Ben Settle

Ben Settle’s monkey business

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I saw a photo today and the caption read “Anti-Poachers Protecting Gorillas.”

The photo showed a black dude taking a selfie.

Behind him was a guy dressed in a very convincing gorilla outfit, but standing in a very ungorilla-like pose.

Specifically, he was standing completely erect, with his arms straight by his sides, a big beer belly jutting out.

“How is this gonna work?” I wondered. “Will this guy pretend to be a gorilla so the poachers come and try to shoot him? And then what?”

I got curious so I researched this story in more depth.

SHOCKER!

Turns out I was completely wrong.

That’s not a man in a convincing gorilla suit.

Instead, it’s a real gorilla standing in a very human-like pose.

It seems these anti-poachers in the Congo raised a couple of orphaned gorillas. And now that the gorillas are grown up, they completely imitate (ape?) their human parents.

So they stand up straight, walk around on two feet, and even pose for selfies.

Which got me thinking about the instinct for mimicking those around us, whether human or ape.

It’s such a fundamental part of the thought machine we know as the brain.

Resistance is futile.

And if you need proof, take for example email marketing guru Ben Settle.

Over the course of the past year, Ben has on several occasions warned his readers to disregard social proof when making a buying decision online.

Noble advice. Except…

Even though Ben is like the good friar going about the shire and sermonizing about the dangers of alcohol, he’s also back at the monastery brewing up some delicious ale that he sells at the Sunday market.

Specifically, at the end of July, Ben ran an aggressive campaign to promote his Email Players newsletter (I know because I was tracking and categorizing every email he sent out that month).

And so from Thursday the 25th to Monday the 29th, he sent out 10 emails. Each day followed the same pattern.

Morning: an interesting or intriguing email leading into a link to the Email Players sales page…

Afternoon: an email that was basically just a testimonial for Email Players. 5 testimonials over 5 days. Because they are too powerful not to use.

So in case you want to promote an offer aggressively over the span of a few days, maybe try mimicking this little sequence of Ben’s. I imagine he’s using it because he’s tested it and it works.

And if you don’t need emails, but you do need some advertorials, then fear not. The anti-poaching brigade is preparing a special report on the topic, which you can sign up for here:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Minesweeping for copywriting clients

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I was talking to someone recently and I mentioned how I’d gotten off Upwork a few months ago.

“So how do you get clients now?” she asked.

I paused and thought. “I don’t really know.”

Well, I’ve thought about it a bit more. Here are the facts:

Since getting off Upwork, I’ve had some old clients get back in touch with new projects…

I’ve also had some referrals that turned into actual work…

And finally, I applied for and got one email writing job that was advertised within Ben Settle’s paid newsletter.

And while it’s been enough work (along with my ongoing clients) to keep me busy, I’d like to have a more steady drip-drip of new leads.

So I’ve taken the advice of several successful copywriters (Chris Orzechowski and Roy Furr), and I’ve started putting together a list of businesses I would like to write for.

The goal was to put together 50 such companies. I’ve been at it for about a month. And so far I have… 8.

In spite of the fact that good direct marketing companies should be easy to track down (they run ads, right?), I’m not finding it so easy to actually find them.

It’s kind of like that old game Minesweeper that used to come with Windows.

You click on one square, hoping it will open up a whole patch of the board that’s free of mines…

But it turns out to be just one stupid revealed square, with no extra information, and you’re back to where you started.

At least that’s how it feels for a while.

But if you keep it up (so I tell myself), the Minesweeper field starts to open up and you get a better idea of where those mines (ahem, clients) might be hiding.

(By the way, did you know that Minesweeper happens to be an NP-complete game? That’s a fancy computer science term that means Minesweeper is pretty damn complex. And that progress in the game probably won’t be linear, and might require going down some dead ends.)

Anyways, the point of all this is to inspire myself, and maybe you as well. Because if you keep putting in the work, eventually results will start to follow. Either that, or you land on a mine and blow off your foot. (Haha, nervously.)

