Dan Kennedy

Hidden gold inside crap online properties

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Last week, I wrote about about my plans to start rehabbing distressed online properties. To which a reader named Josh wrote:

“It seems like the only enduring ‘property’ aspect of a ‘web property’ is its rank on the Googles. The other aspects — web design, copywriting, product development, etc. — are all ‘disposable’ parts in the sense that an underperforming site will likely need a clean sheet in those areas.”

Actually, I can think of a half dozen “gold” assets that a crap online business can have. Each can be worth many times what you pay for that business.

I shared three specific such assets with my email subscribers. But even if you have no interest in flipping blogs and online stores… this is something you should think about.

Because if you have a business, chances are you have too unused assets.  Don’t leave those assets unused, and don’t wait for a hostile private equity takeover. As Jay Abraham says, get everything you can out of all you’ve got.

But what if you got no business? What if you’re a lowly copywriter looking for work?

In that case, your chances of getting hired (or rehired) are much better if you know a bit about marketing.

Like Dan Kennedy said in that quote I shared a few days ago… you don’t need to be brilliant. Just know enough to pull out some hidden value from your clients current business… and you will look like a genius.

But maybe you’re wondering what gold assets a crap business could possibly have. Like I said, I only shared this with my email subscribers. If you’d like to get on my email newsletter, here’s where to go.

In the land of the warm-bathers, the November swimmer is a hero

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One morning in late November, I decided to go swimming in the sea. I got to the shore, stripped down to my swimming panties, and started to hop on the cold stones towards the water.

An old woman walking her dog stopped to watch, mouth agape.

“You’re going in?” she asked.

“I am,” I said.

“But it’s cold!”

“We will see.”

I got in the water, swam a minute or two, and got out. The old woman was still there. She was thrilled I had survived. “You are a hero!” she shouted, clapping her hands.

I shrugged it off. “It was nothing.”

It really was nothing. The water wasn’t cold at all. It was probably warmer than the Pacific Ocean in California gets in July. Only the locals in this country, who refuse to get in the sea unless the sun has brought it to a low boil, could crown me a hero for going for a swim now.

Which connects to something I read today in a Dan Kennedy sales letter. The sales letter is selling a course on how to become a more successful copywriter.

At one point of this sales letter, Dan gives the reader reasons NOT to buy his course. One reason he gives is that you really don’t have the chops to do decent work, and to deserve a decent wage. In that case, Dan says, maybe you should stick to only the smallest clients, and only the most limited projects.

Has that thought ever crossed your mind? If it has, I want to leave you with what Dan writes next:

“You should remember copywriter John Francis Tighe’s favorite admonition: in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. You need only know more than the client and enough to produce results he could not get on his own. You do not need to know more than every copywriter, most copywriters. If that governed, there’d never be more than one working copywriter, period.”

Check it:

If you want regular copywriting tips, which occasionally touch on the business of copy, you might like my email newsletter.

Zoolander-safe direct response levers

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Maybe you know the graveyard scene from the absurd comedy Zoolander:

Derek Zoolander, a really really good-looking male model played by Ben Stiller, meets former hand model JP Prewett, played by David Duchovny.

They’re meeting in a graveyard at night. Because Duchovny has a dangerous secret to reveal… male models committed all the biggest assassinations in history! And Derek is next in line.

“But why male models?” Derek asks.

“Because they are perfect,” Duchovny says. Male models are in peak physical condition… they get access to the most exclusive locations… and they don’t think for themselves.

Derek ponders on this for a minute. And then he scrunches up his forehead, pouts out his lips, and asks,

“But why male models?”

Don’t judge.
​​
Because for years, I was asking one question in the same stupid way. And then earlier this week, I heard a marketing talk by Dan Kennedy.

The subject was segmentation. It’s not a complicated concept:

You have your audience or your space of prospects. But instead of marketing to everybody… you market to only a segment of the whole.

“But why segmentation?”

Lean in Derek. I’ll tell you the explanations I’d heard for years.

Segmentation is the only way to make expensive direct mail work. You only pay to mail to people who are most likely to buy your offer.

“Ok, go on…”​​

Segmentation is also a smart way to avoid pissing off your email subscribers. Don’t send them stuff they don’t care about, and they won’t unsubscribe.

“I see…”

But I didn’t really. I kept pondering on this many times over the years.

And like Derek Zoolander, each time I scrunched up my forehead, pouted out my lips, and asked once again,

“But why segmentation?”

Well, it finally clicked. Or rather, I heard Dan Kennedy explain it, and it pierced my thick male-model skull.

The real reason you segment is to increase response.

Because when you segment your list, you know something extra about the people you are writing to. You can take that extra info and stuff it into your message.

For example:​
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R​ather than mailing out a sales letter with the headline, “How to increase your IQ by 30 points in the next 90 days”…

Your headline can read, “How beautiful but dimwitted male models can get equally beautiful brains before Milan Fashion Week 2021.”

When you segment, your message becomes more targeted. Your copy becomes more specific. And your response becomes more up.

This is just one of the many simple direct response levers that even Zoolander could pull to make an unprofitable campaign profitable… or to make a worthless business worthwhile.

Which brings me to my offer of partnership and investment opportunity from yesterday. In case you didn’t read it, you can read the archived version here.

I’ve forgotten dozens of unique and phenomenally effective ideas

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“All great advancements in businesses come from outside the box, not inside the box. I get to do it. What I get to do as a consultant, I get to go over and work with industry A. And because everybody’s myopic, while I’m over there I notice something that’s phenomenally effective. Hardly anybody else outside their business is doing it but could be doing it. I borrow it from industry A and I take it over and I teach it to industry B. And while I’m over there, I notice something they’re doing that hardly anybody else is doing but could be doing. So I borrow it from industry B and I take it back and I teach it to industry A. It’s a disreputable way to make a living, but I’m a high school graduate.”
– Dan Kennedy

A couple weeks ago, I wrote how copywriting has given me a great business education. It’s allowed me to look behind the curtain at dozens of successful enterprises.

Unfortunately, unlike Dan Kennedy, I am much more than a high school graduate. In the 25 years I spent in the school system, I became an expert in passing tests. It never occurred to me to think of how I could apply what I was learning to real life.

This short-sighted behavior has followed me around like a hungry dog. Example:

Since I started writing copy for money, I’ve worked in dozens of different industries. Like I said, it’s been a great education. But I never did anything with the phenomenally effective things that were unique in each industry. I never even wrote them down. And I’m sure I’ve forgotten most of them.

So I’m telling you now, to keep you from wasting opportunities like I did:

Start a list right now. When you come across a good idea in a specific industry, put it on your list. And think about how you could use it in other places.

I started such a list just a few days ago.

​​I kicked my list off with a few profitable things I’ve seen in ecommerce and real estate, two industries I’ve been writing a lot for. And — better never than late – I’ve already got a good business idea out of it. If you like, I will tell you all about it in my post tomorrow.

Or you can get that same post, ahead of time, if you are subscribed to my email newsletter. Here’s the optin page.

Challenging the “easy” norm in direct response marketing

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“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.”
— Apocryphal Ernest Shackleton ad

I had a miserable hike up a mountain yesterday.

Right at the start, I had to scramble up steep boulders. I was soon out of breath. Then the wind picked up, and whipped my ears until my head hurt. Then the fog rolled in, and it got cold and damp. Large frost crystals appeared on the occasional plants. And yet I, along with a growing mass of other people around me, trudged up in silence to the top of the mountain.

At the top, all that waited for me was a tiny and steamy hut, where they served hot tea. It was great, and totally worth it.

My point being:

A good number of human beings want a chance to prove themselves, to test their strength, even to suffer in order to achieve some goal.

And yet direct response marketing is all about making things easy and push-button, and appealing to the greedy sloth in people.

Is there space for a little noble sado-masochism in the slothful world of marketing?

Maybe.

​​I remember reading how marketer Sean D’Souza accidentally made his article-writing course much harder than he first intended it to be. I forget the details, but he mistakenly told his course attendants to write much more, in a much shorter period of time, than what was reasonable.

People taking the course suffered… lost sleep… got tense and nervous.

​​And when it was all over, they raved about the course, and became evangelists for it. Sean now has a waiting list for the course, which he markets as being famously difficult.

Direct marketing industry norms say that you have to provide easier, cheaper, faster solutions. But as marketer Dan Kennedy says, norms reinforce average.

​​So maybe, if you are looking for a market position that gets you above-average results, then promising your clients and customers struggle, expense, and many weeks and months of it, well, maybe it’s not a crazy idea to try.

Speaking of which:

Men (and women) wanted to subscribe to my daily email newsletter. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours spent reading the emails I send each day. Marketing lessons doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success. If interested, apply here.

The aggressive other meaning of “money loves speed”

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“There is absolutely nothing you can ever do or say that is MORE attractive than escalating quickly. Not teasing her, telling stories or having lots of social proof. Nothing comes close. Fast escalation beats them all.”
— 60 Years of Challenge

Marketing legend Dan Kennedy has a famous saying that “money loves speed.”

For the longest time, I thought that meant working faster, producing more content and offers, and getting paid more. It definitely makes sense given that Dan himself was (probably) the world’s highest paid copywriter for a time. His secret? He wrote faster and more than anybody else.

But maybe that’s not all there is to this saying.

Maybe it’s about making more money through fast product fulfillment and customers service… or through the promise of speedy results or relief from pain… or even through concentration-enhancing drugs like Ritalin.

Well, maybe those are a bit far-fetched.

​​But here’s something that’s almost certainly true. I didn’t think of it myself, but I managed to catch it when two successful marketers (Rich Schefren and Kim Walsh Phillips) mentioned it during a recent interview.

What they said was that ascending customers quickly means you will make more money.

And if you don’t know what I mean by ascending, it is standard direct response stuff: you first sell somebody a $47 newsletter, then a $197 course, then a $4997 yearly subscription service.

And what Rich and Kim were saying, as an interpretation of Dan’s “money loves speed,” is that the faster you do this — all in the same sitting is just great — the more money you will make.

Fast ascension. Not waiting weeks, months, or years to push your customers to the next level of commitment with you.

Which is pretty much the same thing you will hear in the pickup niche, where they talk about “fast escalation” as the end-all technique to attracting women.

Perhaps you find this off-putting. Or too aggressive. Perhaps it’s not for you.

But I think it’s good to at least keep it in the back of your mind. Because money — and women — love speed.

Since you’ve read this far, let’s try some fast ascension:

I write a daily email newsletter about marketing and copywriting. It’s not for everybody. But maybe you will like it. If you’d like to sign up, click here.

“I’ve made a huge mistake”

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I loved the original run of the TV show Arrested Development, in large part because I identified with the no-good character of Gob Bluth.

If you’ve never seen the show, I can’t do it justice here. So let me just say Gob is an irresponsible, childish, struggling stage magician.

He doesn’t think too far ahead and he consistently jumps into problem situations, such as making unintended marriage proposals or voluntarily going to prison. This sets him up for his catchphrase:

“I’ve made a huge mistake.”

Like I said, it might not be funny here in this post, but it’s funny in the show. And it’s funny because I, and I guess many other people, know that sinking feeling.

It happens when you’re here on your grassy but dull knoll… looking at that other grassy but sparkling knoll over there.

Your desire builds until it becomes unbearable. So you charge down your grassy knoll and up the other grassy knoll. And once you reach the top, all sweaty and winded, you notice this new grassy knoll is no better, and is probably worse, than where you started.

“I’ve made a huge mistake.”

Thing is, this pre-existing condition in the human mind — that anything else must be better than what you’ve currently got — can be exploited for sales.

Don’t take my word for it. It’s an idea that many successful marketers have expressed in slightly different ways.

Todd Brown advises not selling improvement on what your prospect already has, but a new solution.

Rich Schefren’s koan for this is, “Different is better than better.”

And Dan Kenendy says, “Sell escape, and not improvement.”

But doesn’t that mean setting your prospect up for a huge mistake? It certainly can. But if you are more forward-thinking than Gob Bluth, then you will water and prune your grassy knoll… so when your prospect arrives, all sweaty and winded, he will see the grass truly is greener there.

And now for something completely different:

I write a daily email newsletter. It can help you escape the dull and mundane workday for a few minutes. Click here to sign up.

Sorry to see you go

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Here’s a Days-Of-Thunder-sized personal confession:

I cant “read” marketing.

I find it too boring. As soon as I suspect an email or a web page or an article is trying to sell me something, a switch gets flipped in my head, my eyes get watery, and I start to gloss over the text in hope of escape.

This is definitely a problem, since I make my living writing sales copy, the exact kind of stuff I can’t stomach reading.

So I’ve found ways of working around this.

For example, one of the main benefits I get from hand-copying ads is that it simply forces me to carefully read those ads.

For a while, I was also having success by seeking out trends for a “3-minute DR news” feature for my email newsletter. That helped me actually pay attention to other marketers’ ads, even if I had no interest in what they were selling or preaching.

As part of this, I subscribed to dozens of email newsletters. But over time, I unsubscribed from almost all of them.

I did the same just now with copywriter Abbey Woodcock’s newsletter.

All I know about Abbey is that 1) she was one of Parris Lampropoulos’s copy cubs, so she’s gotta know about copywriting and 2) she has some kind of program helping newbie freelancers get started.

Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen in Abbey’s emails, she doesn’t talk too much about 1. But she talks aplenty about 2.

So I unsubscribed. But then, I saw an interesting thing on Abbey’s unsubscribe page.

It’s something I haven’t seen anybody else do. Here’s what happens:

When you click unsubscribe in Abbey’s email, you get taken to her site to confirm. “Yes, I really do want to unsubscribe.” Once you click that, you are taken to one final page.

“Sorry to see you go,” the page says.

And then directly below, it goes on: “Here are some other resources that might be a better fit,” followed by two affiliate links (Copy Chief and something called Effic Planning System).

I thought this was great because 1) it could be genuinely helpful to somebody who wasn’t a fit for Abbey’s stuff and 2) it could make some money for Abbey from an otherwise useless ex-lead.

This illustrates a principle I first heard Ben Settle talk about. (I guess he learned it from Dan Kennedy.)

That principle is to always seek out unused capacity.

Abbey’s unsubscribe page is just one small and clear example of this.

But if you have any kind of business — yes, even as a newbie freelancer — you might have unused capacity that you could profitably exploit.

Take for example these blog posts. For most of the time I’ve been writing them, I simply ended each post without including any kind of call to action.

Unused capacity.

So I started including a CTA each and every time. Something simple. Along the lines of,

I’ve got an email newsletter about marketing and persuasion. If you like what you just read, you might like that too. In case you want to give it a try, click here to subscribe.

The beginnings of empire: How Agora made its first sales

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You look out your window, past your gardener, who is busily pruning the lemon, cherry, and fig trees… amidst the splendor of gardenias, hibiscus, and hollyhocks.

The sky is clear blue. The sea is a deeper blue, sparkling with sunlight.

A gentle breeze comes drifting in from the ocean, clean and refreshing, as your maid brings breakfast in bed.

For a moment, you think you have died and gone to heaven.

But this paradise is real. And affordable. In fact, it costs only half as much to live this dream lifestyle… as it would to stay in your own home!

What you’ve just read is the opening of the International Living sales letter.

Bill Bonner — the founder of Agora, a $1B+ publishing company — used this sales letter to launch his first newsletter over thirty years ago. The letter supposedly brought in $3 for every $1 of advertising spend. Today, it still continues to bring in new paying readers.

I bring it up to illustrate a powerful marketing truth, which I first heard from another famous copywriter, Dan Kennedy:

Sell escape, not improvement

Bonner wasn’t selling people on eking out more from their meager social security. He was selling them escape, to heaven, with nothing more than what they already had. Well, with nothing more but a subscription to International Living.

You too can do the same. ​​Selling people a lighter shade of drab is hard work. Selling them a bright and exciting new color, well, that’s the kind of approach that can help you start a billion-dollar empire.

Speaking of escape:

Imagine checking your email every day, and among the dozens of boring, pushy, or irrelevant messages from God-knows-who, you see it.

It’s a daily email, one that I sent you. It talks about marketing and persuasion, but mostly, it’s a way to escape for a few moments.

For a moment, you think you have died and gone to heaven. But this paradise is real, and surprisingly affordable. In fact, it’s free. You can sign up to make this dream a reality by clicking here.

Time to walk away from rags-to-riches origin stories?

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According to legend, Arthur was an orphan and just a boy when he was sent to fetch a sword for a knight to use in a jousting tournament. Arthur rushed home. But there was nobody there — they were all at the jousting. What to do?

Arthur rode to a churchyard where a sword stood stuck in an anvil, on top of a large stone. He pulled the sword out with ease.

​​But this was no ordinary sword. It was the famous sword in the stone. By pulling it out, without knowing what he did, Arthur became rightful king of England.

It’s a good origin story — good enough to be retold for a thousand years. And in some forms, it continues to be retold today.

For example, it seems like every guru who sells through direct response comes with a rags-to-riches story that mimics the “sword in the stone” legend.

“I was deep in debt… I was living in a trailer home… I couldn’t turn to anyone for help… and then I stumbled upon copywriting/binary options/real estate investing.”

Everybody uses stories like this. So they must work, right?

Maybe. Or maybe not.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a half dozen reasons why it might be good NOT to have a rags-to-riches story for a guru. Such as…

It might lower prospects’ self-esteem instead of raising it…

It might sound like boilerplate that bores or sets off readers…

It might attract opportunity seekers who will refund and complain when they’re not able to pull the sword out of its DVD case.

I doubt anybody’s ever tested whether an against-all-odds origin story really helps sales. It’s just something everybody uses… because everybody else uses it.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t use it, too. I’m not even saying you should spend time or money to test it. I just want to suggest that, when everybody starts doing something, it’s time to question that thing. As Dan Kennedy once said:

“Industry norms? Forget them. They reinforce ‘average.’ It’s a norm because it’s ‘normal,” which gets you ‘average’ results. So, if you want to be average, fine. Pay attention to the way everybody does stuff and the way they’ve always done stuff. Don’t try to figure out how to walk away from it.”