Direct Marketing

“A-list copywriter vaccine”

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A certain Dr. Frankenstein, who is a genetics professor at Stanford University, claims he has invented a “superhero vaccine.”

Dr. Frank took genetic material from an an Olympic athlete as the basis for his vaccine.

And what does the vaccine do?

“It gives you a body-wide genetic upgrade,” says Dr. Frankenstein. He claims that the jab will make heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and liver disease a nonissue in the vaccinated.

I don’t know about you, but a genetic upgrade sounds great to me. I’d love to have the muscles, stamina, and Alzheimer’s resistance of an anonymous Olympic athlete, all with just a one-time visit to Dr. Frank’s offices.

In fact, this superhero vaccine matches 3 of my 4 criteria for the ideal offer.

It’s irresistible and promises escape… it’s easy… and it’s urgent.

After all, old age and diseases are certainly coming. And I don’t want to be left behind as the only non-vaccinated, aging weakling in a population of vaccinated superheros.

Of course, there is one element of the ideal offer missing with Dr. Frank’s jab. And that’s perceived safety.

In fact, the reactions I’ve read so far are a rehash of Jeff Goldblum’s speech from Jurassic Park:

The lack of humility before nature that’s being displayed here staggers me… Don’t you see the danger inherent in what you’re doing here? Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet’s ever seen but you wield it like a kid that’s found his dad’s gun.

It’s a reasonable attitude.

But who of us is gonna be that reasonable once a number of daring souls opt for the superhero vaccine… and report amazing results about overflowing energy, perfect memory, and more lustrous hair?

Perhaps you see where I’m going with this. So I won’t drag the point on.

Instead, let me remind you that my Copy Riddles program is open right now.

I think of it as an “A-list copywriter vaccine.” Because it gives you the irresistible promise of a brain-wide copywriting upgrade… through a quick and easy process… based on the winning sales bullets of A-list copywriters.

And there’s a certain matter of urgency. Because Copy Riddles is only open until this Sunday, July 4, at midnight PST.

“Uff, I don’t know,” you might say. “It sounds kind of risky.”

In that case, let me tell you that a small group of daring souls have already gone through Copy Riddles.

They all survived. And here’s what one of them, an Agora copywriter by the name of Vasilis Apostolou, has to report:

I’ve taken every popular course out there. I’m talking about the most popular courses from A-list copywriters. Obviously, I’ve read, listened and watched a lot about bullet writing.

But I can say with 100% confidence that John has put together the best course on bullets, bar none.

I learned a lot from the course that I use for all types of copy: From subject lines to hour-long interview style promos.

I wish I had John’s bullet course when I was starting out. It would have saved me tons of frustration… and shaved months off my learning curve.

In case you’d like to find out more about the A-list copywriter vaccine:

https://copyriddles.com/

You too can profit from mooches, singers, and bon bon eaters!

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“I’m always amazed that people seriously believe that they can make $1,000 a week stuffing envelopes. Evidently, greed and the ‘something for nothing’ ploy are too much for the bon bon eater to resist. What the mooch doesn’t know is stuffing envelopes is a sophisticated, highly mechanized operation that is run by legitimate businesses that specialize in mass mailings. The possibility of them using a bon bon eater is not only remote, it’s a joke. As a biz-opper, you look at bon bon eaters as a joke — a profitable joke.”
— Biz Op: How To Get Rich With “Business Opportunity” Frauds And Scams

Thanks to a reader named Lester, I found out about the book Biz Op, written by one Bruce Easley in 1994.

Biz Op claims to be an inside look at how Easley made a killing by cheating, lying, and scamming his customers, often in violation of state and federal laws.

“Yeah right,” I said.

“Why would anyone publicize that information if it were really real? Even if Easley wasn’t afraid of the legal consequences and the retribution of his burned “mooches”… why not turn his confession into a business opportunity itself, and sell people ‘The Lazy Way to Riches’ for $197… instead of selling a book about defrauding people, through a regular book publisher, for a few bucks apiece?”

I don’t know the answers to any of that. But I have no more doubts that Biz Op the book is legit.

There’s the fact that Easley was written up in the NY Times (“You too can be a successful criminal!”).

There are his appearances on daytime shock shows like Donahue.

But most of all, there’s the book itself.

It’s got insider jargon I’d never heard of. Like mooches (any sucker dumb enough to hand a bizopper his or her money)… bon bon eaters (stay-at-home moms who respond to envelope stuffing offers)… and singers (relatives you pay to pick up the phone and act as social proof for your biz op).

And then there’s all the familiar detail of the marketing approach and the copy. In a nutshell, Easley’s biz op offers were:

1. Irresistible (a promise of riches outside your normal grasp, and an opportunity to escape your current life)
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2. Easy (you don’t have to do anything… or the work will be trivial)

​3. Safe (there’s a money-back guarantee plus all these other people say it’s a great opportunity)

​4. Urgent (somebody else in your market is interested and we need to tell them by tonight if it’s them or you)

I saw a YouTube video recently of Magnus Carlsen, the current world chess champion.

Carlsen was shown different positions on a chess board. Each time, within a few pieces being put on the board, he recognized the position as part of some famous historical chess match. He even recognized the setup from the chess scene in the first Harry Potter movie.

My point is that there’s value in knowing the history of your field. That’s why I’m telling you about Biz Op the book.

Don’t scam people. But there’s value in studying mooches, singers, and bon bon eaters. Because Easley’s 4-part checklist above is the essence of what makes for a good direct response offer.

Make your own offer as close to that as you can… without lying, cheating, or breaking any laws… and you’ll have a real shot at profit.

At least that’s my theory. Which is why I organized my own offer as I did.

I’m talking about my Copy Riddles program. For the right person, it should be irresistible (“breakthrough copywriting skills in 8 weeks or less”)… easy (“just follow the instructions and do the exercises”)… and safe (“there’s a guarantee, plus all these other people say it’s great”).

And what about urgent?

Well, Copy Riddles is open until this Sunday, July 4, at midnight PST. After that, it won’t be available for months.

So if you want to find out about this exciting opportunity before it becomes unavailable…

https://copyriddles.com/

When sex doesn’t sell

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The cover of Gary Halbert’s Killer Orgasms! book has a photo of Gary’s topless girlfriend.

I took that photo, censored it with a thick black bar over the nipples, and put it into the sales letter to my bullets course, now called Copy Riddles.

There are a couple reasons for that:

One is that this book was instrumental to Copy Riddles coming into being.

Killer Orgasms! was the first place where I found the “source text” behind bullets, so I could see how A-list copywriters like Gary do the magic they do.

But that’s not the only reason I have the photo in there.

Because sex sells, right? If you associate sex with your offer, it makes people buy more?

Maybe… or maybe not.

It might actually backfire.

Like I wrote yesterday, our attitudes towards other people are mixed.

In a situation of fear and danger, we love nothing more than to be in the middle of the herd. There’s safety in numbers.

But in a situation of attraction and mating, we hope to seduce by being exceptional. We hope to be seen as the maverick, roving the hillsides alone. Others are just meddling competition in this case.

At least that’s what some scientists hypothesized back in 2009. So they ran some experiments. And they showed this common-sense logic to be true.

They found that, sure, sex can make your offer sell better… if your offer is about standing out.

But sex can hurt your sales if your offer involves a strong appeal to community and belonging.

Which was relevant to me.

Because I initially planned to sell Copy Riddles with a stronger appeal of support, community, etc. I wound up minimizing that, and amping up the exceptionalism talk:

“Discover how you can OWN bullets more quickly than you would ever believe… and set yourself apart from the masses of other marketers and copywriters.”

But who knows? Maybe all this jiggering won’t do anything.

