Direct Marketing

Last chance: Shangri-La mountain pass closing

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“Shangri-La, he called it. La is Tibetan for mountain pass.”

No, it’s not. I checked just now. The Tibetan word for mountain pass is something entirely different than “la.”

But Shangri-La is what James Hilton, the author of Lost Horizon, called his magical lamasery hidden away in the Himalayas, And a narrow and hidden mountain pass is how he explained that Shangri-La was practically impossible to find or reach — every century only a few wanderers managed to happen upon the place.

I’m telling you this because in a few short hours, at 12 midnight PST, the mountain pass to my Shangri-La MVE event will close. Once the pass gets buried under of mountain’s worth of snow and ice, there’s no saying when or if it will ever be passable again.

I won’t be writing any more emails before the deadline. So if you are interested in reaching the magical and carefree valley on the other side, it might make sense and make your way through the narrow and hidden mountain pass right now:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

And if you need a reminder of what this Shangri-La MVE offer is all about, before the clock strikes 12, here are the full details:

===

I’m calling this offer the “Shangri La” MVE offer. And that’s because like Shangri La, the three parts of this offer only appear once every fifty years. Specifically:

1. I normally don’t offer a payment plan for Most Valuable Email. I did offer a payment plan for MVE once, as a joke, for one day only. Well, like Shangri La, the payment plan is back, and not as a joke.

You can get MVE for $99 today and then two more monthly payments of $99. This payment plan is there to make it psychologically easier to get started — in my experience, people take up payment plans not because they cannot afford to pay in full, but simply because it feels like a smaller commitment.

2. I am also offering a bonus, which I’m calling Shangri La Disappearing Secrets.

Over the past years, I have periodically sent out emails where I teased a secret, which I then turned into a disappearing, one-day bonuses for people who took me up on an offer before the deadline.

Inside this Shangri La Disappearing Secrets bonus, I have collected 12 emails that teased 12 secrets — and I have revealed the secrets themselves. These include:

* An email deliverability tip that is so valuable I decided not to share it publicly, but only with buyers of MVE. This tip is something that multiple people have told me I should turn into a standalone course or training — which I most probably will do one day.

* Stage Surprise Success. Step-by-step instructions for creating effective surprise in any kind of performance, whether thieving, magicking, comedy, drama, or simply writing for impact and influence. And no, it’s not just shocking people with something they weren’t expecting. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite of that.

* A daring idea to grow your list and build up your authority at the same time. I have not yet had the guts to put it into practice, even though I have lots of reasons to believe it would work great to build my own authority, and get me more high-quality leads than I’m getting now.

* A persuasion strategy used by con men, pick up artists, salesmen, even by legendary copywriters. I ran a little contest in an email to see if anybody could identify this strategy based on a scene from the movie The Sting. Out of 40+ people who tried to identify the strategy, only 2 got it right.

* An incredible free resource, filled with insightful and proven marketing and positioning advice. This resource comes from a man I’ve only written about once in this newsletter, but who has influenced my thinking about marketing and human psychology more deeply than I may let on — maybe more deeply than anybody else over the past few years.

* Magic Box calls-to-action. Use these if you don’t have a product or a service to sell yet, or if you only have a few bum offers, which your list has stopped responding to every day. Result of a “magic box” CTA when used by one of my coaching clients: the first hand-raiser ever for an under-construction $4k offer.

* A new way to apply the Most Valuable email trick, one I wasn’t comfortable doing until recently. Now that I’ve started using it, it’s gotten people paying more attention… leaning in more… even rereading my emails 3x… and reaching out to reopen dropped business conversations.

* Steven Pressfield (the author of the War of Art and the Legend of Bagger Vance) used to write scripts for porn movies. He once shared two porn storytelling rules. I’ll tell you what they are, and how smart marketers, maybe even me on occasion, use one of these rules in their own sales copy and marketing content.

* A list of 14 criteria of truthful stories. I’m not saying to get devious with this — but you could use these criteria to jelly up a made-up story and make it sound absolutely true. More respectably, you can use these criteria to take your true but fluffy story and make it sound 100% gripping and real.

* Why I drafted US patent application 16/573921 to get the U.S. Government to recognize my Most Valuable Email trick as novel, non-obvious, and having concrete, practical applications.

* Two methods for presenting a persuasive argument, as spelled out by Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. I illustrate these two methods with a little public debate that Daniel Throssell and I engaged in via our respective email newsletters. Daniel and I each adopted opposing methods, just as described by Kahneman.

* An infotainment secret I stole from Ben Settle. As far as I know, Ben doesn’t teach this secret in his books or newsletters — I found it by tracking Ben’s emails over a 14-day period and spotting Ben using it in 8 of those 14 emails. And no, I’m not talking about teasing, or telling a story, or stirring up conflict. This is something more fundamental, and more broadly useful, even beyond daily emails.

3. The Shangri La Library Of Rare And Priceless Ideas. 937 interesting ideas I’ve collected over the years from books, podcasts, newsletters, courses. Reach into this library to never again run out of ideas for your Most Valuable Emails.

So there you go. My Shangri La MVE offer:

A payment plan for Most Valuable Email that only appears twice in a century… 12 bonus persuasion secrets… and all the email ideas you will ever need.

This offer is good until tonight, Friday Oct 11, at 12 midnight PST.

If you’re at all interested, the time to act is now. That’s because of that simple certainty I wrote about yesterday — there won’t ever be a better time.

I won’t be running big promo events for Most Valuable Email, because it doesn’t fit my policy of treating previous customers with respect.

On the other hand, if you get MVE now, you will also be eligible for any future disappearing bonuses I might offer with it, or any other special offer or real I will make to new buyers also.

If you’d like to take me up on this Shangri La offer, before it disappears:

​https://bejakovic.com/mve/​

P.S. And yes, if you have already bought MVE, you also get the Shangri La Disappearing Secrets and the Shangri La Library Of Rare And Priceless Ideas. No need to write me for them. I’ll add them straight inside the MVE course area.

937 days’ worth of email ideas, free

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A couple days ago, after I complained that there’s still a reader on my list, Vivian, who hasn’t bought my Most Valuable Email program, another reader on my list, Bridget, who also hasn’t bought my Most Valuable Email program, wrote in to point out where I’m falling short:

===

Key point – where you are falling short is you are not answering the questions:

* Where am I going to get interesting ideas every day?

* How am I going to make the ideas I do have interesting enough to send without making 99% of my current subscribers want to unsubscribe?

===

Bridget is absolutely right. I don’t make the “where to get interesting ideas” part clear on the MVE sales page.

It actually is there in the course — I have a little section where I list four sources where I regularly find interesting ideas for Most Valuable Emails.

The reason I don’t make a bigger deal out of it is that I feel interesting ideas are cheap. They are everywhere, and it’s more a matter of how freshly and insightfully they are presented. And that’s what MVE is about.

I wrote back to Bridget to tell her that. And she replied:

===

You may believe interesting ideas are cheap. They may well be. But Vivian’s afraid she’ll run out, and that’s more important to her buying decision than objective reality.

===

Again, Bridget is absolutely right. So now what?

Let it never be said that I am more stubborn than Andrew Jackson.

And that’s why, I’d now like to announce I am adding one more bonus to my Shangri La MVE event. I’m calling this bonus the Shangri La Library Of Rare and Priceless Ideas.

For years now, I’ve been collecting interesting ideas I come across, whether in books, newsletters, podcasts, or courses.

For each such idea, I write it down, along with the source of where I got it. Sometimes I also add in my own observations as well.

I checked just now and so far I have 937 such interesting ideas. Here’s a sample:

* “To build fascination and rapport, keep asking deeper, more enthusiastic questions” (from James Altucher via his podcast)

* “Use the same link text as the subject line to get clicks” (something Ian Stanley said somewhere)

* “Toil shared becomes no toil at all” (from Plutarch’s Parallel Lives)

* “Trialibility is the no. 1 factor affecting adoption of an innovation” (from Jonah Berger’s Catalyst)

* “Pick out a fun and relevant theme for email promotion events” (from Travis Sago, on some ancient podcast appearance)

Rare? Priceless? You decide. In any case, it’s my contention you still have to do something to these ideas to turn them into fresh and insightful emails. MVE shows you what to do, and it even gets you doing it.

But so you can say you will never ever run out of ideas for Most Valuable Emails, I’m making available my entire Library Of Rare And Priceless Ideas as part of this Shangri La event.

I collected all these rare and priceless ideas and put them into a type of endless scroll known as a PDF file.

If you have the stamina, you can read through them from beginning to end. If you don’t, you can pick off an idea each day, apply the Most Valuable Trick, and turn that idea into a fresh and insightful email that 1) pulls in readers, 2) builds your authority, 3) makes you just a tiny bit better as a writer and a marketer, 4) maybe even makes a sale or 10.

My Shangri La MVE event ends tonight at 12 midnight PST. If you need a reminder of what it’s about:

===

I’m calling this offer the “Shangri La” MVE offer. And that’s because like Shangri La, the two three parts of this offer only appear once every fifty years. Specifically:

1. I normally don’t offer a payment plan for Most Valuable Email. I did offer a payment plan for MVE once, as a joke, for one day only. Well, like Shangri La, the payment plan is back, and not as a joke.

You can get MVE for $99 today and then two more monthly payments of $99. This payment plan is there to make it psychologically easier to get started — in my experience, people take up payment plans not because they cannot afford to pay in full, but simply because it feels like a smaller commitment.

2. I am also offering a bonus, which I’m calling Shangri La Disappearing Secrets.

Over the past years, I have periodically sent out emails where I teased a secret, which I then turned into a disappearing, one-day bonuses for people who took me up on an offer before the deadline.

Inside this Shangri La Disappearing Secrets bonus, I have collected 12 emails that teased 12 secrets — and I have revealed the secrets themselves. These include:

* An email deliverability tip that is so valuable I decided not to share it publicly, but only with buyers of MVE. This tip is something that multiple people have told me I should turn into a standalone course or training — which I most probably will do one day.

* Stage Surprise Success. Step-by-step instructions for creating effective surprise in any kind of performance, whether thieving, magicking, comedy, drama, or simply writing for impact and influence. And no, it’s not just shocking people with something they weren’t expecting. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite of that.

* A daring idea to grow your list and build up your authority at the same time. I have not yet had the guts to put it into practice, even though I have lots of reasons to believe it would work great to build my own authority, and get me more high-quality leads than I’m getting now.

* A persuasion strategy used by con men, pick up artists, salesmen, even by legendary copywriters. I ran a little contest in an email to see if anybody could identify this strategy based on a scene from the movie The Sting. Out of 40+ people who tried to identify the strategy, only 2 got it right.

* An incredible free resource, filled with insightful and proven marketing and positioning advice. This resource comes from a man I’ve only written about once in this newsletter, but who has influenced my thinking about marketing and human psychology more deeply than I may let on — maybe more deeply than anybody else over the past few years.

* Magic Box calls-to-action. Use these if you don’t have a product or a service to sell yet, or if you only have a few bum offers, which your list has stopped responding to every day. Result of a “magic box” CTA when used by one of my coaching clients: the first hand-raiser ever for an under-construction $4k offer.

* A new way to apply the Most Valuable email trick, one I wasn’t comfortable doing until recently. Now that I’ve started using it, it’s gotten people paying more attention… leaning in more… even rereading my emails 3x… and reaching out to reopen dropped business conversations.

* Steven Pressfield (the author of the War of Art and the Legend of Bagger Vance) used to write scripts for porn movies. He once shared two porn storytelling rules. I’ll tell you what they are, and how smart marketers, maybe even me on occasion, use one of these rules in their own sales copy and marketing content.

* A list of 14 criteria of truthful stories. I’m not saying to get devious with this — but you could use these criteria to jelly up a made-up story and make it sound absolutely true. More respectably, you can use these criteria to take your true but fluffy story and make it sound 100% gripping and real.

* Why I drafted US patent application 16/573921 to get the U.S. Government to recognize my Most Valuable Email trick as novel, non-obvious, and having concrete, practical applications.

* Two methods for presenting a persuasive argument, as spelled out by Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. I illustrate these two methods with a little public debate that Daniel Throssell and I engaged in via our respective email newsletters. Daniel and I each adopted opposing methods, just as described by Kahneman.

* An infotainment secret I stole from Ben Settle. As far as I know, Ben doesn’t teach this secret in his books or newsletters — I found it by tracking Ben’s emails over a 14-day period and spotting Ben using it in 8 of those 14 emails. And no, I’m not talking about teasing, or telling a story, or stirring up conflict. This is something more fundamental, and more broadly useful, even beyond daily emails.

3. The Shangri La Library Of Rare And Priceless Ideas. 937 interesting ideas I’ve collected over the years from books, podcasts, newsletters, courses. Reach into this library to never again run out of ideas for your Most Valuable Emails.

So there you go. My Shangri La MVE offer:

A payment plan for Most Valuable Email that only appears twice in a century… 12 bonus persuasion secrets… and all the email ideas you will ever need.

This offer is good until tonight, Friday Oct 11, at 12 midnight PST.

If you’re at all interested, the time to act is now. That’s because of that simple certainty I wrote about yesterday — there won’t ever be a better time.

I won’t be running big promo events for Most Valuable Email, because it doesn’t fit my policy of treating previous customers with respect.

On the other hand, if you get MVE now, you will also be eligible for any future disappearing bonuses I might offer with it, or any other special offer or real I will make to new buyers also.

If you’d like to take me up on this Shangri La offer, before it disappears:

​​https://bejakovic.com/mve/​​

P.S. And yes, if you have already bought MVE, you also get the Shangri La Disappearing Secrets and the Shangri La Library Of Rare And Priceless Ideas. No need to write me for them. I’ll add them straight inside the MVE course area.

MVE cancelled

by

No, not Most Valuable Email.

The MVE that’s been cancelled is the Most Vivian Event, the big promotion I announced yesterday.

I had hoped to use this event to pull every remaining non-buyer on my list and get him to buy Most Valuable Email, will-he, nill-he.

My plan was to use I know about promos inside the Most Vivian Event — structure, copy, and most importantly offer:

An “Italian lottery,” giving new buyers a good chance to get MVE free…

A stack of free bonuses that I’ve sold for good money before, totaling the price of MVE and more, so even if somebody didn’t win the “Italian lottery,” they would still feel like they’re getting a steal…

An entirely new bonuses as well, which would reveal all the thinking that went into this promo — basically a little promo course built around a specific case study, to make this MVE offer so valuable that if you ever send any kind of emails, the investment would pay for itself with this one new bonus alone.

I had grand plans to make this event fun, epic, and undoubtedly immensely successful. Except…

It’s all been cancelled.

Reason why:

Each time I got near to settling on the final offer for the Most Vivian Event, I kept bouncing into one problem:

“What do I do with previous buyers?”

I have a long-standing policy to reward early buyers for buying for me. That means I grandfather previous buyers into any upgrades, new runs of a course, or bonuses I end up offering in the future. It also means I don’t feature discounts.

Yesterday, when I had the initial idea for this new promo, I shrugged this question off.

I told myself I’d figure out some way to incentivize new buyers… to reward previous buyers… and to have this promo make business sense for me personally.

But no matter how I structured this offer, there was always one end of the triangle — new buyers, old buyers, me — that was left high and dry.

I realized it’s not a matter of what bonuses or incentives I end up offering. It’s simply a consequence of my “reward previous buyers” policy, and the fact that I have hundreds of previous buyers of MVE.

That’s why I’ve actually never run a bonus- or discount-based promo for any of my offers, outside of a launch. I just never realized it until yesterday.

You might say I’m being stubborn to stick to this policy. And that’s exactly right. Because I want people to believe a few simple certainties when they think of me.

One of those simple certainties is that I won’t screw over previous buyers. I don’t ever want my buyers to think, even in passing, “Huh, maybe I should have waited to buy this, this new deal is better than what I got.”

Yesterday, I wrote that I had clearly been falling short by continuing to sell MVE on its merits alone.

Some people who could benefit from MVE — like Vivian, who wanted something for “coming up with interesting ideas and presenting it in a concise and compelling way” — never even considered buying.

Frankly, that falling short will most likely continue.

But if you have been on the fence about MVE for a while, I do have a special offer for you today. It’s nothing like the spectacle I was planning on. But you can decide whether it’s enough to get you to take me up on Most Valuable Email today.

I’m calling this offer the “Shangri La” MVE offer. And that’s because like Shangri La, the two parts of this offer only appear once every fifty years. Specifically:

1. I normally don’t offer a payment plan for Most Valuable Email. I did offer a payment plan for MVE once, as a joke, for one day only. Well, like Shangri La, the payment plan is back, and not as a joke.

You can get MVE for $99 today and then two more monthly payments of $99. This payment plan is there to make it psychologically easier to get started — in my experience, people take up payment plans not because they cannot afford to pay in full, but simply because it feels like a smaller commitment.

2. I am also offering a bonus, which I’m calling Shangri La Disappearing Secrets.

Over the past years, I have periodically sent out emails where I teased a secret, which I then turned into a disappearing, one-day bonuses for people who took me up on an offer before the deadline.

Inside this Shangri La Disappearing Secrets bonus, I have collected 12 emails that teased 12 secrets — and I have revealed the secrets themselves. These include:

* An email deliverability tip that is so valuable I decided not to share it publicly, but only with buyers of MVE. This tip is something that multiple people have told me I should turn into a standalone course or training — which I most probably will do one day.

* Stage Surprise Success. Step-by-step instructions for creating effective surprise in any kind of performance, whether thieving, magicking, comedy, drama, or simply writing for impact and influence. And no, it’s not just shocking people with something they weren’t expecting. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite of that.

* A daring idea to grow your list and build up your authority at the same time. I have not yet had the guts to put it into practice, even though I have lots of reasons to believe it would work great to build my own authority, and get me more high-quality leads than I’m getting now.

* A persuasion strategy used by con men, pick up artists, salesmen, even by legendary copywriters. I ran a little contest in an email to see if anybody could identify this strategy based on a scene from the movie The Sting. Out of 40+ people who tried to identify the strategy, only 2 got it right.

* An incredible free resource, filled with insightful and proven marketing and positioning advice. This resource comes from a man I’ve only written about once in this newsletter, but who has influenced my thinking about marketing and human psychology more deeply than I may let on — maybe more deeply than anybody else over the past few years.

* Magic Box calls-to-action. Use these if you don’t have a product or a service to sell yet, or if you only have a few bum offers, which your list has stopped responding to every day. Result of a “magic box” CTA when used by one of my coaching clients: the first hand-raiser ever for an under-construction $4k offer.

* A new way to apply the Most Valuable email trick, one I wasn’t comfortable doing until recently. Now that I’ve started using it, it’s gotten people paying more attention… leaning in more… even rereading my emails 3x… and reaching out to reopen dropped business conversations.

* Steven Pressfield (the author of the War of Art and the Legend of Bagger Vance) used to write scripts for porn movies. He once shared two porn storytelling rules. I’ll tell you what they are, and how smart marketers, maybe even me on occasion, use one of these rules in their own sales copy and marketing content.

* A list of 14 criteria of truthful stories. I’m not saying to get devious with this — but you could use these criteria to jelly up a made-up story and make it sound absolutely true. More respectably, you can use these criteria to take your true but fluffy story and make it sound 100% gripping and real.

