Personal Change

Meme and troll your way to success

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Two days ago, I wrote an email about Flat Earthers, and how I get where they’re coming from. I got a reply to that from long-time reader, pro copywriter, and original Crazy Email Lady, Liza Schermann, who wrote:

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Haha I love this! “For much of my life, I’ve had sympathy for Flat Earthers”. Should be the headline on your website.

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In the words of farm boy Westley, “As you wish.”

After Liza’s email, I went into my WordPress settings, and changed the tagline of my site. Any visitor to any page of my site, aside from the optin page, will now see a masthead up top that reads, “Desert Kite: For much of my life, I’ve had sympathy for Flat Earthers.”

Stupid inside joke? Trivial? Trolling?

Perhaps. And yet…

Yesterday, I promised to share an interesting idea that’s been bouncing around my head after I heard it a few weeks ago.

The idea comes from Omid Malekan, who is now a professor of crypto (!) at Columbia University, and who was previously the resident crypto expert at Citibank.

Malekan was writing about memecoins, basically stupid inside joke cryptocurrencies, trivial and trolling shitcoins, which are now having their moment and are currently worth over $100 billion in aggregate.

Malekan thinks memecoins are a bubble bound to pop. But in trying to make that case, he decided to “steelman” the case for memecoins, and argue for the other side as well as he could. And he discovered something interesting:

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I did realize some interesting things. Like historically, a lot of things start out as a joke and then end up becoming really significant and important. This is particularly true in the art world where a lot of what we today consider to be like, ‘Oh this is an amazing genius work of art,’ was just at the time 50 or 100 years ago the artist trolling.

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Malekan gave the example of Don Quixote, which started out with Cervantes trolling the popular form of writing at the time, knightly romances.

In time though, Cervantes’s book took a life on its own. Today, it’s held up as the first novel, and it’s taught as canon and forced down the throats of university students worldwide.

The list gets much wider and more significant if you don’t look at just trolling but also include, play, fun, and aimless games.

I read once that agriculture didn’t arise by the gradual conquering and mastering of plants to produce food. Rather, it grew out of symbolic, playful, or temporary gardens that people grew for no practical purpose, the way Eastern Europeans still plant little pots of wheat before Easter.

What about language?

My personal theory, though I’m sure others have had it before, is that the wide variety of modern languages is there thanks to memeing, trolling teenagers throughout history. And if you want proof of that, look at how new creole languages still emerge today, with new grammar and vocabulary, thanks to the kids of the displaced parents.

But you probably don’t want proof of that. You probably want me to get to the point of this email, if any.

My point is simply that play, fun, aimless games, or even mockery, trolling, and memes, have value in business, beyond simply being a sweetener for your content.

Get ready for the pitch now, because I’m about to give it to you:

If you want an example of memery and trolling turning to gold, take what I call my Most Valuable Email trick. It started out as a joke. It was my own attempt to put a smile on my own face and later on the faces of my readers, once I had a few.

Then the Most Valuable Email trick became a habit.

Later, I discovered this Most Valuable Email trick was actually useful to me.

And today, it’s directly influenced not just my copy, but the design of my website and emails… my personal positioning… and even the business strategy of what I do with this little newsletter.

Plus I’ve shared the MVE trick with others, and this memey or jokey thing has had real concrete benefits for them too.

Here’s Shakoor Chowdhury, a marketer who does performance deals with ecommerce clients (he’s driving $300k+ in sales each month for just one of them). Shakoor wrote about MVE:

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John, this is by far my favorite of your programs and really kickstarted my email marketing.

There were really two parts to MVE that changed my life:

1. Using “the meat” — emails cannot just be all information and value with no entertainment, you have to give people a reason WHY they should listen

2. the use of [the MVE trick] in your copy, what a powerful concept… instead of [doing what everybody else does, if you you use the MVE trick, it] also quickly raises your authority and credibility

When I bought this course I was very inconsistent, but you gave me direction and I started writing daily and grew a list of 470 subscribers in less than a month of implementing

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If you would like to find out how to meme and troll your way to success:

​https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Why I can no longer be a Flat Earther

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I was on a plane a few months ago, looking out a window facing west, at sunset, in a perfectly cloudless sky, with the Mediterranean sea below me, all the way to the horizon.

I’m telling you all these details because I believe each one was crucial to a once-in-a-lifetime scientific discovery:

I could clearly see the Mediterranean Sea below me, looking cool and darkened. But there was a line ahead, towards the west, past which the sea gradually became warm-colored and bright, being still lit up by the setting sun.

Like I said, this was once-in-a-lifetime scientific discovery for me. I believe it was the first time in my life I had convincing first-hand evidence that the Earth is in fact round.

For much of my life, I’ve had sympathy for Flat Earthers, the people who insist, today, in 2024, that the earth is or at least might be flat.

I don’t necessarily have the “water can’t cling to a spinning ball” kind of sympathy… or the “Antarctica is a giant ice wall to keep you from falling off and finding out the truth” kind of sympathy.

Rather, I have sympathy with what I feel the Flat Earth movement is really about. Because after I first heard that Flat Earthing is a thing, I asked myself, “How do I know these people are wrong? How can I be sure the Earth is round and not flat?”

I’ve been told that’s how it is…

I’ve also seen pictures, illustrations, and videos, supposedly from space…

I’ve even been given models of the solar system, and arguments about rotation and magnetic fields and gravity…

… but I had zero first-hand experience. At least until that flight across the Mediterranean a couple months ago. I now believe 100%, though I’m certainly not trying to push my strong faith on you, that the Earth is in fact not flat, but round.

And I STILL have sympathy with the Flat Earthers.

Yes, the world is immensely complex.

It’s inevitable that much of what we believe about it gets passed on to us unquestioned. We couldn’t function otherwise.

But there’s still value in proving some things to yourself, regularly.

Not everything — there’s too much of that. But some things.

It can give you confidence when you find proof for yourself, beyond the confidence of being given proof.

It can lead you to insights you might not have otherwise.

And possibly, every so often, more often than you might think, it can help you find extra stuff, which others have swept under the rug.

Which things you choose to question is of course up to you.

But maybe stuff that’s directly connected to your work, success, or professional competence is a good place to start.

And if making sales or writing sales copy comes into what you do, then here’s a way to get first-hand experience and proof, which nobody can take away from you:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Why I’ve been turning away doubting subscribers

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Over the past few days, I launched my Daily Email Habit service to people who raised their hand to get on the priority list. At the end of the sales page, rather than linking to an order form, I asked people to write me to say if they are in, out, or have any questions. Most people who wrote me said they are in, like these folks:

#1. “Yes, I am in!”

#2. “No questions, I’m in!”

#3. “This looks brilliant John, I’m in. Thank you for coming up with such an exciting service!”

#4. “Count me in, please! Looking forward to it…”

#5. “I am IN. Please send me the link to join.”

#6. “Wtf dude you are such a badass. Yes I’m in.”

#7. “Yes absolutely im in. This sounds like an awesome idea”

… but some people had questions. Here’s one that came up a few times:

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I took a loooong look (plus a night to sit on it), and I want to try it out.

But I’m going to be honest with you:

I’m still debating whether I need prompts like this or random insightful articles to expand my thinking.

(for example, the recent one you shared from Sean got the creative juice flowing)

This means I can’t promise I’m in for the long term yet. I understand that the concept of any subscription is to lower the entry cost in exchange for longer loyalty (like Daniel’s AiC newsletter).

So, if this “test the water mindset” bothers you, I’m okay with putting this one off for now, too.

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Each time I got this particular question, I’ve been telling people NOT to sign up. Why?

I read once of a study in which people evaluated the attractiveness of a core offer (a bunch of saucers and cups and plates) + a free bonus bundle (more saucers and cups and plates, some in good shape and others a little chipped).

The conclusion of the study was that people evaluated the core offer as more valuable if it were sold on its own, with no free bonuses (perceived value: $33)… than if it were sold with the free bonuses, some of which were good and some of which were chipped (perceived value: $23).

I’m not saying that people who are not sure if they want my Daily Email Habit are “chipped saucers.” I’ve known a few of them for a while, and I know they are good people. Plus, I appreciate their honesty in voicing their doubts.

I just mean to tell you a kind of psychology quirk. The human brain tends to evaluate sets of items by using the AVG function, rather than the SUM function.

That includes my own brain. Yes, maybe it’s not very smart. But the fact is:

1. I don’t need the money from an extra subscriber.

2. I particularly don’t need the money if that subscriber won’t be getting anything out of it. (I can’t say for sure that anybody who expresses doubts on signing up will not get value out of it, but to my mind, the odds jump up dramatically.)

3. There’s an impact on my will to work and my long-term sticktoitiveness if I feel that what I’m doing has some sort of meaning vs. if it’s meaningless.

Maybe that makes perfect sense to you.

Or maybe it makes you a little uncomfortable. After all, aren’t we in business? Isn’t the goal to make money? When and how do you decide to turn away good, hard money today because of something vague like “will to work and long-term sticktoitiveness” tomorrow?

All that, and more, is something I tried to address in my Most Valuable Postcard #1.

Most Valuable Postcard was my short-lived paid newsletter, some two years ago.

And Most Valuable Postcard #1 was about the most important and valuable topic I could find — the most important thing to focus on in your business, whether you sell products or your own services, according to the most successful direct marketers in history.

If you’d like to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/mvp1/

An old Soviet joke from a modern Russian prison

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Here’s a Soviet joke for you:

A shy, unathletic, bookish boy is walking across a snow-covered courtyard in Moscow, past a group of kids who are playing football.

The ball rolls to the boy’s feet. He decides against habit to join in the game. He kicks the ball awkwardly, and it veers off and crashes through the window of the janitor’s apartment on the ground floor.

The janitor emerges. He’s a huge, bearded man, who has clearly been drinking. He roars and starts to chase the boy.

The boy runs for his life, thinking to himself, “Why do I need football in the cold and the snow? I should be at home, safe and comfortable, reading a book, conversing with my favorite author Ernest Hemingway.”

Meanwhile, Ernest Hemingway is in a Havana bar, drinking rum, with a salsa band playing next to him. It’s hot. Hemingway thinks to himself, “God I’m sick of this heat and rum and salsa. I should be in Paris, the center of the world, drinking Cavalos with my great friend Jean-Paul Sartre, and discussing philosophy.”

Meanwhile, Jean-Paul Sartre is in a Paris cafe, in a cloud of cigarette smoke. He’s taking part in an abstract but heated discussion that means nothing to him. “God how I’m sick of all these cigarettes and cafes and empty discussions,” thinks Sartre. I should be in Moscow, talking to my friend, the great novelist Platonov, about things that are real and mean something.

Meanwhile, back in Moscow, Platonov is running across a snow-covered courtyard. And he growls through his gritted teeth, “God I swear if I ever catch him, I’ll kill the little bastard.”

That’s from the memoirs written by Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. Navalny wrote down the Soviet joke above — “my all-time favorite joke” — while in prison in the Pokrov correctional colony.

You might know Navalny’s story. Back in 2020, he was poisoned by the Russian secret service with a nerve toxin, almost died, but somehow made it to Germany to get medical treatment.

He recovered over the course of months. During this time, he cold-called Russian secret service agents and tricked them into revealing how they had poisoned him (I wrote about the crazy story ​back in December 2020​).

In spite of the assassination attempt, Navalny decided based on his principles to return to Russia.

He was promptly arrested as soon as he landed at the Moscow airport. He was then charged with embezzlement, fraud, and extremism, and was tossed in jail.

That was back in 2022.

Navalny never made it out of jail. He died earlier this year, on February 16, at age 47, under mysterious circumstances in the “Polar Wolf” prison, which sits in Western Siberia above the polar circle. “All necessary resuscitation measures were carried out but did not yield positive results,” the prison statement read.

I’m telling you this because somehow, during all this, Navalny remained cheerful and optimistic, in spite of the fact he was in prison in Siberia, in spite of the fact he had a 19-year sentence, in spite of the fact he knew he was really in for life, one way or another.

All that’s to say, if you think that whatever you’re writing about is too serious for joking, that your audience cannot and will not stand lightheartedness, that certain topics are sacred, well, it might be worth reading some of Alexei Navalny’s posts from prison. They are fascinating, inspiring, and well-written. Plus they might give you a change of mind on some things.

In case you’re curious:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/21/alexei-navalny-patriot-memoir

The unpardonable sin in daily emails

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> be me
> get email yesterday
> feel sucked in by the subject line because it’s the same as the name of a paid training i’m thinking to create
> read email
> interesting opening, about how the author wrote something that got a whole lot of reader engagement and replies
> get to the takeaway
> “Vulnerability”
> feel face drop, groan
> close email and vow never to read another of the author’s emails again

An A-list copywriter, Robert Collier, once wrote that the unpardonable sin in nature is stagnation, standing still.

Another A-list copywriter, Jim Rutz, once wrote that the #1 sin in ad mail is being predictable.

It applies to daily emails as well. The #1, unpardonable sin in daily emails is stagnant, predictable content. That’s why a point of my personal philosophy, which may resonate with you, is to do anything but be predictable.

Right now, I’m in the middle of rolling out my new Daily Email Habit service to people who expressed interest and got on priority list.

While I do that, I have no paid offers to promote.

So let me take the next few days, while the rollout is happening, to share some unpredictable pieces of writing.

I mean “unpredictable” both because these pieces of writing contain surprising ideas presented in insightful ways… and because you wouldn’t expect to have them shared inside of a newsletter like this one, about direct marketing and online businesses.

To start with, here’s something I read two years ago that still pops up in my mind pretty much every week.

The title of it is When Magic Was Real.

The idea that sticks with me is that magic — real magic, not stage magic — is real, and is “the product of belief x belief.”

If you want to read something surprising, insightful, and maybe mind-altering:

https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/when-magic-was-real

How to prepare for a future in which people can’t think

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I was talking to a friend today. She has a kid who is 11. The kid has to go through a rigorous set of state-sanctioned exams that will determine his future education, career progression, and I suppose retirement community.

“It’s crazy!” my friend said. “Who even knows what will happen in the future?”

I have no kids and am generally clueless about what’s going on in the world. “Huh? Future? What are you talking about?”

“AI!” she said. “What will kids have to learn? How will that even look?”

I read an article by Paul Graham a couple weeks ago. I’ve written about Graham before in these emails. In a nutshell:

Graham is a kind of modern-day renaissance man — a painter, computer programmer, businessman, and investor. This last one is what he’s best known for.

Graham cofounded Y Combinator, the early-stage investing firm behind companies like Airbnb, Coinbase, Stripe, Twitch, Instacart, Reddit. Thanks to his stake in these companies, Graham is worth north of $2.5 billion.

Along with his many other activities, Graham also writes interesting online essays. He wrote a new one a few weeks ago.

In the future, predicts Graham, not many people will be able to write because AI has made it unnecessary.

Is that bad? In Graham’s words:

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Yes, it’s bad. The reason is something I mentioned earlier: writing is thinking. In fact there’s a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing. You can’t make this point better than Leslie Lamport did:

“If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.”

So a world divided into writes and write-nots is more dangerous than it sounds. It will be a world of thinks and think-nots. I know which half I want to be in, and I bet you do too.

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Is Graham right about writing?

I don’t know. I have heard said that 2,500 years ago, smart people were making the same argument AGAINST writing, saying that it weakens critical thought and makes the mind flabby.

I can only report my personal results, today, in 2024.

Writing, at least in my case, causes me to think more and make distinctions I wouldn’t make otherwise. Plus, I even find it kind of enjoyable. And there’s no doubt that thanks to writing, I’ve achieved a level of influence I could never have achieved otherwise.

I am telling you this because I’m finally ready — with two days’ delay — to start rolling out my new Daily Email Habit service.

A key idea behind Daily Email Habit is that there’s value in writing.

And so this service is designed to help you start and stick with the habit of writing a daily email. A big part of how it does this is by giving you a new constraint each day, and narrowing the scope of what to write about.

At the same time, Daily Email Habit is designed NOT to narrow the scope so much that you end up filling out a template. There’s value in writing, and it’s something you cannot get by outsourcing your daily email to a template — or to AI.

I will start rolling out Daily Email Habit tomorrow.

If you’ve already written me to express interest in this new service, there’s nothing more you need to do.

But if you haven’t written me yet, and Daily Email Habit sounds like it might be useful to you, then write me and tell me what you like about this service. I will then add you to the priority list, so have a chance to try out Daily Email Habit sooner rather than later.

The excessive value of writing into the void

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In my email yesterday, I asked for reader questions and replies. Well, I got ’em. To start, a reader named Kenneth wrote in to ask:

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Yeah, at this point you are reading my mind.

I’ve always wanted to ask a question, but wondered whether you respond to emails.

Well, the question “How do you get opt-ins to your list?”

I can’t say I know because I got into your list by a strange way.

I am in a copywriting group and a member of the group shared your sales letter as a way to use reverse psychology, I think it was your MVE product.

He didn’t even share a link, I had to copy the link in the screenshot(I think that’s what happened), got on your homepage and got on your list.

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… and that’s pretty much how I get people to opt-in to my list:

I write stuff… wait until people share that on the Internet of their own accord… then rub my hands in anticipation as others see those shares, google the clues available, search through the Google results, find my website, figure out that I’m actually the guy they were searching for, and then opt in.

I’ve heard this described as “upstream leads” — as in, people who had to swim upstream to find you. I’ve also heard it said these are the most valuable kinds of leads.

Is that true? I don’t know. I can imagine it is… I can also imagine it’s just an excuse by people who like to do it that way.

But that’s less interesting to me than the following:

I’ve gotten variants of Kenneth’s question before. And maybe I’m reading into it, but my feeling is that when people ask “How do you get subscribers” there’s a hidden assumption there.

That assumption is that, if you got no subscribers, no readers, there’s no sense in writing, particularly an email a day, like I do.

Sounds reasonable. But again, is it true?

The answer is no, at least to my mind. Even if nobody is reading what you write, a daily email:

1. Gets you to think about whatever you’re teaching or selling or doing, sharpens your own opinions on the subject, and builds up your expertise

2. Makes you a better writer and a better communicator, in all formats, not just email, without any pressure

3. Builds up a warchest of interesting content, which you can reuse for paid products, for ads, as book chapters, for SEO, for live presentations and trainings, for client work, or as a portfolio

4. Acts as proof of your authority to anybody who does come across you, whether that’s a potential client, customer, or simply fan

5. Can be enjoyable on its own, much how toast with butter is enjoyable on its own

6. Beats Wordle as a daily habit (though you can do both, as I do)

7. Makes you referable, for all the reasons 1-6 above combined, so that in time you do get people subscribing to read what you have to say

I’m telling you this because:

1) I’m grateful to Kenneth for writing in with his question, and I wanted to answer it thoroughly in a newsletter email, and

2) because starting tomorrow, I will be rolling out Daily Email Habit.

Daily Email Habit is my new service to help you be consistent with daily emails. It will give you a daily email prompt/constraint to take away idling over what to write, to keep you on track, and even to help you be more creative.

I will be rolling out Daily Email Habit gradually. But if you like, reply to this email, tell me what like about this service, why it sounds like it might be valuable to you, and I will add you to the priority list, so have a chance to try out Daily Email Habit sooner rather than later.

The first online course to sell for $1M?

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Will an online course ever sell for $1M a pop?

Probably not, but who knows. Maybe it will be yours. Consider the following:

In 2007, rare-book dealer Glenn Horowitz made a prediction in the New York Times that a rare, signed copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses, known as the Kaeser edition, would become the first 20th-century book to sell for $1M.

“I can’t remember now,” said Horowitz later, “but, knowing myself, I imagine I would have used the statement as a come-hither.”

And that’s what it turned out to be.

Soon after, Horowitz got a call from a collector who proposed paying $1M for the Kaeser. Horowitz then called Ron Delsener, the then-owner of the book, who had paid $460,500 for it a few years earlier.

“It took Ron about 10 seconds to say yes,” Horowitz recalled. Horowitz’s commission for making that come-hiter statement about the first $1M book, for making the call to the then-owner, and for waiting 10 seconds to hear yes, was $100,000.

I was amazed to read an article about Horowitz, the top-of-the-top among rare-book dealers. I found so much in common between the rare-book dealer’s world and the course creator world.

Sure, course buyers won’t pay $1M for a course (yet), and most people buy courses for reasons other than collecting.

But consider the following change in the rare-book industry, brought on by the Internet, as described in the article:

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The Internet made scarcity scarce: everyone could see that there were a gazillion copies of the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica for sale online, and their price plunged. To sell, a book now had to be the best copy, the cheapest copy, or the only copy.

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Swap out “copy” for “course,”” and “the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica” for, say, “How to write emails,” and maybe you can see a valuable lesson in the above. Again from the article:

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Such books required dealers to know more and to be more imaginative: they had to articulate what made a particular provenance or inscription so valuable. Christian Jonkers [a rare book dealer] said, “Our job as booksellers is to justify the difference between the price we bought it at and the price we’re selling it at by providing a narrative about why you should buy it.”

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Marketing guru Jay Abraham, who claims he has helped his clients create an extra 8 billion dollars in value, has this idea of industry cross-pollination. Says Jay, valuable practices that are as common as gravel in one industry can be imported profitably into your own industry, where they appear to be magic, or gold.

I would never have thought to go searching for business ideas in the rare-book dealer’s world. but the article I read is full of ’em, down to Glenn Horowitz’s downfall, near-bankruptcy and possible jail time, for engaging in a common though legal-gray-area business practice.

I have pages of notes from this article. I even got the idea to create a kind of paid newsletter where I would profile interesting people from other industries, in a kind of done-for-you cross-pollination report.

That’s almost certainly never going to happen. But if you sell courses or information more broadly… and if you’re looking for profitable ideas that nobody else in the course creator industry is using… then the following article is worth a read:

https://bejakovic.com/rare-book-dealer

A price does not need to be paid

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This is a personal email and there’s a good chance it won’t say anything to you.

Take that as a warning and only read on if you’re not looking for marketing tips or copywriting hacks today.

I’m sitting in a cafe as I write this, my usual refuge on Thursday afternoons when Flor the cleaning woman takes charge of my apartment.

Since I have a laptop, I am required to sit at the big table of computer-bound immigrants, next to the espresso machine, along a window that faces the street.

On Thursday afternoons when I sit here and work, more often than not, I see an old woman walking down the street, who comes to the cafe window and knocks.

The barista then opens the window.

The old woman and the barista chat for a couple of minutes.

The barista then gets ready a coffee and hands it out the window. The old woman takes the coffee, smiles, waves a farewell, and walks away.

I don’t know the agreement or relationship this old woman has with the cafe, but one thing that’s clear is that she is not paying anything for her coffee.

I’m telling you this because I recently caught myself thinking about success, about things I want in my life.

The phrase that popped up in my head was, “A price needs to be paid.” When I investigated a bit more, I found that I believe that in order to have the things that I want, I have to pay a price, and the currency must be something that is dear and valuable to me — time, comfort, my own self-image.

It’s a kind of grocery-store metaphor of life. “You can have whatever you want — if you can afford it, and if you can stomach to pay for it.”

No doubt, this metaphor of life works to an extent. It’s gotten me to where I’m at today.

But grocery stores are only one kind of thing you can see while walking down the street. You can also see, say, playgrounds, trees growing in the park, couples walking hand-in-hand.

If you’re anything like me, and if you think a price needs to be paid, maybe this is something to think about.

Maybe another metaphor of life might serve you better?

Maybe another metaphor might allow you to get what you want sooner, hold on to it longer, and enjoy yourself more along the way?

Maybe, rather than “a price needs to be paid,” it’s possible that “toys are there to play with”… or “a gift is there to be accepted”… or “it’s a free and voluntary exchange”?

I don’t know. But I’ve been thinking about it.

Anyways, all this popped up in my mind while I was doing “The Work.”

I’ve talked about The Work in these emails already. The Work was working for me when I wrote about it, and it’s working for me still.

Plus, right now, I’m in the middle of putting together a new offer. I also recently promoted my biggest course with some success.

So rather than trying to get you to send me money today, I will tell you the best thing I did this year was to read the following book, and to start doing what it says as soon as I got to chapter 2:

https://bejakovic.com/stillworking

Mandatory vacation day

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This morning at 9am Barcelona time, I concluded the White Tuesday event that promoted my almost 4-year-old Copy Riddles program.

I ended up making 20 sales of Copy Riddles over 6 emails and 36 hours.

I offered a payment plan as a key part of the White Tuesday promo, which means I collected $2,848 so far (one person paid in full) and will be getting another $17,056 over the next 10 months as the payments roll in, for a grand total of $19,940.

In my small, modest world, with my small, modest list, this counts as a good result — $9,970 per day, $3,323 per email, when all the money is in.

This, by the way, is not any kind of “HOT: Work Just 2 days A Month!” bizopp pitch. In fact, it’s the opposite.

I always do a review for myself of a completed promo and list 10 conclusions. I did the same this morning.

My key conclusion was about the reason why this promo was a success, and that’s because of perceived real value.

Copy Riddles sells for $997. The $2k Advertorial Consult I gave away as a free bonus I really got paid $2k for.

Except, for either of those to really matter, to feel real, it took constant work over months and years leading up to this promo. Selling and promoting Copy Riddles… selling and promoting and delivering my other offers… doing consulting and coaching and client work (back when I still did)… featuring testimonials… talking about case studies… going on podcasts… dripping out my experiences writing advertorials… writing these daily emails, from home, from airports, and at train stations.

A couple days ago, Kieran Drew wrote the following in a review of his own successful promo:

“Sure, courses have little-to-no fulfillment cost. But I now have over 3,000 customers and let me tell you, there is no free lunch. Products are not ‘true’ passive income—especially if you send thank you videos to every customer and reply to every email (I recommend both).”

Not “true passive income” is not a problem for me any more.

Five years ago, I published my 10 Commandments Of A-list Copywriters book. Commandment VI I got from Claude Hopkins, who wrote that love of work can be cultivated, and that for him work and play are interchangeable.

I put that in the book as an interesting and possibly useful idea. At the time, it definitely was not a belief I had managed to adopt. But over the years, maybe because I wrote it down then, it’s gradually taken hold in my head.

Today I work, don’t mind working, and in fact have slowly turned work into a kind of game that I can actually enjoy.

Except even games need a break now and then — body and brain need to rest and recover.

And so I’m taking a mandatory vacation day today. This email is the only thing I will do, besides replying to previous Copy Riddles buyers who asked for the bonuses I offered as part of the White Tuesday promo.

Meanwhile, I can only recommend you read or reread my 10 Commandments book. Looking back over it after 5 years, all the commandments are still supremely valuable. In fact, I only wish I myself would follow them more regularly. Maybe you too can benefit from reading them or being reminded of them? For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments