Two weeks ago, I was talking to copywriter Vasilis Apostolou, and he told me of a direct marketing conference that’s happening in May in Poland.
The conference is small but features some people I very much respect, foremost among them A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos and marketer Matt Bacak.
I asked Vasilis how much it costs to get in. He told me. I groaned.
$3,000 just for the ticket. And then there’s travel, a place to stay, plus 3-4 days lost from work.
This past Thursday, I got on a podcast-like interview with Jen Adams from the Professional Writers Alliance. Last December, I wrote some articles for PWA about my 10 Commandments book, and I got paid $1k for those articles. I got paid an extra $100 for this podcast-like appearance.
Getting paid $1,100 is a nice way to do self-promotion – but it’s not enough.
Last summer, I paid $1,200 for the Dig This Zoom calls. I found out about the PWA writing opportunity through the Discord channel for people who bought those Dig calls. So far, I’ve made back $1,100 of that $1,200 via this PWA thing. That means I still have $100 to make up somewhere.
I’ve written before how I have made back all the money I’ve paid for specific copywriting and marketing education.
Tens of thousands on coaching with Dan Ferrari… thousands on newsletters and books with Ben Settle… $297 for the Parris Lampropoulos webinars back in 2019. That last one, by the way, is my most winning investment. When I add up all the extra money I can directly trace back to Parris’s training, I estimate it to have been about a 300x return.
The thing is, all those returns turned out to be unconscious, after-the-fact, well-would-you-look-at-that results.
But I’ve since told myself not to make this into a matter of coincidence or luck. I’ve since made it a matter of attitude. I now put in thought and effort to make sure any investment, regardless of how small or large, has to eventually pay for itself.
That’s an outcome that’s impossible to control if you are buying stocks or bonds or race horses. But it’s quite possible to control if you are buying education, opportunities, or connections.
I will see what happens once those PWA articles get published and once interview goes live. Maybe one of those PWA people will join my list, buy something from me, and pay me that missing $100. Unless I can track $100 of extra sales to that, I will have to think what else I can do to make those Dig Zoom calls pay for themselves.
Likewise with that Poland conference. I decided to go. I budgeted $6k total for it — actual groan-inducing cost plus opportunity cost.
In other words, I will have to figure out a way to make the event pay me at least $6k. And I set myself the goal to have it happen within the first seven days after conference ends. I’m a little nervous about achieving that, but to me that signals that it’s possible.
So now I have three calls-to-action for you:
1. If you are planning to be there in Poland in May, let me know and we can make a point of meeting there and talking.
2. If you somehow already got on my list via PWA, hit reply and let me know. I’m curious to hear what you’re up to and why you decided to join. And if you’re thinking of writing a book like my 10 Commandments book, I might be able to give you some inspiration or advice.
3. If neither of the above applies to you, then my final offer is my Copy Riddles program. It costs $400. If you do decide to buy it, I encourage you to think of how you can make this investment directly and trackably pay for itself, and then some.
You might wonder if that’s really possible.
It is.
So today, instead of pointing you to the Copy Riddles sales page, let me point you to an email I wrote last year about a Copy Riddles member named Nathan, who doubled his income as an in-house copywriter, and who credits Copy Riddles for a chunk of that increase. In case you’re curious:
https://bejakovic.com/how-to-bombard-copywriting-clients-with-extra-value-at-no-extra-effort/