Jay Abraham

Unique, slightly gross positioning through “whale fall”

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A whale is denser than water. When a whale dies and stops breathing, it sinks to the bottom of the ocean. It then forms something called a “whale fall.”

A bunch of shrimps, crabs, and sea cucumbers suddenly appear. Some of these creatures specialize in eating the whale’s soft tissues. Some suck the fat out of whale bones. Others colonize the whale skeleton. In short, a whale fall creates a whole new ecosystem, which can last for many years.

Do you think this could be a way to create a business?

I once read Craigslist was basically an Internet whale that sank to the bottom. When it did, a bunch of creatures crawled out and started feeding off its carcass. So Airbnb scarfed up the vacation rentals. Indeed.com sucked in the job listings. Tinder ate the “casual encounters” section.

Maybe that’s a way for you too to start a business right now. Today’s whales like Facebook and Google are becoming less popular. Many of their services don’t work well. Maybe you can peel one off, and simply do a better job.

Or if you want personal positioning, why not turn your hungry eyes toward a whale influencer?

Guys like Jay Abraham or Frank Kern have been around for a long time. Over the years, they’ve had lots of different angles and ideas. They can’t focus on all of them. So you could pick one that appeals to your appetites, chomp into it, and make it into a steady stream of nourishment.

Maybe this whale fall discussion is getting a little gross. But the basic idea is sound. Few things are new in the world. We mostly take what came before us, and recycle it to new purposes. So go forth and prosper, you ambitious sea cucumber, you.

Are you still here? I don’t have any more whale facts for today. But if you want more marketing and business ideas, click here and subscribe to my daily newsletter.

Avoiding sick-at-the-gut customers

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As I write this, I’m feeling woozy. The ground is swaying under my feet. My stomach is a little sensitive.

I wouldn’t be surprised that when I lay down for the night and I turn out the lights, I will have to run to the bathroom to throw up.

In case you’re wondering, I haven’t been drinking. But I did spend the whole day on a boat.

It was a beautiful sunny day. Fresh air. Clear skies. The contrast of green olive trees and white cliffs and deep blue sea below.

It was a great experience. I didn’t feel anything but excited during the whole day.

But once the day was over, and I stepped off the boat, tired and happy to be back on dry land, that’s when the whole earth started to move beneath my feet.

Now let me switch to a different topic for a second:

Here’s something valuable that A-list direct response marketer Michael Fishman once said in an interview with Jay Abraham:

“The interesting thing is that your selling copy in the prospecting process can actually impact the longevity of a customer with the company. So what I mean by that is if you make very, very big promises for a self-help product, a health or investment product — if you make very, very big promises for that about quick results and overnight success, etc. — the kinds of people that will find that believable and ultimately will buy turn out to be folks that are not very committed in the long very long run to your company because they’re opportunistic about their purchase.”

Michael is saying that hype can hurt your long-term sales because you end up selecting the wrong customers.

The only thing I would add is that hype can also create wrong customers for your business, out of otherwise good people.

Because your prospect goes for a bright and colorful selling experience, designed by somebody like you or me. He spends a long time with you, enjoying the contrast of cool blue promises and big white warnings and a sparkling offer underneath it all.

So your prospect has a great time while you entertain and sell him. He doesn’t feel anything but excited the whole time. But at the end of it, he steps off the boat — by taking you up on your offer — and that’s when the feelings of wooziness and stomach upset hit him.

A part of this reaction is inevitable. But a part of it is within your control. And I’d like to suggest it’s worth controlling yourself.

Because as Michael said in the same interview, direct response is built on repeat business. You rarely make money the first time.

So if you want a profitable business… rather than just a bunch of sick-at-the-gut customers who aren’t worth anything to you… then you might purposefully make your sailing — I mean selling experience — less long, less colorful, and less enjoyable than you know how to do.

For example, I know several ways to hype people up so they will sign up for my email newsletter. But I won’t use them. Instead, if you like marketing and copywriting ideas that can help you build a profitable business… long-term… then here’s where you can join my newsletter, which gives you one new idea each day.

A transparent but effective marketing ploy (thanks, Jay Abraham)

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Yesterday I heard marketing coach Rich Schefren tell a “How did he get away with that?” story about the first time he bought a Jay Abraham product:

The product was supposed to arrive in a month.

