Daniel Throssell

Don’t be like me

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For the past two days, I’ve been running a kind of flash offer I’ve called Copy Riddles Lite.

In order to promote that, I have finally done something I should have done months ago, and that’s to go through the emails that Australia’s best & world’s most provocative copywriter, Daniel Throssell, wrote to promote Copy Riddles back in September.

Daniel’s emails are filled with gold I could and should have been using to promote Copy Riddles ever since. Such as, for example, the following quotes:

“There are few other courses I fully and wholeheartedly endorse as strongly as one of my own. Copy Riddles is one of them.”

“I have literally never had so many people write to me after I start promoting something, offering unsolicited & gushing feedback on it!”

“It’s the most brilliant course concept I’ve ever seen … literally a gamified series of sequential puzzles that teaches you copywriting.”

So don’t be like me — lazy, careless, and self-defeating when it comes to promoting your own good offers.

Instead, when people write nice things about you and what you sell, save those comments… cherish them… casually drop hints about them over tea or coffee… and every Sunday or even more often, stand up on a soapbox, and openly and dramatically read out those flattering endorsements to everyone who might be interested and many of those who are not.

The Copy Riddles Lite offer is closing down tonight, in another 8 hours, specifically at 8:31pm CET.

Copy Riddles Lite is not a gamified series of sequential puzzles. That’s the full Copy Riddles course, which contains 20 such sequential puzzles.

Copy Riddles Lite contains just one such puzzle.

But it’s a puzzle that stands alone, without the rest of the Copy Riddles program. And if you can guess the right answer — or even if you don’t, but you put in the effort — it will teach you something very valuable about copywriting, in a very short period of time.

Copy Riddles Lite is priced lightly, according to its lite nature. And if you buy it and decide you want to upgrade to the full Copy Riddles program, I will credit you the price you paid for Copy Riddles Lite.

So if you’d like to get this piece of a highly endorsed training before I close down the cart, here’s where to go (no sales page, just an order page):

https://bejakovic.com/crl​​

The extra something in Daniel Throssell’s BF 2021 campaign

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A few weeks before Christmas, I bought Daniel Throssell’s course Campaign Conqueror. I’m currently on my second pass through the course.

If you’re curious why I would buy Daniel’s course now, two years after he put it out, well, that’s something I might talk about in the coming weeks.

For now, let me just bring you back to November 2021, back when Daniel had his massively successful Black Friday campaign, which was the impetus for his creating this course.

I won’t rehash the history of that campaign — odds are, you know how it went down.

And if not, let me just say that it was an affiliate promotion/competition, involving a dozen email marketers (not me), including some with big guru status and much bigger lists than Daniel.

And yet, Daniel came out on top in that affiliate promotion. And not just on top, but I believe he made as many sales as all the other expert marketers combined.

Why was Daniel’s Black Friday 2021 campaign so successful?

My answer at the time was Daniel’s relationship with his list, and the quality of his offer. And no doubt, those were both a big part.

Daniel has a much more detailed answer inside Campaign Conqueror, including things I didn’t realize he was doing.

But there’s something extra I still haven’t heard anyone talk about, including Daniel in Campaign Conqueror. (I might be wrong, and I might have missed it. That’s why I’m on the second pass through Campaign Conqueror. But since this is my own observation, I’ll go ahead and share it.)

I first noticed this extra something in my own reaction during that 2021 event. It has been sitting in my head ever since. It’s influenced how I write emails inside promotions and during off-promo periods. It’s summed up in the phrase:

“Make it feel real”

The 2021 Black Friday affiliate event was a confluence of unusual, extreme events. There was genuine bad blood, public callouts, a never-before-seen and never-to-be-repeated offer on Daniel’s part, all in the middle of a time-limited, seasonal promotion, with everybody else in this small space observing, commenting, and firing shots back and forth.

This led to drama, yes. And to high stakes. But in my mind, it did something more.

Jay Abraham said in one of his trainings that the biggest reason sales fail to happen is that people are afraid of looking dumb. Of making a mistake. Of being played for a sucker.

Daniel’s offer and copy during that 2021 Black Friday promo cut through the usual manipulation techniques and marketing automation that people in this market normally experience. It made the event feel real. It made even skeptics, jaded and guarded, say, “Ok… it’s time to act.”

“Make it feel real” might sound vague to you.

If so, it’s worth looking at Daniel’s emails from then, and remembering the campaign if you witnessed it live, to note down what made this event a unique and real occurrence rather than a repeatable promotion that could be done every Black Friday.

And in case you’re wondering:

This “make it feel real” stuff is not something that’s only useful once in your career, when all the stars align.

It’s a valuable daily practice you can start right now.

For example:

Over the past week, I polled my list a few times. I asked if readers had any good offers they would like to promote to my list… I asked if readers would like to hire me for list management.

I got responses to both of those emails. But since I didn’t want to share anything publicly about those responses, I didn’t write any followup emails about either of these polls.

After couple days of this, I realized this is a problem. If I poll my list, and then never say anything about the results of that poll, my readers might start to feel some kind of disconnect… wonder if my emails are written by a living, thinking person… or suspect that they are interacting with a malfunctioning autoresponder.

That’s why, after I got an unusual number of replies to my email on Tuesday about the “zero-handclap unsubscriber,” I knew it was time to feature a bunch of those replies publicly.

So I did so in yesterday’s email.

Sure, featuring all those replies served the purpose of recognizing those readers, and of helping sell my Simple Money Emails course.

But the bigger reason in my mind was to make it clear that a live person is on this end of these emails, that I’m actually interacting and responding to readers, that I’m writing each email new every day, including today, Thursday, January 11 2024.

This is just one easy way to make it feel real.

Ultimately, what matters is that you keep the idea in mind, and that you do things consciously and regularly to make it feel real for your readers.

And now, time for a real offer:

I’m putting on a free training on Zoom. The plan is to do it in 10 days time, around Jan 21. But I will have the full info on the time and date tomorrow.

As for the content, this training will be an overview of how I do what I do: write emails about what interests me, get people to sign up to my list, buy stuff from me, hire me, recommend me, interact with me, in a way that contributes to other parts of my business and even my life.

I’ve done a lot of stupid things over the years with this newsletter, and it’s taken me a while to get to where I am.

So this training will be framed as advice to myself when I starting out this newsletter back in 2018, still a fresh and wriggling copywriter.

This training can be relevant to you if you work with clients right now, and you’re looking to create a second stream of income, or you want access to better clients, or more stability, or amazing opportunities you can’t even imagine now, or in case you simply want to do something for yourself rather than for others all the time.

I will be promoting this training over the next few days. If you want to join, you will first have to get on my list. Click here to do so.

What’s wrong with affiliates?

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Story time:

10 years ago, my friend Sam and I naively decided to become Internet marketing millionaires.

Somehow we found Andre Chaperon’s Tiny Little Businesses course.

We rubbed our hands together, and envisioned that in six months’ time, we’d be sitting at the beach, drinking margaritas, occasionally leaning over to our laptops to see how many more thousands of dollars had rolled in over the past 15 minutes.

Andre’s TLB told us to pick a niche, find a product we could promote as an affiliate, then build a list using that affiliate product as the offer.

Sam and I followed this recipe to a T and beyond.

We spent weeks picking out the perfect niche (hard gainers, skinny guys who want to put on muscle but can’t).

We did market research to find out the pain points, motivations, and language used by our target market (it helped that both Sam and I were both in our target market, tall and hopelessly skinny).

We found the perfect affiliate offer to promote, a quality program, fairly expensive, with a good sales page. It would make it easy to pay for ads with even a few sales.

I had seen that the owners of this offer had previously worked with affiliates.

But when the time came to promote them, I couldn’t find the form on their site to sign up as an affiliate.

I wrote to the owners to ask about it. A reply came back:

“Thanks for the interest. But we’ve actually paused taking on new affiliates at the moment. It doesn’t really work for our business.”

First, there was a moment of shock. Then my blood pressure shot up.

I may or may not have fired back an email, explaining to this guy that he doesn’t know how business is done online… that this is free money that he’s saying no to… that a new customer is the most valuable thing a business could ever get, and that’s what I’m offering to bring him.

Very rightly and very wisely, the offer owner did not respond to my stupid email.

Those were the early days of my marketing career. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that a businesses would not want to sell offers (particularly info products, with no marginal cost) to somebody new, with no effort involved.

“What’s wrong with affiliates?” I asked myself. My newbie brain simply couldn’t handle it.

As you can guess, Sam and I never recovered from this setback. Our dreams of a drunken 4-hour workweek on the beach vanished like receding waves in the sand.

But that was a long time ago. I’ve learned a lot about marketing and online businesses since then. I’ve heard and seen many other successful marketers say they do not work with affiliates. And today, I can tell you…

I still don’t really get it.

I mean, what could possibly be wrong with affiliates? Why would anybody ever say no?

Over the past few months, I have had two affiliates promote my stuff.

Daniel Throssell promoted my Copy Riddles course back in September.

Right now, Kieran Drew is promoting Simple Money Emails.

During both promos, I rolled out of bed each morning to find thousands of dollars worth of new sales, dozens or hundreds of new subscribers, and somebody with standing in the industry going out of his way to say nice things about me and my products. Here’s a few bits from Kieran’s email yesterday:

===

SUBJECT: The best email writing course I’ve ever taken

B – E -J – A – K – O – V – I – C

The reason I’m shouting letters over Zoom like a Croatian spelling bee is because my friend asked for my favourite newsletters.

I always recommend this guy. People always sound skeptical. It’s not quite the standard Ben Settle or Justin Welsh you hear chucked around in our space.

But out of the hundreds of lists I’m lurking on, John Bejakovic’s emails glue me to the screen the most, and keep me coming back for more.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say he’s the best email copywriter you’ve probably never heard of.

[… Kieran goes on to explain the offer, course plus two free bonuses, and then he says:]

Yes, this is an affiliate link.

But I’ve taken his course 5 times in 5 months. It’s an hour read yet every time I come out noticeably better at copy. Few courses have that effect – which is why I’m promoting it.

===

Who would not want endorsements like this?

​​Aren’t affiliates just the greatest thing in the world?

But maybe you are wiser and more perceptive than I am.

“Kinda cherrypicking there, ain’t you John? Both Kieran and Daniel are pretty atypical cases.”

Maybe.

They do both have a list that they email regularly. They have both built a bond with that list, and authority and trust. And more.

They both cultivate discipline in their readers, rather than preaching the gospel of the 4-hour workweek. They both, explicitly or implicitly, repel people who aren’t down with their message.

In short, both Kieran and Daniel have spent time building up a quality list and emailing themselves into a healthy, respect-filled relationship with that list. And now I get to benefit from it.

I’m not sure what my point is, except:

1) Great affiliates are great, and

2) If you want to be a great affiliate, start a list today. And if you already have one, email it more often, starting today.

And if you don’t want to be anybody’s affiliate, but you simply want to have the opportunity to sell any reasonable and helpful offer you decide to create, start a list today. And if you already have one… well, you know where I’m going with this.

In fact, you probably knew all this before. But if hasn’t clicked yet, or if something is still holding you back, here’s a course that has helped others before you:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

Announcing: pre-Black Friday Copy Riddles stable price

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Day 2 of The Copywriter Club live event in London.

​​I’m trying to finish all my work — this newsletter, plus my health newsletter which goes out each Thursday — before 9am so I don’t have to lug my laptop to the conference venue.

​​Fortunately, a reader writes in:

===

Hi John,

Greetings!

Are you planning to make a Black Friday/Cyber Monday offer, especially of your Copy Riddles course?

The reason I ask is so that I can start saving for it and blissfully ignore other offers.

===

The grand answer is no, I’m not planning any kind of Black Friday offer on Copy Riddles or any of my other courses. In case you’re curious, here are two reasons why:

For one thing, I don’t know when Black Friday falls. Maybe there are ways around this significant obstacle. But even if there are, the following obstacle remains…

Black Friday typically means discounts. And several years ago, I copied and adopted, without shame or remorse, Daniel Throssell’s policy of not running sales or discounting offers down from an established price.

My reasoning is simple:

I sell expensive offers to a small batch of dedicated buyers. I never want one of these buyers to open a new email from me and be faced with a cheerful message, informing them that a course they bought from me now costs hundreds of dollars less — “Haha, sucks for you, shoulda waited for Black Friday!”

I’ve consulted clients who run regular discounts to large lists. They say they’ve never ever gotten a complaint from earlier buyers about a new sale.

I can believe it. But I still won’t do it. I can imagine that if I found myself on the other end of such a deal, I wouldn’t complain either, but I would still feel soured. And I would think twice when buying the next time.

One of the greatest copywriters of all time, Robert Collier, once said that the most effective appeal he knew to get people to buy is to say, “The price is going up.”

Well, the price of Copy Riddles is not going up, at least today. (It’s also not going down, today, tomorrow, or ever.)

So the only urgency I can appeal to today is if you actually plan to go through this course and profit from it.

The sooner you buy it, the sooner you can go through it, and the sooner you will take your copywriting skills to a new level. If you do this honestly, it will be worth much more to you than any discount on this course that I could offer. In case you would like to get started now:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

How Edward Bernays manipulated me, and how he might do it again

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I once wrote an email with the subject line, “How I manipulated you, and how I might do it again.”

​​That email was all about the strategic use of inflammatory words — like “manipulated” — to get people reading stuff they might not read otherwise.

Well, Edward Bernays manipulated me, and I guess he manipulated millions of other people, too.

Right now, I’m reading Bernays’s book Propaganda. It’s been in print for the past 100 years, and it’s still discussed today, though I suspect few people who discuss it have ever read it.

Why do people know and discuss Propaganda? Because of that title. Propaganda. It’s like manipulated. On the one hand repulsive, on the other hand fascinating.

Imagine that Bernays had titled his book Public Relations — which is really what his book is about. Would we be talking about it today, much less reading it?

The answer is no. The proof is that Bernays did in fact write a book called Public Relations. Result?

Propaganda: 2,700+ reviews on Amazon
Public Relations: 74 reviews on Amazon — and I bet most of those only came via Bernays’s Propaganda fame

All that’s to say, hooks matter. And unless you hook someone right away, then all the other thousands of words you might have written won’t matter much.

But you knew that. It’s the oldest bit of advice traded around the copywriting bonfire.

What you might not know is how to write a great hook. How to make it sensational and inflammatory — propaganda for the rest of what you have to say.

About that. As Daniel Throssell wrote recently:

​The skill of coming up with a great hook, and the skill of making it sensational, are almost exactly the same as a tiny, mechanical, supposedly “niche” copywriting skill you probably do not yet possess.

​​But it’s a skill you can find out more about, and even acquire quickly, via the following page:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Getting praise for promoting failure

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Yesterday, I threatened to send you a testimonial in my email today. And when I get into a threatening mood, it’s hard to get me out of it.

So here’s what long-time customer Lucus Allerton wrote me a few days ago, in the wake of the Copy Riddles relaunch and the recent promo that Daniel Throssell did for it:

===

This might be weird to say, but hopefully comes across as more sincere than sycophantic.

I’ve honestly been delighted at all the positive (even gushing) testimonials I’ve seen for your Copy Riddles course. Not just the ones showcased by you, but by Daniel Throssell as well.

I think your (growing?) recognition is well-deserved. You deliver insights via your usual understated way, but from the numerous courses I’ve seen, your course belongs in the gold-standard. The time you clearly took to prepare the materials has made a direct impact on the structure and quality of your examples and riddles. I think it’s really important that you promote ‘failure’ too. We often learn more from our mistakes than our successes. It was fascinating to see Daniel say even he was stumped, going through your course, and got some things ‘wrong’ by overcomplicating it.

I know from my own experience from trying my own bullets through your course, then seeing how much better the real ‘answer’ was sometimes, made it a much more impactful and helpful experience. It helped test how much I understood the concept, instead of only recognising it.

And it’s far better than only seeing the solutions upfront, as most courses might do.

But at this point I’m only stating things you already know.

I’m glad you’ve brought it back, because I honestly believe it elevates the overall quality of the copywriting course industry. There are far worse courses at much higher prices. Copy Riddles shows how good a copy course can be, and I hope it raises everyone else’s standards too.

===

I have this long-running rule for my newsletter not to share obvious, bland insights, things that are true but have been said a thousand times before.

​​If I ever find myself wanting to say something like this, I have 3-4 different strategies to camouflage it, dress it up, make it at least somewhat new rather than the oldest of old hats.

Well, you gotta fail in order to get better… you learn more from your mistakes than your successes… there’s no more worn-out truths than that. And yet, it doesn’t make it any less true. Maybe the fact you read it today in Lucus’s words rather than my own can make it sink in finally.

And if that’s the case, and you want to learn copywriting via the “gold standard” — exercises that gets you comparing what you do (including making mistakes) to what A-list copywriters have done, starting from the exact same prompt — then go here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

My frustrating experience shipping alcohol overseas

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This morning, I wired money to Daniel Throssell for his share of the Copy Riddles sales made over the past week. But I wanted to send Daniel something more than just an email notification of a wire transfer.

I know Daniel has this message in his signoff:

“Fan mail, death threats and gifts of expensive whisky can be dispatched via messenger kangaroo to:”

“All right,” I said. As a first step, I found an article, “24 Best Alcohol Delivery Services in Australia.”

I went to the website of one of those 24 best alcohol delivery services in Australia.

I added a bottle of Oban to my cart.

Five years ago, I visited the Oban distillery in Oban, Scotland. It was a rare highlight of an otherwise miserable trip, plagued by cold, food poisoning, and a terrifying ride in a van down the wrong side of the road.

Those memories flooded back as I filled out the form with Daniel’s PO Box and my billing details. I clicked the “Is this a gift?” option, and I wrote a little note to Daniel, explaining why exactly this whisky.

​​I pressed the button to get to the final order page… and… and… loading… almost there… still loading… loading…

I tried again. No.

I tried from beginning. Same thing.

I tried a different browser. It wouldn’t work.

I contacted their support. But nothing I did or they advised would get the order complete or my bottle of 14-year-old Oban on the road.

I exhaled to calm myself. I’d wasted a good 40 minutes fighting with one of the best alcohol delivery services in Australia. “It’s okay,” I told myself in a cheery tone. “I’ve learned something!” I made my way down the list.

The next among Australia’s 24 best alcohol delivery services also sold Oban. But since this was a site that specializes in “business gifts,” the bottle cost 40 dollars more.

I stared hard at the screen. I grunted. Fine.

I filled everything out once again, including the gift message about why exactly this whisky.

Only, once I’d written that message out, I got a notification that it would cost me an extra $5.95 to have the gift card with the message included. I stared in confusion at this notification, and then I got furious. “Oh no you don’t!” I roared. “That’s the straw that broke this donkey’s back!”

I closed down this second website, and I moved on to number 3 on list of the 24 best alcohol delivery services in Australia. My nerves were starting to fray.

The third site did not sell Oban at all. So much for my carefully crafted note to Daniel, explaining why exactly this whisky. But at this point I didn’t care. I was entirely fixated on shipping something brown, in a bottle, with alcohol in it, to Daniel’s PO Box.

This website did not have a “Is this a gift?” option. So not only would there be no note, but perhaps the receipt would go along with the present.

Tacky?

“Efficient!” I told myself, my teeth clenched together, my eyes darting from side to side.

I entered my credit card details, cackled as I watched the order go through, wiped the sweat off my brow, and started to finally relax. And only then did I realize the sun was starting to go down — and I still hadn’t written my daily email.

So no point or takeaway to today’s email. Who’s got time for a takeaway?

Only thing I can perhaps highlight is how dogged I was in making this purchase, in spite of obstacles put in front of me — frustration, time, effort, and even insults by that “business gifts” website.

My point is not that I’m a uniquely determined personality. My point is that this is how people normally shop for stuff they want.

If you haunt copywriting lists, you will hear expert and non-expert copywriters tell you how important it is to reduce friction… to spend time crafting your headline… how good copy matters! And it’s true, at the margins, and at scale, hundreds of sales per day, or thousands, or tens of thousands.

If you play at that level, you will have to get everything right.

But odds are good you are not playing at that level. And so you don’t have to get everything right. You just have to get basic psychology right, and apply it correctly and consistently. People will still buy.

And on that note, consider my Most Valuable Email training. It won’t teach you basic psychology directly, but it will give you a framework for getting basic psychology downloaded into your brain, day after day, by applying the Most Valuable Email trick correctly and consistently.

This might sound confusing, but I can’t explain it better without giving away stuff that I charge for in the course.

All I can tell you is that lots of people have gone through this Most Valuable Email training before, many have praised the approach, and quite a few have benefited from actually implementing it. In case you’d like to learn more:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Can you identify this persuasion strategy?

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Yesterday afternoon, in a breakdown of all discipline and order, I decided to skip the gym, eat whatever sweets I could find around the house, and instead of working, download a movie to watch.

After all, Daniel Throssell was sending out emails to sell my Copy Riddles course. Money was coming in without me doing anything. So why not take a rare day off to loaf about?

The movie I downloaded was one of my favorites — The Sting.

​​I’d seen it 3-4 times already. But yesterday, I saw something new in it, something I want to share with you because it’s very relevant to persuasion and influence.

What I want to tell you requires a spoiler.

​​So if you’ve never seen The Sting before, it might be worth stopping this email right now, and coming back to it only when you’ve watched the movie yourself.

It’s worth it.

Not only does The Sting have Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the lead roles… not only did it win an Oscar for best film and best director… but it also has a sparkling script (which also won an Oscar) by a guy named David Ward, who was well-read in the techniques of conmen, and who also seems to have had an intuitive understanding of human psychology.

Are you still reading? Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Here goes:

The relevant scene is when Johnny Hooker, a lonely conman on the run played by Robert Redford, tries to pick up Loretta, a gruff waitress at the local diner.

Hooker has already talked to Loretta before. He knows she is as alone as he is, and that she’s only passing through town, another tramp like him.

He’s tried asking her out before. She shot him down cold. But Hooker gives it one more try.

He knows where Loretta lives. And one night, at 2am, when Loretta finishes her shift at the diner and goes home and turns on the light in her room, Hooker takes a deep breath, walks up to her building, climbs up the stairs to her door, and knocks.

Loretta cracks open the door. The following dialogue follows:

HOOKER: I was wondering if you might wanna come out for a while, have a drink or something.

LORETTA [indignant]: You move right along, don’t you?

HOOKER: Hey I don’t mean nothin’ by it. I just don’t know many regular girls is all.

LORETTA [still angry]: You expect me to come out, just like that…

HOOKER: If I expected something, I wouldn’t still be standing here in the hall.

LORETTA: I don’t even know you!

HOOKER: You know me. I’m just like you. It’s two in the morning and I don’t know nobody.

Loretta pauses at this. She gives Hooker a sad smile. She opens the door a bit wider, and moves aside to let him in.

So that’s the scene. Now here’s the spoiler:

Loretta is not actually a waitress at a diner. She’s actually a top level hitman, or hitwoman, working for a mob boss that Hooker fleeced by accident. She’s been hired to take Hooker out. She’s playacting her indignation, just trying to reel Hooker in so she can kill him.

In many ways, this is the essence of a confidence game. And sure enough, the pattern above repeats in different situations in the movie, with different characters, as they try to influence and con each other.

Now, since Daniel’s Copy Riddles promo is over, I have to get back to work. And I do have something to sell today. But it’s not something I want to sell to just anyone.

​​F​​or one thing, this thing I have to sell is too valuable to make available to anyone who wants it. For another, it requires more than money to profit from.

This thing I have for sale is probably not for you. But I’ll make you a deal:

Hit reply right now. Tell me the name of the persuasion pattern or strategy that the scene above illustrates. If you don’t know the name for it, then tell me in a sentence what you think is going on, on the level of persuasion.

​​I’ll give you a hint:

This pattern is also used regularly by pick up artists, salesmen, even by legendary copywriters.

So write in and tell me what you think it is.

If you get it right, it will tell me you might have it. In other words, you might actually profit from this thing I have for sale, so I’ll tell you more about that.

And if you don’t get it right, well, at least I’ll tell you what’s really going on throughout The Sting, and how it works in the real, non-con world as well. And maybe you can profit from that in some way.

Why I’m happy to give up more than half my profit by promoting Daniel Throssell’s sale

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Yesterday, I gave a little breakdown of the structure of my Copy Riddles sales letter, and then advised people to get on Daniel Throssell’s list, and buy Copy Riddles via Daniel’s affiliate link.

​​Reader Jakub Červenka, who runs an info publishing business in the men’s sexual health niche (something I used to write for in my freelance days), asks a logical question:

===

John,

since you are sharing so much about the structure and the thought process behind your pages (thank you!) could you, perhaps in one of your next emails, explain why are you pushing people so much to buy through Mr Boycotted (😉) efforts?

I understand that you value your readers and relationships you so carefully build, but the second part is – this is still business, no?

And in my opinion, making more money is better than making less money…

So, telling your list about the sale once, twice… great, they have been told, if they didn’t buy, their mistake, you told them. And reminded them.

But why are you giving up half of your profit (I am guessing) by constantly promoting Daniel’s sale?

I know even with commission you pay him you take home more than from your original price, but still…

The obvious answer to me would be some kind of promo of his offers in the future, but it doesn’t seem to be the case from what I think of Daniel’s business model so I am curious and probably many more of your readers are too.

===

The numbers are actually less favorable than Jakub says.

I’m actually making slightly less for each sale of Copy Riddles via Daniel’s promo than I did the last time I sold this course myself. That’s due to the $200 discount I am offering Daniel’s readers… plus the affiliate commission I’m paying to Daniel.

That said, I continue to happily send my own readers to buy through Daniel’s list for following three reasons:

Reason #1. I agreed with Daniel to make this $200 discount exclusive to his list. At the same time, I want to make sure that anyone on my list who might actually want Copy Riddles buys at this same discount.

​​If that means nagging on and on about getting on Daniel’s list, and possibly losing money over a full-price sale that might come in the future, so be it.

The ultimate goal, like Jakub says, is valuing my readers. I want to make it an absolute certainty in my readers’ minds that I’m playing square with them and treating them right.

It’s only business, but the way I choose to play it, which is for the long term.

Reason #2. Daniel has been good to me over the years, He promoted me to his 5k-person list back when I had a list of fewer than 300 readers, and on several subsequent occasions. He has spoken well of me, driven subscribers my way, and helped me make sales.

And now, he’s hyping me up to his own list, which he values equally as much as I value mine, and he’s sending new buyers my way for a very expensive course. It’s simple gratitude to pay that back in an earnest way.

But if you need a more mercenary explanation, then consider…

Reason #3. Top copywriter Chris Haddad, who also runs an 8-figure Clickbank business, once said, “Your job is to make your affiliates money.”

Why make your affiliates money? Because it’s your job. Because it’s how you get paid this month, and next month, and the month after that.

I don’t know whether Daniel and I will ever do another JV promo in the future. Maybe we never will. But maybe we will collaborate in some less formal, more indirect way.

Or maybe I will have other JV partners and affiliates. Whatever the case, it can’t hurt to let it be known that, just like with my readers, I treat my partners squarely and work to help them make money.

So that’s my thought process on continuing to send people to Daniel’s list, even after I could squint and say, I’ve done enough.

That said, I won’t send you to Daniel’s list now. It’s simply too late.

The special discount I promised Daniel ends at noon PST today, less than an hour from now. As far as I know, Daniel won’t send more emails before now and then.

If you’re not on Daniel’s list, then I assume you weren’t interested in Copy Riddles right now. That’s okay. I’ll work to get you interested in the future.

But if you are on Daniel’s list, and you would like to get Copy Riddles before the $200 discount disappears, then rummage through your inbox right now… find Daniel’s most recent email… and follow the instructions at the end of it. If you’re serious about owning copywriting skills at a high level, it will be well worth it.

A peek behind the curtain of my “mesmerizing” Copy Riddles sales letter

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It’s strange times around the Bejako household. There’s a Copy Riddles promotion going on, but I’m not the one furiously typing it up.

Instead, I’m looking on as Daniel Throssell sends out email after email to sell Copy Riddles. I’m watching the resulting sales coming in. And I’m feeling a little guilty that I’m not somehow supporting the effort.

So let me share a third-party opinion on Copy Riddles that might help change some minds.

This opinion comes from Carlo Gargiulo, an Italian-language copywriter. Carlo is a star copywriter at Metodo Merenda, a Switzerland-based info publishing business. He also has his own list where he writes to entrepreneurial dentists and doctors and marketers, and he is a bit of an LinkedIn influencer in the Italian copy space.

Carlo had the following to say about Copy Riddles:

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Copy Riddles is the best copy course of all time.

I have spent a lot of money studying and learning so much useful information from copywriter courses such as Stefan Georgi, John Carlton, David Deutsch, etc. (all great courses that I have enjoyed), but I feel that Copy Riddles was the COURSE that allowed me to become a good copywriter.

I hope you will create courses similar to Copy Riddles in the future.

My dream is a course of yours on writing sales letter-landing pages (Your writing style is completely different from that of most copywriters I see around.). Indeed, Copy Riddles’ landing page is the only one I have read in its entirety over and over again. You literally mesmerized me with that landing page.

Anyway, congratulations and thanks again for creating and making Copy Riddles available.

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Here’s a quick copywriting lesson, specifically about how I structured the multi-page Copy Riddles sales letter, which Carlo says he found mesmerizing.

Each of the three pages of that sales letter is designed to get you to believe one and only one thing, specifically:

Page 1’s belief is that bullets are one of the most valuable copywriting skills you can ever own.

To do that, I refer to authorities such as John Carlton, Gary Halbert, Gary Bencivenga, Parris Lampropoulos, David Deutsch, Stefan Georgi, and Ben Settle, all of whom have gone on record to say that — yes, bullets are one of the most valuable copywriting skills you can ever own, and maybe the most valuable.

Page 2’s belief is that the best way to own bullets is to follow what Gary Halbert once recommended in his newsletter — and what people like Gary Bencivenga, Parris Lampropoulos, and Ben Settle have put in practice — namely, to look in parallel at both the source material and the finished bullet.

Page 3’s belief is that Copy Riddles is a fun and effective way to implement that Gary Halbert process…

… without spending months of your time and hundreds of hours of your mental effort to do what I’ve already done for you, which is to track down a bunch of winning sales letters… buy or borrow or steal the books or courses they were selling… and go bullet by bullet, comparing the source to the finished product, figuring out how exactly the A-list copywriters turned lead into gold.

And that’s pretty much the entire sales letter.

If I manage to convince the reader of all three of those points, then making the sale is easy, which is why I don’t have a big and dramatic scarcity-based close for the Copy Riddles sales page.

Of course, it does help that I have a bunch of great testimonials, like Carlo’s, right before the final “Buy now” button.

Maybe you would like to see how this mesmerizing sales letter looks in reality.

I won’t link to it directly in this email. Instead, I will remind you that Daniel Throssell is promoting Copy Riddles right now.

Daniel has gotten me to offer a one-time, sizable discount from the current Copy Riddles price, exclusively to people who come via his list.

So if you’re curious what my mesmerizing Copy Riddles sales page looks like, check out Daniel’s next email, because it will have a link to that page at the end.

And if you’re at all interested in buying, then act before tomorrow, Wednesday at 12 noon PST, because that’s when Daniel and I agreed to end this special offer, which will never be repeated again.

In case you’re not yet on Daniel’s list, here’s where to go:

https://persuasivepage.com/