Direct Marketing

Having trouble selling courses?

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Last August, a well-known course creator in the copywriting and email marketing space sent me a message that said, in part:

===

Lately it feels like there’s a secret “Thou Shalt Not Buy From [dude’s name]” commandment that’s been floating around and I’m not sure how to fix it 😅

(Kidding, sort of. It’s just that course sales have been waaaaaaaay down)

They dropped off big around March. There was piracy, which certainly didn’t help, but I mostly think it was my audience getting crushed by the robots.

They got scared and stopped buying, even when I offered exactly what they said they wanted.

===

I have heard the same message since, from a few other list owners I know. Some have seen gradual declines in course sales. Others have seen things drop off a cliff over past 2-3 months.

Has selling courses become a a problem for you?

Were you able to sell courses before… and now it feels like there’s a secret fatwa on you, prohibiting people in your market from giving you money?

If so, hit reply and tell me about it. Think of me like your therapist or your father confessor.

I’ll listen, without judgment.

And if you like, I will also share with you a bit of behind-the-scenes of a second dude I know personally, somebody who is selling tons of courses right now, more so than ever, behind the scenes, quietly, without any fanfare, and what his secret is, in his own words.

Want the behind-the-scenes of the auctions I will be running?

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Over the past week, I’ve gotten on “coffee dates” with 7 possible auction partners. This is following a couple emails I sent out to my list 10 days ago, and two posts I made in two communities I’m in.

Among these possible auction partners are:

* A yoga teacher with a 15k email list, 500k Instagram followers, and 1-1 mentorships that reach into $2k/month range

* A copywriting course creator I’ve looked up to ever since I got started with my email list back in 2018

* A marketer with a Skool group of about 5k and a suite of offers he has sold successfully and now wants to auction off licensing rights to

* Several folks who help coaches get more business, and who have communities and lists made of thousands of coaches

* A dude who has a list of 99k souls, mostly buyers, and a $10k offer, I will say no more…

With all 7 of these possible auction partners, things are currently moving forward.

On top of that, there are auctions I myself will be running with my own audience and with my own offers.

On top of that top, there are auctions I want to run in partnership with other people who have offers or expertise, and putting in front of my own group, or new groups I spin up.

And now, because I don’t have enough things going on in my life, and enough obligations to deliver on, I was wondering…

Would you want the behind-the-scenes of the auctions I will be running?

I don’t know which of the auctions I’m working on will turn into reality, and which might die in the pre-auction phase.

But I figure out of my current 7 auction partners… plus 2-3 auction ideas for my own auctions… plus a few offers from other people thinking to auction to my groups…

… at least some, maybe half, will come to reality and produce real results, data, and insights.

And that’s just over the next few weeks.

I keep seeking out auction partners both via paid and organic, warm and cold channels.

I also have an arrangement to get possible auction partners referred to me, from somebody who has the ear of many community owners.

Interest in auctions has already been sizeable following my own $31k auction back in December. I figure after a few more successful auctions, interest will be even sizeabler.

All that’s to say, I think I will have plenty of behind-the-scenes to share over the coming weeks, months, and possibly years.

Here’s what I’m offering to make available for ALL the auctions I will run, from here to eternity:

– real numbers (sales and dollar amounts) about how the auction did, both in public and behind the scenes

– details of what the auction offer was, and what offers were made to people who bid but didn’t win (an auction is pretty much an exercise in devising a good offer, and so this will be education in offer-making in real time, with numbers to back it up)

– my “day after” conclusions following each auction, which I write with myself and share with nobody else (some good, some bad)

– my auction-partner-getting strategies, plus the results they’re producing (follow them yourself if you want auction partners too)

– my “Auction Systems” doc — my A-B-C doc for how to run an auction. So far, it’s pretty basic, but it will be updated and evolving based on future auctions I will run, including templates, copy, offer stack skeletons etc. Basically, I’m looking to make this an SOP for how to run an auction, or as close as I can get to it.

For transparency’s sake, and to reassure any of my potential auction partners who might be reading this:

I will anonymize or scrub the names of my auction partners, their businesses, and identifying offer details.

The point is not to expose internal stuff from people’s businesses, at least without their explicit consent.

The point is to give you behind-the-scenes of the auctions I’m running, plus what’s working, and what’s not.

Does that kill it for you?

If yes, that’s too bad.

If not, then read on, because I’m also thinking to offer some bonuses:

* Ride along with me on one of the auctions I will be running, either for myself or for a partner, so you can learn how to run an auction + get a 25% cut of what I will make

* Get on my shortlist for people I refer auction partners to

I realize I’m really getting into the territory of selling air here. But in my current optimism about auctions, I figure that some of the current one-time auction partners I have shaping up will become ongoing auction partners.

And with all the hustling I’m doing to get more partners, I figure will eventually get to a place where I have more possible partners than I can work with myself. If that happens, you can be the person I reach out to first for help.

* (Experimental and possibly deadly) An invite-only WhatsApp group where I share real-time auction results, complications, and curiosities, and where members can chime in both with help and with hooting

I’m foolishly enthusiastic about this idea of giving you a peek behind the scenes. But then again, I’m foolishly enthusiastic about a lot of things.

Sometimes my enthusiasm is proven right. Often it’s not.

So before I put in an ounce more energy or a minute more of time to create this, you gotta tell me:

Is this something you want?

Or since I’m so gung ho on auctions… would you bid $1 for the behind-the-scenes of the auctions I will be running?

Vote away below, and your vote will determine what happens here:

​Yes, I’d bid $1 ​

​Yes, I’d bid $100​

​Yes, I’d bid $1,000,000, my house, my car, and possibly my spouse for this​

​No, and I wish you’d stop trying to ram auctions down my throat​

Readers respond about direct mail

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Yesterday, I wrote about direct mail, and how not dead it is, and in fact how savvy business owners, who grew up online, are now rediscovering it.

I asked for the experiences of readers related to direct mail. I got ’em. Here are a few particularly relevant and current ones…

#1. From an in-house copywriter at a big supplement brand and alternative health publisher:

“One of my sales letters for [client] is going to direct mail soon. Excited to see how it performs.”

#2. From the chief copywriter at a health and beauty brand:

“We’ve been sending direct mail at [client]! It’s not the classic plain text letter format, but postcard style cart/checkout abandonment campaigns with some short copy + a discount. Not sure what the ROI is but I imagine it’s not bad since we’ve been doing it for a while. ”

#3. From a fundraising expert:

“I love direct mail. I’ve been doing it for 17 years for clients but in the nonprofit space. It works really well. I made over $10MM with mostly direct mail. From a very small warm list of donors.”

#4. From a fractional CMO:

“Current client spends $200k per month on direct mail. Cold, B2C.”

#5. From the owner of a guitar school:

“I’ve basically built my whole school around it and made ~200k€ with direct mail. It’s really profitable, but a bit slow.”

#6. From an expert in retention marketing for 8-figure ecom brands:

“100%. That’s a huge part of ecomm. I’ve run many campaigns and automations with direct mail. I also have direct connections in the biggest direct mail platforms.”

My point for you today is the same as yesterday.

Direct mail has gone underground. But it is something to consider unearthing again if you have a business, so you can make sales to the 80% of your email list that doesn’t open your emails, or to the 99% of your audience that never sees your messages on social.

Direct mail is also something to consider doing behind the scenes if you partner with businesses and take a cut, or if you take on clients straight out, as a way to distinguish yourself from the sea of copywriters and marketers offering same-old services and producing same-old results.

That’s really all I have for you today.

Except, maybe you’d like to buy something from me? For just $5?

If you haven’t read it yet, you might like my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

Out of the A-list copywriters I profile in that book, the majority cut their chops on direct mail.

Their stories and commandments can be relevant to you if you decide to integrate this new-again medium of selling into your toolbox. If you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Direct mail interest rising

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A bit of behind-the-scenes of my newsletter:

Last Wednesday, a guy signed up to my email list.

