Direct Marketing

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.

My infotaining emails totally flopped for my first big DR client

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My first big direct response copywriting customer was Dr. Audri Lanford, back in 2017.

​​Dr. Audri and her husband Jim were direct response veterans — they ran a big Internet Marketing event with the legendary Jay Abraham back in the year 2000.

Audri and Jim died in 2019 in a freak gas leak explosion. I found out about that through Brian Kurtz’s newsletter because Brian was apparently good friends with Dr. Audri and her husband.

Back in 2017, Dr. Audri had an innovative offer called Australian Digestive Excellence.

​​ADE was a drink of some sort that fixed every chronic digestive problem you could ever have. According to the hundreds of testimonials Dr. Audri had accumulated over just a year or two, it seemed the stuff was really magic.

Now it was time to scale.

Dr. Audri had her source of cold traffic, I believe banner ads on a radio talk show website.

​​These banner ads drove leads to a quiz. And after the quiz, that’s where some patented Bejako emails kicked in.

Well, really, my patented emails were a 12-email sequence in the infotaining style of marketer Ben Settle. I just softened Ben’s somewhat dismissive and harsh tone to make it more suited to these tummy-sensitive leads.

Result?

What were the total sales, made ​across I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of expensive cold leads?

Two. ​​Two sales total.

Why? Why???

The email copy was solid. Sure, I would do it better today, but even back then, I had a “George Costanza school of digestive health” email and one about “How to survive 5-star restaurant food.”

I don’t know the reason why my infotaining email copy flopped. But it brings to mind this old but gold point raised by master copywriter Robert Collier:

“It’s not the copy so much as the scheme back of it.”

Tweaking words is rarely your biggest lever. Even less so if your copy is halfway decent.

Instead, figure out the right scheme. The scheme to get in front of the right prospect. The scheme to get their attention. The scheme to appeal to hidden closets and cupboards of their psychology. The scheme to get them eager and greedy.

Do that,​​ and the specific copywriting tricks you use won’t matter all that much.

And now, let me tell you about my Most Valuable Email trick. It’s an email copywriting trick.

It might seem self-defeating to tell you about it. ​​

Except, through some magic, this email copywriting trick turns you into a 21st-century scheme man or scheme woman. Maybe one to parallel Robert Collier himself one day.

I won’t explain in more detail how the Most Valuable Email trick makes that happen.

For anybody who has bought and gone through my Most Valuable Email training, it will be obvious.

For you, if you haven’t yet gone through Most Valuable Email, and if you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

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.

A message from Porter Spamsberry & Co

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Each day, I like to check my spam folder several times because — who knows? Maybe somebody wrote me with a declaration of love, and I don’t get much of that in my usual inbox.

But no. No love ever in my spam folder.

Instead, all I ever find is dozens of messages from senders like:

Tech Crashes
Lucrative Market News
Worldwide Recession
Recession Starts Now
Market Collapsing

It’s not just the sender names that look the same.

All these emails have the same format, with a linked first sentence… a domain name that’s the same as the sender name (recessionstartsnow dot net)… and the identical “Thank You!” message that appears when you try to unsubscribe.

Unsubscribing, by the way, is impossible.

New disposable domains and new senders keep popping up in my spam folder, day after day, like moles. American Conservative Group. In Time Investing. Wallstreet Burning.

Sometimes, these website have disappeared by the time I click the link in the email, just a few hours after it was sent out.

But some of these emails do still point to live websites.

And on those websites, there’s always a video sales letter, which always features the same glum face. The glum face belongs to Porter Stansberry, the investment researcher and copywriter who started and then sold the billion-dollar company Stansberry Research.

What’s going on?

My suspicion is that this is some affiliate getting creative, and not a new email marketing strategy from Porter & Co, Stansberry’s new venture. But maybe I’m wrong.

If you know, and you would like to tell me, I will be grateful to you.

In any case, let me tease you about something else Stansberry-related:

A while back, a senior copywriter for Stansberry signed up to my newsletter. He replied to one of my emails, and offered to tell me the number one secret behind Stansberry’s billion-dollar success.

I won’t tell you what that copywriter told me — there’s value in not blabbing publicly.

But in case you would like to get on my email newsletter — after all, top copywriters and A-list marketers read it every day — click here to subscribe.

 

The royal way to grow a list

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Yesterday, King Charles III and Queen Consort Camila went for a drive to Bolton Town Hall in London. Birds chirped, armed guards looked on tensely, and crowds of well-wishers and paparazzi pushed around the fences, trying to catch a geek of the aged couple.

Nothing really remarkable there. It’s just another pebble in the mountain of news coverage about the British royal family over the past year.

The news coverage continues, because people look at the royals as a symbol of something ancient, enduring, quintessentially British.

That’s kind of amazing if you think about it.

Charles III is the fourth English monarch from the house of Windsor, which is only 105 years old. Before that, it was called the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in reference to its original German domains. The name was changed during World War I. The image of a bunch of goose-stepping Germans running the UK was too threatening.

How did the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha get to rule the UK? Well, they replaced another German house that ruled the UK, the House of Hanover.

The history of Europe, and really of the world, has seen this pattern over and over. Conquerors and adventurers, foreign princes and stranger kings, appear from somewhere far away and take control of a large and well-trained population.

I read about this in David Wengrow and David Graeber’s Dawn of Everything. The two D’s say the key is that a population has been well-trained and disciplined to obey rule. Who rules doesn’t matter very much at all.

You might be starting to feel a little uncomfortable, and worry that I’m about to preach anarchy, or talk about political revolution.

Quite the opposite. I’m preaching monarchy, and talking about long-term business stability.

Via your list. Specifically, via growing your list with the best prospects, the kind who will buy and read and do what you tell them to do.

I listened to a Dan Kennedy seminar yesterday. Dan said how his best customers were always the martial arts guys — because they had been trained and selected over years to be disciplined.

I remember when pick-up coach RSD Tyler did a list swap with the dreamy fitness coach Eliott Hulse. Eliott said how the buyers he got from the RSD list were fantastic customers, because Tyler’s whole message was self-improvement and taking responsibility and putting in the work.

I’ve even experienced this same phenomenon myself. Back in 2021, I did a list swap with Daniel Throssell. I couldn’t believe how many sales I got from new subscribers who came from Daniel’s list. And that’s with a hidden sales page I had at the time, and without pitching anything myself. It was simply because Daniel has trained and prepared his audience so well.

So there you go. If you want the best leads and future customers, do it the royal way.

Find a market — or an audience — that’s already been disciplined.

It sure beats the hard work of taking an unruly mass, devising new laws, and trying to beat those laws in over the course of generations.

Ok, so much for monarchy.

Now, let’s talk old-time religion. Specifically, my 10 Commandments book. To find out more about that, or maybe even to spend $5 and get some valuable discipline in return, go here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The best way to market your old course

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In the virtual pages of this daily email newsletter, I’ve gone back over and over to an article by James Altucher, titled, I Plagiarized And You Can, Too!

I’ve written about James’s core idea several times already. I won’t repeat it today. But I will point out the interesting 12 words of advice with which James ends his article:

“The best way to market your first book? Write your next book.”

That’s how the cookie crumbles, book-wise. But what about course-wise?

For the last few days, I’ve been promoting my Copy Riddles course.

This is the third time I am promoting this course at the current price in the past 6 months.

And yet, during this run, over just a few days, I’ve made more sales of Copy Riddles than I did over several weeks of promotion earlier.

The difference is I’ve announced this is the last week to get the free bonuses that come with Copy Riddles.

At the end of this week, I will remove the free bonuses, expand them, and turn them into paid upsells.

So the best way to market your old course?

​​Take your free bonuses and convert them into an upsell funnel. And then advertise that fact well to your audience.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. The candle is burning down. The hourglass is noiselessly draining away.

The free bonuses for Copy Riddles will disappear this Saturday Jan 21, at 12 midnight PST.

The first bonus is Storytelling For Sales. The second bonus is Copywriting Portfolio Secrets.

Don’t buy Copy Riddles just for the free bonuses.

But the majority of people who bought Copy Riddles over these past few days have been on my list for a while.

That makes me think they’ve been eyeing Copy Riddles for a while.

If, like them, you’ve been weighing up Copy Riddles for a similar while, you have until Saturday to get the whole package, free bonuses included. You can do that at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

What never to swallow at the start of your newsletter

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No, I’m not talking about swallowing your pride. Read on because it’s important.

​​Last night I was reviewing a newsletter. The newsletter was full of valuable content, but the author didn’t try to sell me on that content in any way. He meant for it to sell itself.

This brought to mind something I heard marketing wizard Dan Kennedy say:

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We sometimes take the attention of the people with whom we communicate with all the time for granted. That they will give us attention because of who we are and our relationship with them. It’s a bad presumption. It was not a bad presumption a decade ago when there weren’t as many of us showing up every day, asking for their attention. But now there’s a lot more of us showing up every day, asking for their attention. And so we gotta earn it, every single time.

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If you’re anything like me, then your brain will try to feed you excuses, all day long, just because it wants to stop thinking. It will say:

“They opted​​ in to my newsletter. They expressed interest. They want to hear what I have to say.”

“They like my persona. They read my emails in the past. They bought stuff from me!”

“​​I’m sure they will read this too. It’s good enough.”

​Don’t swallow your brain’s excuses. ​Don’t take your readers attention for granted. That’s not good enough.

Not if you want the best chance to influence people, to present yourself as an authority, to get your readers to buy or share or do whatever it is you’re after.
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The more closely people read your stuff, the more of your story and your arguments they swallow, the more you manage to spike their emotions in the minutes they spend with your content, the better it is for you. And in a way, for them.

As a Big Pharma salesman might tell you, the most expensive drug is the one that doesn’t work.

And as I, a Big Copy salesman, will tell you, the most expensive 3 seconds for your reader are clicking on your email and skimming straight through to the end because he’s not properly engaged. That’s 3 seconds wasted for nothing.

On the other hand, 3 or 13 minutes reading every word you wrote because you sold it properly ahead of time — that can be both valuable and enjoyable.

So how do you pre-sell your valuable content?

That knowledge is something I don’t pre-sell. That’s something I sell.

Specifically, that’s what I sell inside my Copy Riddles program. In case you’re interested:

Copy Riddles shows you A-list copywriters sell and pre-sell valuable but dry information. But Copy Riddles does much more. It gets you doing the same.

This doesn’t mean you have to go all John Carlton on your newsletter readers.

You can be subtle or savage in the way you pre-sell your content and your information. It’s your choice.

What is not your choice is how people’s brains work, and what kinds of messages they respond to. And the most condensed and powerful way to create messages that people respond to is inside Copy Riddles.

As I mentioned two days ago, this is the last week I am giving away two free bonuses with Copy Riddles. The first bonus is Storytelling For Sales. The second bonus is Copywriting Portfolio Secrets.

Don’t buy Copy Riddles just for the free bonuses.

But if you decide you want to get Copy Riddles, you have until Saturday Jan 21 at 12 midnight PST to get Storytelling for Sales and Copywriting Portfolio Secrets as free bonuses.

After then, Copy Riddles will remain available, but the free bonuses will disappear.

To get the whole package:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Barcelona man discovers the secret of how to escape the online rat race

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“It was unbelievable. One day he’s driving around in a rusted out ’68 Pontiac station wagon, living in an uncarpeted house that didn’t even have a color T.V., and struggling to make ends meet like the rest of us. The next day he’s driving in a brand new Lincoln Mark, a brand new Mercury station wagon, a $35,000 GMC motor home, his house is fixed up like a palace, and he’s traveling all over the country.”

This morning I read an old but gold business opportunity ad.

The ad ran across a full page of newspapers, in tightly crammed print. I imagine the entire thing was 3,000 words or more.

This ad is a master class. If you are doing email marketing today, particularly if you sell yourself and your expertise and your authority and your trustworthiness, this ad is worth studying, thinking about, and emulating in your own email copy.

​​You can easily find versions of this ad by googling for the headline:

“Ohio Man Discovers the Secret of How to Escape the American Rat Race”

The Ohio man in question is marketer Ben Suarez. The secret in question is a system Suarez called NPGS.

​​Once upon a time, you could discover the NPGS secret if you mailed a check for $20 to get Suarez’s book, 7 Steps to Freedom.

A little-known fact about me is that I live in Barcelona in a hipster neighborhood called Poblenou.

An even lesser-known fact is that a few years ago, before I started living in Barcelona’s Poblenou, I went on a used-book website and actually bought Ben Suarez’s 7 Steps to Freedom.

I did it because it was one of the books recommended somewhere by Gary Halbert in his newsletter.

Suarez’s book arrived to my house. It is the size of a comprehensive dictionary and weighs as much as a brick. Over many hundreds of pages, it lays out Suarez’s NPGS system — basically how to run a successful mail-order business.

As you can probably guess, I never got beyond the table of contents in 7 Steps to Freedom. I bet that 99.9% of other people who bought this book didn’t get any further.

No matter.

Because as another Ohio bizopp marketer, Dan Kennedy, once said, people want miracles, not how-to information.

So if you want to escape the online rat race of endless content creation that never turns into much cash, here’s the secret:

Give people what they want. Miracles, and not how-to information.

This is why I organized my Copy Riddles program as I did.

Sure, Copy Riddles features some how-to information. That was unavoidable.

​​But the main thing inside Copy Riddles are the repetitive daily exercises, which I claim implant A-list copywriting skills into your brain, will ye or nill ye.

That’s not just an empty claim I’m making. Here’s proof for it, in the words of freelance copywriter Ivan Sršen, who went through Copy Riddles a while back:

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Before John’s Copy Riddles training, I knew about the problem mechanism… and I knew about the solution mechanism. In fact, I knew about around 60% of the stuff he teaches in this course. But I was still like a deer in headlights. Only after going through Copy Riddles… after applying all this that I ‘knew’ in daily exercises, did it all click together. My bullets — and my understanding of copy mechanics — are light years ahead of where they were after a few short weeks.

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If you’d like to experience a miraculous transformation in your understanding of copy, you can find out more about Copy Riddles at the link below.

As I mentioned in my email yesterday, this is the last week I am giving away two free bonuses with Copy Riddles. The first bonus is Storytelling For Sales. The second bonus is Copywriting Portfolio Secrets.

Don’t buy Copy Riddles just for the free bonuses.​​

But if you decide you want to get Copy Riddles, you have until Saturday Jan 21 at 12 midnight PST to get Storytelling for Sales and Copywriting Portfolio Secrets as free bonuses.
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After then, Copy Riddles will remain available, but the free bonuses will disappear.​​​​

To get the whole package:​​

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Daniel Throssell, Daniel Kahneman, and a robot lawyer walk into a bar…

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A few minutes ago, I got my coffee ready, I set my timer, and I got down to writing this email. As a first step, I checked some news headlines and bingo — I saw it:

“AI-powered ‘robot’ lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court”

Maybe you’ve heard the news already. A startup called DoNotPay is helping people fight speeding tickets.

Before, DoNotPay used AI to write a letter that you could mail in to contest your speeding ticket. But now, DoNotPay will help one lucky defendant in court.

The DoNotPay app will run on the defendant’s phone. It will listen in to the court proceedings. And it will tell the defendant what to say to get out of his speeding ticket in court.

“This courtroom stuff is more advocacy,” said Joshua Browder, the CEO of DoNotPay. “It’s more to encourage the system to change.” Browder says he wants to give access to law to people who can’t afford it.

As you might guess, this noble mission isn’t very popular with lawyers themselves.

When Browder tweeted about his new courtroom “robot”, lawyers jumped on him, and threatened he would go to jail if he followed through with this plan.

And verily, a courtroom robot is not legal in most places. In most places, all parties have to agree to be recorded. But I doubt good will and keeping Browder out of jail is why lawyers jumped all over Browder’s tweet, telling him to stop this project immediately.

Lawyers still have a bit of time.

Right now, courtroom AI robots just handle speeding tickets. And Browder admits even that took a lot of work.

His company had to retrain generic AI for this specialized task. “AI is a high school student,” Browder said, “and we’re sending it to law school.”

Law school… and then what? because Being a good lawyer is not just about knowing the letter of the law.

Specifically, I have in mind a passage I read in Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.

