Direct Marketing

Three bits of Dan Ferrari’s timeless wisdom

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A couple days ago, A-list copywriter Dan Ferrari, who was my copywriting coach once upon a time, sent one of his once-every-ice-age emails.

I’ll tell you an idea from that email that caught my eye. But first, a quick story to set it up:

I was talking to my friend Marci a few days ago. Marci has started a quick, daily, general-interest AI newsletter. He asked me if I had any suggestions for him.

I told him to consider picking a specific audience and niching down to writing about AI for that audience.

Marci’s brother Krisz was in the room and listening to the conversation. At this point he jumped in and said, “For me the newsletter is perfect as it is. It’s short, it’s interesting, it keeps me in the loop even if I’m not so much into AI.”

So who’s right? Should Marci niche down his newsletter? Should he keep it broad?

Or more relevant to you:

Should you go with one product name or a second product name? One segment of the market or another? One headline or a second one?

To answer that, let’s go back to that Dan Ferrari email from a couple days ago. In it, Dan wrote the following:

===

Something that none of the gurus will ever say publicly… direct response is largely dictated by luck.

No one knows exactly which offers are going to work and more importantly, how successful they will be.

No one.

Some of us are better at guessing than others but make no mistake, we’re still guessing. There are too many variables at play. Many of them are not within your control or even the business’ control. They are external and completely unknowable.

===

That might sound discouraging. And it’s true that “testing” AKA regular failure is an essential part of the direct response game.

But as Dan says in the same email, you can improve your luck by upping your skills.

​​Better skills help you come up with better ideas that are more likely to work… and they give you access to better opportunities that are more likely to succeed a priori.

And now, let me ease into my sales pitch.

There’s a third thing Dan said, not in this email, but on one of those exclusive coaching calls, talking to a small number of copywriting mentees, me among them:

===

You can use a fascination/bullet midway through a story to get people to stick… or in a lead… or anywhere in the copy.

===

Dan wasn’t talking about jamming in actual (*) sales bullets anywhere or everywhere in your copy. He was simply saying, if a bit of copy would make for a great sales bullet, it can work as an exciting, surprising, momentum-building sentence of copy, anywhere you need it.

So that’s one reason to learn sales bullets. Here are a few others:

Email marketer Ben Settle has said that, “when written correct everything ‘comes’ from the bullets, including non-bullet copy or ads where there are no bullets.”

Copywriting legend John Carlton has said that the sale often comes down to a single bullet.

And Stefan Georgi, who charges something like $50k for a single sales letter, has said that one of the biggest jumps he made as a copywriter came when he discovered bullets.

Ok, so much for the sales pitch.

Now, here’s my offer:

If you’d like to up your copywriting skills… double or triple your chances of success… put yourself in the path of better opportunities… and make your own luck long-term… then get Copy Riddles, my training that forces you write A-list sales bullets that are so important to all kinds of copy. You can find it here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

It might be fantastic and refreshing, but it ain’t got a sales page

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I’ll admit it right away:

The world has not been crying out to buy my Simple Money Emails course.

This past summer, I launched it as a special offer via an ad in Josh Spector’s newsletter. Many of my readers got it back then.

I haven’t advertised it or offered it since, because I’ve been waiting for the sales page to write itself.

But the sales page refuses to do any writing. And I have little interest in doing its job for it. I have lots of more exciting, more promising things I can be doing.

Things were at this impasse until a couple days ago, when I got the following email from a reader:

===

I subscribed through Josh Spector’s newsletter and thought The Simply Money Emails Course was fantastic and refreshing.

Of the many different courses (free and paid) that I have taken, Simple Money Emails is the only course that has taken me from being a complete email copywriting newbie to feeling ready to take on client projects after completing the course.

As for my feedback on the course I’d say it is very detailed and meaty even though it looks like a short course initially. What tied everything together is the video interview you did with Igor and I’d say for future versions of Simple Money Emails I’d like to see more video content for visual learning (and faster consumption)

I haven’t gotten through the swipe files yet but I think they’re the cherry on top and I definitely will use them as a base or inspiration for the emails that I am going to write for my clients.

===

The fact is, I’ve gotten lots of positive feedback from people who have gone through Simple Money Emails already.

And so from today on, I’ve decided to make this course available to buy, even without a sales page.

(I will deal with the sales page issue in a possibly exciting way starting tomorrow.)

For now, I will just tell you what’s inside my Simple Money Emails offer:

1. My Simple Money Emails training

​​Since 2015, I’ve written close to 2,000 daily sales emails. I’ve used them to successfully sell info courses, live trainings, high-ticket coaching, supplements, software, ecommerce products, even pet supplies.

