Ben Settle

Best resource for newsletter growth ideas

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A couple days ago, copywriter and business owner Will Ward, who was in Dan Ferrari’s coaching group at the same time as me, forwarded me an email from Quiet Light, an online business broker.

This email described — without naming it – a newsletter that’s for sale right now:

“Social good and transformation” space. 300,000 total subscribers. Paid subscribers totaling almost $50,000 per month in subscription revenue. Started in May 2020. On sale now because the owner is “eager to return to her previous endeavors.” Asking price? $2.55 million.

Those numbers and dates made me wonder where the hell I was in May 2020 and what the hell I was doing then. Well actually, I can tell you almost exactly.

Right around that time, in June 2020, I sent out an email, “Expert advice on how to start an email magazine,” in which I shared an interview with Alex Lieberman.

In 2015, Lieberman started Morning Brew, a daily email newsletter with a summary of the day’s business news.

By 2020, Morning Brew was making $13 million per year in ad revenue. Later that year, in October 2020, Lieberman sold a controlling stake in Morning Brew to Business Insider for $75 million.

Like I wrote in that June 2020 email, I’d been thinking of starting a Morning Brew for X newsletter for a while, where X would be some topic I’m personally interested in.

Had I done it then, maybe today I’d be sitting on a multi-million dollar asset.

I didn’t do it then, but I did do it this past January. I started another newsletter, Morning Brew for X. X is my topic — something I’m interested in, and that I’m not sharing yet publicly. I want to grow this newsletter first and build up a bit of a moat before letting thousands of other marketers in on what I’m up to.

Anyways, as part of starting my own Morning Brew-like newsletter, I discovered there’s already a galaxy of Morning Brew-like newsletters, including many Ponziish Morning Brew-like newsletters that tell you how to grow your own Morning Brew-like newsletter.

My eyes were opened.

For years, I’d been living in the world of direct response-based, daily, Ben Settle-like emails that sell supplements or courses or dog toothbrushes. Most of those daily emails look pretty much the same, sound pretty much the same, and function pretty much the same — a good income or a nice back end.

Meanwhile, you have this cousin industry of people building $2.55 million and $13 million and $75 million businesses, using nothing other than email newsletters.

I’m not ragging on Ben Settle or his ideas. Those ideas, both for growing email lists and for monetizing them, have made me and my clients a healthy amount of money. But I do want to point out how much other stuff is happening in the world of email right now, adjacent to the little Amish world that’s centered on direct response copywriting and marketing.

Of course, this other, Morning Brew-like world has its own Amish tendencies. Also, there are literally hundreds or maybe even thousands of newsletters to choose from right now, all telling you how to make it as a creator or creative entrepreneur or a newsletter operator.

What’s worthwhile in this new world?

I can only tell you the best resource I have personally found. That’s Chenell Basilio’s Growth In Reverse.

Each week, Chenell does a deep dive into the growth strategies of a newsletter businesses — “deep” as in, it takes her 40+ hours of research to produce one of these analyses. For some reason, she does all this work and then gives it away for free.

Some of these strategies Chenell identifies I know about already. Some are new to me. Some are strategies I have no interest in trying myself myself. Some I think are very clever, and they already have me moving.

For example:

You can sign up to Chenell’s newsletter using the link below. It’s an affiliate link — though I’m not getting paid anything.

If you are curious why I’m promoting Chenell’s Growth In Reverse, beyond that it’s a great resource on how to grow your newsletter, and why I’m using an affiliate link, even though I’m not getting paid, then sign up to read her next email, which will arrive this Sunday.

​​Or sign up just because you want to grow your own newsletter and you want new ideas on how to do that. In any case, here’s that link:

https://bejakovic.com/chenell

I made $1,100 so I decided to spend $6,000 more

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Two weeks ago, I was talking to copywriter Vasilis Apostolou, and he told me of a direct marketing conference that’s happening in May in Poland.

The conference is small but features some people I very much respect, foremost among them A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos and marketer Matt Bacak.

I asked Vasilis how much it costs to get in. He told me. I groaned.

$3,000 just for the ticket. And then there’s travel, a place to stay, plus 3-4 days lost from work.

This past Thursday, I got on a podcast-like interview with Jen Adams from the Professional Writers Alliance. Last December, I wrote some articles for PWA about my 10 Commandments book, and I got paid $1k for those articles. I got paid an extra $100 for this podcast-like appearance.

​​Getting paid $1,100 is a nice way to do self-promotion – but it’s not enough.

Last summer, I paid $1,200 for the Dig This Zoom calls. I found out about the PWA writing opportunity through the Discord channel for people who bought those Dig calls. So far, I’ve made back $1,100 of that $1,200 via this PWA thing. That means I still have $100 to make up somewhere.

I’ve written before how I have made back all the money I’ve paid for specific copywriting and marketing education.

​​Tens of thousands on coaching with Dan Ferrari… thousands on newsletters and books with Ben Settle… $297 for the Parris Lampropoulos webinars back in 2019. That last one, by the way, is my most winning investment. When I add up all the extra money I can directly trace back to Parris’s training, I estimate it to have been about a 300x return.

The thing is, all those returns turned out to be unconscious, after-the-fact, well-would-you-look-at-that results.

​​But I’ve since told myself not to make this into a matter of coincidence or luck. I’ve since made it a matter of attitude. I now put in thought and effort to make sure any investment, regardless of how small or large, has to eventually pay for itself.

That’s an outcome that’s impossible to control if you are buying stocks or bonds or race horses. But it’s quite possible to control if you are buying education, opportunities, or connections.

I will see what happens once those PWA articles get published and once interview goes live. Maybe one of those PWA people will join my list, buy something from me, and pay me that missing $100. Unless I can track $100 of extra sales to that, I will have to think what else I can do to make those Dig Zoom calls pay for themselves.

Likewise with that Poland conference. ​I decided to go. I budgeted $6k total for it — actual groan-inducing cost plus opportunity cost.

​​In other words, I will have to figure out a way to make the event pay me at least $6k. And I set myself the goal to have it happen within the first seven days after conference ends. I’m a little nervous about achieving that, but to me that signals that it’s possible.

So now I have three calls-to-action for you:

1. If you are planning to be there in Poland in May, let me know and we can make a point of meeting there and talking.

2. If you somehow already got on my list via PWA, hit reply and let me know. I’m curious to hear what you’re up to and why you decided to join. And if you’re thinking of writing a book like my 10 Commandments book, I might be able to give you some inspiration or advice.

3. If neither of the above applies to you, then my final offer is my Copy Riddles program. It costs $400. If you do decide to buy it, I encourage you to think of how you can make this investment directly and trackably pay for itself, and then some.

You might wonder if that’s really possible.

​​It is.

​​So today, instead of pointing you to the Copy Riddles sales page, let me point you to an email I wrote last year about a Copy Riddles member named Nathan, who doubled his income as an in-house copywriter, and who credits Copy Riddles for a chunk of that increase. ​​In case you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/how-to-bombard-copywriting-clients-with-extra-value-at-no-extra-effort/

Ben Settle’s strange interest in selling to distracted and damaged addicts

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Marketer Ben Settle wrote a strange email on Friday to promote his mobile-first, app-based, course-delivery platform Learnistic. One of the arguments Ben gave for why mobile apps like Learnistic are the future is this:

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Everyone’s basically Gollum now.

Stroking their Precious phone in the dark.

Looking at it, checking in on it, making sure it’s safe and pulling it out just to make sure… not able to rest or bear to be too far away from it — all while scrolling, consuming content, and wrapping their very existence around it.

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By that same logic, I’m surprised Ben is still writing and sending emails.

I mean, if he’s interested in selling to distracted and damaged addicts, which is what he seems to be saying above, then it would make more sense to get himself on TikTok, or at least back on Facebook, rather than to keep writing and sending emails, a relatively low-addiction technology.

My experience, like I wrote a few days ago, is different. I’ve found that if you treat people how you’d like them to behave, then more often than not, they actually meet your expectations. Treat your customers like capable human beings, instead of like Gollum, and you will often find them to be that way.

But really, all the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes. That applies to Ben, and it applies to me also.

The fact is, I dislike my phone, and I hate apps. So maybe everything I wrote above is just justification for that.

I held out for years before I got a cell phone, even as everybody else around me got one. I held out much longer before I got a smart phone — basically until girls I was talking to started getting suspicious, and thinking my old-school Nokia must be a burner, and that I must really be married and hiding it.

Even now, with a smart phone in my pocket, I still refuse to use or download all but the most essential apps. And as much as I’ve learned from Ben himself, and as curious as I’ve gotten several times when he teased free content through his Learnistic app only, I’ve never once been tempted by him to download Learnistic.

That’s also why I host my courses inside the members-only area of my website, using technology from caveman days. It’s also why for my own personal work — journals, notes, research — I mainly use text files on my hard drive, a pre-caveman technology.

Anyways, tonight was the end of the launch for my Insight Exposed program. I only made that program available to people who are signed up to my email list. If you’d like to get on my email list, you can sign up for free by clicking here.

Which email newsletters sell classified ads?

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Last week Ben Settle sent an email in which he wrote:

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I remember buying little $35 and $50 ads in email newsletters 20 years ago.

Nowadays, I don’t see a lot of them.

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True. So let me ask you, do you know of any such email newsletters?

I know of a few. In fact, I bought a couple of classified ads in two weekly newsletters this month.

​​One ran already, bringing me some 50 new subscribers. Another will run in a few more days.

The first of these ads cost $350. The other will cost $100. We will see if they end up paying for themselves.

I’ve also bought one of the three $1k classified ads in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter. That ad is supposed to run some time next month. I will let you know more about it as it’s nearing, because I will have a special offer in that ad, only available if you are on Daniel’s list at the time.

But why even bother with classified ads? Here’s why:

In the old direct mail days, one of they key pieces of info that marketers wanted to know was what format somebody was sold through.

An infomercial buyer was not the same as a magalog buyer was not the same as a sweepstakes buyer.

The same bit of psychology holds today.

A YouTube gawker is not the same as a Twitter endless-scroller is not the same as an email reader. Even if all of them are interested in marketing, or even bought marketing-related courses.

So that’s why I’ve been looking to buy more email classified ads.

I’ve being doing my research about email newsletters that sell them.But I would like to get your feedback also. So I have an offer for you:

Do you read any email newsletters that run classified ads?

Write in and tell me specific names. Ben Settle, Daniel Throssell, and Josh Spector are off the table, since I know about them already.

My offer for you is that, if you write in and tell me, I will reply to you with one source of email traffic to avoid, at least in my experience. I ran an experiment with it last year, spent $731, and made nothing in return. I will tell you what I learned, and maybe you can laugh at my stubbornness or folly.

Also, in case you are not interested in growing your list with paid ads, but you want to do it organically, then take a look at my Most Valuable Email training.

​​Personally, I’ve been able to trace hundreds of my subscribers to emails I’ve written using the Most Valuable Email trick I describe in this training.

On several occasions, influential people chanced upon one of those MVE emails, enjoyed it enough to share it with others, and ended up driving a large number of new subscribers to my list. If you’d like to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Newsflash: Gary Bencivenga endorses the Copy Riddles approach

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I went for my morning walk just now, and I was listening to the Gary Bencivenga seminar on my headphones.

If you don’t know Gary, he is an A-list copywriter whose star shines brightest on the Copywriters Walk of Fame.

Gary’s sales letters mailed out tens of millions of times. They made him and his clients millions of dollars.

Before he retired, Gary was better at this than anyone.

An executive at Rodale Press, a big direct response publisher, said that Gary never lost a split-run test when going up against other top copywriters. An executive at Phillips publishing, another major direct response company, said that Gary had more winners than anybody else.

When Gary decided to retire, he put on a $5k/person farewell seminar where he shared all his best secrets. I’ve listened to the recordings of this seminar from beginning to end three times so far.

And yet, the following amazing story never managed to pierce that ball of lead that sits on my shoulders. Not until today.

Gary was talking about the first time he had to compete against the legendary copywriter Gene Schwartz, and try to beat a control that Gene had written for Rodale.

“I didn’t want to be overly influenced or depressed,” said Gary. So he didn’t look at Gene’s copy before starting his own.

After Gary finished his first draft, he decided to finally take a look at Gene’s stuff.

“I was so depressed,” Gary said. Gene’s copy was so much stronger.

But remember what that Rodale exec said? Gary never lost a split-run test for Rodale, not even against the great Gene Schwartz.

Here’s what Gary ended up doing:

I said, the only way I’m going to have a way of competing with Gene is if I figure out what he’s done to get these bullets.

​​So wherever his bullets came from, I would read the same page. I would learn from him just by mimicking what he had done.

So I said, “This bullet that he came up with came from chapter 3, page 4. What is the original source of this?”

And he taught me so much, just by studying his copy and by looking at the product itself.

I was able to beat him, but it was really his package too in a way, because I learned the technique.

Here’s a confession that’s not secret:

​​This approach to learning the technique of copywriting is what lies at the heart of my Copy Riddles program. I got the idea for that from another legendary copywriter, Gary Halbert.

And now, that same Copy Riddles approach has been endorsed by three big names — Gary Bencivenga, Parris Lampropoulos, and Ben Settle — all of whom have said publicly that this is the way they learned copywriting technique.

You can follow this approach yourself, right now, for free. Just like Gary did.

First, find a collection of winning sales letters written by a-list copywriters.

Second, get the product they were selling. You might have to stalk Amazon, eBay, used book sites, and online repositories.

Third, when you get both the sales letter and the out-of-print book in your possession, go bullet by bullet, and tease out how the A-list copywriter turned lead into gold.

Of course, you can also take a shortcut. You can take advantage of the fact that I’ve already done all this work for you, and that I’ve packaged it up in a fast, fun, mostly-done-for-you ride I’ve called Copy Riddles. To find out more about that:

https://bejakovic.com/cr-3/

It’s not throat clearing, it’s persuasion magic

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Back in 2017, I signed up to Ben Settle’s $97/month Email Players newsletter. ​Only years later did I think to ask myself the $6,953 question:

​What did it?

​​What put me into that hypnotic trance and got me to finally pull out my credit card and pay Ben, after I’d read hundreds of previous Ben Settle emails, without taking action?

After spending an hour digging through my email archives, I found it.

​​It turned out to be an email in which Ben talked about a Dan Kennedy idea, using a bunch of Dan Kennedy examples and Dan Kennedy arguments.

Because that email ended up sucking me into Ben’s world and getting me to hand over an estimated $6,953 to Ben, I’ve studied it in detail. I’ve found many interesting things inside. Let me tell you about just one of them.

​​In spite of being a rehash of Dan Kennedy content, Ben’s email starts out like this:

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Recently, I made a special trip to my office to retrieve all my Dan Kennedy NO BS Marketing newsletters.

The first issue I ever got was the September 2002 issue (front page has a picture of a dwarf stuck in a airplane toilet…) I’d just started learning copywriting a handful of months earlier. And, I remember the “back page” of that particular issue having a profound effect on my mindset at the time — and has through all these years, as it’s kept me healthily paranoid and uncomfortable no matter how good things get.

I just re-read it, and everything he said was true then, and is even more true now.

What was that back page about, exactly?

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To the uninformed (as I was for many years), this opening might look like a classic example of throat clearing — of the rambling first two reels of “Lost Horizon” that should simply be burned.​​”Get to the action already!”

Of course, Ben isn’t simply rambling on or clearing his throat. He is performing a bit of persuasion magic. Specifically, he is setting the frame.

I won’t spell out what frame Ben is setting. I think it’s obvious enough.

I will just point out this setting the frame stuff applies equally to daily email as to any other communication you might be performing.

For example, here’s a frame, albeit a different frame from the one Ben was setting, in a sales bullet by A-list copywriter Jim Rutz:

* Incredible but legal: How you can easily pay Mom’s medical bills with her money and deduct them from your taxes. (page 77)

Once again, I believe the frame is obvious. But if you want a spelled-out explanation of that particular frame, you can find it in point 6 of round 20A of my Copy Riddles.

As I said yesterday, Copy Riddles might look to the uninitiated like it’s only about writing sales bullets.

But with a bit of thinking — or without it, and simply with a bit of practice — Copy Riddles is really an education in effective communication. ​​
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In case effective communicating is what yer after, you can find out more about Copy Riddles at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

My infotaining emails totally flopped for my first big DR client

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My first big direct response copywriting customer was Dr. Audri Lanford, back in 2017.

​​Dr. Audri and her husband Jim were direct response veterans — they ran a big Internet Marketing event with the legendary Jay Abraham back in the year 2000.

Audri and Jim died in 2019 in a freak gas leak explosion. I found out about that through Brian Kurtz’s newsletter because Brian was apparently good friends with Dr. Audri and her husband.

Back in 2017, Dr. Audri had an innovative offer called Australian Digestive Excellence.

​​ADE was a drink of some sort that fixed every chronic digestive problem you could ever have. According to the hundreds of testimonials Dr. Audri had accumulated over just a year or two, it seemed the stuff was really magic.

Now it was time to scale.

Dr. Audri had her source of cold traffic, I believe banner ads on a radio talk show website.

​​These banner ads drove leads to a quiz. And after the quiz, that’s where some patented Bejako emails kicked in.

Well, really, my patented emails were a 12-email sequence in the infotaining style of marketer Ben Settle. I just softened Ben’s somewhat dismissive and harsh tone to make it more suited to these tummy-sensitive leads.

Result?

What were the total sales, made ​across I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of expensive cold leads?

Two. ​​Two sales total.

Why? Why???

The email copy was solid. Sure, I would do it better today, but even back then, I had a “George Costanza school of digestive health” email and one about “How to survive 5-star restaurant food.”

I don’t know the reason why my infotaining email copy flopped. But it brings to mind this old but gold point raised by master copywriter Robert Collier:

“It’s not the copy so much as the scheme back of it.”

Tweaking words is rarely your biggest lever. Even less so if your copy is halfway decent.

Instead, figure out the right scheme. The scheme to get in front of the right prospect. The scheme to get their attention. The scheme to appeal to hidden closets and cupboards of their psychology. The scheme to get them eager and greedy.

Do that,​​ and the specific copywriting tricks you use won’t matter all that much.

And now, let me tell you about my Most Valuable Email trick. It’s an email copywriting trick.

It might seem self-defeating to tell you about it. ​​

Except, through some magic, this email copywriting trick turns you into a 21st-century scheme man or scheme woman. Maybe one to parallel Robert Collier himself one day.

I won’t explain in more detail how the Most Valuable Email trick makes that happen.

For anybody who has bought and gone through my Most Valuable Email training, it will be obvious.

For you, if you haven’t yet gone through Most Valuable Email, and if you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

You see it, but you don’t really see it

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A few days ago, Andy Griffiths, who publishes a newsletter about newsletter formats, wrote up an issue about email marketer Ben Settle. The most interesting bit came in the last sentence:

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I sent Ben Settle a few questions. He declined to answer, saying anyone could work out his business model by deduction. That’s true. It’s all there in the emails.

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But is it really?

I doubt Ben really believes that. He runs an info publishing business telling people exactly what’s really going on in his free emails, underneath the surface.

This extra information is worth paying for, and a lot. Ben’s info publishing business started pulling in $1M/year a few years back. Today it’s probably higher.

So the question becomes:

How can anybody sell something that’s out there for free?

It’s because you see it… but you don’t really see it. A-list copywriter John Carlton put it this way:

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The ads you see in the wild are finished products. All the work that went into creating that finished product is invisible. There’s no “infrastructure” to an ad, no curtain to peek behind once it’s posted or printed.

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Except of course there is a curtain to peek behind.

You can pay Ben Settle to find out how he runs his email marketing business — how he got you to pay him to find out how he got you to pay him.

You can also pay me to find out how A-list copywriters, like John Carlton above, wrote some of their most lucrative ads, and how you might be able to do something similar.

​​I worked it all out by deduction — well, not really. I had a secret resource at my disposal.

You can find out the details of that secret resource on the page below, which is the sales page for my Copy Riddles program.

For now, I will just say that today is the last day can get two free bonuses I have long offered with Copy Riddles.

The first bonus is Storytelling For Sales. The second bonus is Copywriting Portfolio Secrets.

Don’t buy Copy Riddles just for the free bonuses.

But if you decide you want to get Copy Riddles, you have until tonight at 12 midnight PST to get Storytelling for Sales and Copywriting Portfolio Secrets as free bonuses.

That’s just a few short hours away, and this will be my last email before the deadline. ​​

Once the deadline passes, Copy Riddles will remain available, but the free bonuses will disappear. My plan is to flesh them out and turn them into paid upsells for Copy Riddles.

To get the whole package before then:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Threats and shaming in early-morning emails

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Two mornings ago, I found myself on the street outside my house, in the dark. There were no cabs because it was 4:30am on New Year’s morning. I took my phone out to rent a city bike as the first step of catching my 7am flight, but instead of opening the bike app, I automatically opened my email inbox.

“Hello,” I said. “This will be useful.”

It turns out I’d gotten a new email from marketer Ben Settle. The subject line read:

“Why my ‘no coming back’ policy will inevitably be the new normal”

Ben was talking about his policy of never allowing people who unsubscribe from his paid newsletter to resubscribe.

I have no doubt that Ben’s prediction is right, and that this policy will become more and more common.

After all, newsletters are the Ford Edsel of the information publishing industry.

As Agora founder Bill Bonner, who has sold billions of dollars’ worth of newsletters, supposedly said once, nobody wakes up in the middle of the night, heart racing, pajamas wet from sweat, with the sudden realization, “Good God… we’re all out of newsletters!”

Newsletters are something that the marketer dreamed up, because they provide continuity income, automatically, without the need to keep getting credit card details.

Newsletters are something the market doesn’t really want, not without a huge amount of bribes, indoctrination, and in Ben’s case, threats and shaming. From his email about his “no coming-back” policy:

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“Plus, practically speaking, if the trash lets itself out why take it back in?”

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Whatever. People will justify anything to themselves out of self-interest.

Fortunately, my self-interest isn’t aligned with selling you a newsletter, because I tried it and found I hate it, even before I had to give a single thought to retention.

The good news of that is, I don’t have to threaten you or shame you, which is something I find personally distasteful.

The bad news is, I don’t ever hear the satisfying sound of shopping-cart notifications telling me I’ve made a bunch of sales on autopilot.

Instead, I have to keep sending emails, writing sales letters, and doing my best to tempt you into buying the offers I’m selling.

That’s okay. Like I keep saying, I’m okay with working a bit, regularly, and for the long term.

And I’d rather have my freedom, both from the fixed schedule of publishing a paid newsletter, and from the psychological toll of barking at my subscribers and cracking my whip at them.

Perhaps you also value freedom over automatic shopping cart notifications. Perhaps you can understand where I am coming from. In that case, you might like to sign up to my (free) daily email newsletter.

You can try it… find it doesn’t work for you… unsubscribe… and later, if you change your mind, you can subscribe again. No threats or shaming.

To get started, click here and fill out the form.

Are your emails too long? A litmus test

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A tale of two long emails:

A few days ago, I recorded a breakdown of a Ben Settle email that got me to subscribe to Ben’s $97/month Email Players newsletter.

That email is long, very long, almost 1,700 words.

I use that email as a reminder to myself whenever I worry my own emails are getting too long. The fact is, if you have the right message-to-prospect fit, you get your reader in a hypnotic trance, and length becomes an asset, not a liability.

Then this morning, I did a copy critique of an email that’s also long, and clocks in at almost 1,100 words.

This second email is interesting and insightful. It makes a bunch of convincing sales arguments. At the end of it, I want to actually take up the offer the email is making.

And yet, part of my critique was that this email is probably too long. Even though it’s interesting. Even though all its parts are necessary. Even though it is actually shorter than Ben Settle’s email.

​​Still, this second email just feels too long.

Why? What’s the difference?

It’s not the writing, the formatting, or even the design.

The difference is that Ben Settle wrote his very long email for his own list and his own business.

On the other hand, the quite long email I critiqued this morning was from a freelance copywriter, working for a client.

​​That’s the real litmus test for whether your emails are too long. If you like, I will explain.

The reality is you have two sales to make as a freelance copywriter. One is to your client’s market or audience — the sale you probably think you’re getting paid for.

But you have another sale to make. And that’s to the client himself.

If the client doesn’t like your copy, he will nag you to change it. Or he will neuter it himself. Or he just won’t run it.

But wait, it gets worse.

You might count on your powers of persuasion to make your client see the light. To convince him to try out your long email as-is, without changing a word.

And you might succeed. But there’s a good chance that your long email will get less response, not more, compared to a shorter email.

For example, the email I critiqued is trying to get people to sign up to a free webinar. There’s a fair chance that a much shorter email, which just hypes up the urgency and scarcity and repeats the phrase “hot new opportunity” a few dozen times will actually pull more webinar signups.

So why would you ever want to send longer emails, with three pages of story and argument and proof?

Well, I told you already. Because those are the emails that select the right people. That get those people not just to click or opt in, but to buy from you. That get those people not just to buy from you, once and at $37, but to spend thousands of dollars with you over a period of years. The way that Ben Settle email did with me.

Unless you have a very, very sophisticated client, those are not things that your email copy will ever be judged on.

Instead, you’re much more likely to be judged on the client’s gut feeling or some shortsighted metric. “I don’t know, it’s kind of long, isn’t it? The other email we tried is much shorter. And it got more clicks to the optin page.”

I’m telling you all this because today is the last day I’ll be promoting my coaching program for a while.

Over the past seven days promoting this coaching program, I realized there are two categories of people who make a good fit:

1. People with their own quality list and their own quality offers, whether products or services

2. Copywriters who have near total control of a client’s email list, and who also have some sort of rev-share deal on the money coming in from that list

If you fit either of those categories, and if you want my help and guidance in making more money from the lists under your command, then as a first step, get on my email list. After that, we can talk in more detail.

And if you’re a freelance copywriter, but you don’t fit either category above, then my advice is to work towards getting into one or the other or both of those categories.

And not only because it would make you a good candidate for my coaching program.

But also, because those two categories are the only place where you will be truly be judged on your results and your copywriting abilities, rather than on how well you can divine and cater to your client’s whims.

Plus, the two categories above are where the real money is. Or where there’s the potential for real money. At least in my experience — and I’ve been in both categories.