Gary Bencivenga

Writing formulaic copy month after month

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A couple weeks ago, I got on a call with a long-time reader, who works as an in-house copywriter.

This is part of an illuminating practice I’ve taken up, of actually interacting with people who read my emails and buy my courses.

Anyways, this reader, who has been working as a copywriter at the same company for four years, said the following:

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The main problem is, each month, the offers don’t really change so I’m writing the same stuff repeatedly.

The only difference is when they have a product launch, I get to write different stuff and set up more flows.

Other than that, it’s quite routine. There’s not much growth for my skill set.

To be honest, I don’t write a lot of copy there, because the copy I write there is quite formulaic and it’s also, not much variation. I don’t get to experiment much with ideas.

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About that:

Gary Bencivenga, widely called the world’s best living copywriter before he retired, liked to quote Al Davis, the coach from 1963-1965 for the infamously tough, mean, aggressive 1965 Oakland Raiders team.

One time, during a press conference before a game, a reporter asked Davis, “So I guess you’ll just have to take what the defense gives you?”

Davis glared. “We don’t take what the defense gives us. We take what we want.”

Gary Bencivenga, who seems to be as sweet and nice of a man as you can put a hat on, recommended Davis’s tough-guy attitude for copywriters also.

Gary didn’t just take the offer the client gave him to promote. Instead, he took what he wanted — he switched the offer altogether, or reworked it, or added to it — until it was as close to his ideal as he could get it, and many miles ahead of where it had started.

So that’s point 1.

Point 2 is that you’re not Gary Bencivenga. You don’t have his authority, and you don’t command the same deference and respect from clients. That’s normal. Gary, again, was the world’s best, and he had a reputation to match.

The situation is even trickier if you’re an in-house copywriter, working with one company full-time. In this case, the power dynamic shifts even more to your client/employer.

And maybe, when you try to “take what you want” — to rework an offer, or to experiment with copywriting ideas, or to simply do something that will stretch and increase your skills — your client/employer gives you a look and just says, “No.”

What then?

It’s up to you. But one thing you can do is say, “Fine. I’ll do my own thing.”

I’m not saying to quit your job. You can “take what you want” on your own time, with nobody controlling what you do or how you do it. It can give you new skills, experience, extra authority.

And who knows?

If you come to your client/employer next time, and cite a personal success story, instead of just pulling a good idea out of the air, maybe you’ll get a better hearing.

If not, you will still feel more fulfilled, skilled, and stimulated. And you’ll have options, because you’re building your own thing on the side, and taking what you want there.

On the call I had with the in-house copywriter I mentioned above, I heard that this is exactly what he’s doing. He’s hunting and working with freelance clients as well. Plus, he’s started his own email list, and he’s writing to it daily.

Who’s got time for all that?

I don’t know. You almost certainly don’t. Or maybe you do. And maybe, if you want some help with the last part, starting and sticking to writing a daily email, you will like my Daily Email Habit service.

Every day, Daily Email Habit prompts you to write something different.

At the end of 7 days, you already have a bunch of little experiments you wouldn’t have had before. And at the end of 30 days, you can experience a transformation.

If you’d like to experience that transformation as soon as possible, it makes sense to get started today:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Industry gossip you shouldn’t care about but probably do

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Yesterday, I exchanged a couple emails with the “The World’s Most Obsessed Ad Archivist,” Lawrence Bernstein.

Along with a few decades and deep connections in the direct response industry, Lawrence has the distinction of being one of only a handful of people to be called out as a “valued resource” by A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga, at the climax of Gary’s legendary Farewell Seminar.

I promoted a little offer of Lawrence’s a couple months back. Lawrence was good enough to tell me yesterday that the 150+ sales of that offer that I helped make were slightly more than he got from his own house file.

That’s gratifying to read. And considering I only have a modest-sized list, it’s proof of the effect of daily emailing done right. But wait. There’s more.

Lawrence then went on to say how this compares to big-marketer results he’s been privvy to recently:

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By contrast, and I realize this isn’t apples to apples…

There are/”were” some BIG marketers who thrived on the affiliate merry-go-round of ubiquitous as they are shallow $2K courses, usually backed up by webinar selling.

That model hasn’t had much of a pulse — at least as far as I can see — for a year or so. One of my subscribers and friends, who writes for one of the big financial outfits wrote me this last February, regarding those $2K offers:

“Been on a massive downslide ever since the FTC stepped in against Agora Financial – and in general the most recent “home-runs” have been more like inside-the-park home runs. They rarely work externally… and they’re mostly just milking house files with backend launches.

I’ve seen groups repeatedly run promo’s bringing in names at 10% of BE just because they had nothing else…

I’ve seen huge affiliate pushes for webinar launches that resulted in 750,000 names on a hotlist… and the sales were so low the affiliates payouts were ZERO…”

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Let me repeat that last number because it’s so crazy: 750,000 qualified leads… and effectively ZERO in profits.

I read something similar in an email from Shiv Shetti recently.

Shiv shared stuff he’s heard inside private masterminds, gossip about specific flashy gurus in direct marketing-related niches.

These are guys who are publicly making millions and living a Floyd Mayweather lifestyle… who are in private broke, nearing bankruptcy, or are facing revolt from the customers and clients they have managed to rope in.

Maybe you’re not in the direct response industry. Still, I’m telling you this in case you ever find yourself looking around, and seeing that everyone else is doing so much better than you are… maybe even including people who got going well after you did.

You can’t really know anybody else’s full reality. And if you’re like me, you don’t even want their reality, even if it’s not all rotten.

From what I can tell, the insecurity about how well others are doing is simply a way to focus the general human desire for ANYTHING BUT WHAT I HAVE NOW.

“People are like cats,” says Dan Kennedy, “they always want to be in the other room.”

The trouble is, this kind of “But look where everybody else is!” comparison is such a fundamental part of human nature, or at least my own, that there’s no easy, quick, and permanent fix for it.

But certain things do help. Awareness of it… inquiry about what’s really going on, and if the surrounding thoughts are true or not… focus on your own work, instead of gawking around.

And maybe the following exercise.

It’s quick, it’s easy, and it might just give you a permanent fix, at least a partial one in your business, and maybe even in how you feel about it.

If you have a couple minutes and an open mind:

https://bejakovic.com/things-worthy-of-compliment-in-12-of-my-competitors/

The highest paid quality on earth

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Last night, I started reading a little book on door knocking.

Door knocking?

Yep, it’s a real skill. And a lucrative one. ​​​

​​​The book was written by a real estate agent who built her entire career by going up to a stranger’s door, knocking on said door, and if somebody opened, asking if they wanted to sell their home.

​​Most of the time, the people inside said no. So the real estate agent would turn around, walk down to the next house, and do it all over again.

The author of the book gives a few good reasons why a sane person might want to live their life like this. Here’s a few that might resonate with you:

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You will earn more money than most doctors, lawyers, pilots, and professors. You will have more freedom to come and go than almost any other professional, and you will have a saleable product (your business) that will continue to support you after you exit the industry.

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I love this book so far, and in particular I love what the author says is the number one quality that leads to success as a door knocker, and by extension, to success in opening up any kind of sales conversation.

Can you guess what this quality is?

I’ll give you a hint. In fact I’ll give you a few hints, and tell you what it’s not:

* Persistence. A lot of people persist in spite of not getting any results or making any sales. (Such as, ahem, myself for large stretches of writing this newsletter.)

* Intelligence. Good God no.

* Extroversion. Now we’re getting a little warmer, but in the words of Eddie Murphy, that ain’t it…

* Likeability. Sure, being seen as likeable helps open conversations. But a lot of people, myself included, tend to default to thinking that you’re either likeable or not.

​​Of course, that’s not true.

​​We each morph from moment to moment, and from environment to environment. Our likability goes up and down, because it’s not really inherent to us. It’s in other people’s heads, and not something that we have control over. So likeability ain’t it either.

I’ve now given you some hints. I told you what this magic quality is not. As to what it is?

If you’d like to know that, I’ll tell you. Or rather, I’ll point you to it.

​​This quality makes up chapter one of one of the greatest sales books of all time, where it’s called the “highest paid quality on earth.”

If you’d like to know what this quality is and why it is so valuable and how to get it, read the book.

​​Plus, read the book because no less of an authority than Gary Bencivenga, the A-list copywriter who gets the most love an adulation from other top-level copywriters and marketers, credits his great success to this book.

And by the way, you can cheat. You can find out what this quality is without reading the book.

Somehow, I suspect this will do absolutely nothing for you. But you decide. Here’s the book, with all its sales wisdom:

https://bejakovic.com/highest-paid

If you’ve got 2 minutes right now, I guarantee more response to your offers

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A few weeks ago, I joined JK Molina’s email list. You might have heard of JK — he’s kind of the marketing coach to all the coaches who coach coaches.

Anyways, in between the steady flow of familiar promises – “make $100k per month with just Google docs and email” — I found an interesting persuasion idea in one of JK’s emails. Says JK:

“You get better leads by offering to take something they ALREADY HAVE into something they DON’T.”

Huh? The first time I read this, I had no idea what JK’s on about. But an example helped:

Bad ad: “How to make $30,000”

Good ad: “Turn the old car you’ve got parked in your garage into $30,000.”

A-ha. A dim, flickering light came on in my head.

And thanks to that flickering light, I could once again see Gary Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullet #3. Gary asked which of these investing headlines won:

A:

The Millionaire Maker:
Can he make YOU rich, too?

B:

If you’ve got 20 minutes a month,
I guarantee to work a financial miracle in your life

As you can probably guess by now, the answer was B. Gary says it “worked like a charm and handily beat the previous champ.”

Gary’s explanation for why B won is that we’ve all gotten jaded by big promises, but the if-then structure somehow manages to disable normal critical faculties.

Maybe that’s really it.

Or maybe it’s what JK says above.

Maybe it’s that we don’t respond to promises unless we feel they are concrete and real. Unless those promises are anchored to something we can touch, taste, or in case of 20 minutes, simply know with 100% certainty that we have on us, right here, right now.

So try it yourself and see.

​​Use the if-then structure, or promise to turn the junk in your prospect’s garage into a stack of $100 bills.

I guarantee this will increase response to your offers. And if it doesn’t, come back tomorrow, and I’ll give you a new idea, for free, and keep giving you new ideas, until one of them does increase your response.

Also:

If you’ve got two thumbs and a smart phone, then I promise you a new way to fascinate your email subscribers every day. For more information on that:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Good manipulation vs. bad manipulation

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Let me introduce you to one of Hollywood’s top creators:

A man who has won an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, five Primetime Emmy Awards, and three Golden Globes.

A man who’s worth about $90 million.

A man whose words, stories, and ideas have been consumed, willingly, eagerly, by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

You may know his name. It’s Aaron Sorkin. He’s the creator of shows like The West Wing and Newsroom, and the screenwriter behind movies like A Few Good Men and The Social Network.

Sorkin was asked once about the difference between language that convinces and language that manipulates. He replied:

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There’s no difference. It’s only when manipulation is obvious, then it’s bad manipulation.

​​What I do is every bit as manipulative as some magician doing a magic trick.

​​If I can wave this red silk handkerchief enough in my right hand, I can do whatever I want with my left hand and you’re not going to see it.

​​When you’re writing fiction, everything is manipulation. I’m setting up the situation specifically so that you’ll laugh at this point or cry at this point or be nervous at this point.

​​If you can see how I’m sawing the lady in half, then it’s bad manipulation. If you can’t see how I did that, then it’s good.

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​​Maybe you don’t agree with Sorkin. And you don’t have to. I’m not trying to convince you, or manipulate you, into accepting this idea.

I’m just sharing this idea because of an occasional objection I’ve gotten to my Copy Riddles program. Specifically, the objection has to do with the following bullet I tease on the sales page:

“The sneaky 7-word phrase Gary Bencivenga used to get away with making extreme promises. Gary Bencivenga was famous for providing proof in his copy… but this has nothing to do with proof. It’s pure A-list sleight-of-hand.”

A few people have written me over the years, saying they like the sound of Copy Riddles, think it might be for them, but worry that program is somehow teaching them techniques of manipulation.

Which is absolutely true.

Like Sorkin says, when you write copy, everything is manipulation.

You create an emotional experience, and guide people along to your desired goal.

If you want to go Dale Carnegie, you call that influence. If you want to go Robert Greene, you call it seduction. If you want to go Aaron Sorkin, you call it manipulation.

Now about manipulation, the good vs. the bad:

One thing that Copy Riddles does show you is the good kind of manipulation. Meaning, manipulation that’s not obvious.

Because direct response copywriting doesn’t have to be AMAZING or filled with SECRETS that THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW. Yes, that stuff can work. But it’s not required, and in many places, it’s not even helpful.

The good news is, direct response copywriting can also be subtle, under the radar, and not obvious.

​​And as evidence of that, take Gary Bencivenga, the copywriter I mentioned above. Gary wrote copy that most copywriting newbies would say is weak — because it didn’t read like most direct response. And yet, Gary’s words sold millions of dollars of helpful, quality products.

Maybe you’d like to learn how to do the same. If so, maybe take a look at the following page:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Red-hot tip for great names for your new offers

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A new reader/buyer writes in with something notable:

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Hey John,

I found your blog through google a few days ago and I just read the email you sent yesterday about copyhour.

I just purchased trough your link so I was wondering if you could send me access to the Red-Hot Copywriting Secrets bundle?

Thank you!

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Red-Hot Copywriting Secrets is the name I gave in my email yesterday to the bundle of five free bonuses I’m giving away to people who join CopyHour via my affiliate link.

Here’s why I took note when my reader asked for that by name:

My #1 test for a great name is whether people feed it back to me.

I seed a name somewhere in an email. And if days, weeks, or months later, people still feed that name back to me, I know I’m on to something good.

It’s not a lot of surprise that Red-Hot Copywriting Secrets turned out to be a sticky name. I actually got the “Red-Hot” part from that Gary Bencivenga ad I was talking about in yesterday’s email.

Which is another reason to study and even hand copy old and successful ads like Gary’s. And on that note:

My promo of CopyHour continues, but it will end soon, specifically, tomorrow, Thursday, at 8:31pm CET.

If you join CopyHour before then, I will give you five free bonuses, each of which I previously sold for good money:

#1. Copy Zone (price last sold at: $100). My 175-page, A-Z guide on the business side of copywriting, from getting started with no experience or portfolio, all the way to becoming an A-list copywriter. Only ever sold once before, during a flash 24-hour offer in March 2023.

#2. Most Valuable Postcard #2: Ferrari Monster (price last sold at: $100). A deep dive into a single fascinating topic — code named Ferrari Monster — which I claim is the essence of all copywriting and marketing. Get the Ferrari Monster right, and almost everything else falls into place.

#3. Copy Riddles Lite (price last sold at $99). A slice of my Copy Riddles program, proportionately priced. Try yourself against legendary A-list copywriters like Gene Schwartz, David Deutsch, and Clayton Makepeace — and in the process, implant new copywriting skills into your brain.

#4. Horror Advertorial Swipe File (price last sold at: $100). A zip file with 25 PDFs, featuring the original copy for 25 of my horror advertorials. These advertorials pulled in millions of dollars on cold Facebook and YouTube traffic, and sold everything from fake diamonds and dog seat belts, to stick-on bras and kids’ vitamins.

#5. 9 Deadly Email Sins (price last sold at: $100). 9 lessons distilled from my expensive and exclusive one-on-one coaching sessions with successful business owners and marketers.

When you add all those prices up, you get a total of $499 in free bonuses. This happens to be more than CopyHour currently sells for.

That said, don’t join CopyHour just to get my free bonuses. Join because you decide that you will do the work involved in CopyHour, and that you will benefit from it.

For more info on that, take a look at Derek’s writeup of how CopyHour works:

https://bejakovic.com/copyhour

P.S. If you do join CopyHour, write me and say so. Also write me in case you already have bought via my affiliate link. The affiliate portal only lets me see the first name of who’s bought and not the email. So write me and say you bought, and I’ll send over your bonuses.

Announcing: Red-Hot Copywriting Secrets

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I’m excited to announce my new offer, Red-Hot Copywriting Secrets.

​​I’ll tell you about this new offer in a moment, but first I want to share a valuable marketing tip with you. Here goes:

Back in the 1990s, Gary Bencivenga, widely believed by marketing experts to be the greatest living copywriter, sold a little offer of his own.

Gary’s offer was a book of tips for winning jobs. He sold it via ads in USA Today, like this:

Headline — “Do you make these mistakes in job interviews?”

Offer — The core book, “Interviews that Win Jobs,” for $49.95. There was also a free bonus, which Gary said was “selling nationally for $49.95,” called “How to Answer the 64 Toughest Interview Questions.”

So far, so standard.

Except, I am a bit of an amateur advertising sleuth.

And so I happen to know that Gary also ran a second ad for a second book about job and interview tips.

He sold this second offer via ads USA Today, like this:

Headline — “Job hunting? How well can YOU answer these 64 toughest interview questions?”

Offer — The core book, “How to Answer the 64 Toughest Interview Questions,” for $49.95. There was also a free bonus, which Gary said was “selling nationally for $49.95,” called “Interviews that Win Jobs.”

So that’s my little tip for you today:

Do what Gary did, and double your front-end offers by selling both your bonus and your core offer.

This will force you to make both offer and bonus sexy and appealing.

​​And it will add legitimacy and authority when you say that the bonus sells for $49.95, as opposed to the mealy-mouthed alternative of so many marketers, valued at $49.95.

I don’t bring up this Gary Bencivenga tip by accident.

I bring it up because I discovered this tip back in the decade of the 2010s, when I spent 100+ hours copying old and successful ads by hand, including both of Gary’s jobs ads.

I doubt that I would have spotted Gary’s doubled-up offer had I simply “read” Gary’s first ad, skimmed past that “selling nationally for $49.95” at the very end, and tossed the ad aside.

That to me is the value of hand-copying ads and sales letters.

Other people ascribe magic to the actual neurology of copying stuff out by hand.

I’ve personally never experienced that. But I have found the process of copying ads immensely valuable because it forced me to sit and really examine ads carefully, and spot many of the valuable details that make them work, which I would have missed otherwise.

Which brings me to my new offer. It’s a special, one-time bundle called Red-Hot Copywriting Secrets. Inside this unique bundle, you can find the following:

#1. Copy Zone (selling nationally for $100). My 175-page, A-Z guide on the business side of copywriting, from getting started with no experience or portfolio, all the way to becoming an A-list copywriter.

#2. Most Valuable Postcard #2: Ferrari Monster (selling nationally for $100). A deep dive into a single fascinating topic — code named Ferrari Monster — which I claim is the essence of all copywriting and marketing. Get the Ferrari Monster right, and almost everything else falls into place.

#3. Copy Riddles Lite (selling nationally for $99). A slice of my Copy Riddles program, proportionately priced. Try yourself against legendary A-list copywriters like Gene Schwartz, David Deutsch, and Clayton Makepeace — and in the process, implant new copywriting skills into your brain.

#4. Horror Advertorial Swipe File (selling nationally for $100). A zip file with 25 PDFs, featuring the original copy for 25 of my horror advertorials. These advertorials pulled in millions of dollars on cold Facebook and YouTube traffic, and sold everything from fake diamonds and dog seat belts, to stick-on bras and kids’ vitamins.

#5. 9 Deadly Email Sins (selling nationally for $100). 9 lessons distilled from my expensive and exclusive one-on-one coaching sessions with successful business owners and marketers.

The trainings inside Red-Hot Copywriting Secrets sell nationally for a total of $499.

But you can get this bundle at a discounted price of just $497 — if you act by this Thursday at 8:31pm CET, using the link below.

Plus, if you get Red-Hot Copywriting Secrets before the deadline, I’ll also add in a free bonus, membership in Derek Johanson’s CopyHour program.

​​CopyHour sells nationally, and internationally, for $497. But it’s yours free when you get Red-Hot Copywriting Secrets.

​​To get both before the doors close:

https://bejakovic.com/copyhour

P.S. If you do get Red-Hot Copywriting Secrets, write me and say so. Due to the quirks of the above sales cart, I can only see the first name of who’s bought, and not the email. So write me and say you bought, and I’ll make sure you get both Red-Hot Copywriting Secrets and access to CopyHour.

The beginning and the end of copywriting

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Today being January 1st, I find it an excellent opportunity to wish you a happy New Year and to point out the surprising significance of January.

As I learned when I was still young and very stupid, January is named after the Roman god Janus, the two-faced deity of doors, gates, and more broadly, beginnings and endings.

I say I was still very stupid when I first learned this, because my reaction was, “A god of doors? How lame. What’s next? A god of faucets?”

It was only later, after I read a book or two, that I found out just how fundamental the idea of a door — an entry point, an exit point — really is to the human mind.

Because all human perception, down at the most basic neurological level, is based on difference, contrast.

Right now, bunches of your neurons are frantically working to determine where they can draw a line, and call everything before it one thing, everything after it another, and convince you these are somehow meaningfully separate, and discard the many other details that don’t fit into that picture of the world.

Without this Januarial work of drawing lines and creating doors to come up with discrete concepts, we couldn’t really have any higher-level thinking.

That’s why it makes sense that January, the month of doors, comes before, say March, named after the Roman god of war, Mars.

“That’s truly fascinating,” I hear you saying. “I had no idea of the depth of your classical learning or your smattering of popsci neuroscience. But what does this have to do with marketing or making money or really anything else I might actually care about on January 1st?”

Everything. It has everything to do with it.

This basic observation, of the outsized importance of beginnings and endings, repeats itself at every level of the sales job.

At the level of entire sales campaigns, where the opening of the campaign and the closing of the campaign bring in almost all the sales…

At the level of individual sales letters, where the headline and lead on the one end, and the offer and close at the other end, represent 80%-95% of the effectiveness or sales pull of that letter…

At the level of individual sales claims or promises, such as the following:

“The simple 12-word-sentence that will make you the #1 candidate more often than you would ever believe.”

That’s a bullet written by A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga, considered by many to be the greatest of the greats because he won so often against other A-list copywriters.

You might think Gary’s bullet is just a simple, direct response promise. But there’s a surprising amount of subtle psychology that goes into this bullet, with a particular emphasis on what Gary chooses to put first in this bullet, and what to put last.

I won’t explain that subtle psychology here, but I will tell you the following:

Wouldn’t it be nice to start this New Year acquiring a new skill, a truly valuable skill, a skill that few others possess?

Wouldn’t it be nice to acquire one of the greatest skills you can have as a copywriter, whether you write for clients or for your own business?

Wouldn’t it be nice to acquire a skill that ultimately all effective copy comes from?

You probably know what I’m talking about.

But if you’d like to make 100% sure, or if you’d actually like to use this January 1st to get yourself this skill and the associated bump in fortune that this skill can bring, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

The most famous copywriter, real or fictional

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On Dan Heath’s new podcast, “What It’s Like To Be,” I heard Dan asking a TV meteorologist, a criminal defense lawyer, a forensic accountant, all the same question:

“Who’s the most famous meteorologist/criminal defense lawyer/forensic accountant, real or fictional?”

This got me wondering who the most famous copywriter might be, real or fictional.

I had a gut feeling. I double-checked via simple Google search, by looking at the total number of results.

As far as real copywriters go, there’s really only one possible option for a copywriter that a rando off the street might know.

​​That’s David Ogilvy.

There’s something about the pipe, the smart suits, the English disdain, the French castle.

Sure enough, Ogilvy was the only real copywriter who has more than 1M indexed Google results about him.

As for fictional copywriters, it depends on who you consider a copywriter.

Don Draper, the creative art director from the TV show Mad Men, clocks in at over 2M Google results.

But was he really a copywriter or more of an idea man? I’ll let you decide.

Meanwhile, the most famous, fictional, 100% copywriter that I’ve been able to find is Peggy Olson, also a character on Mad Men, who only gets around 220k Google results.

Should we stop there? Oh no.

It turns out several celebs out there have a copywriting background… but are not today known as copywriters.

One of these is novelist James Patterson. Before Patterson set out to write 200 books (and counting), he was a copywriter and later the CEO of J. Walter Thompson, one of the biggest and oldest ad agencies in the world.

Patterson has 6M+ Google results to attest to his fame.

And if we’re already going with celebrities who have copywriting in their history, and maybe their blood, then we get to the most famous copywriter of all time, real or fictional, live or dead, even though nobody nowhere would identify him as a copywriter.

I’m talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald worked for a time as a copywriter before becoming the author of the quintessential great American novel, The Great Gatsby, and later a topic of almost 13M Google results.

So there. Now you know. And now you might ask yourself, “What did I just read? Did I really need this in my life? How did I wind up at the bottom of this email?”

If any of those questions is flitting through your head, let me point out that interest in famous people seems to be hardwired into our brains.

Tabloid writers and sales copywriters know this fact well, and they use it over and over and over. Because it works to draw attention and get people reading, day after day.

That’s a free lesson in copywriting.

For more such lessons, including ones that you might not be able to shrug off by saying, “I guess I knew that,” you will have to buy my Copy Riddles course.

The whole big idea behind Copy Riddles is the appeal of famous people — at least famous in the small niche of direct response copywriting.

I mean, on the sales page, in place of a subheadline, what I have is a picture featuring Gary Halbert, Gary Bencivenga, Stefan Georgi, and Ben Settle, all of them celebrities in the micro world of direct response, all of them paid off on that page as being integral to the course.

If you’d like to buy Copy Riddles, or if you simply want to read some gossip about famous copywriters, then head here and get ready to be amazed and shocked:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

The two kinds of newsletters

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It’s late — I’ve been working until now on a new daily newsletter that I will launch tomorrow. It’s connected to my weekly health newsletter, which I tease occasionally but never reveal.

Inevitably, whenever I launch something new like this, a million and one little niggling things pop up that need to be done.

That’s why it’s late. And that’s why I somehow still haven’t written this daily email.

So let me just share something I wish somebody had shared with me a long, long time ago.

Had somebody told me this, it would have cleared up many confused days and nights of my marketing education.

It would have taken away some worries.

And maybe it would have even made me some money.

Here’s the big “secret”:

There are two fundamental styles of direct marketing/businesses/newsletters.

The first style I will call the Marty style, as in Marty Edelston.

Edelston was the founder of Boardroom, a $100M direct response publisher. He hired the bestest and A-listest copywriters out there, including Gary Bencivenga, Parris Lampropoulos, and David Deutsch.

The second style I will call the Dan style, as in Dan Kennedy.

Dan was at one point the highest-paid copywriter on the planet. He is also somebody who has shaped generations of direct marketers, including Russell Brunson, Ben Settle, and, on a much more modest level, me.

Marty style: intriguing, benefit-oriented, impersonal.

Dan style: intimate, personality-oriented, opinionated.

The Marty style of newsletter features cool how-to insider tips, such as how to ouwit a mugger in a self-service elevator, along with references to outside authorities who revealed that info.

The Dan style of newsletter features a personal rant by Dan about how the sky is falling or is about to fall. It features no outside references because what other authority could you ever need besides Dan himself.

So which style is better?

Or rather, why are there two styles, and not just one, the way we would all prefer?

You guessed it. Because each style can work well, and each style has its drawbacks.

Dan style means you can sell much more easily, and at much higher prices, and people will stick with you for longer.

But your audience is much more limited, and your product is really you.

Marty style means you can reach a much broader audience much more quickly, plus you don’t have to grow out mutton chop mustaches and share photos of yourself sitting on a bull.

But your audience is much less attached to you, and they will pay $39 instead of $399 for the same info.

So which style you choose to follow is really up to you and the kind of marketing/business/newsletter you can stomach for an extended period of time.

Of course, you can also stomach both, which is basically what I’m doing.

I have this newsletter, more on the mutton-chop-mustache, Dan Kennedy side. On the other hand, my health newsletter, including the daily newsletter I’m launching tomorrow, is fully on the “what never to eat on an airplane,” Marty Edelston side.

You gotta figure out what you want to do.

Final point:

If you do decide to go the Marty Edelston, impersonal, benefit-oriented route, then you will likely need copy chops, above and beyond what you will need if you are really selling yourself.

And if you do need copy chops, specifically the kinds of copy chops that people like Gary Bencivenga, Parris Lampropoulos, and David Deutsch have, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr