Direct Marketing Archives - Page 4 of 73

Ancient A-list secrets to coming up with new hooks for old offers

March 24, 2026 by John Bejakovic

In my Daily Email House community, I have a thread titled, “What can you teach?” It’s a thread inviting people to share their bit of expertise, which we could turn into a training for the community or possibly even into a product.

A few days ago, a new member chimed in to say what he could teach:

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I can teach anyone to write stories that sell in less than 30 mins even if they’ve never written a story in their life before.

I did live workshops a few years before and taught this method to 35 people and they ALL wrote stories in less than 30 mins. Some even got clients.

I’d love to know what everyone thinks about such an offer and I’d really appreciate if you could offer some pointers.

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Here’s my pointer:

“Write stories that sell” is a promise that has been made a million and one times over the past few years, by a million and one people, myself among them.

That’s not to say that writing stories that sell is not a valuable skill.

But in order to sell it, at least to an audience that isn’t already in love with you, you’ll need to adapt it in some way so it sounds new.

In other words, if you’re selling some evergreen and familiar hammer, you need a new hook, a new way to package it up, a new way to make it sound different from the things people have already become deaf to.

How do you do that? Well lemme give you an example:

I have this course, Copy Riddles.

I have sold hundreds of copies of Copy Riddles in the past. But over the last couple years, I haven’t been promoting it too much.

There are different reasons for that:

Copy riddles is expensive ($999)… it’s evergreen (like I said, a bad thing for sales)… and on top of all that, I’ve lost interest in teaching copywriting stuff to would-be copywriters, and have moved to things like email marketing and offers to people who have stuff to sell.

BUT—

Copy Riddles remains filled with ancient wisdom from A-list copywriters.

This ancient wisdom includes dozens of secret techniques to repackaging existing, old-hat info, which gets ignored, inside shiny and sexy new giftboxes, which sell.

The reason why these secret techniques were developed is that copywriters typically have no control of the offer they are promoting (eg. they cannot control the stuff inside the giftbox).

That’s why these A-listers were forced to simply work with words and hooks, and to really do some persuasive wizardry (eg. to come up with more and more elaborate wrapping paper and decorative bows, in order to make the repackaged info appear irresistible).

And now, if you have an offer, or if you want to create an offer, you can benefit from the A-list copywriters’ wisdom, without being hampered by their copywriting limitations.

You can use these ancient A-list secrets to come up with incredible and yet irresistible new hooks for your existing (or planned) offer.

If necessary, you also have the leeway to actually adapt your offer, so it matches and pays off whatever exciting new hook the A-list secrets produced for you.

And the best part?

Since your aren’t just doing this as a copywriter working for a client, but as an offer owner who’s selling his or her own offer… YOU get to collect all the profit and reap all the benefit of repositioning your offer into something that the market wants right now.

When you think of it like that, then maybe the $997 investment in Copy Riddles doesn’t seem so impossibly high.

In any case, if you’re interested in finding out more about these ancient A-list secrets, and how you get get them, not just to hold in your arms, but to imprint in your brain and to have at your fingertips when you next need them, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Question

March 23, 2026 by John Bejakovic

Do you collect phone numbers on your order pages?

HYPE!!!

March 21, 2026 by John Bejakovic

Yesterday, I sent an email that I modeled on an old business opportunity ad. The results so far:

61 responses, many from people who are surprisingly qualified and serious about the offer.

My personal suspicion is that I got 2x-3x the response I would have gotten had I simply written yesterday’s email in my usual way, by sitting down and improvising and “doing my best.”

Dan Kennedy, in his Opportunity Concepts seminar, which I promoted a couple weeks ago, says that the 1st step of changing the positioning and presentation of your offer to counter the incredible amount of resistance in your prospect’s mind is simply to add HYPE!!!

Hype gets a bad rap.

Hypey ads are often held up as tasteless, manipulative, and outdated, in contrast to honest, authentic, and helpful marketing that many modern gurus try to peddle.

To that I just shrug and say, YOU DON’T GET IT.

Hype is at its core is not about putting in a ton of exclamation points or astonishing/mouthwatering/jaw-dropping adjectives.

Instead, hype at its core is simply copy that focuses as little as possible on you and your product, which ultimately nobody wants… and instead focuses as much as possible on your prospect and his sorry situation today… and beyond that, on the shiny, happy, rich outcome your prospect would gladly be living tomorrow.

Who knows.

