Direct Marketing

How I’d transform existing ecom clients into my own info business(es)

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A couple days ago, I wrote email about how I’d eat ecom copywriters’ lunch… with some fava beans, and a nice chianti.

That email was based on my own experience from a few years back, writing lots and lots of advertorials and revshare emails for ecom clients.

Today, I got another idea for you along the same lines, an idea I was very excited about at the time. This idea could have made me a profitable info publishing business on day 0, but it never happened, because I committed a classic persuasion blunder.

First a bit o’ background:

Like I wrote on Monday, I got ecom clients by writing advertorials. Then, I offered those same clients to write emails on a revshare basis, which made me much more than working as a per-hour copywriter.

But there was one ongoing problem, and that was a lack of good offers to promote in those daily emails.

The clients I worked with had a half-dozen or so live dropshipping offers. Some worked great, some ok.

Ideally, I’d promote each of those offers only twice every month, because otherwise I noticed the response dropped off.

What to promote all those other days?

There were affiliate networks that specialized in “viral” ecom products like the ones my clients were selling. But no matter how supposedly “viral” these offers were, my tests showed that only a handful were worth promoting, and even those underperformed our in-house offers.

Beyond the affiliate ecom products, there were a few ClickBank info products that we could sell to our audience. But since our audience (dog owners and kitchen and household gadgets buyers) was outside the popular and cutthroat ClickBank niches like dating and weight loss, the only ClickBank offers I could find had awful marketing and sold poorly.

So I had an idea.

What if I were to simply create custom info products to sell to my clients’ list?

I had a good sense of what offers could sell well based on my emails, plus I could research what’s selling on Amazon, what’s getting views on YouTube, searches on Google.

I could create some ebooks, simple sales pages for those ebooks, maybe some upsells. It didn’t need to be perfect, just attractive and quality enough to put confidently in front of our list, and to complement the physical products we were selling.

I pitched the idea to my clients. I said I will do ALL THE WORK and split the money with them.

They liked the idea, and said they would talk about it at “the partners next meeting.” Aaand… they came back a few days later, with the results of their partner deliberations:

“We discussed it extensively last meeting and decided it’s not exactly the direction we want to go (although we do see the huge potential there).”

… in other words, they said no because my “no work and no-risk offer” still sounded like some work, some risk, or at least some uncertainty or obligation.

That’s the classic persuasion blunder I told you about at the start. It goes back to the old Dean Jackson “Would you like a cookie” analogy.

Says Dean, imagine you have a guest at your house, and you know she loves oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

You could sit there with your guest in the living room and then suddenly jump up and say, “Hey how about I go in the kitchen and bake you up a tray of those cookies you love? It won’t take a minute, really!”

Do this, and odds are great your guest will think, frown, and say, “Oh no, don’t worry about it.” She might even look at you a bit weird for offering to go out of your way like that.

But what if you preemptively bake those cookies?

And then, when your guest settles in on the couch, what if you come out of the kitchen with a trayful and say, “Would you like a cookie? It’s one of those chocolate chip oatmeal ones I know you love.”

… in this case, odds are excellent your guest will wolf down the whole trayful.

Same thing here.

I could have done the work ahead of time. Created an ebook, a sales page, and even some upsells.

That done, I could have simply told my clients that I have a custom new info product offer I’ve special-made for our audience.

If they’re ok with it, I will send out a day’s email to it to test it out. I’ll also set up an affiliate account for them so they can track the sales, and give them 50% (or whatever) of the sales. If it works well, I can keep promoting it and keep splitting the profits with them.

Had I done this, there’s an excellent chance they would have said, “Sure go ahead.” After all, I was testing out new offers all the time. Many turned out to be duds, while a rare few turned out ok and became regular sellers.

Of course, I never did this. You can probably guess why.

Creating an info product, even a generic one like a dog-training ebook, takes time.

Creating a sales funnel for said ebook, even a basic one, takes time.

Creating upsells? Time.

Plus, there’s still a chance it won’t work, even though my intuition said it would.

Which brings me to my offer for you for today.

Everything I’ve just told you about happened back in 2021. The world has changed a tad since then.

If I were doing this today, well — take a look at the link below.

It’s a webinar. it demos an “AI Super Agent” that does everything I just talked about — the market research, the product creation, and the funnel building. It does it in a matter of minutes, instead of a matter of weeks/never that it would have taken me.

The guy behind this AI gizmo is Josh Rosenberg. A couple decades ago, Josh used to be a copywriter. Then a decade ago, he became a big ClickBank seller in the “teach you a guitar” and “sex & dating” spaces. Then towards the end of the 2010s, he went on to work behind-the-scenes CMO for a bunch of big direct response clients, to the tune of over $150M in sales.

A couple years ago, Josh started focusing aggressively on creating AI tools for direct response businesses.

He says he’s taken his knowledge and expertise from the various stages of his career, and baked them into this “AI Super Agent,” so it does 95% of the work of creating an effective info product funnel for you.

I haven’t used the thing myself, and so I cannot vouch for it. The reason for this is I don’t think this “AI Super Agent” is a fit for the kind of personality-based, “let me tell you something new” approach that I offer via this newsletter.

But I think this “AI Super Agent” can be very tempting if you’re in a situation like I was back in 2021. In case you’re interested in spinning up and testing out a new info business in a few clicks and taps, this might be worth a watch:

https://bejakovic.com/aisuperagent

“A little scary”: X-ray goggles revealed

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In an email last week, I teased a pair of “X-ray goggles” that let you peer into places you maybe shouldn’t be peering, like your prospect’s wallet.

I thought these goggles might be particularly relevant for people who do lots of sales calls. They allow you to only get on calls with people who can afford what you’re selling, so you minimize the time you spend on the phone while maximizing the actual sales you make.

Last week, I talked to a few such people to find out more about their situation. At the end, I revealed to them what these goggles are, plus where to get ’em. Here are a few responses I got:

“I didn’t know such a tool existed, and I’m sure people on my list would like to have a pair.”

“That is interesting (and a little scary). Thanks for sharing that, John.”

“Damn! I WISH I could use that! I ran it on myself and it blew me away! That’s a killer app. Have you used it? Has it helped you?”

I have not used these X-ray goggles myself because frankly I don’t do sales calls. I am also not running lots of paid or affiliate traffic to generate leads I have to wade through.

But maybe you do?

Or maybe you have a sales team that does?

Or maybe you work with such a client?

If so, these X-ray goggles are worth a look:

https://bejakovic.com/xray

17 ideas to salvage a huge cold list

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Yesterday, I sent out an email asking for advice on what to do with a huge cold list that someone I know is in secret possession of.

This list is not only huge, not only cold, but there are also a bunch of other strange restrictions. Can anything be done?

After asking for advice yesterday, I got a buncha responses, including from people who manage email lists as a job (one guy for 20 years) and from others who have been in similarish situations and shared their experiences and suggestions.

I was honestly grateful to get so many thoughtful, detailed, and helpful responses. I read them all. I selected the ones that sounded feasible to me, and boiled related ones to get 17 separate ideas, most of which were new to me. I then organized them in three categories:

1. Technical ideas (how to email)

2. Content ideas (what to email)

3. Out-of-the-box ideas (how not to email)

I don’t know a better way to say thanks to everyone on my list who wrote me than to “pay it forward” and share the total collection of ideas with my whole list. You can find it below.

If you yourself are in secret possession of a list that’s huge, cold, possibly dead but maybe not, then read these ideas, and if you find them valuable, pass them on.

And in case you take any of these ideas and apply them, let me know — I’d love to hear about it and update the doc. Here it is:

https://bejakovic.com/salvage

Your advice on salvaging a huge email list?

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One big lesson I learned long ago, from a former client in the real estate investing space, is that your email list can do much more for you than simply provide you with income.

The email addresses on your list stand for, more often than not, real, living, intelligent people, with experiences and skills and connections.

These people can help you with all sorts of stuff, including partnerships, referrals, and advice.

So let me ask you for advice on the following email list puzzle:

I’ve been talking to a FB ad agency owner who happens to read these emails. She has been patiently sitting on an email list, which was part of her payment for a revshare deal with a client (ie. she has full rights to use this list).

The bad/terrible:

– This email list hasn’t been emailed in the past 1-18 months (depending on when they bought)

– The guru who was the face of the offer is no longer involved

– His name or his offers cannot be used or even mentioned

– Emails can’t be sent from his account/domain

Bad, right?

Yes. There are only two positives to offset the four negatives I’ve just listed:

– There are 115k email addresses on this list

– All are buyers, with some spending as little as $27 and some as much as $15k (it’s a finance list)

So do you have any experience or advice with something like this?

If these were physical mail addresses, we could mail a small segment of the list as a test and see what happens.

Is that the thing to do here as well? Is our best bet to set up a new domain, and start slowly spamming people and see where it leads us?

Or should we throw away the whole list?

Or is there some third option I’m not seeing?

If you have any advice for me, or even better if you’ve been in a situation like this before and can share your experience, please let me know. Thanks in advance.

Ben Settle: “How to make money in the make money online space”

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Yesterday, I wrote an email in which I quoted email marketer Ben Settle, in order to help me sell Igor Kheifets’s new book Click Send Earn.

Today, I’ll quote Ben again, to the same end:

“Make money online is not an easy market to consistently make money in the way Igor does. If you want to learn from someone how to make money in the make money online space, I can’t recommend Igor enough.”

If you’re eager to find out how Igor makes money consistently in the the “make money online” market — to the tune of several million a year — you can find that laid out in his book Click Send Earn.

I bought and read this book myself before reaching out to Igor and asking to promote it.

I endorse everything he teaches inside, plus I learned new and valuable things myself.

And in case you are not in the “make money online” market, the ideas and personal experiences that Igor shares in his book can be just as profitable for you, whether you’re offering coaching, or selling info products in another niche, or simply looking to grow and monetize an email list as a core part of whatever it is you do.

Igor’s Click Send Earn sells for a mighty $3.99.

Igor has said in private he could sell this info for $97-$297. Having read the book myself, I agree with him, and that’s why I asked him to promote it.

If you would like to grab a copy, so you can read it, and apply it, and profit from it:

https://bejakovic.com/clicksendearn

Ben Settle & Dan Kennedy both said it — but who was the original source?

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Here’s the history of the men who influenced me to be where I am today, writing you this email:

Patient readers know my susceptibility and fondness for the phrase, “The only real security is your ability to produce.”

I read that idea in a Ben Settle email back in 2017, which got me to sign up to Ben’s Email Players newsletter, which eventually convinced me to start sending daily emails myself.

As Ben wrote in that email, he himself got the “ability to produce” idea from an even older Dan Kennedy newsletter. I thought it stopped there, even though I always felt that “ability to produce” is an odd phrase for Dan Kennedy to invent. (Perhaps that’s why it stuck in my mind so.)

But, as I found out only last week, this phrase is not a strange Dan Kennedy construction.

The quote about “ability to produce” actually goes back to Douglas MacArthur, one of only five 5-star generals in the history of the United States.

MacArthur’s quote, such as I could trace it, was “Security lies in our ability to produce.” MacArthur was speaking quite literally, about national security and the importance of industry and agriculture to that.

But I’m not here to talk tariffs. I’m telling you this because this is a newsletter about ideas, specifically insightful ideas, even more specifically, insightful ideas that you can apply and bring into reality and profit from.

And on that note, I have a new offer for you. It’s a $3.99 ebook called Click Send Earn.

This book is written by Igor Kheifets. I’ve known Igor for a while. Back in 2021, I gave a presentation inside his List Building Lifestyle mastermind, which eventually turned into my Simple Money Emails course.

I bought Igor’s book last week because, frankly, I was curious about the funnel he was using to sell it.

But I read the book as well. And I was surprised, in a very positive sense.

As Igor said somewhere (in private, not inside this book) he could charge $97-$297 for the info that’s inside. And I believe it. So I reached out to him and asked to promote his book, for the following three reasons:

First off, this book is very clearly written by Igor, not by AI, not a ghostwriter.

Second, it lays out how Igor walked the familiar rags-to-riches route — which in his case was literal, because he used to clean toilets at a hotel once upon a time, and now makes millions a year via email.

The book lays out lessons learned along the way and gives you the business blueprint that Igor uses today, and which he teaches others, for how to build and grow and monetize email lists.