But it didn’t arrive in a month. Or in two months. Or three.

When it eventually did arrive, some six months later, it came with a letter written by Jay. The letter said something like:

“Here is the product that you ordered from me and boy, are you lucky I decided to hold off on releasing it! This extra time allowed me to add in all these extra case studies and valuable modules and colored streamers that will do x, y, and z for you!”

And for the record, today, many years after this first experience, Rich counts Jay as one of his two biggest mentors.

My point being:

Jay’s ploy may have been transparent. And yet, just like canned laughter on a TV sitcom, it still served its purpose.

In fact, what Jay did illustrates one of the essential functions of marketing. So let’s see if I can do it:

You’ve probably heard me mention my book 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters. This book is short, only 40 pages. And if I could have, I would have made it even shorter and even easier to read.

But I needed at least this many pages to cover all 10 of these commandments, the best you-won’t-find-em-on-Facebook copywriting strategies I’ve come across so far.

And since I wanted to make each of the commandments crystal clear, I also included 3 supporting real-world examples to make each comandment stick in your mind. So 40 pages really was the minimum to do all that.

Anyways, if you haven’t yet seen this book, you might find it both valuable and a quick and easy read. In case you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Will work for hundreds of thousands of dollars

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There’s a video on YouTube that shows Dan Kennedy’s cave. It’s where Dan does his writing, and where he receives clients for consults.

Dan’s cave is underground. That said, it’s as bright and cheery as an underground cave can be. The walls are packed with rare Disney memorabilia, exotic money, and clocks. And then there’s a sign that reads:

“Will work for hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

This connected in my mind to something Jay Abraham said.

(By the way, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to Jay Abraham, including the video I re-watched today. I can imagine he’s said this same thing in many places, but it never registered in my head until just now. It’s another example of why it’s worth going back to stuff you’ve already read or listened to.)

Anyways, Jay was saying how you don’t want to just give stuff away for free. First off, you want to make people understand how valuable your free gift is. Second, you want to set expectations. Jay gave some off-the-cuff copy to show what he means:

We’ve spent five years and 50,000 hours studying this. We’ve come to conclusions that, to our knowledge, no one else has. We’ve spent a year and a half refining it. We’ve now put it into a form where you can grasp it and you can act on it. It will instantly impact your performance. It’s the result of looking at billions of dollars of successful transactions.

It would mean a lot to us to share this with you. We would like to gift it to you without charge and buy it for you. But there is an expectation, and it’s a very respectful one:

If we do that, we’d like if you, first of all, take the time to seriously read it and reflect on it and then take action. And we’re hoping it will help you appreciate what we do so that there will be an inclination to want to do business with us later.

It’s this last bit that finally clicked for me. Jay is basically saying, free stuff ain’t free. And you should let people aware of this. Don’t be pushy. Don’t be needy. But do state the fact.

Speaking of which:

I’ve written almost 900 of these blog posts, each of which is first sent out as an email to my newsletter subscribers. By my estimate, they are the result of ~9,000 hours of cumulative work and experience.

This includes tens of thousands of dollars in copywriting coaching… dozens of courses and even more books on the topics of copywriting and marketing… and the experience of 6 years of working on client projects, with many 7-figure and several 8-figure direct response businesses.

I’m saying this because it means a lot to me to share these posts with you. I hope you get value and entertainment out of them. I also hope they will, as Jay says, give you an inclination to do do business with me later.

Speaking of which:

If you want to do business with me, the first step is to get my free (well, debatable) email newsletter. Click here if you’d like to sign up.

Taking over abandoned but rich online oil wells

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Jay Abraham likes to tell a sexy story about two marketers. The story is true and it goes something like this:

Two marketers started selling fake diamonds through ads in the same local newspaper.

One marketer wrote a brilliant ad, got a high response, and made a bunch of sales. After ad costs and fulfillment, he was left with a profit of a few thousand dollars.

​​”What a waste of time,” this marketer said. And he moved on to bigger and better opportunities… ones where he could make tens of thousands or maybe even a hundred thousand dollars, using the same approach.

Then there was marketer two. He only wrote a passable ad, and got a lower response than marketer one. He was left in the red after ad costs and fulfillment.

But when marketer two sent his customers the fake diamond, he also included a letter. The letter said something like,

“Behold your beautiful fake diamond! See how it shines and sparkles! And if you by chance find it sparkles a bit less than you expected, perhaps it’s the modest size. But worry not. Send back your beautiful but modest-sized fake diamond… and we will credit it to your next purchase of a magnificent and ginormous fake diamond. Just enclose a check for an extra xyz dollars to…”

In other words, marketer two created a back-end of upsells and followup offers. Result? A business that made something like $25 million in its first year.

(By the way, I only found out later that marketer one, the brilliant but short-sighted copywriter, was Gary Halbert.)

I thought of this story today because I’m seeing something similar right in front of me.

For the past two years, I’ve been writing copy for a client in the ecommerce space. Over the past year alone, they have abandoned about a dozen hot funnels. Yes, including fake diamonds.

Each funnel had an in-demand product… copy that was working… a large, hungry, accessible audience eager to hand over their money.

So why abandon ship? Because fulfillment got tricky… or shipping got expensive… or ad costs went up and made the funnel unprofitable. So on to the next opportunity, the next oil well that can be exploited with just a bucket and a rope, for as long as it lasts.

I had the idea this morning of taking over some of these abandoned but rich funnels. But my first thought was, how could I possibly succeed where my client had failed? After all, they have a gaggle of ad buyers, a herd of ad production people, and money and resources and connections I can only dream of.

So how could I succeed? Perhaps, by having a back-end of upsells and followup offers. By tapping this oil well a bit deeper… and using strategies that go beyond a bucket and a rope.

Maybe that’s doable… but it also sounds like a lot of work. Which brings me to the point.

Last autumn I wrote about my idea of a “cash buyers list.” In a nutshell, I am looking for people who are willing to partner with me in some way on investing in online properties, whether that’s product funnels or blogs or sudoku solver software.

And if you have interest in partnering with me on some tried-and-proven ecommerce funnels… and you either have money, or relevant skills to contribute, then get in touch. Maybe we can create a new case study together for Jay Abraham to talk about for years to come.

The dumbest way to make more money?

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A few weeks ago, while researching one of these posts in which I mentioned premier marketer Jay Abraham, I came across a great story.

It was told by a guy named Andrew Wood. And it’s about the easiest, and possibly dumbest, way to make more money. The story goes like this:

Back in the early 2000s, Andrew Wood ran an info publishing business, teaching marketing to karate schools. Wood knew what he was talking about, because he had previously created and then sold a chain of 400 karate schools.

Wood’s info publishing business was pulling in good money, around $30k each month. The trouble was, Wood’s expenses — business, car, wife — totaled $40k each month. In other words, he was leaking money like a beached tanker leaks oil.

So in a moment of desperation, Wood got in touch with Jay Abraham. The two met.

Over the course of a morning, Jay Abraham grilled Wood all about his business. After each question, Abraham came up with suggestions. And Wood replied he was already doing that — or he had tried it before but it didn’t work.

As the meeting wore on, Jay Abraham grew more and more frustrated. Eventually, he stood up from the table.

“You’re so fucking smart,” Abraham said, “figure it out for yourself.” And he walked out.

Wood sat there stunned. But before he had a chance to do anything, Jay Abraham came back and apologized. And he asked Wood to run through the numbers one more time.

“What are you taking in each month?”

“$30k.”

“How much are you spending?”

“$40k.”

“And how much do you want to make?”

“$60k would be great.”

“Okay,” Jay Abraham said. “That’s easy. Just double your prices! Find something you can add to the program to increase the value and double the price.”

And with that, Jay Abraham said goodbye.

Silence. Do you think Andrew Wood sat there thinking, “What a great insight!”

Of course not. He thought it was a total lack of advice. But on his way home, he stopped for a beer. A few of his employees joined. And after the third pint, one of the employees said,

“Just imagine, if we did double the price, what could we put in the box to get them to pay twice as much?”

Wood says the ideas came slowly… but after more beer, they started to flow a bit more freely. And I guess you can see where this is going:

A couple weeks later, Wood stood on stage in front of his two hundred customers. And he announced a new monthly program.

It would cost $200, twice as much as what they were already paying. The contents were not much more than what they were already getting.

And yet, people bought.

In part, because they knew and liked and trusted Wood already. In part (I suspect), because the value of what they were getting was still much higher than the price he was charging.

Wood says that in three months, he went from taking in $30k a month to $100k a month. More importantly, he went from losing $10k each month to making a profit of $60k. By Christmas, he was entirely debt-free and owned his first Ferrari.

The end. Except, what’s the point of me retelling this entire Andrew Wood story?

I just want to point out that Jay Abraham’s idea was very simple. And that Andrew Wood was very resistant to it. And even when he and his employees started playing what-if, the ideas came slowly.

And yet, according to Wood, this one dumb idea was worth $5 million to him. So I want to leave you with a question or two to ponder:

Could making money be simpler than you think?

Could a dumb idea, probably one you’ve heard dozens of times, be all you need to turn yourself from a failure to a success?

Probably not. But just pretend for a second. What if?

​​Even if the ideas come slowly, keep at it. A few million dollars might be hiding on the other end.

And for more rehashed stories, you might like to subscribe to my email un-newsletter.

Premier positioning (War is over)

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Gary Bencivenga held his farewell seminar at the St. Regis Hotel.

Bencivega’s motto was, Why not the best? That’s why he chose the ritzy St. Regis.

The St. Regis hotel holds Forbes five-star and AAA five-diamond ratings. It’s been home to a bunch of famous guests and residents, including Alfred Hitchcock, Salvador Dali, and John Lennon, who recorded a demo version of “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” in his room. At the time of Bencivenga’s seminar, 15 years ago, a room at the St. Regis cost $750/night.

But let’s get back to Gary Bencivenga.

He got excellent results as a copywriter. Perhaps better than anyone else. But I believe his farewell seminar is why we’re still talking about the guy 15 years after he retired.

That “Why not the best” attitude gives Bencivenga a position in the mind. He remains the premier A-list copywriter, while other A-listers of his generation fade into obscurity.

Now here’s another positioning tidbit for you to mull over:

Jay Abraham won’t speak at an event unless he’s the keynote speaker. Jay positions himself as the world’s premier marketing consultant. Why would he ever accept anything less than top billing?

Rolex. Rolls Royce. Harvard. Like Gary Bencivenga and Jay Abraham, these are all premier brands. That means 1) they charge a premium over what their competition charges and 2) they occupy a clear position in the prospect’s mind. Why not the best?

Of course, there’s a problem.

You can’t simply wave a wand, claim to be the premier choice, and make it true.

Conditions have to be right. There’s got to be a soup of good options — you one of them – but nobody to  claim the premier position yet. Or you can think of it as a war, with many warring parties, but no clear winner.

Now here’s the good news:

If those conditions exist, you don’t have to wait and hope for the “premier” label to land on your shoulders.

You can proclaim yourself the premier choice.

Start charging never-before-seen prices.

And adopt the attitude. Why not the best?

War is over. Your prospect finally has a clear winner to keep in his mind.

Ok, so much for the ritzy part of the marketing spectrum. Now for the down-and-dirty:

Want more ideas about positioning, copywriting, and persuasion? Then you might like to sign up for my email un-newsletter.

Hidden gold inside crap online properties

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Last week, I wrote about about my plans to start rehabbing distressed online properties. To which a reader named Josh wrote:

“It seems like the only enduring ‘property’ aspect of a ‘web property’ is its rank on the Googles. The other aspects — web design, copywriting, product development, etc. — are all ‘disposable’ parts in the sense that an underperforming site will likely need a clean sheet in those areas.”

Actually, I can think of a half dozen “gold” assets that a crap online business can have. Each can be worth many times what you pay for that business.

I shared three specific such assets with my email subscribers. But even if you have no interest in flipping blogs and online stores… this is something you should think about.

Because if you have a business, chances are you have too unused assets.  Don’t leave those assets unused, and don’t wait for a hostile private equity takeover. As Jay Abraham says, get everything you can out of all you’ve got.

But what if you got no business? What if you’re a lowly copywriter looking for work?

In that case, your chances of getting hired (or rehired) are much better if you know a bit about marketing.

Like Dan Kennedy said in that quote I shared a few days ago… you don’t need to be brilliant. Just know enough to pull out some hidden value from your clients current business… and you will look like a genius.

But maybe you’re wondering what gold assets a crap business could possibly have. Like I said, I only shared this with my email subscribers. If you’d like to get on my email newsletter, here’s where to go.

Easier, more powerful prospecting: Thinking like Jay Abraham

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Back in 2006, Jay Abraham, aka “The 9 Billion Dollar Man,” interviewed Michael Fishman, aka “The World’s Greatest List Broker.”

I randomly came across a transcript of this interview a few days ago.

The interview was messy. Jay Abraham had to keep running to the toilet to pee. And he was talkative. For much of the interview, he riffed ad hoc while Michael, who was supposed to be the one sharing his expertise, just kept saying “um-hmmm.”

And yet, while it’s messy, this interview is pure gold.

It’s gold because of the unique insights Michael Fishman has about the psychology of direct response buyers. But the thing I want to share with you today is something Jay Abraham said, right at the end.

Because the whole purpose of this interview was to create a kind of calling card for Michael Fishman. A thing that demonstrates his knowledge and insights, that he could use to drum up new business.

So at the end, Jay Abraham, who might be world champion at spinning up lucrative business ideas, gave Michael two pieces of advice on what to do with the interview.

The second and I suspect less valuable piece of advice was to find potential clients, write to them and say, “A lot of people told me this tape opened up their eyes and made them a bunch of money, thought you might like it.”

This is good. It’s what many businesses, including many direct response businesses, are doing in essence.

But I think it pales in effectiveness to the first piece of advice that Jay gave Michael.

And that was for Michael to go to everybody he knows… ask them to make a list of people they would like to send this tape to… and then to send it, along with their letter of endorsement.

The mathematics definitely checks out. Because if you know a 100 people… and they know a 100 people… suddenly that becomes a very big space. One that you might have a hard time exploring on your own.

Just as important, the psychology checks out. Because there’s a huge wall in the human mind between “known” and “unknown.” And you want to be on the “known” side.

There’s a broader lesson here too. But I saved that for people who are subscribed to my daily email newsletter.

Do you know anybody who might like to get my newsletter? Please write them an email, telling them why, and linking them to this page. And if you yourself want to subscribe, click here.

The beautiful future of text sales letters

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“All train compartments smell vaguely of shit. It gets so you don’t mind it.”
— Ricky Roma, Glengarry Glen Ross

Right now, everybody’s so in love with copy.

In certain circles, this love even goes further, to a certain pride about ugly websites and ugly emails and ugly sales letters. “Who cares? If you’re interesting, if you write well, people will read your message even if it’s written on used toilet paper!”

There are even people who claim they’ve tested this. They claim that ugly, because it stands out, outperforms beautiful.

I can believe this. But here’s the thing:

If everybody’s making an ugly website in the hope of shocking people into handing over their attention… then ugly stops being different.

It gets so you don’t mind it, like Ricky Roma says in the quote above. And at that point, ugly loses its selling power.

I bring this up because I’m listening to an interview right now that Rich Schefren did with a marketer named Sean Vosler.

Rich spends the first five minutes of the interview enthusing about Sean and his work. Rich thinks this is the future of marketing.

He even gets so excited that he pulls up his text messages on screen, to prove how he just had an exchange with Jay Abraham, and how he invited Jay to join this interview. Rich thinks Sean’s stuff is so revolutionary that even Jay needs to see it.

So what exactly is Sean doing?

Well, he is selling a book about copywriting. That’s not unusual. What is unusual is that the book and its sales page are very professionally and beautifully designed (by Sean himself, who has a a background in design).

The point, as Rich puts it, is that “different is better than better.”

And in a world where many marketers are taking pride in making garish-looking sales pages… or sending boring and plain-looking emails (like the ones I send out in my email newsletter)… in that world, a beautiful design like Sean’s looks different. It gets attention. And that’s half the sale.

By the way, this is part of a bigger trend.

Last autumn, I wrote about a similar move to higher production values in VSLs. And now text sales letters seem to be headed in the same direction.

So if you are a marketer or business owner, this beautiful design stuff is something to keep in mind.

And if you are a copywriter, this is something you can bring up to your clients, and make yourself seem well-informed and cutting-edge.

But wait, you might say.

What exactly makes for beautiful design in a marketing context?

I can’t say. I’m not a designer. But if you want to see Sean’s sales page, the one Rich Schefren was so enthusiastic about, here’s the link so you can judge for yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/sean-vosler