Means Of Control

Wickedful

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I like to go see movies without knowing anything about them other than they’re playing at my local movie theater. I don’t want to know the genre, the actors in it, the plot summary, the reviews.

“Let them surprise me,” I say with a magnanimate sweep of my hand, as I hand over my 7 euro at the box office.

And so this Wednesday, I went to see Wicked. I only knew it had something to do with the Wizard of Oz. But I was surprised to find it’s three hours long, and a musical of the kind I don’t like, and a heavy-handed morality play to boot.

I emerged from the theater several years older, no wiser, and looking desesperately for something, anything, a little shred from this ordeal that I could reclaim for my daily email.

And there was something.

In between all the unendful singing, Wicked also has bits of dialogue. And the dialogue regularly makes use of a little word-trick. Each time it happened, it put a smile on my face and lightened the heavy burden of watching this movie.

I won’t spell out exactly what this word-trick is. But perhaps you can guess? I’ve tried to use it myself numerious times in this email.

My point for today is that it makes sense to make up and use your own words, terms, slang, even if it’s nonsense, or silly. It lightens the burden of reading (or watching) otherwise valuable but dry material.

You might shrug at that. Perhaps it’s because you’ve heard this advice before. Perhaps it’s because you think it doesn’t apply to you, and the serious business you are engagified in.

So there’s a bigger and to me much more interesting point I want to share with you. But I will save it for my email tomorrow. It’s not that humor is important, though it is. It’s not that it can be done in every field, even if your field is accounting for mortuary offices.

Rather, the point I want to share with you is a surprising idea I heard recently in the crypto space, which applies much more broadly, to business and perhaps to life.

Maybe you think that’s a grand claim. I can only promise to pay it off tomorrow.

Meanwhile, if you would like to learn a different trick, one that can lighten the burden of reading AND writing daily emails, you might like the enfollowing:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Revealed: MVE contest winners

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Yesterday, I concluded my first-ever prize-giveaway contest. The prizes totaled $1,088. The condition to enter was to submit 50-150 words about any email I’ve written using my Most Valuable Email trick.

My goal for this contest was to find out whether the MVE trick makes my emails more sticky and effective, and also how my readers are using the MVE trick for their own benefit.

Only one problem:

Now that the contest’s over, I don’t really want to reveal which Most Valuable Emails the winners picked.

There’s value in keeping the mystery around what the MVE trick is. And if I gave five distinct examples of Most Valuable Emails, odds are good that the trick would be easy to spot.

But a deal’s a deal. So I’m announcing the contest winners, the prizes they got, and my reasoning for why they won:

#1 Gold medal

The first prize of $250 goes to Shakoor Chowdhury, a marketer and copywriter from Mississauga, Ontario.

Shakoor picked a Most Valuable Email I wrote over the past week, the same email I referenced yesterday, which drew lots of positive responses from other readers also.

But the real reason Shakoor gets first prize is because he also wrote me to say:

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

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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This is the #1 winning entry, because it matches the #1 reason I find Most Valuable Emails so valuable. And that’s that that Most Valuable Emails make it interesting for me personally to stick with daily emailing day after day. And it seems for Shakoor also.

#2 Silver medal

The second prize of $200 goes to Tom Grundy, a high-powered London banker who also happens to write excellent emails about self development.

Tom picked three of my old Most Valuable Emails as his favorites, going back to 2021. But the real reason Tom won a prize is that he also applied the MVE trick in one of his LinkedIn posts. And the result, in Tom’s words:

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I thought I’d share the attached LinkedIn post I made a while ago. Great thing about this post was that people replied with their own “MVE style” replies and it turned into a fun thread.

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Like I keep saying, the MVE trick makes your emails engaging and fun for your audience. Same goes for your LinkedIn posts, if that’s your bag.

#3 Bronze medal

Finally, three third prizes — three $197 tickets to my upcoming Water Into Wine workshop — go to:

1. Carlo Gargiulo, an Italian copywriter working in-house at Metodo Merenda.

Besides working in-house, Carlo also writes his own email newsletter. He’s been selling his own services and coaching for years to his list. But recently, Carlo made his first-ever affiliate sales to his list, via an idea I shared in the MVE swipe file.

Point being, the MVE training has value beyond simply teaching you the MVE trick.

2. Alex Ko, senior copywriter at KooBits in Singapore.

Alex won because he picked a Most Valuable Email I wrote more than a year ago, and he pointed out how this email still has an impact on my business every day.

In other words, Alex rightly highlighted that writing Most Valuable Emails is not just about sales or engagement. Instead, it can actually transform you and your business in time.

3. Jeffrey Thomas, a DR copywriter from St. Paul, Minnesota, who works in-house at Marketing Profs.

Jeffrey has previously written me to say nice things about Most Valuable Emails I’ve written. But he won this time because he applied the MVE trick himself — to the description of a live presentation he’ll be giving at a major conference this November.

So there you go. The MVE contest winners, and the reasons why they won.

If you’re one of the winners above, I’ll be in touch about how to get you your prize.

And if you’re not one of the winners above, you now have 5 good dimensionalizations of what the MVE program can do. Not just for me, but for other marketers, copywriters, and even one business owner, in a range of situations, applications, and formats.

If you already have my Most Valuable Email program, this might encourage you to revisit it, apply the trick yourself, and benefit.

And if you don’t have my MVE program, I can only assume it’s because you found the prize contest cheesy and crass. Because you’re above such flat-out manipulation. Because you don’t want your name to be used to sell stuff online.

I can completely understand. I feel the same way about many marketing stunts.

That said, maybe this email has given you some new arguments for why you can benefit from discovering the Most Valuable Email trick and inserting it into your marketing. If you’d like to get started now:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

MVE contestants hit me with the stupid Swedish Chef routine

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My Most Valuable Email, $1088-prize contest continues. ​More on that below. ​​But first, a true personal story:

I hated high school. More than anything, I hated English class.

I hated it so much that I refused to read the books we were to read or write the papers we were to write.

I remember Mr. Sherman, my 11th-grade art teacher, calling my mom late one evening.

He told her I wouldn’t be able to go on tomorrow’s field trip to Washington DC. The fact was, I was currently failing English class, and there was a law about taking badly behaving inmates out of prison.

The reason I managed to not fail English completely was that I went to a pretty progressive school. English class wasn’t just about taking tests and writing papers. It would sometimes involve creative assignments — you know, to make school fun.

For example, in 12th grade, we had to read Beowful. Of course I didn’t.

Fortunately, to prove we had read Beowful and thought about it deeply, we had to do one of those creative assignments. In other words, we were free to do anything and present it to the class, as long as it had to do with Beowulf.

My turn came. I walked up to the front of the class and popped in a tape to a little portable stereo. (Yes, this was a long time ago.) I pressed play.

First, a bit of music came on. As that faded out, my voice came on, trying to sound as smooth and hip as a radio DJ:

“Good evening and thanks for tuning in to another episode of late-night early-English classics. Tonight, we have sections seven through nineteen of the greatest epic poem ever written in the English language. You know it and I know it — of course, I’m talking about Beowful. And as always, we have our local old-English expert, professor Bjorn Bejakoffson of St. James University, to read this masterpiece for us in the original. Take it away professor Bejakoffson…

… and at this point, I transitioned into my best impression of the Swedish Chef from the Muppets.

I used to be good at mimicking the accents of other languages. But here, I was really just making up gibberish and making it sound like what I imagined old English sounded like.

In that 12th-grade English class, in part because I was always so unprepared, I had developed a reputation as the class clown.

My classmates were all eager to see what I had done for this creative assignment. As soon as the stupid Swedish Chef routine came on, everybody started laughing.

I stood there at the front of the class, beaming with cleverness as the tape played.

But then I spotted the English teacher. He was standing in the back, shaking his head, and scribbling down something in his notes. As I found out later, it was a C- for me.

I dredged up this story from my failing memory because of the Most Valuable Email contest I launched yesterday. There was just one condition to enter this contest:

“Write me an email and tell me which of my Most Valuable Emails has been most useful or interesting to you, and why.”

I’ve gotten a bunch of entries so far.

Many of them warmed my cold heart.

But I also got a few entries from people who clearly do not know what my Most Valuable Email trick is. Instead, they were just picking emails at random, including ones that don’t use the Most Valuable Email trick, and flattering me in hopes that they will guess right and have a shot at a prize.

I’m telling you this for two reasons:

1. Because, while I keep using the Most Valuable Email trick over and over, it remains subtle and surprising to people. Even people who regularly read my emails often can’t guess what it is.

2. Because I have somehow grown up and become like those dreaded teachers I hated so much in high school. And when I see someone trying to fake or buffoon their way through this contest, I just shake my head and scribble down in my notes: C-.

If you’d like to participate in this contest, you can find the prizes, rules, and deadline below.

And if you want to have a decent shot of winning any of the prizes, it will help to know what the Most Valuable Email trick is, and to make reference to it when you submit your entry. To help you do that, here’s where you can find the actual Most Valuable Email training:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

And here’s more details about the contest, from yesterday’s email:

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First prize — $297.

Second prize — $200.

And three third prizes — a $197 ticket to my upcoming Water Into Wine workshop, on repackaging your offers for more sales.

If you’re interested, here are the rules for this competition:

1. Entries must be submitted in the form of an email from 50 to 150 words. Simply tell me which of my Most Valuable Emails has been the most useful or insightful or entertaining for you, and why. You don’t have to be clever, fancy, or unique in what you say — simply tell me what comes to mind.

2. The deadline for this competition is this Wednesday, June 19th, at 8:31pm CET. I’ll announce the prizes the day after, on Thursday, June 20th. The competition is open to anyone on my list, whether or not you have bought my Most Valuable Email training.

3. You can submit as many entries as you like, and I will consider all of them. But you can only win one prize.

4. What I want primarily is to find out how my readers have been using my Most Valuable Email trick to benefit themselves, as well as how this trick has made certain of my emails more sticky and available in their minds.

Like I say on the sales page for Most Valuable Email, if I had to choose just one type of email to write each day, I’d choose Most Valuable Emails. That’s why I want to hear about the real-world effects these emails have had on my readers.

5. The decision about which competition entry wins which prize will be made by me, based on my personal reaction and surprise. As one MVE buyer wrote me after going through the course:

“I’m looking back at your old emails with new eyes. You know that moment people get epiphanies and the entire world looks different? I’m feeling that way about your writing now. You’ve helped me unlock something I didn’t know existed. So incredible.”

$1088 in prizes to Bejako readers

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First prize — $297.

Second prize — $200.

And three third prizes — a $197 ticket to my upcoming Water Into Wine workshop, on repackaging your offers for more sales.

I’m 100% serious about this competition.

To enter, simply write me an email and tell me which of my Most Valuable Emails has been most useful or interesting to you, and why.

Most Valuable Emails = any of my emails that use the Most Valuable Email trick.

I write a new Most Valuable Email every few days. In fact, I wrote 3 over the past week alone.

If you’ve been on my list for a while, you probably know what I mean by the Most Valuable Email trick.

And if you don’t know, you can watch me pull back the curtain and reveal the trick inside my Most Valuable Email training.

Plus, inside that training you can find a swipe file of 51 Most Valuable Emails that I selected as being particularly successful, effective, or influential for me personally. Any of those is eligible for this competition as well.

That means that, if you buy Most Valuable Email today, and then enter this competition, you have a fair shot of making your money back within two days, and to get the course to boot. There’s no telling how many people will enter this competition, and you might win first prize simply by virtue of showing up.

Plus, just for entering the competition, I will send you an additional valuable marketing idea, which you can use today to make more sales.

If you’re interested, here are the rules for this competition:

1. Entries must be submitted in the form of an email from 50 to 150 words. Simply tell me which of my Most Valuable Emails has been the most useful or insightful or entertaining for you, and why. You don’t have to be clever, fancy, or unique in what you say — just tell me what comes to mind.

2. The deadline for this competition is this Wednesday, June 19th, at 8:31pm CET. I’ll announce the prizes the day after, on Thursday, June 20th. The competition is open to anyone on my list, whether or not you have bought my Most Valuable Email training.

3. You can submit as many entries as you like, and I will consider all of them. But you can only win one prize.

4. What I want primarily is to find out how my readers have been using my Most Valuable Email trick to benefit themselves, as well as how this trick has made certain of my emails more sticky and available in their minds.

​​Like I say on the sales page for Most Valuable Email, if I had to choose just one type of email to write each day, I’d choose Most Valuable Emails. That’s why I want to hear about the real-world effects these emails have had on my readers.

5. The decision about which competition entry wins which prize will be made by me, based on my personal reaction and surprise. ​​As one MVE buyer wrote me after going through the course:

​​”I’m looking back at your old emails with new eyes. You know that moment people get epiphanies and the entire world looks different? I’m feeling that way about your writing now. You’ve helped me unlock something I didn’t know existed. So incredible.”

Announcing: The winner of the “Send me your feedback on my Simple Money Emails course” contest

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Two weeks back, I announced the winner of the “Influence my Simple Money Emails course” contest, only 3 months behind schedule.

Well, today I have another contest winner to announce, this time for the “Send me your feedback on my Simple Money Emails course” contest.

I told everyone who had gotten Simple Money Emails to send me their feedback, their praise, their blame, their outrage.

The most useful bit of feedback, determined by a select three-part panel composed of myself, plus a Shire hobbit named Bejako Baggins, and top-secret agent Bond Jebakovic, would win a ticket to my upcoming Authority Emails training, valued somewhere north of $500.

I ran that contest a little over a month ago.

Today I would like to announce the winner (fanfares please):

Career coach Tom Grundy. (Tom, if you’re listening, come by the DJ booth to pick up your prize.)

Tom wrote me with the following bit of feedback on Simple Money Emails, specifically about a tiny section at the bottom of page 2:

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I really enjoyed SME. A few parts which were refreshers, a few which were a new take on stuff I’d already come across, and some stuff which was brand new to me.

I actually found the most useful part of the course to be the small section at the bottom of page 2. The eight bullet points to me were gold. I came into copywriting through a Stefan Georgi course, so I learnt his RMBC method and only then came onto daily emails, which I found to be much more my thing. I always struggled to see how daily emails “fit” with other copywriting models (RMBC, PAS, AIDA etc) and this section has made it super clear for me. Now when I sent my daily emails I use this list, and make sure I’m ticking off at least one in each email (and ticking them all off over time).

So if you had pages which delved into each of these 8 bullets in more detail (just like you have already for the openers and closers) I’d also find this super valuable.

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The reason it’s taken me this long to announce Tom’s the winner was because it’s taken me this long to take his advice and expand this section of the course a bit with some illustrations.

I’ve done that now.

So if you have Simple Money Emails already, you will the find the updates automagically present inside your course area.

And if don’t have Simple Money Emails yet, you can get it at the page below, and start benefiting from it in under an hour from now:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Announcing: The winner of the “Influence my Simple Money Emails course” contest

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It’s 6:45pm as I write this, which means it’s about 8 hours later than I normally write these emails. I’ll tell you in a sec why that’s significant.

But first, let me tell you why I’m writing so late:

I’ve spent much of the day wandering the streets of Budapest, my once-adopted but then renounced home.

​​I lived here for 11 years but then left. This trip is the first time I’ve been back in over 4 years.

The last few days were all about meeting up with old friends.

Today is my last day. I spent it by doing a full tourist circuit, up to the renovated City Park, with its new hot air balloon and its convex garden-covered museum of ethnography… and then, via the oldest metro in continental Europe (1896)… up to the Castle District with its panoramic views of the various bridges over the Danube right below.

Oh, and when I stopped in along the way at different Starbuckses to order my decaf latte, I used my faded but still passable Hungarian and kept introducing myself as János. Nobody realized I’m not a local.

All that’s to say, it’s been a nice and nostalgic day.

But now it’s night. And night is when I find it impossible to write anything sensible or quick.

In fact, I have no idea how I can possibly tie the above Budapest opener with any kind of offer I sell, except to say that I was so strapped for ideas for this email that I started rooting around my journal for this newsletter… and going far, far back.

So far back, that I found that I had still not announced the winner of the “Influence my Simple Money Emails course” contest, which I ran back in July, before I released the course.

For that contest, I asked readers to write in and tell me what has them bothered when writing simple sales emails. What they would like to learn, and why they haven’t been able to learn it yet.

The best such response — as chosen by me — got a free ticket to my 9 Deadly Email Sins training, which cost $100 to attend.

So let me do what I should have done months ago:

The winner — fanfare please — of the “Influence my Simple Money Emails course” contest is Richard Terry, owner of Accolade Kitchen and Bath, a construction and remodeling company in St. Louis, Missouri.

​​Richard won himself the free ticket to the Email Sins training by writing in with the following:

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I’m told that a sales email should be in a story format that tells the story about the client’s fears, concerns, what keeps them up at night etc. Your product or service should solve your prospects problem. My challenge is not being creative enough to produce these emails on a consistent basis with relevant content.

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Even though I didn’t announce Richard as the winner publicly until now, I gave him access to 9 Deadly Email Sins when I put it on.

​​I also used his comment a guiding light when I actually the Simple Money Emails course.

My goal for the course was to demystify email copywriting, and show that writing effective daily sales emails is not a matter of unusual creativity — but a matter of preparation, and a willingness to follow a few simple rules, which I laid out in the course.

In case you’d like to write sales emails on a consistent basis, but you have not been able to, then my Simple Money Emails course can help you get started.

​​I even included the 9 Deadly Email Sins training as a free bonus.

​​If you’d like to get the whole package now, go here:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Value is not how-to

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Yesterday’s email, about a strange scientific experiment on kittens, provoked some response.

​​One reader said I should have included a trigger warning. (“Deeply disturbing content. Cruel. CRUEL.”)

Another reader said we “look at Nazi scientists and cringe as we click our tongues” but we allow our own scientists all sorts of license.

A third reader wrote to say he loved the line, “The scientists are wearing white lab coats. The kitten is not.” He thought the line was priceless.

I highlight these responses because they focus on exactly the two things that got me about the strange kitten experiment.

​​The research was bizarre and cruel. At the same time, the image of two laboratory scientists in white lab coats, working hard to startle a kitten into blinking, was ridiculous and made me smile.

There was a point to my email yesterday. If you read the email, do you remember the point?

If you don’t remember, no problem. The point was not the value of the email.

In general, value in an email is not the how-to. Value in an email is the emotional spike it creates.

I could tell you how to create emotional spikes in your emails, but really, what would be the value in that?

Instead, I’ll just tell you that you can create emotional spikes even without talking about cruelty to kittens, without creating outrage, and without trying to be funny. In fact I’ve created a course all about the how-to of “intellectual” emotional spikes. You can find it here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Discipline in print

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Last night, I got a 4-word reply to my email about how quickly memory fails. A reader with a pseudonymous email address replied with just the following aimless question:

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John How r u?

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I got out my 3-ring binder of previous reader replies. I flipped through the pages in search of this reader’s email address. Sure enough, at the bottom of page 22, I found it. This reader had written me before. On January 24 of this year, in response to an email about teaching people to value your offer, this reader had written me to say:

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Who the fuck do you think you are?

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Now I remembered. I even wrote an email about that reply back in January.

Back then, I decided to keep this guy or gal on my list because 1) I don’t get many abusive replies from readers, and I’m more amused than bothered when it does happen and 2) I thought this reader might provide me fodder for an email in the future. That’s just what happened.

I proactively unsubscribed my “How r u” reader last night. Again, not because I was annoyed or bothered by the pointless reply.

“How r u” reader simply became a noble sacrifice to demonstrate an immensely important and fundamental point about all marketing, and in particular, about email marketing.

I honestly cannot overstate the importance of the following point. Even more so if you’re somebody like me — far from a born marketer, salesman, or promoter, and coming from a rather permissive and lax family background.

The point is this:

A key to all marketing, and perhaps the key to email marketing, is to train your audience.

Once upon a time, when I was very naive, I thought marketing was simply about getting the word out about what you have. “Whole frozen turkey, 16 lbs., $25.91. Walmart.”

Later, I figured out that marketing actually changes people — creates new desires, habits, beliefs. “Welcome to Marlboro country.”

But for some reason — again, I’m far from a born marketer or salesman – it took me a long, long while to connect the fact that 1) if you are creating marketing and 2) since marketing changes people then 3) you should consciously create marketing that changes people in a way that suits you.

This is what I mean when I say, train your audience. Tell ’em what to do. Reward those who do it. Punish those who don’t. And make an example of ’em.

100 years ago, John E. Kennedy said marketing is salesmanship in print.

Today, John E. Bejakovic is telling you, marketing is discipline in print.

Of course, maybe you don’t agree with me. Maybe you think I’m saying something offensive or crude or just wrong. In that case, I invite you to write in and tell me so. I promise to read what you write me, and to reply as politely and thoughtfully as I know how. Perhaps publicly.

In any case, let’s get on to the discipline:

For the past couple days, I’ve been talking about a group coaching program I’m planning for the future. The goal of this coaching program is to get people writing daily emails, regularly and well.

Right now, if you’re interested, you can get on the waiting list for that program. The waiting list is the only place I will make this program available.

And as I say on the optin page for the waiting list:

If you do sign up to the waiting list, you will get automated email from me with a few questions. Answering those questions will take all of two minutes, but it will give me valuable information to see whether this group coaching could actually be right for you. Please reply to that email within 24 hours with your answers. I will take anyone who doesn’t do this off the waiting list.

So far, a good number have signed up for the waiting list and have written me in reply to that automated email. I wrote back to each of them individually to say thanks.
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​But a few people have signed up to the waiting list, and then failed to reply to the automated email within 24 hours.

Maybe they changed their minds about the coaching. Maybe they simply forgot. Maybe they were testing me.

Whatever the reason may be, I took them off the waiting list, and I prevented them from getting back on. They might be fine people, but they are clearly not good prospects for a strict coaching program, which is what I intend for this program to be.

If you’re interested in this coaching program, then the first step is to get on my email list. Click here to do so.

Some facts for you to judge me by

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Here are a few facts about me that might seem entirely irrelevant to a newsletter about marketing and copywriting:

I am unmarried, I have no children, I am straight. My religious orientation can only be described as puzzled.

My nationality is dual — Croatia and US. ​​I grew up in the US, but I was born in what was then Yugoslavia but then became Croatia, in a mixed Croatian/Serbian family. As a result, my entire life I’ve been hostile to feelings of nationalism and even patriotism, because I experienced first-hand how much of a fictional construct my homeland was — both my old one, and my newer one, and my still newer one.

Here are a few more facts, maybe slightly more relevant to this newsletter:

Try as I might, I don’t care about money beyond the Micawber rule: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness.” I also don’t enjoy working for work’s sake, and I am by nature lazy, in fact very lazy.

And yet, for years now, I have been working, and quite a lot, and I have been making money, and more than I spend.

​​The reason is that, while I don’t care about money and I’m lazy to work, I do enjoy the feeling of being disciplined and achieving goals, particularly if I was resistant to getting started towards them. And if that means doing work every day and if money falls out as an end result, then so be it.

And now a few final facts, which are relevant to this newsletter:

I’ve been working as a professional copywriter since 2015. I’ve have had 100+ clients over that time, but the bulk of the money I’ve made came from maybe 5 of those clients, and the bulk of that bulk, the money that’s sitting in my bank account now and that’s allowed me to live life how I choose over the past few years, came from one client only.

I will tell you more about that client in a second. But first, let me tell you the reason for all the facts, relevant and irrelevant, I’ve just given you. The reason is the following passage from a book called Revolt of the Masses, by a writer named José Ortega y Gasset:

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I may be mistaken, but the present day writer, when he takes his pen in hand to treat a subject which he has studied deeply, has to bear in mind that the average reader, who has never concerned himself with this subject, if he reads, does so with the view, not of learning something from the writer, but rather, of pronouncing judgment on him when he is not in agreement with the commonplaces that the said reader carries in his head.

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Ortega was a snob and his entire book was written in a condescending and bossy tone. But the above point is spot on — people more often read to judge you than to learn from you. And what basis do they use to judge you? What they already know and believe.

So you got two options:

Option one is to start with your own beliefs and experiences, and to be transparent about those, even if they are irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Many people will judge you negatively as a result, and will consciously or unconsciously dismiss you from then on.

On the other hand, a few people will align with your own choices and beliefs, and they will judge you favorably, including on the actual on-topic content you might be sharing.

Option two is to start with your reader. To find out what your reader believes, what experiences he or she has, and then to signal that you share those — even if you have to stretch the truth or cover up stuff.

You might think I am passing judgment and saying to do the first but not to do the second. Not at all. I’ve done both myself. The first in this newsletter, the second in my work as copywriter working for clients.

Which brings me back to that client who was responsible for the bulk of the money I’ve made as a copywriter.

Today is the last day I am selling a swipe file of 25 “horror advertorials” I wrote for that client between 2019 and 2021. And if you check each of the advertorials in that swipe file, you will find that in the very first sentence or two of each advertorial, and many times after that, I signal in conscious but subtle ways that I am like the person who is reading, that I share his or her experiences, that I have similar beliefs.

It’s dirty work, but there is satisfaction in accomplishing it. And it does pay well.

Anyways, if you want to get my Horror Advertorial Swipe File, you have to be on my email list. The clock is ticking, and there aren’t many more hours before the deadline. If you like, click here to sign up.

Ben Settle’s strange interest in selling to distracted and damaged addicts

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Marketer Ben Settle wrote a strange email on Friday to promote his mobile-first, app-based, course-delivery platform Learnistic. One of the arguments Ben gave for why mobile apps like Learnistic are the future is this:

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Everyone’s basically Gollum now.

Stroking their Precious phone in the dark.

Looking at it, checking in on it, making sure it’s safe and pulling it out just to make sure… not able to rest or bear to be too far away from it — all while scrolling, consuming content, and wrapping their very existence around it.

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By that same logic, I’m surprised Ben is still writing and sending emails.

I mean, if he’s interested in selling to distracted and damaged addicts, which is what he seems to be saying above, then it would make more sense to get himself on TikTok, or at least back on Facebook, rather than to keep writing and sending emails, a relatively low-addiction technology.

My experience, like I wrote a few days ago, is different. I’ve found that if you treat people how you’d like them to behave, then more often than not, they actually meet your expectations. Treat your customers like capable human beings, instead of like Gollum, and you will often find them to be that way.

But really, all the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes. That applies to Ben, and it applies to me also.

The fact is, I dislike my phone, and I hate apps. So maybe everything I wrote above is just justification for that.

I held out for years before I got a cell phone, even as everybody else around me got one. I held out much longer before I got a smart phone — basically until girls I was talking to started getting suspicious, and thinking my old-school Nokia must be a burner, and that I must really be married and hiding it.

Even now, with a smart phone in my pocket, I still refuse to use or download all but the most essential apps. And as much as I’ve learned from Ben himself, and as curious as I’ve gotten several times when he teased free content through his Learnistic app only, I’ve never once been tempted by him to download Learnistic.

That’s also why I host my courses inside the members-only area of my website, using technology from caveman days. It’s also why for my own personal work — journals, notes, research — I mainly use text files on my hard drive, a pre-caveman technology.

Anyways, tonight was the end of the launch for my Insight Exposed program. I only made that program available to people who are signed up to my email list. If you’d like to get on my email list, you can sign up for free by clicking here.