Classified Ads

Well, that was a total disaster

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I was lying in bed last night by the open window, enjoying the spring breeze, listening to the radio. Suddenly, the music on the radio stopped and an urgent news announcement came on—

Two tectonic plates had just shifted somewhere off the coast of Western Australia.

As a consequence, a tsunami, a massive wave hundreds of meters high, was headed towards my little beach barrio of Poblenou, Barcelona, Spain.

I immediately jumped out of bed, threw on my Tommy Bahama shirt, and rushed to find Hector Campana, the main civil engineer in Poblenou. ​​”I have to warn Hector,” I said breathlessly, “we have to somehow survive this massive wave.”

I stormed inside Hector’s offices in an old colonial building by the waterfront. But he wasn’t there. One of his unshaven and red-eyed employees looked up at me.

​​”Hector?” he scoffed. “Go check the bar.”

“It’s a matter of life and death!” I said, and I ran to the bar on the corner.

Sure enough, Hector was there, slumped on a bench against the back wall, eyes closed, five empty bottles on the table in front of him.

I yelled at him to get up and get to work. He didn’t respond.

I grabbed him by the shoulders and tried to shake him awake. But he just slumped over even more, all the way off the bench, and down to the floor.

I took a quick look around to make sure nobody was watching, and I gave Hector a healthy kick in the ribs. This finally seemed to wake the brute up.

He opened his eyes a little, grumbled, and said in a drunken drawl:

“Engineers have detected multiple services degraded. At this time, delays in processing and intermittent errors may continue to be experienced until full resolution is declared. Mar 06 2023, 14:21 CST.”

That’s pretty much exactly how it went down last night.

​​The full story is that Daniel Throssell, somewhere off or on the coast of Western Australia, sent out an email to his list. This email had my ad inside, which I had paid Daniel $1,000 for.

As a result, a traffic wave, many hundreds of visitors high, hit my little online barrio.

But Hector Campana — aka ActiveCampaign, my email service provider — was drinking on the job, completely unable to deal with the incoming wave.

For the better part of yesterday’s afternoon, evening, and night, ActiveCampaign was passed out and unresponsive.

​​Broadcast emails took hours to go out. Autoresponder emails weren’t working at all. Neither were automations — and I had set up an automation to actually deliver the promised lead magnet to people who responded to my ad.

I spent about three hours last night fixing what I could by hand, and sending emails to people who had taken me up on the paid offer on the Thank You page.

​​During the night, ActiveCampaign gradually sobered up and emails finally started going out. Even so, I still had an hour or two of cleanup this morning.

So all in all, it was a total disaster. Really, the only salvageable thing was this:

Even though ActiveCampaign was passed out last night, it was at least registering (most) people who opted in. So as of right now, a little more than 14 hours after Daniel’s email went out, I have some 410 new subscribers thanks to my ad.

More importantly, I’ve also made 37 sales of the $100 offer I was making on the optin Thank You page.

25 of those sales came from people who were already subscribed to my list, and who opted in again via the ad to get the free bonuses I promised.

But I’ve also made 12 sales of the same $100 offer to entirely new subscribers.

Which means that — twelve times one hundred, carry the four — my ad in Daniel’s newsletter has already paid for itself. In fact, it paid for itself in just 3 hours and 9 minutes — that’s how long it took for the 10th purchase from a new subscriber to come in.

So a total disaster looked at from one angle… or looked at from another angle, an unqualified success.

Meanwhile, back in Poblenou:

Later today, I will organize an emergency Town Hall meeting to discuss the firing and possible lynching of Hector Campana.

Also later today, at 3:31pm EST to be exact, I will take down the paid offer I am currently making on that Thank You page.

While I promised Daniel that my lead magnet would only be available through the ad in his newsletter, this paid offer on the Thank You page isn’t part of that promise.

So whether you just got onto my list, or whether you’ve been on my list for a while, you can take me up on this offer. But you do have to be on my list. To get on there, click here and fill out the form that appears.

3 great reasons to sign up to Daniel Throssell’s list before tomorrow

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Last month, marketer Daniel Throssell sent out a newsletter email with the subject line, “Want to advertise to my list?” The cost to run a 50-word ad in Daniel’s newsletter was $1,000. Immediately, I wrote back and said yes.

Then Daniel did something unusual but very smart.

​​He effectively said, your money is not enough. And he set a second condition to run an ad in his newsletter, which was to come up with a unique offer that would only be available through the ad.

So that’s reason one why you might want to get on Daniel’s list before tomorrow.

​​Because I did come up with a special offer, and a free one, which I believe will be very enticing to people on Daniel’s list. But if you’re my loyal reader, and you’re not on Daniel’s list, I don’t want to give you the shaft. So I’m telling you now. To get my special free offer, get on Daniel’s list, and read his email tomorrow.

My offer will only be good for 24 hours after the ad runs. As you might know, I’m strict about deadlines and I don’t make exceptions. I’ll also be keeping my word to Daniel that the only way to get this offer is through this ad, so I won’t be letting anybody in through a side door.

So that’s reason one.
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Reason two to sign up to Daniel’s list before tomorrow is that the classified ad cost me $1,000. That’s a fair amount of money, and frankly I don’t want to pay it. So I decided to come up with a second offer to recoup my ad costs as the ad is still running.

But what kind of offer would be almost guaranteed to pull in $1,000 in 24 hours, and to a bunch of people who don’t really know me from Adam’s rat terrier?

I paced the chemical-stained floor of my laboratory all evening long, throughout the night, and into the early morning. Finally, a lightbulb went on in my head. I thought of a paid offer, one I believe will be almost irresistible to anybody who’s working as a copywriter, either freelance or in-house.

​​I put that offer on the Thank You page that follows the optin that my ad will lead to. This second offer will only be available there, on the Thank You page, only for 24 hours, never to be repeated again.

So that mystery offer on the Thank You page, that’s reason two.

​​Reason three I’ve written about before:

Daniel and I did a list swap back in 2021. With one email, Daniel drove over 10% of his list to my website. I got hundreds of new subscribers and in fact, I tripled my list from where it was before the list swap. More importantly, I got close to 100 new buyers, many of whom are still with me.

Then about a year ago, I put on a presentation where I analyzed three unusual elements of Daniel’s email copywriting style. Daniel promoted this presentation to his list. A similar thing happened. Hundreds of new subscribers for me, and lots of new sales.

And then there was that Black Friday campaign that Daniel ran a while back. I wasn’t involved in that, and good thing. Daniel outsold 15 other “expert” marketers, not individually, but in total. Add up all the sales made by all the other guys, and Daniel still sold more, with only his own list, which was maybe 1/20th the size of what all the other guys had in total.

The point being:​​

Maybe you joined Daniel’s list in the past, and decided it’s not for you. Maybe you didn’t resonate with Daniel’s personal stories, his sense of humor, or his online persona. If so, my advice is to look beyond the surface.

Because Daniel has a responsive email list beyond anything I’ve ever seen. ​​It’s not accidental. It’s strategic, and you can see the strategy in practice, for free, by getting on Daniel’s list. The sooner you do that, the more likely you are to learn something valuable.

So here’s the front door to Daniel’s strange world of entertainment and subtle influence. My advice is to open the door and go inside, and to do so before tomorrow:

https://persuasivepage.com/

Which email newsletters sell classified ads?

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Last week Ben Settle sent an email in which he wrote:

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I remember buying little $35 and $50 ads in email newsletters 20 years ago.

Nowadays, I don’t see a lot of them.

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True. So let me ask you, do you know of any such email newsletters?

I know of a few. In fact, I bought a couple of classified ads in two weekly newsletters this month.

​​One ran already, bringing me some 50 new subscribers. Another will run in a few more days.

The first of these ads cost $350. The other will cost $100. We will see if they end up paying for themselves.

I’ve also bought one of the three $1k classified ads in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter. That ad is supposed to run some time next month. I will let you know more about it as it’s nearing, because I will have a special offer in that ad, only available if you are on Daniel’s list at the time.

But why even bother with classified ads? Here’s why:

In the old direct mail days, one of they key pieces of info that marketers wanted to know was what format somebody was sold through.

An infomercial buyer was not the same as a magalog buyer was not the same as a sweepstakes buyer.

The same bit of psychology holds today.

A YouTube gawker is not the same as a Twitter endless-scroller is not the same as an email reader. Even if all of them are interested in marketing, or even bought marketing-related courses.

So that’s why I’ve been looking to buy more email classified ads.

I’ve being doing my research about email newsletters that sell them.But I would like to get your feedback also. So I have an offer for you:

Do you read any email newsletters that run classified ads?

Write in and tell me specific names. Ben Settle, Daniel Throssell, and Josh Spector are off the table, since I know about them already.

My offer for you is that, if you write in and tell me, I will reply to you with one source of email traffic to avoid, at least in my experience. I ran an experiment with it last year, spent $731, and made nothing in return. I will tell you what I learned, and maybe you can laugh at my stubbornness or folly.

Also, in case you are not interested in growing your list with paid ads, but you want to do it organically, then take a look at my Most Valuable Email training.

​​Personally, I’ve been able to trace hundreds of my subscribers to emails I’ve written using the Most Valuable Email trick I describe in this training.

On several occasions, influential people chanced upon one of those MVE emails, enjoyed it enough to share it with others, and ended up driving a large number of new subscribers to my list. If you’d like to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/