Maybe one day I will put on a workshop called HYPE!!! Maybe it will be all about converting your existing honest, authentic, and ineffective copy to be more opportunity-minded, more prospect-oriented, and more response-getting, the way I did with my email yesterday.

Meanwhile, if you’re curious to see the old-timey ad I modeled in my email yesterday (the ad ran almost 100 years ago, and ran for years), you can check it out here:

https://www.skool.com/daily-email-house/theres-a-reason-why-old-ads-work

How an ex-copywriter makes $12k/month in a new kind of part-time job

March 20, 2026 by John Bejakovic

Makes more in a day than he used to in a week. Started in his spare time — without special qualifications or connections. Works just 15 hours a week. Profit from his experience — begin now — make big money — learn how from this Free Email.

I’ll be honest with you:

I just spent an hour+ reading old “business opportunity” and “new career” ads in Google Books scans of 20th-century magazines.

Reason is I have a legit new career opportunity to clue you in to, and I wanted to get inspiration for how to best tell you about it.

You marketers working your head off for poor pay — You freelancers worried about making ends meet — You copywriters who want to break away from an uncertain job — You ambitious service providers longing to get into a big-paying, uncrowded profession — Listen!

Yep, listen.

I can put you in touch with an ex-copywriter who switched to a new kind of part-time job.

It’s paying him more than he ever made before while working less than he used to.

It allows him to work at home, in his bathrobe, or to take his family for round-the world trips and check in to his job on his laptop.

It’s fascinating work, which he can feel good about.

He’s gained respect and authority.

He gets plenty of leisure time to do with what he wants.

Let This Free Email Tell You How

No up-and-doing man or woman who wants to do more, be more, and have more, can afford to close down this email without hitting reply.

It costs you nothing to learn all about this money-making opportunity. You take not the slightest risk. You cannot possibly lose anything. And you can gain much.

If you’re a copywriter or other breed of marketing freelancer… if you already have clients, but you find the career prospects unstable, or the work underpaid or uninteresting, or the clients too demanding… then hit reply to this email and express your interest in this mystery new career opportunity.

I can put you in touch with the ex-copywriter I am talking about here, so you can profit from his experience.

The simple act of replying to this email may bring you bigger success and greater financial independence than you perhaps think possible.

If you will never write emails for your business

March 19, 2026 by John Bejakovic

I talk a lot about the value of having an email list and writing to the folks on there personally, regularly.

And maybe I’ve convinced you, and maybe you’re out there, writing your little heart out, and getting praise for it, and making sales from your emails week after week.

If so, great! I’m proud of you. Keep at it, and keep profiting. No need to read this email any further.

But…

If you are plenty convinced about the value of regular email marketing… and in spite of it all, you just know for a fact that you will never ever write emails regularly, because you hate writing, or because you’re too busy, or because you don’t like to put yourself out there like that… then what?

Then I got a solution for you. Here’s the promise:

* Reap the benefits of a regular email newsletter — audience loyalty, sales, referrals, higher prices you can charge…

* Without the ecstasy, or, if you prefer, agony, of sitting down and writing yourself…

* Via emails written in a true, quirky, human voice that AI cannot imitate, particularly over the long term…

* Without paying an arm, two legs, and maybe an ear for a competent email copywriter who is actually better than AI.

If that sounds good to you, here’s the deal:

Former Survivor contestant, subsequent RV blogger, and eventual expert email marketer Liz Wilcox offers something called the Email Marketing Membership.

Each week, members of EMM get a fresh new newsletter template, written by Liz, which they can simply drop into their own biz and profit from — no writing needed.

Once upon a time, in the early days of my freelance copywriting career, I actually worked for a business that offers this service to realtors.

That business charges each realtor $725/month.

Later, after I stopped working as a freelance copywriter, I offered this as a DFY solution to a business owner on my list.

I told the business owner I would not be writing the weekly newsletters myself, but would outsource them to a copywriter.

I asked for $2k/month. The business owner agreed to the $2k/month without batting an eye because he saw the value.

But…

Liz doesn’t charge $2k/month for her Email Marketing Membership.

She doesn’t doesn’t charge $725/month either.

Liz charges just $108…

… PER YEAR!

That’s right. As you’re reading this, Liz has opened up the yearly subscription window for her EMM, and it’s just $108 for the full year.

Liz only does this once every Haley’s Comet. The rest of the time, you can sign up for EMM monthly. Monthly is fine, but there are two reasons you might want to sign up now, and for the whole year:

1. Liz regularly puts on and charges for extra trainings on topics like sales pages, course launches, and communities. People who sign up monthly for EMM have to pay for this extra trainings. People who sign up for the year get all these extra trainings free.

2. I’ll add in $108 Bejako Bux, which you can use towards any purchase of any of my offers in the future, if you sign up to Liz’s EMM for the full year, using the link below.

Normally, I add in info products as bonuses when I promote an affiliate offer like this. But I don’t have something that’s a fit here.

Fact is, if you want to profit from an email list but you don’t want to write, then Liz’s handwritten, human, relationship-building newsletter templates, plus her email marketing training have got you covered.

(Hence the $108 in Bejako Bux.)

Final point:

Why so cheap? WHY???

Simple. Liz has 4,000 paying members inside EMM. 4,000!

Liz is living the Kevin Kelly “1,000 true fans” dream, except she’s got not just 1,000 true fans, but 4,000 of them.

Get 4,000 people to send you $105 a year… and you’ve got a pretty good life. And Liz has a pretty good life.

If you want to profit from Liz’s unique business model and from your email list, without doing any of that horrible writing:

https://bejakovic.com/lizyearly

P.S. If you take me up on this offer, forward me your receipt from Liz and I’ll get you your Bejako doubloons, I mean, Bejako Bux.

Today: PIP Challenge kickoff

March 18, 2026 by John Bejakovic

This morning I chuckled as I prepared the SOP for my PIP Challenge kickoff call.

In case that’s too many acronyms for you, “PIP” in this case stands for Price Increase Promo.

Starting later today, and lasting the next 3 weeks, I’ll be running a challenge with a group of list and offer owners.

I’ll personally help them run a promo to increase the price of one of their offers in a way that 1) makes them look good to their audience and 2) maybe even makes them money.

An “SOP” I imagine you know. Just in case, it stands for “standard operating procedure,” a corporate term that basically means, “how to”.

Like I said, I chuckled today while preparing the PIP SOP. That’s because, along with dutiful sections like “Which product,” “Which price,” “Which occasion,” “Which emails to send,” I also included several examples of price increase promos I’ve run, like:

* The time a broke and unmotivated reader asked for a discount, and I used that as the occasion of finally raising the price of an underpriced offer

* The “MVE 2: Judgment Day” promo I used to re-launch (and increase the price of) my Most Valuable Email program

* The time the FTC asked a federal judge to hold “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli in contempt of court, and I did a quick (and extremely lucrative) price increase promo on the back of it

At this point, my PIP SOP is pretty simple. But I still found myself asking questions and articulating answers that I hadn’t thought of before.

I know I’ll be using this SOP myself for future price increase promos I run to my own list. And as I’m going through this Price Increase Challenge, and working directly with people on their live price increase promos, I will be filling it out with more examples, more detailed answers, more templates, etc.

The PIP SOP is only available to the folks who join me for the Price Increase Promo Challenge, a select group I’ve named the Email Promo Pioneers, Class 1.

My Price Increase Challenge kicks off later today, Wednesday, at 8pm CET/3pm EST/12 noon PST. In case you are interested, here are the details:

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Here’s my offer to you today:

* Magically boost the overall value of your business…

* Manifest an asset you can use to make easier future sales of all your offers…

* Raise your status in the eyes of your audience…

* Make yourself more interesting to affiliates…

… and maybe even make some money!

About that make money part, master copywriter Robert Collier once wrote that the most sales-making headline he ever found was:

“Before The Price Goes Up!”

That’s is precisely how I’m offering to help you achieve all the outcomes above.

Specifically, over the next 3 weeks, I’m offering to personally help you plan, run, and profit from a “Before The Price Goes Up!” promo to your email list.

Like Collier says, a price increase is a great way to make some sales.

But it has lots of other knock-on benefits, such as a boost in status… a higher-value asset that you can use to sell other offers more easily (via bonuses, or simple anchoring)… and creating something that affiliates might suddenly become interested in.

If you decide to join me over the next few weeks, I’ll help you overcome such insurmountable hurdles as:

* “But I don’t know which offer I should increase the price of! I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot or worse yet in the knee!”

* “But what will people think! How can I possibly increase the price in a way that doesn’t make me look stupid, greedy, or both? Surely there is no way to increase price in a way that makes me come out looking solid to my audience… right? Right???”

* “But what new price should I choose? It’s impossible to decide. The options are infinite…”

In case you didn’t pick up on it, I’m being a little bit sarcastic.

Yes, there are some questions you should ask yourself before running a price increase promo. But a promo like this is not tremendously complex, and there’s not all that much you need to know in advance.

Yes, I will help you make decisions about the questions above, and give you my advice and input and encouragement along the way. (I’ve run a bunch of price increase promos, some very successful, some less so.)

But that’s the smaller reason why you might want to join me now.

The bigger reason is simply to make sure you actually do this price increase now, instead of putting it off indefinitely… because you’re scared of making a mistake, or in the words of Joe Karbo, because you’re too busy making a living to make any money.

Speaking of money:

I’m calling this the Price Increase Challenge.

And I’m charging a sky-high, one-time fee, with an asterisk, to participate in this Price Increase Challenge:

$250*.

Two hundred and fifty dollars.

That’s a quarter of a thousand dollars.

A lot of money.

Yes, the usual arguments apply. If you have an email list and an underpriced offer, it will very likely be worth it to you to pay $250, and much more, to run a price increase promo now instead of in 6 months from now, or never. I listed all the reason why at the top.

But there’s also the asterisk.

The asterisk is there because I don’t really want your money.

What I really want is for you to run this price increase promo and to reap the benefits of it.

That’s why, if you join me for this challenge, and if you pay me $250 upfront, I will refund you the entire $250 if you actually run your price increase promo within 3 weeks of this Wednesday, when this challenge will kick off.

In other words… get my personal help and advice… get accountability… get the benefits of a price increase, including possibly making some money… and win all your money back. Recoup 100% of your capital, and make some nice interest too.

Oh, and you get the coveted title of Email Promo Pioneer, Class 1.

If you’d like to join me for this Price Increase Challenge, hit reply to this email, tell me you want in, and I’ll get you started.

How the hell are you supposed to make money on this?

March 17, 2026 by John Bejakovic

Yesterday, I announced my new Price Increase Promo Challenge:

* 3 weeks to run a price increase promo to your list, so you can make some sales, boost your status, and make selling in the future easier

* Get my personal help, advice, and encouragement as you plan, run, and profit from your promo

* $250 entry ticket, ALL OF WHICH I WILL REFUND YOU if you actually run the price increase promo within the 3 weeks of the challenge

To which I got a message from fellow marketer Nick “Ice Cold” Bandy, who wrote:

“How the hell are you supposed to make money on this?”

About that:

I recently listened to a presentation by Jeff Walker of Product Launch Formula fame.

(PLF, in case you don’t know, is the best-selling Internet marketing Course of all time, and has been responsible for probably a billion dollars+ in client results, as well as making Jeff some tens or maybe hundreds of millions of dollars.)

Says Jeff:

“Launch goals, that’s the first place I always start whenever someone comes to me to work with me individually or whenever I’m sitting down to do a launch. What do I want to get out of this? It’s very important to know what you’re after with your launch because you can actually fine-tune the various strategies to get exactly what you want.”

Hm, I thought. I’ve never really done that.

Sure, I’ve always known launches had knock-on benefits besides just making you money. Sometimes I looked forward to those extra benefits.

But for each launch I’ve done, sales have been my only direct goal, while any other benefits were only indirect and cloudy and unstated “would be nice” additions.

Jeff Walker is more of a strategic thinker than I am. In his presentation, he lays out 7 launch goals he has consciously gone after in the past:

1. Make money (nothing wrong with it)

2. Build your prospect list

3. Build your client list

4. Create additional products

5. Build JV relationships

6. Create social proof

7. Make an impact

I took Jeff’s lesson to heart and set goals for myself with this particular price increase promo beyond “make money” (I hope to make precisely zero dollars with this promo).

I will leave you to guess which goals those might be (I’ll tell you it’s three of the ones on the list above).

Meanwhile, my offer still stands.

The Price Increase Promo Challenge kicks off tomorrow.

If you’d like to join me and get my help, inspiration, and advice… if you want to run your own price increase promo, make some money, and achieve other goals like Jeff lays out above… and if you’re ok paying the high, high price of $250, all of which will be refunded to you if only you actually do the challenge honestly, then:

1. Hit reply

2. Tell me you are interested

3. Click “Send” (thanks to Nick Bandy for correcting my faulty and unclear CTA yesterday)

Announcing: Email Promo Pioneers, Class 1

March 16, 2026 by John Bejakovic