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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:

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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/

Last month, I got an email with a subject line in all caps:

“THANK YOU JOHN!”

Inside the email I found a picture of a young guy in a sharp suit, standing on stage, holding a microphone in his left hand and some kind of glass trophy in his right.

Behind him on the wall, projected in large letters, was his name, Carlo Gargiulo. That’s who was writing to me. Carlo had this to say:

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Hi John,

I am writing this email to say thank you.

Last night was one of the most important nights of my life.

I was awarded in the company as the most productive copywriter in the company where I work.

I was awarded for constant study, application of new writing techniques, and great results generated by my emails.

As for productivity, I really want to say thank you because I started writing much more quickly after taking the Most Valuable Email course.

Studying and re-studying the course and re-watching the video of your critique of my email several times was critical to my growth.

Despite the award and applause from colleagues and clients, I still feel like a copywriter eager to grow and improve!

I look forward to learning so much more from you and taking it to the next level!

Thank you for the valuable insights, information, and techniques you tell us about every day in your emails and in your amazing courses.

They are invaluable to me 🙂

Carlo

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Obviously, this testimonial serves me very well. But can you possibly get anything out of Carlo’s message above?

Well no. At least not if you are looking for the secret shortcut to the Cave of Treasures, preferably a shortcut which doesn’t involve any walking.

On the other hand, if you are still reading, then let me repeat Carlo’s longcut to success:

“Constant study, application of new writing techniques, and great results generated by my emails.”

If the sound of constant study and the application of new techniques doesn’t make you cover up your ears in horror… and if you like the sound of great results generated by your emails, then consider my Most Valuable Email course.

It might be the first step on your path to the Cave of Treasures.

And who knows, maybe like Carlo, you will find MVE helps you write much more quickly, be more productive, and even win awards and applause from colleagues and clients.

For more info, go here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/