Gary Halbert

The one piece of influential writing which molded me above all others

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The one piece of influential writing which molded me above all others – above all the Ben Settle emails, all the Dan Kennedy books, all the Dan Lok Facebook ads — is an old issue of the Gary Halbert newsletter, titled:

The Difference Between Winners and Losers.

I read this issue in the first few weeks after I discovered copywriting, years before I actually became a freelance copywriter.

And I’ll make a dramatic claim:

I don’t know if I would have ever started as a copywriter without this Winners/Losers issue. Without the basic idea I got from it.

One thing I know for sure is that whenever I come back to the core idea from this Winners/Losers issue, big things, transformative things, often happen.

Maybe I’ve made you curious. So here’s the gist, in Gary’s own words:

Non-alcoholics can never truly understand alcoholism. Straight people can never understand what it is to be gay. Gays can’t hope to thoroughly comprehend what it is to be straight. And…

Spectators Can Never Understand
What It Is To Be A Player!

In that newsletter, Gary gave a quick, cheap, and easy exercise that anyone could do to 1000x their chances of becoming rich. It just involved putting out a classified ad and fielding all the calls that would come in.

​​Just follow the simple instructions, and ultimate success is 1000x more likely.

“But most of you are not going to follow these simple instructions,” Gary said. “I know that already from past experience.”

“I won’t be like those people,” I told Gary, who was already dead. “I will do what you tell me, and I will become a success!”

Of course, as you can probably guess, I never did follow Gary’s instructions and I never did put out the classified ad. But the idea, along with a bit of shame, stuck with me.

And that’s how I achieved what I have achieved. Because on occasion, I remember Gary’s Difference Between Winners and Losers.

And rather than saying, “Yeah that’s good advice” or “Pff I’ve heard that before,” I shut up for a minute and actually follow the step-by-step instructions that some smart and successful person has laid out for me.

Because like Gary said, knowing something intellectually is not good enough. You have to do it, apply it, experience it yourself to have a chance of becoming a player.

Perhaps keep that in mind, as I switch to an almost entirely unrelated topic:

My Copy Riddles program is now open for enrollment, until this Sunday at 12 midnight PST.

“Pff I know all about that,” I hear you say. “You haven’t stopped talking about your Copy Riddles program for a century and a half.”

Well, maybe this is the moment when you finally hear me. For two reasons:

First, because Copy Riddles was actually born when I finally followed another bit of Gary’s step-by-step advice. This was advice I had known intellectually for years, but that I had never put into practice. And when I finally did put it into practice, big, transformative things happened.

And second:

B​ecause Copy Riddles is built around the idea that you gotta experience things yourself.

Spectators can never understand what it is to be a player… and copy readers can never understand what it is to be a copywriter.

​​That’s why I built and organized Copy Riddles as a series of practical exercises, simple but powerful, that you do every day to implant copywriting skills into your head — and to actually get the experience of creating effective copy.

But maybe that’s all a little vague for you.

Fortunately, I have written up a quite extensive and exclusive report, with all the details of how Copy Riddles works. In case you’re interested:

https://copyriddles.com/

A sexual health riddle by the 499-pound gorilla of copywriting

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Today, I will share a super valuable copywriting commandment with you.

Tomorrow, I will tell you an equally valuable commandment, which is the exact opposite of what I’ll tell you today.

How is that gonna work? We will see. Let me set it up with a little riddle for you:

* Almost foolproof contraception: It’s over 99% effective but… so new… most people have never even heard about it!

So, can you guess what this “almost foolproof” method of contraception is?

If you’ve been through my Copy Riddles program, you should be able to answer easily.

​​In fact, you should be able to answer this riddle even when the neighbor’s car alarm jolts you awake at 3am… while you’re all sleepy and a little drooly… just lifting your head up for a moment and saying, “Yes of course that almost foolproof method of contraception is —” before you drop back down to the pillow and pass out again.

But maybe you haven’t been through Copy Riddles. In that case, answering this riddle might be a bit harder. So I’ll will give you a hint that might help.

A few years ago, the Harvard Business School blog published an article titled, “When Negotiating a Price, Never Bid with a Round Number.”

They cited a bunch of scientific studies, in-lab experiments, and statistical analyses.

And the conclusion was:

Better make your prices, and really all your published numbers, jagged, specific, and unround. That’s because people don’t trust or respect a round number much — they figure that little thought and work went into it, and the number is probably not accurate or not representative.

This is really an example of the incredible uselessness of science, if you ask me.

After all, this bit of scientific research came out a few years ago.

But how long have marketers and business owners known, pretty scientifically, to make their numbers not round? A long time. For example, take Gary Halbert, the 499-pound gorilla in the world of copywriting.

Gary is responsible for that sexual health bullet above. It was part of his sales letter to sell his “Killer Orgasms!” ebook.

I won’t tell you what Gary’s “almost foolproof contraception” method is. But knowing that Gary was a smart marketer, and combining it with that obvious and almost useless bit of HBS scientific news, will probably be enough to get you to Gary’s contraception method, or at least to get you close.

But maybe you really really need to know the answer.

​In that case, you can try to dig up a copy of Gary’s book. Or just wait for the next run of Copy Riddles, which will happen in June, and probably at some jagged, specific, not-round price.

Or maybe not?

Maybe the next price of Copy Riddles will end in a zero, or maybe even two zeros?

If you are curious how or why I would possibly want to make my price a nice, even, round number, after everything I’ve just told you, then read my email tomorrow. It will tell you the answer. You can sign up to get it here.

Anatomy of a penis pill business success

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In early March of this year, I was listening to some Dan Kennedy seminar when Dan casually mentioned a penis pill company, out of Scottsdale, Arizona, that Gary Halbert used to write for, and that got busted by the Feds in the early 2000s.

I did some research.

​​I couldn’t find evidence connecting GH.

​​But I did find an NBC News article that said there was a company, called C.P. Direct, out of Scottsdale, Arizona, that sold “more than $74 million worth of pills that it claimed would enlarge penises or breasts, make the consumer taller or hairier — even sharpen his or her golf game.”

C.P. Direct got busted in 2002.

But they didn’t get busted for bogus claims, ineffective product, or lack of proof or evidence.

Instead, they got because of forced autoship and not giving people refunds.

The NBC News article concluded that “C.P. Direct would likely still be selling its pills today if it hadn’t illegally charged customers’ credit cards without reauthorization.”

Well, maybe.

Or maybe not.

Maybe if C.P. Direct had run a more legit business, at least in terms of not actually stealing from people, then there wouldn’t have been much of a business at all.

Maybe they would have had such high refunds and low reorders that even Gary Halbert’s magic front-end copy couldn’t save them.

And vice versa.

Just because Gary Halbert, if he did write the front-end copy for C.P. Direct, did create $74 million worth of sales of herbal supplements — “guaranteed to induce gross physical alterations of the human body” — well, that doesn’t mean that the copy was any good.

​​Maybe Gary’s copy was a total flop, but the fact that C.P. Direct could milk hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars from every naive customer, against the customer’s will, made the business profitable nonetheless.

My point being, there’s a lot of number porn out there, people who (truthfully) claim their copy has sold millions of this and trillions of that.

Or you can see ads that keep running in Newsmax or on Taboola, month after month.

But the fact is, the advertising you might be copying and studying from might not be great advertising after all. Even if it’s got hard numbers to back it up.

​​Well, at least it’s not great, unless you are also willing to copy the rest of the business, shady and illegal practices included.

And now the big question?

Are you happy with your size? Breasts or penis? If you’d like to increase and improve what you have, completely naturally, then join thousands of other satisfied readers and sign up for my email newsletter.

Gary Halbert’s ghost determines the hand-in-cap odds

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In my email yesterday, I offered you a wager if you wrote in and picked the winner of this year’s SuperBowl.

The betting office is closed now.

But if you wrote me in the past 24 hours, and if it turns out you picked right, you’ll get my upcoming Copy Zone offer for 50% off.

As things stand right now, the Bengals are the clear favorite, with 17/10 odds. That’s according to all the picks I got from people on my list.

But maybe it’s not yet time to run out and put real money down on Cincinnati. Because the most persuasive handicapping analysis I got came from copywriter Thomas Crouse:

“I know nothing about football, so I will bet on the Bengals purely on the basis that tigers are superior to sheep.”

This simple comment set me off on a search for the strange origins of the word handicap.

It turns out it comes from an old trading and betting game, called hand-in-cap. Here’s how that worked:

Imagine for example, that you and I each own a football helmet. You own a Bengals helmet… I own a Rams helmet.

We want to trade. But you think your Bengals helmet is worth more.

“Come on,” you say, “look at those amazing stripes!”

Fine. But how much more?

“Let’s not haggle like lettuce-peddlers. We’ll get somebody else to decide.”

So you get out your A-List Copywriters-edition Ouija board. And, holding hands, together we summon the great ghost of Gary Halbert.

Gary will be the umpire who determines the odds — how much more the Bengals helmet is worth than the Rams.

In a flash of light, Gary appears from the after-world, wearing flip flops, a torn t-shirt, and a red baseball cap that says, “CLIENTS SUCK.”

He looks over your football helmet and mine. He strokes his beard.

“It’s a damn tough one,” Gary says. “I was born and bred in Ohio. And so I have a soft spot, I mean real soft, quite mushy, for the Bengals. But then I made Los Angeles my adopted home. And I gotta say the Rams are looking good this year.”

He thinks some more.

“So let’s just say the odds are $70. The Bengals helmet is worth the Rams helmet plus seventy bucks.”

At this point, Gary takes off his CLIENTS SUCK cap.

You and I each put $5 of forfeit money in the cap. And we each also put our right hand in the cap.

The rules are this:

If you agree with the odds, you pull out your hand from the cap, palm open.

If you don’t agree with the odds, you pull out your hand from the cap, with a closed fist.

The same for me. Result:

If we we both agree, the trade happens. We exchange football helmets. I give you an extra $70. Gary pockets the $10 worth of forfeit money as reward for umpiring, and he flies off to copywriter heaven.

If we both disagree, the trade doesn’t happen. And Gary still pockets the $10 worth of forfeit money.

And finally, if one of us agrees but the other doesn’t, the trade also doesn’t happen.

Except in this case, the $10 of forfeit money goes to whoever agreed to the trade… and poor Gary goes back to copywriter heaven empty-handed. (Really, it’s okay. He can write a new sales letter tonight and make a million dollars by tomorrow morning.)

So that’s hand-in-cap.

People played it for hundreds of years.

The term then got transferred to horse racing — an impartial umpire chose the odds between different horses — and sports betting in general.

​​Eventually, it morphed into the modern word (disability, disadvantage) we know today.

I’m telling you all this because 1) I like etymologies and 2) I’ve long been fascinated by how a few simple, well-chosen rules can produce complex, interesting, and valuable behaviors.

Like hand-in-cap.

The rules are simple. And yet they make it so you and I and Gary each have a stake in working towards, and agreeing to, a fair trade.

That same idea can be applied much more generally.

You might want to manage a few people who work for your business… or create a thriving online community… or just mold a group of your customers into a tightly-knit, devoted “herd.”

So my advice to you is to start by thinking of a few simple rules to drive the behaviors that you want.

That, and sign up for my email list. Sure it’s a wager. But maybe you can win some valuable insights.

My fruitful first Clickbank failure

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This year marks the 10th anniversary of the publication of my first-ever book. Well… book might be a bit grandiose.

It was more like an 85-page pdf. And by publication, I really just mean I put it up on Clickbank for sale.

The title of this thing was the Salary Negotiation Blueprint. The background was this:

10 years ago, I was a dissatisfied office drone working at an IT company. Day after day, I’d sit at my computer, drumming my fingers on the desk, looking out the window as the sun set at 4pm. “And I still have to sit here and pretend to work for 2 more hours!” I wanted to get free.

And then I heard about Mike Geary. Mike was making a million dollars a month selling his own 85-page pdf, The Truth About Abs, on Clickbank.

How could I do the same?

Fortunately, the same source who clued me in to Mike Geary (Tim Ferriss) also clued me in to that most highly revered and valuable guide to direct marketing:

Gary Halbert’s Boron Letters.

Being the bookish type that I am, I got the Boron Letters and I read them. At the time, I wasn’t sure what exactly was so great about them. But I did get one thing from Gary, and that’s when he talks about how to create an info product:

1. Pick a topic
2. Read 5 of the best books on the topic and take notes
3. Write up your own book/85-page report with the best information taken from those other books
4. Make millions!

And here we get to the crossroads.

Because in an unusual move for me… I actually put the Boron Letters down… stared at the void for a bit… and then took a hesitating, first step forward.

In other words, I stopped reading and actually did what Gary was telling me to do. I followed his steps 1-3.

The outcome was the Salary Negotiation Blueprint. I put it up on Clickbank. And then, I rubbed my hands together in anticipation of step 4 aaaand…

Total sales? 0. Total money made? $0. Total learning experience?

Well, with 10 years of hindsight and about 6 years of working as a direct response copywriter, let me highlight a few of the mistakes I made with this first project:

1. Name. I went with Salary Negotiation Blueprint just because every other info product at the time was “something something blueprint.”

But what exactly was the promise in my name? That with my blueprint, you could… negotiate? Not very tempting.

2. “Affiliates will love it!” No, they won’t.

You can see public lists of what Clickbank affiliates love to promote, and salary negotiation guides are not it. This was a lesson I could have learned from the Boron Letters — sell to a starving crowd.

3. My market. What profile of person is going to buy an ebook on salary negotiation?

I can’t say, because I never managed to sell a single copy. But my guess is, these aren’t exactly players with money. More likely to be schlubs on a budget — much like me at the time.

6. The back end. What can you sell to somebody who bought a guide on salary negotiation? A course on networking over the water cooler? Or a guide on Slack tips and tricks, maybe? It feels like grasping at straws.

Ultimately, salary negotiation is a one-time need. Which is bad — because the profits come on the back end.

7. The price. I can’t remember the price. I think I started out at $37, and when I failed to make any sales there, I moved it down to $17, where I continued to fail to make sales.

But whether at $37 or at $17, my price was completely disconnected to the value of my offer. There was zero thought or strategy to it.

So there you go. Maybe you can learn a bit about direct marketing from my mistakes above. Or maybe you knew all this simple stuff before.

Either way, you’re in a good place.

Because there are mountains of people out there who don’t know even these basics of direct marketing and copywriting.

​​And not all these people are as clueless and unsuccessful as I was 10 years ago. Some of them have working businesses — even thriving businesses — in spite of awful, self-defeating marketing.

But you’ve probably heard this claim before.

I know I heard it for a long time. And all I could say is, “Well, where are all these mountains of business owners who could benefit from my growing marketing knowledge? I’m ready to help them out!”

The perverse truth is, they seem to pop up the most when you no longer need them.

A part of it is simply your level of skills. But a part of it is the exposure you give yourself.

In other words, you can shortcut the process somewhat, by giving yourself more exposure. Which brings me to my ongoing offer:

You can get a free copy of my Niche Expert Cold Emails training.

This training covers two cold email strategies that got me in touch with a couple of business owners, one with a working business, and the other with a thriving business.

All in all, these cold emails led to $16k worth of copywriting work. Not Mike Geary money, but an important step on my journey away from office dronedom. And I’m sure I could have gotten more work from these emails, had I just used them more consistently.

The training is yours free right now, as part of a promotion I’m trying out. For the full details, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/free-offer-niche-expert-cold-emails/

The copywriting commandment top copywriters all violate

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“You’re on ten on your guitar… where can you go from there? Where?”

You probably know what I’m talking about. It’s a famous historical record:

Documentary filmmaker Marty DiBergi is interviewing rock guitarist Nigel Tufnel.

Nigel is showing off his equipment room. His most prized guitars, and his special amplifier. It doesn’t go up to 10, like most amplifiers. It goes up to 11. One louder than 10.

“Why don’t you just make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number,” Marty asks, “and make that a little louder?”

Nigel stares at his prized up-to-11 amp. The only thing moving is his jaw as he works on his chewing gum. The cigarette in his hand is slowly burning down.

“These go to 11,” he finally says.

Like I said, you probably know this scene, or at least the catch phrase, “These go to 11.” It first appeared in 1984’s mockumentary This is Spinal Tap, and become an undying cultural meme.

One thing I did not know until today is that all the dialogue in This is Spinal Tap was improvised. This includes the “up to 11 line” above.

But it makes sense. Because one thing I did know, even before today, is that Christopher Guest is one of the most talented and naturally funny actors in all of entertainmentdom.

Guest acted, sang, and played guitar as Nigel Tufnel in This Is Spinal Tap. He also directed and wrote Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman. He even played the soft-spoken but sadistic Count Rugen in The Princess Bride.

But all of that is nothing. Not compared to how Christopher Guest sounds in real life. Because the man is naturally funny.

For example, he was interviewed on Charlie Rose some 15 years ago.

He was sparkling and subtle in almost every second of the live interview.

Charlie Rose: You go back to the same actors frequently?
Christopher Guest: I have to. [pause] It’s a tax thing.​​​

That’s rare.

Because most comedians, even the ones I love the best, are a big disappointment when they have to improvise.

They don’t have the same delivery.

They don’t have good punchlines.

They are simply not very funny, especially when compared to their stage or movie persona.

And this is yet another connection between the world of comedy and the world of sales copywriting. Because one of the biggest and most sacred sales copy commandments is:

“Write like you talk!”

Sure, this is good advice for people who are terrified of writing.

Or for those who are used to writing in a nonsense, corporate tone (“Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion…”)

But “write like you talk” is not something that top copywriters actually do themselves.

Don’t believe me?

Go on YouTube and find some video of Gary Halbert speaking. See how slow and ponderous the man was. It’s nothing like the crisp, funny, energetic writing in his newsletter.

And that’s not a coincidence.

Top copywriters make their copy more than “just how they talk.”

I won’t give away the secrets of the trade here.

Suffice to say that most copywriters, just like most comedians, simply aren’t that persuasive or funny in real life.

We’re not all Christopher Guest, unfortunately.

Fortunately, there is a simple fix. It’s called hard work and unrelenting toil.

In other words, if you’re not naturally an incredible storyteller or an irresistible salesman, you can still write top-level copy. Something that reads well… even though it’s not true to life. In the words of Christopher Guest himself:

“In real life, people fumble their words. They repeat themselves and stare blankly off into space and don’t listen properly to what other people are saying. I find that kind of speech fascinating but screenwriters never write dialogue like that because it doesn’t look good on the page.”

If you’d like to read more about the connections between copywriting and comedy, check out my daily newsletter. It’s a topic I write about on occasion. You can sign up here.

Out of office and Carlton’s self-programming trick

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I finished up this morning’s Zoom call and then I tiptoed back to bed, snuck in, and started shivering under three layers of blankets.

There were two things I wanted to get done today. The Zoom call was one. And I managed to get it done, in spite of being sick with some unidentified illness.

I’m telling you this in case you’ve written me in the past few days and haven’t gotten a response. It’s because I’ve pared down what I’m doing to the absolute essentials.

I also wanted to share a little psychological hack I learned from John Carlton. Carlton writes:

Gary Halbert used to buy himself watches, or cameras, or even boats (preferably used wooden craft requiring thousands in maintenance, but that’s another story) whenever he finished a big gig. As a reward for a job well done.

I’ve always rewarded myself with free time (as in taking the phone off the hook for an entire week, or splitting to hang with friends).

It doesn’t matter what, precisely, the reward is (as long as it’s meaningful to you)… but the ACT of rewarding yourself fires up the motivation part of your unconscious brain.

You might think it’s silly to connect Carlton’s watches-and-sailboats advice to my situation today.

So be it.

But I don’t think I could have pulled myself together for the call had I scheduled more work for myself right after, and had I not promised myself that shivery, four-hour nap as a reward.

But anyways. Here’s an email-writing tip. Wrap up what you’ve been talking about by giving your reader a takeaway he can use today. So here it is, in Carlton’s words:

Fastest path to burnout is to finish a grueling gig, clear the desk, and then start the next grueling gig.

What the hell are you thinking, you’re Superman?

Decompress, go shop for a goodie, teach your brain to associate end-of-job with fun rewards.

Main key: The reward cannot be something you’d buy or do anyway. It has to be pure excessive nonsense (like Halbert’s 14th watch or 3rd boat) that delights your Inner Kid.

Last point:

If you’d like to read me repurposing and curating famous copywriters good ideas, consider signing up to my email newsletter.

Answers to life, the universe, and all direct response marketing questions

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If you’re looking for the answer to life, the universe, and all direct response marketing questions, then I have a computer you should talk to.

No, I mean it.

A real computer. It’s called Delphi. You tell it something. And using some computer magic plus an ever-updating database of previous moral judgments, Delphi tells you if your prompt is ethical or not… good or bad… moral or immoral.

I wanted to see if it worked at all. So I fed it a few prompts. And here’s what it spat back:

“Get rich” — it’s good

“Get rich slowly” — it’s okay

“Get rich quick” — it’s wrong

That’s encouraging. Maybe this Delphi really does know something.

Because the responses above are pretty much how a large part of the population feels about money.

They’d like to have more of it, maybe even much more. But they are not very enthusiastic about grinding it out over the years and decades they imagine it would really take. And yet, they have moral hangups about getting there quick — it must mean doing something sneaky or bad.

Ok, Delphi. Let’s see how you do with a few direct response classics. Here are a few promises made by Gene Schwartz, Chris Haddad, and Gary Halbert:

“Master Transcendental Meditation In A Single Evening” — it’s unreasonable

“Get Your Ex Girlfriend Back, Literally At The Push Of A Button” — it’s immoral

“Lose Up To 20 Pounds In Two Weeks The Lazy Way” — it’s bad

Interesting. I wonder what Delphi’s layers of virtual neurons didn’t like about these promises. Let’s try a few full-blown DR headlines, from Parris Lampropoulos, John Carlton, and David Deutsch:

“Scientists Discover Solution to Sexual Problems Hidden in 1,500-Year-Old Himalayan Secret” — it’s good

“Amazing Secret Discovered By One-Legged Golfer Adds 50 Yards To Your Drives, Eliminates Hooks and Slices And Can Slash Up To 10 Strokes From Your Game Almost Overnight!” — it’s good

“What Every Wife Wishes Her Husband Knew About Estate Planning And The IRS Hopes You Never Find Out” — it’s good

Perhaps you can see inside Delphi’s mind and understand why the oracle liked these headlines.

I have my own theory. It’s something will be sharing with people who signed up for my Influential Emails training.

That offer is now closed — I shut it down earlier today, as I said I would.

But if you didn’t sign up for Influential Emails… and you want to know my thoughts on the above headlines, and how this can be used to make your emails better… well, then just stay put. I’m sure to use this technique in an email soon, and then it will probably be obvious to you.

But for today, since Influential Emails is closed, I have no offer to make to you. Well, none except absolute moral judgements on any question you might have… along with age-old wisdom about direct response headlines and body copy. You can find it in the hallowed issues of my daily email newsletters. Here’s the entrance to the temple.

How to get “America’s best copywriter” to read your every email

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I tend to idolize things that happened before I arrived on the scene. So I imagine it must have been great to fly in the “Coffee, Tea, or Me?” heyday of TWA…

It must have been great to do business by the screeching and crackling fax…

And it must have been great to write copy for junk— I mean, direct mail.

I imagine direct mail copywriters to have been like titans, bigger and cooler and more powerful than any of us today.

That’s one of the reasons I have so much respect for Gary Bencivenga. Of course, there are many other, more logical reasons to respect Gary.

Like the fact the man’s been called called “America’s greatest copywriter,” by people who should know. Or that he has an unmatched string of wins, going up against other top pros. Or that he’s a deep thinker in this field, whose ideas have influenced many, myself included.

So here’s one idea of Gary’s. It’s the one that influenced me the most.

This idea was connected to another titan who stomped the Earth before I became aware of direct response. I’m talking about Gary Halbert.

Gary Halbert died in 2007. And when that happened, Gary Bencivenga wrote the following:

In fact, I was thinking about Gary and his newsletter just a few weeks ago. I had noticed something unusual about my reaction to it. I subscribe to numerous marketing ezines. But I noticed that, under the crush of hundreds of emails a week, I found myself deleting almost all of them unopened… except for The Gary Halbert Letter. I would always open his, usually as soon as it hit my inbox.

Whenever I notice an anomaly like that, I ask the most instructive word in the English language: Why?

[…]

Gary shared news. Sometimes he was the news, sometimes it was a dramatic turn of events in his tumultuous life, but often enough, he shared news of a technique or strategy that would make your response and profits soar. You couldn’t afford to miss even one of these gems, so you had to open every issue.

Maybe you think is trivial.

But maybe it says something to you. It did to me. It told me that, if you can get America’s best copywriter to read every email you send, it’s worth doing.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. supposedly said, “Man’s mind, stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimension.”

This one observation by Gary B., which I read early in my copy career, really got in my head and stretched it to a new dimension.

And ever since, it’s been key in how I write my own emails. And key to why these emails have gotten in the heads of other people as well. That’s why “Say something new” is the central tenet behind my Influential Emails training, which will happen next month.

Now that you know that, maybe like me, you can go off and spend a few years meditating on Gary’s koan. Try implementing it in your own business. And keep it up until you start to see results.

Or if you’d like a shortcut, both in terms of coming up with new things to say… and of new ways to say ’em… then Top Gun, as Gary might say, take a look at my Influential Emails offer. It’s open now, but it will close this Sunday. Here’s the link:

https://influentialemails.com

When sex doesn’t sell

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The cover of Gary Halbert’s Killer Orgasms! book has a photo of Gary’s topless girlfriend.

I took that photo, censored it with a thick black bar over the nipples, and put it into the sales letter to my bullets course, now called Copy Riddles.

There are a couple reasons for that:

One is that this book was instrumental to Copy Riddles coming into being.

Killer Orgasms! was the first place where I found the “source text” behind bullets, so I could see how A-list copywriters like Gary do the magic they do.

But that’s not the only reason I have the photo in there.

Because sex sells, right? If you associate sex with your offer, it makes people buy more?

Maybe… or maybe not.

It might actually backfire.

Like I wrote yesterday, our attitudes towards other people are mixed.

In a situation of fear and danger, we love nothing more than to be in the middle of the herd. There’s safety in numbers.

But in a situation of attraction and mating, we hope to seduce by being exceptional. We hope to be seen as the maverick, roving the hillsides alone. Others are just meddling competition in this case.

At least that’s what some scientists hypothesized back in 2009. So they ran some experiments. And they showed this common-sense logic to be true.

They found that, sure, sex can make your offer sell better… if your offer is about standing out.

But sex can hurt your sales if your offer involves a strong appeal to community and belonging.

Which was relevant to me.

Because I initially planned to sell Copy Riddles with a stronger appeal of support, community, etc. I wound up minimizing that, and amping up the exceptionalism talk:

“Discover how you can OWN bullets more quickly than you would ever believe… and set yourself apart from the masses of other marketers and copywriters.”

But who knows? Maybe all this jiggering won’t do anything.

Or maybe it will even hurt. After all, if a female reader sees this same topless photo and the surrounding “set yourself apart” copy, it might be a turnoff rather than motivating.

But whether I suffer or not, the underlying idea is worth keeping in mind:

Your prospects’ frame of mind influences whether they want to belong or to be unique. And perhaps, this can influence your sales.

We will see what it does in my case. Because as of today, I am reopening Copy Riddles.

The first round kicked off in March. I’ve had very positive feedback about it. I’ll write more about that over the next few days. (Signup will be open until this Sunday.)

In the meantime, if you’d like to check out the Copy Riddles sales page for yourself, here’s the link:

https://copyriddles.com/