January, I got a completely unnecessary and unexpected windfall of about $2,900 in sales, with zero work. But that’s a story for another time.

For now, I just want to say that the Most Valuable Email is most valuable because of what it does to you. And that’s to inch you closer to mastery, to really knowing, with each email you write using the Most Valuable email trick.

In case you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

3 great reasons to sign up to Daniel Throssell’s list before tomorrow

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Last month, marketer Daniel Throssell sent out a newsletter email with the subject line, “Want to advertise to my list?” The cost to run a 50-word ad in Daniel’s newsletter was $1,000. Immediately, I wrote back and said yes.

Then Daniel did something unusual but very smart.

​​He effectively said, your money is not enough. And he set a second condition to run an ad in his newsletter, which was to come up with a unique offer that would only be available through the ad.

So that’s reason one why you might want to get on Daniel’s list before tomorrow.

​​Because I did come up with a special offer, and a free one, which I believe will be very enticing to people on Daniel’s list. But if you’re my loyal reader, and you’re not on Daniel’s list, I don’t want to give you the shaft. So I’m telling you now. To get my special free offer, get on Daniel’s list, and read his email tomorrow.

My offer will only be good for 24 hours after the ad runs. As you might know, I’m strict about deadlines and I don’t make exceptions. I’ll also be keeping my word to Daniel that the only way to get this offer is through this ad, so I won’t be letting anybody in through a side door.

So that’s reason one.
​​
Reason two to sign up to Daniel’s list before tomorrow is that the classified ad cost me $1,000. That’s a fair amount of money, and frankly I don’t want to pay it. So I decided to come up with a second offer to recoup my ad costs as the ad is still running.

But what kind of offer would be almost guaranteed to pull in $1,000 in 24 hours, and to a bunch of people who don’t really know me from Adam’s rat terrier?

I paced the chemical-stained floor of my laboratory all evening long, throughout the night, and into the early morning. Finally, a lightbulb went on in my head. I thought of a paid offer, one I believe will be almost irresistible to anybody who’s working as a copywriter, either freelance or in-house.

​​I put that offer on the Thank You page that follows the optin that my ad will lead to. This second offer will only be available there, on the Thank You page, only for 24 hours, never to be repeated again.

So that mystery offer on the Thank You page, that’s reason two.

​​Reason three I’ve written about before:

Daniel and I did a list swap back in 2021. With one email, Daniel drove over 10% of his list to my website. I got hundreds of new subscribers and in fact, I tripled my list from where it was before the list swap. More importantly, I got close to 100 new buyers, many of whom are still with me.

Then about a year ago, I put on a presentation where I analyzed three unusual elements of Daniel’s email copywriting style. Daniel promoted this presentation to his list. A similar thing happened. Hundreds of new subscribers for me, and lots of new sales.

And then there was that Black Friday campaign that Daniel ran a while back. I wasn’t involved in that, and good thing. Daniel outsold 15 other “expert” marketers, not individually, but in total. Add up all the sales made by all the other guys, and Daniel still sold more, with only his own list, which was maybe 1/20th the size of what all the other guys had in total.

The point being:​​

Maybe you joined Daniel’s list in the past, and decided it’s not for you. Maybe you didn’t resonate with Daniel’s personal stories, his sense of humor, or his online persona. If so, my advice is to look beyond the surface.

Because Daniel has a responsive email list beyond anything I’ve ever seen. ​​It’s not accidental. It’s strategic, and you can see the strategy in practice, for free, by getting on Daniel’s list. The sooner you do that, the more likely you are to learn something valuable.

So here’s the front door to Daniel’s strange world of entertainment and subtle influence. My advice is to open the door and go inside, and to do so before tomorrow:

https://persuasivepage.com/

Why aren’t people replying to my emails any more?

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My email yesterday, about a “roadway to success as a copywriter and marketer,” drew only a few lonely replies.

On average, I now get fewer replies to my daily emails than I did a year ago. Even though my list was much smaller then.

What’s the difference?

Maybe I’m just doing a poorer job writing these emails than I did a year ago. Maybe people are not enthused enough to hit reply as often.

Maybe the makeup of my list changed, and maybe my subscribers today are just less chatty.

Or, maybe, it’s fact that these days I end each email with a link, and an opportunity to buy some product from me.

In fact, my email yesterday did get a nice number of people to click through to my Copy Riddles sales page. So maybe some of the energy that my readers used to spend on replying is now getting spent on clicking, reading my sales letters, and buying from me.

The most life-changing idea I’ve been exposed to since I started learning about marketing came from Mark Ford.

Mark is an entrepreneur, direct marketer, and A-list copywriter who was one of the key people who made Agora the direct marketing behemoth it is today.

As you might know, much of what Agora does is sell secrets. Secrets to getting rich… secrets to getting free of pain… secrets about how to sell secrets.

And yet, here’s what Mark said once:

“There is an inverse relationship between the value of knowledge and what people are willing to pay for it. The most important things in life you’ve probably heard a hundred times before, but you’re not paying attention. When you’re in the right place and you hear it, you have that ‘aha’ moment and everything changes.”