Of course, maybe you’re not off Upwork. Maybe you’re just trying to get started there. (And why not? It’s a good place to get clients, and it worked well for me for years.) In that case, you might like this collection of the tricks and strategies I used while I was still on Upwork:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book

4 daily email newsletters you might like

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I’m subscribed to several dozen daily newsletters.

Reading most of them is a chore.

In part, that’s cause they all come from Agora or Agora-like companies.

And they either deal with stock tips and gold rush advice…

Or health information about diseases I haven’t heard of, at least yet. (Macular degeneration, when you arrive, I will be ready.)

I slog through these emails each day because email marketing is my job.

But among these dull but important emails, there are a few email newsletters, which arrive daily or even multiple times a day, that I actually open up and read with some personal interest. Here they are:

#1. Simon Black

“America is going to shit and you better have a plan B for when it happens”

That’s the summary of International Man, run by Simon Black.

The thing is, Simon writes interesting emails. There’s always some little history lesson, written as a simple story. I find myself intrigued and educated.

Word to the wise: Simon’s subject lines are pretty dull and too matter-of-fact. Try opening up his emails even if the subject line doesn’t catch your attention.

#2. Newsmax

I mentioned Newsmax a few days ago.

It’s a giant newsletter about news from a conservative standpoint.

All of the stories in Newsmax will get your blood pressure up, whether you vote left, right, or not at all.

Plus, you will get links to some of the most shameless sales letters running on the Internet right now.

#3. Ben Settle

Ben settle didn’t invent daily emails. But he did a lot to make them popular.

He did this by being surprising and polarizing.

Even after many years of reading Ben’s emails, I still open and read them each day.

#4. James Altucher

I only started reading James Altucher several months ago.

He is multimillionaire former hedge fund manager and failed entrepreneur.

He writes long blog posts that get sent as emails as well.

His emails are personal, funny, and interesting.

But James also seems to be backed by some Agora company.

So the interesting and personal stuff that he writes is interspersed with cutthroat sales copy for getting rich off marijuana penny stocks. Just so ya know.

#5. That’s actually it. The above 4 are the only daily newsletters I enjoy reading.

​​But while preparing to write this email, I typed “daily emails” into Google. And I subscribed to a bunch of newsletters I had never heard of before:

– Uptown Messenger (about where to buy drugs in New York City?)
– the Skimm (possibly about the milk industry)
– PRSUIT (of missing vowels)
– Londonist (about things to do in London, where I don’t live)
– and something called “A Season of Grief,” which apparently sends you inspiring daily emails to help you cope with a death in the family

I can’t wait. I’ll keep you updated. But before you go, there’s one more:

#6. Your recommendation.

Do you follow any newsletters (daily or not) that you actually enjoy reading? (Besides mine, of course.)

If you do, please let me know.

This is not just an engagement tactic. I’m planning on putting together a weekly (not daily) newsletter about email marketing soon.

So you’d be helping me out. And I’d give you due credit in the first edition of that upcoming newsletter.

Just click here, and if you’ve got a hit tip for me, send me the juice.

The 2019 Nobel Prize in email marketing

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Two years ago, a bunch of smart guys got the Nobel Prize for discovering how the circadian rhythm works.

As you might know, that’s our body’s internal clock.

It’s what keeps you awake during the day, sleepy at night, and in a zombie state after you change time zones.

These scientists wanted to figure out how this happens.

They found that there’s a protein that builds up in our cells during the night…

And gets depleted during the day.

It’s kind of like an hourglass. During the night the sand gets put in at the top, and during the day it runs out. When it runs out, you’re knocked out.

This is pretty similar to the classical view of email marketing.

“You don’t want to mail sales pitches too frequently,” the conventional argument goes. “If you do, you’ll deplete your ‘goodwill hourglass’ and people on your list will unsubscribe.” It sounds reasonable, just like the circadian rhythm story.

But it’s contradicted by a new discovery.

Just look at the work of email scientists like Matt Furey, Ben Settle, and Travis Sago.

Their attitude is not, “How often can I sell something to my list?”

Instead, they focus on selling something every day — and having their list love them for it.

It’s a super powerful change in perspective.

Worthy of a Nobel Prize in email marketing.

If you have an email list, then this “sell every day” approach opens up grand vistas of untapped profits.

And if done right, it also creates better, longer-lasting relationships with your customers and your audience.

But this won’t be much use to you unless you have an email list. Filled with people who are in your target market. And hungry for what you sell.

There are lots of ways to build such a list. If you want to know a fast way, here’s one option:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

An important reminder for clingy copywriters

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A few days ago, I got carried away.

A potential new client contacted me. “Would you like to write daily emails for us?” he asked.

“Sure I would,” I said. “And I’d like to do more than that for you.”

Then I threw in a kitchen-sinkful of copywriting and marketing services I could provide along with the daily emails. The problem was that at this early stage, I didn’t really know what this client’s actual needs are. In other words, I was pitching instead of selling, as Ben Settle puts it.

Normally, I don’t get this needy or clingy.

But sometimes, it gets away from me.

A few days after this happened, I read something related by direct response copywriter Jason Leister.

I think it’s an important reminder for all copywriters, including myself, who can get carried away when a great new opportunity appears on the horizon. Jason writes:

“Over the years, I’ve come to hire clients very slowly. If you work with clients, consider hiring them SLOWLY. (You are hiring them, remember that. You’re in the driver’s seat of your business, not anyone else. They’ve got the “money” but you have the thing for which they are willing to part with that money. Money is everywhere, YOU are not.)”

Jason then describes what this means practically in his business.

I think it’s worthwhile reading for all freelance copywriters.

If you want to read Jason’s complete email including the practical bits, simply write me and I can forward it to you. Or you can head over to Jason’s site, where he publishes his daily emails with a few days’ delay. Here’s the link:

https://incomparableexpert.org/dailyjournal/

The truth about daily emails

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I’ve been on a learning kick lately, reading and watching and slurping up everything I can find by a guy named Travis Sago.

I won’t list his resume here.

Suffice to say he’s an Internet marketer who’s been around for I guess close to two decades.

​​He’s made many millions of dollars.

What’s more, he’s done this profitably (ie. without building up a giant organization, but just him and a couple of elfin helpers).

So if you are a person like me, who doesn’t dream of starting a 100-person company, but who does dream of having a 7-figure income by dabbling in marketing, then you might find what Travis has to say interesting. So I’ll share one Travis thing with you.

It’s one of his 6 secrets for successful email campaigns.

Says Travis:

“Make your email campaign an EVENT”

Now maybe this sounds trivial to you.

But I think it’s a crucial lesson for a lot of businesses today who are hopping onto the daily email bandwagon.

As you might know, I’m also a big fan of Ben Settle. I believe Ben is responsible for the bandwagonification of daily emails. The way he was able to do this was by writing daily emails himself — promoting his own methodology, building his own brand, and refining his ideas and strategies. In other words, there’s definitely a lot of value to writing daily emails.

They help you get positioned as a leader in your market…

They distill your own selling and marketing approach…

They help you create valuable content.

But here’s one thing that they are not likely to do:

They don’t make sales.

Not lots of them anyways. Not in my experience.

For sales, you need an EVENT, just like Travis Sago says.

And to be fair, this is something Ben Settle teaches and lives as well. He’s constantly running events and promotions. And even his core offer — his paid monthly newsletter — is basically an event that comes to an end at the end of each month.

Still, a lot of people who only follow Ben on the surface, and who are bouncing along merrily on the daily email bandwagon, miss this important point.

And that’s why, if you are writing daily emails, and you aren’t getting the results you want, maybe try creating some EVENTS.

As for me, it’s back to work, toiling away at an upcoming event. While that’s not complete, you might like the following free offer — even without an EVENT to promote it:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Selling empty cans to pale, dirty Internet addicts

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Imagine a dark, airless room.

A pale, young man who hasn’t showered in five days is sitting there, lit up by the light of a computer monitor.

He has headphones on his head and he is completely absorbed as one hand bashes on the keyboard and the other twitches at the mouse.

And on the desk, next to his computer, is a steaming can — a new warning symbol for our age.

At least, that’s the argument I just read in an article by one David Courtwright, a professor of history at the prestigious University of North Florida.

Courtwright’s article starts off by talking about the spread of computer gaming addictions: Young guys who spend their entire days and nights sitting at the computer, playing World of Warcraft.

And it’s really entire days and nights.

Some of these guys keep cans by the computer so they don’t have to take time out to go to the bathroom.

Courtwright argues this is a symptom of “limbic capitalism” — selling goods and services that are actually addictive.

Limbic capitalism is not a new phenomenon, Courtwright says, but it’s definitely been helped by the spread of the Internet and the growth of entrepreneurial culture (and opportunities).

But if guys want to pee while sitting at their computer, then why not sell them the can, right?

This might have been the right attitude some time ago.

Once upon a time, you needed large numbers to make a business (and marketing for that business) profitable. And if that meant selling to addicts, so be it.

Even if that was true once (and I’m not sure it was), it’s not true any more.

In the online marketing sphere, guys like Sean D’Souza and Ben Settle make a good living by selling to a small number of curated customers who are willing to spend a lot of money — and get a lot of value — from their offers, year after year.
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The same systems that have allowed for the rise of limbic capitalism have allowed for the rise of this other kind of capitalism (maybe call it forebrain capitalism, since it’s designed to appeal to deliberate decision making).

So what does this have to do with you?

Maybe nothing.

It’s just something I think about when choosing which projects I will spend my time and effort and lifeblood on.

But maybe this resonates with you in some way, and maybe it helps you when you have to make your own decisions about how to run or grow your own business.

Anyways, enough philosophizing.

If you do have a forebrain business that sells something worthwhile to people who aren’t addicts, and you want sales copy (even limbic sales copy) to help your sales, then you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

The productivity benefits of dirty hostels and shared bathrooms

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Ben Settle wrote an email today with the subject line, “Why airports are the devil.”

Ben’s email is all about how he hates travel — the bacteria-infected airports, the dirty hostels, and the horror-filled lifestyle of a digital nomad.

Now, I hate many of the same things that Ben’s pointing out.

And yet, I still travel frequently and willingly.

And I think traveling is important — whether I like it or not.

That’s because I’ve noticed that when I sit at home and develop a daily routine, my brain slowly and imperceptibly starts to get slow, stupid, and depressed.

After a while, it simply refuses to work very well. It refuses to be active, creative, or engaged — because everything around me is too familiar.

The upshot is it starts to take me longer and longer to get work completed… Small obstacles become overwhelming… And I find it hard to stay motivated or positive.

Going for a trip clears all those cobwebs quickly and amps me up with energy for when I get back home. And that’s why I’m willing to submit to uncomfortable airplane seats or to bacteria in dodgy restaurants or embarrassment when having to deal with strangers in a strange land.

I’m sure there are many people who are like Ben, and who can thrive in their own home fortress, with a regular, familiar routine, day in and day out.

But I suspect many people are also like me.

The thing is, not everyone has a free and flexible lifestyle.

Many people who do get depressed and bored and inactive in their daily lives cannot travel and get new experiences whenever they want.

And so they seek novelty, stimulation, and entertainment wherever they can get it.

Usually through TV shows. Or social media. Or even in the marketing they are exposed to.

Which, in case you’ve got a business, is a great opportunity.

If you send marketing emails entertaining and challenging your audience, you can help your prospects make up for the fact they have routine and staid lives.

And if you want to see how I write such emails — even as I sleep on friends’ couches and expose myself to dangerous airport bacteria — then you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Hundreds of dollars of marketing and copywriting secrets for $21.36

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As I’ve mentioned recently, I’m traveling over the next few weeks. But I’ve got some big plans for when I get back home and get back to work.

I plan to apply lessons from a talk that Gene Schwartz made at Phillips Publishing to copy that I write for my clients. I plan to apply lessons from a Jay Abraham course to my copywriting business. I plan to apply lessons I’ve learned from a Perry Marshall lecture to a new affiliate project I will be kicking off.

These three resources — the Gene Schwartz talk, the Jay Abraham course, the Perry Marshall lecture — currently sell for hundreds of dollars.

That’s if you can find them at all.

And yet, if you dig them up, honestly consume them, and apply their lessons, I believe they will be a terrific investment that will over time make you much more than that what you’ve paid for them.

But here’s the thing. I didn’t pay hundreds of dollars for all these courses. I paid a total of $21.36.

That’s because all three of these reousces are among the 11 free bonuses for Brian Kurtz’s new book Overdeliver.

In case you don’t know Brian Kurtz, he was one of the main guys behind Boardroom (now called Bottom Line), one of the biggest direct marketing publisher of the last few decades. And he’s one of the best-connected and well-liked guys in direct marketing.

That’s one of the reasons why so many top marketers volunteered their valuable products — like the ones above — to serve as bonuses for Brian’s book.

(I also suspect it’s why Brian’s book gets over-the-top praise from many of the big names I’ve mentioned frequently in these emails, including Parris Lampropoulos, Ben Settle, Mark Ford, Joe Sugarman, Gary Bencivenga, Ken McCarthy, Kim Krause Schwalm, and the list goes on.)

Anyways, I’ve personally found Brian’s offer very valuable — even though I have only been going through the bonuses and haven’t even made it to the core book yet. In case you want to check it all out for yourself, and maybe even invest $21.36, here’s where to go:

https://overdeliverbook.com/

Snatching defeat from the jaws of a large, aggressive dog

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I really love dogs but that would have helped me little last night, when a territorial black monster named Tony cornered me with apparent intent to tear out my liver.

Tony is the dog of a friend I’m visiting and is supposedly a German shepherd. I have my doubts about this lineage because

1) as mentioned, Tony is all black and not brown, and

2) Tony is about 50% larger than any German shepherd I’ve ever seen (he weighs around 100 lbs). In fact, if I ever ran into Tony in a dark forest, my first thought would be I’m seeing a wolf and I’m about to become a cautionary tale for naughty children.

Fortunately, I survived last night’s Tony attack because my friend, knowing Tony’s territorial tendencies, put a muzzle on Tony’s snout ahead of time.

So even though Tony charged at me repeatedly and got so close I could hear his jaws snapping, I was safe.

As I was lying in bed later, going over this exciting evening and trying to fall asleep, I summed it up as,

“Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” (suck it Tony)

This in turn reminded me of a great subject line technique I call inversion (others might have different names for it).

It’s when you take a saying, a well-known phrase, or a cliche and either turn it around (as with the “defeat” phrase) or take a key word and negate it (as in the Ben Settle subject line, “Why the customer is always wrong”).

This inversion style of subject lines works for two reasons:

First, it catches your reader off guard and it causes dissonance that the reader will probably want to resolve.

Second, it gives you an interesting angle to write about — assuming you write the subject line ahead of the email body.

Anyways, I’ll be staying with my friend — and Tony — for the next few days. And assuming Tony’s muzzle doesn’t slip off and I wind up in the ER, I’ll even try to get a bit of copywriting done. Specifically, some emails for a new health offer I will be promoting.

If you want to get a good idea of how I write such emails — and you can, too — then check out the following page:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/