As they always do, my minions went to work, figuring out who this guy is.

Turns out he has an interesting business and a book I could relate to. I sent him a 1-1 email to connect more personally.

He replied.

We got into a bit of an email conversation about what we’re each working on. We got on the topic of auctions, which I’m offering to run for people who have offers and an audience.

It turns out this guy has an email list of 99,000 living souls, mostly buyers, and a proven $10k offer he has been selling to that list.

He was interested in the idea of having me run an auction with his audience and offer.

He sent me a Loom with his questions about auction stuff. And at the end of it, he added:

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I’m wondering if you would be open to running this as a direct mail campaign as well.

Cause I’ve got 99,000 people on the list and they’re hit with emails, but direct mail is something I haven’t done yet to them.

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My eyes lit up. Direct mail is a separate topic from auctions, but it’s one I’m very, very interested in.

I tend to glamorize direct mail because its golden days happened before I came onto the scene.

All the legends of the direct response biz, from Halbert to Bencivenga to Schwartz to Caples to Collier, worked in direct mail, honed their chops on direct mail, and praised direct mail as the most reliable, most profitable, most practical medium of salesmanship multiplied.

“Come on Bejako,” I hear you say, “that was centuries ago, back in the time of Margaret Thatcher and Bill Shakespeare. Ancient history!”

No, not really. The fact is, while direct marketing definitely moved online over the past 20 years, direct mail never went away.

Some businesses continued to rely on it…

… and now, like my new reader’s comment shows, interest in direct mail is bubbling up again, among savvy business owners who might never have considered direct mail 10 years ago.

Interest in direct mail is not bubbling up because these business owners glamorize direct mail the way I do.

It’s bubbling up because direct mail today is a great investment. How great? I’ve heard one smart marketer say that for every $100 he spends on direct mail, to a highly targeted list of buyers, with a proven high-ticket offer… he makes 3 grand in return.

Those are the kinds of numbers that should make your furry ears perk up with interest.

I’m putting this idea out there so you start seeing mention of direct mail, and maybe get curious about this opportunity.

I’m also doing it as an information gathering mission.

Have you done direct mail campaigns in your own biz? Have you done direct direct mail for a client? Or do you have interest in having direct mail campaigns run for you… or learning how to do them for others?

What’s the name of your highest LTV customer?

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I’m a bit strapped for time today, dealing with the Wrath of God in the form of another family crisis.

As a result, it’s late in the day — almost 10pm my time — and I still haven’t written my daily email.

So let me send out an email I have been meaning to send out for a while:

Who is your highest LTV customer?

I’m not asking for a psychological profile or demographic description.

I’m asking for a specific name.

You don’t have to tell me.

But you should know it yourself.

If you do know, reach out to that person today.

(I did it myself, just this morning.)

Start a conversation.

Find out what they’ve been up to lately.

Ideally, get them on a call and just listen.

I promise:

You will be enlightened. You will come out of it with new offer ideas. You will feel better about what you do (surprisingly important, particularly if you sell something vaporous like I do, magic spells that make money appear out of thin air).

And what if you don’t know the name of your highest LTV customer?

Then find out.

In case you use ThriveCart, like I do, but you don’t know the name of your highest LTV customer, I can help you out.

Reply to this email, and I’ll send you a Google Sheets spreadsheet you can clone and drop your ThriveCart transactions in, which will calculate per-customer LTV for you.

And now, back to the Wrath of God.

Can I pay you $1.5k for sending one email?

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Maybe I can.

(Hat tip to the Notorious Nick Bandy for this idea.)

The background is this:

I’m looking for partners to run an auction for, using their offers and their audience.

(I ran an auction with my own offer and my own audience back in December. It brought in $31k. ​Case study here​.)

Not everybody makes for a great auction partner.

But if you’re working with a client who is spending $200/day on ads… or sending regular emails to a list of a few thousand souls or more… or has a community of a few hundred members or more… they might be a good partner for an auction.

My deal to you is this:

If you have a client who meets one of the criteria above, hit reply. I’ll give you a message to send to your client. The message will make you look good to them, and will put my offer of an auction partnership in a normal-sounding way into their head.

If you so choose, you then send the email to your client…

… and if I end up partnering with your client on an auction, I’ll pay you $1.5k or 10% of my cut of the auction profits, whichever is greater, just for putting me in touch with them.

Plus, if you want, you can ride along with me, and work alongside me to actually carry out this auction, and be privy to the behind-the-scenes offer design, and planning, and selling.

That way, you can can get invaluable experience you can use to run an auction of your own, or with partners, just like I’m doing.

(Of course, if you have no interest in ever running an auction, and you just wanna get paid for sending an email, that’s perfect too.)

So?

Worth hitting reply, and maybe sending one email to your client?

Can I help you make a buncha sales via… an auction?

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I ran an auction in my Skool group back in December.

It brought in $31k (case study here).

I’m planning to run more auctions with my own audience.

But if you have been hearing chatter about auctions, but don’t want to go to the trouble of running one yourself, maybe I can help?

My offer is:

I’ll run an auction for you, with your own offers and your audience.

For every $10,000 I send you in sales, shoot over $2500 to me AFTER the money is in your bank account.

I’ll take care of everything involved:

* Coming up with the offer stack

* Writing posts

* Managing the auction itself to make it fun or even magical for your audience

* Closing all the sales

(Of course, if you wanna be involved in any of these steps, you can be, to whatever extent you want.)

And if you have an email list, but no community where to run an auction?

I’ll set that up and cover it 100%.

If you’re interested, hit reply and we can talk.

3 conclusions from my 1-day, 3-sale promo yesterday

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Yesterday, I promoted Travis Sago’s course 24 Hour FUN Auction, which is the course I followed to run a $31k auction in my own community Daily Email House.

My email yesterday succeeded in making… 3 sales of Travis’s $49 course.

As I always do, even following a 1-day, 3-sale blockbuster like this, this morning I sat down and wrote up my conclusions from this promo.

I’d like to share three of them with you:

#1. Run live tests

On the one hand, a number of people on my list wrote me to express interest in exactly the information in Travis’s course.

On the other hand, I had floated the idea of selling Travis’s course before in my community, and the results were feeble.

How would my entire list react if I ran a promo selling Travis’s course?

There’s only one way to tell, and that’s to put the offer in front of them.

I had all kinds of plans in case Travis’s course sold well:

– A community for running penny auctions

– Extra bonuses on top of the one I offered yesterday

– Valuable and intriguing additional offers to make to people who bought Travis’s $49 training

… but none of that matters much if the core offer, and the way it’s packaged up, is not something people want.

People’s stated interests, or even stated lack of interest, doesn’t matter much until the test is “live,” meaning people either put money down on the table or they refuse to do so.

I have learned this lesson in the past, and I applied it yesterday.

I didn’t spend any time developing other bonuses, or creating a new community, or writing up an upsell page with additional offers.

I treated yesterday’s email as a live test. The email was straightforward. There was no deadline. It was really just the core offer and a bonus I already had lying around, plus my best arguments why you should buy.

If that sold well, it would make sense to invest time in doing all the other stuff I had planned and to run a full promo. Otherwise, even bonuses and upsells wouldn’t have made this promo worthwhile.

#2. Make sure you get credited for affiliate sales

I made 3 sales yesterday. I got credited for 1 of them.

Travis’s 24 Hour FUN Auction is delivered within Travis’s Skool group. Two of the folks who bought yesterday were already members of that group. And even though they bought through my affiliate link, Skool doesn’t credit me for the purchase. Lesson learned.

#3. Don’t be satisfied with a mystery, or with your own best guesses

Yesterday, I watched from the front row as Maliha Mannan of The Side Bloger ran a 2-hour auction in her community of 60 people.

Results:

– The group grew from 60 people to 97 in a matter of hours

– Even though the group wasn’t massively engaged before, the auction post had 249 comments, and people at the end were commenting things like “that was so much fun”

– Maliha made $1,029 from the winning bidder, and will make untold millions and possibly billions more, from post-auction offers she can make to other people who expressed interest

All that’s to say… auctions work, and do all the stuff I promised in my email yesterday, stuff like:

– They make sales

– They identify high-intent leads

– They act as a price discovery mechanism (and the discovery is often shockingly high)

– They create engagement in communities

– They help communities grow

– People find them fun

– etc.

And yet, my promo yesterday of a $49 offer that shows you how to do this drew 3 sales.

Why?

I could shrug my shoulders, and chalk it up to the “mysteries of the mind.”

I could also make guesses about why people didn’t buy.

But better than either of those is to simply do some investigative journalism, and go out into the world and collect data.

So lemme ask you:

If you clicked through yesterday, but you didn’t buy Travis’s course, what was it that made you say no?

Or if you read though my email yesterday but decided to not even click through, what was the deciding factor?

Hit reply and let me know.

In turn I will reply to you with a bit of a thank-you gift.

I’ll tell you the #1 lesson I got from a quick and dirty marketing book I just finished reading. In a nutshell, I’ll tell you how one smart marketer solves the “top of funnel” problem for himself in a different way from most:

– How he converts bunches of hesitant, skeptical, or unaware prospects in 20 minutes or less (and no, sales copy ain’t got nothing to do with it)

– How he gets these prospects-turned-first-time-buyers to upsell themselves (all very natural, no pushing or persuading) so they turn into high-value, long-term customers

– How he gets them to eagerly refer him to others, so his marketing message spreads without him creating tons of content or spending a cent on ads

Are you curious? Then think about your own reaction to my email yesterday and the offer I made, and tell me what about it made you react the way you did. In turn, I’ll share with you the above marketing mystery.

Today: 51 behind-the-scenes conclusions from my “I endorse you” auction

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On December 10, 2025, I ran an auction in my Daily Email House community.

At the end of 24 hours, the winning bid came in at $31k.

The morning after the auction ended, I sat down and wrote up my impressions, conclusions, and shoulda/coulda/woulda regrets about this auction.

I aimed to write 50 items. I ended up with 51.

Also in the wake of this auction, I had a number of people reach out to me to say I should create a course about how to run auctions.

To everyone who wrote me, I replied this won’t be happening, because such a course already exists, and it’s the one I followed. It’s Travis Sago’s 24 Hour FUN Auction.

Only one problem:

For the longest time, Travis’s auctions course was only available inside Travis’s $1997/year community, Royalty Ronin. (I’ve been a member of Ronin since 2024, and that’s how I got access to the auction course.)

What I didn’t know, until only a few weeks ago, is that inside a second, free community that Travis runs, Community FIRE, Travis is now making 24 Hour FUN Auction available as a standalone course, for just $49.

Let me repeat that. Previously $1997… now $49.

And now, let me encourage you to follow the link at bottom of this email and get Travis’s 24 Hour FUN Auction training today.

As one dude in my community put it after my auction, auctions are not a “method that Internet marketers have ruined yet.”

There’s no guarantee that Internet Marketers won’t ruin auctions given enough time.

But at least this year, auctions a new and exciting way to sell online.

Even if you feel you are the smallest of fish, with a tiny audience, and no partners lined up, knowing how to run an auction like this can be a new opportunity to differentiate and distinguish yourself in the marketplace.

I’ve made the case in an earlier email that auctions are a legit alternative to product launches, and that they fix a lot of chronic problems that launches have.

Auctions are also an amazing way to inject new engagement and life into a list or community, even one that’s languishing or eroding week by week. (In my own non-languishing community, I had people who never even made a peep in the community before the auction bidding thousands during the auction.)

Auctions make buying feel like a treat. And like I wrote yesterday, when buying feels like a treat, the price that folks are willing to pay goes up. As the winning bidder in my auction, The Amazing Nick Bandy, put it:

“@John Bejakovic feel free to quote me saying it’s the most fun I ever had spending $31k”

Also, if you get Travis’s 24 Hour Fun Auction training today, I will give you, as a free bonus, my 51 behind-the-scenes conclusions about my “I endorse you” auction, including:

* How to make more money from your auction offer weeks later… from people who did NOT bid (conclusion 2)

* Why I felt bad right after the auction ended, even with the auction doing 3x of what I had hoped for (stupid but instructive, conclusion 12)

* How to “auction off” multiple identical high-ticket offers in secret (conclusion 13)

* 2 easy tweaks I could have made to grow my group significantly during the auction (conclusions 19 and 20)

* A “strip tease” I performed several times during the auction to inject energy when energy seemed to be flagging (conclusion 21)

* The 13-word question that helped me form the core of the offer I made, which ended up being bid up to $31k

* The one bonus that added ~$10k to the winning bid (conclusion 30)

* The “exploitative” technique (wasn’t really exploitative, but it felt like that to me at the time) that got top bidders to keep bidding (conclusion 34)

* My big resolution about auctions I will run in the future (conclusion 49)

* An easy way to add life in the comments without writing anything (conclusion 51)

Do you want this behind-the-scenes peek into the insights I wrote up for myself? If so, here’s what to do:

1. Go to https://bejakovic.com/fun-auction

2. Ask to join the Community FIRE group (you gotta do it to be able to be able to buy the course, and like I said, it’s free to join)

3. Once you’ve been approved as a group member (should be quick), go to the Course area of Community FIRE, and get your copy of the 24 Hour FUN Auction for a whopping $49

4. Forward me your receipt from Skool, and I will get you my 51 behind-the-scenes conclusions from my $31k auction.

Last bit of encouragement:

If you made a deal with yourself not to buy every shiny and exciting training this year, I honestly recommend you make Travis’s 24 Hour FUN Auction the exception. The link is above.

Free welcome sequence for small businesses

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I recently met Liz Wilcox, and I’m gonna spend the rest of this email selling her to you.

Liz is fond of wearing large glasses, where the frame is of different colors for the left and the right eye.

She was once a contestant on the TV show Survivor (Survivor 46).

Today, Liz runs a paid membership for small business owners who want to do something with email marketing, but don’t really know what to to do.

Inside her paid membership, Liz teaches email marketing, has expert speakers come in and teach also (I will be speaking in May), plus, as the the main selling point, she gives members weekly templates and swipes for their business’s email newsletter, so they can get it out in minutes instead of hours or never.

Like I said, Liz’s membership is for business owners who have heard of the power of email marketing, but don’t really wanna write themselves… don’t wanna hire a copywriter either… don’t wanna entrust this to a VA… and yet want to get the benefit of regular communication with their prospects and clients and customers.

So how much would you pay for such an incredible and spectacular email marketing membership, which slices, and dices, and makes julienne fries?

$999/month?

NO!

$99/month??

NO!!!

$19/month???

NO! NO! NO!

Liz charges 9 whole bucks per month for her email marketing membership. And get this. She has… 4,000 members of her $9/month membership. At those numbers, she has the margin to make sure she can provide and deliver great templates, great trainings, and great everything.

But I’m not here to sell you on Liz’s membership. Not really, not yet at least.

All I really wanna do is just point you to Liz’s “Swipe Swipe Baby” lead magnet. It’s an entire templatized welcome sequence, plus three weekly newsletters, which you can plug into your business right now if you want.

When I initially talked to Liz, I asked her what lead magnet of hers I should send folks to.

She said, “I only have one. It’s six years old, and I’ll never create a new one, because it just works.”

And why not? Liz’s lead magnet is in fact the perfect magnet for prospective leads for $9/month membership.

So if you want Liz’s free welcome sequence templates… if you wanna know more about Liz (lots of Vanilla Ice references on her site)… or if you’ve been intrigued by her $9/month membership… here’s the front door, fully free to walk through:

https://bejakovic.com/lizwilcox