Jeff Paul Archives - Desert Kite

A few days ago, I shared a Jeff Paul sales letter that tells the story of how Jeff dug himself into a deep hole, with $100k worth of debt, living in his sister-in-law’s basement, without a job, humiliated, scared, and unable to provide for his wife and two kids.

What happened to Jeff? How did he get trapped in this hole? In Jeff’s own words:

I got talked into a 100% commission job with a company in Philadelphia, while my wife and children were living here in Chicago. I stupidly allowed the company to talk me into moving my family to Philly, uprooting them from the only home they knew, away from Peggy’s large and close family, and all the kids’ friends.

Here’s the killer. Two weeks after Peggy and the kids moved into the home I bought with our last nickel, I found out the company was going under. Shutting the doors. Without paying me one cent of the six-figure commissions they owed me. (Because they weren’t paying me, and like an idiot I believed their lies of future money coming, I was using credit card advances to live on.)

I don’t know how true this story is in Jeff’s case. But it rings true enough, based on my experience.

I don’t mean I’ve ever racked up $100k of debt by accepting a commission-only job. But I’ve never made a single cent from such a job. And not for want of trying.

I’ve had three client arrangements that were commission-only from the start.

In each case, there were lots of stupid meetings, wasted weeks or months of time I could have spent on others things, and even free work that I did. And I never saw a cent from it.

Maybe it’s just been bad luck. Or maybe it’s the reverse of my “Why royalties are good for everyone” argument.

If a client has never paid you anything, and feels they never have to pay you anything until you make them some money, maybe they don’t take the project seriously. They become eager to drag their feet, or to have things done exactly how they imagine it, or to pursue dumb ideas, instead of taking your expert advice into consideration.

So what’s the point?

Well, all this is not to say commissions or royalties aren’t great. Or that commission-only arrangements can’t be great.

The fact is, the most money I’ve made to date from copywriting came from a commission-only arrangement.

But it came from an existing client, who had paid me a lot of money already for other work I was doing for him. The commission-only project was a bonus on top of that other work.

On the other hand, whenever I started a new client relationship with working only on commission, it’s lead to nothing except the stress and hassle of eventually having to call it off — with the client being offended that I don’t want to keep working for them for free.

So should you just say no when somebody makes you a commission-only offer?

In my experience, it’s certainly better than saying yes.

Of course, you can also try to spin it a little. Set yourself up with a better deal than zero. But that’s a conversation for another time, and perhaps, for another Jeff Paul sales letter. In case you want to join that conversation, whenever it does happen, sign up for my email newsletter.

IN ONLY SIX MONTHS, that formerly desperate man bought a $385,000 house with half down, and became a millionaire in less than a year. He also bought a vacation house, put away enough to cover his kids’ college educations, easily stopped his bad habits, and attained complete personal and financial freedom… all accomplished automatically, without effort or willpower!

That’s the back envelope copy from a direct mail sales letter written by one Jeff Paul.

Jeff was a student and protege of Dan Kennedy, and this sales letter is actually selling Dan’s Psycho Cybernetics program.

I’m sharing this copy with you for two reasons:

First, because I want to point you to Info Marketing Blog. It’s got a few decades’ worth of brilliant direct response ads, and smart and interesting commentary. And if you need proof of that, the guy who runs Info Marketing Blog, Lawrence Bernstein, was called out as a valuable resource during Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar by Gary Bencivenga himself.

Second, there’s a masterful marketing and copywriting lesson in those two sentences of copy above. It’s right there at the end:

“… automatically, without effort or willpower!”

When I look outside at the people I know… and when I look inside, at my own feelings and frustrations… I find this is what we all really really want, deep down.

Peace. No effort. Definitely no struggle, and no demands on our willpower. No opportunity for it to go wrong. Instead, all done automatically, by some mechanism outside of us.

That’s why smart marketers like Dan Kennedy and Jeff Paul, and millions of others like them, make those promises.

And if you want to sell, in big numbers, at high prices, you should make these promises too.

Only be careful those desires you stimulate in your sales copy don’t seep into your own subconscious.

Because in my experience, life is all about effort, about exerting your willpower, about getting things done yourself instead of sitting around and wishing they could be done automatically.

How exactly do you reconcile selling something to people that you wouldn’t consume yourself? It seems a little like going down to the elementary school each day to sell drugs to kids, while being religious about never allowing that filth near your own family.

I don’t have a good way to reconcile these things for you. But facts are facts. And if you want to see some market-tested facts, here’s Jeff Paul’s complete sales letter. It’s worth reading. So much so that I’ll even talk about it tomorrow.

Sign up for my email newsletter if you want to read that when it comes out. And here’s the link to the sales letter if you want to get a head start.

https://infomarketingblog.com/wordpress/jeff-pauls-greatest-story-selling-ad/