Third, this book has ideas in it that were new and insightful for me. For example, it was early in Igor’s book (p. 11) that I learned that that “ability to produce” quote is not from Ben Settle or even Dan Kennedy, but from Douglas MacArthur.

Like I said, when I bought Igor’s book, I bought it out of curiosity around the marketing.

But I thought my audience — “MY audience is different” — is too sophisticated when it comes to email marketing to profit from a book titled Click Send Earn.

Well, like I said, I’ve since read the book. I’ve learned new things and gotten value from it. I can get behind and endorse everything he teaches inside this book. That’s why I asked Igor to promote it.

And that’s what I’m doing right now, recommending it to you.

If you’re looking for a proven (by Igor, and his students) blueprint for a successful email-based business, then buy this book, read it, apply it, and profit. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/clicksendearn

How to stay off Reddit and improve your productivity

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In short, sign up to my Daily Email Habit service. Explanation plus proof:

I put in a funny image or meme at the top of each DEH email, to make it fun to keep opening up these emails day after day, and to put you in the right frame of mind to write your own daily email.

At least that was my reasoning for putting the funny image or meme in each DEH email. But apparently there are other benefits too. From email marketer Logan Hobson, who subscribes to Daily Email Habit:

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I find the daily meme an extra benefit to DEH. I started noticing that I recognized some of your images from reddit, and I wanted your images feel fresh, so I stopped browsing reddit as much and have improved my productivity, knowing I will receive a high-quality curated meme each day in your email without having to endlessly scroll to find one in the wild.

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Of course, the goal of Daily Email Habit goes beyond just improving your productivity and keeping you off Reddit. The real goal is to get you writing your own daily emails consistently, both so you make sales today, and so you build up a relationship with your audience, so they open and read your email tomorrow.

And about that, here’s marketing strategist Nick Bandy, who also subscribes to Daily Email Habit, and who has been emailing his list of buyers daily:

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DEH is the biggest ROI I’ve ever gotten on any course or product I’ve ever purchased. It’s incalculable.

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I have a bunch more testimonials from subscribers who praise Daily Email Habit. I also give away a sample 0th Daily Email Habit email, so you get a sense of what it looks like and what you’d be signing up for, including the funny image/meme up top. For all that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Last chance to claim your “Unannounced Bonus” along with Copy Riddles

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This is the last email I will send to promote the “Unannounced Bonus” promo I have been running this week for my Copy Riddles program.

The last time I ran a promo for Copy Riddles was in November of 2024. The time before that was more than a year earlier, in April of 2023.

I will for sure, 100% not be running another Copy Riddles promotion this year.

If I ever do run a promo for Copy Riddles again in the future, next year or the year after that, I am sure to have an huge and real-world bonus — like I’m offering right now — which I will make available to new and old buyers alike, including buyers who took me up on Copy Riddles during this present promo.

On the other hand, if you decide to wait, you are sure to miss out on the following “Unannounced Bonus” offer, which will never be repeated:

#1. Copy Riddles, of course, which allows you to own A-list copywriting skills more quickly than you would ever believe

How?

By drilling into you mechanical do-or-die skill of writing sales bullets, and giving you feedback from A-list copywriters, who wrote their own sales bullets starting with the same source material as you did.

(This feedback process is why past customers have called Copy Riddles “the best course I’ve taken, bar none” and “worth every dollar/minute/page.”)

#2. A lifetime subscription to Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine

… which sells for $997 on the rare occasions when Lawrence makes it available at all. $997 is what I paid Lawrence last year for it. (A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga: “I would gladly have paid him ten times, even 100 times its price.”)

#3. The unique and never-to-be-repeated “Bullets With Bejako” live cohort

Many years ago, I used to run Copy Riddles as a live cohort to provide members with greater motivation, feedback, and results that an “asynchronous” content-only course frankly cannot match.

I stopped doing live cohorts for Copy Riddles because they are too much work.

I won’t ever do a live cohort in the future. But I’m doing as part of this “Unannounced Bonus” promo, so you can own those million-dollar copywriting skills in just the next few weeks, instead of never.