Kahneman says there are two fundamental ways lawyers argue.

These two ways are actually illustrated perfectly in the little debate Daniel Throssell and I had last week, in emails talking about newsletters and who wants ’em.

So I will make you an offer right now, which you are free to refuse, in case you’d rather go read Thinking Fast and Slow yourself.

My offer is a disappearing bonus.

It’s good until 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PSST tomorrow, Thursday, Jan 12 2023.

If you’ve already bought my Most Valuable Email course, and would like me to spell out Kahneman’s two lawyer strategies, write me before the deadline and ask.

​​I will write back to you, both with Kahneman’s passage, and the specifics of how Daniel and I each took one of the two approaches.

And if you haven’t bought my Most Valuable Email course, then my offer is the same, except you have to also buy the course before the deadline.

Buy just to get the bonus?
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If you find yourself desirous of the disappearing bonus, but reluctant to buy a course just to get that bonus, then I will argue that desire itself is a reason to get MVE.

​​Because this desire is something you too can create in others. It’s something I talk about in the course itself, specifically inside the 12 Rules of Most Valuable Emails, specifically Rule #10.

For more info on this course, or to get it before the deadline:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Daniel Throssell is right

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“Whether liketh you better, said Merlin, the sword or the scabbard? Me liketh better the sword, said Arthur. Ye are more unwise, said Merlin, for the scabbard is worth ten of the sword, for while ye have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded, therefore keep well the scabbard always with you.”

Australia’s best copywriter, Daniel Throssell, wrote an email two days ago in response to my own email from New Year’s Day.

Daniel’s subject line read, “John Bejakovic is wrong.”

In his email, Daniel started off by saying he and I are on good terms and that he has helped me before. And he’s absolutely right.

In 2021, I had been stubbornly writing this newsletter in silence for three years. With one email to his own list, Daniel changed that. In the three days after he first promoted me, I tripled my list size, and made a bunch of money as a result.

Daniel has also promoted me since, and every time, I’ve gotten a big boost in new subscribers. I’ve written before to say how grateful I am for that, and how impressed with the influence that Daniel has over his readers.

But back to Daniel’s email from two days ago. After that “we’re good” intro, Daniel went on to the heart of it:

A five-point argument that paid newsletters are a desirable or even superior info product. That’s opposed to what I wrote in New Year’s Day email, where I said that nobody really wants a newsletter, not without lots of bribes, indoctrination, or shaming.

If you haven’t done so yet, I’ll leave you to read Daniel’s email and see if you are convinced by his arguments. I’ve heard from readers on both sides.

Some said Daniel is a magician with words and that he turned it around brilliantly. Others said they found Daniel’s arguments unpersuasive.

As for me, I will only say that, even after reading Daniel’s email, I am still not selling a paid newsletter, or planning to do so.

But Daniel is selling a paid newsletter. In fact, he wrote recently that adding this paid newsletter to his business is one of the best things he’s ever done.

And that’s why he’s absolutely right to publicly fight for his position, to make a black-and-white case of it, and even turn it into an issue of what’s noble or not.

If you want to be seen as a leader, or if you have a kingdom to protect, then Daniel’s example is well-worth studying and following.

Like King Arthur, you have to mount your horse, brandish your sword Excalibur, and lead the charge against any flying serpent that crosses your borders and into your marches, before the ugly beast has a chance to threaten your heartland.

If I were in Daniel’s position, I would have to do the same. But fortunately for me, that’s not the position I am in.

Like I’ve said before, I don’t look at what I’m doing here primarily as a business. Yes, these emails have been making me money, and sometimes good money. But this is not only project I’m working on, and it’s not the main way I’m looking to make money.

That non-dependence is like the scabbard of Excalibur for me. It means I don’t lose no blood, no matter the wounding things anybody may write about me, about the content of my emails, or about the offers I promote.

And if you value your freedom more than ten kingdoms, then this kind of non-dependence is something to keep always with you.

Moving on. I have tribute to collect from various places around the world. Meanwhile, if you would like to read more essays I’ve written, then sign up to my daily email newsletter. Click ye here and fill out the form that magically appears like Merlin out of a cloud of smoke.