Mindvalley

Kieran Drew offers me some feedback

by

A few days ago, I got an email from Kieran Drew with the subject line, “Feedback.”

As you might know, Kieran is a bit of a star in the creative entrepreneur space. He has something like 187k followers on Twitter. He also has a big and growing email newsletter, with over 25k readers.

This past May, Kieran launched his writing course, High Impact Writing. He sold $140k worth of it in five days.

Then in September, Kieran relaunched his writing course… and made over $180k from it.

Clearly, the guy knows a thing or two about online businesses, course creation, and keeping audiences engaged.

And with that preamble, let me now share a paragraph from that email Kieran sent me. He wrote:

===

I sat with MVE last night and (I don’t say this lightly), it’s one of my favourite courses. Maybe because it’s written, and super relevant to me, but I haven’t enjoyed something like that since Andre chaperon auto responder.

===

An early chapter from the Saga of Bejako:

The reason I got into online marketing and then copywriting was that a long time ago, I saw marketer Hollis Carter stand up on stage at Mindvalley and talk about his business, which was publishing books for people on Kindle.

In the middle of his talk, Hollis said as a throwaway how his goal is to get book readers onto an email list, and then give them the “Soap Opera Sequence” from Autoresponder Madness by Andre Chaperon.

I took note of that.

So Andre Chaperon’s Autoresponder Sequence became the first copywriting course I ever went through.

And a “7-part Soap Opera Sequence” became the first copywriting service I ever offered the world, back in 2015, on Fiverr, for $5. (I charge even more now.)

Anyways, it’s gratifying to hear my Most Valuable Email course being compared to Andre’s course. But it’s much more gratifying to have people like Kieran going through MVE multiple times, and getting real value from it.

But about that:

Most Valuable Email is not for everyone.

You need to 1) have an email list and be willing to write to it regularly and 2) write about marketing and copywriting topics, because the Most Valuable Email trick will not work in all markets and niches.

But if you fit those two criteria, and you want to see what’s so enjoyable about MVE as a course and about the results it creates, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

A sales letter with negative traffic cost and highest quality leads

by

“Ogilvy & Mather has had more success with editorial layouts, than with addy layouts. Editorial layouts get higher readership than conventional advertisements.”
— David Ogilvy, How to Create Advertising that Sells

One of the turning points in my marketing career was hearing a talk that Hollis Carter gave at Mindvalley.

Back then, Hollis was already a successful entrepreneur. His venture at the time was a publishing house for Amazon Kindle books.

You can do anything with a Kindle book, Hollis said.

You can rank on Google for a competitive keyword… you can build authority… you can prospect for leads.

Hollis did a reframe to drive the last point home. A Kindle book is basically a sales letter, but Amazon distributes it for you to their huge audience… and even pays you for getting your sales message out.

Sounds pretty good, right?

And it ties into what I talked about yesterday, on how to write a magalog. Magalogs were a powerful sales format precisely because they looked and read like magazines. Camouflage works, just like Ogilvy says above.

Do you want to camouflage your sales message into a Kindle book? If you do, then much of yesterday’s advice on how to write a magalog will apply straight up.

But beware.

With a Kindle book, you’ll want to cut down the sales even more than in a magalog. And you’ll want to stuff your pitch towards the end of the book. Otherwise, you risk a ton of bad reviews.

For example, I once created a Kindle book called The Little Black Book of Essential Oil Scams. The goal was to promote another book I’d written about aromatherapy.

Inside the “Scams” book, I put a bunch of interesting and valuable content for anyone new to essential oils. I also added three mini sidebars throughout, promoting the second book I was selling.

Result?

Amazon reviewers were ready to lynch me. “Just a shameless sales pitch!”

So I learned my lesson. And when I published the 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters this last September, I put my shameless pitch towards the end of the book.

I also shamelessly asked people just to sign up for my email list, rather than to buy anything outright. A bunch of people signed up for my email list… and I haven’t had any bad reviews yet.

So let me wrap it up for you. A few days ago, a reader of my daily emails named Yusuf wrote in to ask:

“What would you be doing if freelance copywriting made you zero dollars?”

I told Yusuf that if freelance copywriting completely dried up, I’d probably start writing books on Kindle.

​​I’d make a bit of money from the sales of the books themselves… and then get readers to sign up for an email list and sell them something else.

Because people who have read your book will be some of the highest quality leads you will ever find. That is, assuming that you’ve given them unusual value in your book… without scratching their itch all the way.

Speaking of which, I sometimes share things in email that I never put on this blog. If you’d like to be part of my exclusive and valuable email community, click here to subscribe.

The Trojan horse of lead generation

by

“And armed hosts, an unexpected force,
Break from the bowels of the fatal horse.”
— The Aenid by Virgil

How do you overthrow a city defended by impenetrable walls?

You build a wooden horse and you get the Trojans to do your work for you.

How do you get paid for advertising your own product to other people’s customers?

You write a short book and you get the Amazons to do your work for you.

At least, that’s what one very successful Internet marketer had to say a few years back.

I’m thinking specifically of Hollis Carter, who ran (or still runs) a publishing company called Velocity House.

I remember watching a talk that Hollis gave at Mindvalley a long time ago — it was one of the first things that that got me excited about internet marketing.

The basic message was this:

Whatever you want to do — build a reputation, get leads, rank for a competitive keyword on Google — then writing a book and putting it on Amazon can do that for you.

Instead of paying for advertising, Hollis was saying, Amazon will actually pay you to deliver your ad (in the form of a book) to your target audience.

Well, I’m on this horse.

I’m putting together a Kindle book right now that will serve only for lead generation.

The best part is, it’s easy to do, since I’m just repurposing emails I’ve already sent to my email list.

But there’s a little twist to making sure this book unleashes the armed hosts and unexpected force of lead generation.

It’s a small principle that I learned from Ben Settle, who I suppose learned it from Matt Furey. Outside of these two guys, I don’t hear anybody else talking about it.

If you want to find out what this special principle is, I’ll tell you. All you have to do is sign up by the end of today (midnight PST, Tuesday, December 4) for my upcoming book on email marketing, and I will send you an email explaining the rest of this Amazon Trojan horse lead gen approach.

Here’s the link to sign up:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/