Direct Marketing

A splendid chance for notoriety that will never offer itself again

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Three years ago, I wrote a prescient email that started out so:

“Today, I want to share with you a marketing technique so powerful, so daring, so all-around incredible that I wish I had the circumstances and the courage to implement it myself right now.”

This powerful, daring, and all-around incredible marketing technique is something I found in a book about P.T. Barnum. Lemme tell you about it.

Barnum once promoted a Swedish opera singer, Jenny Lind, on her first tour of the U.S. He ran ads in newspapers to promote Lind, but not just that.

Barnum also — get ready for this — ran an auction for the very first Lind ticket to be sold.

But again, not just that.

Barnum went in private to see a certain hat maker, Genin, and told Genin to bid as much as needed to win.

Barnum then went to a Dr. Brandreth, a maker of patent medicines, and also told the good doctor to bid as much as needed.

“The higher the price,” Barnum told both men separately, “the greater renown it will give you all over the country within twenty-four hours.”

Genin listened. He kept bidding and ended up putting up the winning $225 bid for the first Lind ticket, about $8,662 in today’s money.

Within 24 hours, the name “Genin the hat maker” was known all over the country.

Ragged and beat up “real Genin hats” started being sold at a 46,000% markup.

Genin started selling 10,000 extra hats a year on the back of that initial $225 investment — and became a very rich man.

Dr. Brandreth, on the other hand, didn’t listen to Barnum’s advice.

Brandeth decided to cap his bidding at $200, and he lost the opportunity to win the first Lind ticket. He later said:

“I had better have paid $5,000 [over $192,000 in today’s money] than to have missed securing the first Jenny Lind ticket. Such a splendid chance for notoriety will never offer itself again.”

Three years ago, as I said, I didn’t have the courage or circumstances to implement Barnum’s powerful, daring, and all-around incredible auction idea.

Today I have the circumstances — my Daily Email House group, where I can run the auction. And as for courage, I have gathered that too, and will run my own first auction soon.

Ultimately, this auction is your opportunity to build a name for yourself, gain notoriety, and achieve status, all while building up your email list.

If you win the auction, I will use my own good name, standing, and authority with my list to hold you up like baby Simba and say “Behold!” while all the gazelles and zebras stare up in wonder and applaud.

But even before that happens, you will already have gotten your name into people’s minds.

“Who is this Genin the hat maker?” they will ask, except with your name except Genin’s.

Some people are sure to look you up and sign up for your list right away.

If you have a flair for showmanship and self-promotion, you will be able to capitalize immediately by making a big deal out of being the winning bidder.

But even if not, your name will simply become more familiar to people — including the many influential marketers and business owners who read these emails — so they become more responsive to you the next time hear of you.

Now lean in. Close. I wanna whisper something important to you:

If you’re looking to build a name for yourself, I advise you, in secret, one-to-one, just you and me here inside this email, to bid as much as it takes to win.

It will be a splendid chance to win renown for yourself that will never offer itself again.

You’re likely to profit many times over what you will bid to win. Of course, I’m even guaranteeing that you will make all your money back before I’m done promoting you.

More details on my auction soon.

Meanwhile, if you wanna secure your spot inside Daily Email House, where the auction will be happening:

https://bejakovic.com/house

Direct marketing explained in two simple steps

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Yesterday, I was on a call with a smart and very successful direct marketer. He explained his entire philosophy of direct marketing in two steps:

1. Get people to say YES, and then

2. Upsell them

(Of course, people are free to say no to the upsell. No hard feelings.)

This is a fractal that repeats over and over, throughout the direct marketing world. For example, it’s how I have run ads in other newsletters that paid for themselves on day 0:

1. Get people to say YES to a cool free offer in the ad and on the landing page, and then

2. Upsell them to a paid offer on the thank-you page

Of course, people are free to say no to the thank-you page offer. (Once again, no hard feelings, just a bit of me sticking voodoo pins into a little doll I use to represent my ideal customer avatar.)

The above is basically the model I’m gonna help you implement if you manage to win the bidding in the upcoming “I endorse YOU to my list” auction, which I will be running soon in my Daily Email House community.

The community is free to join… though if you do join, I’ll try to upsell you on participating in the auction.

Of course, no hard feelings if you say no to that.

(Starts muttering, and gets pins ready.)

Just kidding. Here’s where to join my FREE community, where the shared mission is, “Use your email list to pay for a house”:

https://bejakovic.com/house

“XXXXXXX will be the new webinars!”

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Yesterday, I ran a poll, both in my Daily Email House community and to my list, asking readers if they would bid $2 (two whole dollars) to have me endorse them to my list.

People voted.

After discounting those who voted for multiple options (most likely just email software clicking on links), I got the following fairly clean results:

24 people said they would bid $2

14 said they would bid $200

7 said they would bid $2,000

6 said they would bid whatever it takes to win

What will happen in reality? I have no idea. But I’m willing to give it a try, at the risk of making a fool of myself publicly and of burdening myself with big obligations that will take time and effort to pay off.

I’m willing to do this because I’m curious about the potential of AUCTIONS.

AUCTIONS (a word which happens to have 8 letters, the same as the number of X’s in my subject line today) is an invention by Travis Sago.

Well, maybe “invention” is a little strong. Let’s just say Travis adapted the traditional idea of an auction, and brought it into spaces where auctions were never even considered.

For example, Travis himself got started with auctions back in 2020, when he auctioned off 3 email templates (along with licensing rights and some bonuses).

The winning bid for that ended up being “$8,000 + $2,000 to a charity of Travis’s choice.”

(The winning bidder, by the way, was a certain Justin Goff, who used to be an influential email marketer.)

Travis has since been running more auctions, and encouraging others to run them as a fun and new way of selling. He’s even making the prediction that auctions will be the new webinars (there, I spelled it out completely, I hope you’re happy).

I didn’t understand that at first. How could an auction possibly be a replacement for a webinar?

After all, in an auction it seems there’s only one thing being sold to one bidder.

Of course, Travis is a clever guy, who gets a lot of use out of everything he’s got, including stuff that seems worthless to other people.

That’s why the winning bid is not really where the money is made in one of Travis’s auctions.

When I finally figured that out, the “auctions will be the new webinars” prediction made more sense. I could understand how some of Travis’s students were bringing a hundred thousand dollars, or even a quarter million, with a big and successful auction.

Based on my numbers above, I’m not expecting anything close to those results. But again, I’m willing to run my first auction and see where it could possibly go.

At best, I will make some money and deliver something of value to people who actually value it.

At worst, I will provide some entertainment for everyone participating or just observing.

If you wanna observe my first auction, or better yet, participate, it will be happening soon, inside my Daily Email House community. You can find that here:

https://bejakovic.com/house

Would you bid at least $2… to get me to ENDORSE you to my audience?

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A couple weeks ago, I sheepishly asked if you would bid at least $1 to have me promote you to my audience.

I got a goodly number of people saying YES.

But my ego craves approval and encouragement something fierce… and frankly my ego was not satisfied.

So I went away… locked myself in my laboratory… and experimented and researched and toiled until…

I CREATED IT!!!

V2: My new prototype auction offer.

The stakes are bigger this second time around.

And that’s why I’m asking if would bid, not just $1… not even $1.50… but at least $2 (two whole dollars) for the following:

#1. I will ENDORSE you to my audience

I have a unique level of credibility with my list, and more broadly, in the email marketing and copywriting space.

I have been emailing for years, and I’ve had readers stick with me for years… I don’t really hard-sell and I don’t ever sell out… I’m always looking to only promote things I feel good about because I believe they are genuinely valuable to my list.

As a consequence of these long-standing policies, I regularly turn away lots of people who would like me to endorse them or their offers.

But when it comes to you?

I will endorse you 100% to my audience.

In other words…

I will transfer my credibility to you, both so you can hit the ground running with my readers when they become your readers… and so in the future, you can go around and say, “I got endorsed by John Bejakovic therefore hire me/read me/buy from me.”

Maybe that sounds like a paradox? Or like I’m finally selling out?

After all, how can I endorse you congruently, without even knowing who you are or what you do?

Glad you asked:

#2. I will work with you to create the sexy and valuable offer I will promote in my newsletter

We will work together.

The goal here is both for me to get to know you, so I can figure out what your unique strengths are, and so I can credibly endorse you…

… and so we create something I will feel great about promoting to my list, and that my list will find both valuable and sexy.

Ideally, we can start with offers or content you currently have. But if that’s not an option, I will help you create something from scratch.

(I can even contribute some of my own content or offers, and give you rights to give that away.)

I will also work with you on the ad copy and the landing page copy.

You will get as much 1:1 with time me and even my hands-on help as needed (though as little as possible).

And then, optin bribe done…

#3. I will also work with you to come up with a thank-you page offer

This is an offer you can make to new subscribers on day 0, as soon as they sign up.

This is the secret to both making money immediately… and to turning free subscribers into first-time buyers, who are dramatically more likely to buy from you down the line.

(Once again, we will work together on both the offer and the copy.)

#3. I will then send a dedicated email to my list and create a post here in Daily Email House, to promote and endorse you and your optin bribe, and…

#4. I will GUARANTEE you will make 100% of your money back

If you don’t make 100% of your money back on day 0, with the first email and post I create to endorse you, I will keep promoting you… and endorsing you… and sending new subscribers to your list… for as long as it takes for you to make back 100% of your money.

I will also keep working with you to tweak the copy or offers (or come up with entirely new ones) if that seems to be the issue.

UNOFFICIALLY, my goal is to take the winning bid here, and have the winning bidder make 10x his or her investment, over the next year, as a result of this offer.

I honestly think it’s very doable, because an email list has tremendous value if you keep mailing it, and because first-time buyers are likely to buy future offers you create.

But also, I think 10x in the next year is very doable because of a couple…

BONUS IDEAS

#1. “First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin”

After you get my endorsement and my readers become your readers, I will help you take the same funnel and put it in front of other creator’s audiences.

I will give you valuable paid resources and, again, my personal help in finding, negotiating, and reducing the price of ads in other newsletters, so you can keep growing your list at breakeven or at a profit, regularly, month after month.

(And yes, you can approach these newsletter owners and tell them, “I already got John Bejakovic to endorse this offer… and his audience loved it.”)

#2. Membership inside my Monetization Mastermind

The Monetization Mastermind is a small, invite-only group I’ve set up for list owners, with the goal of forming JV partnerships and doing list swaps.

I won’t name names here, but the Monetization Mastermind features the who’s who of list owners in the email marketing, course creator, and copywriting worlds — about 50 of us in total.

(The fact these busy and influential folks are inside a community I organize goes back to my unique credibility in this corner of the Internet.)

This group is exclusive, invite-only, and highly vetted.

But once you will have my folks on your list as a result of me endorsing you… and a working offer funnel as a result of me working with you… you will belong inside the Monetization Mastermind, and you will be able to take the funnel we’ve created and use it (or tweak it slightly) to do list swaps with other successful list owners.

(Once again, the fact that you have been endorsed and promoted by me, and that you have an optin bribe that’s been proven to be interesting and valuable to readers will make this an easy and natural sell, unlike if you were simply to approach these same people out of the blue.)

#3. OTHER BONUSES???

As a final idea, I’m open to offering other bonuses based on ideas you throw at me.

Special status within my Daily Email House… an interview I do with you and post within either Daily Email House or Monetization Mastermind or both… a spot on a RECOMMENDED PARTNERS page on my site… a link to your optin bribe inside my book bonus flow… help with email copy to build up your status and standing further…

… what extra inducement would make this auction offer worthwhile or exciting or sexy for you?

Lemme know and if my liver can handle it, I will make it happen.

AND NOW…

I’ve done my research when crafting this V2. That’s how I know:

Fellow email marketer Daniel Throssell says he “literally built his entire business off” an ad he ran to Ben Settle’s list.

(That was a time that Ben was selling one of three spots in his newsletter for $500… without any kind of personal help and certainly without any endorsement.)

Daniel claims he got a 10x return on his ad spend, and I can well believe that’s an understatement if you could really see what those newsletter subscribers have paid Daniel over the years.

AT THE SAME TIME:

Another would-be list owner who ran an ad in Ben Settle’s newsletter (same as Daniel) got NO CLIENTS and didn’t make his money back. This guy wrote:

“I bet if I had offers in place and knew what I was doing that I would’ve made that money back in one sale.”

