Get expert training in Scheming, raise your income

I once read a book called The Man Who Sold America and in it I came across the term “scheme man.”

Once upon a time, a scheme man was a legitimate and even highly coveted and paid profession.

Scheme men were basically marketing consultants who could devise new selling “schemes” — ideas, concepts, breakthroughs. As master direct marketer Robert Collier put it, “It’s not the copy so much as the scheme back of it.”

Claude Hopkins, often thought to be the first A-list copywriter, was the premier scheme man (he was the one discussed in that book I read).

Hopkins didn’t really use clever copywriting to turn his clients and himself into billionaires (in today’s money).

Instead, he did it by devising new selling schemes.

As an example, Hopkins’s first big marketing job was to sell “carpet sweepers.” His innovative scheme was to start offering these carpet sweepers in a dozen different fancy wood casings, rather than the single drab choice available previously.

Stupid, right? Who cares about the casing?

This was a completely impractical and unnecessary new development. And yet, it resulted in 250,000 carpet sweepers being sold in 3 weeks.

After that, some of Hopkins’s schemes involved the “world’s biggest cake” (100,000 people came to see it)… the “paid free sample” scheme for Liquozone (which took the company from bankruptcy to making $60 million in profit the next year)… and the “engraved with your name” pen that doubled response when added as a bonus to an ordinary offer.

Point being:

Become a skilled Scheme Man, then or now, and your future is settled.

If you can devise new ways for a company to sell what they’ve already got, your services will ALWAYS be in demand, and you will get paid BIG MONEY IN BIG CHUNKS. Plus, the work can be exciting and challenging and even fun.

Except how? How do you become a skilled Scheme Man, today, in 2026?

For that I’d like to point you to Mike Samuels, and his 6-week ABP cohort.

Mike’s cohort is currently open for signups. The signup window closes tomorrow. After that, you won’t be able to get in, and also the bonuses disappear, and if this program is ever opened again, the price will go up.

Like I said, Mike’s cohort program is called ABP, which stands for Action Based Psychology. I don’t think that name does justice to what Mike is offering here.

What Mike is offering is a full-on certification program for Scheme Men, though he calls them “ABP Consultants.”

Mike’s program first gets you trained on the relevant underlying psychology and translates that into specific marketing techniques, so you can own these ideas yourself and turn them into new selling schemes for specific businesses.

Mike then gives you “audits” so you don’t have to count on remembering all these ideas and schemes, but can simply refer to the audits when the time comes.

And then finally, there’s a client-getting section so you can actually turn your new Scheming skills into profits for clients and income for yourself.

Like I said, the signup for this cohort closes tomorrow. If you’re interested in the full details before this opportunity goes away:

https://bejakovic.com/scheme

Return of “if you’re a copywriter and you write for coaches and consultants”

Four days ago, I sent an email with the subject line:

“If you’re a copywriter and you write for coaches and consultants”

In that email, I was promoting a timesaving AI offer by copywriter Dawn Apuan. Dawn has built an AI gizmo that she says has cut 30-40 hours from her workweek, and other copywriters that Dawn has shared her system with say it’s cut their working time in half or saved them 20 hours a week.

I sent that email out as a test. I like Dawn, I know she’s legit, and the offer sounded good to me. Would my list agree?

I checked my affiliate sales dashboard the next day. Zero sales. Oh well.

I have this policy, the “No Spinach” policy.

I no longer try to shove anything down my audience’s throat just because I think it’s good for them. Sure, I’ll test things out. But I’ll only keep promoting something to my list if it’s good for them AND it does something good for me, like make me sales.

And so, since I figured I had made zero sales of Dawn’s offer, I moved on, to shinier and more opportunityish pastures. And then this morning, I got a message from Dawn:

“Hey John! Not sure when your promo wraps but you’ve got 4 sales so far plus bumps and 2 upsells :)”

I checked the affiliate dashboard to see what exactly that means.

$700+ in affiliate commissions so far.

All right, fine. Here I am again, promoting Dawn’s timesaving, spinach-free, AI system for copywriters who write for coaches and consultants.

