Uncategorized

Many years ago, while I was still on Upwork, I created a short-lived LinkedIn profile.

​​I thought LinkedIn could be a way to get high-quality leads for my copywriting services. So I created a profile and started aimlessly “connecting” with people who could be potential clients or contacts to help me get clients.

This lasted all about three days. I hated the experience, and it produced nothin’. I felt stupid and frankly humiliated, groping, and needy.

In a fit of rage, I deleted my LinkedIn profile, raced up to the tower of my moss-covered castle, slammed the large oaken doors behind me, and vowed that the cruel world would never see me “connecting” with anyone ever again.

And yet, ever since, I continue to hear stories of people getting clients, customers, and, yes, valuable connections through LinkedIn.

Even though I refuse to come down from the tower of my moss-covered castle, I have to admit my beastly ears always do perk up at these stories.

And so they did a few days ago, when I got an email from reader Carlo Gargiulo, who works as a copywriter at an info publishing business in Switzerland.

​​Carlo wrote me to say he has been applying some ideas I’ve shared, specifically inside my Most Valuable Email training, to writing LinkedIn posts. The results have been impressive.

Like I said, I couldn’t keep my beastly ears in place. I let out a soft growl. And I wrote back to Carlo, to ask exactly what he was doing on LinkedIn. He wrote me to say:

===

About three months ago I decided to start writing posts on LinkedIn about copywriting and direct response marketing.

I started doing this because I noticed that very few Italian copywriters were talking about copy on LinkedIn.

So, every Monday morning I publish a post.

The goal is to create some authority for myself and to get some clients among the entrepreneurs who follow my page.

For the past 2 weeks or so I have been reaping the first fruits.

There are entrepreneurs I had met in the past who have contacted me privately to ask how much it costs to consult with me and how much money I charge in exchange for writing marketing materials.

Specifically, they want posts similar to the ones I write on LinkedIn and email sequences.

The other result I have achieved is about the growth of authority in the company where I work as a copywriter.

Many colleagues started following me, and since I’m not very popular (since I’m very private), those posts were a hook to showcase my knowledge, and now I end up with a queue of people who want to talk to me about anything related to copy and direct response marketing.

As I told you, I’m very private, I lead a quiet lifestyle (books, TV series, magazines, running, walks at the lake) and I don’t like to show off.

===

Carlo’s message went on. He listed the specific marketing and copywriting ideas from the MVE swipe file, included with the MVE training, that he has been using in his LinkedIn posts.

I won’t repeat those here. ​​But I think you get the bigger point:

A way to use LinkedIn not to feel humiliated and out of place, but to get clients warmed up, reaching out, and asking to work with you… and even maybe to get a kind word or a smile of appreciation from your coworkers and colleagues.

Of course, that’s all assuming that you can write something that lights up people’s brains a bit, and that they feel interested in reading more of.

There are different ways to do that.

​​But as Carlo found, and as I found before him, using the MVE trick, and specific ideas in the MVE swipe file, is one effective way to go about it. If you’d like to get started with that today, so you can reap the benefits within a few months’ time:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/​​

Yesterday, I sent an email about how my Copy Riddles program is up on pirate sites, even though it’s not for sale on my own site any more. I got a bunch of responses to that email.

​​One reader wrote in to say that “not selling Copy Riddles is a crime against copywriters who want to master the craft.” Others wrote in to ask why I decided to retire the program.

If you like, I’ll tell you a reason why.

It’s that I believe — how can I put this delicately — that teaching people how to be a copywriter is a crumbling business.

ChatGPT is a part of it. But really, it’s that we were in a “copywriting bubble” over the past five or seven years.

The 4 Hour Work Week and podcasts and side hustle blogs made copywriting a thing. Marketers with copy chops and those without could create courses about copywriting, and sell them for good money to masses of people.

​​That came to a fever pitch thanks to corona — there was genuinely more demand for copywriters since everything moved online, and many people were looking for a change.

When I was looking for a copywriting coach in 2019, I had trouble finding one. Over the next year, every living A-list copywriter, and many others, unliving, C-list, or D-list, launched coaching programs.

But now, I believe all that’s coming to an end.

I’m not saying copywriting as a profession is gonna die. I predict that, if you have already have skills and clients, you will be able to adapt and continue to do well. And I’m sure new people will appear and write winning copy tomorrow who have never heard of Gary Halbert today.

But the fact is, 90% of the copywriting education market is not made up of people who will ever write winning copy, or really any kind of copy. It’s made up of people who don’t have skills or clients, and who never will, for reasons of their own.

With all the talk of AI, plus the wobbling of the economy, plus simply the fact that copywriting is past its gold rush moment, I believe this large crowd will start to scatter, if it hasn’t started already, to other business opportunities that sound newer and more exciting.

So that’s why I decided to give myself a bit of a nudge, and I retired my Copy Riddles program. A shrinking market makes me uneasy.

So that’s why I decided to give myself a bit of a nudge, and I retired my Copy Riddles program. A shrinking market makes me uneasy, and I wanted to step ahead of it.

But more on that in the future.

For now, I’ll point you to my Most Valuable Email course. I’ve kept that peach on the table because it’s not meant for copywriting specifically. Rather, it’s for anybody who considers themselves a marketer, and who wants to become more successful and valuable at what they do. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

If you know somebody who is an expert on email deliverability, please send them my way or tell me where I can find them.

The background, as I’ve mentioned before, is that I’ve launched a new newsletter.

My new newsletter runs on Beehiiv, which is a Substack-like platform.

I recently started paying for Beehiiv “boosts” — basically co-reg when people sign up for other Beehiiv newsletters.

I also have double-optin set up for my Beehiiv newsletter.

When I started running the paid boosts, I quickly started getting dozens of new subscribers per day.

But none of them, not a single one, was double-opting in.

The good news is, with boosts you don’t have to pay for subscribers who don’t double-opt in. The bad news is, I wasn’t growing my list.

I didn’t know what was wrong, and I wanted to find out in the quickest and most direct way possible.

So I wrote up a post about what I was seeing. I titled it, “Boosts: Shaky day 1 experiences.” And I posted it inside the Newsletter XP community, which is hosted and run by the Beehiiv people, and which has a few hundred people, mainly Beehiiv users, who paid good money to be there.

Result:

It seemed like the entire Beehiiv team got on the case. They figured out that the Boosts were not to blame. Rather, it turned out my double-optin emails were for some reason ending up in spam.

One of the Beehiiv people suggested changing my sending domain from my custom domain to the default Beehiiv domain. That fixed the issue for the moment. But it’s not a permanent solution.

Yesterday, I tried reverting to my custom domain again. And again, I am seeing that practically nobody is doing the double optin.

I’m guessing my confirmation emails are going to spam again. ​​

So if you know somebody who can help me diagnose and fix the underlying issue, tell them to contact me or tell me how to contact them.

For the right man or woman, I’ll pay top dollar to get this problem solved. And I’ll be grateful to you for your help, and for putting me in touch with this person.

My email yesterday got a high number of unsubscribes. The normal is 1 or 2 but yesterday’s email got 5. One unsubscriber wrote:

===

I do LOOOVEEE the emails and I just want them to keep coming ALWAYS. But the thing is I’ve subscribed to A LOT of lists already and I’m consuming a lot of content than I should. In fact, I’m at the point where I’m inches away from getting the infamous “information overload”. So most of the time I just skip some emails to let my brain rest. Unfortunately, very very unfortunately, I have to let your email list go (FOR NOW). But I need to get those emails in the future so kindly don’t put me on your blacklist. It’s temporary. Hope you can understand.

===

Here’s a free and valuable email marketing tip:

Don’t apologize. Don’t explain yourself. Don’t hedge or flip-flop.

Email is a wonderful medium because you can control any neediness you might feel.

​​You can be however you are in real life. You can even write like that. But then you can take a moment to distance yourself from what you’ve written to cut out any unasked-for apologies, waffling, or attempts to lessen the insult that your message wasn’t going to cause anyhow.

As for the guy above, he has been placed on a blacklist. Not out of any malice. Active Campaign does it automatically whenever somebody unsubscribes.

I used to occasionally go in and purge that blacklist so unsubscribed readers could get back on my list if they so choose.

​​I don’t bother any more. I do get on occasion somebody writing to me to say they signed up but are not getting my emails, in which case I will add them by hand.

Famed negotiation coach Jim Camp used to say negotiation is a series of decisions. You can’t tell people anything. The only thing you can do is help them see and decide for themselves.

My email yesterday got a high number of unsubscribes. I’m sending a new email today because you only ever get people off your list when you a send a new email. You also only ever get people reading and opting in and PayPaling you money when you send a new email.

Negotiation is a series of decisions. You can only send people emails to help them make those decisions for themselves. ​​If that’s something you can see for yourself, you might decide to start applying it. You certainly don’t need my help to do it. But in case you want it, you can sign up for my email list here.

This past January, I wrote an email about my “5-year rule.” Before starting any new project, I simply ask myself:

“Would I be ok working on this for the next five years?”

If my answer is, “No way!” or “Really, I want to do this for a year or max two and get out,” then I don’t allow myself to even start.

To which, I got the following response from a reader:

===

Where were you two years ago with this advice John?! Really – you’re late to my party!!!

Seriously, thanks for this. I remember your earlier email about this and it made sense then, and it makes just as much sense now.

Is it ridiculous to say that I still don’t really know what I would like to be doing in five years? Sigh.

===

Like I told this reader, I wouldn’t stress about it — I feel most folks, myself included, don’t really know what they want. But we do know pretty well what we don’t want.

That’s why massively successful opportunity offers are so often really not about the promise, but about implied escape:

* Lazy Man’s Way to Riches [DON’T WANNA WORK, EVEN IF IT’S TO GET RICH]

* Four Hour Workweek [DON’T WANNA WORK]

* 7 Steps To Freedom [REALLY JUST DON’T WANNA WORK OR HAVE PEOPLE TELL ME WHAT TO DO]

So there you go. If you’re searching for your prospects’ deepest desire, maybe it’s just to escape. If so, it makes sense to call it out, or even put it in your product name.

But maybe escape is not your prospects’ deepest desire. Maybe it’s something else. In which case, I got some good news, some bad news for you.

The bad news is, as with escape above, your prospects are rarely ever going to tell you their deepest desires straight out. The fact is, they probably don’t know themselves. At least not consciously. And if they do know, they won’t admit it when you ask them.

The good news is, there aren’t all that many of these fundamental desires to go around. So you can just make a list of them, and then test them out against each other with your audience, and see which one gets a best response. For example, by putting different ones in your subject line.

If you want a list of deepest desires I myself assembled, you can find that in round 19 of my Copy Riddles program. I call this list the Dirty Dozen.

I didn’t pull this list out of thin air or my deep understanding of human nature — my understanding ain’t that deep.

Instead, I pulled the Dirty Dozen together by looking at what top copywriters were really doing in their copy — beyond just selling the main promise and showing the proof for it. Sometimes — not always, but often — there were other, hidden, emotional appeals in there. Deep stuff, dark stuff, dirty stuff, which I ended up putting into that list.

Anyways, maybe I’ll go ahead and take my own advice. And if you’d like to do the same, you can find the Dirty Dozen, and much more stuff that nobody’s ever told you about, inside my Copy Riddles program here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Up until today, my best-ever month in terms of income was November 2020. At that time, I was chest-deep in copywriting client work, plus I was getting a sizeable profit share on two big email lists I was managing.

As this email goes out, 28 days into March 2023, I’m about $200 over what I made in November 2020. And there are still a few days to go this month.

I sat down this morning and made a list of possible explanations for this new record in income.

Was it inflation?

Some part, yes. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, inflation has risen like smoke between then and now, 16%. But I still have one more new offer to make to my list this month. With it, I might have a record month in inflation-adjusted terms also.

Was it client work?

I’ve largely escaped from client work over the past couple years, and that’s why it’s taken me so long to get to a new record month. If I was chest-deep in client work in 2020, I’m ankle deep in it now. I have one client — easy work, good money, and exposure to what’s happening in the industry. It’s nice to have but not a major part of my total income.

Was it sales I made to new subscribers from the classified ad I ran early this month?

So far I’ve made $4k in sales to new subscribers who came from that $1k ad, a 3x return. That’s a nice result and definitely good to have. But again, it’s not a major part of my total income this month.

So what was it then?

Well, I will just deny any rumors you may have heard:

I did not walk through Barcelona’s Gothic district late one night this past December, and I did not come upon a crossroads, where a man in a fedora was leaning against a door and smoking a cigarette.

Furthermore, I did not engage in conversation or debate or deal-making with this man, and I was not as a result offered any occult or supernatural knowledge regarding persuasion or influence, nor did I strike a fearful bargain with said man, up to and including the sale of my soul or that of any firstborn child I might one day have.

No, none of that. If I do have any secret, it’s not supernatural or occult.

I won’t lie and say my big secret, if there is one, is out there for all to see, and available simply by reverse engineering.

But as Tony Robbins likes to say, success leaves clues. And secrets leave footprints, especially on the written page.

And with that, I’d like to recommend to you my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters. It’s based on this very idea — success leaves clues, so why not collect them and put them into quick and easy little Kindle book. As one highly critical (4-star) reviewer wrote:

===

excellent book

Short and very pertinent. Loaded with the names of hugely successful giants of the copywriting world and the titles of their successful books. I read the book on Kindle and highlighted many great bits of advice and the names of the great writers sharing advice. If you write ad copy for a living or hope to do so, buy this book.

===

You’re now at a crossroads. If you decide to take the path that leads to reading this book, here’s where you can buy it:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Three days ago, direct response copywriter Stefan Georgi sent out an email, “Big Secret About Peak Productivity.”

I like big secrets and I cannot lie. Besides, according to Stefan’s website, the man has sold over $700 million via his sales copy. So maybe he really does have some big secret? I opened the email to find out. This was it:

And yesterday was one of my most productive days in a long-while (like I CRUSHED the day).

Alright, so why am I sharing all of this?

Because there’s a stupidly simple lesson here:

When you feel tired, burned out, or like you just don’t want to work…

Then you should take a break.

After I read this, I shrugged, smiled at my own gullibility, and closed down Stefan’s email.

​​I didn’t feel enlightened. I didn’t have an a-ha moment. I didn’t learn anything new or really even anything useful. And yet, the next time Stefan Georgi sends out an email, I will still open it and at least skim it.

And even if it’s another bland breakthrough like the one above, I will still stay on Stefan’s list, and still give him the benefit of the doubt with the email after that and then some.

So here’s my BIG secret about peak emailing:

Your status is more important than your content.

​​Sure, if your content is truly atrocious all the time, you will drive people away. I remember some years ago signing up to Dan Kennedy’s “email newsletter” which was clearly not written by Dan, and which was just an autoresponder on repeat to let you know about various GKIC subscriptions and offers and lead magnets. I opened a few of those emails, and then unsubscribed.

On the other hand, if you’ve built yourself up as somebody important and successful, like Stefan has done, then you can allow yourself a lot of slack.

​​One email in three, one email in four, five, has to deliver something — something. The rest can be “big secrets” about taking a break when you’re tired… or about the importance of hard work… or about doing the right thing. And people will still read.

Actually I have something more to say about this, the BIG secret about peak status. But I feel I’ve shared enough big secrets with you in today’s email, so I will save that big secret for tomorrow.

Meanwhile, if you have no status yet, or you have status but for your own stubborn reasons you refuse to exploit it, then you might find some big secrets to help you inside my Most Valuable Email training.

Like I say on the sales page for that monster:

Most Valuable Emails never required I have any status or authority. Instead, they’ve helped me build up immediate and unquestionable authority — even when I had no standing in this industry. These emails make it 100% clear I know what I’m talking about, even when I don’t harp on about the great results I’ve had for clients or the testimonials or endorsements I’ve gotten.

So what’s the big secret of Most Valuable Emails? You can find that out here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/