Direct Marketing

What’s working on Substack right now

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I’m currently subscribed to 27 Substack newsletters. Not all of those mail me anything regularly. But the ones that do have largely become my source of news, randomly interesting articles, and pop culture contact.

Since I write an email newsletter myself, every day, which you are reading right now, I’m very curious about the Substack phenomenon.

Could this be an opportunity for me? Should I start a persuasion-themed Substack newsletter?

Should I reposition myself as a Substack marketing expert?

Should I simply start publishing serialized fantasy literotica, inspired by Greek and Roman history, under some flowery pseudonym, and host it on Substack?

More on all those questions in a future email.

For today, I just want to share a bit of what’s working on Substack right now.

I recently signed up to Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter. That’s where Simon publishes his analysis of the media and publishing industry, including digital formats like Substack.

Owens’s most recent article says that across the media landscape, companies are struggling to corral new paid subscribers.

It’s not just Netflix, which I wrote about a few days ago. Other traditional and online publishers, from The Atlantic to Quartz, have either reached the limits to the growth of paid subscribers, or are actually seeing their paid subscriber numbers shrinking.

But as Owens says, “the longer you spend in publishing, the more you realize everything is cyclical.”

And so it seems the trend today in various publishing businesses is to loosen up the content behind paywalls… rely less on paid subscribers… and rely more on…

Ads.

Guess who’s back? Ads are back.

You’ve probably seen ads if you are signed up to any big-name email newsletter like The Morning Brew. The Morning Brew was bought a couple of years ago, for $75 million, on the strength of its advertising reach alone.

The Morning Brew has millions of subscribers. But even smaller newsletters, like Josh Spector’s For The Interested, which I wrote about recently, is making a healthy $48k per year, just by showing ads to a fairly small audience of 18k subscribers.

And what about Substack?

​​Well, Owens’s newsletter is hosted on Substack. And since the guy analyzes what’s working in media right now, you might conclude his own Substack might be a clue to what to do.

Owens does have a subscription option, but it’s only to be able to ask him questions. There is no content that is hidden behind the subscription. ​​

On the other hand, you can buy a 200-word ad in his weekly newsletter for $400.

Owens’s newsletter has fewer than 5k subscribers. Is $400 a lot of money just to reach some fraction of 5k people?

Apparently not, because the ad slot was filled in each of Owens’s recent issues. And perhaps it genuinely pays for the advertisers — Owens says that of his 5k subscribers, many are executives at big name media outlets or tech companies.

So what’s the point of all this?

No point. I’m just trying to give you a different perspective on how you can make money, even if you’re a hardcore direct response business, with a classic-themed daily email like this one.

The world is always changing. Exciting opportunities are popping up all the time. And the only thing that’s constant is the demand for ancient-Greece-themed fantasy literotica.

In other news:

I am not opening up my own daily emails to advertising, at least not yet. But if you’d like to read more articles like this one, and maybe see how I make money from my daily email newsletter, without ads and without a subscription, then you can sign up here.

How to get all of Ben Settle’s best stuff for free

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A lot of value in today’s email. Let me set it up with a response I got to my email yesterday:

Not gonna lie, ever since you did that presentation about Daniel Throssel’s emails I’ve noticed you’ve been writing in a similar style.
But more subtle which is your approach.

This email had no value at all. But who cares? I was still reading all the way to the end. and I actually really liked it.

Hope the furnishing all goes well in Barcelona!

Let me tell you a personal, and very valuable story:

Many, many years ago, I subscribed to Ben Settle’s daily emails for the first time.

And right off, I was annoyed. Ben would send out emails claiming to be filled with “value,” which were just pitches for his Email Players newsletter, or testimonials which he slapped in and claimed were valuable in themselves.

What a crook.

Eventually though, all that shameless self-promotion wore me down. I got curious.

So I subscribed to Email Players see what Ben’s real secrets were.

I got his Email Players Skhema, the how-to workbook that comes with the subscription. I read through that.

I also finally remembered I had a free copy of the first issue of Email Players, which Ben gives away on his site. I read through that also.

And then I read the first month’s issue, which revealed the “secret” Ben had been teasing for weeks.

And you know what?

The damnedest thing happened.

It turned out Ben wasn’t lying all along.

His emails were packed with value. More often than not, the most valuable stuff in the paid newsletter was right there, in his emails, sometimes explicitly stated.

I didn’t see that before just because Ben’s emails are structured as infotainment. The value wasn’t bolded, highlighted, and explained as it would be in a textbook. It took what Ben likes to say “reading between the lines” or at least a slightly more careful reading than I was giving his daily emails, or to any emails for that matter.

Was there stuff in the paid Email Players print newsletter that wasn’t in Ben’s daily emails?

Sure. And by not paying for Ben’s newsletter, you will miss out on that.

At the same time, by a close reading of his emails, you will get the best stuff. You will also find stuff Ben doesn’t reveal in his newsletter, or probably even in his books, stuff that he wants to keep for himself.

So that’s my response to the claim above that my email yesterday had no value at all. And if you don’t see how that’s a response, well…

In any case, here’s another thing I learned from Ben Settle. It’s to end your emails with “Okay, on to business.”

If you want to get my best stuff for free, both stuff I’ve learned from Ben Settle, and from my own experience, working with 8-figure direct response businesses, and managing large and very profitable email lists myself, then you can sign up to my very valuable daily emails here.

“Awful Awful Waste of Money”

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Some time ago, I got tempted into buying Dan Kennedy’s book, “The Phenomenon: Achieve More In the Next 12 Months than the previous 12 Years.”

Does that make me possibly the stupidest person on the planet?

Probably. After all, check out one review on Amazon, which I read before I decided to get the book:

Awful Awful Waste of Money

I seriously think this is the biggest waste of money and quite possibly the biggest waste of time I have ever spent. This is nothing but a pitch for Dan Kennedy and everyone of his student’s products. There isn’t a single how to trigger the Phenomenon. This is an even worse type of push that Tony Robbins does where he at least gives a little info before trying to sell you on spending 10K for a seminar. Do not pay for this.

And yet… I did pay and I got myself a used copy. For one thing, because I love DK’s stuff. For another, because the promise just sounded so appealing I couldn’t resist.

Result:

There is nothing new in The Phenomenon. In fact, the book is mostly not written by Dan, but by a bunch of his coaching students hyping themselves up. And like the review above says, there’s no how to.

Well, there is a checklist of “rules” right at the start. I jumped on it yesterday, my greedy opportunity seeker eyes shining in the dark. Rule #1 said:

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

My head sank to my chest. “That’s the one thing I didn’t want to hear,” I said to Dan, who couldn’t hear me.

This rule is certainly something I have known for years. It’s one of the pillars of Ben Settle’s email system, which Ben inherited from Matt Furey and ultimately Dan himself.

Whenever I’ve worked with clients on their email marketing, I’ve always insisted we put an offer at the end of each email.

For one thing, you’re never going to make money without an offer.

For another, engaged readers actually like buying, or at least having the choice to buy.

And yet, I don’t consistently have an offer in my own emails.

Sure, I promote trainings like my Copy Riddles on occasion, and I will do so again in the future. (The next run of Copy Riddles will be in June.)

But I have no default offer I can always go to, even when I’m not in the middle of doing a launch of relaunch of a product.

So it turns out Dan’s Phenomenon book is hardly a waste of money or of time, even though it’s mostly slapped-together self-promotion.

And yet,​​​ I remain possibly the stupidest person on the planet.

After all, if I had a client like myself, I would have either forced him to include some kind of offer each day in his emails, or I would have fired him long ago.

So take it from Dan to me to you:

If you are doing email marketing, or really any kind of marketing, make people an offer. With each of your messages. It might turn you into a phenomenon.

But what about me?

Still no offer.

I have to have something. So I decided to offer…

C​onsulting.

Now, I fully expect absolutely nobody to take me up on this offer, at least today.

That’s because I’ve gotten pretty good at coming up with offers over the past couple of years, working both with clients and on my own projects.

And “consulting” is an awful offer. It’s vague — what exactly does it mean? There’s no sexy name. And who would possibly want it?

Like Agora founder Bill Bonner said, nobody wakes up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, wet pajamas stuck to his back, face to face with the awful truth — “We’re out of newsletters.”

Well, likewise, nobody wakes up at 3am thinking, “I gotta have some more consulting.”

I’ll fix some of those problems in the coming days and emails.

I’ll sharpen up the offer. I’ll tell you what exactly I can consult you about, and why it would make good sense for you to pay me to do so.

I’ll tell you some case studies of clients who have hired me for consulting, and what they got out of it (and what they didn’t).

Maybe will even come up with a sexier name than “consulting.”

But all that in future emails.

For now, if you do want my guidance or advice on marketing and copywriting problems, and you want it before others get to me, then fill out the form at the link below, and you will hear from me soon:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

Announcing my hot new course

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Today I would like announce my spectacular new course, Barcelona Ballers.

Barcelona Ballers is ​​all about how to find a beautiful, lavish, and yet affordable long-term rental in Barcelona in just 14 days or less. Here’s just a tiny bit of what Barcelona Ballers will show you:

* The 3-second “incognito” trick to gets real estate agents tripping over each other to talk to you. Barcelona realtors are infamous for being unresponsive. But with this push-button tweak, you can triple the number of agents who respond to your inquiries.

* How to use a threatening “I know where you live” message to whip real estate agents into shape if they are slacking off. Not for the faint of heart. Only use this for an apartment you really, 100%, do-or-die want to see.

* The simple 12-word-sentence to get apartment owners desperate to rent their place to you. Why humiliate yourself? Turn the tables and make owners sell themselves to YOU.

But wait, there’s more.

Barcelona Ballers is proven to work. After all, it worked for me, just last week. But to make sure it works for you also, Barcelona Ballers also comes with a spectacular 100% satisfaction guarantee:

If you are not lounging in your dream Barcelona apartment within the next 14 days, I will allow you to stay in my spare bedroom, for free, for as long as you choose to continue your apartment search.

And if you happen to be a direct response marketer or copywriter, I will sit next to you, every day, coffee in hand, and critique your email copy, so you make more sales or book more client work.

In this way, I will help you increase your income and expand the number of apartments in Barcelona you can afford to rent. I will keep this up as long as it takes, until you can find a balling place and start living that Barcelona Baller lifestyle.

But before you start whipping out your credit card, breathe in deeply, and then exhale. And now listen to what I have to tell you.

A few days ago, I read a valuable post by Josh Spector. As you might know, Josh is an intriguing online figure.

For the past six years, he has been writing an email newsletter, For The Interested, with inspiration and advice for “creative entrepreneurs.”

FTI now has over 18,000 subscribers. In it, Josh shares only “value” — no infotainment, no stories, no personality. Only hardcore how-to.

And yet Josh does very well.

The only income numbers I could find for Josh is that he made $48k in the last year just from tiny classifieds at the end of his newsletter.

But based on a few interviews Josh has given, I suspect this is no more than 5%-10% of the income generated by his newsletter and related offers. In other words, multiply $48k by 10 or 20, and you might get an idea of Josh’s true income numbers.

But back to Josh’s post. It shared 8 questions. Josh says asking himself these 8 questions every month is what made his success possible.

Sounds too simple? Let me give you an example, and then you can make up your own mind. Josh’s question #6 is:

“What have you learned to do well in the past year?”

If you look around much of the marketing world, you will see the value of asking yourself this question.

For example, right now, a half dozen big-name email marketers are all trying to outdo each other to sell Ian Stanley’s new course on Google Doc sales letters.

Ian had success over the past year or two, launching his own offers using a sales letter in a Google Doc.

To start, it was probably a hack or an improvisation. In time, Ian realized he had a neat little system that works pretty well.

So he packaged up his experiences and insights with Google Docs sales letters… put a bow and a card on it… and got a bunch of other people to sell it for him.

I’d like to say that you too can do the same.

But the fact is, there’s no point in me saying it.

If I did, the vast majority of people would start listing reasons why this simple idea wouldn’t work for them. Oh I’m just starting out… oh I don’t have an audience… oh I haven’t learned to do anything cool or unique yet.

On the other hand, the right people don’t need to have me say it at all. Those few people are fired up right now, just from the realization that yes, there must be something, however small and niche, which they have learned to do well in the past year, and which they could package up and sell to others.