I had heard the advice that you should sell in each email perhaps a million times, over the course of perhaps a million years.

I had seen it in practice in perhaps a million email newsletters.

I was even telling my own clients to do the same, and I witnessed the millions of dollars this simple advice could produce for them.

And yet, it never clicked in my own head. I didn’t sell in each of these email for the first, oh, three years of my newsletter.

For some reason, it clicked last year. Specifically, it clicked on May 29, 2022, after I read the opening to Dan Kennedy’s slapped-together guide to getting rich in 12 months, called The Phenomenon. Dan’s Rule #1 in that book says:

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

“Oh yeah…” I said to myself, putting my finger to the tip of my nose. “Why don’t I try that?”

So now, I will give you a link to the Copy Riddles sales page.

The Copy Riddles sales page spells out Gary Halbert’s advice for how to master the number one thing that, in his opinion, makes people buy from an ad.

The sales page goes on to tell you how to implement Gary’s advice yourself if you’ve got the time. It also tells you how Copy Riddles will do the legwork for you if you don’t have the time to do it yourself, or if you want to save yourself time.

The sales page then gives you testimonials from newbie copywriters, senior copywriters, heads of marketing agencies, entrepreneurs, and marketing consultants — all of whom thought Copy Riddles was great, and some of whom say it was the best copywriting course they have ever taken.

I’ve said all this before, in previous emails. But maybe you weren’t paying attention then. Maybe today it will click.

In any case, here’s that link:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

How copywriters can create their own offers

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A few days ago, after promoting my Income At Will coaching program, I got a question from a long-time reader and customer, who works as a freelance copywriter:

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Can you create a program on creating offers as a copywriter?

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To tell you the ‘strewth, I had been thinking about just that. But it’s something I reserved only for people who are signed up to my email newsletter. If you’d like to join them, for free, so you don’t miss out on special offers I make only to my email subscribers, click here and sign up.

Tipping outrage and my despicable suggestion

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A few nights ago, I went out for sushi with a friend. At the end of the night, the bill came. We each took out a credit card and split the bill halfway, 40 euro per person.

My friend then took out two one-euro coins and put that down on the table as a tip. ​​Out of solidarity, I reached for my pocket to see if I had any change, but my friend said, “No, no, it’s fine.”

I live in Spain, and the tipping culture here is that tipping is not required or expected. If you do leave anything, it really is “just the tip” and not half the snaking bill.

Compare that to the U.S.

​​I read an article in the AP last week. It said people in the U.S. are increasingly unhappy about tipping.

15% used to be standard once upon a time. Then it inched up to 18%. In most places, 20% is now standard.

Lots of automated registers now prompt you for tips. Plus tipping is spreading in situations where tips weren’t expected before, such as carryout and fast-food counters. If you want to clearly signal you were actually impressed with the food or the service, you will have to leave a 30% tip or more.

Lots of consumers feel this is getting out of control, a kind of highway brigandage at the coffee shop and the rotating sushi place.

On the other hand, you have people in the service industry, the baristas and the waitresses and the cooks, rightly pointing out that tips are how they live. It’s about paying people “what they’re owed,” said one service-industry veteran.

That AP article is worth digging up and reading, because it’s shows a war of different psychological principles — loss aversion, reactance, liking, reciprocity.

But that’s not my point for today. My point is simply that at the end of the AP article, there’s a quote from a consumer who’s complaining.

It’s the company’s job to pay, he says.

That’s foolish. Just the opposite. It’s the company’s job not to pay.

Some companies even advertise good tips in their job listings. “Somebody else will pay you well for doing this job,” they are saying, “but it ain’t gonna be us.”

This might make you feel frustrated as a consumer, or outraged if you work at a tippable job.

And maybe you’re right, whichever side you’re on. But here’s where I will make a suggestion you might find despicable:

Take that frustration and outrage, and instead of stewing there with your arms crossed, channel it into something valuable for you.

​​Get yourself into a similar position to those despicable companies, of not having to pay anything yourself, but passing on your expenses to others.

You might wonder what I’m on about. So let me tell you.

Marketer Dan Kennedy has a story of getting his million-dollar-plus divorce settlement. Dan says:

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I’ve never taken a pay cut. Somebody whacks me with a new tax, somebody else is gonna pay it. I’m not.

Exact same attitude about my divorce settlement. It’s why it didn’t really bother me. I said, I don’t know exactly who’s gonna pay this, but it ain’t gonna be me.

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Dan wasn’t bothered by his divorce settlement because he’s in a position of “income at will.”

In other words, when Dan got the ugly news of the millions of dollars he was suddenly supposed to pay to his ex-wife, he started thinking about creating a bunch of new offers — high-priced seminars, diamond-level coaching, marriage counseling services.

​​And then he advertised those new offers to his list, or as he likes to call it, his herd.

The herd ended up paying for the divorce, not Dan.

So start thinking about how to get yourself into a similar situation.

Because really, the only way to fully protect yourself against inflation… and out-of-control tips… and new tax bills… and ugly divorce settlements… is to put yourself into a position where you don’t have to be the one to pay any of that.

And if you want some free advice on how to do that, you might want to get on my email list. Click here to sign up.