Scarcity

Exciting update about my No B.S scarcity emails

by

Three weeks ago, I wrote three emails making fun of Dan Kennedy’s ongoing, scarcity-mongering “Shutdown livestream” campaign.

At the end of those emails, I included an affiliate link for you to sign up to that campaign.

In part, I did this because the campaign had been effective on me (I signed up both to the livestream and to Dan’s newsletter).

In part, I also did it because I’ve learned a ton from Dan Kennedy, and I would promote his stuff for free, and I have in the past.

But let’s get back to the present.

I sent out those three emails three weeks ago. I had a good chuckle with readers who wrote me back about Dan’s scarcity tactics. And then, I forgot all about it.

Until last night.

Because last night, I got an email with the subject line, “Exciting Update: NO BS Shutdown Campaign Leaderboard Revealed!”

The inside of that exciting email said:

===

Now let’s dive into the current top 5 on our Leaderboard:

1. Tim Hewitt
2. Travis Lee
3. John Bejavoic
4. Frank Buddenbrock
5. Frank Andrews

===

I don’t know if there’s a French-Canadian marketer out there named John Bejavoic. I’m guessing not. Instead, I reckon this is only time #64,171 in my life that somebody’s mangled my last name.

No matter. Because it means that, for the first time in my life, and in spite of my absolute lack of effort and my three tongue-in-cheek emails, I am now in the running of an affiliate competition.

The email described the prizes for the top 3 affiliates:

* Third place is a 6 months free of Dan Kennedy’s newsletter
* Second prize is a box of Dan Kennedy faxes
* First is a ticket to the No B.S. Superconference in May

The first two prizes I don’t need. The third prize I don’t want (who wants to travel around the world from Barcelona to Dallas TX).

And yet…

As I read through this “Exciting update” email last night, I found myself paranoid, spinning around, and looking over my shoulder.

Would somebody swoop in and take my 3rd place position?

I was like a dragon, guarding my wealth, suspicious somebody will take it away from me, and slyly thinking how I could increase my gold stash — even though I don’t really want the gold.

It brought to mind the following passage by another master of direct response marketing, Claude Hopkins. Hopkins wrote a hundred years ago:

===

Many send out small gifts, like memorandum books, to customers and prospects. They get very small results. One man sent out a letter to the effect that he had a leather-covered book with a man’s name on it. It was waiting for him and would be sent on request. The form of request was enclosed, and it also asked for certain information. That information indicated lines on which a man might be sold.

Nearly all men, it was found, filled out that request and supplied the information. When a man knows that something belongs to him – something with his name on it – he will make the effort to get it, even though the thing is a trifle.

===

So now I’d like to invite you once again to sign up to Dan Kennedy’s free livestream campaign.

The livestream will happen March 1st, two days from now. It will feature Dan Kennedy, being interviewed in his basement, where he works, by Russell Brunson of ClickFunnnels. The topic will be why Dan has decided to cut off new signups to his No B.S. Letter “for the foreseeable future.”

I’d like to invite you to sign up for this livestream for three reasons:

First, because like I said already, I have learned a ton from Dan Kennedy. Odds are good that you too will learn something valuable, if only you sign up, and even more so if you actually watch the free livestream.

Second reason is that you would help me do better in this stupid affiliate contest, which I am participating in against my better judgment, simply out of loss aversion and blind greed.

Third, because I have a trifle with your name on it.

It really is a trifle. But it’s yours.

​​It has your name on it.

And you can claim it, if only you sign up to the Dan Kennedy free livestream campaign, forward me your confirmation email, and tell me a physical address where I can mail your trifle.

And in the spirit of this entire No B.S. scarcity campaign, I have to mention this named trifle is only for the first 15 people who take me up on this offer.

To get started, here’s the first step, where you can sign up for Dan’s free livestream:

https://bejakovic.com/no-bs-scarcity

An incredibly powerful email hook

by

Oh boy.

Yesterday’s email, about scarcity as a performance art, brought the replies pouring in.

I feel like I’m in the courtroom scene in Miracle on 34th Street, with postal workers bringing in satchels of mail for proof of how strongly people feel on this issue.

The issue, in case you missed my emails over the past couple days, is an upcoming livestream by marketers Dan Kennedy and Russell Brunson.

During the livestream, which is set to happen in a couple weeks’ time, Russell will interview Dan, from Dan’s sacrosanct basement workspace. The topic will be Dan’s mind-boggling decision to shut down new subscriptions to his No B.S. print newsletter, starting March 3 of this year.

Real? Fake?

Some of my readers turned detective and wrote in with their findings.

They spotted a detail on the optin page for this upcoming livestream. An image shows Russell, with a mild look of panic on his face, holding a fax from Dan to demonstrate how real this decision is.

The fax has a headline in huge font that reads “SHUT ‘ER DOWN!!!”

Only problem is, the fax also has a small date in the upper right corner, and that date reads 10/24/2022.

Other readers acknowledged that Russell does go for fake scarcity, but defended the man. Some called him a marketing genius. Others just said he does a great job distilling marketing concepts and makes them usable quickly — and it’s up to you to decide what to do with them.

My main takeaway after this whole experience is that industry gossip is an incredible powerful email hook. If, like me, you needed any reminding of that, then let me remind you:

Industry gossip is an incredible powerful email hook.

The only problem I have with anything that’s incredibly powerful is that I bore quickly.

As I said recently on my “How I do it” presentation, I look at this newsletter first and foremost as a sandbox, a playground.

It’s kind of a miracle that it’s turned into a nice source of income and a fountain of good opportunities.

But once something stops being interesting for me, it stops being a topic for this newsletter. So I won’t be writing about this bit of industry gossip, as Dan himself might say, for the foreseeable future.

That said, my playground attitude is not an attitude I encourage anyone else to take.

So if you want to see how two professionals who take their jobs very seriously do it, then check out Dan and Russell’s current “SHUT ‘ER DOWN!!!” campaign.

I continue to promote it with an affiliate link, even though I don’t know if I’ve made any sales, and even though, given that it’s Dan Kennedy, I would promote it without getting paid, simply because I’ve learned so much from the man, and I think you can too.

If you’d like to sign up for that free upcoming livestream, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/no-bs-scarcity

No B.S. scarcity

by

Yesterday, I got hypnotized.

I knew what was happening.

I didn’t stop.

I didn’t particularly want to stop.

Instead, I pulled out my credit card and signed up for a $137/month international subscription to a print monthly newsletter.

I had considered signing up before — it’s Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Letter.

“But do I really need this?” I asked myself each time before. The answer is no.

Besides, I know what personality-based marketing newsletters are really about — and that’s selling you a personality.

And yet, last night I happily bought. Even though I knew what was happening, I justified it to myself as something I simply wanted to do.

What changed?

Very simple.

​​Dan (or somebody on his behalf, since the man doesn’t use the Internet) sent out an email with the subject line, “You’re Invited Into My Basement.”

The offer was a free, live, upcoming event broadcast from Dan’s basement, where he works. Dan would be interviewed by Russell Brunson of ClickFunnels. The reason was the following:

===

Russell is flying out to grill me on my recent decision to shut down new sign-ups to The No B.S. Letter after 30 years. And it’s sure to be quite the masterclass in and of itself—no scripts, no pre-recorded sessions, and absolutely No B.S.

===

“Huh,” I said. “No doubt this is some marketing stunt. No way is Dan actually closing signups to his newsletter.”

But I clicked through to register for the event.

And the same message popped up. “The Last Day To Join Dan Kennedy’s NO B.S. Letter Is March 3rd.”

I still don’t really know what this last-day stuff is about. I didn’t listen to Russell Brunson’s VSL or read the copy that popped up after I signed up for the free upcoming event.

Instead, I just had Dan’s voice talking to me, because I have been listening to a course of his lately…

I had his ideas floating behind my eyes, because I recently finished a book of his…

And I felt like we were just in touch today, and yesterday, and the day before, because each day he sent me an email — which I read as I nodded my head and took notes.

All that stuff was true every day before yesterday. But thanks to this “doors closing” stuff — whatever that’s about — yesterday I got entranced, pulled out my credit card, and signed up to the No B.S. Letter. Even though, in spite of Dan’s No B.S. brand, I’m pretty sure this scarcity play is almost surely B.S.

So my point for you is the hypnotic power of scarcity, once you’ve built up sufficient trust and authority.

As for me, I will probably be doing some sort of promotion soon to relieve myself of this new monthly expense.

That’s one thing I’ve learned from Dan Kennedy — never pay for anything.

Another thing I’ve learned is to have an offer at the end of everything I write.

So today I’ll leave you with the link to the “Has Dan Kennedy Gone Mad?!?” campaign.

Yes, that’s an affiliate link. I signed up ages ago to promote Dan Kennedy’s newsletter, but I could never do it in good conscience because I wasn’t signed up myself.

​​Well… until today. How things change.
​
​So if you want to suss out whether this scarcity is for real or B.S., or sign up to the No B.S. Letter before the doors supposedly close:

https://bejakovic.com/no-bs-scarcity

The third-hottest release of 2023 closes after just one night

by

Last night, with crowds of paparazzi pushing outside the velvet rope, and a few stars making their way from their limos down the red carpet to the doors of the classy old theater, my Influential Emails show had its grand opening.

The show ran for exactly one night.

And then this morning, I locked and chained the theater doors, removed the “INFLUENTIAL EMAILS” letters from the marquee, and took out an ad in the local paper to announce this show is now over.

As I announced in the lead up and during the grand opening of Influential Emails, this promotion would go until Sunday at the latest, and I might close it down sooner.

Well, that sooner is today, about 12 hours after the initial grand opening. I would have closed it earlier but I was asleep.

The reason why I did this is that made up my mind, before I launched this promo, what a nice sum of money would be to make from it.

I’ve now made that money and more. And so the cart is now closed.

If you managed to squeeze in to the Influential Emails show, I hope you will get value out of it in a way pays for itself, and soon.

If you wanted to get in but didn’t manage to, then all I can say is — if you’re not too angered by this experience, then maybe you will have better luck next time.

And if you were not interested in buying Influential Emails, then I can share the following valuable truth with you:

You can choose who you sell to, and how much of something you sell. There’s no law against it. And it’s ultimately good for business, in many different ways.

Now here’s a little sneak peek behind the scenes:

This promo didn’t really run for 12 hours.

It ran for about 36 hours.

I opened it up a day earlier for a private showing, just for people who were on the waiting list and who had already bought something from me in the past.

I also gave them an inducement to buy within the first 24 hours.

Many did.

That’s how I managed to make more money with this one-and-a-half-day promo than I used to make in a whole month, the first few years of my copywriting career.

Some of the folks who were invited for this private showing had bought pretty much all of my offers in the past.

Some had bought just one of my courses.

And some only bought my little $5 Kindle book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

It didn’t matter.

They are all valued and ongoing customers, and I wanted to say thanks with this special opportunity.

All that’s to say, if you have not yet bought my 10 Commandments book, then consider doing so.

It might teach you a thing or two about copywriting. And it might just prove to be a ticket to an exclusive future show, and a walk down the red carpet. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Last day ever to buy Copy Riddles

by

Today is the last day ever to buy Copy Riddles. At 2:31 EST tomorrow, Tuesday April 18, I will turn off the shopping cart for Copy Riddles and stop making this program available for purchase.

In the future, depending on interest, I will from time to time offer 2-month group coaching around the content inside Copy Riddles, the way I did for a small number of people last year.

The price for that future group coaching, if it does happen, will be at least $1,000 higher than the price for current self-study Copy Riddles course. This coaching will also only be only available to a few people at a time when it is available at all, since my personal time and attention will be required.

All that’s to say, if you’ve already gone through Copy Riddles, or you never had any interest in doing so, then unfortunately I have nothing for sale to offer you in this email. I promise to do better in the future.

On the other hand, if you have been thinking about Copy Riddles but you’ve been on the fence — an uncomfortable and jagged place — then today is the last day to buy Copy Riddles as a standalone, self-study course.