If by chance you fall into this second group, you will get even more fired up from the other 7 questions that helped Josh achieve his success. For the full list, check out Josh’s valuable post below:

https://joshspector.com/creative-entrepreneur-questions/

Don’t rape your audience

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Today’s post is on the subject of email marketing, a rather milquetoast topic. The hook, though, is jarring — rape.

I didn’t think of that hook. Instead, it comes from William Goldman, somebody I’ve mentioned often in these emails.

Goldman was first a successful novelist and later a successful Hollywood screenwriter and then again a novelist.

Along the way, he also wrote a non-fiction book called Adventures in the Screen Trade. I read it a couple years ago. It’s a combination of memoir and an insider’s look into Hollywood as it was in the 60s and 70s of the last century.

Somewhere in the Adventures book, Goldman talks about the most important part of a screenplay — the beginning. And it’s here that he writes the following:

“In narrative writing of any sort, you must eventually seduce your audience. But seduce doesn’t mean rape.”

Goldman is contrasting movie writing to TV writing. At the beginning of a movie, Goldman says, you have some time. You can seduce. Things are different in TV land — you gotta be aggressive, right in the first few seconds. Otherwise the viewer will simply change the channel.

I had never thought about this difference. But it makes sense. And it makes me think of…

Sales copy, which is definitely on the TV end of the seduction/rape spectrum. Just think of some famous opening lines of blockbuster VSLs:

“Talk dirty to me”

“We’re going to have to amputate your leg”

What about email copy? Much of it also opens up in the same aggressive way. Here are a few opening lines I just dug up from recent sales emails in my inbox:

“MaryAnne couldn’t take it anymore:”

“In 1981, a dirty magazine published an article that had the potential to make its readers filthy rich.”

I always assumed this is just the way good copy is — VSLs or emails or whatever. Of course, that’s not true.

When I actually look at some of my favorite newsletters (and even some successful sales letters), they don’t have an immediate and aggressive grabber. Instead, they build up and work their way into their point — without rambling, but without aggression either.

The difference comes down to the relationship you have with your list. Some businesses, including some businesses I’ve worked for, have little to no relationship with their list. Each email they send out is like a random infomercial popping up on TV — if it doesn’t capture attention right away, it never will.

But some businesses have a great relationship with their list. They can afford to take the time to light the candles and pour the wine and stare seductively at their reader across the table. In fact, if they didn’t, things would seem off.

Is it possible to go from one style of email marketing to the other?

I believe so. In my experience, people tend to mirror your own emotions and behavior. That means you’ll have to take the first step if you want things to change. Rather than waiting for your list to have a better relationship with you… start seducing, and stop trying to rape.

Now that we’ve warmed up the conversation:

I also have a daily email newsletter. You can subscribe for it here. And if you do subscribe, I promise to… well, I won’t go there.

Make money opening emails from your favorite marketing influencers!

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A couple days ago, I got an email about an event called “How To Make Money Sharing Videos”.

Just to be very very clear: I am not promoting this event, and I am not in any way encouraging you to join it.

But I have to admit it did get me intrigued.

How exactly do you make money by sharing videos?

Maybe you can guess. If not, I’ll tell you the answer in just a sec. But first, let me tell you a curious little story this reminded me of.

Last year, after listening to Dan Kennedy talk about opportunity marketing in his Opportunity Concepts seminar, I started being on the lookout for all things business opportunity.

And so I came across an intriguing ad, which ran repeatedly in bizopp magazines and tabloid newspapers in the early 90s. The headline ran:

Get Paid To Watch Your Favorite TV Shows!
Profits Up To 10,000.00 A Day Possible!

“Yeah yeah yeah,” I panted with my tongue hanging out, “how do I get paid? I like Seinfeld for example, how much can I make with that? I want to know! Or what about Peep Show? Does that pay even better?”

The ad doesn’t say. You had to mail in a “Get Paid Application Form” plus $21.95 to find out.

And depending on which week’s Weekly World News you were reading, you had to mail in your check to different-named businesses in:

Colorado City, AZ (Nov 6, 1990)
Bellingham, WA (Sep 24, 1991)
New York, NY (Nov 19, 1991)
…

In other words, it’s very likely that this offer was a scam. A new fly-by-night mailing address each month… a bunch of angry and ashamed new customers… and then on to the next place before anyone could catch whoever was behind this bizopp.

Sorry to break it to you, but this probably means you cannot get paid, as the ad promised, to “sit back, relax, and watch television.”

Still, the marketing and persuasion idea back of this scheme is sound. You can use it even if you are running a more legit business.

For example, that “sharing videos” thing is really about affiliate marketing. The videos you would be sharing are webinars for affiliate offers.

Of course, that’s not what the very top of the sales funnel sells you.

Instead, it sells you something more simple, more easy, more familiar. Something you are already doing and probably enjoying.

It’s only once your interest and greed are aroused, once you click through, opt in, watch the webinar, do you find out the cold, hard truth.

So what about making money by opening emails? The promise in my subject line?

The cold hard truth is, open those emails, read them, apply any good and free ideas you come across. Or even pay for some good ideas that those emails advertise, and then apply those.

Do this consistently, and you’re sure to make money in time.

Maybe that’s not what you were hoping to hear.

Maybe you’re disappointed and hurt to hear that, while it’s certainly possible to make good money online, it will take some work, some time, some effort and maybe even creativity on your part. It will never be fully automated, and there’s no secret shortcut to get around that.

If you find that truth repulsive, then my newsletter is not for you.

But if like me, you are a panting, hanging-tongue bizopp seeker at heart… but in time you learned to control yourself and even put in some work… then stick around. I might have some good ideas to share with you.

Also, you might like my Most Valuable Postcard.

This offer is not open right now — I got all the subscribers I wanted during the launch two days ago. But there is a waiting list.

So if you’d like to get on the waiting list, and be the first to find out when I reopen MVP for subscribers, then sign up to my newsletter. And when you get my welcome email, hit reply, and let me know to add you to the MVP waiting list.

 

A critical look at Daniel Throssell, part II

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Last autumn, I wrote an email with the subject line, “A critical look at Daniel Throssell.”

It was about how I experienced, first-hand, the crazy levels of engagement that Daniel gets with his emails.

In that email, I also said I’m reading Daniel’s newsletter every day to try to decode exactly how he does it.

My original plan was to do this formally. To sit down, look at a bunch of Daniel’s emails, take notes. To read critically, not just as a consumer of marketing, but as a marketer, trying to squeeze out what exactly Daniel is doing, and how I might start doing the same.

That formal sit-down never happened. Well, not until a couple weeks ago, after Daniel wrote me to say:

I had this kinda weird idea to pay you to do an analysis of my storytelling and email style. You know I highly rate your marketing analysis skills above almost anyone out there.

I’m curious to see if you would identify anything I’m doing that I haven’t even consciously realised myself that I was doing. Nothing super formal, just spending a few hours writing down any random thoughts/notes/analysis you have about how you perceive I tell my stories and use them to achieve my goals.

Would you be interested in that?

If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, you might know I rarely miss an opportunity to turn down a paying gig. It happened this time too.

I told Daniel that no, I wouldn’t want to do this, not for money, because I really don’t know what I would end up delivering. It’s not like I’d be writing a sales letter, with a clear and defined thing I could hand over at the end.

But I did tell him I’d do it for free, if I could make a little presentation out of it, and if he would also promote it to his list.

Daniel agreed.

So I sat down. I looked at a bunch of his emails. I scratched my forehead and I took a bunch of notes. Result:

Some of what I spotted Daniel doing is straightforward copywriting, just done really well.

Some of it is ideas he teaches in his Email Copywriting Compendium.

And then, some of it is stuff I hadn’t thought about before.

Specifically, I noticed three techniques Daniel uses regularly.

These three techniques aren’t in his Email Copywriting Compendium… they aren’t standard copywriting advice… and yet, they made certain of Daniel’s emails have the most impact on me and stick in my mind the most.

If you like, I’ll tell you what those three techniques are.

I’ll also give you examples from Daniel’s copy, and spell out exactly how you too can use these techniques, starting today, to make your emails more fun, more unique, and more effective.

Like I said, this will be part of a presentation I will put on. The presentation will happen live, next Monday, May 16 at 8pm CET.

You can register for this presentation below. Just click the link at the end and fill out the form on the next page, and I’ll send you a email with the Zoom meeting info and a calendar invite.

If you cannot attend this presentation live, you can still register because I will send out a recording BUT—

If you can at all attend live, I encourage you to do so. That’s because I’ll give you a surprise gift on the call, something I think you will like. This surprise gift won’t be a part of the recording.

So if email is how you make money… or if you’re a fan of Daniel’s style… or if you just have ears to hear and eyes to see that what he’s doing with his newsletter is wildly effective… then here’s your ticket:

https://bejakovic.com/daniel-throssell-presentation

Opportunity doesn’t come in a sales letter

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A couple weeks ago, I sent out an email about my history making a living, for a few months at least, by writing and selling $2.99 books on Kindle. To which a reader wrote in and asked:

Every day, I get inundated with ads about ‘building passive income with kindle ebooks.’

​Is this one of those overblown opportunities that resembles a once pristine reef teeming with life that’s now been trampled into oblivion?

​Curious to hear your thoughts, as you’ve actually been in that space.

My answer is something marketer Rich Schefren likes to say, which is that opportunity doesn’t come in a sales letter.

The implied or overt promise for any make-money thing is to get rich in just 78 days or less, and then retire if you want to, so you can start worrying about how to spend all that free time you’ve suddenly saddled yourself with.

It makes sense to sell this promise to people because that’s what we all respond to. But it’s not something you want to buy yourself.

That’s not to say that Kindle publishing has become a dead and fossilized reef, with only a few pale and hungry blobfish still swimming around and trying to eek out a bit of nourishment from it.

It doesn’t even mean that it’s not worth paying for a course to guide you through the technical work of picking a niche, writing up and formatting your first book, getting the cover done, etc.

That information can easily be worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars to you, if it saves you time that you would have spent to figure out the same stuff.

Or it​ can be worth infinitely more — if it makes the difference between you getting overwhelmed and giving up on a project and sticking with it and ultimately having success with it.

My bigger point is that if you decide to buy a book, course, membership, mastermind, coaching program, whatever, be mindful of what you’re buying… and figure out how to make that thing pay for itself.

​​Apply the ideas you’re getting exposed to. Work harder. Do things you wouldn’t have normally done.

​​It might not be as sexy and colorful as a pristine reef teeming with life… but it’s a guaranteed opportunity to succeed, in just 78 days, or a few months more.

But back to Rich Schefren. I have a offer for you today:

Last year, I regularly promoted Rich’s Steal Our Winners. That’s where Rich interviews a handful of successful marketers each month, and gets them to share a tactic or idea that is working for them right now. You can think of it as a bunch of opportunities, but not in a sales letter.

Steal Our Winners used to be an attractive offer and an easy sale to make — you could try it out for just $1 for the first month.

But then they changed the offer. The $1 trial disappeared, and was replaced by a lifetime-only subscription. So I stopped promoting Steal Our Winners.

But now, the $1 trial is back. So I’m promoting it again, because I still think Steal Our Winners is a valuable source of new marketing ideas.

The only issue is that the layout of the Steal Our Winners site has changed, and for the worse. It’s been redesigned to become more confusing, more YouTube-like, and less monthly newsletter-like. I personally find that annoying, but maybe it won’t be an issue for you, particularly if you didn’t get used to the old site.

In any case, if you are curious to find out more about Steal Our Winners, or even to try it out for $1, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/sow

What’s the best font for making sales?

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A couple days ago, I saw a little study titled, “Best Font for Online Reading.”

Spoiler: there’s no clear answer.

One font, Garamond, allowed the fastest reading speed on average.

But that’s just on average. Not every person read fastest with Garamond. Another font, Franklin Gothic, proved to be the fastest font for the most people, though the average reading speed was lower than Garamond.

So is it time to change your sales page font to Garamond? Or Franklin Gothic?

Or maybe even to Open Sans — the font that came in last in terms of reading speed?

There is an argument to be made for having people be able to read your copy faster. If they get through your copy more quickly and easily, they get your sales message more easily, and they make it to the order button faster. And money loves speed, right?

On the other hand, there’s an equal argument to be made for having people read slower. The more time and effort somebody invests with you, the more likely they are to trust you (one of those mental shortcuts we all engage in), and the more likely they are to justify that investment and trust by buying in the end.

So like I said, no clear answer.

But this did bring to mind a story Brian Kurtz likes to tell about a time he hired Gary Bencivenga.

As you probably know, Brian was the VP at direct response publisher Boardroom. And in that role, he hired some of the most famous and most brilliant copywriters of all time, Gary among them.

Anyways, Brian’s story is about two sales packages, one fast, one slow, both written by Gary Bencivenga, both promoting the same product.

To me personally, this story has proven to be the most fundamental and important lesson when it comes to copywriting or running a direct response business.

Brian’s little story won’t tell you what kind of font to use, or what kind of copy to write, fast or slow. But maybe it will make that choice a lot clearer in your mind.

In case you want to read Brian’s valuable sales and copy study, you can find it at the link below. But before you go read that, perhaps you might like to sign up for my slow but trustworthy email newsletter. In any case, here’s Brian’s article:

https://www.briankurtz.net/how-you-sell-is-how-they-will-respond/

I broke the email chain yesterday

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This morning, reader Jesús Silva Marcano wrote to say:

Hey John!

Today when I saw that I didn’t have an email from you….

And after waiting a few hours…

I must admit a part of me was a little saddened.

Besides Ben Settle’s emails, yours are the ones I usually look forward to.

They never disappoint.

I hope all is well.

It’s true. I didn’t send out email last night.

I broke a chain going back to July 2020, when I skipped a few days because I was on vacation at the seaside, drinking quite actively, and generally celebrating and feeling high from having made a ton of money the previous few months, my first really big copywriting months.

But nothing exciting like that happened yesterday.

I had an email scheduled. I checked my inbox before I went to bed. But the email still hadn’t arrived.

I checked ActiveCampaign. It said my email was “Pending Review.”

I tried to stop the campaign so I could recreate it and send it again. It wouldn’t allow me. I tried again. No soap.

I contacted ActiveCampaign to ask what’s up.

No response.

I went to bed, figuring it would solve itself.

It didn’t.

This morning, my email from yesterday is still “Pending Review.” I can’t imagine why, because I wasn’t writing about any controversial or flaggable topics. (I do have an email about a certain kind of “gross body enhancement” coming up, but last night’s email waddn’t it.)

Oh well. The world doesn’t end if I don’t send out an email.

​​But it does spin a little faster. So it’s a shame I don’t have something to sell you right now.

In my experience, people today are starved for something — anything — real.

And when your readers witness you making a mistake, in real time, or getting involved in conflict, in real time, or failing to deliver on a public promise like a daily email, that’s more powerful and engaging than even the most personal stories you share.

And if I had, say, a training on writing faster, that would be perfect. I could end this email right here by saying something like:

“But you know what? Let’s talk copywriting. According to my extremely neat timekeeping, 72% of so-called “writing” really goes to editing. And things often don’t get delivered on time, or ever, because they are “Pending Review” by that finnicky, editing part of your brain. So if you don’t want to be at the whim and mercy of your own inner editing demon, if you want to meet all deadlines, if you wanna get projects done more quickly and make more money, then join me for the Faster Writing (and Editing) Workshop here blah blah…”

Well, maybe a little less ham-handed than that, but you get the idea.

If only I had the faster writing offer for sale right now, then the fact that ActiveCampaign is behaving like a lazy consular office processing my visa application… rather than as a for-profit business that has been taking my money for the better part of a decade… well, that would’ve all worked in my favor.

So keep this in mind if you have your own email list. Anything really real in your life, particularly that readers can experience and verify for themselves, makes for the pinnacle of engagement.

As for me, I got nothing. No gain from this ​event. ​Except to tell you that indeed I am ok, in case you were worried. And now that I’ve told you the background of all this, to maybe make a slightly stronger bond with you, so you get excited about getting my next email tomorrow, and decide to sign up for my email newsletter.