* Why I drafted US patent application 16/573921 to get the U.S. Government to recognize my Most Valuable Email trick as novel, non-obvious, and having concrete, practical applications.

* Two methods for presenting a persuasive argument, as spelled out by Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. I illustrate these two methods with a little public debate that Daniel Throssell and I engaged in via our respective email newsletters. Daniel and I each adopted opposing methods, just as described by Kahneman.

* An infotainment secret I stole from Ben Settle. As far as I know, Ben doesn’t teach this secret in his books or newsletters — I found it by tracking Ben’s emails over a 14-day period and spotting Ben using it in 8 of those 14 emails. And no, I’m not talking about teasing, or telling a story, or stirring up conflict. This is something more fundamental, and more broadly useful, even beyond daily emails.

So there you go. My Shangri La MVE offer:

A payment plan for Most Valuable Email that only appears twice in a century… and 12 bonus persuasion secrets.

This offer is good until tomorrow, Friday Oct 11, at 12 midnight PST.

If you’re at all interested, the time to act is now. That’s because of that simple certainty I wrote above — there won’t ever be a better time.

I won’t be running big promo events for Most Valuable Email, because it doesn’t fit my policy of treating previous customers with respect.

On the other hand, if you get MVE now, you will also be eligible for any future disappearing bonuses I might offer with it, or any other special offer or real I will make to new buyers also.

If you’d like to take me up on this Shangri La offer, before it disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

P.S. And yes, if you have already bought MVE, you also get the Shangri La Disappearing Secrets. No need to write me for it. I’ll add it straight inside the MVE course area, right under the MVE Swipes document.

Where am I falling short here?

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The survey I ran a few days ago keeps giving, including some pretty, pretty shocking gifts.

For example, yesterday, a reader named Vivian filled out the survey. As her single biggest challenge with her email list, Vivian wrote:

“Coming up with interesting ideas and presenting it in a concise and compelling way.”

In the field about what difference it would make to get a solution to this challenge, Vivian explained:

“It would help me produce more effective email campaigns that produce better results.”

And in the field about how difficult it’s been to find a good answer to the above dilemma, Vivian selected:

“Very difficult”

When I read this, I heard a voice in my head. It was the voice of a ghost, of negotiation coach Jim Camp, who died back in 2014. Camp’s voice said:

“What in the world am I doing wrong? Where am I falling short here?”

Clearly, I’m doing something very wrong.

I checked and Vivian has been on my list for over a year.

In that time, I have promoted my various email trainings, including my Most Valuable Email program, hundreds of times.

Vivian hasn’t bought MVE, even though the core promise of MVE is a different way to present your ideas in email from what everybody else is doing… a way that produces concise and compelling emails that even grizzled, wary, and sophisticated marketers and copywriters find interesting.

The only thing I can think of right now is that I’m not doing a good enough job selling what I got.

The price for Most Valuable Email is $297.

Is that expensive?

Sure.

But I exported all my ThriveCart transactions a few days ago. I’ve been using ThriveCart as my shopping cart for the past 18 months.

On average, during these 18 months, I’ve been able to turn 12.7% of my newsletter subscribers into buyers. And on average, over those 18 months, each of those buyers has paid me $354.69.

Is that good? Bad? I don’t know.

I do know these numbers have allowed me to fully replace my freelance copywriting income, which was my main source of income for 5+ years, and which many people would find enviable.

I can also tell you I got the numbers above without any kind of continuity offer… without running a high-ticket coaching program for all but a few of those 18 months… and without counting the half dozen or so affiliate promotions I’ve run during that time, which would probably add another $100 or so to that average customer value.

I’ve been making the claim over and over that Most Valuable Emails are the #1 reason I’ve been able to stick to writing this daily newsletter and getting the kinds of results above.

The MVE trick has made me, and continues to make me, an exponentially better copywriter and marketer.

Plus it’s simply fun for me to write Most Valuable Emails regularly… and it produces emails that surprise readers and keep them reading, whether they buy or not.

It’s ain’t just me, either.

On the MVE sales sales page, I have a testimonial from Thomas Lalas, the director of retention marketing at Everyday Dose. Thomas sent out a Most Valuable Email to Every Dose’s 100,000+ list. Result, in Thomas’s words:

===

This email was the highest-converting single-email campaign sent to the non-buyers of all time.

Usually we get such results with 2- or 3-part campaigns, typical in launches.

Interesting to explore this [Most Valuable Email] method further.

Will likely make it a part of our welcome flow, too.

===

But I’ve been yappinatin’ about all this for a long time now.

Vivian still hasn’t bought.

Maybe you haven’t either.

Like Camp says, clearly I’m doing something wrong. I want to change that.

So I spent this morning scheming up something I’m calling the “Most Vivian Event.”

I don’t ever use personalizations in my emails, so I won’t try to make this the “Most [firstname] Event.”

But if you haven’t gotten MVE (the product) yet, and more importantly, if you haven’t been using the Most Valuable Email trick in your emails, this event applies to you too.

The Most Valuable Email trick really has been that valuable to me, without any hyperbole. And it can be the same for you — if I don’t keep falling short, and if I can finally persuade you to try it out.

I wanted to kick off the Most Vivian Event today… but with the grand plans I came up for it, I realized it will take a bit of time to set up. Tomorrow is the soonest I can do it. Full details in my next email. Be there?

Looking for 20 beta-testers to pay an unthinkable amount for my new book

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I’m looking for 20 beta-testers for a pre-publication “email draft” of my new book.

The background:

Yesterday, I made my plans for this coming month. My goal #1 in October is to finish writing my new book, titled The 10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Hypnotists, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Propagandists, and Stage Magicians.

I already have the first 3 commandments/chapters of this new book largely done.

Still, getting the remaining 7 written by the end of this month is ambitious, considering I’ve been working on this book for more than a year now.

In my favor, most of that time has gone to research and outlining. I’ve only been writing for the past few months, on and off. But still — I realized yesterday there’s a good chance that I won’t make it by the end of this month, not unless I change my approach.

I got to thankin’…

I’m good at writing emails, much better than at writing book chapters. Maybe there’s an opportunity there?

And so I thought up a new offer to 1) help me get this book done on time, and 2) entertain and maybe reward a small number of dedicated readers of this newsletter.

So here’s my offer to you:

If you like, you can join a small group of beta-testers for my new book. The price to get inside this exclusive and elite club is an unthinkable $10. That $10 will get you:

1. An extra email with extra content from me, each day this month, starting this Sunday, October 6, and ending Wednesday, October 30, with content that’s intended for the new book.

2. A chance to influence the final content in the book. I hope you you will hit reply when I send you these content emails and share your thoughts. If all goes well, I will have more content at the end of this month than I will need for the book. I will decide what to keep and what to toss based on your feedback.

3. An acknowledgement in the book when I do publish it, because you were there at the start, and because you helped me get it done.

4. A free paperback copy once I publish the book. My current 10 Commandments book sells for $9.99, plus shipping. This new 10 Commandments book will also be priced at $9.99, plus shipping. But join me for this beta tester group, I’ll send you a paperback copy for free when it’s published, and I’ll also cover the shipping.

If you’d like to join, you can do so at the link below. But before you do, a few caveats:

I encourage you to only join if you’re a dedicated reader of these emails… if you’re already interested in getting my new book when it comes out… and if you will have the time to read yet another email over the coming month, and maybe even to hit reply to tell me what you think of what I wrote.

Again, these “new book” emails will start this Sunday. The deadline to sign up for them is this Friday at 8:31pm CET (I want a couple days buffer), though there’s a fair chance I will turn off this offer sooner than that, maybe as soon as tomorrow morning.

If you know you want in right now, here’s where to go:

​https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments​

Last notice: “ONE-TIME Inflation-BUSTING Sale”

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Today is the last day to get a copy of Lawrence Bernstein’s “How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes,” which normally sells for $97, for just $7.

Lawrence has been good enough to make this deal available to you, because you happen to be a subscriber of this newsletter.

And… to fight against inflation?

Well maybe. But today’s subject line is one I wrote because I’m a regular subscriber of Lawrence’s Ad Money Machine monthly subscription. Lawrence recently wrote about a successful renewal letter that used that “Inflation-BUSTING” headline, so I’m trying it out today.

If you’d like to get a sense for extensive direct marketing knowledge, expertise, and archive that Lawrence brings to what he does, without signing up for a Lawrence’s monthly subscription offer, then “How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes” is a great way to get started.

It can teach you a lot about writing sexy leads, angles, and hooks for your sales letters, emails, advertorials, ads, and pretty much any other piece of copy you might have to write.

To get this guide before the price goes back up to $97, the link is below. The deadline is less than 3 hours from now, and I won’t be writing any more emails about it.

Final word about “How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes”:

I’m not an affiliate for this offer. I don’t get paid whether you buy it or not. I can tell you I did buy this offer myself, for my own purposes, several weeks ago, before I ever had any plans on promoting it to you.

If you’d like to grab it also, before the price shoots up 13-fold in just a few short hours:

​​https://bejakovic.com/fascinations​​

The only marketing subscription I pay for each month

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I don’t pay for any copywriting newsletter, print or digital.

I don’t pay for any marketing mastermind.

I don’t pay for any monthly coaching, community, or support built around an industry guru or expert.

Nothing wrong if you pay for any of these. I’ve paid for all of them in the past. But it’s been at least a couple years since I paid for any kind of marketing info subscription each month.

Well, except one.

I pay for it now.

I’ve been doing so for a little over a year.

I keep paying for it each month because I find it 1) interesting and 2) valuable. And because I find it interesting and valuable, I find time most days to at least give a quick glance to the latest daily edition, and often I have a thorough sit-down read.

This marketing info subscription is Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine.

As you might know, Lawrence a direct marketing expert who’s been in the game for a few decades.

Lawrence also happens to have a passion for research and archiving and detail. And his Ad Money Machine basically gives you interesting and valuable ads, ranging over the past 100+ years of direct marketing… plus Lawrence’s expert commentary on the why and how and who and who else behind each ad.

It’s as good of a source for marketing insight and inspiration as I’ve been able to find.

Ad Money Machine costs $97/month. You can go sign up for it now. But maybe, probably, you’re not ready to “go steady” with Lawrence based on just my quick and surface description of what he offers.

So I’d like to suggest a “coffee date.”

Lawrence has put together a guide called “How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes.” It gives you a perfect flavor for what Lawrence does – a collection of fascinating and effective ads from the past, all tied together with a common theme, along with Lawrence’s commentary and analysis, which you can’t find anywhere else on the Internet.

“How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes” normally sells for $97, the same as a month of Lawrence’s Ad Money Machine subscription.

But for the next day or so (the clock’s ticking), Lawrence is making this guide available to you, just because you happen to be a reader of this newsletter, for only $7.

Final word:

I’m not an affiliate for this offer. I don’t get paid whether you buy it or not. I can tell you I did buy this offer myself, for my own purposes, several weeks ago, before I ever had any plans on promoting it to you.

If you’d like to find out more about it, while Lawrence’s sizable discount is still live:

​https://bejakovic.com/fascinations​

How to offer discounts without discounting your offer

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I once went to buy a pair of RayBan sunglasses. When I went to pay, the woman at the counter leaned in conspiratorially.

“Would you like to buy this cleaning kit for your new sunglasses?” she asked.

Before I had a chance to tell her that in fact I work in direct marketing, and that she should try her useless upsell on somebody else, she continued:

“The cleaning kit is only 9.95 euro, but we have a special promotion, where if you buy it you get a 20% discount on anything in the store. That’s a 50 euro savings on your sunglasses.”

What happened next is what I believe they call “cognitive dissonance”:

The twin angels of Refusing To Be Upsold and of A Perfectly Rational Argument vied for supremacy of my soul.

After a brief but fierce struggle, the Angel of A Perfectly Rational Argument won out.

“Uhh… I guess I’ll take the cleaning kit?” I said, still trying to figure out how I was being scammed, and how this made any sense for the sunglasses store.

I never really did figure it out, except to think that maybe it allowed them to discount their sunglasses and make people feel like they were getting a bargain… without actually discounting their sunglasses.

I though of this this morning when, in my usual rounds of snooping on other marketers, I checked out Ryan Lee’s current offer.

I don’t really understand what exactly Ryan is selling — he’s helping people publish a “micro book,” whatever that is.

I do know that the cost for his 2-week “Micro Book Accelerator” is $895. Included in the price are a number of bonuses, one being a book cover designed by Ryan’s personal crack designer (“a $999 value”).

So far, so normal.

But then you get down to the bottom of the sales page, where the checkout links are.

There’s a full pay option for $895…

There’s a 3-pay for $319 per month…

And then there’s an option to “join and get the full MBX experience (only without the cover design) for a BIG discount (almost $600).”

I have no doubt that most people who join are joining Ryan’s full experience, cover included.

But I thought this last option was interesting:

A way to discount the offer… by not discounting the offer. By respecting the people who buy the full package, and by making everyone else a different offer, and a credible reason why that new offer is significantly discounted (that’s what connected this in my mind to the sunglasses story above).

Maybe you say this is just a downsell. Maybe. But I’ve never seen it done like this, and to me at least, it was new.

Anyways, since I very much like to take interesting ideas and apply them in this newsletter, I decided to put this one to work as well.

So if you like, you can now sign up to get my Simple Money Emails training (minus the swipe file and the bonus 7 Deadly Email Sins and Quick and Dirty Emails trainings) at a significant “Perfectly Rational Argument” discount from the usual $197 price.

This new offer is only $77, $120 off the price that the complete Simple Money Emails program sells for.

Since this is an experiment, and kinda makes me uncomfortable, I am restricting it to only the first 20 people who take me up on it. And one way or another, I will close down this offer this Saturday at 8:31pm CET.

If you want the “Perfectly Rational Argument” discount, here’s where to take me up on this new offer while it’s still live:

https://bejakovic.com/sme77/

How to 3x your readership and give the right people an excuse to say hi

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A couple weeks ago I sent out an unusual email using my Most Valuable Email trick.

I got a response to that from a former client/partner, the owner of a successful direct marketing agency, somebody who had at one point paid me a sizable monthly retainer to advise on emails and advertorials. He wrote:

===

At first, I thought the [censored] was just a gimmick and part of your email strategy.

But then I wasn’t sure (new CK account and all that).

Finally, on my 3rd read I figured this was actually you being clever and not an issue with your CK setup.