And if you somehow managed to miss the dozens of emails I’ve sent about Copy Riddles over the past days, months, and years, and you’re wondering what this program is really about, you can read the full details, including the experience of many people who have gone through Copy Riddles already, at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

sold out

by

Just a heads up, nearly half of all the artificially restricted copies of Copy Riddles have sol—

Relax. I won’t go there.

A couple days ago, I tapped into a rich vein of discontent by writing about Justin Goff’s “sold out” email, which tried to push an unattractive offer that had “sold out” fewer than half of all available copies.

Many readers wrote in to say they found this kind of marketing sneaky and misleading (“This email had me screaming at my phone”).

And then, among the many “you tell ’em!” replies, I got a message by a reader named Andre, who wrote in with a suggestion for me:

Your email about no real urgency on infinite+ digital copies reminded me of what Tony Shepherd used to do.

Because he had a fairly large suite of digital products…

He ripped a page out of Disney’s marketing book.

What he did was promote a product for a set amount of time and then…

Put it back into the “vault” where it was unavailable until the next time he promoted it.

It’s an interesting strategy to use for digital products.

Not sure if that would ever work for you, or even a creative variation, but hey, there it is.

The fact is, this model is exactly what I was doing with my Copy Riddles program — until yesterday.

I presold and launched Copy Riddles last year in April. I dripped the content out by email day by day — because I was creating it live, day by day.

After that initial launch finished, I placed Copy Riddles inside a heavy trunk and had the trunk locked and brought inside the Bejakovic Cave of Treasures.

​​I then had the cave sealed with a large boulder and guarded by a large man with a large sword, who only ever said one thing, “Hassan chop.”

It was only every few months that I had Hassan move the boulder and open up the cave. Only for a few days at a time did I let people inside to partake of Copy Riddles treasures.

This model worked well. Each time I made Copy Riddles available for a few days, I had new people sign up. And I made good money.

Plus there were other benefits, too.

For example, many people who had signed up during earlier runs signed up again, since they got lifetime access.

​​On that second or third run, some of them finally consumed all the content, which made it so they could finally get the promise of the course — A-list copywriting skills, implanted into your brain.

​​That was good for them and good for me. Because, promise delivered, they were now that much more likely to become my long-term customers.

Anyways, like I said, that’s the model I used — until yesterday.

As of yesterday, Copy Riddles is now an evergreen course. It’s available year-round, and not just during a few launch periods. And it’s delivered through a members-only area of my site (which I might rename The Cave of Treasures) and not through email.

I’m telling you all this because of the ongoing Copy Riddles “launch.”

All the current “launch” really means is that if you do decide to get Copy Riddles before this Sunday, Oct 30 2022, at 12 midnight PST, you will pay less than if you join Copy Riddles after this “launch” period ends. I will increase the price to $400 on Monday as a first step.

But there’s a second reason why I’m telling you about my course model switch. And that’s in case you ever create and want to sell courses of your own.

How you package up and deliver those courses will have a big impact on how those courses are perceived, sold, and consumed — independent of the content and value inside.

But if you are creating your own courses, don’t assume that just because I changed from the launch to the evergreen model that this is the way to go.

The fact is, this switch wasn’t a decision about money or about the number of sales made.

I simply wanted offers I could promote regularly at end of my daily emails. Copy Riddles is now one of those offers.

But this switch means I’ve lost some of the benefits of the launch model. I’ve had to think up ways to try to reproduce at least a part of them.

We will see if the price increase on Monday will work to stimulate the same kind of urgency as Hassan rolling back the boulder on the mouth of the cave.

And as for those other benefits of the launch model — like people actually consuming the content and getting value out of the course — well, I’ve had to think up other things.

I’ll talk about those in future emails during this “launch” period. Meanwhile, if you want to get Copy Riddles now, before the price goes up, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

“sold out”

by

Yesterday, marketer Justin Goff sent out an email with the subject line “sold out”. The body copy immediately explained what was sold out:

Just a heads up, nearly half of the 250 swipe files that are available in the special sale going on today have already been taken…

So they will be sold out soon.

Here are a few things I, and probably many other people who are on Justin’s list, know after this email:

1. Justin has been promoting this affiliate offer for a few days.

2. So have several other marketers with large lists, including some with the largest lists in the copywriting/IM niche.

3. After several days of steady emailing by all those marketers, going out to tens of thousands of people in total, fewer than 125 sales of the affiliate offer have been made. That probably translates to a less than 0.1% conversion rate — and maybe as low as 0.025%.

I don’t know how many sales, and more importantly, how much money, Justin made with this “sold out” email. Maybe he did great. And maybe I will look like a fool for sticking my nose into things that I don’t know anything about.

With that in mind, let me say that Justin’s email is a violation of a fundamental rule of copywriting.

Perhaps the most fundamental rule of them all.

It’s a rule I was exposed to in the mythical webinar training that A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos put on back in 2018. Parris repeated this rule, over and over, while talking about how he evaluates his own copy, and while critiquing many pieces of student-submitted copy. The rule is this:

“Does it help your case, hurt your case, or is it neutral? Only keep it in if it helps your case.”

This rule might seem blindingly obvious. But as Justin’s email above shows, even smart and successful marketers will break this rule — because they get rushed, careless, or greedy.

When I read Justin’s email, my first impression was, “Fewer than 125 copies sold? This must not be a very attractive offer.” My second impression was, “Even if it’s a fine offer, I’ve got plenty of time to get it, since at this rate it won’t sell out soon — in spite of Justin’s alarmist subject line.”

Again, I might be sticking my hoof in my snout by talking about a promotion where I don’t know the actual sales numbers, and one which is still going on.

But the bigger point stands. Does it help your case, hurt your case, or is it neutral?

Anyways, on to my own promotion:

Nearly half of the infinity+ digital copies of my Most Valuable Email course have already been sold.

The remaining infinity+ copies are sure to sell out soon. So starting tomorrow, I will turn my great eye elsewhere, and start promoting my twice-born Copy Riddles program.

That means you might not hear from me about my Most Valuable Email program for a while, even though it will continue to be available for sale.

But hold on—

Is this any kind of way to do urgency? Should the fact that I won’t be pitching MVE for a while make you want to buy it today?

No. Not unless you’re the type to get activated by “sold out” subject lines and other transparent scarcity tactics.

On the other hand, if you like the basic promise of Most Valuable Email — “turn ordinary and rather boring emails into something clever and cool” — then today is as good a day as any to start down that path. ​​And maybe even better than any later day — because if you get going now, you will start seeing the benefits of this little trick in action sooner.

Whatever the case, if you are interested, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Excluded by Amazon: The book that’s too powerful to promote

by

Yesterday, as I finished up my email promoting Derren Brown’s book Tricks of the Mind, I rubbed my hands together and started a reverie:

I imagined myself sitting in the shade, under a tiny palm tree, by a tiny beach, sipping a very tiny beer, and eating a very, very tiny steak.

After all, I was planning to put in an Amazon affiliate link at the end of yesterday’s email.

Depending on how many people actually took me up on my recommendation to get Brown’s quality, value-packed book, I might make $0.14 in affiliate commissions… or maybe $0.22… or who knows, if I was really persuasive… even $0.47!

That won’t buy a proper vacation even in a reverie, but a tiny vacation? Sure.

But then this tiny reverie was rudely popped. As I clicked to get the affiliate link, Amazon told me off:

“This product is one of the Amazon Associates Program Excluded Products. We do not support direct linking to this product. Please direct customers to another product or the category for this product instead.”

Excluded? Another Product? After I’d written the email???

I decided to invest a few minutes into threatening and cursing my laptop. That produced no result. So I looked around, made sure nobody had seen me, and pulled myself together.

I dug into why some products are excluded from the Amazon affiliate program. It turns out there are only three reasons why:

1. It’s alcohol

2. It’s an external promotional page linked to by an Amazon property

3. The third-party seller requested that the product be excluded

Brown’s book, by being a book, and by being on Amazon and not an external page, must fall into the third category.

In other words, like I wrote yesterday, maybe the information in this book really is too powerful.

Maybe Brown himself wants to keep it hush-hush. Maybe he only wants a select few, those who are cool enough, smart enough, mature enough, to read this book.

Maybe he wants to keep this book from appearing on a bunch of SEO-optimized top 10 lists and Medium filler articles and “most underrated” email newsletters.

So let’s see if that added information makes the book more attractive to you.

Whether you click the link below or don’t, I’m eating boiled chicken breast either way. I mean, I’m not getting paid anything by Amazon if you buy this book, and even if I were, it wouldn’t buy me steak tonight.

Before you go, if you want to hear more from me about excluded, possibly too powerful, insider information, then sign up for my email newsletter. And now, here’s the link to Brown’s book:

https://bejakovic.com/tricks

How to create blacker-than-black urgency without a deadline

by

This morning, I closed down the Copy Riddles cart and ended the promotion for this run. It’s now time for all the people who signed up to see how I deliver on the promises I’ve made.

Like I wrote in my last promo email for Copy Riddles, 76.7% of those people — well, 76.7% of my total sales — all rolled in the last day. I had more coming in after I wrote that email, so the final number for last-day sales was even higher.

That’s because, like I wrote in that email, deadlines are black magic. In the words of Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap:

“It’s so black. Like how much more black could this be? And the answer is… none. None more black.”

Well, for Nigel’s benefit and maybe yours, I want to tell you that there is a form of persuasion wizardry that might be blacker than black. Let me quickly get my cloak and peak hat on, and tell you what I have in mind.

Over the past few days, while preparing to write my second Most Valuable Postcard, I started reading Rich Schefren’s 12 Month Marketing Blueprint.

I’m a big fan of Rich and just about everything I’ve seen him do. But I have to say the name of this particular offer is misleading. It’s hardly a blueprint. Really, it’s a fully built, furnished condo with pictures of Rich’s family inside.

In other words, what you get inside the “Blueprint” is 310 pages of actual emails, slides, sales letters, and free reports that Rich created back in 2006 and 2007 and sent out to his list and to his JV partners.

If you wanna reverse engineer a blueprint out of this, that’s gonna be on you. You have to do it yourself.

​​But it might be a worthwhile exercise. Because here’s the result of all these hundreds of pages of marketing, from the front page of the Blueprint:

Over 830,000 downloads
Over 1,895 one-way links
$960,000 in the first 2 hours and 15 minutes
From unkown – to known – to well known. From 20 clients to 2,070 clients. From 2 employees to 12.
How I Got Attention and Leveraged it to 7.4 Million a Year company.

I won’t spell out the many smart strategies that Rich uses in this 310-page collection of marketing. (A few of the most interesting ones are going to people who are subscribed to receive my Most Valuable Postcard later this month.)

What I will reveal to you is that blacker-than-black wizardry I mentioned above.

Here it is, right at the top of Rich’s sales page for his consulting offer — the offer that sold out in 2 hours and 15 minutes, and generated close to a million dollars:

“Warning: 32,543 want to know more about my coaching. 4,507 are on a waiting list to get early access (to this page) and 4,284 marketers registered for a teleseminar to get the details of this program. In addition, my joint venture partners will be sending out roughly 1,300,000 emails directing their subscribers to this offer. Consequently, there are only 1000 of 1000 seats available. Many of them are being taken as you read this. Scroll down to secure your spot!”

So there you go. that’s how you create blacker-than-black magic, without a deadline. Right there, in that salad of numbers.

What?

​​You want a blueprint?

A salad is not enough?
​​
Pff… fine.

​​Here’s the actual formula, phrased the way Rich likes to phrase it:

Social proof + Scarcity = Urgency

And now, on to unrelated promotional materials:

If you are interested in my Most Valuable Postcard offer, I have an update for you.

I initially only opened this offer to 20 people, when I first made it available, back in May. All 20 of those 20 are still subscribed to get the postcard.

Later this month, I will reopen my Most Valuable Postcard for the first time, to 20 new subscribers. I’ll limit it again because I’m making some changes to the offer and I want to control how that will go.

My joint venture partners will be sending out roughly 0,000,000 emails directing their subscribers to this offer.

But this email is going out to over 1,300 people who read my daily emails.

And almost 140 of these readers have already expressed interest in signing up for the Most Valuable Postcard. They have joined the waiting list, so they can be the first to get notified and the first to have a chance to sign up when I reopen the Most Valuable Postcard.

In case you’re interested in blacker-than-black persuasion magic, and you’d like to have the best chance to sign up to my Most Valuable Postcard when it reopens, you’ll have to be on my email list first. Here’s where to sign up.

My guilty-pleasure morning ritual gets an ugly update

by

I sat down a few moments ago for my guilty-pleasure morning ritual. The coffee was ready, I flipped open my laptop and—

“Oh what the hell is this,” I said out loud.

The game was still the same. But the background of the site had changed from dark gray to white.

I checked the URL. It was no longer some weird .co.uk domain. It was now nytimes.com.

Perhaps you’ve seen the same.

After all, millions of people around the world have all been playing this game each day, and millions more have been joining them week by week.

The game is a word-guessing game, called Wordle, created by a guy named Josh Wardle.

Wardle created Wordle some time ago as a game that just he and his girlfriend could play together. His friends and family got in on it too. Then Wardle released Wordle publicly on his website last October.

That first month, a total of 90 people played it.

Two months later, in December, the number of people playing Wordle each day had grown to 300,000.

By January, it was millions each day.

On February 1st, the New York Times bought Wordle from Wardle, for a “low 7 figures” sum. And today, here we are, with the stupid, white, failing NYT background.

Oh well. In the end, the corporations absorb everything. But let’s talk influence:

I can see many things that went into making Wordle a success. I want to point out just one. It might be relevant to you if you are interested in the creative or marketing side of reality.

Like, I said, Wordle is my guilty-pleasure morning ritual.

That’s because there’s only one Wordle puzzle each day.

Once you play — whether you win or lose — that’s it. You gotta wait until tomorrow, when the next one comes out.

This has a few key consequences:

One of course is scarcity. It makes each Wordle puzzle feel more valuable and interesting. It keeps you coming back day after day.

Two is that you can’t glut yourself.

With most games – and with things other than games too — I often keep playing to the point where I start to feel disgusted.

But there’s no risk of that with Wordle. It’s like a Spartan marriage. The two sides meet only rarely, and are full of desire for each other.

But maybe the most important thing is that each Wordle puzzle feels unique and real.

Wordle grew so quickly because players shared their results on Twitter. (Through a clever design, Wardle allowed people to share their results without giving away the puzzle.)

That worked because there is only one puzzle a day. Everybody in the world who played Wordle on a given day had that same puzzle.

In other words, it made sense to brag about your results, because other Wordle players actually shared your experience. It even created a sense of connection to other people playing Wordle.

But maybe you haven’t played Wordle yet, and you’re getting lost in what I’m talking about. Or maybe you’re wondering what this might mean for you, or how can you use this.

I’ll give you just one idea bouncing around in my head:

For a long time, I’ve been writing these daily emails, and then posting them to my website as an archive. This has helped me in the past because these blog archives were the main way people found me and my newsletter.

But that’s slowly changing. And so today I remembered an idea I had a while ago:

To scrap the archive, and simply post the latest daily email on my site. Each day, the email on the front page would be updated, and the previous email would disappear. Plus there would be a newsletter optin form for people who don’t want to miss out.

I’m not sure if this is smart. I’m not sure whether I will do it. But maybe.

Because Wardle’s Wordle success shows that in a world where everybody’s working hard to get you as addicted and engaged as possible… less can be more.

Anyways, if you have any advice for me on the technical side of how I could easily implement my latest-email-front-page idea on my WordPress site, please write in and let me know.

And if you haven’t played Wordle yet, you can find it on the white-background page at the link below. (I got today’s puzzle in two tries only — my best score yet.)

https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html