​​In this training, I distill all this experience to give you a simple, repeatable, 1-2 process, which almost anyone can use, to write daily emails that make sales today and keep your readers coming back tomorrow.

2. Simple Money Email Swipes

​​This is a swipe file containing 51 of my simplest, most effective money-making emails. These include all the emails I reference in the core SME training, plus many more — all highlighted and marked up to show you the relevant ideas or concepts in action.

3. Quick & Dirty Emails That Make Money

​​This is a presentation I gave 2021 to Igor Kheifets’s $97/month mastermind. I talked about my experience writing daily emails to two large lists made up of ecommerce buyers — which were each making $4k to $5k in sales with each email, day after day. In many ways, this training was the forerunner to the complete Simple Money Emails training.

4. 9 Deadly Email Sins

​​Over the past year, several successful business owners and course creators have paid me multiple thousands of dollars to critically look at each email they were sending and give them my feedback.

​​This training sums up the 9 most frequent pieces of copywriting feedback I’ve given in these exclusive coaching situations, along with examples of actual copy I critiqued. I sold this training for $100 when I put it on live, but it’s yours free as part of Simple Money Emails.

5. The price for Simple Money Emails, parts 1-4 above, is $197.

If you decide you’d like in, you can buy Simple Money Emails here:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

… and if not, that’s okay. I’ll be back tomorrow, teasing and demoing the ideas from this course without spelling them out. Perhaps in time you will figure it all out. Or if you have no time to be teased and you’d like to get going now, well, the link is above.

10 jaw-dropping email deliverability tips you must know in 2023: A complete guide for marketers

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A new reader writes in:

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John – just wanted to let you know that deliverability on your emails is pretty terrible.

I’ve marked your emails as not-spam multiple times. They keep ending up in spam though!

I want to read your emails.. ha.. you’re making it difficult for me though, haha. Are DKIM and SPIF set up properly?

===

I’m grateful to this reader, both for fishing my emails out of the spam folder, and for writing me to tell me about my deliverability problems.

I do have DKIM and SPF set up but apparently it makes no difference for some email providers and some inboxes.

Beyond that, I have no interest in tech fixes for email deliverability, any more than I have in SEO tweaks for getting my stuff to rank on Google.

Instead, I prefer the following ultimate deliverability tips:

1. Novelty — writing something new in my emails, which gets people curious what I might have to say tomorrow, and seeking them out even in the spam folder

2. Deadlines — having strict, often 24-hour deadlines, to reward people who seek out and open my emails when I send them out

3. Featuring reader replies like above — encouraging others to reply to me as well

4. Replying personally to people who write me — encouraging more readership and replies in the future

5. Links at the end of almost every email plus a reason why to click — apparently Gmail and other inboxes like lotsa clicking

6. Occasional valuable ideas — again, this makes people want to seek out my emails and open them

7. Sending daily — so my most loyal readers sense something is wrong if they don’t get my email, and they go searching for it, or even write me to ask what’s up

8. Being transparent about what I offer so people can decide easily if it’s not for them and unsubscribe — unengaged readers are supposed to be bad for deliverability

9. Occasionally purging people who don’t open or click my emails

So there you go:

​​9 jaw-dropping, ultimate email deliverability tips you NEED to know in 2023.

And if you’re wondering about the disconnect between my subject line (10 tips) and that list of 9, I’ll make you a deal:

1. Get my Most Valuable Email course at https://bejakovic.com/mve/

2. Reply to this email before 8:31 CET tomorrow, Wednesday Oct 11

3. I will then write back to you with a simple but effective 10th way I’ve found to increase my email deliverability — something that multiple people have told me I should turn into a standalone course or training

4. Of course, if you’ve bought MVE before, this offer is open to you as well. But the same deadline applies.

Just another one of my industry-leading insights in this email

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A couple days ago, I started receiving a gentle barrage of email notifications like this:

“The John Bejakovic Letter: A new contact has been added to your list”
“The John Bejakovic Letter: A new contact has been added to your list”
“The John Bejakovic Letter: A new contact has been added to your list”
…

I checked where all these “new contacts” were coming from.

It turned out to be a website that promotes itself as a discovery platform for newsletters. And sure enough, on the front page of the site, there was the “John Bejakovic Newsletter” with the following nonsense description:

​===​

“The John Bejakovic Newsletter is not simply another regular publication; it is a vibrant, information-rich tool that provides a unique entryway to the corporate and commercial worlds.”

“Pros: John Bejakovic’s newsletter provides subscribers a tactical advantage in today’s fast-paced business environment by delivering industry-leading insights.”

