Josh Spector Archives

The good, the coulda been better, the ugly of my Josh Spector promotion

August 7, 2023 by John Bejakovic

Last night, I finished the promotion I was running over the past week, which started when I ran a classified ad in Josh Spector’s newsletter last Sunday.

I had a free offer in the actual ad, Simple Money Emails, and a paid upsell, 9 Deadly Email Sins, for people who opted in.

I turned off both offers last night, as I said I would, once the deadline passed.

For my own benefit, I wrote up my conclusions about this experience.

If you like, you can read some of my conclusions below. It might be interesting to you if you’re looking to grow your list, monetize your list, run classified ads, or put on quick and simple offers that your readers appreciate and buy.

But as FBI negotiator Chris Voss likes to say, the last impression is the lasting impression. So let’s leave the good for last, and let’s start with the ugly first.

THE UGLY:

I haven’t made back my money on the Josh Spector ad.

I mean, I made a bunch of sales over the past week, but not enough from new subscribers, who came via the classified ad, to cover the $350 I gave to Josh to run the ad.

There’s a fair chance I will make back my money in time. But of course, there’s also a chance I won’t.

I have various hypotheses as to why it hasn’t happened yet. I might write about those down the line, but some include options in the next, coulda been better section.

THE COULDA BEEN BETTER:

I made a nice number of sales of the paid upsell last week — but at only $100 per sale.

The promotion I did last month, for Steve Raju’s ClientRaker, ended up with a comparable number of sales, but at 3x the price.

Had I raised the price higher, I prolly woulda made more money — there’s a lot of elasticity in info products. Maybe that way I would have already recouped my money on the Josh Spector ad.

But maybe it wasn’t the price. Maybe it was the copy, the core appeal.

Simple Money Emails is something I thought about carefully. I planned out that name, and the core appeal. The number of people who took me up on that offer confirms it’s something attractive.

On the other hand, as I’ve written already, the upsell, 9 Deadly Email Sins, wasn’t something I carefully planned or thought about — at least as far as the packaging goes, because the content is thought-through and very valuable.

I might have packaged up that same valuable content into a different-patterned box with a different-colored bow, and sold 50% or 80% or maybe 100% more.

THE GOOD:

One good thing was that I got a buncha new subscribers.

In fact, I grew my list 7% list over past week. From what I can see from new subscribers who have custom domains, these are high-quality prospects. Whether I manage to convert them in time is probably up to me.

The other good thing was I made a buncha sales to existing readers.

One of those sales came from somebody who joined my list back in 2019 (my guess is I had ~80 subscribers at the time). Several sales came from people who joined my list in 2020… and lots came from people who joined 2021, in 2022, and earlier this year.

Most people who bought 9 Deadly Email Sins bought multiple offers from me before.

The fact they are still with me is encouraging. It means I’m doing something right both with the products I’m selling, and with this marketing, the email that you’re reading right now. It must be engaging enough to keep people around, and reading, and buying, years down the line.

THE AMAZING:

I tell myself I have to have an offer at the end of each email. My offer at the end of this email is my Most Valuable Email course, which is amazing. But don’t take it from me. Reader James Harrison bought MVE last month, and wrote me about it last week to say:

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Also, a few days ago I finished going through your MVE course. I thought it was amazing. I especially loved what you did at the end, with the MVE Riddles. Not enough courses get their students actively using their brains.

Thank you for all that you do.

===

Maybe actively using your brain isn’t something you’re into. But maybe it is. In that case, if you’d like an amazing way to do it, and to win bigly in the process:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Emily tried to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen

July 31, 2023 by John Bejakovic

Last Monday, Josh Spector’s assistant Emily sent me an email with an alarmist subject line:

“TIMELY: For The Interested Classified Ad Copy Needed”

I was annoyed Emily was pushing me for the ad copy, since there was still a week to go. But I wrote it up and sent it over, along with the link I wanted the ad to go to.

A message immediately shot back. Emily again:

“Thanks for sending your copy and link over. Unfortunately, I’m getting an error message when I click on your link:” — and then a screenshot of an error page on my site.

I rolled my eyes at Emily’s pickiness. Of course it takes you to an error page — I’m still working on it, it’s in draft status!

I took a deep breath and collected myself. I politely replied to Emily and explained the situation. The landing page was still under development. “I will have it ready by the time the ad runs,” I said at the end.

