Boardroom

The two kinds of newsletters

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It’s late — I’ve been working until now on a new daily newsletter that I will launch tomorrow. It’s connected to my weekly health newsletter, which I tease occasionally but never reveal.

Inevitably, whenever I launch something new like this, a million and one little niggling things pop up that need to be done.

That’s why it’s late. And that’s why I somehow still haven’t written this daily email.

So let me just share something I wish somebody had shared with me a long, long time ago.

Had somebody told me this, it would have cleared up many confused days and nights of my marketing education.

It would have taken away some worries.

And maybe it would have even made me some money.

Here’s the big “secret”:

There are two fundamental styles of direct marketing/businesses/newsletters.

The first style I will call the Marty style, as in Marty Edelston.

Edelston was the founder of Boardroom, a $100M direct response publisher. He hired the bestest and A-listest copywriters out there, including Gary Bencivenga, Parris Lampropoulos, and David Deutsch.

The second style I will call the Dan style, as in Dan Kennedy.

Dan was at one point the highest-paid copywriter on the planet. He is also somebody who has shaped generations of direct marketers, including Russell Brunson, Ben Settle, and, on a much more modest level, me.

Marty style: intriguing, benefit-oriented, impersonal.

Dan style: intimate, personality-oriented, opinionated.

The Marty style of newsletter features cool how-to insider tips, such as how to ouwit a mugger in a self-service elevator, along with references to outside authorities who revealed that info.

The Dan style of newsletter features a personal rant by Dan about how the sky is falling or is about to fall. It features no outside references because what other authority could you ever need besides Dan himself.

So which style is better?

Or rather, why are there two styles, and not just one, the way we would all prefer?

You guessed it. Because each style can work well, and each style has its drawbacks.

Dan style means you can sell much more easily, and at much higher prices, and people will stick with you for longer.

But your audience is much more limited, and your product is really you.

Marty style means you can reach a much broader audience much more quickly, plus you don’t have to grow out mutton chop mustaches and share photos of yourself sitting on a bull.

But your audience is much less attached to you, and they will pay $39 instead of $399 for the same info.

So which style you choose to follow is really up to you and the kind of marketing/business/newsletter you can stomach for an extended period of time.

Of course, you can also stomach both, which is basically what I’m doing.

I have this newsletter, more on the mutton-chop-mustache, Dan Kennedy side. On the other hand, my health newsletter, including the daily newsletter I’m launching tomorrow, is fully on the “what never to eat on an airplane,” Marty Edelston side.

You gotta figure out what you want to do.

Final point:

If you do decide to go the Marty Edelston, impersonal, benefit-oriented route, then you will likely need copy chops, above and beyond what you will need if you are really selling yourself.

And if you do need copy chops, specifically the kinds of copy chops that people like Gary Bencivenga, Parris Lampropoulos, and David Deutsch have, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

How living next to train tracks can transform your copywriting skills

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A few days ago, I came across a trending science article with the headline:

“These cancer cells wake up when people sleep”

From what my zero-biology-classes-in-college brain could understand, researchers have made an important new discovery.

Cancer cells in one part of the body are most likely to spread to other parts of the body — a dangerous process called metastasis — while we sleep.

In other words, sleep — usually a good thing – suddenly becomes threatening and dangerous if you have cancer.

I guess this is big news in the science community and might lead to new ways to stop cancer from metastasizing.

But I’m not part of the science community. I’m part of the direct response copywriting community.

And so I mused that, were I in the business of selling important new health information, like Boardroom used to do, I might sell this breakthrough research with a provocative headline:

“How living next to train tracks can stop cancer”

The reason I thought this immediately was because the above science story reminded me of what I think is the greatest bullet of all time:

“How a pickpocket can cure your back pain”

That bullet was written by A-list copywriter David Deutsch in control package for Boardroom, back in the 2000s. David’s brilliant bullet has a clever underlying structure, which I modeled for my would-be headline/bullet above.

Perhaps you can parse exactly what I did with my bullet above. Or perhaps you know the story behind David’s bullet and therefore don’t need to parse what I did.

But if not, you can find the background of David’s bullet, including a breakdown of his clever technique, in Round 10A of my Copy Riddles program.

But let me put it this way:

Living next to train tracks can transform your copywriting skills.

Because enrollment for Copy Riddles closes later today, at 12 midnight PST.

If you haven’t signed up yet, and if you’re sleeping fitfully when the deadline hits, you will miss the enrollment window, and you will have to wait who-knows-how-long to enroll and find out the secret (and more importantly, the copywriting lesson) behind David’s bullet.

So trains rumbling outside your window might actually be a good thing in this case.

On the other hand, if you got no rumbling trains to count on, then you can always sign up now, while you’re still awake and while your mind is fresh and on it. Here’s the link:

https://copyriddles.com/

Daily email battleship

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One of the most eye-opening and mind-expanding collections of direct response insights I know of is an interview with Michael Fishman.

For context:

During Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar, the only person to get up on stage and present, besides the great Gary himself, was Michael Fishman.

Gary was an A-list copywriter.

Michael was an A-list list broker. (A-list list broker broker?)

In other words, while Gary’s expertise was to come up with creative words…

Michael’s expertise was to find creative lists of people to send Gary’s subtle sales letters to.

But what’s that? You say there’s not much to be creative about in choosing lists?

Well, that’s why that interview was so eye-opening and mind-expanding.

Sure, some of Michael’s work was routine. He had to keep a close eye on which lists were interested in related topics… which lists were hot… which lists were made up of recent, eager buyers, spending good money.

But sometimes, list picking was much less routine. Some of Michael’s work involved a real leap of insight and intuition.

For example:

One offer that Michael worked on is Boardroom’s Big Black Book. This was a typical Boardroom book of secrets — what never to eat on a Greyound bus, that kind of thing.

The Big Black Book​​ was many hundreds of pages long, and it was sold through a sales letter filled with fascination bullets.

And yet, get this:

Michael had the idea to promote the Big Black Book to a list of buyers of manifestation audio course, sold on TV through an infomercial.

Totally different products… totally different markets… totally different formats for marketing… totally different everything.

So why did Michael recommend this manifestation list and why did the list end up working?

That’s the crazy thing. Because this list was made up of buyers of a product called Passion, Power, and Profit.

Get it?

​​Big Black Book… Passion, Power, and Profit.

Michael had the insight that some buyers really respond to alliteration in the name of the product. That’s why the BBB offer turned out to be a good fit for the PPP list.

Like I said, eye-opening and mind-expanding.

This brings me to my offer to you for today:

It’s a little game that you and I can play. I call the game Daily Email Battleship.

This is how you play:

Sign up to my email newsletter. When you get my welcome email, hit reply and write me the names of all the daily emails newsletters you are subscribed to.

I’m not talking about just copywriting and marketing. Anything. Magic, manifestation, or medicine. Any topic or person or business is okay, as long as they email, more or less daily.

And then:

1. If you tell me a newsletter I also subscribe to, it’s a direct hit. I will tell you that. So if you write me to say, “I am on Ben Settle’s list,” I will write back and say, “Great, so am I.”

2. But if you tell me a daily email newsletter I don’t subscribe to… I will counter. And I will tell you a newsletter I subscribe to, which you don’t subscribe to.

3. And if I can’t do that, because you are subscribed to more novel and interesting daily email newsletters than I am, then you win.

And as your prize, I will tell you why I am collecting these email newsletters, and what this has to do with the Michael Fishman story above.

This information might be valuable to you. Or it might just feed your curiosity.

In any case, if you’d like to play, the opening shot is yours.

What’s the best font for making sales?

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A couple days ago, I saw a little study titled, “Best Font for Online Reading.”

Spoiler: there’s no clear answer.

One font, Garamond, allowed the fastest reading speed on average.

But that’s just on average. Not every person read fastest with Garamond. Another font, Franklin Gothic, proved to be the fastest font for the most people, though the average reading speed was lower than Garamond.

So is it time to change your sales page font to Garamond? Or Franklin Gothic?

Or maybe even to Open Sans — the font that came in last in terms of reading speed?

There is an argument to be made for having people be able to read your copy faster. If they get through your copy more quickly and easily, they get your sales message more easily, and they make it to the order button faster. And money loves speed, right?

On the other hand, there’s an equal argument to be made for having people read slower. The more time and effort somebody invests with you, the more likely they are to trust you (one of those mental shortcuts we all engage in), and the more likely they are to justify that investment and trust by buying in the end.

So like I said, no clear answer.

But this did bring to mind a story Brian Kurtz likes to tell about a time he hired Gary Bencivenga.

As you probably know, Brian was the VP at direct response publisher Boardroom. And in that role, he hired some of the most famous and most brilliant copywriters of all time, Gary among them.

Anyways, Brian’s story is about two sales packages, one fast, one slow, both written by Gary Bencivenga, both promoting the same product.

To me personally, this story has proven to be the most fundamental and important lesson when it comes to copywriting or running a direct response business.

Brian’s little story won’t tell you what kind of font to use, or what kind of copy to write, fast or slow. But maybe it will make that choice a lot clearer in your mind.

In case you want to read Brian’s valuable sales and copy study, you can find it at the link below. But before you go read that, perhaps you might like to sign up for my slow but trustworthy email newsletter. In any case, here’s Brian’s article:

https://www.briankurtz.net/how-you-sell-is-how-they-will-respond/

Niche secrets and side business reports

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A little-know fact about my online life:

​​Between 2016 and 2018, I became a low-level celebrity and semi-expert in the aromatherapy and essential oils niche.

I had connections with top experts in the aromatherapy field. I had an email list that’s about twice the size of my current copywriting list. I was regularly and successfully selling info products about aromatherapy — an ebook and occasional webinars.

I started this side career as a marketing experiment and learning opportunity.

In fact, the name of my aromatherapy website, Unusual Health, was a tell. The health part was obvious — I was writing about alternative health topics. The unusual part — well that was standard copywriting lingo, like one weird trick.

I bring this up because last week, I got an email from a reader named Nick.

Nick wrote in response to my “Back to the Boardroom era” email. That’s where I said there might once again be an opportunity to simply package up good, credible information and sell it. And Nick wanted to know:

“If you were going to offer a product of information that was of high quality on any given topic where would you gather your information? What would your research process look like? Where would you avoid looking for information?”

I won’t burden you with an exact recipe. But I will tell you the general idea:

Think “library” instead of “smartphone”.

I’ not saying you have to actually go down to your local library. I’m also not saying you have to become a PhD candidate in whatever niche topic you want to sell info products in.

But ​​I do believe that as soon as people come in contact with your product, they can smell immediately if there’s something new there. And the easiest way to give people something new… is to genuinely do what nobody else is doing or willing to do.

In the case of my aromatherapy website and info products, that meant digging into sources of data that were a layer or two deeper than what everybody else in the space was doing.

I’m talking books, textbooks, science papers beyond the abstract. Much of this stuff was publicly available online. But it wasn’t anywhere to be found on essential oils blogs or Facebook groups or YouTube channels.

Of course, you still have to package the earnest but dry info you dig up in a sexy way, using your copywriting and marketing skills.

For example, the lead magnet on my site was The Little Black Book of Essential Oil Scams. I got that straight from Boardroom, and their Big Black Book of Secrets.

Anyways, by the end of 2018, I decided to shutter my essential oil influencer career. I had too much copywriting work and other projects that were more lucrative.

But one day, I might get back to selling aromatherapy, because I found the topic interesting.

And that’s the final thing I want to share with you:

You might be stressing about which niche to pick for a side project, business, or even as a copywriter who wants to specialize.

And no doubt, it’s hard to succeed long-term writing and researching and promoting a topic that you absolutely hate.

But in my experience, the more you know about any topic, the more interesting it becomes. A bit of interest is enough to start.

So if you have a bit of interest in dog training or black-and-white photography, now might be time to start writing the “5-Minute Bad Dog Cures!” or “Black & White Power: Secrets and Strategies for Better B&W Photography.”

Or, if your interest is marketing or copywriting, well, you can write your own stuff. Or for inspiration, you can read what I write in my daily email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

Back to the Boardroom era?

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Last autumn, I was writing a few sales emails for an SEO agency. So I spent an hour on Google, trying to find stories of people who had been penalized, by Google, for doing shady SEO stuff.

And after an hour, I had little to nothing to show for it.

Not because such stories don’t exist or because people haven’t written about them online.

But because people’s actual stories have been crowded out by billions of SEO-optimized listicles with titles like “10 Google Penalties That May Be Affecting Your Site” and “The Complete list of Google Penalties and How to Recover.” ​​And then there’s worthless Medium, which showed up at no. 2 for a Google search on “Google penalty stories”:

The most insightful stories about Google Penalty – Medium
Read stories about Google Penalty on Medium. Discover smart, unique perspectives on Google Penalty and the topics that matter most to you like SEO, …

Page after page of Google results like this gave me no actual, credible, human info. And I guess it’s not just me that it’s happening to.

A recent article in the New Yorker talked about the growing mass realization that Google search sucks. Partly because Google as a company has decided to go fully evil. Partly because we have all started to rely so much on Google… that the Internet has warped itself to appeal to Google’s tastes and preferences.

The result is page after page of horrible, inhuman fluff, broken up perfectly with H1 and H2 headings, made up of regurgitated and repurposed low-quality information or even flat-out lies.

Which is something you can either be frustrated about…

Or if you’re like me, you might decide to see it as a business opportunity.

The tech nerds on Hacker News can try to come up with a new search engine to beat Google.

But this is a newsletter about marketing. So let me tell you it smells to me like we might be headed back to the days of Boardroom.

The past 15 or so years, coinciding with rise to monopoly of Google, have also seen a rise of personality-based marketing businesses.

Coaches, gurus, and experts of various stripes have been selling information at high prices — not based on the quality or quantity of the info — but based on their own perceived authority, trustworthiness, and the relationship they have built with their audience.

That was the only way you really could charge for information online.

The days of Boardroom — charging $39 for a book of tax-saving or health or consumer tips — without a face you could trust and a guru you could feel is your friend… why pay for that?

After all, it seemed that Google made that kind of information available for free.

Except again, we’re now in an age where there’s so much information, and so much bad information, all available for free, that there might be an opportunity to simply start a business curating good information and selling it online.

So if you’re looking for a side project, new business, or a way to help millions of people navigate their lives better, consider reviving Boardroom.

Bring together valuable, trustworthy information. Charge for it. Build a list. And then do it all over again.

You probably won’t ever be able to charge thousands of dollars for a single book or five-hour video course, the way you can if you are selling based on personality.

​​But you will be able to reach a much bigger pool of people — which creates valuable opportunities of its own.

Or you can watch me do it. I’m planning to take my own advice. I will write up the results in my email newsletter. You can sign up to join it here.

How A-list copywriters stab you in the heart, and then twist the knife

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Here’s a fascination/bullet written by Boardroom’s “secret weapon” Mel Martin:

“How to travel free on luxury cruise ships. Lots of passengers you meet on board are doing it but never tell you. Page 367”

There’s a lot of hidden psychology in this bullet. Martin uses the first sentence to stab the reader in the heart… and he uses the second sentence to then twist the knife, and to make the wound permanent.

How exactly does he do it?

Well, that’s something I looked at in detail in today’s lesson of my bullets course. That lesson is done and passed. But the course keeps marching on. And it’s still free to sign up for — if you do it now.

For more info, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/bullets-signup/

What never to omit in a bullet. Never.

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Today, I sent out the first lesson in my new bullets course.

In case you didn’t read my post yesterday, here’s the rundown:

The course is free, and is delivered by email. Each email talks about a copywriting lessons I’ve figured out by comparing the source material (the book or course for sale) to the finished bullets in the sales copy.

Today’s lesson started at the beginning, with the man who invented the modern sales bullet, or really fascination.

I’m talking about the best copywriter you’ve never heard of. This copywriter is so little know because Boardroom CEO, Marty Edelston, kept this copywriter busy — and kept him a secret. Edelston never revealed who was writing all those early winning Boardroom ads. Other Boardroom employees were also under strict orders to keep this copywriter’s name a secret.

Well, the golden age of Boardroom is past. And the secret is out. The “secret weapon” copywriter was one Mel Martin.

And like I said, Martin really wrote fascinations, not just bullets.

Before Martin, most sales bullets gave straight-up benefits or warnings. But that’s often not enough, not in a competitive market. So Mel Martin added another ingredient to his bullets to make them irresistibly fascinating.

That’s what today’s lesson was all about. It’s something you cannot omit if you want to write successful bullets — or really any kind of successful copy.

Unfortunately, unless you are subscribed to get my bullet course, then you missed today’s lesson. It won’t be available again, unless I package all the lessons up one day and make them available as a course to buy.

That’s the bad news. The good news is you can still sign up to get every following bullet lesson I will send out. For example, tomorrow’s lesson is about a 2-bit bullet ingredient that will keep your reader from saying “So what?” or “Bullshit!” when he reads your bullets and your copy. If you want to get that lesson as it comes out, here’s where to subscribe:

https://bejakovic.com/bullets-signup/

Surprise! How to make your copy more appealing by saying less

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Back in the 90s, A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos wrote a control for a Boardroom book called Tax Loopholes. One of the bullets in that control read:

“Surprise! Choosing the wrong private school for your child can cost you a bundle in tax breaks. What to do on page 90.”

I found the actual Tax Loopholes book online. And here’s what it says on page 90:

“If you send your child to a special school for psychological reasons, be sure to choose the right school. Otherwise your medical deduction could be disallowed. Recent case: A psychiatrist recommended that a child attend a boarding school. The IRS refused to allow the parent to take a medical deduction because the school was not a “special” school, and the curriculum didn’t deal with the child’s problem in any way.”

So how did Parris get from the source material (boring, unsexy) to the bullet (intriguing, sexy)?

Let’s take it step by step. If I had to summarize what it says in the book, I might say something like:

“The trouble is you can send your kid to a boarding school for a medical reason thinking you can get a tax break, but it ends up disallowed because it’s not the right kind of school”

There’s one big problem with this. And that’s that very few people are thinking of sending their kids to a boarding school for a medical reason.

So now the clever thing that Parris did becomes obvious.

Because if your appeal is very specific and limited, you can broaden it simply by generalizing and omitting stuff.

That’s how a boarding school (specific and fairly rare) becomes a private school (general and pretty common)…and that’s how the mention of the medical deduction simply disappears. Now our basic-bitch summary becomes:

“You can send your kid to a private school thinking you can get a tax break, but it ends up disallowed because it’s not the right kind of school.”​​

(This is already pretty close to what Parris’s bullet says. Beyond this one insight, it’s mostly a matter of tightening up the copy.)

Now here’s why this trick is so valuable:

This generalization/omission sleight-of-hand doesn’t just apply to writing bullets. It’s something you can do in all your copy if your initial appeal is too narrow. As Parris said once (I’m quoting from memory):

“Ask yourself, does it help my case, does it hurt my case, or is it neutral? If it hurts your case or it’s neutral, take it out. Only keep it in if it helps your case.”

By the way, I’ll be going through more bullets and source material like this, to figure out how great bullet writers do their business.

If this is something that interests you, you can sign up for my email newsletter here, because that way you’re sure to get my new research as soon as it comes out.

A secret online resource to hone your copy chops

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Gary Halbert once wrote an issue of his newsletter with the title, “Let’s do the twist!”

The issue was all about how to write sexy, money-sucking bullets. Bullets that get people so fascinated they have to buy the product.

You can still find Gary’s newsletter issue online. And it’s worth reading from start to finish.

But today, I want to focus on just one piece of advice that Gary shared about learning to write good bullets.

Gary said to first find a promotion with lots of good bullets. Then find the actual book/course/info product that the promo was selling… and reverse engineer how the copywriter wrote the bullet, based on the source material.

You need both halves — the copy and the source material — to really see the clever things the copywriter did. Otherwise, you might get fooled into thinking you too can write good bullets just by imitating the form, without getting the substance.

Anyways, I started following Gary’s advice a few days ago. And I think it’s been great practice — not just for writing bullets, but for copywriting in general. For example, as a result of this exercise, I already learned one obvious but clever copywriting trick, which I’ll share with you tomorrow.

But maybe you’re wondering how you can do this yourself, so you can hone your own copywriting chops.

Like Gary says, you’ll first need a promotion with lots of good bullets. I won’t advise you there — there are plenty of people and websites to supply you with swipe copy, both for free and for money.

Instead, I want to tell you about getting the other half… the original info product.

Of course, it might still be for sale, in which case you can just order it. And if not, you might be able to find it on eBay on Amazon.

But there’s a third place you can find original direct response info products…

… online…

… completely free…

… and completely legal (as far as I know).

And in my experience, you can find stuff at this place that you might not find anywhere else, including Amazon and eBay.

For example, that’s where I found one of Gary’s info products as well as several 90s Boardroom books.

Perhaps you’re wondering what this magical place is. Unfortunately, you missed the boat on that. Because it’s something I only revealed to subscribers of my free email newsletter.

After all, I have to reward people who read my writing each day… and I have to give other people, like you, a reason to subscribe by withholding information on this public blog.

If that kind of thing pisses you off, I can understand.

But if you can get over it, and if you want to sign up for my free email newsletter so you don’t miss out on any future “secrets” I reveal… then here’s where to sign up.