As part of this V2 offer, I’m offering help with your optin bribe and the rest of your funnel.

In my research, I’ve seen somebody offering a “newsletter ad” funnel like this for $5k.

Yeah, I’m also offering that.

But I am also offering… not just to put your ad and your list in front of my audience… not just to help you with the offers and the funnel to monetize that ad… but I’m putting my name and endorsement on the line for you, so you benefit from the credibility I’ve built up over the years.

It’s very very rare to get somebody to go full-in and endorse you to their list.

The few times it’s happened as an offer, made by credible people with real standing in their industries, it ranged all the way up to $34,000 on the high end.

And in all the cases I have found audience owners offering an endorsement, there was NO guarantee that you will make your money back.

And yet, a 100% guarantee is something I am offering with this new and improved V2.

So with all that said?

Would you bid $2 for all this — for my help, audience, endorsement, and personal guarantee?

Vote away below… and your votes will determine if this auction happens… or if I skulk back to my lab because I laid an egg.

​Me likey, I’d bid $2!​

​Good golly, I’d bid at least $200!​

​I play big! I’d bid at least $2,000!​

​I ain’t playin’! I’d bid whatever it takes to WIN!​

“Coaching crickets” so loud you cannot hear the quiet “maybe”

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Before bed this past week, I’ve been reading a book about direct marketing. A couple nights ago, I read the following:

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You need to identify all the categories of solutions available to your prospect. Make a list of their pros and cons. Your job is then to close all the doors to buying other solutions by identifying all the ways your solution is better than all those other solutions.

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“WOW,” I said out loud. “This is GREAT advice! I should totally do this with my newsletter and with the offers I make!”

Then I shrank back a bit, and looked around my bedroom to make sure nobody had heard me.

I realized what I’d read is perfectly normal, commonplace advice about any kind of selling.

In fact, back when I used to write lots of advertorials and sales pages for clients, this kind of “dismissing alternatives” was a major part of my research process, which took probably 60% of the entire time I devoted to any copy project.

And yet…

A different part of the brain is involved when you’re solving a problem for other people than when you’re solving a problem for yourself. At least that’s how I explain to myself why I never think to apply things I knew to do so well for clients to my own newsletter and my own offers.

I once heard marketer Sean D’Souza say:

“If you wanna solve your problems, go and solve somebody else’s problems.”

That’s one reason why I recently started offering 1:1 coaching.

Of course, there are other good reasons too.

For one, doing 1:1 coaching gets me talking to the most motivated and proactive people in my audience, which makes me feel much better about what I’m doing in the world, and the impact my ideas and work can have.

For two, 1:1 coaching is market research. It exposes me to my audience’s problems, objections, and desires in a way that I never woulda thought up.

For three is that thing Sean D’Souza says. I’ve realized that my best advice to others is really advice I myself should be following as well, but that, for mysterious neurological reasons, I could never give to myself directly.

I just gave you three good reasons why you too should consider offering coaching, if you’re not doing it already.

Only one problem:

Like I wrote a couple days ago, “coaching” is actually a terrible offer.

The only way “coaching” sells is if you have built so much status or bond with your audience that they are basically buying YOU, in spite of that vague and unattractive “coaching” offer you made.

(That’s why I can kinda sorta get away with it.)

But what if you don’t have the same level of status and bond with your list yet?

From what I’ve heard among people on my list and inside Daily Email House, it’s a real problem. As one House member put it:

“I have thrown coaching to my list before, but the crickets were so loud I couldn’t hear the quiet ‘maybe.'”

A couple days ago, I talked about a new and 100% different offer you can make instead of “coaching.”

It’s a transmutation of “coaching” into something else, which sells better, is easier to deliver, and still gets you all the benefits I listed above.

Could this be something you’re interested in?

If so, hit reply and let me know.

Yes, I am selling something here ultimately. And if you hit reply and express the smallest bit of interest, my crack team of D2D salesmen will immediately descend on your front lawn, set up camp, and start a round-the-clock door knocking campaign…

No, none of that.

If you do reply and express interest, I will simply reply back, in order to find out a bit more about you, so I can see if this “alternative to coaching” could be useful to you.

If I think it can be, I will give you the full details.

If you like the sound of it, you can take me up on what I’m selling.

If it’s not a fit for any reason, you can tell me no. You won’t hurt my feelings, or sour this relationship we’ve got going on.

Does that sounds like something you can bear?

Then ask yourself whether a different, easier-to-sell offer instead of coaching could be valuable to you. If it could, hit reply and tell me so.

I promoted Dan Kennedy’s $0.99 audiobook but when the results rolled in!…

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This past Wednesday, I was moving my stuff from my old apartment, in the peripheral “Williamsburg of Barcelona,” to my new apartment, in the very heart of Barcelona.

It’s stressful to move, even though I have little stuff.

I found some movers on the Spanish version of Craigslist. They showed up unprepared, possibly drunk, and clearly determined to take as much advantage as they could of the fact they were being paid per hour, rather than per completed job.

It took 3 and 1/2 hours for them to move a few plants and a few trashbags’ worth of stuff 3 miles across town.

My day was eaten up with preparing for this move… with witnessing the move in all its glacial fury… and then with recovering from the move ie. hiding the trashbags of stuff in places around my new apartment where I cannot see them and don’t have to think about them for a while.

All that’s to say, on Wednesday I really had no time or brain power to write my daily email.

So I took post from my Daily Email House community, in which House member Anthony La Tour shared how it’s now possible to get get several super valuable, multi-thousand dollar Dan Kennedy seminars for the cost of an Audible audiobook, and I basically sent that out as my email.

Results:

$306 in Audible bounties so far, plus about a dozen readers writing in to say “thank you” for cluing them into this offer.

Conclusions:

#1 Audible can be a legit “in-between” offer to promote

The regular Amazon affiliate program pays peanuts, but the bounties when somebody signs up for Audible are generous — $10 for a $0.99 trial, whether the customer sticks or not.

When you add it all up, and add up some other bounties Amazon is giving to affiliates, you get the $306 I made with my email on Wednesday.

$306 is not “pay for a house” money.

But I wasn’t in the middle of promoting anything anyhow. $306 is a decent return for spending about 15 mins to “write” and schedule an email in the middle of moving apartments.

Of course, in order for this to be a repeatable thing, it would take other unique audiobook deals — either something not available in other formats, or only available for drastically more in other formats, like the Dan Kennedy thing.

#2. There’s great value in telling people something new

On Wednesday, I had no idea whether talking about this Audible deal would make me any money.

I knew it was still a good thing to share this deal in my email.

Because much more than the direct money from the sales you might make, there’s value in telling people something new.

Genuine news hooks readers on opening your emails in the future as well, and at least checking out you future offers also. After all, they might miss out! And few new things are as interesting as a legit new deal on something people already want.

#3. “How can they afford this???”

Audible pays out $10 bounties for somebody signing up for a $0.99 trial.

That connected in my mind to Internet Marketer Igor Kheifets’s pretty irresistible offer to affiliates:

Igor is currently paying out a $30 commission for each affiliate sale of his $3.99 book.

How can Amazon (and Igor) afford to do this?

They can afford to do it because:

1. They know their numbers ie. what a new customer in this funnel is worth to them, and

2. They have high-enough numbers, because they make new customers all kinds of additional offers in the form of order bumps, upsells, downsells, and cross-sells.

And that’s just in that one funnel.

After the customer buys, Amazon and (Igor) own the customer relationship. They can then simply make new backend offers from now till doomsday. As Igor wrote to me as I was promoting his book, “I only need one backend sale to cover everything.”

I’ve long been guilty of not having either of the 2 items above.

#1 (not knowing what a new customer in a funnel is worth to me) is fairly easy and quick to fix.

#2 (not having two dozen other offers to make in one funnel) is less so.

But I’m working on both of them. And I’m sharing what I’m learning, and I’m trying to take some people along for the ride. If you wanna go for that ride as well:

https://bejakovic.com/house

How list owners can get off social media for good

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Yesterday I wrote about a new 1:1 coaching program I am offering. I got an “indicator of interest” about that from an online business owner who already has a sizeable list and business.

When I asked him what even got him interested in this offer, he replied:

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What got me interested was simply learning from you directly. I’ve always admired the life you live, the things you’re able to do, and how you’ve managed to do it all while not slaving to social media.

I’ve been trying to find ways to get off social media for good, but yet to crack the code.

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In the words of Russell Conwell, founder of Temple University and originator of the “Acres of Diamonds” story, “I am astonished that so many people should care to hear this story over again.”

You’ve probably heard “Acres of Diamonds” already in some form. In three bare-bones acts:

1. Guy leaves his farm in a fruitless search for diamonds.

2. Guy gets increasingly poor and frantic as the years pass, and finally decides to end it all by drowning himself in the sea, off the coast off Barcelona (no joke, that’s the original story, look it up).

3. Meanwhile, back home, diamonds are discovered all throughout his farm, buried under an inch or two of sand and soil.

The moral of that story, at least for me, is “get more out of what you’ve already got.”

If you’ve got an email list, that translates to getting more out of your existing list eg. (much) more monetization.

Monetization makes it so you’re not dependent on constantly getting new leads in, so you can get off social media for good, if you feel like you’re slaving away there.

Monetization also makes it so you have much more choice about where and how you source your leads if you do want to grow your list.

If a new reader is worth a lotta money for you — via more monetization — then you stop being dependent on sources of free leads like social media. You can instead grow your list by reaching out to the best sources of leads (in my experience, other list owners) and making them outrageous deals that are too good for them to refuse.

As for the how-to specifics and details of more monetization, that will depend on what you do, what your niche is, what your goals are, and where personal no-go lines lie.

If you want my help and years of experience to help you with that:

I’ve got this new 1:1 coaching program, which runs for a year.

This coaching program is reasonably low-cost, because accountability and whip-cracking are not a part of it.

In order for me to be useful to you at all with this coaching program, I need to see you have some runway already.

In case you’re interested, hit reply and tell me a bit about your situation with your list.

Specifically, I’m interested in things like how many people you have on your list… how many new people you’re getting in an average week… what kinds of offers you’ve made so far… and how that’s gone for you.

The “magazine model” for your paid membership or continuity offer

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A couple days ago marked the 1-year anniversary that my Daily Email Habit service has been going out, day after day after day, to members all around the world.

Following that announcement, a new subscriber to Daily Email Habit wrote in and asked:

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Wow. Happy Bday to your DEH!

I am curious to see the first seven. Any chance to send them to me?

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My response was some icy staring across the Internet, a bit of finger tapping on my desk, followed finally by a cold hard NO.

Like I’ve been telling people since I launched Daily Email Habit:

I don’t send out previous puzzles to new subscribers. The idea is Daily Email Habit works like a magazine subscription — you get the issues that go out from the time you subscribed, and not before. It’s a way to encourage people to sign up now rather than later.

After hearing my cold hard no, the DEH subscriber above replied to say:

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I know. I was just curious to see how it started. I respect your answer. It sounds fair and smart.

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I’m a-telling you this because this week, I launched a new 1:1 coaching program.

On Tuesday, I got on the first call with one of the coaching clients who already signed up. Let’s call her Ms. X.

Ms. X runs a paid membership and wants to increase the number of paying subscribers and reduce churn.

But like lots of other people who run memberships, she has so far been promising new subscribers access to everything inside her membership, including all the stuff that happened before they subscribed.

But what’s the incentive to join today… when joining tomorrow will give you everything you get if you join today, plus some more stuff… plus you get to hold on to your money for an extra 24 hours?

Not much incentive.

Fortunately, Ms. X already came to that conclusion before she even got on this coaching call with me.

At this point, her bottleneck is technical. Her membership software makes it hard to restrict/allow access to different members like this.

My Yoda-like suggestion was, “Many simple option you fail to see.”

I suggested some low-tech ways to deliver content that’s only available to current members. Ways that make it easy to test out this idea for impact. If this magazine model makes a difference, as it most likely will, then Ms. X can worry about the long-term tech later.

A magazine model is something to think about if you too are running or are thinking of launching a paid membership, or really any kind of continuity offer.