It was a good offer 4 days ago. It is still a good offer. And it seems that at least some people on my list want it.

Maybe you would want it too? If you are curious, you can find my writeup of this offer below. But fair warning. Thanks to my dawdling and carelessness, the deadline for this offer is nigh, exceedingly nigh.

If you want to get in before this offer disappears, head over here for more details:

https://bejakovic.com/if-youre-a-copywriter-and-you-write-for-coaches-and-consultants

The opportunity seeker’s way to success

I’m a bit stressed as I write this. It’s Saturday morning. Tomorrow and Monday I’m going on a mini-vacation. Also on Monday, I have a deadline for the advertorial I promised to deliver to my first client/partner in years.

The advertorial that’s due Monday is, err, 75% of the way done?

I have a bunch of research, a bunch of notes, and a bunch of very rough AI drafts. Still, I’m far from having something I can give to the client. And I have today to finish it.

In moments like this, I ask myself, “Why do I do this to myself?”

And the answer comes, “Because I would never get anything done otherwise.”

I have long had this theory that everybody who succeeds in direct marketing is an opportunity seeker at heart.

Opportunity seeker = somebody who chases bright shiny objects, much like a bee that flits from flower to flower.

I think the business owners and the copywriters and everybody else who somehow makes it in direct marketing are first and foremost opportunity seekers, meaning that they get sucked in by marketing that promises you hot new riches now, even if you have no time or money to invest and cannot count past 5.

I myself am a veteran opportunity seeker.

It started in high school when I responded to a direct response ad in the back of a newspaper, which promised a lucrative and enjoyable new career (forestry service), without any qualifications, presumably even without finishing high school.

I have since spent tens of thousands of dollars buying various stuff that promises to be a hot new opportunity.

You might think I’d know better by now. I don’t know better.

Anyways, here’s my point for you:

If, like me, you are an opportunity seeker, then make it work for you. Take the psychological levers that you know can be pulled to make you act, and pull them yourself.

At the heart of every opportunity pitch are three words:

1. NEW

2. OPPORTUNITY

3. NOW

The NOW is why this opportunity wasn’t available yesterday, and why it won’t be available tomorrow. It’s enforced in opportunity marketing via scarcity and, more typically, urgency.

You can enforce NOW on yourself in the same way, by setting deadlines for yourself, like I did with that advertorial I told you about.

(Of course, for a self-imposed deadline to be meaningful, you need some kind of public accountability, like clients or customers who are expecting stuff to be delivered.)

The OPPORTUNITY part boils down to the idea of SOMETHING FOR NOTHING.

The fact is, we will all have to work in some way until the day we die. Even if you make all the money in the world, you will still have to invest and manage and secure that money.

But nobody wants to hear that. I certainly don’t.

So I embark on projects that promise to be bolt-on opportunities, things I can work on for a bit, get up to speed, and then simply profit from for the rest of my life, without sacrificing anything I’ve already got. Of course, it never really works out that way, but so what? It gets me moving.

And the NEW, of course.

If you’re an opportunity seeker like me, the familiar and old hat becomes invisible to you quickly.

This is where the danger lies, because the familiar and old hat is really what works, while something genuinely new is very likely to fail, or at least to fail when you try to set it up.

The way I deal with this is to introduce novelty WITHIN familiar and old-hat structures. Such as for example, daily emailing.

I’ve been doing this daily email every day for almost 8 years now.

Commitment and discipline, right? No. Novelty.

I never know what I’m gonna write about. It kind of stresses me out and excites me each morning. Today’s idea came (of course) during the shower.

So there you go:

1. Look at the marketing that’s working on getting you to move.

2. Figure out what done it.

3. Then apply it yourself in some way, to achieve whatever success you want to achieve in life.

Are you an opportunity seeker like me?

Do you want novelty? Do you want something for nothing? Do you want a reason to do it now?

If so, then daily emails might be for you. Like I told you, they work for me.

There’s public accountability. There’s the excitement of something new each day. And there’s something for nothing in the form of all the collateral content that gets produced, which you can feed into courses, books, paid newsletters, templates, apps, IP, which you can sell forever, without ever touching it again!