What it DID do is make me pay attention. (Been a loooooong time since I read anyone’s email THREE times).

So I’m voting for “brilliant” vs “haha mistake!”

Also, using this as an excuse to say hi. Hope all is good.

You still doing the coaching gig?

===

The [censored] bit above was my use of the MVE trick in that email.

It’s a new form of Most Valuable Email, one I have started playing with from time to time.

It’s still the same old Most Valuable Email trick, but applied in a new way, one I wasn’t comfortable doing before.

It’s getting results like the above:

People paying more attention… leaning in more… even rereading my emails 3x… and reaching out to reopen dropped business conversations.

If all this sounds abstract, it’s probably because you don’t know what my Most Valuable Email trick is.

You can get it below and find out.

I also have a disappearing bonus to motivate you to act now. The disappearing bonus is simply an explanation of my new way of using the MVE trick, like in the email that drew the response from the agency owner above, and how you can do this too.

If you’d like this disappearing bonus, here’s what to do:

1. Get my Most Valuable Email training at the link below

2. Send me an email by tomorrow, Wednesday Sep 25, by 8:31pm CET, saying you want the disappearing bonus. (After that, no bonus.)

And if you already have Most Valuable Email?

This disappearing bonus is of course open to you too – but the same deadline applies.

Here’s the link to get Most Valuable Email:

​https://bejakovic.com/mve/​

P.S. You might say, “Oh but I want my copy to be crystal-clear like glass, and not to require rereading three times.”

There is something to that.

At the same time, I personally don’t ever want to make what I write scrollable, skippable, and disposable.

If what I write makes people stop, scratch their head, read all the way to the end, reread, I’m good with that.

And in terms of results generated:

Six months ago, the agency owner above and I were talking about working together again.

At that time, I had just started as a coach in Shiv Shetti’s PCM mastermind, and I didn’t have the time to take on a new project.

The new-style MVE email above got the agency owner to reach out and pick up the thread of that conversation… a win in my book, particularly since, as of last week, I am no longer working with Shiv’s PCM mastermind.

Pay-what-you-want for a new business opportunity for copywriters

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Last year, I promoted an unusual offer, called ClientRaker, by Steve Raju.

Steve was once a whizbang software engineer, who reinvented himself as a successful direct response copywriter, and who then reinvented himself as an AI consultant.

Steve now charges big businesses good money to tell them how to better use AI. But he does more than that.

Steve is actually using AI to set up commission-only deals with businesses that get tons of lead flow. He sends his little AI minions to reactivate the dormant leads of these businesses, and he gets paid on performance, in amounts that would make a Bond villain take note.

Steve hasn’t put on any kind of training since last year’s ClientRaker — he makes his money in different ways. But this next Wednesday, at 10am Pacific, Steve is putting on a workshop called the Word Is Not Enough (he has a habit of naming offers after Bond movies).

Steve announced this new workshop by teasing some of the content:

* Why most traditional high-ticket offers don’t make sense anymore in the age of AI

* Why most service providers are struggling nowadays

* What you should pivot to

* What hands down the best offer at the end of 2024 actually is

* All the tools you need to offer that

* How to outsource it if you can’t be bothered to do even that

* How to structure deals for the very highest return

I am vaguely interested in learning more about how to use AI.

I am significantly more interested in learning about hot new business opportunities.

I am very interested in hearing Steve talk about what he is doing, particularly how he is positioning himself, how he is adapting to the current market, and how he is finding and structuring new deals.

The copywriting world tends to attract smart people who think different. But there are few copywriters I know who think like Steve does, and who have his credentials for smarts (the man was a legit child progidy, I mean, prodigy).

Steve’s training next week is pay-what-you-want. I’ve signed up, and I’ve paid the suggested $47.

I would like to invite you to sign up as well. I’ll even throw in a bonus, which I’m calling The Secret of the Magi. (If Steve likes to name offers after Bond movies, I name mine after Robert Collier books.)

I don’t know the details of what-all Steve will share in his workshop. But I imagine if you get a new offer you can make to businesses, you will need businesses to make the offer to.

My Secret of the Magi bonus will tell you just one secret related to that — how to open up conversations with people you don’t know, even if they are busy, even if they are rich and successful, and even if they are way above you in status.

Of course, The Secret of the Magi will not work in 100% of cases.

But after observing other people cold contacting me… and after spending this past summer cold contacting a bunch of other people… I’ve had one big takeaway for how to open the door to conversations that can lead to those business partnerships.

I will tell you this takeaway, illustrate it with a few examples, and give you specific instructions on how you can apply it too.

All that inside my Secret of the Magi, which is yours, if you sign up for Steve’s workshop and forward me your receipt by tomorrow, Friday Sep 20, at 12 midnight PST.

Sign up after that, or forward me your receipt after that, and you will be in for Steve’s intriguing workshop, but you won’t get no bonus.

If you wanna get both, the time is now:

​https://bejakovic.com/the-word-is-not-enough​