David Mamet

The opportunity of the two-sentence newsletter

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Yesterday, I wrote about Sparkloop. It’s a way to monetize your newsletter by promoting other newsletters.

I am using Sparkloop to make some money in the early days of my own health newsletter. I make a few shekels right at signup time (thanks to the coregistration screen that pops up right after somebody opts in). I make a few more shekels with in-line newsletter recommendations each week when I send out a new issue.

I could make more money if I emailed more often. But the weekly schedule already costs me a lot of time, plus I already have this daily marketing newsletter you are reading now. Who’s got time for more daily emails?

I wanna tell you my plan, which you are free to use yourself.

I got it from marketer Josh Spector. Once upon a time, Josh started out by sending a typical “creator economy” newsletter. You know — once a week, a bunch of curated links, some how-to advice.

But then Josh did something really unique. I don’t know if it was his idea originally, but it was certainly the first time I’d seen it.

Josh started a daily newsletter. But instead of aggregating dozens of links or writing hundreds of words of personal content, Josh’s newsletter was typically just two sentences.

One sentence had a bit of intriguing content. The second sentence had an offer. Kind of like this:

===

SUBJECT: The opportunity of the two-sentence newsletter [<== intriguing, bullet-like subject line]

I’ve written up the entire business plan here. [<== minimal content that typically links out to another blog, podcast, newsletter]

***

Today’s email is brought to you by a daily newsletter that embodies the idea above. [<== The promo. That’s a link to Josh’s newsletter by the way]

===

Josh monetizes this daily newsletter by 1) selling that ad spot for $350 or 2) by promoting offers of his own choosing, including other newsletters via Sparkloop.

The nice thing is that creating this kind of content is as close as you can get to effortless, particularly if you are writing a newsletter in a niche that interest you.

But even if you go into an entirely foreign niche, you should be able to gather dozens of interesting tips and write dozens of these two-line emails in a couple hours’ time.

Does it really work? I can tell you that I bought one of Josh’s $350 ads. I got hundreds of clicks to my own (marketing) newsletter, close to a hundred signups, and I actually made sales to some of those new readers in the first 30 days, to the point where I almost paid for the entire ad.

In other words, people read these quick and simple emails, and they act based on them.

So here’s a business plan that pulls all this together:

1. Pick a niche. For reasons that I will tell you in a second, I can suggest “parenting” or “business opportunities” as niches.

2. Run ads either on Facebook or Twitter to get subscribers to your newsletter. You should be able to get new subscribers for at most $2-$3.

3. Monetize right away with Sparkloop’s Upscribe to recoup some (or all) of your ad cost on day zero.

4. Send 2-sentence daily emails with 1) a tip to give people something interesting and 2) a newsletter recommendation.

This is why I recommended parenting or business opportunities above. They are big markets, with lots of interest in general. Plus, based on my research into which newsletters are available to promote on Sparkloop, you will have endless, high-quality, relevant options to promote, each paying you $2-$3 per new subscriber.

5. And that’s it. Keep repeating, keep growing, and you will soon be able to, in the words of David Mamet, “BUY A HOUSE IN BEL AIR AND HIRE SOMEONE TO LIVE THERE FOR YOU.”

I myself am planning to complement my own weekly health newsletter with such a quick daily email newsletter, and do just what I’ve told you above.

There’s no reason why you can’t do it as well, even if you have few resources right now beyond the device — laptop or phone — that are reading this post on.

Of course, a crucial part is Sparkloop, which gives you something easy and attractive to promote, even when you have zero other offers.

If you’d like to sign up to Sparkloop, for free, and start putting the business plan above into action right now, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/sparkloop

DO NOT WRITE A CROCK OF SH—

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A few weeks ago, I shared a bit of writing advice from A-list screenwriter and playwright David Mamet.

For some reason, Mamet likes to use all caps when he’s giving out advice. So here’s another loud tip from Mamet, one he initially shouted at a bunch of junior writers working under him:

DO NOT WRITE A CROCK OF SHIT. WRITE A RIPPING THREE, FOUR, SEVEN MINUTE SCENE WHICH MOVES THE STORY ALONG, AND YOU CAN, VERY SOON, BUY A HOUSE IN BEL AIR AND HIRE SOMEONE TO LIVE THERE FOR YOU.

I’m sharing this motivational quote with you to address the most common question I get about Copy Riddles. That question is:

“Is Copy Riddles about how to write bullets specifically, or copy in general?”

The short answer is yes.

The slightly less short answer is Copy Riddles is about implanting core copywriting skills into your head. I’m talking about stuff you can’t do without if you write sales copy…

Like promises… proof… intrigue… and some of those dirty and hidden psychological tricks you may have seen insiders whispering about.

Really, there is only one fundamental part of copywriting that you can’t get through the Copy Riddles process.

That’s telling a story. And that’s why I included a special bonus along with Copy Riddles, titled Storytelling for Sales.

This bonus lays out my system for writing the stories in my “horror advertorials.”

Some of the horror advertorials I’ve written have sold millions of dollars worth of ecommerce products to cold Facebook traffic. And in this bonus, I tell you how I write the stories in these advertorials, which is the most important part.

But like I say, that’s a bonus. Because the fact is:

Once you have the fundamentals that Copy Riddles will implant in your head…

You can use them to WRITE A RIPPING HEADLINE, SUBJECT LINE, BULLET, OR SLICE OF BODY COPY WHICH MOVES THE SALE ALONG… AND YOU CAN, VERY SOON, BUY A HOUSE IN BEL AIR AND HIRE SOMEONE TO LIVE THERE FOR YOU.

In case that kind of power turns you on:

https://copyriddles.com/

“START, EVERY TIME, WITH THIS INVIOLABLE RULE:”

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Last night, I had a few extra hours left at home before my flight to warmer climes.

So there I was, sitting in the kitchen, talking with my mom. Suddenly, she looked at the clock. Her eyes lit up.

“Do you want to watch Scent of a Woman?” she asked.

It’s her favorite movie, or one of them. A 90s Hollywood melodrama about a blinded army colonel, played by Al Pacino, who really enjoys women and yelling at the top of his voice.

If you’ve never seen the movie, I’m about to spoil it for you:

The entire two-and-a-half hours is the colonel’s last grand tour around New York City before he attempts to kill himself. Disabled life isn’t worth living, he believes.

Of course, the colonel doesn’t succeed in killing himself.

There’s a climactic scene in a fancy hotel room in which the colonel’s chaperone, an earnest 17-year-old boy, wrestles, cajoles, and begs the colonel for his gun and his life.

“Give me one reason not to kill myself,” Al Pacino yells at his usual 11, while shoving the gun in the boy’s face.

“I’ll give you two,” says the chaperone, tears running down his face. “You can dance the tango and drive a Ferrari better than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

The colonel exhales. His shoulders slump. He turns around. “I’m gonna need a drink,” he says. And he starts disassembling his gun.

I hope you’ve been sufficiently emotionally aroused. Because now I’d like to sell you a piece of writing advice by film director and playwright David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross, Wag The Dog, Hannibal).

At one point, Mamet wrote up a short guide for a few writers working under him. Like Al Pacino, Mamet also enjoys yelling, at least in print, so he wrote his advice mostly in caps:

“START, EVERY TIME, WITH THIS INVIOLABLE RULE: THE SCENE MUST BE DRAMATIC. it must start because the hero HAS A PROBLEM, AND IT MUST CULMINATE WITH THE HERO FINDING HIM OR HERSELF EITHER THWARTED OR EDUCATED THAT ANOTHER WAY EXISTS.”

Going back to Scent of a Woman, you can see how neatly the hotel scene fits this rule:

The colonel has a problem. He’s lost his self-respect and he believes he cannot enjoy life any more. But he finds himself thwarted in his desire to end his misery. And he is educated that, in spite of his disability, life is still worth living.

So there you go. A simple way to write melodrama, which is really all you should be doing when you write sales copy. Just follow Mamet’s rule.

…

Yes?

What, you want more?

Solid copywriting advice is no longer enough for you?

Jeez. All right. Let me try impressing you with another quote. This one comes from a miserable German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer:

“Pedantry also is a form of folly. It arises from a man’s having little confidence in his own understanding, and therefore not liking to leave things to its discretion, to recognize directly what is right in the particular case. Accordingly, he puts his understanding entirely under the guardianship of his reason. Therefore, the pedant, with his general maxims, almost always misses the mark in life, shows himself to be foolish, absurd, and incompetent.”

The point being, you can write serviceable melodrama by following rules, like the one that Mamet lays down. But you’re not likely to ever write something really great. Or even to produce a breakthrough piece of sales copy.

That’s not to say that rules don’t have their place. But maybe Mamet was wrong.

Maybe you shouldn’t start START, EVERY TIME, WITH THIS INVIOLABLE RULE.

Maybe you should just END BY CHECKING YOUR LIST OF RULES, to make sure you HAVEN’T WRITTEN ANYTHING IRRETRIEVABLY STUPID WHILE TRUSTING YOUR INSTINCTS.

Ok, enough shouting. Here’s a quiet message instead:

Every day, I write about marketing and copywriting. Often I include movie illustrations for the points I’m making. If this kind of thing makes your eyes light up, consider signing up for my email newsletter here.

Why adults crave drama so much

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I’m not sure I could do this every day. Or that I would want to.

I spent today maneuvering a tiny little sailboat. Sun sea wind.

I am more physically tired now than that time 10 years ago, when I thought it was a good idea to start going to a boxing gym.

But after three days of supposed “sailing” over the past week, which involved either a complete lack of wind or a complete lack of control, I got both wind and some control today. I even hung my ass out of the boat and lay down almost flat on top of the waves, two thirds of me hanging off the side, to keep the thing from capsizing. It worked.

(I still ended up capsizing a few times. They tell me that’s normal.)

But let me get to the point:

​​I’m glad I’m making progress handling the boat. But I’m not sure I could do this every day. I’m too adult. ​​This craving for speed and the spending of physical energy is a kids’ game. I’d rather read a book or watch a movie.

Which brings me to a valuable quote I want to share with you.

​​It’s from playwright David Mamet, who wrote a book about drama that all copywriters should read. (Itsa called Three Uses of the Knife.)

And in the book, David gives the following bit, which is both a rare explanation for why we adults crave drama so much… as well as a reminder to put it in your copy — or suffer the consequences:

“Children jump around at the end of the day, to expend the last of that day’s energy. The adult equivalent, when the sun goes down, is to create or witness drama — which is to say, to order the universe into a comprehensible form. Our sundown play/film/gossip is the day’s last exercise of that survival mechanism. In it we attempt to discharge any residual perceptive energies in order to sleep. We will have drama in that spot, and if it’s not forthcoming we will cobble it together out of nothing.”

Higher open rates = lower sales?

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“They like to talk to salesmen, something. They’re lonely. I don’t know. They like to feel superior. Never bought a fucking thing.”
David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross

I’ve been writing a lot of emails in the ecommerce space lately. This is for a client who’s constantly launching new products.

A few days ago, the client wrote me with a question:

“I’m curious with all the recent launches, which have looked most promising from an open rate and revenue standpoint?”

I could tell him right away which of the products were most successful in terms of revenue. But I wasn’t sure about open rates. So I decided to dig into the data.

It turns out the relationship between open rates and sales in our case has been negative. In other words, the more people opened up our emails, the less money we made. I even ran a little regression on it. On average, each extra percent of opens cost us $100 worth of sales.

How could that be?

Well, for one thing, we keep promoting different products, and at different price points. Higher-priced products might have less overall interest, but can result in more sales.

But there are other possible explanations, too.

For example, different subject lines will select for different segments of the market.

Maybe one subject line gets you a lot of opens. But like in that Glengarry Glen Ross scene above, maybe you’re just reaching a bunch of bored leads, who like to click on sensationalist ads, and who have no intention of buying anything.

Whatever the explanation is, the message is clear:

All those millions of blog posts by email marketing experts telling you how to increase your open rates could actually be hurting your sales.

A. B. C.

Always be checking your sales numbers. Sales numbers are for closers. Open rates? They’re for bums.

Speaking of open rates, I write a daily email newsletter with very high open rates. If you’d like to get on it so you can bring those numbers down, here’s where to subscribe.

Don’t play it again, Sam

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“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world,” says Rick while looking into his glass, “she walks into mine.”

Rick’s piano player Sam is there in the back of the darkened room, softly rolling out some hokey-pokey tune.

“What’s that you’re playing?” Ricks asks him.

“Just a little something of my own,” says Sam over his shoulder.

“Well stop it,” Rick tells him. “You know what I wanna hear. You played it for her, you can play it for me.”

Sam stops playing. He turns around carefully. “Oh, I don’t think I can remember.”

“If she can stand it, I can,” barks Rick. “PLAY IT!”

You probably recognize this as one of the most dramatic of all the scenes from all the films in all the Hollywood. It’s from Casablanca, and it’s one of a couple of scenes that gets close to using the famous line “Play it again, Sam,” which doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the movie.

To my mind, this scene is a great illustration of 1) an important point about writing and 2) something more.

The writing bit is something that I read in a New Yorker article about big-name playwright, director, and screenwriter David Mamet. Mamet has written movies like “Glengarry Glenn Ross” (“Always be closing”) as well as The Spanish Prisoner, Wag the Dog, Ronin, and a bunch more. Anyways, here’s the Mamet quote I read today:

“The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always what does the protagonist want… Do we see the protagonist’s wishes fulfilled or absolutely frustrated? That’s the structure of drama… People only speak to get something… They may use a language that seems revealing, but if so, it’s just coincidence, because what they’re trying to do is accomplish an objective.”

You can definitely see the protagonist’s “absolutely frustrated” wishes in the Casablanca scene. A few indirect words, mostly about what song to play, reveal the desperate psychological setup of Rick’s character in that moment.

You want to show, not tell. And you want to make the dialog about what the protagonist wants, whether he’s getting it or not.

That covers the first half of the Mamet quote above.

But like I said, there’s something more in that Casablanca scene and in that Mamet quote. It has to do with a really fundamental truth about human psychology. And it’s very useful to know if you are ever looking to influence people, or to understand them better.

But I can’t talk about this second thing today. Because I have a rule, “One post, one topic.” However, read my post tomorrow, and I’ll tell you all about this fundamental truth about the human mind, and how it fits into the Casablanca scene above.

Are you Joe Hepp to the real con game?

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Yesterday, a friend and I spent a lot of time tracking down the phrase “Joe Hepp.”

It appears in A House of Games, a David Mamet film about con men.

“Are you Joe Hepp?” is apparently an old circus saying that means, “Are you a know-it-all?” It later morphed into, “Are you hep?” — meaning “are you in the know?” — and later hip, hippy, hipster, etc.

But here’s something you might find more interesting.

It’s the etymology of another phrase from A House of Games. It comes up when the main con man, Mike, talks about what a con game really is.

It’s short for confidence game, says Mike.

You might have already known that.

But do you know why it’s called a confidence game?

Not because the con man gains your confidence in order to cheat you. Instead, it’s because he gives you his confidence. And this makes you trust him, and makes you susceptible for manipulation and persuasion.

In other words, it’s the old reciprocity principle from Robert Cialdini’s book Influence.

Except, not as it’s applied in the lame and ineffective way of most marketers (“If I bombard my prospects with free pdfs and hard-teaching emails, then they will feel obliged to eventually buy from me”).

No.

There are much better, more subtle, and more effective ways to apply reciprocity — AKA the con game — to copywriting and marketing.

I won’t lay them out here.

But if you’d like to know what I have in mind, you might find some answers here:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/