Aaron Krolik

How to get Copy Riddles for just $70

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I sat down to write this email a few minutes ago, but I’m siting in an “airspace” cafe. It’s loud and busy, I got distracted. Instead of focusing, I checked my inbox. “Thank God,” I said, “somebody’s writing to me.”

The subject line read, “Piracy on Copy Riddles.” And the body:

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Hello John,

My name is Danica and I’m with Acme Dead Pirates Corp, a copyright protection service. We find and pursue takedowns of pirated copies of digital content on the Internet.

While we were searching for piracy for another client, we noticed infringement on Copy Riddles. I just thought you should know that your content is on many pirate websites. Here’s a sample:

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What followed was a list of sites that apparently have my retired Copy Riddles program at a steeply discounted price. The email ended with Danica’s offer to partner with me and “help you keep your hard earned revenue.”

Since I’m no longer selling Copy Riddles, there’s no hard-earned revenue to protect. And based on what I saw of the pages that claimed to have a map to where the Copy Riddles treasure might be buried (“Call 1.mp3”), I suspect they might be just lying.

But if you’re willing to give it a go, google Copy Riddles, hand over your doubloons to one of these pirate sites and you might be able to get a copy of Copy Riddles, which used to sell for $400, for as little as $70. Dead men tell no tales.

But back to that email I just got:

I don’t know Danica from Eve. It’s possible she represents a legit business. By the way, that business is not really called Acme Dead Pirates Corp. I changed the name because of what I will say next:

Danica’s email reminded me of an earlier email I had written, about online reputation management companies. These companies offer to take down slanderous or embarrassing posts that might have appeared about you on sites like bustedcheaters.com or worsthomewrecker.com.

An investigative journalist named Aaron Krolik found out that a dozen of those reputation management companies pointed to the same 2-3 people. And those 2-3 people were the same ones hosting hundreds of slanderous and embarrassing cheater sites.

In other words, the same people were posting nasty things about you online, then contacting you and helpfully offering to partner with you to take those nasty things down, for a fee of a few hundred dollars.

So consider this a public service announcement about “copyright protection service” cold emails.

Or consider it an example of fraudulent behavior that you might nonetheless want to integrate into your business. I’m not talking about actually scamming people. But the concept of creating your own demand is sound, and it can be done legally and even ethically.

But more on that another time.

For now, if you’d like to get my Most Valuable Email course, before it becomes pirated to oblivion or before I decide to make it walk the plank, look ye here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Unethically creating demand

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Earlier this year, NY Times reporter Aaron Krolik went on a site called cheaterboard.com. And he wrote this nasty post about himself:

“Aaron Krolik is a complete loser. Will do ANYTHING for attention. ANYTHING.”

The post included an ugly selfie of Krolik and a caption that read BUSTED.

Cheaterboard is a site that allows burned men and women to out their cheating exes. Except… is there more to it than that?

Within a few days, Krolik’s post had spread to a bunch of other sites, like bustedcheaters.com and worsthomewrecker.com. Similar concept to Cheaterboard.

Soon, these posts made it to the top of Google Images when you searched for Krolik’s name. Bing helpfully suggested “loser” when you started typing “Aaron Krolik.”

In a nutshell, Krolik had successfully ruined his own “cool guy” reputation.

Now was time to fix it. So Krolik contacted 247removal.com, a company specializing in cleaning up online slander.

It was easy to find them because they ran ads on sites like Cheaterbaord.

​​For a paltry fee of $750 per individual post (typically adding up to thousands of dollars to cover a bunch of sites), 247removal offered to scrub “Aaron Krolik is a complete loser” from the world.

Let me pause here and ask you…

Do you suspect any foul play here?

Krolik did. In fact, that’s why he went through the experiment of slandering himself.

It turned out that hundreds of online slander sites, and dozens of reputation management firms, all boiled down to a few people. Specifically, a programmer in India and a man and woman in Dayton, Ohio.

They would encourage and spread the slander (or who knows, maybe you really did cheat on your wife)… and then for fees up to $20,000, they would take it down.

Unlike my usual posts, this is not a business idea I’m recommending.

Although there is a kernel here that can be useful and even not so unethical.

And that’s the practice of serving a specific customer, rather than selling a specific product. So put Cheaterboard out of your mind for a second, and consider these examples instead:

Example 1: Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley’s manager. He secretly sold buttons that said something like, “Elvis sux!”

Why slander his own star? Because some people didn’t want to buy any Elvis… but they sure needed to buy something.

Example 2: Copywriter Abbey Woodcock has a clever page that you hit once you unsubscribe from her email list.

​​”Sorry it didn’t work out,” it says, “but here are a few resources that might be a better fit you.” And then, Abbey puts in a bunch of affiliate links to other copywriting programs.

Example 3 is apparently standard practice in the newsletter industry:

If you have a company with a bunch of different gurus and newsletters inside it… what do you do when a subscriber fails to renew? Of course.

You offer them any of the other newsletters to subscribe to. Maybe they didn’t like that first guy. But they’re clearly interested in the promise of getting rich with financial advice… so maybe they will like guy #2.

So that’s my advice to you. Once you identify demand, think beyond the product or products you offer.

And if there is no demand… then sometimes you can create it, ethically. But this post is getting long already, so I’ll leave that topic for another day. If you want to read that when it comes out, you can sign up for my email newsletter.