“Cons: Persistent follow-up emails from John Bejakovic’s newsletter may be sent to subscribers who unsubscribe, and over time these emails may start to annoy you.”

===

​​In case it’s not clear:

This has nothing whatsoever to do with this newsletter you’re reading now.

​​I’m guessing the above fluff was generated by AI.

And I’m guessing the “new contacts” who subscribed to my list were all bots — based on the email addresses, the associated first names that were put in, and the behavior of the contacts after subscribing.

So that’s the bad part, the skeleton that I trotted out of the closet and made dance at the top of my email. Now here’s the good part:

These bot contacts came via Sparkloop. I’ve written about Sparkloop before. It’s a newsletter-recommendation marketplace.

​​Other newsletters (and occasional scam websites, like the above) can find you on Sparkloop and send you newsletter subscribers you pay for.

Or don’t pay for — because Sparkloop allows you to set your own criteria for who is an engaged, worthwhile subscriber, including location or activity or your own intuition.

For example:

I deleted all the contacts that came via that newsletter discovery website, prolly close to 100. This won’t cost me anything, except a bit of time, which I’m trying to recoup by writing this email.

On the other hand, I have been getting a trickle of actual engaged readers via Sparkloop. (It’s only a trickle, because I’m not using the co-reg functionality, but am only accepting leads who were sent to my optin page.) ​​

​​I’m also using Sparkloop to grow my health newsletter, and I’m getting good results there.

Point being, you gotta keep an eye on Sparkloop, because it’s a shiba inu that will eat from the trashcan from time to time.

​​But if you’re willing to keep an eye on it, then it’s as close as I’ve found to an automated way to grow your newsletter with the kinds of leads you yourself want.

If you wanna try Sparkloop out, you can find it at link below. ​​Yes, that’s an affiliate link but it’s not likely to pay me anything — not unless you also decide to use Sparkloop to make some money via promoting other newsletters, which is a topic for another email. ​​Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/sparkloop

Challenge offers vs. set-up offers

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Yesterday, I sent out an email, “Maybe I can help you publish a book fast.”

At the end of 600-odd words where I talked about Spider-Man, my old IT job, and a recent podcast appearance I made, my offer was that if you have a business, or better yet a business plus a bunch of good content sitting around, then maybe I can help you shape that content into a book that can go on Amazon and turn you into the David Copperfield of your niche.

I had no idea whether anybody would reply.

​​I certainly had no idea whether anybody qualified would reply.

But I did get a number of qualified replies, more than I even hoped for, much less expected.

There’s clearly interest and demand there. That should have been obvious up front, when you think of the fact that ghostwriting has been a thing since Confucius, and that plenty of successful businesses, offering various done-for-you book services for bizowners, have sprung up over the past decade or two.

Still, the unexpected number of qualified replies reminded me of an ancient fairy tale.

Maybe you’ve heard this fairy tale before. But maybe not, at least not the full details:

Once upon a time, a young prince named Gary lost his Social Security card.

Gary went into the Social Security office. He was shocked to discover that the office was packed with elderly villagers, waiting in huge lines, treated like cattle, bossed around, or sent away to come back and plead their case another day.

A few days later, young prince Gary shared this experience with someone at the local newspaper.

The newspaper guy told Gary how, as a public service, the newspaper used to run a Social Security info form, hidden at the bottom of page 74.

Readers could clip out that form and send it back to newspaper to find out what level of Social Security they are entitled to. The newspaper would then forward that form to the Social Security Administration.

But the newspaper stopped offering this public service — it became too much of a pain in the ass. Because even though the ad was buried deep in the newspaper, it got replies from 17% of the circulation.

Young prince Gary’s ears perked up. He thought for a moment. The outcome was his magical “How To Collect From Social Security At Any Age” ad.

The ad coupon offered the same Social Security form, which Gary would forward to the SSA. Plus it sold a $3 booklet, with the same title as the headline of the ad.

Result? $800,000 in 1970s profit, or about $5 million in 2023 money.

The point, in Gary Halbert’s own words:

“Think About Looking For ‘Set-Ups’ Instead Of Challenges!”

Yes, it’s possible to take a poor offer, tweak it, add to it, rename it, reposition it, and hype it up with A-list copy. It can sometimes turn a loser into a winner.

But it’s a challenge. And as Gary says, you don’t want any challenges.

You want to make an offer that sells itself in spite of bad marketing, or with no marketing at all.

You might scoff and throw your arms up in frustration at that. But Gary’s fairy tale above, and my email from yesterday, show that such set-up offers are out there, if you only keep your antennae up.