If you wanna get started with daily emails, today, I got a hot new opportunity for you:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Want high-quality copywriting clients?

The best-kept secrets of rich and well-connected copywriters

For years, they’ve privileges, perks, and pleasures beyond the reach of most people in the industry. Now you can too

I’m helping Svet Dimitrov with an offer he’s making available by auction.

Svet, as you might know, is a direct response copywriter who’s currently working as a copy chief for a 7-figure brand. (He worked as a copy chief with a different brand before.) He’s also got a side gig where he mentors copywriters and business owners with their copy.

Svet got his current copy chief role by networking in a hidden, secret, little known online hangout he calls the Golden Group.

Why haven’t copywriters been told about this group?

The Golden Group is a place where DR marketers and business owners hang out. It’s got fewer than 500 members. But to hear Svet tell it, the Golden Group is wildly engaged, and made up of business owners and preposterously high-quality marketers.

(Since Svet he got his copy chief role there by sending a few DMs in the Golden Group, who am I to question the quality of the people inside.)

Right now, Svet is offering to bring you into the Golden Group with him, and to help you get a copywriting client there.

He’s planning to make this offer via auction, with bidding starting at $1.

Specifically, Svet is offering to:

1. Get you into the Golden Group

2. Guide you, down to the behind-the-scenes DM, so you get connections leading to a direct response copywriting client out of the group

3. Copy chief you on the work you deliver for this client, so the client makes money from your copy and so they want to work with you and paying you, month after month after month

4. Guarantee your results — Svet will keep working with you, guiding you, and copy chiefing you, until you make back the entire winning auction bid

Discover the hidden secret to getting fast cash for your copywriting skills

Considering what Svet is really offering here, which is a way to very possibly make tens of thousands of dollars in the next few months, and hundreds of thousands of dollars down the line… and that he’s guaranteeing you will make your money back before he’s done with you… it would be reasonable for him to charge $10k-$15k for this offer up front.

But again, he’s making this available via auction.

Is a high-quality copywriting client something you’d bid $1 for?

How to promote yourself with as much energy and enthusiasm as you promote other people

I was talking to a dude today. He’s a very established, skilled, and successful copywriter who works with big clients. He also has his own personal email list and quality offers that genuinely help people.

At one point, the dude complained that, when he promotes other people’s offers, whether for clients or affiliate offers to his list, he can make his pitches for these offer amazing, incredible, stupendous.

“Why can’t I write this way about the my stuff?” he said.

It’s a legit problem, and one I’ve had in the past.

It’s not just a matter of being coy, of not wanting to brag about your own stuff.

A part of the problem is that we’re all simply too close to our own offers, and we take them for granted, or we even focus on the deficiencies, limitations, and problematic corner cases. Beyond that, there are even neurological reasons why it’s dramatically harder to promote yourself with as much energy and enthusiasm as you can muster to promote somebody else.

Well… until now.

(Get ready. I’m about to make you a pitch.)

I have a way out of this predicament, a mechanism, a “Light Bulb Mental Switch.”

It allows you to promote your own offers with the same persuasive energy that you can summon when you promote others’ offers.

It also doubles as a litmus test, a way to double-check your marketing after it’s written to make sure it passes the test. It tells you how to tweak it in order to transform it, if it doesn’t immediately pass.

This Light Bulb Mental Switch is magical, mysterious, and multifaceted.

It helps you promote your own offers the way you promote others. It also helps you promote others even more effectively than you can now.

And now, the deal:

A 24-hour disappearing bonus.

I will reveal to you this Light Bulb Mental Switch if you get my Most Valuable Email training.

Do so and you will learn my Most Valuable Email trick, which I still stand by as being most valuable, all these years after I first hit upon it, and thousands of emails later.

The Most Valuable Email trick is not stupid stories, not predictable personal reveals, and not rehashed references to Batman movies or Game of Thrones episodes.

The Most Valuable Email trick is something entirely new different, much like my Light Bulb Mental Switch.

Get Most Valuable Email, write me before tomorrow at 8:31pm CET, and ask to have the Light Bulb Mental Switch, and I will reply to you and share it with you.

(Don’t write me after the deadline. This is a 24-hour-only deal.)

24 hours from now, you can be nothing but one day older — or you can be on your way to getting rich by promoting yourself the way you really deserve. You decide.

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

HYPE!!!

Yesterday, I sent an email that I modeled on an old business opportunity ad. The results so far:

61 responses, many from people who are surprisingly qualified and serious about the offer.

My personal suspicion is that I got 2x-3x the response I would have gotten had I simply written yesterday’s email in my usual way, by sitting down and improvising and “doing my best.”

Dan Kennedy, in his Opportunity Concepts seminar, which I promoted a couple weeks ago, says that the 1st step of changing the positioning and presentation of your offer to counter the incredible amount of resistance in your prospect’s mind is simply to add HYPE!!!

Hype gets a bad rap.

Hypey ads are often held up as tasteless, manipulative, and outdated, in contrast to honest, authentic, and helpful marketing that many modern gurus try to peddle.

To that I just shrug and say, YOU DON’T GET IT.

Hype is at its core is not about putting in a ton of exclamation points or astonishing/mouthwatering/jaw-dropping adjectives.

Instead, hype at its core is simply copy that focuses as little as possible on you and your product, which ultimately nobody wants… and instead focuses as much as possible on your prospect and his sorry situation today… and beyond that, on the shiny, happy, rich outcome your prospect would gladly be living tomorrow.

Who knows.

Maybe one day I will put on a workshop called HYPE!!! Maybe it will be all about converting your existing honest, authentic, and ineffective copy to be more opportunity-minded, more prospect-oriented, and more response-getting, the way I did with my email yesterday.

Meanwhile, if you’re curious to see the old-timey ad I modeled in my email yesterday (the ad ran almost 100 years ago, and ran for years), you can check it out here:

https://www.skool.com/daily-email-house/theres-a-reason-why-old-ads-work

How an ex-copywriter makes $12k/month in a new kind of part-time job

Makes more in a day than he used to in a week. Started in his spare time — without special qualifications or connections. Works just 15 hours a week. Profit from his experience — begin now — make big money — learn how from this Free Email.

I’ll be honest with you:

I just spent an hour+ reading old “business opportunity” and “new career” ads in Google Books scans of 20th-century magazines.

Reason is I have a legit new career opportunity to clue you in to, and I wanted to get inspiration for how to best tell you about it.

You marketers working your head off for poor pay — You freelancers worried about making ends meet — You copywriters who want to break away from an uncertain job — You ambitious service providers longing to get into a big-paying, uncrowded profession — Listen!

Yep, listen.

I can put you in touch with an ex-copywriter who switched to a new kind of part-time job.

It’s paying him more than he ever made before while working less than he used to.

It allows him to work at home, in his bathrobe, or to take his family for round-the world trips and check in to his job on his laptop.

It’s fascinating work, which he can feel good about.

He’s gained respect and authority.

He gets plenty of leisure time to do with what he wants.

Let This Free Email Tell You How

No up-and-doing man or woman who wants to do more, be more, and have more, can afford to close down this email without hitting reply.

It costs you nothing to learn all about this money-making opportunity. You take not the slightest risk. You cannot possibly lose anything. And you can gain much.

If you’re a copywriter or other breed of marketing freelancer… if you already have clients, but you find the career prospects unstable, or the work underpaid or uninteresting, or the clients too demanding… then hit reply to this email and express your interest in this mystery new career opportunity.

I can put you in touch with the ex-copywriter I am talking about here, so you can profit from his experience.

The simple act of replying to this email may bring you bigger success and greater financial independence than you perhaps think possible.

Secret offer knowledge that’s too valuable to trumpet loudly

I’ve been going through Dan Kennedy’s Opportunity Concepts seminar recordings.

There are two great, truly great, Dan Kennedy seminars.

One is Influential Writing, in which Dan explains how to create a cult of personality in your writing. Basically, it’s what everybody with a personal daily email newsletter is doing or should be doing.

The other great Dan Kennedy seminar is Opportunity Concepts. It tackles the other side, not the copy but the offer.

Opportunity Concepts teaches you how to repackage, reinvent, recreate what you offer as an opportunity — something so new, so distracting, and so sexy that people want it based on its own merits, even if they don’t know you, even if it sounds preposterous, even if it’s expensive.

So today I’m going through Dan Kennedy’s Opportunity Concepts, maybe for the fifth time ever.

The seminar sold for $10k when Dan put it on live back in 2011.

The recordings sold for $1,500 after that, but are no longer available anywhere, including eBay or Dan Kennedy’s site.

(Don’t ask me how I got ’em, but I got ’em a long time ago, for free, though legally.)

So I’m going through Dan Kennedy’s Opportunity Concepts. And I decide on a whim to google “Opportunity Concepts.” There’s not much out there. but…

… there is a page on the Dan Kennedy’s website, saying that Opportunity Concepts has been turned into a book called Selling Opportunity.

The only way to get Selling Opportunity is to sign up to the Diamond Level of Dan Kennedy’s membership/newsletter.

The Diamond Level costs $297/month.

Much better than either $10,000 or $1,500, and really a drop in the bucket considering the value of this info.

But then, on one last hunch, I decide to go to Amazon.

I search for “Selling Opportunity.”

And there it is.

A recording of Dan Kennedy’s Opportunity Concepts, sold as an audiobook published by Nightingale-Conant… for $15.

I bought it immediately, even though I already have it.

I skipped around through it, just to see if it really is the Opportunity Concepts training.

It is.

Some parts are missing (a couple guest presentations, for example).

But most of it is there.

If you like, you can get Opportunity Concepts, reinvented as Selling Opportunity, below.

I won’t trumpet it any more. You either know or you don’t know what this is worth. If you don’t, that’s okay. If you do:

​https://bejakovic.com/opportunity-concepts

Free 3-step plan to get more testimonials, perform an X-ray of your market, have buyers recommit to what they just bought from you, and possibly even drive more sales

Here’s a 3-step plan to get more testimonials, perform an X-ray of your market, have buyers recommit to what they just bought from you, and possibly even drive more sales:

STEP 1. Sell an offer.

STEP 2. Offer people a bonus if they buy the offer now.

STEP 3. When people buy, send them an email with the promised bonuses. At the top of that email, paste in the following mystical, secret, wizard-like spell:

===

Thanks for taking me up on [the name of your offer].

I’m curious, what made you do it?

===

Yes, that’s it.

Yes, I can see your jaw drop and your eyes roll back in your head from mock amazement.

All I can say is, don’t knock it till you try it.

I’ve been doing this all week long with people who took me up on my recommendation for the 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

As usual when I interact directly with people on my list, I’ve been blown away by how little I know, how pale my own imagination, and how rich and surprising it is to go out to my market and talk to them.

You want examples?

I’ve gotten a dozen responses so far, with varying answers to “What made you do it.” Three categories have been prevalent so far:

A. The opportunity of the beast

This being a biz-in-a-box offer, it’s inevitable that people would cite the opportunity of it. Ok, that’s not surprising. But still, it’s different and more insightful to hear it in people’s own words:

#1. “I still don’t plan on leaving my job which I like no matter how successful it is though I might stop working overtime and do this instead once it starts paying. In the meantime it’s not that much of a time commitment that I can’t do both.”

#2. “I like Travis [Sago]’s model of working other’s lists but this method looks equally profitable but might be more helpful in expanding my skills.”

B. A point of differentiation

I hadn’t thought of this one at all, and I didn’t talk about it in my emails. And yet, multiple people brought up the uniqueness of advertorials as opposed to other things copywriters can offer:

#1. “It’s also a point of differentiation since it seems that everyone who hasn’t firmly planted their flag in the email copywriting camp (i.e. most copywriters/marketers) has rebranded themselves as a creative strategist overnight (soon-to-be most copywriters/marketers).”

#2. “Clients who are willing to spend money on advertorials are more serious overall. Meta ads is the bright shiny object that everyone and their dog in law wants rn. But advertorials have been around way longer and sophisticated clients like them a lot.”

C. Because of me

1-Person Advertorial Agency is a great offer, I think its value is self-contained.

And yet, the fact that my readers know and trust me (and maybe even like me???) definitely helps sell the offer, and makes it more credible — even when I say I haven’t used this system myself:

#1. “Plus, as a previous buyer of yours, products you recommend carry more weight than other offers.”

#2. “The fact that you are promoting it. Especially your honesty in saying you have not been taken the course yourself.”

So there you go. Sell something. Then ask people why they bought, and you shall receive.

And now, an important announcement:

The opportunity to get 1-Person Advertorial Agency + the bonuses I am offering is ending tonight at 12 midnight PST.

Along with the core 1-Person Advertorial Agency offer (full details at the sales page below), I am offering the following bonuses:

#1 Horror Advertorial Swipe File, which you can feed to the AI beast so it produces better, or rather, more horrifying advertorials

#2. 26 Rules of Client Management for Copywriters, taken from my Copy Zone guide to the business side of copywriting

#3. Most Valuable Postcard #1: Nota Rapida, which digs into the topic of building long-term relationships with copywriting clients much more deeply

#4. Ghostbuster, Nick Bandy’s 5-stage sequence for reactivating (reanimating?) dead clients or prospective clients

If you wanna get that, you will have to act today. But why not act now, while it’s on your mind? Here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

The Lazy Man’s Way to Copywriting Clients

The past few days, I’ve been promoting the 1-Person Advertorial Agency, which I claim is the hottest opportunity for copywriters in 2026.

Do you want a proof element for the effectiveness of what’s being sold to you here?

Will-ye or nill-ye, I’ll give it to ya.

As I wrote a couple days ago, the guy who came up with the 1-Person Advertorial Agency system is a copywriter named Sam Bradbury-Butler.

But the guy who actually got Sam to document his system and turn it into course is former Agora copywriter turned copywriting guru Thom Benny, who counts Sam as one of his proteges.

With me so far?

Good. Cause we have a few more twists and turns:

After the auction I ran in my Skool community last year, I suggested to Thom that, instead of doing a launch as planned for 1-Person Advertorial Agency, we could do an auction. (Remember those?)

We could auction off a done-with-you, 1-1 partnership with Sam… with the post-auction offer being a piece-by-piece breakdown of Sam’s system, along with group coaching to help you implement the same.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter too much if you understand the details of this fantastical offer.

What matters is that meetings were held… plans were hatched… and visions of a $150k auction were had, at least by me.

We even came up with an attractive name for the first (logical) step of Sam’s system, calling it:

“The Lazy Man’s Way to Copywriting Clients”

Aaaaand…. then it all came crashing down.

Sure, Thom and I, who weren’t involved at all in the delivery of these big plans, were excited by the idea of the auction, and the group coaching on the back of it, and all the money it would bring.

Sam, on the other hand, was not excited. In fact he nixed the idea straight out. When I asked why, Thom explained:

“Sam’s got a big project waiting in the wings which he’ll be turning his attention to once this launch closes. So he doesn’t want this launch to burden him with a bunch of other stuff he didn’t really sign up for.”

In other words, Sam is too busy and too happy simply doing what he is teaching here. He has no interest in doing any more teaching of it than he’s already done, even with the promise of more money.

That’s because Sam is making A LOT MORE money by simply working his own system ($49k earlier this month, for just one client, and Sam’s got several).

And though Thom managed to convince Sam to take the time to share how his system works, that’s where it stops, because Sam is going back to profiting from this thing that he’s offering to you right now.

That’s the proof element I promised you up top. It answers the age-old question that pops up with any business opportunity:

“If this is so great, why aren’t you doing it yourself and why are you so busy selling it instead?”

Well, Sam is doing it himself, and he doesn’t want to be busy selling it any more, because he wants to get back to doing.

Anyways, if you wanna find out more about 1-Person Advertorial Agency, you can do so at the sales page below.

Since our ambitious auction plans got scrapped, you can also find out, or at least get a good sense for, “The Lazy Man’s Way to Copywriting Clients.”

You can find that described in the section under the subhead, “Module 3: Getting Paid As A 1-Person Advertorial Agency.”

For that, and the full details of this opportunity while it’s still live:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency