Chris Orzechowski

Do I have an affiliate relationship with all these big names?

by

A couple days ago, I opened the most recent Exploding Topics newsletter, which tracks topics and brands that are surging online.

The top Exploding Topic was Scandinavian Biolabs, “a hair growth startup” that raised $5M in funding last year.

“Hello,” I said, “this sounds familiar.”

I had a sense that I know the head copywriter at Scandinavian Biolabs. I suspected it might be one Liza Schermann, the original Crazy Email Lady, who also acted as a cohost of the Age of Insight and Influential Emails trainings I ran several years ago.

I forwarded the Exploding Topics email to Liza to confirm this is indeed the place where she works. Liza wrote back:

===

Haha look at that, I’m back at work and growth is skyrocketing! That’s the place indeed. I remember the celebration party for that $5M funding vividly.

I was just typing a reply when you forwarded it so I might as well do it here.

Did you have an affiliate or some kind of other partnership with Chris Orzechowski? Or did you just promote his workshop because you found it interesting? I was wondering that every time you promoted a big name.

Anyway, it seems like it’s been an eventful year in Bejako Land business-wise with lots of different offers (at least from what I could keep up with). I’m looking forward to your annual summary email if you’re planning to send one!

===

In answer to Liza’s question:

Yes, I promoted Chris Orzechowski’s training (“5 steps to a million-dollar list”) as an affiliate.

I also promoted Derek Johanson’s CopyHour and Email Delivered Courses as an affiliate.

I promoted Thom Benny’s 1-Person Advertorial Agency as an affiliate.

I promoted Justin Blackman’s Different On Purpose as an affiliate.

I promoted Igor Kheifets’s Click Send Earn as an affiliate.

I promoted Kennedy’s “$27k to $544k” training as an affiliate.

And in a couple weeks from now, when I promote Gasper Crepinsek’s ChatGPT Mastery, I will do so as an affiliate.

I have in the past promoted people’s things simply because I thought they were cool and valuable, without getting paid.

I still do that sometimes.

But if I can promote something I think is cool and valuable AND get paid for it at the same time, well, I like to have my cake and lick it too.

The fact is, I have been feeling burned out this year about creating new offers.

I have created a lot of courses, trainings, reports, and even books over the 6+ years of running this newsletter.

Some have stuck around and become evergreen offers (Copy Riddles, Most Valuable Email, my new 10 Commandments book). Others were exotic one-time events (like the Age of Insight and Influential Emails workshops).

One thing’s for sure:

Even when I’m in full offer-creation mode, the appetite of my audience for cool and valuable new solutions to existing problems is much much bigger than what I can personally satisfy.

That’s one reason I’ve been building up a little invite-only group of list and offer owners.

I’ve been quietly pitching this group to people as a place to connect and partner and share ideas.

It’s proven to be that — it’s led to list swaps, podcast appearances, and affiliate promos, and not just involving me, either.

It so happens that Chris, Derek, Thom, Justin, Igor, Kennedy, and Gasper are all in my little invite-only group.

Maybe this group could be a good fit for you too?

If you’re interested, write in and let me know who you are and what you do.

A list is a mandatory requirement, as is the fact that you are writing that list regularly, and that you’ve made money from your list.

If have your own proven offers, that’s definitely a bonus.

Beyond that, I’m curious to hear who you are and what you do. If it’s a fit with the group, I’ll know it when I see it.

If more sales from your list with less work sounds sexy to you, write in and let’s talk.

Sneaky guru model for getting the most out of a pool of prospects

by

If you’re the enterprising sort, here’s a direct-response recipe for getting the maximum value out of a pool of prospects:

1. Run a campaign featuring a guru who is promising an outcome, say, big stock market returns.

2. Make sales of your offer to people who respond to that campaign.

3. Take all the people who didn’t buy (or who bought once, but then canceled a subscription offer) and put in front of them another, entirely different-seeming offer, with a different guru, which actually makes the exact same promise as the offer in step 2.

4. Go back to step 2, and keep going back, with still another guru and another different-seeming offer, repeating until everyone has bought.

I once heard direct marketing expert Dan Kennedy talking about this sneaky multiple-guru model, which is actually very common among high-level direct response operators.

This strategy is obvious enough that in what behemoths like Agora are doing, but it happens in less obvious ways in many other businesses.

Some direct response businesses have low/mid/high variants of the same underlying product, all behind different brands that are impossible for prospects to see through.

Other businesses simply partner with related businesses who make the same promise but with a different feel, tone, or face to their message.

The point being, some people might not like you or your style. But if they’ve raised their hands to say they want the outcome you promise, that’s real value.

Sooner or later, somebody somewhere will sell these folks an offer to help them get that outcome. That somebody might as well be you, and that somewhere might as well be right here, right now, using the recipe above.

And with that, let me remind you one final time of the free training that email marketer Chris Orzechowski is putting on tomorrow, Monday, October 6, at 6pm CET/12 noon EST/9am PST.

Chris is gonna be sharing his “5 Steps To A Million Dollar List.”

I haven’t seen Chris’s training, but I do know his business model and his philosophy.

The fact is, it’s very similar to what I do, to what I preach in these emails, and to what I sell in my offers.

But — maybe you don’t want to hear this from me. Or maybe you have heard it from me, for a long time, and while you like hearing it, maybe it still hasn’t clicked, or hasn’t moved you to action.

In that case, Chris’s free training — and the 8-week coaching program he will be launching on the back of it in the coming weeks — might just be the fix.

If an email-based, flexible, profitable, and even fun business is an outcome you would raise your hand for, then here’s a free offer to help you get there:

https://bejakovic.com/mdl

Free training by million-dollar list owner

by

This Monday, October 6, at 6pm CET/12 noon EST/9am PST, Chris Orzechowski is putting on a training called “5 Steps To A Million Dollar List.”

In case you don’t know Chris, he himself is the owner of a million-dollar list. He’s built a 7-figure list-based business selling offers around copywriting and email marketing, both to copywriters and big ecom businesses.

For the record, Chris’s list is currently under 13k people.

A few years ago, back in 2021, Chris made $996k with a list of just 6k people. Business Insider wrote up a profile of him because of this.

All that’s to say, Chris knows what he’s talking about — and the stuff he’s talking about is doable for others too.

I haven’t seen Chris’s training yet, but I know his philosophy of email marketing. It’s to email daily, sending out emails pretty much like the one you’re reading now.

Chris is gonna be kicking off an 8-week coaching program in October, guiding a group of people who wanna build the kind of profitable list business he himself has.

Monday’s “Million Dollar List” training is gonna be a kind of appetizer for that.

Chris says it will be a deep dive into list growth and monetization strategies that have worked for him.

So if you attend Chris’s training on Monday, you might learn something valuable and lucrative, maybe something you apply to your own list and your own biz starting Tuesday morning.

And if you’re interested in getting outside help and guidance in building the same kind of lean, profitable, list-based business Chris has, then Monday’s training will also be a chance to see if Chris is the guy for you.

If you’d like to attend, here’s the link to sign up:

https://bejakovic.com/mdl

Announcing: Live personal positioning cohort

by

Yesterday, inside a small group of list owners that I have set up to help with affiliate deals, marketer Justin Blackman posted, as a kind of afterthought, that he has an exciting and cool new offer, that, by the way, it’s live now, and, oh, that it’s only available until the end of this week, or maybe not even that long.

The offer is called Different On Purpose.

You can find the full details of it at the sales page below. But in the interest of getting you to click through to that sales page, here are some intriguing facts about Justin’s “now you see me, now you don’t” new offer:

# Who it’s for

Freelancers, coaches, and service-based business owners who feel they’ve lost their mojo — thanks to AI, competition, and simply stuff that used to work not working any more.

(No judgment here, by the way. As Justin says on sales page, he himself has been wrestling with these issues for the past year and a half.)

# What it is

A live cohort that runs from September 25 – November 19. Small groups that Justin will be heading, with frankly a crazy list of 15 guest trainers to add in unique expertise, including Todd Herman, Daniel Throssell, and Chris Orzechowski.

Deliverables and outcomes are both new and different personal positioning… plus assets to support and communicate that… and, thanks to the guest trainers, strategy to get those assets and message out into the world, so as to regain that lost mojo.

# Why you might wanna sign up now

Two reasons:

First is that this is the first time Justin is offering Different On Purpose, and his strategy is to underprice it and overdeliver on it. (See the complete list of 15 guest trainers if you don’t believe the “overdeliver” bit.)

Second is that, this being a live cohort which Justin will head, it’s limited to 30 people.

I don’t know how many of those spots are already taken.

I do know Justin is promoting Different On Purpose to his list… I’m guessing at least some of the guest speakers who have lists totaling hundreds of thousands of names will promote it as well to their lists… and maybe others in that group I set up will promote it too.

All that’s to say, if you worry about where your service or client business is going… if you feel like your personal positioning is taking on the nice ochre color of a brick in the wall… and if you wanna do something about it now rather than in 2035… then Different On Purpose is something to consider.

To find out more about it, before those 30 spots are filled and the decision is no longer yours:

https://bejakovic.com/different

You are most probably a cat person

by

Yesterday at 3:55pm, I stacked two books under my laptop for a more flattering camera angle, did one final check of my hair, and fired up Zoom.

I was doing a call with Kieran Drew for people who bought his High Impact Writing course.

​​This part of Kieran’s birthday bash series, where he interviewed five people who make their living by writing, including 8-figure course creator Olly Richards, email marketer Chris Orzechowski, and A-list copywriter David Deutsch. And me. ​​

The conversation with Kieran ran for more than an hour. I really enjoyed it.

I will tell you one bit that came up early, and kept coming up in various guises, because it’s probably relevant to you.

Kieran said how social media, in spite of the success it’s given him, drives him crazy.

​​I said how I, in spite of managing my little email business without the help of social media, get pangs of envy when I see how well Kieran’s doing thanks to Twitter and LinkedIn.

And so it goes.

I know agency owners who want to become high-ticket coaches. High-ticket coaches who want to become course creators. Course creators who want to start up an agency.

Legendary curmudgeon Dan Kennedy once summed it up by saying, “People are like cats. They always want to be in the other room.”

At this point, you might expect me to get all preachy and say, ​​”You gotta be happy with whatchu got… you gotta keep your nose down and persist at what you’re doing… you gotta stop yourself from getting distracted by the greenness of your neighbors lawn…”

But like another famous curmudgeon, William Shakespeare, once said, “There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

There’s nothing inherently bad about the fact we’re always looking for new opportunities, improvements, or simply a change from what we already have.

It’s just a part of life.

And rather than saying that’s not how it should be, it makes more sense, to me at least, to accept it adjust to it. To be aware of the drive to go into the other room, to be selective about when you respond to that drive, and to realize that the same drive will most probably crop up even in that other room.

And if you want, you can start practicing that right now.

Because until tomorrow, Saturday, at 12 midnight PST, I have a special, free, other-room bonus if you buy my Simple Money Emails course.

The bonus is the “lite” version of Matt Giaro’s $397 course Subscribers From Scratch. It will show you how Matt grew his email list, with high-quality subscribers who paid for themselves, via little newsletter ads.

I’ve tried this strategy myself in the past, and it worked great for me. I got hundreds of new subscribers, and most often they paid for themselves on day zero.

So if you are sick of social media as a means of growing your list, or if you never wanted to get on social media to start with, then Matt’s course can show you a real alternative.

That said, this newsletter ad approach has its own downsides as well.

Like all other means of growing your list, it will require some work to set up.

Like all other means of growing your list, it will require some work to keep going.

And unlike many other means of growing your list, say Facebook ads or even social media, newsletter ads won’t ever get you tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

But if you want to get a few dozen or a few hundred new subscribers at a time, and you want to get subscribers who actually read your stuff and buy your offers, then newsletter ads can be a good option.

And Matt’s course will show you how to do it.

Again, you get it as a free bonus if you get Simple Money Emails by the deadline, tomorrow, Saturday, at 12 midnight PST. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/​​

P.S. ​​If you bought Simple Money Emails previously, this offer applies to you as well. So does the deadline.

​​You should have gotten an email from me with instructions on how to claim Matt’s Subscribers From Scratch Lite. If you didn’t get the email, then write me and I will sort it out.

Birthday bash offer

by

I wrote a long email just now. Until I realized I was burying the lead.

So I told myself what I often tell coaching clients – split up the damn thing into two emails. One for today, one for tomorrow.

Here’s one for today:

Today is my buddy Kieran Drew’s birthday.

As you might know, Kieran is a big name in the online creator space. He has a Twitter following of 205k people, a newsletter audience of 30k people, and 6-figure launches every few months.

To celebrate his birthday, Kieran has prepared a special bundle of his most popular offer, High Impact Writing, with his second-most popular offer, the Viral Inspiration Lab.

I imagine that anyone on my list who wanted to get High Impact Writing got it back in March when I promoted it. But I’ve been wrong before.

If you don’t yet have High Impact Writing, I endorse it fully. And now is a good moment to get it because you can effectively get the Viral Inspiration Lab for free.

Plus!

Over the next month, Kieran will also hold a series of private interviews as a special thank-you gift for people who buy HIW now, as well as people who have bought HIW before.

The interviews will be with five successful writers Kieran knows, including A-list copywriter David Deutsch… email copywriter Chris Orzechowski… and yours truly, Bejako the Slow.

If you’re interested and you want to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/hiw​​

Minesweeping for copywriting clients

by

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