Psychology Behind Advertising

A grateful reader succeeds in making me blush

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Last night, I got an email from marketer and copywriter Shakoor Chowdhury, who wrote:

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Hello John,

I wanted to take a moment of my day to say “thank you”!

Besides Dan Kennedy, you have played the most impactful role in growing my revenues every single day

most of my NEW cashflow can be directly attributed to you and your courses “MVE” & “influential emails”…

I write emails daily now and they always bring more money or book appointments with high ticket clients…

This year I decided to focus on building relationships with my customers and not just ‘direct selling’ one time…

And I have to say, nobody is able to teach the concepts of email marketing better than you have…

It is simple, straightforward and teaches the FUNDAMENTALS of what it takes to be an email copywriter

I am a lifelong fan and customer.

Hope many more people and great things find their way to you, you are a bit of a ‘best kept secret’ in the copy world

which is perhaps why you are the best… the mystic ‘guru at the top of the mountain’

I found you because OTHER copywriters spoke so highly of you

===

Like I said in the subject line, Shakoor succeeded in making me blush, and I’m blushing now having to write about it. So let me change the topic immediately.

I recently heard business coach Rich Schefren say that he often gives presents to his mentor Mark Ford, because Mark doesn’t like to be in anybody’s debt, and so he always gives presents in return.

Let me do the same with Shakoor:

Based on what little I know of him, he sounds like a guy who gets things done and would probably have been successful one way or the other.

Last October when Shakoor and I first exchanged a couple emails, he was already working with a number of clients as a kind of full-service marketer for ecom businesses.

With just one of those clients working on a performance deal, Shakoor was taking in $10k+ per month. Overall, at that time, he was driving $300k+ in sales for his clients each month.

Somewhere along the line, Shakoor also had time to run his own dropshipping businesses, one of which got up to 100k+ buyers.

All that’s to say, after Shakoor decided to build up his personal brand and to start writing daily emails, I’m guessing he would have been successful with Dan Kennedy or without Dan Kennedy, with me or without me.

That said, I do appreciate Shakoor’s kind words.

​​I also do appreciate that I have been able to help occasional people learn something about direct marketing and copywriting… and even make transformations in their lives, whether that meant making more money, or getting going with daily emailing so they can build a personal brand and stop relying on cold outreach.

And on that topic:

I’m not currently selling the Influential Emails program that Shakoor was referring to. But I still am selling my Most Valuable Email program.

Most Valuable Email pulls back the curtain and shows you, in less than an hour, how to perform a specific email copywriting trick, one I use regularly in my own emails.

Emails using this trick are different from emails you might be familiar with, like story emails, or “hot takes,” or how-to emails, or personal reveals.

Unlike those other kinds of emails, Most Valuable Emails happen to work well whether you have authority or not, whether you’re just getting started with your personal brand or you have had a following for years.

And yet, none of that is the reason why these kinds of emails are most valuable.

The real reason is that Most Valuable Emails make daily emailing fun and educational for me personally, and easy to stick with for the long term.

And it seems for others like Shakoor also.

Maybe for you too?

I don’t know. But if you’d like to find out more about MVE, and see if it makes sense for you:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Announcing: Best Daily Email Awards

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Over the past few months, I’ve gotten addicted to listening to a Japanese woman’s YouTube channel, on which she puts out collections like, “1963 Billboard Top 100 Countdown.”

These collections feature hit songs I know, and are also a good way to discover something new, or at least new to me.

But the real reason I’m listening to this woman’s YouTube channel, as opposed to a million other YouTube song collections and playlists, is that her collections feel somehow authoritative, vetted.

After all, the included songs were all hits at the time they came out. People loved each of these songs then, even if some of the songs fell into obscurity later. The Billboard rankings prove it.

My own addiction reminded me of something I read in the Robert Collier Letter Book.

At one point, Collier was selling a subscription to the Review of Reviews, a monthly magazine that I guess was similar to Reader’s Digest.

The problem was few people really like committing to a subscription.

The solution of course was a series of attractive bonuses, which could appear and disappear on command.

But how to make a bonus instantly attractive?

One solution was to again defer to authority and vetting by others. The winning bonus was a little book that collected 64 stories that won the O. Henry prize for the best short story of the year.

Result? ​

​​​30,000-40,000 new subscribers with one sales letter, bundling a stupid magazine subscription with this sexy bonus.

You can do the same, by the way.

Maybe your niche already has some objective measure of authority to it — best-selling books, top-ranked ClickBank offers, investors who made the most money.

Or if there is no such objective measure, you can always invent a new prize or award.

You can use this authoritative or vetted status to create an attractive bonus or offer, and of course, to put yourself in the middle of the action.

And with that, I would like to announce the formation of the Best Daily Email Awards.

This is a new yearly award for merit in the daily email format.

Each year, the Best Daily Email Awards are selected by the prestigious and exclusive Daily Email Academy, which you are a member of by virtue of being a reader of this newsletter.

If you would like to nominate a particular daily email for a Best Daily Email Award, simply forward it to me before this Sunday, July 28, at 8:31pm CET.

Any daily email by any brand or person, in any market or niche, is eligible. You don’t need to explain your reasoning for nominating this particular email. The only restriction is you may only submit one entry, and that it’s actually a daily email.

And then, I, as the current acting Director of the Daily Email Academy, will collect the results, and announce the winners at the inaugural prize ceremony next week.

And yes, I’m 100% serious about this. So start forwarding now.

The one ring to rule them all, until it doesn’t

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A few weeks ago, Derek Johanson of CopyHour wrote an email with an inspiring idea:

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Most often all that an online business needs to go from zero to 6 figures is to focus on ONE simple business model and ONE marketing channel for growth.

One Business Model: If you sell courses, only sell courses. That’s your one business model. Don’t add coaching or do freelancing too.
​
One Marketing Channel For Traffic: If you’ve picked LinkedIn to drive traffic, don’t think about YouTube or paid ads at all.

That’s it. Going deep into ONE business model and ONE marketing channel is how you double a small business.

===

When I read this, I had a double reaction:

1. Whoa this makes sense
​
2. Hold on, this can’t be right — it’s just another manifestation of the human desire for “the one thing”

“The one thing,” as you might know, is a popular hook in direct response advertising.

It manifests itself in different guises — “the one thing,” “the ancient secret,” “the real reason” — but ultimately, it taps into to our brains’ desire to melt down the complexity and messiness of the world into just one magic ring of power to rule them all.

Rings like that exist in fantasies, but they don’t exist in real life.

Except, that’s not really what Derek was saying in his email. He was saying something more nuanced, and not-one-thingy.

I wasn’t quite sure how to stickily sum up what Derek was saying. Fortunately, somebody did it for me, in a paid private group (the only paid private group) that I’m a member of. The person in that group summed it up like this:

1. Test until it works
2. Scale until it stops working

Many things can work — for example, as sources of traffic.

The thing is, most things won’t work right out the gate. It will take some time and tweaking for them to produce results.

That’s step 1. Most people quit before they complete this step, and instead they jump to back to the beginning, to another supposed ring of power, hoping that it will work right away.

Derek’s email was about step 2. Going deep into one thing and scaling until it stops working. Which is a worthwhile idea, and like I said, quite not-one-thingy.

I thought about how to apply this to my own business. And I’m not really sure.

In terms of marketing channels to get people reading these emails, my number one source has been referrals and word-of-mouth, which I did absolutely nothing to encourage beyond writing daily and sharing novel ideas and illustrations. Maybe I should just keep writing.

As for the one business model, I still haven’t quite figured out one that I’m happy with. Which is why, over the past few months, I’ve sent out so many emails that ultimately link to $4.99 books on Amazon, or interesting articles you might find valuable, or—

Well, let me get to it now.

You remember I mentioned the paid private community I’m a member of? The only one?

I personally find it very valuable — and interesting.

Maybe you will too. But you will have to decide for yourself. I’m not promoting this community as an affiliate, and I’m not pushing you to join it. But if you’re curious to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

What a day to fly

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“Oh what the f—”

I arrived to the airport today around 8:45am to be faced with a giant, hideous snake, made up of people and luggage, starting at the check-in counters, folding in on itself a dozen times, and finally stretching its tail some hundred yards into the depths of the terminal.

I immediately made my way for the “last call” line. Even that took almost 45 minutes before I finally made it to the check-in counter.

​​I handed my id to the woman behind the counter. ​​She wasn’t interested.

“I need proof of your booking,” she said.

“What?”

“I need to see proof that you’ve bought a ticket.”

“The proof’s there in the computer,” I said. I helpfully pointed to her computer monitor for her.

She flipped it around so I could see. It showed a booting-up window. It was frozen.

“The computers aren’t working,” she said. “I need proof that you’ve bought a ticket.”

Maybe you’ve heard. There was some giant IT crash all around the world today. America. Australia. Europe. Hospitals. Banks. Airlines.

I produced proof of booking in the end.

​​And in return, I got a flimsy piece of paper, written out by hand, with my name on it and the code for the flight. That was my boarding pass today.

I won’t go into the details of all my adventures today.

Suffice to say, the situation was a huge mess, everywhere, all at once.

As I stood there at the airport, in a crowd of thousands of people, all of us burdened with luggage, all confused, all indecisive and yet unhappy to stay where we were, I thought that this was a little sampler of what Porter Stansberry has been predicting for 15 years or more.

“End of America.” Total social collapse. A world in which things stop working, and we’re suddenly exposed and helpless.

I don’t know if Stansberry’s predictions will ever come true.

But I do know that predictions like that always get attention.

Fear works. So does greed, if you can tie it into the fear, and make a claim like copywriter Gary Halbert once did:

“How You Can Profit From The Coming Stock Market Crash And Financial Blood-Bath That Is Going To Be Caused By Cash-Rich Drug Dealers And Other Criminal Scum!”

The thing is, fear and greed can be good at getting buyers. But they might not be very good at getting repeat buyers, the buyers who actually build a direct response business.

There has to be something more.

And to find out what that something more is, today I’ll invite you to read an essay that has been ringing in my head for years.

This essay explains why the “End of America” sales letter was such a huge success, when hundreds of similar sales messages, all making the same predictions and claims, didn’t even come close.

And this analysis comes from a man who should know, because he got the sales numbers of all these hundreds of sales letters, and he got the copy to compare. Plus, he’s a master copywriter himself, who has coached and guided dozens of other master copywriters.

If you’re interested in copywriting, at all, then this essay is worth a read:

https://www.markford.net/2019/12/09/

The light at the end of the tunnel

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“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and the thing is, I love you.”

“What?”

“I love you.”

“How do you expect me to respond to this?”

“How about, you love me too?”

“How about: I’m leaving.”

That’s the start of the last scene of the 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally. In case you haven’t seen it, the movie goes like this:

The first time Harry and Sally meet, they hate each other. The second time they meet, Harry doesn’t even remember who Sally is. The third time they meet, Harry and Sally become friends. Then they sleep together, and things go south and they stop being friends.

And then one New Year’s Eve, Harry finally realizes he loves Sally, and he runs to meet her, and he declares his love. And she says, “I’m leaving.”

The fact is, screenwriter Nora Ephron and director Rob Reiner both felt that movie should end like this.

​​No way should it end with Harry and Sally winding up together. That’s not how the real world works. People in those kinds of relationships don’t end up together.

That’s how the first two drafts of the movie actually went. The bitter truth.

But in the third draft, Ephron wrote this final scene, and Reiner shot it. After Sally’s “I’m leaving,” Harry delivers a speech about all the little things he loves about her, and they kiss and they wind up together, forever, in love.

And that’s how the movie was released, and it was a big, big hit.

So what’s the point?

Well, maybe it’s obvious, but you can go negative and cynical and sarcastic for the whole movie, but you gotta end on an inspiring, positive note.

​​It’s gotta make sense to people and give them a feeling of hope, at least if you want to create something that has a chance to be a big big hit, something that can appeal to a wide swath of the market.

Or in the words of screenwriter and director David Mamet:

“Children jump around at the end of the day, to expend the last of that day’s energy. The adult equivalent, when the sun goes down, is to create or witness drama — which is to say, to order the universe into a comprehensible form.”

But now I have a problem:

I’ve just pulled back the curtain. And what’s behind the curtain is not so nice. So how can I end this email on an inspiring, positive note?

Well, I can admit to you that the world is a large and complex and often unjust place. But it does have its own structure. And just by reading these emails, you’re finding out bits and pieces of that structure, and that helps you make more sense of the world you live in, and it helps you shape and influence the world for the better.

I can also tell you that the above bit, about Harry and Sally and Nora and Rob, is part of a book I’m working on, the mythical “10 Commandments of Hypnotists, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Con Men, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Propagandists, and Stage Magicians.”

I’ve been working on this book for a long time. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

In the meantime, do you know about my other 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters?

It also collects bits and pieces of the structure of the world, and it can help you understand and shape that world for the better. In case you’d like to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Just how bad are you at multitasking?

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Nobody called me out on it. But yesterday, I made a kind of preposterous claim.

​​I was talking about the following headline:

“If you’ve got 20 minutes a month, I guarantee to work a financial miracle in your life”

… and I said that his was an example of a concrete promise, something real and palpable.

As of this writing, nobody wrote me to challenge me on that. So let me do your job for you:

“Really Bejako? A ‘financial miracle in your life’? That’s your example of a concrete and real and palpable promise?”

Yes, really. And to prove it to you, let me tell you a story.

This story involves a man. A man named Tony. Tony Slydini.

Little Italian guy.
​​
Wrinkled, like a salted cod fish.

Spoke with a heavy Italian accent.

Performed magic tricks like you wouldn’t believe.

One of Slydini’s magic tricks involved making a bunch of paper balls disappear, only to appear in a hat that was empty at the start of the trick.

Before making each paper ball disappear, Slydini performed a few elaborate hand gestures. He’d wave the paper ball around in front of him, close it in his hand, sprinkle some invisible magic dust on it, open his hand, close it again, etc.

If you haven’t seen this trick, I have a link to it at the end.

​​But before you go watch, read on. Because I’m about to spoil the magic for you, and that’s important.

How does Slydini make each paper ball disappear?

​​And how does he teleport them inside the hat?

If you don’t want to know, then stop reading now. Otherwise, I’ll tell you.

Still here?

Fine. Here’s the trick behind the magic, from an article in Scientific American:

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Slydini deposits the vanished paper balls into the hat when he reaches inside the hat to fetch invisible magic dust. This mock action prevents the audience from assigning an additional, key intent to the move: to unload the paper balls inside the hat, to later reveal them at the trick’s finale.

Just as our visual system strains to see the vase and the two faces at once, we struggle to conceive of a motion that has a dual motivation: to put and to fetch. Even when it should be apparent to every member of the audience, and to every YouTube viewer, that Slydini’s action of fetching magical powder inside the hat must be a ruse.

In other words, even when the ostensible purpose is preposterous, we still can’t consider an alternative explanation.

That’s how bad our brains are at multitasking.

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Our brains are sticky. This creates some strange phenomena.

Give me a warm cup of coffee to hold. Then show me a stranger’s face. I’ll evaluate the stranger as looking friendly.

Point my attention to the 20 minutes I know I have. Then make me a promise of a financial miracle in my life. I’ll evaluate your promise as concrete and real.

Don’t believe that it works?

You can see Slydini’s trick on YouTube. Link’s below.

​​You now know how the trick is done. But watch it yourself — it takes all of 4 minutes — and witness just how bad you are at multitasking:

 

If you’ve got 2 minutes right now, I guarantee more response to your offers

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A few weeks ago, I joined JK Molina’s email list. You might have heard of JK — he’s kind of the marketing coach to all the coaches who coach coaches.

Anyways, in between the steady flow of familiar promises – “make $100k per month with just Google docs and email” — I found an interesting persuasion idea in one of JK’s emails. Says JK:

“You get better leads by offering to take something they ALREADY HAVE into something they DON’T.”

Huh? The first time I read this, I had no idea what JK’s on about. But an example helped:

Bad ad: “How to make $30,000”

Good ad: “Turn the old car you’ve got parked in your garage into $30,000.”

A-ha. A dim, flickering light came on in my head.

And thanks to that flickering light, I could once again see Gary Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullet #3. Gary asked which of these investing headlines won:

A:

The Millionaire Maker:
Can he make YOU rich, too?

B:

If you’ve got 20 minutes a month,
I guarantee to work a financial miracle in your life

As you can probably guess by now, the answer was B. Gary says it “worked like a charm and handily beat the previous champ.”

Gary’s explanation for why B won is that we’ve all gotten jaded by big promises, but the if-then structure somehow manages to disable normal critical faculties.

Maybe that’s really it.

Or maybe it’s what JK says above.

Maybe it’s that we don’t respond to promises unless we feel they are concrete and real. Unless those promises are anchored to something we can touch, taste, or in case of 20 minutes, simply know with 100% certainty that we have on us, right here, right now.

So try it yourself and see.

​​Use the if-then structure, or promise to turn the junk in your prospect’s garage into a stack of $100 bills.

I guarantee this will increase response to your offers. And if it doesn’t, come back tomorrow, and I’ll give you a new idea, for free, and keep giving you new ideas, until one of them does increase your response.

Also:

If you’ve got two thumbs and a smart phone, then I promise you a new way to fascinate your email subscribers every day. For more information on that:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Customers who pay you to pay you

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Right now, for the meager price of $30,000 to start, and then $10,000 per year to keep going, you can sign up to get a spot at Carbone.

Carbone is an exclusive restaurant in New York.

​​The $30k + $10k/year membership gets you a regular weekly table there.

​​Of course, you still have to pay for the food and drinks and service, which, as you can imagine, are expensive.

It turns out there are more and more such restaurants, going members-only.

They cater to people with money who want a few different things. One is better service, less waiting, and being treated with respect. Two is status and recognition. Three, and more than anything it seems, is a feeling of community.

In other words, people are paying good money to be among others like themselves, and to feel comfortable, welcome, and warm.

I’m telling you this to maybe warm up your own mind to the possibilities that are out there.

You can charge people decent money — maybe even indecent money — just for the privilege of being able to buy from you.

Of course, you do have to offer something in return — exclusivity, top-level service, a community.

Who knows? Maybe this is even a way you can charge for the marketing you give away now. Such as your daily emails, for example.

And with that, let me remind you of my Simple Money Emails program.

This program teaches you how to write emails that people want to read, and that they buy from.

I’ve only sent these kinds of emails to prospects for free.

But maybe you can not only use use these kinds of emails to make sales, but charge for them as well, by combining them with the idea above.

Whatever the case may be, if you’d like to find out more about Simple Money Emails:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

Sizzling tracks at the gay nudist beach of death

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Yesterday, I was walking on the train tracks. It’s how you get to Dead Man’s Beach.

It turns out Dead Man’s Beach is a nudist beach. In fact, it turns out it’s a gay nudist beach.

I didn’t know any of this yesterday. I showed up, pretty straight, in my usual city slicker outfit of blue jeans and converse.

I looked down from the cliff that leads to the beach at all the nudity and gayness. There wasn’t very much of either — just two couples and a couple naked dogs.

But back to the train tracks.

In order to get to Dead Man’s Beach, you have to cross the train tracks, because the train runs right along the sea.

Also, in order to get from one part of Dead Man’s Beach to the other, you actually have to walk on the train tracks for a stretch.

Problem:

Every couple of minutes, a speeding train from Barcelona appears out of nowhere and zooms by on the tracks. This is not how Dead Man’s Beach got its name, but the trains really could be deadly.

Solution:

You can actually hear the train coming a good minute before it appears out of nowhere. Not because it’s ringing a bell or hooting a horn or loudly chugging along, but because the train tracks vibrate.

Even when the train is a mile away, the tracks start to give off a sizzling sound that warns you it’s time to move to the side.

Can you hear it now? You should be able to.

Because until tonight, Saturday, at 12 midnight PST, I have a special, free bonus if you buy my Simple Money Emails course.

The bonus is the “lite” version of Matt Giaro’s $397 course Subscribers From Scratch. It will show you how Matt grew his email list, with high-quality subscribers who paid for themselves, via little newsletter ads.

Right now, the deadline is speeding along, and it will come bursting out of its dark tunnel soon.

When that happens, you won’t be able to get Matt’s course any more — not for free in any case.

I won’t be sending any more emails before tonight. But you still have time.

The tracks are sizzling. It’s a warning. You can probably hear it. It’s giving you a chance to get the jump on the deadline. If you’d like to do it right now, before it’s too late:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

Talk different

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Today is the last day to sign up for my Daily Email Fastlane workshop, which means it’s TIME:

TIME ​​to feature bits of self-serving feedback I’ve gotten from readers who have already signed up.​​

I have one such bit below.

​​If you read on, you will see it serves my purposes perhaps all too well.

Still, it might just be worth reading for your own self, because it does also illustrate a deep marketing truth.

Yesterday, I got a message from Ashley Gainer, who is a copywriter, former journalist, and current host of the Copy Chatter podcast.

Ashley had signed up for Daily Email Fastlane, so I wrote her to ask what her situation is in regard to daily emails, and how I can make the workshop as useful to her as possible.

​​Here’s a part of what she replied:

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I’ve been sending a daily email to my list for 2+ years. Your “takes” on the how and why of copywriting and marketing in general are often so different from what I normally see with the chest-thumpers — I want to know more about your approach.

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Ok, so now that I’ve slipped in this bit of self-serving feedback, maybe you can read it again and see that deep and obvious marketing truth:

If you want people to buy from you, even products that are kind of vague and mysterious like Daily Email Fastlane, then make sure you talk different from other people out there.

I don’t mean just talking all ungrammatical or doubling down on your own slang.

I mean fundamentally having unique things, different things, surprising things to say.

Easier said than done, right?

​​How in helminth do you come up with different, unique, surprising things to say, particularly every day?

Good news:

​​That’s one of the commonalities I’ve found among three successful daily emailers I will be using as case studies inside Daily Email Fastlane.

Honestly, I’m dissecting what these guys do as much for myself as I’m doing it for you.

Because if I could only have five fundamentals of human psychology as applies to marketing and copywriting, one for each of the fingers of my left hand, then contrast would be one of them. In fact it would be the thumb.

That’s why during Daily Email Fastlane, I’ll go into this “talk different” topic, and give you a practical technique I’ve seen used by all three of these daily emailers to say something unique as often as they like.

Daily Email Fastlane is happening tomorrow night, live on Zoom, at 8pm CET, with a replay if you cannot attend live.

But the deadline to sign up is today, Wednesday, less than 12 hours from now, at 8:31pm CET. If you’d like join me and find out how to talk different:

https://bejakovic.com/daily-email-fastlane