Daniel Throssell Archives - Page 2 of 4

Can you identify this persuasion strategy?

September 7, 2023 by John Bejakovic

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.

For 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

September 6, 2023 by John Bejakovic

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

September 5, 2023 by John Bejakovic

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:

===

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.

===

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/

Secret, occult, or classified — which one wins?

September 4, 2023 by John Bejakovic

Yesterday, after I sent out an email with the subject line “201 good reasons to get on Daniel Throssell’s list today,” I got the following reply from a long-time reader:

===

I know all you top level people charge big bucks for critiques.

I’m not sure why but today I decided to rewrite this email with my take on it.

If it can be useful to you, use it however you wish.

All I want from it is your critique and words of wisdom. Not some long breakdown critique. Just a couple minutes of your time and perhaps a couple lines of advice.

===

What followed was a rewrite of my email from yesterday. It was really a re-write – basically every idea I had in the original email was there, just said using other words. Example:

[my original]
“Daniel’s offers are how he beat out a dozen other top email marketers during the infamous 2021 Black Friday campaign. It’s how he made the classified ads he ran this spring (mine among them) a big success for everyone involved. It’s why I ended up providing a unique and sizeable discount on Copy Riddles only to people on Daniel’s list.”

[my reader’s re-write]
“Daniel’s Offers. This is his Midas touch. It’s how he raced ahead of the pack during the buzzworthy 2021 Black Friday showdown. It’s the force behind his game-changing classified ads earlier this year. And guess what? It’s why there’s a unique, too-good-to-miss discount on Copy Riddles for Daniel’s elite.”

So.

Is this re-write, this new choice of words, better than what I had originally?

Or is it worse?

Think about that for a hot minute. And then I will tell you the correct answer, which is, who cares?

The best and most insightful copywriting book I have ever read is the Robert Collier Letter Book. And as Collier says in that book, “it’s not the copy so much as the scheme back of it.”

Yes, individual words have power. But they don’t have nearly the power of sound psychology.

There are lots of ways to tell people that you have secret knowledge. Whether you use the word secret, select, elite, insider, little-known, occult, forbidden, classified — that doesn’t really matter very much.

It’s the opportunity, the scarcity behind all those words that really gets peoples eyes going wide and their mouths hanging open.

Get the psychology down first. Then fiddle with the words. Or don’t, because if you got the psychology behind your words right, you will still make money.

That’s how and why the top copywriters make a lot of money.

So how do you get the psychology down?

Back to my email from yesterday. It was about how I’ve brought back my Copy Riddles course, and how I agreed with Daniel Throssell to offer an exclusive $200 discount to buyers who come via Daniel’s list.

In my email yesterday, I was letting my readers know about that, so they sign up to Daniel’s list in case they want that same discount.

The fact is, you have various options if you want to master the psychology behind the words, the scheme back of the copy. A particularly effective option is my Copy Riddles course.

As marketing consultant Khaled Maziad, who went through Copy Riddles a while back, wrote me about Copy Riddles:

===

I loved that you didn’t include bullet templates but went deep into the psychology behind each bullet. This course is not just about the “how-to” of writing bullets but understanding the artistry and the deep psychology behind them… Plus, when and where to use them.

===

I’m honestly not sure how long Daniel is planning to promote Copy Riddles — we didn’t agree on it, and maybe he is going to decide in real time based on the sales he sees.

I am sure that the only way to get that $200 discount on Copy Riddles is to be on Daniel’s list when he sends out the discount code.

Maybe it’s too late for that already. Or maybe it’s not.

Maybe, if you get on Daniel’s list right now, you will still have a chance at a $200 savings. If you’d like to at least have that option, which is yours if you want it, then here’s the link:

https://persuasivepage.com/

201 good reasons to get on Daniel Throssell’s list today

September 3, 2023 by John Bejakovic

Back in April, I sent an email to announce the last day ever to buy Copy Riddles.

One of the people who replied to that email was Daniel “I just got an entire city boycotted” Throssell. Daniel wrote me to say:

===

This is gutsy, I imagine it’s a cash cow for you!

You know, I have been meaning to ask you for a while if I could promote this one as an affiliate. I have always found it an excellent idea for a course.

But this might be a great opportunity now:

===

Daniel went on to propose a plan. I’d leave Copy Riddles open for one final promo, to his list only. It was clear we’d both make a lot of money this way.

We went back and forth for a while. But ultimately, I said thanks, but no. It would be a cash grab, and people would feel it.

Daniel and I agreed to leave it at that.

But now, I’ve decided to bring back Copy Riddles.

Yes, like Daniel says, Copy Riddles was previously a steady money-maker for me. And yes, I’ve now increased the price dramatically from what I last sold it for.

But like I wrote a couple days ago, I’m bringing back Copy Riddles for reasons other than a cash grab.

I’m proud of this course. It’s felt bad seeing it collect dust on the shelf.

Plus, I got a dozen or more unsolicited messages about how great a product it is, and some about how not making it available is a crime against people who want to get copywriting skills.

I even tried to sell it off wholesale to a new forever home, but that didn’t work out.

So I’ve brought Copy Riddles back.

And since Daniel asked to promote it earlier, I thought would be only fair to write him now to see whether he’s still interested. He said yes, under one condition:

That I offer a special price, only for people on his list.

We agreed on a $200 discount from the new Copy Riddles price.

At the same time, I want to give a fair chance to anyone from my own list to get that same discount, since I won’t be offering it again in the future.

So I’m telling you right now:

If you want to get Copy Riddles, and you want to get it for $200 off what it now sells for, then get on Daniel’s list today. Because his email about Copy Riddles, along with the special discount code, will go out tomorrow.

So that’s 200 good reasons right there to get on Daniel’s list today. And if you need one more:

As I’ve written before, Daniel gets results from his email list that nobody I know can match. The stock explanations for Daniel’s success are his storytelling chops, mixed in with his willingness to embrace conflict and self-promotion.

Fine.

But here’s another reason for Daniel’s success you may or may not have thought of:

His offers.

Daniel’s offers are how he beat out a dozen other top email marketers during the infamous 2021 Black Friday campaign. It’s how he made the classified ads he ran this spring (mine among them) a big success for everyone involved. It’s why I ended up providing a unique and sizeable discount on Copy Riddles only to people on Daniel’s list.

Not only are Daniel’s offers unique and creative, not only are they pretty much irresistible to his audience, but they end up making his positioning and authority and relationship with his audience only stronger after each promotion.

There’s lots to be learned there. And you can do so for free — even if you don’t vibe with Daniel’s style otherwise — by getting on Daniel’s list and paying attention just to the offers he makes.

So there you go. 201 good reasons to get on Daniel’s list. Here’s the link, in case you’d like to do so right now:

https://persuasivepage.com/

Would you like to take Copy Riddles off my hands?

July 2, 2023 by John Bejakovic

A couple months ago, I stopped selling my flagship course, Copy Riddles.

Copy Riddles was based on a Gary Halbert’s advice for how to learn to write bullets — look at the bullets written by the best copywriters, look at the book or course those bullets were selling, and see how the copywriter did his alchemy to transmute lead into gold.

I had various reasons for retiring Copy Riddles. I wrote about one of them in an earlier email. But even if I had no good reasons initially, the fact that I’ve publicly announced that I’m retiring the course means I won’t bring it back.

Frank Sinatra retired in 1971. “I have sung my last song for the public,” he said with a sigh. Fans were shocked. But then, 2 years later, Frank came back with a TV special, Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back, and he started touring again.

Ol’ Blue Eyes could get away with that, but you won’t see Ol’ Bejako doing it, in spite of several people writing to tell me that not selling Copy Riddles is a crime. I’ve simply found it easier to keep my word as a general life policy.

At the same time, I’m genuinely proud of Copy Riddles as a course, and there are people who say there is significant tonnage to what they’ve learned about copywriting from it.

So a few days ago, while I should have been washing myself but was instead just standing in the shower and thinking, I had an idea.

Could I sell the rights to Copy Riddles to somebody else?

Like I said, I don’t want to be the one selling it to the public any more.

But there’s clearly demand for the course, even with my absolute lack of promotion of the thing. Maybe somebody else would like to own the rights to Copy Riddles and sell it himself or herself.

With the tiniest bit of work, you could get affiliates lined up — for example, I’ve had Derek Johanson of CopyHour promote Copy Riddles in the past. I’ve had Bob Bly agree to promote it right before I decided to retire it. And Daniel Throssell asked to promote it right after I retired it.

If you’ve already got a list of people interested in copywriting, you could sell Copy Riddles to your list directly — the thing regularly brought in 5-figure paydays for me when I re-launched it every few months, and that’s with my small list that had seen the offer a lot.

Plus, maybe you could even run cold traffic straight to the sales page. I can’t say with any certainty it would be a winner, but I did talk to A-list copywriter Lorrie Morgan recently, and she was telling me what a good sales letter I’d written for Copy Riddles. Plus, I wrote it in an impersonal way, to be convincing to somebody who doesn’t know anything about me personally and who hasn’t read any of my emails.

All these are just ideas.

I don’t know if anybody is interested in taking Copy Riddles off my hands, or really how this would work. But I am intrigued by the potential.

If you are intrigued as well, and if you are serious about the idea of buying the rights for Copy Riddles from me, write me to say so, and we can start a conversation around it.

How to increase your average open rate by 1.95%

April 3, 2023 by John Bejakovic

My average daily open rate for the last week of February was 33.89%. My average daily open rate for the last week of March was 35.84%. That’s a staggering increase of 1.95%.

Well, it’s not really staggering. It’s not really anything.

Open rates don’t tell you much, and what they do tell you is often bad. I’ve written before how for one large list I was mailing with daily offers, I found a mild inverse relationship between open rates and sales — on average, each extra 1% of opens cost us $100 in sales.

But my sales are up as well. Like I wrote a few days ago, this past March was a record month for me. I made plenty of sales in that last week of March, many more than in the last week of February. I won’t say how much more, but it’s enough to go to Disneyland with.

What gives?

I can tell you my impressions. The jump in both open rates and sales very clearly came after March 6, when I ran an ad in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter. But — about that.

The staggering increase in open rates might be due to new subscribers who came via that ad. I don’t know, and ActiveCampaign gives me no easy way to figure it out.

But I do know that the bulk of new sales I saw in the whole of March compared to the whole of February did not come from new subscribers who came via the ad. The bulk came from my existing subscribers.

Many of those sales came from people buying new offers I had made in March, such as Insight Exposed and Copy Zone. That’s normal.

But one thing that struck me is how many existing subscribers, some of whom have been on my list for months or even years, decided this March to buy offers like Copy Riddles and Most Valuable Email, which I have offered dozens of times before. These readers successfully resisted all my previous pitches, but they found themselves curious and willing to buy now.

It wasn’t just one such person. It was lots. I asked myself what made the difference.

My best answer is this:

There’s a lot that goes into the success of email marketing beyond the actual email funnel and copy. At least if you’re doing something like I’m doing, which is a long-running, personal, relationship-based email newsletter.

I’ll leave you with that for today. And I’ll just remind you of my coaching program for email marketing and copywriting.

I have to include the email copywriting in the coaching program, because it’s what almost everybody wants to learn and believes is most important.

But in my experience, email copy is rarely the thing that really makes the biggest impact in the results of your emails. By results I mean sales, as well as soft stuff like retention, engagement, and influence.

Anyways, if you are interested in my coaching program, you’ll also be interested to know this program is only open to two kinds of people:

1. Business owners who have an email list and want to use email to both build a relationship with their customers and to sell their products

2. Copywriters who manage a client’s email list, and who have a profit-share agreement for that work

If you fit into one of the two categories above and you’re interested in my coaching program, write me an email and say so. Also tell me who you are and what your current situation is, including which category above you fit into. We can then talk in more detail, and see if my coaching program might be a fit for you.

Well, that was a total disaster

March 7, 2023 by John Bejakovic

I was lying in bed last night by the open window, enjoying the spring breeze, listening to the radio. Suddenly, the music on the radio stopped and an urgent news announcement came on—

Two tectonic plates had just shifted somewhere off the coast of Western Australia.

As a consequence, a tsunami, a massive wave hundreds of meters high, was headed towards my little beach barrio of Poblenou, Barcelona, Spain.

I immediately jumped out of bed, threw on my Tommy Bahama shirt, and rushed to find Hector Campana, the main civil engineer in Poblenou. ”I have to warn Hector,” I said breathlessly, “we have to somehow survive this massive wave.”

I stormed inside Hector’s offices in an old colonial building by the waterfront. But he wasn’t there. One of his unshaven and red-eyed employees looked up at me.

”Hector?” he scoffed. “Go check the bar.”

“It’s a matter of life and death!” I said, and I ran to the bar on the corner.

Sure enough, Hector was there, slumped on a bench against the back wall, eyes closed, five empty bottles on the table in front of him.

I yelled at him to get up and get to work. He didn’t respond.

I grabbed him by the shoulders and tried to shake him awake. But he just slumped over even more, all the way off the bench, and down to the floor.

I took a quick look around to make sure nobody was watching, and I gave Hector a healthy kick in the ribs. This finally seemed to wake the brute up.

He opened his eyes a little, grumbled, and said in a drunken drawl:

“Engineers have detected multiple services degraded. At this time, delays in processing and intermittent errors may continue to be experienced until full resolution is declared. Mar 06 2023, 14:21 CST.”

That’s pretty much exactly how it went down last night.

The full story is that Daniel Throssell, somewhere off or on the coast of Western Australia, sent out an email to his list. This email had my ad inside, which I had paid Daniel $1,000 for.

As a result, a traffic wave, many hundreds of visitors high, hit my little online barrio.

But Hector Campana — aka ActiveCampaign, my email service provider — was drinking on the job, completely unable to deal with the incoming wave.

For the better part of yesterday’s afternoon, evening, and night, ActiveCampaign was passed out and unresponsive.

Broadcast emails took hours to go out. Autoresponder emails weren’t working at all. Neither were automations — and I had set up an automation to actually deliver the promised lead magnet to people who responded to my ad.

I spent about three hours last night fixing what I could by hand, and sending emails to people who had taken me up on the paid offer on the Thank You page.

During the night, ActiveCampaign gradually sobered up and emails finally started going out. Even so, I still had an hour or two of cleanup this morning.

So all in all, it was a total disaster. Really, the only salvageable thing was this:

Even though ActiveCampaign was passed out last night, it was at least registering (most) people who opted in. So as of right now, a little more than 14 hours after Daniel’s email went out, I have some 410 new subscribers thanks to my ad.

More importantly, I’ve also made 37 sales of the $100 offer I was making on the optin Thank You page.

25 of those sales came from people who were already subscribed to my list, and who opted in again via the ad to get the free bonuses I promised.

But I’ve also made 12 sales of the same $100 offer to entirely new subscribers.

Which means that — twelve times one hundred, carry the four — my ad in Daniel’s newsletter has already paid for itself. In fact, it paid for itself in just 3 hours and 9 minutes — that’s how long it took for the 10th purchase from a new subscriber to come in.

So a total disaster looked at from one angle… or looked at from another angle, an unqualified success.

Meanwhile, back in Poblenou:

Later today, I will organize an emergency Town Hall meeting to discuss the firing and possible lynching of Hector Campana.

Also later today, at 3:31pm EST to be exact, I will take down the paid offer I am currently making on that Thank You page.

While I promised Daniel that my lead magnet would only be available through the ad in his newsletter, this paid offer on the Thank You page isn’t part of that promise.

So whether you just got onto my list, or whether you’ve been on my list for a while, you can take me up on this offer. But you do have to be on my list. To get on there, click here and fill out the form that appears.

The devil sells me a coffee and gets me addicted to buying more

March 6, 2023 by John Bejakovic

I just got back home from a visit to a new and devilish coffee shop.

It opened maybe 3 weeks ago. It’s a typical “AirSpace” place, cool and yet warm, shiny in parts, subdued in others, stools for sitting, with colorful and well-designed boxes of teas, bags of coffee, and assorted overpriced cups, mugs, and water bottles for sale. (One of the water bottles sells for 50 euro. I guess you put in water and it turns into gin.)

Point being, this new coffee shop has everything to predispose me to go there on occasion.

On occasion, but not every day — there are other good options for coffee around my house as well. But this new coffee shop, devilish place that it is, has just taken care of that as well.

The story:

Two weeks ago, I went there and ordered a pastry and two coffees. I went to pay. The girl rang me up and said, “It will be 6 euro for the coffees. The pastry is free, since it’s the first day we opened the bakery.”

“Oh that’s nice,” I beamed. I thought no more of it.

Since then, I’ve ordered a pastry on a few occasions. I had to pay for it each time.

Then there was this morning. Similar story — a couple coffees, a slice of lemon cake. But it happened again.

“The coffees are 6 euro,” the girl said. “The lemon cake is free.”

My heart almost melted. And through my tears of gratitude, I saw exactly what will happen in the future. I will be going back to this place regularly — screw the other coffee shops around, even if they served me well before.

You might think I’m telling you to give stuff away for free, to build some sort of reciprocity.

That’s a part of it, but it’s not enough. On its own, it can even be dangerous. You don’t want to train people to expect stuff for free. They will get used to it quickly, and they will start to feel entitled.

But surprise people on occasion with some stuff for free — or with any other kind of reward — and their hearts will melt.

Do it rarely, sporadically, unpredictably, and you literally create irrational addiction. There have been hundreds of science papers written to prove this fact, but perceptive people have known it for ages. From Cervantes’s Don Quixote:

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… beguiled by a purse with a hundred ducats that I found one day in the heart of the Sierra Morena; and the devil is always putting a bag full of doubloons before my eyes, here, there, everywhere, until I fancy at every stop I am putting my hand on it, and hugging it, and carrying it home with me, and making investments, and getting interest, and living like a prince; and so long as I think of this I make light of all the hardships I endure.

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And on that note, I would like to remind you I am giving away a purse with a hundred ducats for free tonight. Well, it’s a purse filled with info products, which are worth a hundred ducats, or maybe more.

I’m running an ad in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter. The ad will go out in Daniel’s email in a little more than an hour.

To get the purse full of info products, for free, you will have to be on Daniel’s list when the email with the ad goes out. Here’s the link to Daniel’s website if you want to get on there in time:

https://persuasivepage.com/