Not only will treating your membership like a magazine give people a legit reason to sign up today rather than tomorrow… but it will give them a reason to stay signed up instead of churning (thinking they can always come back later and get everything they missed in the meantime)…

… and if your subscribers are anything like my subscribers, when you introduce and stick to this “magazine” rule, you might hear them say, “I respect your answer. It sounds fair and smart.”

In other news, I have already signed up a few coaching students since launching this coaching program a few days ago. I am also looking for a few more.

The coaching I’m offering is specifically about list monetization, or as I say, about using your email list to pay for a house.

The coaching is 1:1, and runs for a year.

It’s also reasonably low-cost, because accountability and whip-cracking are not a part of it.

In order for me to be useful to you at all with this coaching program, I need to see you have some runway already.

In case you’re interested, hit reply and tell me a bit about your situation with your list.

Specifically, I’m interested in things like how many people you have on your list… how many new people you’re getting in an average week… what kinds of offers you’ve made so far… and how that’s gone for you.

3 conclusions from the Black Friday Bundle

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Yesterday concluded the magnificent and possibly final Black Friday Bundle.

In case you weren’t following along, there was a bundle of courses for sale by 11 copywriters and marketers, supposedly masters of persuasion and selling, myself included.

The bundle was capped at 349 copies (because scarcity, and because that’s what the last such bundle sold). But if you go to the finalized sales page right now, you will see…

“349 292 seats remaining”

… and you will hear a few lonesome crickets chirping, and a melancholy wind blowing through the trees.

Clearly, the bundle under-performed. What done it? And what does it mean for me, or you, if you want to do something like this in the future?

After every promo, I like to sit down and make a list of conclusions. I did so today. Here are 3 big ones:

#1. “Only two ways to make money…”

My friend Sam, who reads these emails, yesterday sent me a quote by Jim Barksdale, former CEO of Netscape. Says Barksdale:

“There are only two ways I know of to make money. You can bundle, or you can unbundle.”

Whether it’s time to bundle or unbundle will depend, as all other things in business do, on where the market is, and what they’ve grown to expect.

“Bundle a buncha random copywriting courses at a discount” worked great at the start of this decade, during the corona and post-corona surge in interest for online side hustles or business opportunities, back when there were fewer copywriting courses and course creators on the scene than today.

Today, that basic approach is clearly no longer working.

Of course, bundles can still work.

I wrote just last week how I happily spent $495 on a bundle of courses. And earlier this year, a bunch of bundled trainings on AI in copywriting sold those now-impossible-seeming 349 copies.

In other words, a copywriting or marketing bundle can still work today if it has either 1) an exciting concept (the AI thing from earlier this year) or 2) a convincing reason why (eg. a clearance bundle due to the business shutting down, like that bundle I happily bought last week, though that was not about copywriting).

This Black Friday Bundle didn’t have either an exciting concept nor a convincing reason why, and given the fact that copywriting is no longer HOT, the bundle did as it did. And yet, my conclusion is…

#2. I should participate in more bundles

In spite of the milquetoast performance of this bundle, it was still a good deal for me.

I made a bit of money promoting the bundle directly. Not enough to pay for a house, but also not terrible for four emails and no obligations to deliver anything after the promo.

But much more important, I got 50+ new subscribers, most of those buyers of a $299 offer, and a few $598 buyers (who got both the front end and upsell).

At least some of those people are likely to spend thousands of dollars with me down the line.

That’s why, even though I recently wrote that promos featuring a bunch of affiliates make no sense for me to participate in, I’ve concluded I should do more of these bundles. The new subscribers and new buyers on my list make it worthwhile.

That said…

#3. I should have had an immediate offer for new buyers

I read this in a book before bed last night:

“Every touch point your prospect or customer has with your business should be monetized. Every page your customer lands on, every response to a support ticket, every action a prospect or customer takes (or doesn’t take) must be monetized. If not, you’re hemorrhaging money and it’s only a matter of time before you bleed out and die.”

I felt a little faint after I read this.

The fact is, I should have had a special offer for people as soon as they sign up, and a second offer after that, in the welcome email in which I told them they are in for Daily Email Habit, or in the delivery of the offer itself.

I should have, but I didn’t, and I still don’t.

The fact is, I am launching new offers, but it’s largely happening inside my Daily Email House community, and even there, behind the scenes.

Daily Email house is my free community where the mission is, “Use your email list to pay for a house.”

(Much more doable than you might think, since the monthly mortgage or rent payment is around $3k on average).

If you’d like to get inside this community, the front door is at the link below. But beware, because once you’re inside, one day, when you least expect it, I might make you an offer, one which you will be free to accept or reject.

If that doesn’t turn you off:

https://bejakovic.com/house

Sex and copywriting?

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I got a question or two from a reader yesterday:

===

I am looking to help people have a better sex life! I don’t have as much experience helping people with this issue as I would like. Curious if this copyrighting work will be useful for me due to the sex topic nature?

===

I wasn’t 100% sure what this reader was asking — it sounded like there were two questions there:

QUESTION 1: “Is copywriting relevant if you sell ‘teach you a better sex’?”

The stock answer is that the brain is the biggest sex organ in the human body.

If you wanna take control of the brain, whether of your partner or your coaching client, then sweet, seductive words, including written words, are the way to do it.

And that’s why:

Back when I had copywriting clients, I actually wrote a good deal of copy for businesses in the sex and relationships niche on ClickBank, including sexy daily emails and sexy sales letters.

I also know of a coach on my list who has a high-ticket coaching program to make women’s sex lives better. She writes sexy daily emails.

I also know a coach on my list who has a high-ticket coaching program to make men’s sex lives better. The last I heard, he was also writing sexy daily emails, and was spending a lot of time fussing over his sexy Facebook ad copy and his sexy sales page copy.

So sex and copywriting?

Yes, sex and copywriting.

QUESTION 2. “What if I’m a coach but I don’t have a lot of experience?”

In that case, my best advice is to make a truly irresistible offer to prospects. Specifically, I’m thinking of an offer I will cleverly code name “Truly Irresistible Coaching Offer.”

The Truly Irresistible Coaching Offer is so irresistible it works even if you have little experience. The deal is simply too good for people to pass up, even if they aren’t 100% sold on you yet.

The Truly Irresistible Coaching Offer has worked to make sales for thousands of coaches, even those with little experience or credibility, across niches ranging across spiritual, business, relationships, and health. (Maybe even sex???)

But the real benefits of the Truly Irresistible Coaching Offer are:

1) The nice and quick income it provides, which translates good money even for an established coach,

2) An opportunity to upsell people into still nicer income,

3) Rapport and bonding and work with your clients and prospects, which in time overcomes that sticky problem of “I don’t have that much experience.”

This probably sounds fuzzy to you, and it is, because I don’t want to give away too much. I’m teasing this Truly Irresistible Coaching Offer, as part of my ongoing promotion of the Black Friday Bundle.

I wrote about that bundle yesterday.

11 offer creators, including moi, are bundling their offers, totaling $13 million in value (approximately), but selling for only $299.

I figure the real benefit of such a bundle is the thrill of buying a bunch of stuff, which has established real-world value, at a steep discount.

And since I figure that thrill of buying at a discount is the real benefit, rather than piling on free bonuses, which give no satisfaction, I am giving you four opportunities to buy more stuff, with established real world value, at a thrilling discount.

Yesterday’s opportunity:

1. “$25 Classified Ads.” A behind-closed doors opportunity to get in front of about 20,000 relevant prospects… advertise and test out your offers… get clients and partners… and grow your list… for what works out to $25 a pop.

Today’s opportunity:

2. Truly Irresistible Coaching Offer. A course that lays out how to make the Truly Irresistible Coaching Offer I teased above.

This course costs $997. That might not sound like any kind of a bargain, but if you consider that this Truly Irresistible Coaching Offer you make itself sells for $997, and is truly irresistible, then even one client, and this course will pay for itself.

Two clients, you will double your money.

Three clients, you will triple your money.

Four clients, I could keep going, but I suspect you see the pattern. And the pattern is that this is basically buying money at a discount.

Tomorrow and Sunday:

3 + 4. I will have more great deals to tease you with.

Of course, if you buy today, I will also tell you the other deals as I tease them out to the rest of my list.

In any case, if you wanna buy the Black Friday Bundle and get a great deal, and then have the opportunity to buy more stuff and get even more great deals:

https://bejakovic.com/greatdeals