(Cue ominous music. Clouds gather on the horizon, and a sudden gust of cold wind blows the window open in my office, scattering papers everywhere.)

Fast forward to yesterday.

In the eleventh hour before my ad in Josh Spector’s newsletter, I finished all the stuff I needed for it, including that landing page.

I could finally take a break. I decided to set work aside completely for the rest of the day.

I was in the mountains with friends yesterday, so we went for a walk. We had lunch. I packed, and got ready for five-hour ride from the Pyrenees back to Barcelona.

(The dark clouds on the horizon have fully built up now, and they flash with lightning every few seconds. Ominous music swells to unbearably tense levels.)

It was almost time to get in the car and drive home. But even though I’d decided to ignore any work-related stuff for the rest of the day, my resolve broke down.

I impulsively checked my email.

It had been about a half hour since the ad in Josh’s newsletter went out — plenty of time for a bunch of new people to get on my list.

I opened my inbox. But instead of dozens or hundreds of “new subscriber” notifications, I saw…

“Aww dude, clicked that FTI link and it leads to an error page 😳“

“John, I took your offer on Josh’s newsletter but the link is throwing an error.”

“Just tried to get the course. It says that I dont have access to the page”

… plus a dozen or more such messages from existing subscribers, who I’d routed to Josh’s newsletter to get a free copy of my new course via the classified ad.

There’s no knowing how many potential new subscribers, who weren’t yet on my list, clicked on the ad and were taken to the wrong page, with no chance to opt in.

In my daily email yesterday, I jokingly predicted crippling electrical storms or perhaps a meteorite strike to sink my ad in Josh’s newsletter.

But I didn’t account for the real danger:

My own mule-like ability to run a $350 classified ad and genuinely include a wrong link inside of it, which is indeed what happened.

Emily tried to warn me. But I wouldn’t listen.

I double-checked my own link when I submitted the ad.

I checked it again when Emily told me it was taking her to the wrong page.

The link was wrong both times, and yet I hypnotized myself into believing it wasn’t.

What’s more, when I clicked on the link myself to test it, it took me to the wrong page. I saw that, but I told myself it was was a website caching issue. “No problem here. It will be ready in time!”

Conclusion:

Too blind… too self-assured… too ready to rationalize away any conflicting evidence.

(Finally, violent storm over, the clouds break. A single ray of sunlight shines through to the soaked and ravaged countryside.)

Almost miraculously, my colossal mistake turned out to be salvageable.

It took me all of two seconds to create a website redirect from the wrong page to the right page. Anybody who clicked on the ad after that would now be taken to the right landing page.

Sure enough, people immediately started signing up for the free course I am giving away via the ad.

And some also signed up for the paid upsell I am offering, 9 Deadly Email Sins. One person who signed up was Shawn Cartwright, the owner of TCCII, an online martial arts academy. Shawn wrote to say:

===

Killer subject line and nice flex on the Pyrenees…

Also, killer offer… and something of real value to the business owners like me who love the idea of being copywriting experts but would rather create their products than perfect a sales page or email.

===

Here’s why this 9 Deadly Sins training could be of real value to business owners like Shawn:

It’s the email equivalent of Emily writing to me and saying, “Uhhh, your link doesn’t work. Do you want to double check that?”

Over the past year, I’ve coached, taught, and consulted a few dozen business owners, course creators, coaches, marketers, and copywriters on their email marketing and email copy.

I’ve found that my feedback keeps coming back to 9 persistent mistakes. All 9 of these mistakes are easy and quick to fix. And yet they are widespread, costing people sales day after day.

Perhaps you’re sure that you could never write emails which blatantly violate the laws of good sense and effective salesmanship.

You’re probably right. You are probably not as ready to hypnotize yourself as I am… to dismiss conflicting evidence like I did… or to be over-confident that what you’re doing right now is just perfect, with zero chance of being improved.

But isn’t it worth finding out what these most common 9 Deadly Email Sins are, to be 100% sure you yourself are not falling prey to them?

In case that’s got you wondering, here are the full details of this training, which will happen live, next Monday, August 7:

https://bejakovic.com/sme-classified-ty/

FREE: Get my new course for free by simply getting on Josh Spector’s list by Sunday and promptly following the instructions in the ad (also free)

July 29, 2023 by John Bejakovic

The past two days, I’ve been promoting Josh Spector’s newsletter, because tomorrow I will run an ad there, which will offer a free copy of my new course, Simple Money Emails.

Several readers wrote in to tell me they got on Josh’s list and are waiting eagerly for Josh’s email tomorrow to take advantage of my free offer.

Others wrote in to tell me they have already been on Josh’s list since the first time I wrote about it, several weeks back. They had glowing things to say about Josh himself. For example, reader Anthony La Tour wrote to say:

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Dude, I’ve already unsubscribed from a few daily emails and yours is the only one I’ve read religiously. I even signed up to Josh’s newsletter a little while ago when you spoke about his newsletter and how to borrow the idea of a one paragraph newsletter.

Josh and I have already exchange some emails back and forth and he’s seriously a cool guy.

I’m proud to say that I’m also going to be launching a “Spector-style” newsletter, following the advice you gave in one of the emails you sent.

I own a couple of your offers and everything you’ve done is top-notch.

Thanks John!

===

On the other hand…

I also had one long-time reader and customer write in to ask about my new Simple Money Emails course — which I am offering for free, if you simply get on Josh Spector’s list by Sunday and promptly follow the instructions in the ad — with the following:

===

Will the people who bought any of your previous courses get the course as an add on or do we need to buy it separately?

===

This reader wrote this in reply to an email in which I had said, “if you are on Josh’s list by Sunday, and you take me up on the offer inside the ad before the deadline, you will get Simple Money Emails for free.”

You might think I am shaming this reader for missing an obvious point. But though I did learn email marketing via Ben Settle, shaming is not what I am doing.

My point is just to illustrate that you rarely have your readers’ full attention — even of the readers who like you, who buy from you regularly, and who read your emails eagerly.

Which is something I address in Simple Money Emails, specifically in Rule #11 of the 12 Rules of Simple Money Emails. And I tell you how to deal with it.

Incidentally, you can get Simple Money Emails for free. By signing up to Josh Spector’s newsletter at the link below. And reading Josh’s email tomorrow, which will have my ad in it.

I won’t be sending out more emails to push you towards this free offer.

In case you want something for free, click on the link below, sign up for free, and you will be rewarded:

https://bejakovic.com/fti

3 great reasons to sign up to Josh Spector’s newsletter before Sunday

July 27, 2023 by John Bejakovic

Today I’d like to invite you to sign up to Josh Spector’s newsletter For The Interested.

Signing up is free, and I can think of no fewer than three great reasons to do so:

First, Josh writes both a weekly newsletter on Sundays (long, similar to what many others are doing) and a short daily newsletter in a different format on all the other days.

What Josh is doing with daily emails is innovative and it works. So much so I already wrote an email about it just a couple weeks ago. It might be something you want to keep an eye on and model yourself.

Second, if you ever find yourself crying “Value! More value!!!” and you want marketers to bombard you with non-stop, practical, how-to info and inspiration, without any teasing, guru-like grandstanding, or endless personal stories, then Josh is your man.

His newsletter is all value, zero charismatic manipulation, all day long.

Third, I will be running a classified ad in Josh’s newsletter this Sunday.

This ad will have a special offer to get my new Simple Money Emails course. I will sell this course after the promo in Josh’s newsletter ends, but if you are on Josh’s list by Sunday, and you take me up on the offer inside the ad before the deadline, you will get Simple Money Emails for free.

So are you… interested?

If you are (maybe you can sense where this is going) then here is Josh’s For The Interested:

https://bejakovic.com/fti

The opportunity of the two-sentence newsletter

July 8, 2023July 7, 2023 by John Bejakovic

Yesterday, I wrote about Sparkloop. It’s a way to monetize your newsletter by promoting other newsletters.

I am using Sparkloop to make some money in the early days of my own health newsletter. I make a few shekels right at signup time (thanks to the coregistration screen that pops up right after somebody opts in). I make a few more shekels with in-line newsletter recommendations each week when I send out a new issue.

I could make more money if I emailed more often. But the weekly schedule already costs me a lot of time, plus I already have this daily marketing newsletter you are reading now. Who’s got time for more daily emails?

I wanna tell you my plan, which you are free to use yourself.

I got it from marketer Josh Spector. Once upon a time, Josh started out by sending a typical “creator economy” newsletter. You know — once a week, a bunch of curated links, some how-to advice.

But then Josh did something really unique. I don’t know if it was his idea originally, but it was certainly the first time I’d seen it.

Josh started a daily newsletter. But instead of aggregating dozens of links or writing hundreds of words of personal content, Josh’s newsletter was typically just two sentences.

One sentence had a bit of intriguing content. The second sentence had an offer. Kind of like this:

===

SUBJECT: The opportunity of the two-sentence newsletter [<== intriguing, bullet-like subject line]

I’ve written up the entire business plan here. [<== minimal content that typically links out to another blog, podcast, newsletter]

***

Today’s email is brought to you by a daily newsletter that embodies the idea above. [<== The promo. That’s a link to Josh’s newsletter by the way]

===

Josh monetizes this daily newsletter by 1) selling that ad spot for $350 or 2) by promoting offers of his own choosing, including other newsletters via Sparkloop.

The nice thing is that creating this kind of content is as close as you can get to effortless, particularly if you are writing a newsletter in a niche that interest you.

But even if you go into an entirely foreign niche, you should be able to gather dozens of interesting tips and write dozens of these two-line emails in a couple hours’ time.

Does it really work? I can tell you that I bought one of Josh’s $350 ads. I got hundreds of clicks to my own (marketing) newsletter, close to a hundred signups, and I actually made sales to some of those new readers in the first 30 days, to the point where I almost paid for the entire ad.

In other words, people read these quick and simple emails, and they act based on them.

So here’s a business plan that pulls all this together:

1. Pick a niche. For reasons that I will tell you in a second, I can suggest “parenting” or “business opportunities” as niches.

2. Run ads either on Facebook or Twitter to get subscribers to your newsletter. You should be able to get new subscribers for at most $2-$3.

3. Monetize right away with Sparkloop’s Upscribe to recoup some (or all) of your ad cost on day zero.

4. Send 2-sentence daily emails with 1) a tip to give people something interesting and 2) a newsletter recommendation.

This is why I recommended parenting or business opportunities above. They are big markets, with lots of interest in general. Plus, based on my research into which newsletters are available to promote on Sparkloop, you will have endless, high-quality, relevant options to promote, each paying you $2-$3 per new subscriber.

5. And that’s it. Keep repeating, keep growing, and you will soon be able to, in the words of David Mamet, “BUY A HOUSE IN BEL AIR AND HIRE SOMEONE TO LIVE THERE FOR YOU.”

I myself am planning to complement my own weekly health newsletter with such a quick daily email newsletter, and do just what I’ve told you above.

There’s no reason why you can’t do it as well, even if you have few resources right now beyond the device — laptop or phone — that are reading this post on.

Of course, a crucial part is Sparkloop, which gives you something easy and attractive to promote, even when you have zero other offers.

If you’d like to sign up to Sparkloop, for free, and start putting the business plan above into action right now, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/sparkloop

Which email newsletters sell classified ads?

February 20, 2023 by John Bejakovic

Last week Ben Settle sent an email in which he wrote:

===

I remember buying little $35 and $50 ads in email newsletters 20 years ago.

Nowadays, I don’t see a lot of them.

===

True. So let me ask you, do you know of any such email newsletters?

I know of a few. In fact, I bought a couple of classified ads in two weekly newsletters this month.

One ran already, bringing me some 50 new subscribers. Another will run in a few more days.

The first of these ads cost $350. The other will cost $100. We will see if they end up paying for themselves.

I’ve also bought one of the three $1k classified ads in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter. That ad is supposed to run some time next month. I will let you know more about it as it’s nearing, because I will have a special offer in that ad, only available if you are on Daniel’s list at the time.

But why even bother with classified ads? Here’s why:

In the old direct mail days, one of they key pieces of info that marketers wanted to know was what format somebody was sold through.

An infomercial buyer was not the same as a magalog buyer was not the same as a sweepstakes buyer.

The same bit of psychology holds today.

A YouTube gawker is not the same as a Twitter endless-scroller is not the same as an email reader. Even if all of them are interested in marketing, or even bought marketing-related courses.

So that’s why I’ve been looking to buy more email classified ads.

I’ve being doing my research about email newsletters that sell them.But I would like to get your feedback also. So I have an offer for you:

Do you read any email newsletters that run classified ads?

Write in and tell me specific names. Ben Settle, Daniel Throssell, and Josh Spector are off the table, since I know about them already.

