Mental Shortcuts

Why my landing page says very little about me

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A new reader, who signed up to my list yesterday, asks why he should listen to me:

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Hey John, why does your landing page say very little about yourself. What makes you different from other copywriters atleast tell me how much money you have generated for your clients.

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Fair question. Here’s a fair answer:

First off, if I ever identified as a copywriter, I don’t any more. it’s been three years since I last had a client hire me to write for them. I don’t expect that to change soon.

As for money, I made some for clients back when I had them. Not enough money to buy Greenland… just enough to brag a bit.

But that was long enough ago that putting it front and center on my site would make me feel a little like Al Bundy, reminiscing about his glory days as a high school quarterback.

In short, I don’t list past client results on my optin page — or the endorsements I’ve gotten for this newsletter, or the money I personaly make via these emails, or my religious or sexual affiliation — because I don’t wanna, and also because it would be misleading.

None of those things is really what this newsletter is about.

The only consistency in this newsletter, the only thing you can expect, is ideas I discover and find interesting, which I then curate and polish to make sure they are relevant and interesting to you as well.

Well, there is one added step I take sometimes, beyond just writing about interesting and relevant ideas.

I call this extra step the Most Valuable Email trick.

The Most Valuable Email trick does set me apart from most other people who write daily emails, including in the copywriting and marketing worlds.

I have some authority and standing now in that space. But the Most Valuable Email trick worked for me even when I was brand new, and nobody knew me, and I had even less to brag about than I have now.

If you wanna find out more about the Most Valuable Email trick, or even have me pull back the curtain and teach you how I do it, you can do so at the sales page below.

I wrote this sales page back in 2022.

It features as much authority flexing as you’re likely to find anywhere on my site.

If you wanna get a few external reasons why you might want to read my emails, you can find them there.

Or if you want to understand the internal reason that makes many of my emails more interesting than what you might read elsewhere, and how you can do the same, in less than an hour from now, then:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Am I just trying to provoke unsubscribes?

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In reply to my email yesterday, marketer and long-time customer Fred Beyer writes:

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Step 1: Tell your audience there are Mavericks who are worth serving and Gooses who are not (I refrained from using the plural geese ’cause we’re referencing a nickname here after all).

Step 2: Ask your audience which one they are, so you can ignore them appropriately according to your own suggestion in the email.

From Simple Money Emails: “What people do remember is the emotional stimulation”, and here you’re letting a large part of your subscribers know they are less desirable than the rest.

Are you just trying to provoke unsubscribes here? 😂

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My primary goal yesterday was what I wrote in the email, to find out who on my list has their own email list that’s growing at a healthy clip.

At the same time, Fred raises a good point. It’s one I thought about yesterday as I wrote the email.

I decided that yes, I’m ok if a bunch of people I don’t have any plans on working with unsubscribe from my list.

It’s not about them being “undesirable” in some global, eugenic sense. It’s simply who I want to focus on working with, and who I don’t want to focus on.

Ironically, it didn’t end up happening. I’ve had just 2 unsubscribes so far from yesterday’s email.

This I think is a lesson in itself, and probably an interesting data point around the topic of natural authority.

But that’s a topic for another place, another time.

For today, if you are wondering about the reference that Fred makes, to Simple Money Emails, it’s my course on how to write simple, daily emails, like this one, which both bring in sales today, and keep readers — the ones you want — reading tomorrow as well.

For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Still on the fence? Discover Daniel Throssell’s arguments for saying “YES” to Copy Riddles

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I’m wrapping up my “Unannounced Bonus” promo for Copy Riddles. Right now, I am partnered with Lawrence Bernstein on Copy Riddles and nobody else. In the past, though, I have had a few other affiliate partners.

One of these was Australia’s best copywriter Daniel Throssell, who had the following to say about Copy Riddles, and his experience promoting it to his list:

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There are few other courses I fully and wholeheartedly endorse as strongly as one of my own. Copy Riddles is one of them.

It’s the most brilliant course concept I’ve ever seen… literally a gamified series of sequential puzzles that teaches you copywriting.

I have literally never had so many people write to me after I start promoting something, offering unsolicited & gushing feedback on it!

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(Incidentally, that’s an illustration of round 11 of Copy Riddles, “A-list copywriter trick for amping up desire and belief at the same time.” The only difference is that I’ve taken the idea described in that lesson, and applied it not to a sales bullet but to a sales email. But emails are really just expanded bullets in my view.)

Maybe if you don’t take my word for how good and valuable Copy Riddles is, you will take Daniel’s word. Or maybe you’ll take the word of one of the two dozen or so sparkling and winking testimonials I’ve got up on the Copy Riddles sales page.

If you are still on the fence about Copy Riddles, it makes sense to take a moment or three right now, and decide whether you want to firmly come off the fence to the NO side.

If you do decide to say NO, that’s ok.

If, on the other hand, you decide to say YES to Copy Riddles before 12 midnight tonight, here’s what you are saying yes to:

#1. Copy Riddles, of course, which allows you to own A-list copywriting skills more quickly than you would ever believe

How?

By drilling into you mechanical do-or-die skill of writing sales bullets, and giving you feedback from A-list copywriters, who wrote their own sales bullets starting with the same source material as you did.

(This feedback process is why past customers have called Copy Riddles “the best course I’ve taken, bar none” and “worth every dollar/minute/page.”)

#2. A lifetime subscription to Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine

… which sells for $997 on the rare occasions when Lawrence makes it available at all. $997 is what I paid Lawrence last year for it. (A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga: “I would gladly have paid him ten times, even 100 times its price.”)

#3. The unique and never-to-be-repeated “Bullets With Bejako” live cohort

Many years ago, I used to run Copy Riddles as a live cohort to provide members with greater motivation, feedback, and results that an “asynchronous” content-only course frankly cannot match.

I stopped doing live cohorts for Copy Riddles because they are too much work.

I won’t ever do a live cohort in the future. But I’m doing as part of this “Unannounced Bonus” promo, so you can own those million-dollar copywriting skills in just the next few weeks, instead of never.

#4. 3-Month Copy Riddles Payment Plan

As part of this promo, until tonight only, you can break up payments for Copy Riddles over the course of three months.

Again, this “Unannounced Bonus” event ends tonight at 12 midnight PST.

If you’d like to say YES to this offer before it disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Death by indecision

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All week long, I’ve been standing on the sidewalk outside my store on top of an old soap box, shouting and yelling to attract buyers to Copy Riddles with the “Unannounced Bonus” of a lifetime subscription to Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine.

That offer comes to a close tonight at 12 midnight PST.

In case you have successfully dodged, ignored, or forgotten everything I have had to share about Ad Money Machine, I can tell it’s a members-only database of winning direct response ads, updated daily and put into historical context by Lawrence himself, a man who has decades of experience as a direct mail copywriter and operator.

You want an example? I’ll give you an example.

Just this past Thursday, July 17, Lawrence’s new entry inside Ad Money Machine was a magalog that ran around the turn of the century for Healthy Directions. The headline complex ran:

Death By Indecision

Today’s Greatest Threat To Your Life Isn’t Cancer… Toxic Drugs… Heart Disease.

It’s Having Too Much Information and No One to Trust

As Lawrence writes in his commentary, this is a “compelling lead that can be deployed in almost any industry.” So let me deploy:

Today’s greatest threat to your pocketbook isn’t AI… inflation… or hordes of competitors.

It’s having too much information and no one to trust.

Regarding trust — Lawrence has been in the game of copywriting and info publishing for a few decades. I’ve been at it for a little over a decade.

That kind of longevity typically encourages trust. But here’s the thing:

Both Lawrence’s Ad Money Machine and my Copy Riddles program are ultimately not about our own personal authority.

Rather, they are based on hard numbers and objective results:

Sales letters that mailed and ads that ran over and over and over… copywriters who were paid millions in royalties for their work and hired by the top publishers over and above others… and in the case of Copy Riddles, a process to get you practicing and writing sales copy, which is independent of my own advice and opinions.

If you have no one to trust, then Lawrence and me are reasonable choices. But if you’re already burdened by too much information from people you trust, then here’s my biased but accurate suggestion:

Drop all the other advice, based on likability and personal authority, and focus on these two resources that are fundamentally based on sales results and a new mechanism.

Only thing is, you can’t think about it too much longer. Beware of death by indecision, because the deadline is nearing.

Like I said, the current offer disappears tonight at 12 midnight PST, never be repeated. If you need a reminder, here’s what the “Unannounced Bonus” offer is made up of:

#1. Copy Riddles, of course, which allows you to own A-list copywriting skills more quickly than you would ever believe

How?

By drilling into you mechanical do-or-die skill of writing sales bullets, and giving you feedback from A-list copywriters, who wrote their own sales bullets starting with the same source material as you did.

(This feedback process is why past customers have called Copy Riddles “the best course I’ve taken, bar none” and “worth every dollar/minute/page.”)

#2. A lifetime subscription to Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine

… which sells for $997 on the rare occasions when Lawrence makes it available at all. $997 is what I paid Lawrence last year for it. (A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga: “I would gladly have paid him ten times, even 100 times its price.”)

#3. The unique and never-to-be-repeated “Bullets With Bejako” live cohort

Many years ago, I used to run Copy Riddles as a live cohort to provide members with greater motivation, feedback, and results that an “asynchronous” content-only course frankly cannot match.

I stopped doing live cohorts for Copy Riddles because they are too much work.

I won’t ever do a live cohort in the future. But I’m doing as part of this “Unannounced Bonus” promo, so you can own those million-dollar copywriting skills in just the next few weeks, instead of never.

#4. 3-Month Copy Riddles Payment Plan

As part of this promo, until tonight only, you can break up payments for Copy Riddles over the course of three months.

Again, this “Unannounced Bonus” event ends tonight at 12 midnight PST.

If you’d like to stop the indecision right now:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Exposed: Gary Bencivenga’s “100x its price” marketing investment

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I once heard Gary Bencivenga say—

But wait. First, let me do things properly, and first tell you who Gary is, in the odd case you don’t know, or remind you of the man’s accomplishments, in case you do.

Gary Bencivenga is widely regarded as the world’s greatest living copywriter.

That praise is based not on subjective impressions, but on hard numbers.

An executive at Rodale Press, a big direct response publisher, said that Gary never lost a split-run test when going up against other top copywriters.

An executive at Phillips publishing, another major direct response company, said that Gary had more winners than anybody else.

Gene Schwartz, a legendary copywriter and the author of the bible in the field, Breakthrough Advertising, summed it up by saying there are only four or five true masters of copywriting — and Gary is one of them.

With that intro, let me tell you what I heard Gary say once.

Gary said he advised a client, a publishing company, to purchase a small financial newsletter, lock stock and two smoking barrels, simply because of an enthusiastic testimonial the newsletter had gotten. (The author of that testimonial was a certain Warren Buffett.)

So great, says Gary, is the value of really convincing proof.

Going by that logic, I am hereby putting in my offer to buy Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine — the entire site, all the content, and the domain. I am doing this based simply on the following testimonial, which comes from Gary Bencivenga himself:

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One of the secrets I teach copywriters and marketers who want to be more successful is to be sure they read a great direct response ad every day.

But where do you find an almost limitless supply of great ads to be inspired by?

The best source I have ever found is Lawrence’s site. I’ve been writing copy for more than 40 years now, and I still do my ‘ad-a-day’ thing, just to keep sharp.

I never fail to be inspired with new ideas when browsing through Lawrence’s collection of ads. I would gladly have paid him ten times, even 100 times its price. Investing in your own knowledge is always the greatest investment you can make, and this is one of the smartest ways to do it.

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I don’t know how much Gary paid to get Lawrence’s daily serving of a great response ad.

I do know I paid Lawrence $97 per month for it for a long time, and then I paid him $997, last year, in one lump sum, for a lifetime subscription.

You, however, can get the same lifetime subscription I paid $997 for, the same subscription that Gary says is “one of the smartest ways” to invest in yourself, and you can get it for free.

You can get it for free as part of the “Unannounced Bonus” promo I am doing for my Copy Riddles program this week, which runs until this Sunday at 12 midnight PST.

For more info on Copy Riddles, or to invest in yourself before this deal disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

This kind of email drives more sales than the average

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Here’s a free marketing tip for you:

If people are buying, it makes sense to advertise the fact.

In the many promos I’ve run within this email newsletter, I’ve always found that when I write an email in which I share a message from someone who’s just taken me up on the promo offer, it drives more sales than your average sales email.

As an example:

Since Monday, I have been running a little promo, the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, for my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

That promo is ending today at 12 midnight PST.

The whole idea behind the promo has been to pile on the bonuses. The little time I’ve had to write emails has been eaten up by spelling out what exactly people get inside the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

And so, though people have been buying, I haven’t had time to advertise that fact. Lemme fix that now. Here are a few messages I got from readers who took me up on this offer over the past 24 hours.

First, from email marketer Logan Hobson, who lives in Japan:

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Alright John,

I got 5 copies of “Book” coming to Japan.

Yes, even though I could have ordered them from Japanese Amazon and gotten free shipping with Prime (which is cheaper here than in the US), rankings and sales on the US Amazon have more impact for you so I ordered them from my US Amazon account.

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Second, from copywriter and marketing consultant Chuck Gibson:

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John,

Receipt attached.

I, of course, already have the book, but not printed copies. But it’s the bonus intrigue that hooked me. Very interesting offer.

And a cool way to get your Amazon sales up. Now I have copies to give to certain protégés.

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And third, from a reader who I’m guessing doesn’t want me to share his name:

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Alright, you got me. This is the worst possible time for me to spend any more money since I have to go on a multi-country trip in 45 days and gotta save as much as possible.

Frankly I don’t even KNOW what I’ll do with every book, Maybe leave one in every Airbnb I stay at as a parting gift? That would be funny but anyway, your bonuses are always amazing and they will be great companions for all the travels.

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As a result of the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle and of dedicated readers and customers like the above, the paperback copy of my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters has jumped from an Amazon book ranking of 1,016,096 at the start of the promo to a current ranking of 75,795.

In the process, it’s leapfrogged such industry standards as Mark Ford and John Forde’s Great Leads, Brian Kurtz’s Overdeliver, and Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Direct Marketing.

So much for the education/demonstration part of this email. Now for the sales.

Like I said, the chance to get the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle ends tonight. If you have taken me up on this offer, check the bonus area I gave you access to, and you will find the following:

#1. Copywriting Portfolio Secrets (Price last sold at: $97)

In this training, I show you how to build up your copywriting portfolio in the fastest and most efficient way, so you can start to win copywriting jobs even today. I show you the best way I’ve found to win 4- and 5-figure jobs I REALLY wanted, even when I wasn’t qualified for them, and how you can do it too.

I previously sold this training for $97. But it’s yours free inside the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle, which also includes my…

#2. No-Stress Negotiation For Well-Paid Copywriters (Price last sold at: $100)

This guide outlines my 7-part negotiating system, which I adapted from negotiation coach Jim Camp. This system kept me sane while I still regularly interviewed and worked with copywriting clients. Follow these seven principles, and you will end up making more money, working with better clients, and being able to stick to it for the long term.

I only offered this information before as part of the $100 Copy Zone guide, which also featured….

#3. How To Get Set Up On Upwork

This free bonus is an excerpt from a short self-published book I wrote once, How to Become a $150/Hr Sales Copywriter on Upwork: A Personal Success Story that Almost Anyone Can Replicate. It tells you how to actually get set up on Upwork — the details of your profile page, your description, your title.

If you combine this bonus with the two bonuses above — Copywriting Portfolio Secrets and No-Stress Negotiation — you have a great shot of winning a job on Upwork by the end of this week, or even today.

#4. Dan’s Timeless Wisdom (priceless, or $25k+)

Between August of 2019 and March 2020, I was in Dan Ferrari’s coaching group. As you might know, Dan started out as a star copywriter at The Motley Fool, and went on to become one of the most successful, most winning, big-money direct response copywriters working today.

Inside his coaching group, Dan dispensed copy critiques, marketing advice, and mystical koans to help his coaching students get to the next level.

At some point, I had the bright idea to start archiving the best and most valuable things that Dan was saying. I got 25 of them down, and they are all included in this document.

(By the way, I never tallied up the exact and rather painful amount of money I paid Dan for the coaching. It was north of $25k. I do know I made it all back, and then some, in just the first two months after I stopped with the coaching, thanks to just one tip I got from Dan.)

#5. Copy Riddles Lite (Price last sold at: $97)

Copy Riddles Lite includes one of the 20 rounds included in my full Copy Riddles program. The round is composed of two parts, in which you practice writing sales bullets, and compare what you wrote to what Mel Martin (as well as several other A-list copywriters) wrote starting with the same prompt.

Do this, and you very quickly realize how much skill went into Mel Martin’s bullets. Fortunately, you also very quickly manage to leech some of that skill from Mel Martin, without spending the months and years of agony it took him.

And once you get a taste for Martin’s skill, then the next step is natural:

#6. “How to Turn Fascinations into Fortunes: Copywriting Secrets To Fascinate, Captivate, And Dominate” (Price last sold at: $97)

Lawrence Bernstein, “the world’s most obsessed ad archivist,” once hunted down a collection of all of Mel Martin’s million-dollar ads for Boardroom, along with other control-beating ads Martin had written for the New York Times book division.

Lawrence then printed out the ads, stuffed them in an envelope, and mailed the collection to Marty Edelston, the founder and CEO of Boardroom.

Did Edelston get a kick out of seeing those old ads that helped build up Boardroom? He sure did.

Marty Edelston was so grateful for these ads that he sent Lawrence a thank-you note, along with a check for $2,000.

If you’d like to see these ads yourself, and study them, and model them for selling your own products, then Lawrence put them together into a collection he called “Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes.”

Lawrence got $2,000 as a thank you for putting together this collection of ads. He then sold this collection for $97.

But you don’t have to pay $2,000, or even $97 for “Fascinations Into Fortunes.”

I’ve made a special deal with Lawrence so you can get “Fascinations Into Fortunes” free, along with Copy Riddles Lite, as part of the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

#7. “How I made an extra $1404.53/month in Amazon royalties at the push of a button”

This report outlines a hack, which involves the push of a button — literally, that’s all there is to it — and which made me an extra ~$1.5k per month in Amazon royalties. I used this hack once, over the span of a few months, or rather a few weeks. I made money with it. And I never used it again.

I’m not saying anybody else should use this hack. I’m not saying anybody else should NOT use it either.

All I’m willing to do is to tell you what this hack is, why I’m no longer using it myself, and how you can try it out yourself, if you so choose, to make easy money off Amazon.

And that’s it.

Those seven bonuses, with a real-world value of $386, counting just what they sold for previously, are what you get if you’ve already taken me up on the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

And if you haven’t yet taken me up on it, here’s how you can:

1. Get five (5) paperback copies of my original 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

2. Forward me your Amazon receipt.

I will then set you up with the Buttered-Up Bonus Bundle.

The deadline is tonight at 12 midnight PST. After that, no more bonuses — I am merciless about this. To get in while the doors are still open:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Platform is magic

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I went for a walk this morning and as I was dodging the puddles from last night’s rain, I listened to a podcast, a conversation between James Schramko and Dean Jackson.

In case those names are not familiar to you, both belong to Internet marketers who have been in the business a combined 50+ years.

Both James and Dean have made many millions of dollars for themselves and many more for their clients and customers.

Whatever. The point is simply that, in the little corner of the Internet where I live, these guys are influential and established and respected. I’ve known about each for many years, and I’ve been paying attention to both intensely over the past year.

This morning, while listening to the podcast, James Schramko talked about changes he had made to his business following the advice of his friend, a guy named Kory Basaraba.

That caught my attention and maybe made me step into a puddle.

The fact is, I’ve known Kory for years. A few years ago, back when I was still doing freelance copywriting stuff, I even worked with him.

Through this experience, I know Kory is smart, successful, and established. But on hearing his name being mentioned on a podcast, by two people I follow, I felt some sort of electric jolt.

I don’t know how wide of a reach this Schramko/Dean podcast episode might get. Maybe a few thousand people, maybe tens of thousands? In any case it’s not Joe Rogan.

It doesn’t matter. My opinion of Kory, while it was positive before, suddenly jumped. He got the warm bright glow of a star in my eyes.

Of course, I’m a hardened cynic and a bit of a wizard when it comes to knowing influence spells. So I quickly shook my head to clear my mind from this strange persuasion.

But I wanted to share this story with you, such as it is, for a bit of motivation.

I don’t understand what it is about having a platform. Maybe I’ll figure it out one day.

Right now, my best answer is that having a platform is simply magic.

A few hundred or a few thousand people around the world listen to you. It’s not a tremendous amount of reach or power. But it doesn’t matter.

The very fact of having a platform, of speaking to a group of people, gives you status and authority and charisma, and even the power to transfer that to others, simply by mentioning their name. That’s magic.

The motivating part is that, if you haven’t done so already, you can do this same thing for yourself.

Nobody’s stopping you from starting a podcast, or writing an email newsletter, today.

Like I said, you don’t need a tremendous overall audience to have a tremendous influence on the people who do listen or read to what you have to say. I can vouch for that from personal experience, having been both on top of the platform at certain times, and in the audience, looking up, at other times.

I know nothing about podcasting. But I know something about newsletters. Such as for example, that the more often you send emails, the greater your influence over the people in your audience.

And with that in mind, let me point you to a service that can help make it easier to send something every day, so you can work your magic quickly:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The dark side of social proof

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Here’s a story of a lovely refund:

Some time ago, I promoted an affiliate offer. As with all affiliate offers I promote, I made sure it’s a great offer I can fully get behind.

A guy from my list, somebody who regularly replied to my emails but never bought anything, bought this offer via my affiliate link. Then a few days later, he refunded it.

That’s part of the deal. Sometimes people buy, and if you offer a money back guarantee, sometimes they refund.

The following however is not part of the deal:

That refunding customer started writing me emails. First he explained that the course he bought didn’t have that “wow factor” and that’s why he refunded. He also asked what I would have done in the same situation?

In a future email, he complained that the course creator wasn’t replying to emails and inquiries quickly enough.

And finally, once the refunding reader got his refund, he claimed he couldn’t see the money landing in his bank account (even though the money was refunded as per ThriveCart). He kept writing me updates about the supposedly pending refund for a couple months.

Maybe the point of my story is not really clear, so let me spell it out:

The point is social proof.

People take an action or make a decision.

They then have to create the reality for themselves that this was the right thing to do.

And since we are social animals, that means getting others to agree with us and feed that back to us, otherwise it’s not really real.

That’s what I felt was going on here. This refunding customer seemed to have no rancor for me for promoting an offer that he decided to refund. Quite the opposite. He was writing me messages for months, trying to get me in some way to agree that either the course or the course creator were to blame, and that he was right in his decision.

Maybe you know the famous story of a UFO cult who was expecting a UFO to land in Chicago on Dec 21 1954, and whisk away the believers before a huge tidal wave wiped out the face of the Earth.

December 21 came and went. No UFO came. No tidal wave came either.

The UFO cult was headed by a woman named Dorothy Martin. She was in contact with the aliens via automatic writing (and sometimes over the phone).

In the hours after the supposed UFO arrival failed to materialize, Martin got the message that the aliens had decided to spare the Earth because of the good work of the UFO cult in spreading the word.

But here’s the really curious thing:

The UFO cult, which until then had been very secretive, very hostile to publicity, very closed to outsiders, suddenly went on a PR blitz, announcing to the world the good news. It was no longer enough for the cultists to be in direct contact with powerful aliens who had decided to spare the Earth from destruction — everybody else had to know about it too.

So that’s the dark side of social proof. We don’t just rely on others’ experiences to help guide our beliefs and decisions. We also seek to convince others that our beliefs and past experiences are right.

That’s all I got for you today. I realize it’s a somehow nasty thing to talk about, a bit destabilizing and inhuman. A positive way to spin it is that our reality is co-created with others, and that you have the opportunity to impact and guide that.

Anyways, if you want to see social proof in action, I’ve got about six pages’ worth of it below in the form of testimonials, creating a reality that my Daily Email Habit is a wonderful service, maybe the best service in the world, at least if you have an email list. I believe it, and I really want you to believe it too, so please click through and start reading:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Which year?

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I opened up Hacker News today to find a trending website, Which Year, that shows you a photo and then you try to guess what year the photo was taken.

“Ok,” I thought, “but why so popular?”

For reference, Hacker News is a kind of link-sharing site where thousands of nerds congregate every day and upvote for the links they like best and downvote the rest.

Most links shared on Hacker news get a few dozen summed-up points, some get up to 100. Which Year, which was posted just 9 hours ago, currently has 349 points, which is by far the most of any link posted today.

I clicked through to Which Year out of idle curiosity, and it was immediately obvious to me why this simple concept has proven so popular. Right up top, it says:

“Which Year DAILY CHALLENGE”

In other words, whoever made this site took a page out of Wordle’s playbook.

While the core idea of Which Year — see picture, guess year — is fine but nothing groundbreaking, limiting how often you can play to once a day, and serving up the same puzzle to everyone in the world at the same time, immediately ups the desirability, coolness, and engagement factor of this puzzle game.

(That’s a page I’ve taken out of Wordle’s playbook myself, and applied to my Daily Email Habit service.)

Anyways, there’s clearly a marketing lesson in there, but rather than hit you over the head with that on this Easter Sunday, let’s play a game.

Today being April 20, I thought we could play a game called, Which Year, Email Edition.

Can you guess in which years the following curiosities happened?

Of course, you can get ChatGPT to answer for ya. Or you can simply wait 24 hours, when I will reveal the answers and give you a new round of puzzles. Here are your puzzles:

1. A killer swamp rabbit attacked a U.S. president (won’t say which one) while the man was trying to fish and relax

2. Nutella was first introduced in stores

3. The price of oil turned negative for the first time in history

Again, come up with your best guesses for which years these events happened, and I’ll share the answers tomorrow.

Oh, and if you want to play another daily challenge, one which isn’t just fun but can also make you money, then you can still sign up to get the next Daily Email Habit puzzle. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Competition contradiction

by

A paradox? A contradiction?

As part of the research for my new book, I’ve been going through a book by Sam Taggart. Taggart is the founder of D2D Experts, an online education company for door-to-door salesmen.

Taggart has a long but distinguished career selling door-to-door, everything from knives to solar panels to security alarms. His door-to-door selling career started at age 11, and culminated around age 35, when he finished as the #1 salesman in a company of 3,000 reps.

Anyways, grok this, if you can:

On page 44 of his book, Taggart’s top recommendation for motivating yourself is to look at all the other salesmen around you, to start tracking their results, and to start thinking of them as competition you have to beat.

And then on page 64, Taggart says how the best salesmen only view themselves as real competition.

Huh?

It’s easy to dismiss this as just contradiction or fluff inherent in a lot of sales material.

But I don’t think so.

A while back, meaning 3 years ago, I wrote about 6 characteristics of people who manage to do the seemingly impossible.

These 6 characteristics came out of a study of pro athletes who came back from devastating injury to compete at the highest level again… as well as star Wall Street traders who managed to beat not only all other traders, but the randomness inherent in the market as well.

One of the common characteristics of such people was that they simultaneously had a short-term view of the task to be accomplished, as well as a long-term view.

In other words, these folks looked at their situation from both 3 feet away, and from 3,000 feet up in the air. They did so the same time, or at least switching constantly between the two.

And so I think it is with Taggart’s advice — and so it is in many other situations in life.

We all want the “one thing” to cling to.

But quite often, particularly in the most important things in life, you gotta hold two opposing thoughts in your head, and you gotta live by both of them.

Of course you don’t really gotta. You don’t gotta do anything. But if you are currently worried by competition, whether that’s other businesses who target same audience as you, or other solutions or trends that tend to wipe out what you’re doing, or simply people within your own company who try to outperform you, then it might make sense to:

1. Make a list of all these villains, to keep track of their activity, and to start viewing them as competition to be beaten

2. To ignore them and to focus on doing the best you can

Anyways, I’ll have Taggart’s advice — not this, but something less contradictory — in my new book, full title:

10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters

My goal is to finish and publish this book by March 24. The way things are going, I might have to shave half my head, like Demosthenes, to keep myself from leaving the house until the book is finished.

In any case, I will be writing about this book and how it’s progressing, plus what I’m thinking about doing to make it a success when it comes out.

If you are interested in the topic of this book, and you’re thinking you might wanna get a copy when it comes out, click below. I’m planning some launch bonuses and I will be dripping them out early to people on this pre-launch list:

​​Click here to get on the bonus-dripping pre-launch list for my new 10 Commandments book​​