Parris Lampropoulos

Polishing unfixably bad copy

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Today I found myself sitting on the floor, my notebook next to me, a bunch of index cards sprawled out all around.

I was working on a wooden first draft of a piece of sales copy.

However many times I attacked it, it wasn’t getting any better.

It practically screamed “amateur.”

And I imagined that if I ever wind up delivering this to the client, they will virtually crumple it up and throw it in my face.

In these kinds of moments, I remind myself of something I heard in an interview with Parris Lampropoulos.

Parris is one of the most successful copywriters working over the past few decades.

Even so, he doesn’t produce winning copy straight out the gate. Says Parris (I’m paraphrasing cause I can’t find the interview where I heard this):

“When I first sit down and write the bullets, I always think I’ve lost it. They’re terrible. Everybody will find out I’m a fraud. Then I rewrite the bullets once, and I think, maybe I will be able to get away with it. Third and fourth rewrite, they’re starting to look pretty damn good.”

So if somebody who’s as successful, proven, established, revered, and experienced as P-Lamp still gets feelings of doubt and sees his first draft as unfixable shit, then maybe you and I can also do the same.

As long as we also put in the work to, like Parris, rewrite the shit until it becomes surprisingly good.

Which is what I’m doing now.

Speaking of which, I gotta go.

If you need some help writing immaculate advertorials (not straight out the gate, but with a bit of polishing), then check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

How to write copy much faster without working any harder

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When most people sit down to write sales copy, they go about it all wrong.

First, they beat on the keyboard for a few minutes or a few hours.

Then they look over the mess they’ve made.

And then they start pulling out their hair in frustration.

Time is passing, but they haven’t written a damn thing yet. Not anything good, at least.

But not you.

Because right now, you’re gonna find out a little secret that I recently discovered in a massively successful promotion, written by A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos. I call it the “suckers lead.” It goes like this:

HEADLINE: How to [get unlikely benefit X]

LEAD: Most people [do the conventional thing and get screwed]. But not you. Because you turned to [page in the book on offer]. Here are some of the secrets you’ll learn: [list of fascinations].

Now, maybe you think this lead is obvious.

Maybe you’re saying, “Yeah, sure John. I coulda thotothat myself. I don’t need you to tell me some supposed A-lister’s supposed dumb secrets.”

If that’s how you feel, then I pity you, young starling.

Because you are likely to waste a lot of time, pull out a lot of hair, and write a lot of shitty copy.

You see, one of the things I’ve been focusing on relentlessly over the past weeks…

Is writing FASTER.

It’s not about typing furiously, about stressing yourself out, or about producing crap.

Instead, it’s about having templates, checklists, and processes to eliminate wasted work, second-guessing, and thumb twiddling.

That’s one of the reasons why I’m collecting leads like the one above — even if they might seem simple.

In fact, this is something I’ll do with the advertorials book I’m putting together. I’ll include a list of simple leads, outlines, and angles to use for various kinds of products.

In case you’re interested in seeing this when it comes out, here’s where you can sign up to get notified when I finish and release this book:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

7 low-key marketers who are worth your attention

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Below you will find a list of 7 un-famous men.

Odds are, you won’t know all of them, or maybe even most of them.

At least that’s how it was for me, for a good number of years into my copywriting and marketing career.

Which is odd, because all of these guys are very successful, either as copywriters or marketers or both.

The thing is, most of them don’t do a lot of self-promotion. But I believe they are worth your attention. And that’s why I advise you to track down everything they may have put out into the public sphere, whether paid or not.

​​Anyways, here goes:

#1. Travis Sago

I’ve mentioned this guy multiple times in my emails. He started out as an affiliate marketer 15 years ago, then became one of the leading Clickbank sellers in the “Get him back” space, and today earns millions of dollars by teaching other marketers his clever and very simple techniques.

#2. Dan Ferrari

I’d first heard of Dan as a success story for the Copy Hour course. Since then, Dan went on to be one of the top copywriters at the Motley Fool, and when that wasn’t enough, he started his own marketing agency providing marketing and copywriting to some of the biggest names in the health and financial spaces.

#3. Michael Senoff

Michael doesn’t fit 100% in this list, because he still does a reasonable amount of self-promotion. But as a marketer from a pre-Facebook generation, he might not have crossed your radar yet. My main reason for putting him in this list is that his site is an incredible rabbit hole into other very successful copywriters and marketers you have probably never heard about (it’s through Michael that I first heard of Travis Sago).

#4. Ted Nicholas

Ted Nicholas is supposed to be the most successful direct marketer in history, responsible for $6 billion in sales — more than even Jay Abraham. But he did all of this a generation or two ago, and while he has written several books about his strategies, they don’t get the same adulation that other copywriting classics (eg. Joe Sugarman’s books) get today. Still, do you think he might teach you a thing or two?

#5. Parris Lampropoulos

One of the most successful copywriters of the past several decades and somebody I’ve written about frequently, Parris mostly focuses on his work and doesn’t do almost any self-promotion. But if you search around, you can find a few podcast interviews he’s done — and each is packed with really A-list copywriting secrets.

#6. Million Dollar Mike Morgan

Mike is another very successful copywriter, who has a public online footprint that might even be smaller than Parris has. But if you search around, you might find an offer Million Dollar Mike is running right now (I think it’s still up), where he’s sharing some of his biggest insights and secrets in exchange for a donation to a good cause.

#7. Mark Ford

Mark Ford has written a dozen books about copywriting and marketing, plus he started and ran one of the biggest business and self-improvement blogs on the Internet (Early To Rise). Oh, and he helped Agora become a billion-dollar company. So why is he on this list? Well, because in my experience, in spite of all that Mark Ford has done and all the great info he has shared, many people still don’t know who he is.

That’s all I got for today.

But if you have more questions on how to become a successful copywriter or marketer, you might look here:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

Copywriting for cavemen

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A while back, some scientists at Cambridge University studied a bunch of hunter gatherer tribes, and they came up with an inspiring conclusion:

Hunter gatherers do not work very hard.

In fact, when you add up all the hunting and gathering they do in a typical week, it adds up to about 20 hours.

Compare that to the typical work week of a human being in agricultural society (30 hours) or in an industrial society (40+ hours).

The point being that maybe we’re not evolved to be all gung-ho about non-stop sweat and toil.

And so if you feel a little lazy sometimes, blame it on tens of thousands of years of evolution that our ancestors spent hanging around caves and watching the caveman equivalent of Netflix.

Now, here’s a bit of good news.

If you aren’t all that crazy about long work—weeks, then copywriting might be a good career choice for you.

Some of the top copywriters out there — including Gene Schwartz, Gary Bencivenga, and Parris Lampropoulos — have stated that a good day for them consists of three hours of solid writing.

Pretty cavemannish schedule.

Plus it gets better.

If you’re easily distracted on top of being a little lazy, you’ve got an additional leg up (three legs down?) on all those other monkeys who want to write successful copy.

Because much of copywriting — 60% according to top copywriting coach David Garfinkel — often goes to research.

Ie. reading.

Following random links.

Kicking rocks around.

And looking for that great idea that will help you sell this weeks copy assignment.

So maybe you’re wondering where I’m going with this.

And it’s simply to give you a bit of encouragement in case you’re wondering whether you have what it takes to be a copywriter.

Odds are good that even the things that you might blame yourself for — such as apparent laziness and distractability — might help you in your journey to get to that top level of marketing and writing copy, if you know how to use them.

Of course, there are lots of other things you’ll need as well.

So if you have questions about succeeding as a copywriter, and if you want my opinion on the steps you need to take besides not working very hard and clicking on lots of seductive links, here’s where to go:
https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

10 additional services copywriters can sell to their clients

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I just got my hair cut. Unfortunately, hair-cutting is all the hairdresser offered to do.

It makes me yearn for the good old days when a respectable barber would cut your hair, trim your mustache, and even pull your rotten tooth out for you.

Oh well. Too bad for hairdressers.

Copywriters can do better, though. Here are 10 additional services that I’ve used (or tried to use) to up-sell and down-sell and cross-sell clients:

#1. The Oliver Twist

This is when the client comes to you, soup bowl in hand, and says, “Please sir, I want some more.” In other words, you simply sell them the same service again. For example, last summer, I wrote one sales email for a guy with a big Clickbank product in the men’s health niche. He liked it, so he hired me to write a new such email every day.

#2. The top of the slide

This is writing copy for one part of the sales funnel, and then for an earlier part. Example: a couple of years ago I was hired to rewrite a VSL. When that was done, I kept in touch with the same client. Eventually, we agreed that I would also rewrite the emails he was using to drive traffic to the VSL.

#3. The after-party

This is just the opposite of no. 2. Example: I once had a job to write headlines for native ads. That job ended. But after a bit of back-and-forth, I was hired to also write the actual advertorials that the native ads led to.

#4. A second tunnel through the mountain

If you’ve done a good job for a client on one project, odds are good they have another very similar opportunity — another product, another funnel — which needs almost the exact treatment.

So just recently I was asked to rewrite a product page for a new supplement company. I did. the client was satisfied with the work, and I immediately got the chance to do another product page for another product in the exact same style.

#5. Oranges instead of apples

Sometimes it pays to stand up to clients. Last autumn, I was contacted by a client who wanted me to write a VSL. After a bit of talking, I told him he needs to pick a segment of the market he plans to target. And so we agreed that, instead of the VSL, I would write emails to his existing list to figure out which segment might sell the best.

#6. Outsourced kaizen

This is when you handle the optimization of the copy or of the funnel. Right now, I’m talking to a client who got in touch regarding an advertorial. So I asked him a question straight out of Jim Camp’s playbook: “Who do you have in your corner who can help you optimize this thing to ensure it performs well?” We’ll see if he has someone, or if he’s interested in having me handle this.

#7. Mouth flapping

Parris Lampropoulos, who is famous as an A-list copywriter, once said he actually makes most his money from consulting with his clients rather than the actual copywriting — in spite of the massive royalties he’s typically paid.

But you don’t need to be a marketer of Parris’s stature to get paid for consulting (aka flapping your mouth). Back in my dark and early Upwork days, I had a difficult client. However, one good thing was he would pay me simply to get on the call and brainstorm, or more often, to shoot his ideas down.

#8. The dreaded touchup

When asked to “simply fix up” existing copy, I usually run like I’m being chased by a bunch of angry bees. But I have done it in the past, and sometimes it proved to be good money for little work. For example, I once rewrote the lead (the first page and a half) of a pretty messy sales letter for a live event about investing, and I got paid what was a princely sum for me at the time.

#9. Money for nothing

This is an idea I got from Travis Sago: you take a client’s “trashcan asset,” turn it into risk-free money, and split the profits. I haven’t done this yet, but not for want of trying — I keep talking to all of my current and past clients about it.

#10. Trousers and britches

Sometimes clients need different formats and they are willing to pay you for it. Example: I once wrote a 2,000 word script for a Facebook lead-gen video. But is 2,000 words the right length? The client wasn’t sure. So I took that same script, pared it down to 600 words, gave him that as a second piece of copy, and earned a bit of extra money.

If you make a bit of an effort to suss out what your client might need, and then pick and choose from the above list, you won’t just make yourself more money.

Instead, you will also solidify your relationship with a client, help them be more successful, and profit doubly down the line. And if you want more advice on how to succeed in the business of copywriting, you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

Contradicting the great Parris Lampropoulos

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A while back, I wrote about a critique I’d gotten from Parris Lampropoulos.

Parris is an ultra-successful copywriter, who gave me some advice about a sales letter I’d written.

“The body copy is fine,” he said.

“But you never want the headline to tip off that you’re selling something.”

The only exception, according to Parris, is if you’re the first person in a market.

I took Parris’s advice to heart. And I believe it’s made my copy better.

BUT!

I’ve just had a bit of contradictory feedback from one of my clients.

These guys sell physical products through ads on Facebook, which lead to advertorials.

I’ve been writing both the ads and the advertorials. The headlines I’ve been using strictly avoid mentioning the product.

So I was surprised to hear that the client tested out some new headlines, which mention both the product and the price.

Doing this decreased clickthroughs (expected) but increased sales (very unexpected).

This kind of boggles my weary mind. Especially, since the products we’re advertising aren’t unique (dozens of competitors sell identical stuff) and the price isn’t a bargain (you’d be able to find much better deals on similar products by searching on Amazon).

Maybe this testing data point will be useful in case you too sell ecommerce products through advertorials.

And it also shows that even the most iron-clad commandments of copywriting are only rules of thumb.

Yes, they increase your odds of success. But sometimes, breaking these commandments can produce better results. The only way to know is to test.

On an entirely different topic:

I currently have a book on Amazon about how I got $150/hr copywriting clients through Upwork.

I will be taking this book off Amazon this weekend. I will make it available some time later, but off Amazon, and at a higher price.

So if you want to read this book, at its current low price, while it’s still on Amazon, better act fast. Here’s the link to see what it’s all about:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book

How to lose the pork belly without sweating or starving

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It might seem like nonsense at first blush.

But it’s possible to lose fat — not just weight, but fat — without sweating your heart out or starving yourself to the brink of insanity.

The secret is olive oil.

If you’re a health-conscious person, maybe you think I’m just telling you to switch to a Mediterranean diet.

Or that the “antioxidants” in olive oil will somehow cause fat to melt.

Or that there’s some magic in the monounsaturated fatty acids, as compared to the usual butter or lard or canola oil or sunflower oil.

Well, it’s none of those things.

In fact, I’m talking about a kettle of fish that’s so different you will never spot it in a pet shop.

If you’re interested in finding out what I have in mind, then Google the late Seth Roberts and his Shangri-La diet.

Because I’m not really here today to talk about weight loss. Instead, I wanna talk copywriting.

And specifically, I wanted to share with you an “unlikely solution” lead (ahem, above) that I saw in a magalog by Parris Lampropoulos (Parris was making the same claim but with yoga, not olive oil).
​
Anyways, here’s how you do the lead:

1. It might seem crazy but [here are the benefits] — [without the usual crap].

2. The secret? [unlikely solution].

3. [List typical objections].

4. None of these are true!

And here’s the thing. This formula doesn’t actually have to be the lead. You can insert it wherever you decide to introduce your product.

Such as for example, after an opening story, or after you’ve badmouthed the alternatives.

This is something I’ll try in an upcoming advertorial.

Speaking of which, I’m working on my guide to writing story-based advertorials. If you want to get notified when it’s out, you can sign up here:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials

Why practice does not make perfect

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I just read that a guy named Justin Blackman forced himself to write 100 headlines a day for 100 days.

Result?

Writing got easier by the end, and he feels he got better at the headlines.

I’m sure the first is true. The second might well be true.

But it also reminded me of something I’d heard from Parris Lampropoulos, one of the most successful copywriters working over the past few decades (he’s been paid a million dollars in royalties for a single sales letter — multiple times over).

“Practice doesn’t make perfect,” says Parris. “Practice makes permanent.”

If you’re moving in the wrong direction, then more practice just means you will be building up bad habits that will be harder to break down the line.

It will help you build confidence, yes.

But then one day, when you find yourself in a smokey roadside bar and two dangerous-looking biker-types start harassing your girlfriend, you’ll walk over, shake your shoulders loose, crack your neck, and say, “Guys, you don’t wanna do this. Because I’ve seen Steven Seagal handle this exact situation, and I’ve practiced his move 100 times a day for 100 days.”

So how do you avoid building up bad copywriting habits?

Well, the same way you avoid winding up in the gutter with a broken jaw. One option is you find people who have proven themselves in the skill you want to learn (think Daniel Cormier, and not Steven Seagal), and you do exactly what they tell you to do.

Another option is you pick fights on the street, but with people you feel you can handle. Sure, you might get a black eye or a bloody nose now and then, but if you adjust and learn from the beatings you get, you will slowly progress and build habits that work.

Or, of course, you can choose to do both. Which is what I’ve done and continue to do. Because practice is important. But deliberate, meaningful practice, and not just Steven Seagal’s patented trachea grab.

Anyways, if you need some of that copy jiujitsu to flip your customers upside down so change starts falling out of their pockets, get in touch with me and we can talk.

Nobel-winning scientist cuts brakes on “most powerful killing system in the world”

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How’s that for a sensationalist headline? But before you turn away in disgust, here’s the story that pays it off:

Back in the 1890s, a surgeon named William Coley was searching for information on sarcoma, a type of bone cancer that killed one of his patients. He came across the record of a house painter with sarcoma, who had had four surgeries to remove the cancer.

Each time, the sarcoma came back. And then…

The house painter developed a severe streptococcus infection, which was close to killing him. He somehow recovered from the infection.

And when he recovered, his sarcoma — which no surgery could eliminate — was also gone.

Coley concluded that the infection killed the cancer. So he went around the country, preaching the new cancer-killing gospel, and purposefully infecting many cancer patients with streptococcus.

​​All the infected cancer patients got very sick. Some of those who didn’t die wound up cancer-free, just like the house painter.

As a result, Coley’s ideas and methods became popular in the early 20th century. But eventually, they were forgotten as radiation and chemotherapy started to develop.

It was only in the 1970s that Coley’s ideas resurfaced again. Scientists realized it wasn’t the streptococcus infection that killed the cancer. Instead, it was the body’s own immune system.

Long story sh-, scientists started trying to figure out how to activate the immune system to attack cancer cells, even without infecting the patient with a dangerous disease like streptococcus.

It would be a kind of holy grail. Because as one scientist working in the field put it, “the immune system is the most specific and powerful killing system in the world.”

Anyways, one big breakthrough came in 1996, when a harmonica-playing immunologist from Texas named James Allison located a “checkpoint” on a specific type of immune cell known as a T cell.

This checkpoint acts as a kind of brake, stopping the T cell from going on a rampage against foreign invaders and local slubberdegullions such as cancer cells.

Allison figured out a way to “cut the brake lines” of this checkpoint, activating the T cells, and killing the cancer.

Fast forward a few more years, and this new approach, known as immunotherapy, started becoming a standard cancer treatment.

That’s a giant breakthrough, because until now, there were only three major ways to get rid of cancer cells — cutting (surgery), burning (radiation), and poisoning (chemotherapy).

Immunotherapy is a fourth way, and it seems to work well in some otherwise hopeless cases. (A famous instance was former president Jimmy Carter, who had advanced melanoma successfully treated with a immunotherapy drug in 2015.)

So yeah.

It’s kindofa big deal.

And it was all cemented last year, when James Allison and another scientist, Tasuku Honjo, received the Nobel Prize in medicine for their discoveries of mechanisms related to immunotherapy.

The end.

What, you’re wondering what this has to do with copywriting?

Well, not much. And also quite a lot.

There’s no direct lesson from immunotherapy itself that I can spot right now.

But there is a general rule of copywriting that says you want to present convincing and credible proof to buttress your sale and to make the close.

And if you’re doing anything related to health (the way I often am), then there are few better pieces of proof than being able to say:

“Based on a Nobel-Prize-winning discovery”

This is something I’ve spotted often in top health sales letters, and I’ve also had it confirmed, in a throwaway comment during a webinar, by Parris Lampropoulos, who is the equivalent of a Nobel-Prize winner when it comes to copywriting.

And that’s why I’ve decided to regularly go back in the annals of Nobel Prizes, and see exactly what those folks did to win.

Anyways, now we’re really at the end.

Or as the brothers Grimm might say, my tale is done, there goes a goose; whosoever catches it, may make himself a pillow out of it. In other words, if you need more guidance on how to write effective sales copy, including strong proof elements, you might like the following:

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

Hundreds of dollars of marketing and copywriting secrets for $21.36

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As I’ve mentioned recently, I’m traveling over the next few weeks. But I’ve got some big plans for when I get back home and get back to work.

I plan to apply lessons from a talk that Gene Schwartz made at Phillips Publishing to copy that I write for my clients. I plan to apply lessons from a Jay Abraham course to my copywriting business. I plan to apply lessons I’ve learned from a Perry Marshall lecture to a new affiliate project I will be kicking off.

These three resources — the Gene Schwartz talk, the Jay Abraham course, the Perry Marshall lecture — currently sell for hundreds of dollars.

That’s if you can find them at all.

And yet, if you dig them up, honestly consume them, and apply their lessons, I believe they will be a terrific investment that will over time make you much more than that what you’ve paid for them.

But here’s the thing. I didn’t pay hundreds of dollars for all these courses. I paid a total of $21.36.

That’s because all three of these reousces are among the 11 free bonuses for Brian Kurtz’s new book Overdeliver.

In case you don’t know Brian Kurtz, he was one of the main guys behind Boardroom (now called Bottom Line), one of the biggest direct marketing publisher of the last few decades. And he’s one of the best-connected and well-liked guys in direct marketing.

That’s one of the reasons why so many top marketers volunteered their valuable products — like the ones above — to serve as bonuses for Brian’s book.

(I also suspect it’s why Brian’s book gets over-the-top praise from many of the big names I’ve mentioned frequently in these emails, including Parris Lampropoulos, Ben Settle, Mark Ford, Joe Sugarman, Gary Bencivenga, Ken McCarthy, Kim Krause Schwalm, and the list goes on.)

Anyways, I’ve personally found Brian’s offer very valuable — even though I have only been going through the bonuses and haven’t even made it to the core book yet. In case you want to check it all out for yourself, and maybe even invest $21.36, here’s where to go:

https://overdeliverbook.com/