My offer for you is that, if you write in and tell me, I will reply to you with one source of email traffic to avoid, at least in my experience. I ran an experiment with it last year, spent $731, and made nothing in return. I will tell you what I learned, and maybe you can laugh at my stubbornness or folly.

Also, in case you are not interested in growing your list with paid ads, but you want to do it organically, then take a look at my Most Valuable Email training.

Personally, I’ve been able to trace hundreds of my subscribers to emails I’ve written using the Most Valuable Email trick I describe in this training.

On several occasions, influential people chanced upon one of those MVE emails, enjoyed it enough to share it with others, and ended up driving a large number of new subscribers to my list. If you’d like to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Announcing my hot new course

May 28, 2022 by John Bejakovic

Today I would like announce my spectacular new course, Barcelona Ballers.

Barcelona Ballers is all about how to find a beautiful, lavish, and yet affordable long-term rental in Barcelona in just 14 days or less. Here’s just a tiny bit of what Barcelona Ballers will show you:

* The 3-second “incognito” trick to gets real estate agents tripping over each other to talk to you. Barcelona realtors are infamous for being unresponsive. But with this push-button tweak, you can triple the number of agents who respond to your inquiries.

* How to use a threatening “I know where you live” message to whip real estate agents into shape if they are slacking off. Not for the faint of heart. Only use this for an apartment you really, 100%, do-or-die want to see.

* The simple 12-word-sentence to get apartment owners desperate to rent their place to you. Why humiliate yourself? Turn the tables and make owners sell themselves to YOU.

But wait, there’s more.

Barcelona Ballers is proven to work. After all, it worked for me, just last week. But to make sure it works for you also, Barcelona Ballers also comes with a spectacular 100% satisfaction guarantee:

If you are not lounging in your dream Barcelona apartment within the next 14 days, I will allow you to stay in my spare bedroom, for free, for as long as you choose to continue your apartment search.

And if you happen to be a direct response marketer or copywriter, I will sit next to you, every day, coffee in hand, and critique your email copy, so you make more sales or book more client work.

In this way, I will help you increase your income and expand the number of apartments in Barcelona you can afford to rent. I will keep this up as long as it takes, until you can find a balling place and start living that Barcelona Baller lifestyle.

But before you start whipping out your credit card, breathe in deeply, and then exhale. And now listen to what I have to tell you.

A few days ago, I read a valuable post by Josh Spector. As you might know, Josh is an intriguing online figure.

For the past six years, he has been writing an email newsletter, For The Interested, with inspiration and advice for “creative entrepreneurs.”

FTI now has over 18,000 subscribers. In it, Josh shares only “value” — no infotainment, no stories, no personality. Only hardcore how-to.

And yet Josh does very well.

The only income numbers I could find for Josh is that he made $48k in the last year just from tiny classifieds at the end of his newsletter.

But based on a few interviews Josh has given, I suspect this is no more than 5%-10% of the income generated by his newsletter and related offers. In other words, multiply $48k by 10 or 20, and you might get an idea of Josh’s true income numbers.

But back to Josh’s post. It shared 8 questions. Josh says asking himself these 8 questions every month is what made his success possible.

Sounds too simple? Let me give you an example, and then you can make up your own mind. Josh’s question #6 is:

“What have you learned to do well in the past year?”

If you look around much of the marketing world, you will see the value of asking yourself this question.

For example, right now, a half dozen big-name email marketers are all trying to outdo each other to sell Ian Stanley’s new course on Google Doc sales letters.

Ian had success over the past year or two, launching his own offers using a sales letter in a Google Doc.

To start, it was probably a hack or an improvisation. In time, Ian realized he had a neat little system that works pretty well.

So he packaged up his experiences and insights with Google Docs sales letters… put a bow and a card on it… and got a bunch of other people to sell it for him.

I’d like to say that you too can do the same.

But the fact is, there’s no point in me saying it.

If I did, the vast majority of people would start listing reasons why this simple idea wouldn’t work for them. Oh I’m just starting out… oh I don’t have an audience… oh I haven’t learned to do anything cool or unique yet.

On the other hand, the right people don’t need to have me say it at all. Those few people are fired up right now, just from the realization that yes, there must be something, however small and niche, which they have learned to do well in the past year, and which they could package up and sell to others.

If by chance you fall into this second group, you will get even more fired up from the other 7 questions that helped Josh achieve his success. For the full list, check out Josh’s valuable post below:

https://joshspector.com/creative-entrepreneur-questions/