#4. 3-Month Copy Riddles Payment Plan

As part of this promo, until tonight only, you can break up payments for Copy Riddles over the course of three months.

Again, this “Unannounced Bonus” event ends tonight at 12 midnight PST.

If you’d like to join Copy Riddles and claim your “Unannounced Bonus” before it disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Copy Riddles is expensive… or maybe not

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This past Monday, as I started my “Unannounced Bonus” promo for Copy Riddles, I got the following message from a long-term customer (I don’t know if he wants me to share his name):

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Gadzooks! What a bonus!

I was going to wait, but I don’t think I can pass this up.

However, I will take a day or two to run my numbers because I was NOT planning on dropping a grand on a new course this month.

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This customer has since gone to join Copy RIddles and get access to that gadzookin’ bonus, which is a lifetime membership to Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine.

Except, something sneaky is going on:

This customer didn’t lay out $997, which is what Copy Riddles sells for. That’s because he took advantage of the (so far unannounced) payment plan for Copy Riddles, which I’m offering this week only, as part of this “Unannounced Bonus” event.

I’ve only offered a payment once before in the 4+ years of Copy Riddles, and I only did that for 2 days.

I was pleasantly surprised it 1) helped drive sales and 2) the people who bought via the payment plan weren’t buying because they couldn’t afford the full price, but simply because it was psychologically easier.

(I have interacted with many of those customers before, and I know they are successful marketers and business owners.)

That’s something to consider if you too sell high-ticket info products.

Here’s something else to consider. The total offer for Copy Riddles during the present “Unannounced Bonus” promo, which ends this Sunday at 12 midnight PST, is now:

#1. Copy Riddles, of course, which allows you to own A-list copywriting skills more quickly than you would ever believe

(Previous customers have said Copy Riddles is “the best course I’ve taken, bar none” and “worth every dollar/minute/page.”)

#2. A lifetime subscription to Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine

… which sells for $997 on the rare occasions when Lawrence makes it available at all. $997 is what I paid Lawrence last year for it. (Gary Bencivenga: “I would gladly have paid him ten times, even 100 times its price.”)

#3. The unique and never-to-be-repeated “Bullets With Bejako” live cohort

Many years ago, I used to run Copy Riddles as a live cohort to provide members with greater motivation, feedback, and results that an “asynchronous” content-only course frankly cannot match.

I stopped doing live cohorts for Copy Riddles because they are too much work.

I won’t ever do a live cohort in the future. But I’m doing as part of this “Unannounced Bonus” promo, so you can own those million-dollar copywriting skills in just the next few weeks, instead of never.

#4. 3-Month Copy Riddles Payment Plan

As part of this promo, for the next three days only, you can get started with Copy Riddles for $399, and then two more monthly payments of $399.

About that price:

I’m not saying Copy Riddles is not expensive because you can break it up into payments, though that can help reduce the psychological sting of a lump sum.

I am saying Copy Riddles can stop being expensive if you take the attitude that you will get your money’s worth from it, and more.

At the risk of sounding like a pretentious pontificator:

I’ve forced myself to develop the habit that, whenever I spend money on courses, memberships, events, I sit down and make a list of 10 ideas for how I could make that money back, and more, by a given date, thanks to what I’m learning or getting inside that course/membership/event, ideally before I’ve even paid it off fully.

No, it doesn’t always work out as planned.

Sometimes it takes me longer to make my money back, and sometimes I don’t manage it all the way.

But sometimes, I do make my money back before the deadline I had set for myself. And sometimes it works out much better than planned.

This is a good attitude in general if you spend time in the world of direct response marketing and copywriting.

That world is built out of intangible, feathery ideas, which can nonetheless quickly translate into real and tangible things like gold, houses, and cars.

I’ll have a real-world example tomorrow of how a Copy Riddles member applied this mentality to get more out of Copy Riddles than he paid for it.

Meanwhile, the deadline is nearing. Once again, it’s this Sunday at 12 midnight PST.

If you’d like to get Copy Riddles and the free lifetime subscription to Ad Money Machine… be part of “Bullets With Bejako” live cohort… and even potentially take advantage of the payment plan, giving you two extra months to recoup your investment in this offer, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/