Or maybe it will even hurt. After all, if a female reader sees this same topless photo and the surrounding “set yourself apart” copy, it might be a turnoff rather than motivating.

But whether I suffer or not, the underlying idea is worth keeping in mind:

Your prospects’ frame of mind influences whether they want to belong or to be unique. And perhaps, this can influence your sales.

We will see what it does in my case. Because as of today, I am reopening Copy Riddles.

The first round kicked off in March. I’ve had very positive feedback about it. I’ll write more about that over the next few days. (Signup will be open until this Sunday.)

In the meantime, if you’d like to check out the Copy Riddles sales page for yourself, here’s the link:

https://copyriddles.com/

Outrage in the inbox

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I apparently misled a bunch of people yesterday.

At the end of the email I sent out to my newsletter subscribers, I promised a copy of a free book on how to get rich as a repositioning consultant.

People wrote in to ask for their copy.

But unfortunately, there is no book. My offer was supposed to be a demonstration of the idea in the email (“If it’s not selling, reposition it as a business opportunity”).

But I wasn’t clear enough or tongue-in-cheek enough about it. So people took my offer at face value.

I wrote back to everybody who responded to explain what had happened.

Most people shrugged, and said that if I ever do write anything on this topic, they hope to get their promised copy. Which they will.

A few people said they had a kind of a-ha moment after re-reading the email. A guy named Nathan put it this way:

I sat there for around 5 minutes debating whether it was sarcastic or not.

Everything in me said, “there is no book”…

FOMO got the better of me though.

I’ve been there myself. And it’s kind of the point of what I wrote yesterday.

This direct response stuff works. And a cocktail of “opportunity” mixed with “FREE” is powerful and heady.

Anyways, the two types of reactions above cover all the responses I got…

Except one.

It came from a guy who’s responded a few times before to my offers and emails. And a few times before, he upset my evening equilibrium with his entitled and loaded comments.

This time, after I explained what had happened, he sent back a highlighted copy of my promised offer from yesterday, along with,

“So… you lied?”

Perhaps I’m overly sensitive.

But I don’t like to create outrage. And I don’t like outrage directed at me. Even passively. Even if it’s supposed to be good for business.

So this became the first time I proactively unsubscribed somebody from my list. It felt good.

Because my thinking is, if you’re planning to be at something for a long time, the way I do with these emails, you have to be happy to come into work every day.

So let me just say thank you. For reading. For being understanding. For not being outraged. And tomorrow, we will be back to our usual marketing topics… along with, who knows, maybe another hidden demonstration.

And by the way:

If you’d like to sign up to my email newsletter so you can read tomorrow’s email and not be outraged by it, here’s where to go.

Start a profitable repositioning business… with your own home as headquarters

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If you sell a product people don’t want — whether physical or information — then I’ve got an idea for you.

​It will allow you to get into a completely new business, without any startup costs, and without any of the hassles you’re currently facing. Plus demand is almost guaranteed.

All right, you ready?

Then let me tell you I’ve been reading a lot of old ads that would still work today. I referenced one of them a few days ago — a real estate opportunity ad from the 1920s in Popular Mechanics.

But I kept flipping through old issues of Popular Mechanics. And I found a bunch of other ads that kept running over and over. Here are a few from a 1956 issue:

1. “New Rubber Stamp Business Pays Beginners Up To $9.20 an hr. Start at home in spare time with this little table top machine”

2. “Start a profitable manufacturing business in spare time with your own home as headquarters”

3. “Make up to $18 per hour! With this NEW PLASTIC SANDWICH MACHINE!”

Mmm… plastic sandwich…

But do you see what’s going on here?

How much demand was there in 1956 for lamination machines or plastics manufacturing equipment?

Probably not that much. Certainly not in a typical household.

But a business opportunity? A chance to be your own boss… work when you want and how you want… make more money than you’re making now…

So here’s my idea:

If you sell dog clippers today and nobody’s buying, then bundle your clippers with a video. Tell people how to set up their own dog grooming business in their back yard in their spare time.

Charge 10x what the clippers cost… and find yourself in a marketplace of one, instead of a commodity market.

Or, if you sell an information product nobody wants, reposition it as a business opportunity.

I did this last year by accident. I was promoting a Clickbank course on reconditioning car batteries. In a moment of inspiration, I wrote the main appeal:

“How to resurrect dead batteries and save (or make) money”

This sold strong at the start — to a group that normally NEVER buys information products. And it keeps selling today.

But maybe you don’t buy any of this.

Maybe you’re glad you didn’t pay for this advice… and in fact you’re sure you never would pay for it.

In that case, I’d like to announce I’m launching a new training and certification program.

It will allow you to make tens of thousands of dollars a month… all from home… in your spare time… by helping struggling business owners reposition their offers.

I’ve prepared a step by step instruction manual that not only tells you how to reposition offers, but also tells you how to get business coming in at a profitable clip right from the start.

I’m giving away a free copy of this book to any serious-minded man or woman. Reading it will not cost you anything. Simply follow the instructions here.

How to become an opportunity specialist

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Back in 2019, while I was writing my first-ever real estate investing promo, I faced a bit of a conflict.

My copywriting coach at the time told me to talk about the mechanism. Basically, HOW you’re going to get rich in real estate.

But he told me something else also. “Go on YouTube,” he said, “and check out old infomercials in the REI space. See what they do.”

So I did. And each 80s and 90s infomercial basically looked like this:

1. You’re gonna get so rich.

2. You don’t need no cash, credit, experience, skills, charm, nothin’!

3. Look at all these people who done it. $10k for this guy. $20k for that guy. $30k for that third guy, and he was totally broke before!

And that’s all the infomercials were. Over and over and over, for 28 minutes. No mention of “how” anywhere.

“Yeah, but that was then,” my copywriting coach told me. “The market has matured. You need a mechanism today to stand out.”

I took his advice and worked the mechanism into the promo. ​​But I’m not sure any more that he was right. ​(The VSL never got produced, so we can’t say either way.)

But I’ve got my doubts, because I’ve been going through a Dan Kennedy course called Opportunity Concepts.

One of the things Dan says is that “Get rich in real estate” has been selling, using the same appeals, since the Civil War.

Have things changed in last 20 years?

Maybe… but probably not.

Instead, Dan says that as marketers, we underestimate how perennially conflicted, confused, self-doubting, inert, and entitled our prospects really are. In all markets. Even in markets that consist of successful, proactive people.

That’s why Dan’s advice is to sell whatever you’re selling as an opportunity. Or as close to it as you can get.

Opportunity? What does that mean?

Well, I tracked down a successful opportunity ad from 100 years ago so you can see. Variants of it ran for years in Popular Mechanics and other magazines in the late 1920s.

Frankly, it could have worked in the 1980s or today just as well. Nothing has changed.

If you sell real estate investing advice, this ad is worth a look. If you don’t sell real estate investing advice, this ad is worth a look. So take a look:

https://bejakovic.com/opportunity-ad

“Huge Hack if YOU Sell 5k-250k products or programs”

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Two months ago, in a private Facebook group, I saw a post by a well-known real estate investing guru:

Huge Hack if YOU Sell 5k-250k products or programs.
We found a LEGIT funding company that will finance your customers.
VERY Easy qualifications:
620 credit score
40k in income
They will pay you 100% up front of what ever you charge, and the customers payments to them will be fractional to anything they pay you!
We have literally 3 folded our income with them overnight.

The guru was offering to make an introduction to the company, and he didn’t reveal their name. In fact, I still don’t know.

But just yesterday, I saw that Flippa (the online business marketplace) has partnered with a company called Yardline.

So now, if you’re looking to buy an online business through Flippa, assuming you can jump through a few hoops, then you can get 250k from Yardline to finance your purchase.

I’m not sure what kinds of terms Yardline offers.