And now here’s my offer:

If you have a business, or better yet a business plus a bunch of good content sitting around, then maybe I can help you turn that content into a book that can go on Amazon and turn you into the David Copperfield of your niche.

​​In case you’re interested, hit reply and we can start a conversation about where you’re at and how I might be able to help you.

$90k upsell to a $39 magazine subscription

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I found the following via Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine site. You gotta pay for that site, and I happily do. It clues me in to wonders like the following:

For the past dozen or more years, select subscribers to National Geographic magazine (one-year print subscription: $39) have been getting a unique sales letter in the mail.

The sales letter, which comes with an attractive brochure, is making a pitch for a $90k upsell — and apparently selling out the offer year after year.

I bet you’re curious what this $90k upsell could be. I mean, it’s quite a leap from $39. ​​What could possibly be worth it?

I’ll tell you.

The offer is called “Africa by Private Jet.” It involves:

* 20 days
​
* 7 different countries

​* A private Boeing 757, refitted to accommodate just 51 expert travelers instead of the standard 233 budget sardines

​* Visits to the best big game, big ape, and big culture locations across Africa

​* Professional scientists as tour guides, an on-staff physician, and an expedition chef

​* An inaugural dinner with Jane Goodall in London (first stop of the trip) and a farewell dinner in Rome (last stop)

​* A safe, fascinating, hassle-free adventure; a feeling of importance and superiority; interesting dinner party stories for a lifetime; all backed by the good name of National Geographic Society

The sales letter made me want to go.

And it reminded me of Ken McCarthy’s Advanced Copywriting for Serious Info Marketers seminar.

One of Ken’s many messages in that seminar was that if you think a bit, you will find higher-ticket offers — which cost 2x, 10x, 100x, even 2,307x of what your front-end costs — and your best or very best customers will still happily buy.

There’s no shortcut to that bit of thinking.

But perhaps a good starting point is to conjure up an absolutely incredible experience or transformation you yourself would like to enjoy — and then just take others along with you on that trip.

Anyways, my offer today has little to do with the above National Geographic story, except the following:

Before he got to talking about upsells, Ken McCarthy spent the majority of that Advanced Copywriting seminar teaching what he believes to be the “most important, do-or-die copywriting skill.”

He first teased people in the seminar, and had them guess what they thought this skill might be. People guessed:

Stirring up curiosity?

Coming up with a big idea?

Sounding believable?

Nope. Ken had a mechanical skill in mind. And he said this one mechanical skill covers 90% of what it takes to be a copywriter. If you’d like to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Deadline to get 4 copywriting bonuses that made the Infostack promo

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Today is the deadline, in just 3 ominous hours from now, to get the Infostack copywriter’s bundle along with my special bonuses.

​​I won’t send any more emails about this offer before the deadline hits.

In case you missed my emails over the past few days:

The core Infostack offer is a bundle of 14 different copywriting courses, trainings, and ebooks, my 10 Commandments Of A-List Copywriters among them.

​​All these products sell on their own for a total of $555, but get the Infostack bundle and you can get them all for a grand total of $49.

I’m also offering some free bonuses to entice you to sign up. Speaking of which, I’ve gotten a bunch of replies during this promotion along the following lines:

“I purchased the Infostack package for your bonuses.”

“… this fine offer from infostack which I leaped on and mostly to get your bonus packages.”

“Grabbed it. And to be completely honest, after reading through Copy Riddles a bit, I swiped this offer specifically for your bonuses.”

“I wanted the Dan Ferrari gems [bonus #4 below], so here we are.”

​​[From an email sent to Infostack support, forwarded to me:] “I’ve sent you TWO requests, yesterday and today, to cancel and refund this transaction. I sent the requests through the Contact link on your website. I did this because I wanted John’s bonuses.”

I also got one person writing me to say about the Infostack bundle, “I don’t think this one will sell. They have again left out the values under each item.”

I won’t share specific sales numbers for this promo — what good are they to you — but I will say that by my standards, the promo did fine. And I’m writing this before the final batch of sales that always come in the last few hours.

That just goes to prove the old direct response adage that people will often buy the bonus rather than the core offer.

So if you ever find yourself stuck selling something bland (rather than SUPER or ideally SUPER Ultimate), then you can always help yourself out by taking a sheet of parchment, reaching for your goose quill and ink stand, and carefully writing down the following heading:

“10 ideas for cool bonuses to make this offer sell better”

That’s how I came up with my own bonuses for the Infostack Bundle. In case you’re curious, here they are:

1. Copywriting Portfolio Secrets ($97 value)

In this training, I show you how to build up your copywriting portfolio in the fastest and most efficient way, so you can start to win copywriting jobs even today. I show you the best way I’ve found to win 4- and 5-figure jobs I REALLY wanted, even when I wasn’t qualified for them, and how you can do it too.

I previously sold this training for $97. But it’s yours free if you take me up on my Infostack offer, which also includes my…

2. No-Stress Negotiation For Well-Paid Copywriters ($100 value)

This guide outlines my 7-part negotiating system, which I adapted from negotiation coach Jim Camp. This system kept me sane while I still regularly interviewed and worked with copywriting clients. Follow these seven principles, and you will end up making more money, working with better clients, and being able to stick to it for the long term.

I only offered this guide once before, as part of the $100 Copy Zone guide, which also featured….

3. How To Get Set Up On Upwork

This free bonus is an excerpt from a short self-published book I wrote once, How to Become a $150/Hr Sales Copywriter on Upwork: A Personal Success Story that Almost Anyone Can Replicate. It tells you how to actually get set up on Upwork — the details of your profile page, your description, your title.

If you combine this bonus with the two bonuses above — Copywriting Portfolio Secrets and No-Stress Negotiation — you have a great shot of winning a job on Upwork by the end of this week, or even today.

And finally, my bonus stack also includes…

4. Dan’s Timeless Wisdom (priceless, or $25k+)

Between August of 2019 and March 2020, I was in Dan Ferrari’s coaching group. As you might know, Dan started out as a star copywriter at The Motley Fool, and went on to become one of the most successful, most winning, big-money direct response copywriters working today.

Inside his coaching group, Dan dispensed copy critiques, marketing advice, and mystical koans to help his coaching students get to the next level.

At some point, I had the bright idea to start archiving the best and most valuable things that Dan was saying. I got 25 of them down, and they are all included in this document, which has until now only been shared with Dan and his coaching students.

(By the way, I never tallied up the exact and rather painful amount of money I paid Dan for the coaching. It was north of $25k. I do know I made it all back, and then some, in just the first two months after I stopped with the coaching, thanks to just one tip I got from Dan.)

So there you go. If you want the Ultimate Copywriter’s SUPER Stack for its $555.86 worth of value and inspiration, yours for just $49…

… or if you want my add-on bonuses for their $25,197/∞ value, yours free…

… then here’s what to do:

1. Buy the Ultimate Copywriter’s SUPER Bundle at https://bejakovic.com/infostack

2. You will then get an automated email from ThriveCart with a link to a special, members-only page on my site where you can access the four free bonuses above.

Important:

The deadline to get both the Infostack bundle and my bonuses is tonight at 8:31pm CET. After that, my bonuses go back to Barbieland. So if you want them, I suggest you get them now.

Hiring a content writer who can write a fascinating investigative article

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I’m looking for a writer, somebody who can write a long-form article that will go on the website of my health newsletter.

The topic is, “How Big Tobacco started addicting food companies.”

The starting point for this article is an academic paper that came out last month on exactly this topic.

Your job, should you convince me you’re the right person for it, will be to take ideas from that academic paper… do additional research you might want to do… dramatize… make it all sticky… tell a story… draw out some surprising conclusions… and produce a piece of writing that’s new and fascinating for a real, live, intelligent human being to read and that makes such a human want to share the article with others.

I’m not looking for SEO fluff, but something written for actual people.

​​I’m fine if you want to use any AI tools to research or write this.

​​I don’t have a specific number of words in mind — I’m imagining something around 1k-2k words, though I’m not in any way set on that.

If you are interested in doing this job:

1. Hit reply
​
2. Tell me that you can write a fascinating article on the topic above

​3. Give me proof for statement 2 above. Tell me, or better yet, show me, whatever you think is relevant to persuade me that you are able to do this work and do it well

​4. Tell me what you want to charge for this work (Hint: saying you will do it for free is not a winning strategy)

For now, I am just advertising this to my list. I am willing to go on Upwork in a day or two and advertise there as well. However, I’m hoping to find the perfect person via my list, and quickly.

​​That’s to say, if you are interested in this job, don’t put off writing me — I hope to hear from you soon.

The best argument against money-back guarantees on the Internet

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

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

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

===

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

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

===

The interviewer, Michael Senoff, asked a clarifying question:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vic Conant replied:

===

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

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

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

===

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

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

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

But still.

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

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

I realized I already am doing it.

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

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

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

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

===

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

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

===

For when you’re ready:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

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

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

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

===

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

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

But this might be a great opportunity now:

===

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

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

Daniel and I agreed to leave it at that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I’ve brought Copy Riddles back.

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

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

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

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

So I’m telling you right now:

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

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

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

Fine.

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

His offers.

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

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

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

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

https://persuasivepage.com/