Direct Marketing

Would you like to take Copy Riddles off my hands?

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A couple months ago, I stopped selling my flagship course, Copy Riddles.

​​Copy Riddles was based on a Gary Halbert’s advice for how to learn to write bullets — look at the bullets written by the best copywriters, look at the book or course those bullets were selling, and see how the copywriter did his alchemy to transmute lead into gold.

I had various reasons for retiring Copy Riddles. I wrote about one of them in an earlier email. But even if I had no good reasons initially, the fact that I’ve publicly announced that I’m retiring the course means I won’t bring it back.

Frank Sinatra retired in 1971. “I have sung my last song for the public,” he said with a sigh. Fans were shocked. But then, 2 years later, Frank came back with a TV special, Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back, and he started touring again.

Ol’ Blue Eyes could get away with that, but you won’t see Ol’ Bejako doing it, in spite of several people writing to tell me that not selling Copy Riddles is a crime. I’ve simply found it easier to keep my word as a general life policy.

At the same time, I’m genuinely proud of Copy Riddles as a course, and there are people who say there is significant tonnage to what they’ve learned about copywriting from it.

So a few days ago, while I should have been washing myself but was instead just standing in the shower and thinking, I had an idea.

Could I sell the rights to Copy Riddles to somebody else?

Like I said, I don’t want to be the one selling it to the public any more.

But there’s clearly demand for the course, even with my absolute lack of promotion of the thing. Maybe somebody else would like to own the rights to Copy Riddles and sell it himself or herself.

With the tiniest bit of work, you could get affiliates lined up — for example, I’ve had Derek Johanson of CopyHour promote Copy Riddles in the past. I’ve had Bob Bly agree to promote it right before I decided to retire it. And Daniel Throssell asked to promote it right after I retired it.

If you’ve already got a list of people interested in copywriting, you could sell Copy Riddles to your list directly — the thing regularly brought in 5-figure paydays for me when I re-launched it every few months, and that’s with my small list that had seen the offer a lot.

Plus, maybe you could even run cold traffic straight to the sales page. I can’t say with any certainty it would be a winner, but I did talk to A-list copywriter Lorrie Morgan recently, and she was telling me what a good sales letter I’d written for Copy Riddles. Plus, I wrote it in an impersonal way, to be convincing to somebody who doesn’t know anything about me personally and who hasn’t read any of my emails.

All these are just ideas.

​​I don’t know if anybody is interested in taking Copy Riddles off my hands, or really how this would work. But I am intrigued by the potential.

​​If you are intrigued as well, and if you are serious about the idea of buying the rights for Copy Riddles from me, write me to say so, and we can start a conversation around it.

1-2 approach to reduce Twitter ad costs by 86%

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Adventures in paid traffic:

I’m running Twitter ads to grow my Morning Brew-like health newsletter. The same batch of ads in different ad groups, using different ways of targeting people.

Terrible results. The best I could do was targeting a bunch of keywords naturally connected to the topic of my newsletter.

New subscriber cost? $14.04. Scary.

I then went and looked at a bunch of profiles of people who signed up. Their Twitter descriptions, what they were sharing. It wasn’t health. It was investing.

So I created a new ad group, targeting investing keywords entirely unrelated to my newsletter.

New subscriber cost? $1.99.

The usual caveats apply:

The quality of any of these subscribers is not clear, since I haven’t tried selling anything to them yet beyond the optin. It’s not even clear if they will stay engaged and open my newsletter in case I sell ads in the future.

Still, if you’re running paid traffic for your newsletter, consider the above 1-2 approach. It might help you find entirely new, unexpected segments of the market that might be a good fit for what you do.

Also, if you are running paid traffic to grow your newsletter or email list, and you’ve spent $500 or more, write in and let me know. I have something you might like.

Mysteries of the mind

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Yesterday I started listening to a four-and-a-half hour long presentation titled, Best Life Ever. I did it because the guy speaking, Jim Rohn, has been billed, by no less an authority than genius marketer and influence expert Dan Kennedy, as being a master storyteller.

Dan says that Jim Rohn built his long and very successful career on zero practical content, great stories only.

So that’s what I expected to find. Fantastic fluff. Zero real substance.

And yet I was surprised. In the first twenty minutes, I already found the content genuinely insightful. I felt that Dan was underselling it. Take for example the following. With a smile, Rohn says:

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The day the Christian Church was started, a magnificent sermon was preached. A great presentation. And if you’re a student at all of good communication, it was one of the classic presentations of all time.

And this sermon, this presentation, was given to a multitude. Meaning a lot of people. But it was interesting.

The record says, when the sermon was finished, there was a variety of reaction to the same sermon. Isn’t that fascinating? I find that fascinating.

It said some that heard this presentation were perplexed.

Now I read the presentation. It sounded pretty straightforward to me. Why would somebody be perplexed with a good, sincere, straightforward presentation?

Best answer I’ve got: They are the perplexed. What other explanation is there? It doesn’t matter who’s preaching.

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Rohn’s point is that there are some mysteries of the mind.

Why are some people inspired to take action? Why do others never take action? Why are some people perplexed? Why do others mock and laugh?

You can try to figure it out. So did Rohn, once upon a time.

“I don’t do that any more,” he says in his talk. “I’ve got peace of mind now. I can sleep like a baby. Not trying to straighten any of this out any more.” It’s just mysteries of the mind.

Did you find that insightful?

I did. But maybe I’m just very easy to dupe into feeling like I’ve had an epiphany. Doesn’t matter who’s preaching.

Or who knows. Maybe Rohn is such a good storytellers that even in those first 20 minutes, he managed to prime me for being easily influenced.

In case you’re a student at all of good communication, this guy was one of the classic presenters of all time. To see why, watch a few minutes of the following:

 

How to get Copy Riddles for just $70

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I sat down to write this email a few minutes ago, but I’m siting in an “airspace” cafe. It’s loud and busy, I got distracted. Instead of focusing, I checked my inbox. “Thank God,” I said, “somebody’s writing to me.”

The subject line read, “Piracy on Copy Riddles.” And the body:

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Hello John,

My name is Danica and I’m with Acme Dead Pirates Corp, a copyright protection service. We find and pursue takedowns of pirated copies of digital content on the Internet.

While we were searching for piracy for another client, we noticed infringement on Copy Riddles. I just thought you should know that your content is on many pirate websites. Here’s a sample:

===

What followed was a list of sites that apparently have my retired Copy Riddles program at a steeply discounted price. The email ended with Danica’s offer to partner with me and “help you keep your hard earned revenue.”

Since I’m no longer selling Copy Riddles, there’s no hard-earned revenue to protect. And based on what I saw of the pages that claimed to have a map to where the Copy Riddles treasure might be buried (“Call 1.mp3”), I suspect they might be just lying.

But if you’re willing to give it a go, google Copy Riddles, hand over your doubloons to one of these pirate sites and you might be able to get a copy of Copy Riddles, which used to sell for $400, for as little as $70. Dead men tell no tales.

But back to that email I just got:

I don’t know Danica from Eve. It’s possible she represents a legit business. By the way, that business is not really called Acme Dead Pirates Corp. I changed the name because of what I will say next:

Danica’s email reminded me of an earlier email I had written, about online reputation management companies. These companies offer to take down slanderous or embarrassing posts that might have appeared about you on sites like bustedcheaters.com or worsthomewrecker.com.

An investigative journalist named Aaron Krolik found out that a dozen of those reputation management companies pointed to the same 2-3 people. And those 2-3 people were the same ones hosting hundreds of slanderous and embarrassing cheater sites.

In other words, the same people were posting nasty things about you online, then contacting you and helpfully offering to partner with you to take those nasty things down, for a fee of a few hundred dollars.

So consider this a public service announcement about “copyright protection service” cold emails.

Or consider it an example of fraudulent behavior that you might nonetheless want to integrate into your business. I’m not talking about actually scamming people. But the concept of creating your own demand is sound, and it can be done legally and even ethically.

But more on that another time.

For now, if you’d like to get my Most Valuable Email course, before it becomes pirated to oblivion or before I decide to make it walk the plank, look ye here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Pretentious prick introduces himself

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Hello. My name is John Bejakovic. I was born in Croatia, but I grew up in the US. Since 2015, I’ve been working as a direct response copywriter for a bunch of clients, including many 7- and 8-figure businesses.

These days I mostly work on growing my own newsletter in the health space. I also write these daily emails about copywriting, marketing, and influence. Sometimes, I consult and coach people on things I know about, such as email marketing and copywriting.

And if you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this…

A few days ago, I signed up to a copywriter’s newsletter. The guy’s name is Louis Grenier. I’m not sure how I found him or how I opted in to his list. He sends daily emails, much like this one you’re reading. Except day after day, this guy starts off his emails with “Bonjour bonjour.”

“What a pretentious prick,” I thought to myself.

Yesterday, Louis sent out an email with the subject line, “A cheatcode for non-native speakers.”

“This oughta be good,” I said to myself, and I opened it.

I skimmed the email. Something about how Louis started a podcast, about how he felt insecure at first because of his American accent when speaking French, but how he realized it was actually a competitive advantage.

Huh? There was a kind of fog in my head. Why is this American guy hosting a podcast in French? And what kind of competitive advantage does an American accent in French possibly give you?

I reread the email from the beginning, a little more carefully now.

It only then started to dawn on me that Louis Grenier, though he writes perfectly in English, and though he has a name that could certainly belong to an American, is actually French. “Bonjour bonjour” isn’t the move of a pretentious prick. Rather, it’s a bit of cute personal positioning.

Point being, you have to constantly repeat yourself.

People aren’t paying 100% attention. You’re not the only one in their inbox. They skim. They forget. Plus new people get on your list, and maybe they missed the fact you’re French or Croatian or Pomeranian or whatever.

So you gotta repeat yourself, the core stuff, simply and clearly, over and over. You need to constantly remind people. And you need to constantly introduce yourself to people who just found you.

And now let me repeat the core message of my emails, at least the tail end:

There is something you can do each day to become better as a marketer or copywriter, which I call the Most Valuable Email trick.

I applied this Most Valuable Email trick once at the end of January, and I got a completely unnecessary and unexpected windfall of about $2,900 in sales, with zero work.

I applied it another time and started a buying frenzy even though I had nothing to sell.

I applied it a third time, and got a nice email in response from Joe Schriefer, the former copy chief at Agora Financial.

But even if none of those external valuable things happen, the Most Valuable Email trick is still most valuable, because it makes me a tiny bit better each time I apply it.

And it can do the same for you. If you’d like to start applying this trick today, here’s where you can discover it:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

How to cut your unsubscribes almost in half

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In this email, I’ll write about an idea you’re probably heard before. It might not be anything new to you. In fact, you might not want to read this email at all.

Yesterday I was talking to a coaching client. He recently took over the management of an email list with 50k subscribers.

That’s my preferred position, by the way — a kind of Harry Hopkins-like figure, a back-end advisor and scheme man rather than a front-facing figurehead.

​​Unfortunately I can’t do that with my own emails. Still, I continue to write this newsletter simply because I find the practice so personally valuable.

But back to the coaching call. My coaching client took over the management of this sizable list, and he started sending more regular emails.

At first, he put a paragraph at the top of these emails, warning his audience they would be getting emails more often, along with a link in case they wanted to unsubscribe.

Unsubscribe link right at the start of the email. Result? 50-60 unsubscribes each time.

He then took that paragraph out. Just the usual unsubscribe link left at the end of the email. Result? The unsubscribes jumped to 100.

That’s the idea I warned you about at the start. You’ve probably heard it before.

Really, it’s a tale as old as time, a song as old as rhyme. But these days, it mostly gets attributed to Jim Camp’s book Start With No.

Says Camp, never take away your adversary’s right to say no. In fact, go out of your way, make a show, above and beyond, to assure your adversary you respect his or her right to say no. And mean it.

Camp was a negotiator in billion-dollar deals.

In other words, this isn’t just about cutting your unsubscribes. It’s also about making more sales and making more deals. And most importantly, it’s about continuing a valuable relationship into the future.

I’ve repeatedly promoted my Most Valuable Email course in these emails.

Perhaps you’ve decided this course is not for you. Perhaps you’re just not interested in it. That’s fine.

Otherwise, if you’d like more information about Most Valuable Email, you can find it here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Guy rebuffs my attempt at cross-promotion

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A report from the trenches:

I’m working on growing my health email newsletter, which I launched a few months ago.

One part of what I’m doing is reaching out to other newsletters to offer to cross-promote. I’ve been contacting newsletters of a similar size to mine, who share some common elements with mine:

– sent out weekly
– news-related
– “proven” — make an emphasis on providing references or sources
– is made up of actual paragraphs of text that people read, rather than just a collection of links

I’ve had a few people take me up on my cross-promotion offer. But one guy, whose weekly newsletter is for people who want to “stay on top of the current issues and that like to read more than just bulletpoints,” was not interested in my offer. He wrote me to say:

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I don’t think this partnership would work out, basically because I’ve done it before and the clicks were very, very low. Also, I don’t think there’s a great overlap in the content of our two newsletters.

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As Dan Kennedy might say about that first reason, if we all stopped doing something if the first time was a fail, the human race would soon die out. There’d be no more babies born.

But what about that other reason? About content overlap?

It’s very sensible to only sell competitive duck herding products to competitive duck herding enthusiasts.

But most offers are not that one-dimensional.

The “world’s greatest list broker,” Michael Fishman, was once tasked with finding new lists to promote an investment newsletter.

Michael suggested a list of buyers of a product called Big Money Pro Golf Secrets. The publisher of the investment newsletter said, “We’ve tried golf lists before, they don’t work for us.”

Michael said, “No problem. It’s not a golf list. Think about who would buy a book called Big Money Pro Golf Secrets. I don’t care if it’s Big Money Pro Flower Secrets. Anybody who would respond to that language is somebody whose door we want to knock on.”

Point being, if you have something that’s not as narrow in appeal as duck herding, there are many dimensions along which you can expand your market, beyond the obvious topic or content or promise of what you’re selling. ​

​ By the way, Michael Fishman is somebody worth listening to. I’ve read and watched and listened to everything I could find online by the guy. I make a habit of occasionally searching the Internet to see if anything new has cropped up.

If you want a place to start, here’s a great interview that Michael Fishman did with Michael Senoff of Hard to Find Seminars:

https://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Michael_Fishman_Interview.htm

My local convenience store superstar

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My girlfriend was staring hard at a piece of bubble gum in her hands. “Malik has been giving me a ton of these lately.”

Malik is a nice Pakistani man who runs the convenience store downstairs. My girlfriend regularly chats with him.

“I thought we were friends,” she said. “He made me look at his wedding photos.”

Malik doesn’t ever ring up what you’re buying. He never gives you a receipt.

​​Instead, he eyeballs the stuff you’re holding in your hands — a bottle of water, two cans of beer — and tells you the total. 7 euro 65 cents. Tomorrow, the same basket of stuff might cost 6 euro 30. Or 9 euro 15.

Sometimes, Malik senses he has overcharged you. And without looking at you directly, he senses whether you feel so too. If he ever thinks he’s gone too far, he doesn’t lower the price. Instead, he throws in something extra — a single-serve cookie, a lollypop, a piece of bubble gum. ​​Lately it’s been happening a lot.

For the past six days, I’ve been milking last week’s copywriting conference for email ideas. I will probably be able to do so until the end of this month.

During the copywriting conference, I saw a half dozen presenters go up to the front of the room to give a talk. At the end of each talk, they all sold some existing high-priced offer.

Most of the presenters offered a discount as an inducement to act now, before the conference ends.

But a few of the really smart, experienced, established marketers didn’t lower the price. That’s an ugly habit to get into. Instead, the most sophisticated marketers threw in something extra — a bonus training, a private consult, a piece of bubble gum — to get you to act now before the conference ends.

Simple, you might say.

But it was the difference between money lost and money made. It was also the difference between the adequate marketers and the superstars.

Anyways, I got an offer for you. It’s one I haven’t offered since last summer. It’s my Email Marketing Report.

If you have an email list of at least 2,000 names, and you would like to make more money from that email list, then this Report might be right for you.

My Email Marketing Report is not cheap. But it’s not shamelessly overpriced either.

That’s why there’s no discount, and no piece of bubblegum as bonus.

Even so, you may choose to take me up on this Report, because you see and decide that it can be valuable for you. If you’d like me to help you make that decision:

https://bejakovic.com/email-marketing-report/

Non-scientific advertising

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The copywriting conference is over.

I’m at the Gdansk airport, wandering around and looking for my gate. Surprise. I come across a glass display case with a taxidermied bear inside.

It’s not an eastern European way of entertaining passengers. Rather, it’s a message from the WWF about trafficking in rare animals and animal products.

Besides the whole taxidermied bear, the glass case contains a bear head, a cheetah pelt, a skinned python, several pairs of snake leather slippers, taxidermied alligators and iguanas, a bunch of coral, and a giant turtle shell.

Those are the souvenirs. Then there’s the charms, potions, and amulets.

Cobratoxan. Seahorse capsules. Little carved ivory Buddhas. Skin caviar, with extract of sturgeon eggs. Bear balsam, with real bear inside.

Was the copywriting conference worth attending?

I’m 100% glad I came. I’ll see how it pays off and when. One thing I do know:

Marketing is like magic. Words and formulas have real power. Money can appear out of nowhere. And none of it happens without belief.

It’s time for me to board my plane and head back home. I’ll be back tomorrow with another email. If you’d like to read that, you can sign up for my email newsletter here.

The fastest, but certainly not the newest, way to cash

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Day 3 of the copywriting conference.

​​You can’t make an omelette without cracking two to three eggs, and you can’t go to a copywriting conference without getting your brain scrambled with hundreds of different ideas, stories, pitches, open loops that never get closed, jokes, not-jokes, cliches, and important takeaways.

Let me pull it together for a moment and tell you about the fastest way to cash. It’s not the newest way to cash. In fact it’s not new at all. I’m sure you’ve heard about it. But maybe you need a reminder.

Yesterday, one of the speakers, Adam Urbanski, said the fastest path to cash, in his experience, is to sell what you know.

The day before, Barry Randall, who I wrote about in my email yesterday, said something similar.

Barry said that what he does is, learn something, keep it simple, and then sell it. On the other hand, what most other people do is learn something, complicate it, and then get stuck.

I’m not sure those are Barry’s exact words. In spite of 51 pages of notes so far, I didn’t write that bit down. I’ll have to seek him out today and confirm it.

Meanwhile, I have a deal for you:

Sign up to my email newsletter.

When you get my welcome email, hit reply and tell me what you have learned that you can sell. I genuinely want to know.

In return, I will reply to you and tell you a practical tip to make your presentation better if you ever do sell that knowledge you have in your head.

This tip is something that popped up in my head yesterday during Adam Urbanski’s presentation.

Adam’s presentation was excellent and very effective. But I believe with a small tweak it could be even more effective.

​​I won’t seek out Adam today and tell him that — nobody wants an unsolicited critique. But if you like, hit reply, tell me what you have learned that you can sell, and I will tell you what I have in mind.