​​All I can say is that if I were looking to buy a business, I’d look for investment partners directly, rather than going through a company like this.

On the other hand, if you do sell a high-ticket offer, and you target people for whom that much money is an issue, then Yardline and similar companies might be something to look into.

​​If I’m reading the Facebook post above correctly, it sounds like an easy way to grow your income without changing your offer, your marketing, or really anything else inside your company.

Plus I think this is jut a bit of curious industry news. Because a few days ago, I speculated whether the direct response industry is at a “Netflix moment.” In other words, if we’re at a kind of tipping point, where things go mainstream.

I don’t think the emergence of companies like Yardline is any kind of hard proof of this. But it is another data point for you to consider… when you think about which direction you want to take your own career or business.

And if you want more direct marketing industry news and predictions:

I write a daily email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

The end of Stansberry?

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Last week, a reader of my email newsletter who works for an Agora affiliate clued me into the following fact:

Stansberry Research is going public.

Stansberry, as you probably know, is one of the biggest imprints that came out of Agora. They had the End of America promo. This was one of the two or three biggest direct response campaigns of all time, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars through a single VSL.

When I heard that Stansberry is going public, my first thought was to David Bowie.

Back in 1997, Bowie released 10-year bonds backed by the future royalties of his album sales.

​​Bowie bonds put $55 million into David Bowie’s pocket, and were given a respectable A3 rating.

​​But within a couple of years, digital file sharing caused the whole music album market to implode. Bowie bonds were downgraded to Baa3, one notch above junk bond status.

Maybe David Bowie, with his artist’s intuition, sensed it coming, and made a smart cash grab just in time?

And maybe Porter Stansberry, using his entrepreneur’s intuition, senses something similar in the current moment?

The Agora copywriter who told me about this assured me I’m imagining things. “It’s probably Stansberry himself wants to be a billionaire. He must be pretty close now.”

A Barrons article that reported on this quoted the CEO of the company that’s taking Stansberry public through a merger. That guy’s reasoning:

“We were looking for a company in the attention economy with scalable, digitally delivered IP. As people say, ‘content is king.’ But it’s rare that you find a company that’s as prolific at creating new IP… They’re like the Netflix of financial content.”

So rather than this being a Bowie moment, maybe it’s a Netflix moment?

​​A moment in which a somewhat limited, niche company uses its own existing assets and a bunch of cash to become a mainstream powerhouse?

Or maybe it’s a sign of things to come — Stansberry & chill?

Maybe. I’m not convinced. But I am curious. So if like me, you dip your toes in the direct response pond, it might be worth keeping an eye on the the ripples from this isolated pebble drop.

Or do you want me to keep an eye out for you? If so, then sign up for my email newsletter, because that’s where all my writing shows up first.

My shame-filled run at becoming a U.S. Park Ranger

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I used to be a real sucker for direct response offers. For example…

One day in high school, I was leafing through the classifieds in the local paper. And one ad made my eyes pop out:

“Get a job as a U.S. Park Ranger. Beautiful work, solid pay. Results guaranteed or your money back.”

For context: I hated high school. I had no ambition of going to college. And I didn’t like people.

“So you’re telling me I can get paid to commune with bears among the hush of the redwoods?” I squinted at the ad. “Hell yes!”

If I remember right, the cost to become a U.S. Park Ranger (as per the classified) was something like $60. That was money I didn’t have… but I begged, borrowed, and stole enough to get it. What did it matter? I could pay it all back with my first U.S. Park Ranger salary. It was guaranteed.

A few weeks later, my “Become a Park Ranger” kit arrived in the mail.

It consisted of a thick binder with study materials and instructions on how to apply for the 3x/year government test procedure that was the first step to becoming a park ranger.

Huh?

A thick binder? Studying for a test? On the off chance that maybe in a year, I could get paid to walk around Yosemite, away from the horrors of high school?

My heart sank. This is not what I had signed up for. And my beautiful $60… where did it go? I called up the company, and with a trembling voice, I asked if I could get a refund.

“Did you take the Park Ranger test already?” the other end asked.

“Uhh… no?”

“Well, that’s the condition for our refund guarantee. Take the test, and if you don’t pass, we will give you your money back.”

I think I buried my “Become a Park Ranger” kit in the back yard that night, so it didn’t remind me of my shame, failure, and lost money.

But who knows. Maybe I will still get $60 worth of story out of it. Because it’s a good illustration of an idea I recently got from marketer Rich Schefren:

“Your offer is not only ‘You pay me x and you get y.’ It’s also what your customer has to do with y to get the outcome.”

Maybe that sounds trivial. After all, the first thing you’re taught in copywriting school is that people don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole in the head. And nobody wakes up at 3am, sweating because they don’t have enough newsletter subscriptions, right?

Well, it might be basic. But how many of us actually abide by these rules when we create offers?

Of course, one way to use this is simply to promise the redwoods and the bears, and to make no mention of thick binders and exam procedures.

​​Trouble is, you need a real sucker to fall for that. And even then, it’s hard to build a repeat business.

So that leaves you with the other option. Which is to actually reduce as much as possible the time and effort that your customer has to invest, post-purchase, to actually get the result he is after.

​Not only will this make for an easier sell… not only will it produce satisfied customers who come back for more, over and over… but it also means folks will pay much more, right up front. Even if they have to beg, borrow, and steal to do it.

Anyways, here’s my offer to you:

Do you want to become a better marketer or copywriter? Tough, isn’t it?

Well, if you sign up to get my email newsletter, I take all the weight off your shoulders. I do the research about the best ideas… I find the entertaining and appealing stories that make these ideas slip easily into your brain… and I package it all up and send it to you every day.

Best part?

You don’t even have to read anything! Just open up my emails when they arrive and stare at your screen for a few seconds. Your marketing and copywriting IQ will increase automatically. Results are guaranteed. To sign up, please send me $60 in cash and then follow the instructions given here.

An email marketing and business-building topic

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Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash despises his band’s biggest hit, Sweet Child O’ Mine.

​​Slash came up with the famous intro riff as a joke, by playing a “circus tune” that mocked the popular guitar technique of string skipping. But the rest of the band picked up on the joke riff and developed the song.

They recorded it, and in 1988, it became their one and only no. 1 hit. Now, 30-something years later, the video for Sweet Child O’ Mine has over 1.2 billion views on YouTube.

You can file that away as “useless fact #754 that’s stayed stuck in JB’s head for the past 20 years.” Except there is a point to it:

If you create anything, even some bastard form like sales emails or blog content, you might start to get bored. Your taste and interests might evolve away from where your audience is. You might veer off and cover topics that you haven’t covered before, and stop covering topics that your audience wants.

Examples of this:

1. I used to follow a guy online who wrote a blog about picking up girls and self-improvement topics. All right. Then he started writing book reviews of the manly pulp novels he was reading. No. Delete.

2. I recently heard Gary Bencivenga talk about email marketing for his olive oil business. “If we don’t put ‘olive oil’ somewhere in the subject line,” Gary said, “we can’t get people to open up the emails at all.”​​

3. My own email newsletter. It’s mainly about persuasion, marketing and copywriting. Whenever I get away from those topics, I feel the pulse of my list slow down. I never tried pushing it… but I bet that after a week of off-topic emails I’d hear the flat line of no pulse at all.

So my point to you is to beware.

Your audience came to you for a reason. If you don’t respect that, even in spite of your own fancy and evolving tastes, you will miss out on those blockbuster #1 hits… and pretty soon, you will lose ’em altogether. And then you’ll be left singing like Axl:

Where do we go?

Where do we go now?

I’ll tell you where you go. At least if you’re interested in persuasion, marketing, and copywriting. You go to my email newsletter. Available for free here.