Ben Settle

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/

Successful, in-demand copywriter wants to find a profitable, sexy business that sucks at marketing

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“Are you the founder or owner of a profitable business that could explode if you had constant access to a great copywriter? If so, read on.”

The sentence you’ve just read was supposed to be the lead of an ad. It’s an ad​​ I started to write — to sell myself. Here’s the background:

Earlier this month, I got my copy of the April issue of Ben Settle’s Email Players.

As you may know, Email Players is Ben’s paid print newsletter. It comes out each month and it sells for $97 a month.

In this month’s issue, Ben revealed some big news:

He is starting to sell ad space — one page of it — on the back cover of his 16-page newsletter.

The price?

A low and introductory $5,000.

Whoa, you might say. That seems like an awful lot. But since my goal for this year is to become a top-paid sales copywriter who’s booked months in advance, my “red shirt” detector went off.

In other words, I realized this might be an opportunity I should take seriously.

After all, if I get just one good client out of this promotion…

I would easily make back my $5k investment.

And if I got two or more such clients, I’d be on my way to reaching that goal of becoming booked months in advance.

In the end, I decided not to run the ad — for reasons I might talk about another time, but not today.

But the whole thing popped up in my mind again last night because I re-read a famous classic ad, from another copywriter looking to sell himself.

The copywriter in question is the Prince of Print, old Gary Halbert.

Thing is, Gary wasn’t fishing for copywriting clients in his ad. Instead, he was looking for love, or at least sex and adventure with the right woman.

So he wrote a three-page ad and ran it in the Los Angeles Times. And he got hundreds of responses, and (I believe) a long-term relationship out of the deal.

If you’re a copywriter and you’re thinking of writing an ad to promote yourself, you should check out Gary’s ad. After all, it’s not easy to write a personal ad (or a “looking for clients” ad) and not seem desperate. ​​

And yet it can be done. If you want to see how, here’s the link:

​​https://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/13Ad%20PDF.pdf

Hungry Hamza’s ISIS diet fail

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A few weeks ago, news surfaced that British jihadi Hamza Parvez was being held in a Syrian prison.

Hamza was one of the first Britons to join ISIS — he ran away in 2014 to Syria, after convincing his UK family that he was going to study in Germany.

So what was Hamza doing in Syria?

Well, along with standard ISIS duties, he appeared in a recruiting video. He also tried to create a social media following back home in the UK, to convince other young Britons to come join him in the land of jihad.

But he failed in his social media quest.

The trouble seems to have been that Hamza, who was solidly built at the start of his ISIS career, lost almost 70 lbs. while in Syria.

He wasn’t happy about the distribution of food within ISIS.

And unfortunately, he decided to complain about this online. At one point, he even wrote on Twitter how he had a dream — ordering food from KFC, Nando’s, and even his fave Thai place.

As a result, his online followers started to mock him as “Hungry Hamza,” and his jihadi credibility went down the tubes.

There’s a lesson here for hungry marketers as well.

It’s from a throwaway comment I heard Ben Settle make in his now-dead podcast.

“Whatever you do,” Ben said, “you want to make it look easy.”

He was talking both about the content of your marketing (ie. don’t complain about being hungry)…

As well as about the form (ie. keep sending out an email each day, as though it costs you zero effort).

Of course, the reality might well be that you’re hungry…

Or that producing a constant stream of marketing content is costing you effort.

But your audience — jihadi or not — never needs to know that.

Hopefully this helps you in your own marketing.

And if you want more advice of how to write fresh daily emails that never sound hungry, check out the following:

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

The case against 60-day money-back guarantees

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A couple weeks back, I was lurking in a Facebook group when I saw an inflammatory post.

Let me first give you a bit of background.

The Facebook group where this post appeared is for people, like myself, who plopped down $500 at some point to get an online course called the Energy Blueprint.

​​The Energy Blueprint is offered by a guy called Ari Whitten, and it’s all about scientifically proven ways to increase your energy (if you’re healthy) — or to overcome fatigue (if you’re not).

Now, if you think about it, you’ll soon realize one important thing:

Claiming to have the solution to something as chronic and ill-defined as fatigue will attract at least a few people with a strong victim mentality.

Such as the author of the inflammatory post I mentioned at the start.

The post itself has been taken down, so I can’t quote it verbatim. But it basically said:

“This course hasn’t helped me one bit. I don’t have the money to buy all these supplements or to do all the treatments. I tried getting a refund but I was told it was 4 days out of the 60-day refund period. I just want to warn everybody that Ari Whitten is a scammer who’s taking advantage of people.”

Now, many people in Ari’s group immediately jumped to his defense, saying how much he’s helped them.

A few even cried, “Two months is not long enough to see how well the course works!”

Which might be true. But in that case, why offer a two-month guarantee?

Personally, I think there are two valid approaches to money-back guarantees.

The first tries to draw more people in. In this case, the guarantee should be as long and generous as possible — a year, five years, a lifetime.

The other approach focuses on the quality of your customers.

It’s what people like Ben Settle do, which is basically to say, “Only buy if you’re sure you want this, because there are absolutely no refunds.”

The thing is, both of these approaches can work, and they can work well.

The “generous guarantee” people will tell you that longer guarantees mean higher sales, but they also result in FEWER refunds.

Perhaps counterintuitively, Ben also claims that NOT offering a guarantee actually hasn’t lowered his sales any — and may have even increased them. And of course, his approach eliminates all the headaches that come with refunds and the people who demand them.

In other words, both extremes seem to be good when it comes to guarantees.

What you don’t want to do, at least in my opinion, is offer a wishy-washy 60-day guarantee — which can backfire on you like it did on Ari Whitten.

As for me, I don’t have any kind of guarantees for my copywriting services. Sometimes, I’ve written copy for clients, and it bombed. Other times, I’ve written copy and it was a big success.

I’ve gotten paid in both cases.

And I have learned some lessons from these failures and successes. In case you want to know what those lessons are, you might like the following free, no-risk offer:

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

5 smelly sinkholes of market info for ecommerce advertorials

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Lately, I’ve been writing a ton of advertorials for viral ecommerce products — everything from dog seat belts to neck traction devices to portable smoothie blenders.

For each product, most of the “writing” is actually research.

And along the way, I’ve realized that some of the most obvious places to do market research for these kinds of products…

Are also the worst options. Here are the top 5 to STAY AWAY from:

#1. Amazon product descriptions
Market info value: 1/5

In my experience, copy is not the primary driver of sales on Amazon.

It’s not even secondary. It probably comes in fourth or fifth place, after the star rating, images, reviews, and probably price.

What’s more, I feel that much of the copy in Amazon product descriptions is actually written for the Amazon recommendation algorithm — and not for actual buyers.

That’s why this copy won’t tell you anything about your market, and why you should largely ignore it. ​​

#2. Amazon reviews
Market info value: 3/5

Ben Settle wrote recently how he doesn’t trust Amazon reviews for market research. Says Ben: Amazon reviews are mainly written by disgruntled trolls.

The situation is even worse for viral ecommerce products. Most Amazon reviews in this segment are actually written by paid shills.

On top of this, popular products can have thousands of reviews, so it makes it hard to separate the rice from the millet.

There are ways around this (that’s why Amazon reviews gets a 3/5). But the gist is that most Amazon reviews aren’t trustworthy for getting an insight into your consumer’s mind.

#3. Product websites
Market info value: 2/5

Viral ecommerce products typically have shiny websites with beautiful pictures.

The thing is, anybody who lands on these websites and decides to buy was sold long before, through other channels.

In other words, the copy on these websites is not what made people buy — and it’s not something to imitate. ​​

#4. Facebook
Market info value 1/5

Many viral ecommerce products are marketed heavily on Facebook.

Unfortunately, the copy of the ads (if there is any) usually focuses on the product, and not the audience’s desires.

On top of this, the comments that appear on these ads tend to be worthless — they usually consist of “pp” [“price please”] or “I want this!” (I guess in hopes one of your FB friends or relatives will buy you whatever it is you want).

#5. YouTube reviews
Market info value: 3/5

YouTube reviews can be useful because you can see the product in action.

However, like with Amazon reviews, most YouTube reviews of viral products are by people who are doing this for money, or because they love getting free crap to review.

In other words, most YouTube reviewers did not actually buy the product. That’s why most likely cannot tell you the real thoughts/concerns/desires of people who would buy this product.

And there you have it.

5 smelly sinkholes you’ll want to beware of.

So where should you look for good info on your market?

I’m afraid I won’t be giving away all my secrets tonight. However, this is something I’ll cover in my upcoming book, which you can get for FREE if you sign up at the page below:

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