Gary Halbert

The end of info products

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THE FOLLOWING EMAIL IS CONTROVERSIAL AND MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO SOME AUDIENCES

READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED

You might be familiar with Max Sackheim’s famous ad, “Do you make these mistakes in English?”

The ad ran for decades, unchanged, and kept bringing in profitable business better than any contender.

Thousands of pages of analysis have been written about the 7-word headline of this ad and the copy that followed.

But what about the actual product this ad was ultimately selling? What about the means by which a prospect could hope to correct his or her mistakes in English? What were prospects actually exchanging their money for?

Sackheim’s copy only teases you about the product, and calls it a “remarkable invention” and a “100% self-correcting device.”

As far as I know, nobody today actually has this remarkable invention stashed away in their garage. Whatever it was, it’s clear it was sold as some kind of tool, a device, and not just information.

This is a well-known direct marketing truth that’s been around since Sackheim’s days and before, back into the age of patent medicines.

A real, tangible, external mechanism — a fat-loss potion, a dog seatbelt, a “100% self-correcting device” — sells much easier than just good info — how to lose weight, how to be a less negligent dog owner, how to speak gooder English.

Smart modern-day info marketers have gotten hep to this fact. That’s why people like Russell Brunson and Ben Settle and Sam Ovens have put their reputation and audience to work behind tools like ClickFunnels and Berserker Mail and Skool.

The thing is, creating a tool, whether physical or software, has traditionally been an expensive, complicated, and risky business.

Take a look at Groove Funnels, another tool created a few years ago by another experienced info marketer, Mike Filsaime. Groove Funnels is a bloated, buggy, frankly unusable product. I say that as somebody who invested into a lifelong subscription in Groove Funnels.

I have a couple degrees in computer science. I also have about a decade’s worth amateur and pro software development experience. But after I quit my IT job 10+ years ago, I never once considered putting this experience to use in order to develop any kind of tool I could sell.

Until now.

Because things are changing. Today even a monkey, working alone, can create and deploy a valuable app simply by querying ChatGPT persistently enough. And there are plenty of shovels available for such would-be gold miners, tools to build tools, which will do much of the in-between work for you. Just say what you will to happen, and it will be done.

Decades ago, master direct marketer Gary Halbert said that the best best product of all is… information!

But I bet if Gary were alive today, he’d be hard at work (or maybe easy at work) creating some kind of high-margin tool to sell, in the broadest sense of the word — a thing to do some or all of the work for an audience with a problem. A few reasons why:

* Again, tools are easy to sell. They fit with innate human psychology of how we want to solve problems.

* Tools can make for natural continuity income if you license them out instead of sell them outright.

* Tools can create their own moat over time. There can be lock-in or switching cost if your users build on top of your tool.

* And now, thanks to the most remarkable invention of AI, it’s possible to create tools quickly, cheaply, and with great margins.

All that’s to say, best product of all… information? I don’t think so. Not any more. Best start adapting now.

Speaking of which, I got an offer for you:

Would you say that there are any tech issues that are keeping you from starting your own email list?

If there are, write in and let me know about them.

In turn, I’ll have something for you that you might like.

$12k bargain that’s working now

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I just finished an interesting hot seat for a copywriter within the PCM mastermind.

This copywriter is working with a business that’s selling a $4k offer and a $12k offer.

The two offers are largely the same, except the $12k offer is more done for you and comes with a stronger guarantee. Result:

The $4k offer gets about 5 sales each month. The $12k offer gets about 8-10 sales each month.

This reminded me of a Gary Halbert quote:

“Fundamentals never change but current variations of how to best use those fundamentals are something you must always stay on top of. In other words: It’s not enough to know that everybody wants a bargain… you must also know what people currently consider a bargain.”

It’s no big mystery that an offer that’s more done for you is easier to sell, and can sell for significantly more. That’s a fundamental that never changes.

What might be a surprise is that today, people apparently consider $12k a bargain.

And on that note:

I’m considering putting together something new, about unique offers working now.

I’m interested in offers that are 1) actually selling well right now, and that are 2) selling with zero or very little appeal to authority.

The way I figure, that intersection is where the most interesting and effective offers can be found.

Ben Settle could probably sell a closetful of old shoes to his list if he wanted to. That’s not because old shoes are a great offer. It’s because Ben has spent 15 years disciplining and punishing his list to do as he says.

Maybe you don’t want to go through that, or maybe you don’t have the time.

But even if you have authority or a strong relationship with your list, a sexy, unique, effective offer, one that will stand independent of you, will make your life easier and your wallet heavier.

Like I said, I’m considering creating something new about such unique, independent offers.

Can you do me a favor?

Simply hit reply and let me know if such information could be valuable to you in what you do. If it wouldn’t be valuable to you, let me know that as well.

Or of course, if you know an offer that is both 1) working now and 2) selling without authority, then let me know, and I will add it to the list of specimens to feature. Thanks in advance.

A-pile vs. B-pile marketers

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A few days ago, I exchanged some emails with a business owner who was in a bad way.

“At the moment,” he said, “I’m feeling a bit like Halbert sitting in the dark trying to figure out what to write in that sales letter to get the power back on.”

If you don’t know the story of Gary Halbert, he was a well-known direct marketer and a better-known copywriting guru.

In the early days of his career, Gary was not very successful.

He would often spend his family’s utilities money to pay for stamps for sales letters to market some new scheme.

Those sales letters went out into the world. What came back were orders and some money, but never as many orders or as much money as Gary would have liked. Sometimes not even enough to cover the utilities bills.

The story goes that Gary was sitting in his kitchen one night, in the dark, with no water because he hadn’t paid the bills.

He was sick and tired of the stress and the visible signs of failure all around him.

And then — because that’s what makes a good story — the lights came on. Not in the kitchen, but in Gary’s head.

Gary had his moment of genius.

He figured out a new product and a new way to market it.

The result was a major success — millions of new customers and a multi-million dollar company, built on the back of one good, I mean, perfect, sales letter.

Now that I’ve told you this story, I’d like to propose that it’s proof that Gary Halbert was what I call a B-pile marketer.

We know of Gary today because his “sitting in the dark” moment actually produced a success. But it equally could have produced yet another failure. In fact, more than equally, because new direct marketing tests fail more than they succeed.

Had that happened, maybe nobody would know of Gary Halbert today, just like we don’t know the millions of other B-pile marketers who repeatedly failed and eventually disappeared. ​
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Compare this to marketers I’m calling “A-pile.”

A-pile marketers aren’t well-know either, but that’s because their story is not as dramatic. There’s no “sitting in the dark” moment. Instead, they build large, stable, cash-spewing businesses that work year after year, without ever being at risk of having the lights turned off.

What’s the difference between the A-pile and the B-pile?

Hark unto me, Buckwheat:

The difference is a marketing strategy that has the highest chance of being successful — of bringing back lots and lots of orders and lots and lots of money.

It’s a strategy that Gary Halbert must not have known early in his career. Or maybe he knew it and was just unable to practice it. I know for a fact — because I heard Jay Abraham say it — that it’s something Gary didn’t apply even later in his career, when he shoulda known better.

Maybe this proven, stable, cash-generating strategy went against Gary’s romantic and heroic nature.

If that’s your nature, too, then maybe this strategy won’t be right for you either.

On the other hand, if you’d like to keep the lights on, and keep the orders flowing, without having to produce a moment of genius, you can find this strategy described in detail in chapter 3 here:

https://bejakovic.com/a-pile

The heart and soul of great copywriting

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Last night, I announced the new “Secret Demand” training I’ll hold on Friday.

This live training will be all about unlocking secret demand in your list. Once you can do that, you can pull an extra $5k, or $15k, or $50k from your list, in just 3-5 days, whenever you so decide.

A good number of people raised their hand to express interest in Secret Demand. I sent them the full details. And this morning, I woke up to the first notifications from ThriveCart that sales had come in.

That’s nice.

Still…

Based on the number of people who had raised their hand, I expected more sales to come in by now.

Maybe that’s greed. Maybe it’s impatience. Maybe it’s simply that I know how valuable what I will teach can be to the right person.

What to do in a situation like that? When some sales are coming in… but you suspect you can do better?

I’ll just share the following quote with you, from marketing legend Gary Halbert, who once wrote:

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Hark unto me, Buckwheat: Writing “copy” is less than 1/10 as important as learning to think about new offers and getting them down on paper as I just did. I can’t say it often enough or strongly enough…

It Is The Deal… The Offer… The Proposition
You Are Making That Is The Heart And Soul
Of Great Copywriting!

===

This is why the largest of the Secret Demand training will be devoted to the offer. Writing copy is fairly straightforward once you have the right offer in place.

Anyways, signups for the Secret Demand training are now open. If you’re interested, you’ll have to raise your hand by tomorrow, Wednesday night at 12 midnight PST.

That’s because I’m not sending people straight to a sales page. I first want to find out if you’re in a situation where this training can possibly help you. And that will take a couple of emails back and forth.

So ask yourself:

Do you have a business?

Do you have an email list?

Does the promise of unlocking secret demand in your list sound appealing?

If so, then reply to this email.

I’ll have a couple questions for you. And if it sounds like a fit, I’ll send you the full details about this training. You can then decide if you’d like to join me on Friday.

A need so strong it actually eclipses survival

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I’m preparing for the Brian Kurtz Titans XL presentation that’s happening later today. I’m still not done with the slides. So I will just quickly share one valuable quote with you and get back to slide-making.

Maybe this quote will speak to you, maybe it will not.

​​Let me set it up first so it has a chance to mean something. Ever wonder about any of the following things:

Why, when a dive bar cleans up and becomes in every way nicer, the regulars often stop coming?

Why, when a run-down apartment building is renovated and repainted, the kids who live there will often tag it with graffiti the first night?

Why, when a rich and successful businessman loses years of work through no fault of his own, he will often rebuild his prosperity in record time?

If you’ve never wondered about these things, that’s ok. Neither have it.

​​But the legendary direct marketer Gary Halbert sure did. and here was Gary’s conclusion:

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Have you ever heard about the hierarchy of human needs? Maybe you studied it in sociology or psychology. Anyway, according to what you learn in college, the #1 human need is survival. After that comes sex. Then, further down the line is the need for an extended family, a need to contribute to society, etc.

I beg to differ. As usual, those college guys have got it wrong. I’ll agree that the #1 need is for survival but #2 is not sex. No sir, #2, just below survival, is the need for humans to remain in their own comfort zone. Not only that, sometimes this need is so strong, it actually eclipses survival.

===

So what to do?

How to overcome this overwhelmingly powerful need for humans to remain in their own comfort zone?

Well, I’ll cover a couple possible answers to this during my presentation to Brian’s group.

But really, overcoming this comfort-zone issue is what the totality of all direct marketing is about.

There are deep psychological principles that direct marketers have figured out, which can be used to move people, in their own interest, against their own inertia.

And there are also many clever tricks and tactics to do so.

I have no hope of covering even a tiny fraction of all this material in an email. But I have prepared a training which guides you through it, and makes these principles and tactics your own. For more information:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Magic words that bring you status

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Yesterday, I went on Twitter in search of my own name.

What I found was a photo somebody had posted of a densely scribbled page, containing the text of one of my emails.

I squinted and leaned in so far my nose almost touched the screen. It was true.

People are actually copying out my emails by hand as a way to learn email copywriting.

It was a bizarre moment. It reminded me of the first time I printed a black-and-white photograph in my high school’s darkroom.

Take a normal-looking piece of paper, expose it to light for a second, then dump it into a bit of clear, water-like liquid. A picture emerges of something you had photographed days or weeks ago.

It feels like magic, because the ingredients seem so ordinary — paper, light, a bit of water-like liquid.

I’ve been writing this daily email newsletter for 5+ years. At first, I was writing mostly just to practice and then sending my emails out into the void.

After a while, I created an offer. I sent out an email just like the ones I had been sending out. Except this time, money came back at me.

It felt like magic, because it was still the same ordinary ingredients — a bare-bones text editor, ActiveCampaign, the blue “send” button.

Since then, I’ve continued sending the same text-only emails, just words in a text editor. And that’s been good enough to give me status and authority in this field. I got into copywriting some ten years ago by hand-copying issues of Gary Halbert’s newsletter. Today people are copying my newsletter issues by hand.

A few days ago, I announced I’m looking for five beta testers for a 3-month group coaching program.

The goal for this group coaching program is to implement the techniques and ideas I talked about on the “How I do it” call I held on Monday. Write interesting emails… build a list… grow your status… make money.

I announced this group coaching program to the people who were there for the live “How I do it” call, and to the people who signed up for the recording.

And in spite of the fact I once again managed to muck up the tech, so that some people never got the link to join the live call, and others never got the recording, I’ve so far filled three of those five spots. I also have a few people who’ve expressed interest in the remaining two.

But I want to get this sign-up process wrapped up now, so I can kick the group coaching off.

So if you’re interested, hit reply and let me know a bit about who you are and what you do.

I will send you a doc with the full info on this 3-month program, and you can decide if it’s for you or not.

If not, no problem. But if yes, then you can join us, and we will start next week.

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/

Terminal

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No, this email has nothing to do with death or disease.

Instead, I am stuck at the airport today, much like Tom Hanks in that Terminal movie. It’s not clear when I will get out.

I was supposed to fly to London this morning to get there in time for the Copywriter Club live event tomorrow.

But I missed my flight. I have no one to blame but myself.

I booked another flight for the afternoon. I tried to go through security immediately, only to be told that I am now at the wrong terminal, and need to go back out and get on a bus and then back inside another building. ​​I did so, only to find out my new flight is delayed.

Like I said, Tom Hanks-like. Maybe I’ll write you another email in six weeks from now as I start to get acclimated to this place.

But you surely didn’t open this email to read about my travel struggles.

So let me tell you a simple but surprisingly useful thing I discovered yesterday.

I was preparing for the presentation I’m to give in London. I decided to say the whole thing out loud while sitting at home and glancing at my notes. I also recorded what I was saying on my computer. I then went for a walk listened to that recording.

It turned out some of the presentation was good… while other parts, which seemed so clever when written down, sounded downright stupid when actually pronounced.

Here’s why I found this surprisingly useful:

I’ve noticed that it takes quite a while — days or even a week or more — to get emotionally divorced enough from what I’ve written to be able to judge it accurately.

If I read it any sooner, my brain tricks me, telling me this is as good as anything I or anyone else could ever write, so let’s drop it now.

Of course that’s not true.

I’ve also heard the advice, going back to Gary Halbert, to read your copy out loud multiple times. I’ve never found that to be useful for anything excepting getting a hoarse voice.

But this thing of reading your copy — or presentation — out loud as well as recording yourself and then listening to the recording… well, for me at least, this sidesteps the part of my brain that feels protective of what I’ve just written. And it allows me to actually come up with a better, stronger version 2.

​​Or 3.

​​Or 4.

So there you go.

Try recording yourself the next time you’re writing something important, and then listen to yourself with wonder and horror.

Maybe you will find it as useful as I have.

I will go do it once again right now, somewhere in the corner of terminal 2, where I hope not a lot of people will hear me revealing the secrets of writing for insight.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t gotten it yet, you might be interested in my Most Valuable Email training.

It’s one way to create the feeling of insight. That’s why I’ll actually be using the Most Valuable Email trick tomorrow during my presentation in London.

For more info on MVE:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/​​

My alternative to shameless teasing

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A couple days ago, I gave a copy critique to a successful course creator. Let’s call him Liam.

Liam is writing a welcome sequence for his newsletter. He has decided to not promote anything in his first seven emails, but rather just to offer solid advice and inspiration — the dreaded “value” autoresponder.

While I certainly don’t condone the nasty practice of not selling anything across seven welcome emails, I figured Liam’s mind was made up on this point, so I didn’t argue it. But I told him that, even if he is not selling his main course in these emails, he can certainly seed it.

Liam already does this already to an extent, by teasing his course in a PS and saying something like, “… if you liked this, you’ll find more good stuff like it in my course XYZ, which I’ll tell you more about soon.”

Teasing like this is fine. It works, and it can work great, the more shameless you’re willing to get with it.

But there’s an alternative to shameless teasing.

​​It makes for more natural content. It’s more sly. And yet it can be even more effective than teasing itself.

Would you like to know what I have in mind? ​​What I told this successful course creator? What I practice myself to good effect from time to time?

I’ll tell ya:

It’s simply to use yourself and your products as your case studies when illustrating a point that the reader should take away.

How exactly do you do that?

Well, look at what I’ve done in this email. I could have made the same point — use yourself as a case study — by talking about some legendary and dead marketer like Gary Halbert… or by referring to a scene from a movie like Brokeback Mountain Part 2.

Instead, I did it by about talking about ME ME ME, or more specifically, the way ME interacted with a client and the advice me gave him.

Which brings me to my offer today:

I do not offer one-off coaching critiques. Well, I did with Liam, but that was a special case, and not something I offer otherwise. Forget about that.

What I do offer is medium- to long-term, one-on-one coaching. It involves both email copywriting — you got a free tip on that today — and more broadly, easy marketing and money-making levers that I spot in your business, the pulling of which is often more lucrative and long-lasting than making any copy tweaks.

My coaching is expensive, and I only take on people rarely, when I feel they have a good chance of profiting and quickly.

If you are interested in getting my critical eye, help, and guidance applied to your business, then hit reply. Tell me who you are and what you do, and we can start a conversation to see if it might be a fit.

Challenge offers vs. set-up offers

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Yesterday, I sent out an email, “Maybe I can help you publish a book fast.”

At the end of 600-odd words where I talked about Spider-Man, my old IT job, and a recent podcast appearance I made, my offer was that if you have a business, or better yet a business plus a bunch of good content sitting around, then maybe I can help you shape that content into a book that can go on Amazon and turn you into the David Copperfield of your niche.

I had no idea whether anybody would reply.

​​I certainly had no idea whether anybody qualified would reply.

But I did get a number of qualified replies, more than I even hoped for, much less expected.

There’s clearly interest and demand there. That should have been obvious up front, when you think of the fact that ghostwriting has been a thing since Confucius, and that plenty of successful businesses, offering various done-for-you book services for bizowners, have sprung up over the past decade or two.

Still, the unexpected number of qualified replies reminded me of an ancient fairy tale.

Maybe you’ve heard this fairy tale before. But maybe not, at least not the full details:

Once upon a time, a young prince named Gary lost his Social Security card.

Gary went into the Social Security office. He was shocked to discover that the office was packed with elderly villagers, waiting in huge lines, treated like cattle, bossed around, or sent away to come back and plead their case another day.

A few days later, young prince Gary shared this experience with someone at the local newspaper.

The newspaper guy told Gary how, as a public service, the newspaper used to run a Social Security info form, hidden at the bottom of page 74.

Readers could clip out that form and send it back to newspaper to find out what level of Social Security they are entitled to. The newspaper would then forward that form to the Social Security Administration.

But the newspaper stopped offering this public service — it became too much of a pain in the ass. Because even though the ad was buried deep in the newspaper, it got replies from 17% of the circulation.

Young prince Gary’s ears perked up. He thought for a moment. The outcome was his magical “How To Collect From Social Security At Any Age” ad.

The ad coupon offered the same Social Security form, which Gary would forward to the SSA. Plus it sold a $3 booklet, with the same title as the headline of the ad.

Result? $800,000 in 1970s profit, or about $5 million in 2023 money.

The point, in Gary Halbert’s own words:

“Think About Looking For ‘Set-Ups’ Instead Of Challenges!”

Yes, it’s possible to take a poor offer, tweak it, add to it, rename it, reposition it, and hype it up with A-list copy. It can sometimes turn a loser into a winner.

But it’s a challenge. And as Gary says, you don’t want any challenges.

You want to make an offer that sells itself in spite of bad marketing, or with no marketing at all.

You might scoff and throw your arms up in frustration at that. But Gary’s fairy tale above, and my email from yesterday, show that such set-up offers are out there, if you only keep your antennae up.

And now here’s my offer:

If you have a business, or better yet a business plus a bunch of good content sitting around, then maybe I can help you turn that content into a book that can go on Amazon and turn you into the David Copperfield of your niche.

​​In case you’re interested, hit reply and we can start a conversation about where you’re at and how I might be able to help you.