Thom Benny

3 lessons from my just concluded promo

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After promos, I have this habit to sit down and write up a list of conclusions.

After promos that go well, I have this habit to publicly share some of those conclusion in an email.

I just concluded my promo for for the 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

It went well.

I promoted from last Monday until last night. I sent 7 emails. I made a nice pile of money, enough to buy an F1 Savannah cat.

Here are three things I concluded/learned/want to remember from the current promo:

#1. Keep mailing as long as you’re making sales

I was 93% sure this promo would be a 98% flop for me.

I had already promoted 1PAA to my list, less than 6 months ago, when v1 became available.

I figured I had tapped out demand. I figured the mystique and excitement had gone. I figured the updated version — a nice and polished video course as opposed to a live all-evening training — actually lowered the perceived value rather than increased it.

“Should I promote this at all?” I said to myself.

I decided I would send one email on Monday and most likely be done with it. I had planned out bonuses but I purposefully didn’t even list them in the initial email, because I didn’t want to make more work for myself.

I sent that one email on Monday… and I made a couple sales.

So I decided to mail on Tuesday also.

I made more sales.

So I kept mailing, day after day after day.

Every night, I would look at my 1PAA promo like the Dread Pirate Roberts looked at Westley, and I would say to it:

“Good night, 1PAA promo. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”

Well, I ended up promoting all week long, and making sales with each email I sent out. When I decided to close the promo last night, so I could move on to other things, I wrote one final farewell email, after which half a dozen more sales came in.

Lesson being, I don’t know anything, the market decides, and so I should keep mailing as long as I’m making sales.

#2. Roll your own affiliate offers

In some ways, I’ve been intimately tied to this 1PAA offer.

Last summer, Thom Benny announced this offer without making it available for affiliates.

I pushed him to open it up to affiliates because I wanted to promote it.

When Thom said he might do so in the future but cannot now, because he doesn’t have a shopping cart that accepts affiliates, I offered to run the entire offer through my ThriveCart.

Thom agreed.

The result was that we ended up selling the 30 spots of v1 of 1PAA in a matter of hours after I promoted it to my list.

When this v2 rolled around, Thom sent out a draft of his sales page.

I pushed back on what I thought was an injustice being done to the amazing case studies this offer has, which were buried deep in the body copy.

As a result, Thom pulled these case studies into the lead, and turned the dutiful v1 of the sales page into a sexy v2 of the sales page, at least to my opportunity-seeker eyes.

There’s a bigger point here:

I’ve realized I love being in a position of helping put together an affiliate offer, and promoting offers that haven’t yet become sclerotic because the offer owner really wants nothing to do with the offer any more, except to trot it out from time to time to some new affiliates, and maybe make a few more sales if those will come.

I first influenced and helped shape an affiliate offer a couple years ago, with Steve Raju’s ClientRaker.

I did it again here with 1PAA.

I will be seeking out more opportunities to partner with people and help them put together a great offer that I can then promote as an affiliate.

#3. Old promise + new plan

Marketer Justin Goff, who used to write these kinds of post-promo lessons-learned emails, which I loved and am copying now, said something profound once:

“Making money with an email list is really about selling the same benefits over and over again with a new mechanism.”

I’ve summarized this to myself as, “Old Promise + New Plan.”

I’ve realized that, when I stick to this super simple formula, offers I create or promote perform well (again, with a 98% certainty). When I stray from this formula, offers flop (with a 93% certainty).

And on that note, I can tell you that for the rest of this month, I will be talking about how you can monetize your email list, so you can buy your own F1 Savannah cat, by creating 1k+ offers that your list actually wants to buy, and that you feel good about delivering. But more about that… tomorrow.

If you have ambitions of copywriting mastery…

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A long time reader and professional copywriter writes in to ask about 1-Person Advertorial Agency, which I claim is the hottest opportunity for copywriters in 2026, and which I’ve been promoting all week:

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John, be honest… is the copy the system spits out for the advertorials any good?

Because compared to your advertorial copy, I don’t know, man.

I looked at the advertorial samples on the sales page, and one of them pretty much reads exactly like AI.

That second-to-last paragraph in the joint pain advertorial especially… it made absolutely no sense.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me being picky.

I just wanted to get your opinion before I consider pulling the trigger.

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Is the copy any good?

I can’t say. I haven’t used the 1-Person Advertorial Agency system myself. But I think the proof is in the pudding.

Does it matter if professional copywriters say it reads like AI?

Or is it more important if it’s making sales to cold traffic, and both the business and the copywriter are making bank?

As for the results of the copy this system produces — the 30% boosts in conversions, the millions of dollars worth of resulting sales, the $49k paychecks — I trust Sam Bradbury-Butler and Thom Benny, the two guys who created this offer. That’s why I’m promoting this to you full-throat.

If you have ambitions of copywriting mastery, I think that’s a noble goal to strive after.

All I will say is it’s much easier to get good as a copywriter if you have successful clients… if you are working on real projects… if you can see sales coming in hourly or minutely… if you have opportunities to test and get results on your tests every day.

Ultimately that’s what this opportunity is about:

Get clients, get results, get paid.

If that’s something that interests you, either so you can take your ample earnings and chill in your ample free time, or so you can take your client relationships and use them to turn yourself into the next Gene Schwartz, here’s where to get at this opportunity, before it closes in a few short days:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

The Lazy Man’s Way to Copywriting Clients

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The past few days, I’ve been promoting the 1-Person Advertorial Agency, which I claim is the hottest opportunity for copywriters in 2026.

Do you want a proof element for the effectiveness of what’s being sold to you here?

Will-ye or nill-ye, I’ll give it to ya.

As I wrote a couple days ago, the guy who came up with the 1-Person Advertorial Agency system is a copywriter named Sam Bradbury-Butler.

But the guy who actually got Sam to document his system and turn it into course is former Agora copywriter turned copywriting guru Thom Benny, who counts Sam as one of his proteges.

With me so far?

Good. Cause we have a few more twists and turns:

After the auction I ran in my Skool community last year, I suggested to Thom that, instead of doing a launch as planned for 1-Person Advertorial Agency, we could do an auction. (Remember those?)

We could auction off a done-with-you, 1-1 partnership with Sam… with the post-auction offer being a piece-by-piece breakdown of Sam’s system, along with group coaching to help you implement the same.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter too much if you understand the details of this fantastical offer.

What matters is that meetings were held… plans were hatched… and visions of a $150k auction were had, at least by me.

We even came up with an attractive name for the first (logical) step of Sam’s system, calling it:

“The Lazy Man’s Way to Copywriting Clients”

Aaaaand…. then it all came crashing down.

Sure, Thom and I, who weren’t involved at all in the delivery of these big plans, were excited by the idea of the auction, and the group coaching on the back of it, and all the money it would bring.

Sam, on the other hand, was not excited. In fact he nixed the idea straight out. When I asked why, Thom explained:

“Sam’s got a big project waiting in the wings which he’ll be turning his attention to once this launch closes. So he doesn’t want this launch to burden him with a bunch of other stuff he didn’t really sign up for.”

In other words, Sam is too busy and too happy simply doing what he is teaching here. He has no interest in doing any more teaching of it than he’s already done, even with the promise of more money.

That’s because Sam is making A LOT MORE money by simply working his own system ($49k earlier this month, for just one client, and Sam’s got several).

And though Thom managed to convince Sam to take the time to share how his system works, that’s where it stops, because Sam is going back to profiting from this thing that he’s offering to you right now.

That’s the proof element I promised you up top. It answers the age-old question that pops up with any business opportunity:

“If this is so great, why aren’t you doing it yourself and why are you so busy selling it instead?”

Well, Sam is doing it himself, and he doesn’t want to be busy selling it any more, because he wants to get back to doing.

Anyways, if you wanna find out more about 1-Person Advertorial Agency, you can do so at the sales page below.

Since our ambitious auction plans got scrapped, you can also find out, or at least get a good sense for, “The Lazy Man’s Way to Copywriting Clients.”

You can find that described in the section under the subhead, “Module 3: Getting Paid As A 1-Person Advertorial Agency.”

For that, and the full details of this opportunity while it’s still live:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

Do I have an affiliate relationship with all these big names?

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A couple days ago, I opened the most recent Exploding Topics newsletter, which tracks topics and brands that are surging online.

The top Exploding Topic was Scandinavian Biolabs, “a hair growth startup” that raised $5M in funding last year.

“Hello,” I said, “this sounds familiar.”

I had a sense that I know the head copywriter at Scandinavian Biolabs. I suspected it might be one Liza Schermann, the original Crazy Email Lady, who also acted as a cohost of the Age of Insight and Influential Emails trainings I ran several years ago.

I forwarded the Exploding Topics email to Liza to confirm this is indeed the place where she works. Liza wrote back:

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Haha look at that, I’m back at work and growth is skyrocketing! That’s the place indeed. I remember the celebration party for that $5M funding vividly.

I was just typing a reply when you forwarded it so I might as well do it here.

Did you have an affiliate or some kind of other partnership with Chris Orzechowski? Or did you just promote his workshop because you found it interesting? I was wondering that every time you promoted a big name.

Anyway, it seems like it’s been an eventful year in Bejako Land business-wise with lots of different offers (at least from what I could keep up with). I’m looking forward to your annual summary email if you’re planning to send one!

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In answer to Liza’s question:

Yes, I promoted Chris Orzechowski’s training (“5 steps to a million-dollar list”) as an affiliate.

I also promoted Derek Johanson’s CopyHour and Email Delivered Courses as an affiliate.

I promoted Thom Benny’s 1-Person Advertorial Agency as an affiliate.

I promoted Justin Blackman’s Different On Purpose as an affiliate.

I promoted Igor Kheifets’s Click Send Earn as an affiliate.

I promoted Kennedy’s “$27k to $544k” training as an affiliate.

And in a couple weeks from now, when I promote Gasper Crepinsek’s ChatGPT Mastery, I will do so as an affiliate.

I have in the past promoted people’s things simply because I thought they were cool and valuable, without getting paid.

I still do that sometimes.

But if I can promote something I think is cool and valuable AND get paid for it at the same time, well, I like to have my cake and lick it too.

The fact is, I have been feeling burned out this year about creating new offers.

I have created a lot of courses, trainings, reports, and even books over the 6+ years of running this newsletter.

Some have stuck around and become evergreen offers (Copy Riddles, Most Valuable Email, my new 10 Commandments book). Others were exotic one-time events (like the Age of Insight and Influential Emails workshops).

One thing’s for sure:

Even when I’m in full offer-creation mode, the appetite of my audience for cool and valuable new solutions to existing problems is much much bigger than what I can personally satisfy.

That’s one reason I’ve been building up a little invite-only group of list and offer owners.

I’ve been quietly pitching this group to people as a place to connect and partner and share ideas.

It’s proven to be that — it’s led to list swaps, podcast appearances, and affiliate promos, and not just involving me, either.

It so happens that Chris, Derek, Thom, Justin, Igor, Kennedy, and Gasper are all in my little invite-only group.

Maybe this group could be a good fit for you too?

If you’re interested, write in and let me know who you are and what you do.

A list is a mandatory requirement, as is the fact that you are writing that list regularly, and that you’ve made money from your list.

If have your own proven offers, that’s definitely a bonus.

Beyond that, I’m curious to hear who you are and what you do. If it’s a fit with the group, I’ll know it when I see it.

If more sales from your list with less work sounds sexy to you, write in and let’s talk.

Announcing: 1-Person Advertorial Agency

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This Wednesday, Thom Benny and his protege Sam will hold a workshop titled 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

As you might know, Thom is an ex-Agora copywriter who now co-runs a fintech company and coaches copywriters on the side. And as for Sam, he is a copywriter who:

1. Drove $50M worth of sales with advertorials he has written for ecom clients, on cold traffic, over the past year alone

2. Takes less than an hour to write one of these suckers, and can churn out 20+ of ’em a month, because he’s getting AI to do much of the work

3. Is finding it easy to get good new clients, because he makes them an offer to reanimate their once-performing, recently dead ads.

And that entire system, everything that makes this possible, is what Sam will be sharing on this workshop:

The AI setup… how to tweak what the AI gives you so it actually converts on cold traffic… plus how to get clients who see the benefit of such advertorials and are happy to pay you generously. (Says Thom, “$5,000-$10,000 per project, delivering in just days, not weeks”).

For reference, Thom wasn’t gonna promote this workshop via affiliates. I insisted and nudged and insisted some more until he said ok.

In case you’re wondering why I’m eager to promote Thom and Sam’s workshop, it’s because advertorials are a kind of copy that I used to write a lot of for clients.

I know the effects advertorials can have on an ecom funnel. One client I worked for dropped in one of my advertorials into his existing funnel, and could immediately scale ads from $2k a day to $12k a day.

I also know the demand for such work. I recently had an ex-client write me to ask if I’d write advertorials for his new business. Another client, the CEO of an ecom brand, once paid me $2k to give him a brain dump of how I write advertorials.

That’s why I’m promoting this workshop to you in the short time that remains.

I was gonna offer bonuses because that’s what you do when you promote somebody else’s offer.

But frankly, Sam gives you everything you need on this workshop, including how to get clients, how to produce advertorials, and how to make them convert so clients keep hiring you and paying you.

And the deal on this workshop is frankly ridiculous.

This “1-Person Advertorial Agency” is a legit business-in-a-box. You don’t come across those so often. When you do, it’s the kind of thing that typically sells for $5k or $50k upfront, plus often sort of unpleasant monthly licensing fee.

For whatever reason, perhaps because selling trainings is not their main business, or because the opportunity is so big and so live, Sam and Thom are not stretching this out into a weeks-long course, but are delivering a one-day workshop that lasts a couple hours, and still gives you everything you need.

What’s more, they are not selling this workshop for $5k or $50k, plus monthly fees, but for $199, one time.

For the full info on this workshop, or to sign up before this business-in-a-box disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

3-step plan to create “Electrical Socket Offers” out of thin air

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Last week I did a presentation inside Thom Benny’s Copyjitsu coaching group. Thom coaches 6 guys, all with good copy chops already, and he invited me, John Bejakovic, to come and pontificate on how to write emails.

One of the guys in Thom’s group asked me the following:

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I have this thing where I’m writing daily emails. I’m getting in reps. I wouldn’t be writing all this stuff if I didn’t believe I could help somebody.

But also, I don’t have any sales pages or digital products. All this that I’m offering, every day, is still consulting.

Do you have any way to think about that, when you’re at that stage, don’t have digital products, but you’re just pitching consulting?

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This is a great question. I bring it up now because earlier today, I asked what objections people had to buying MyPEEPS, a course I’m promoting until Sunday, on building up your email list with paid traffic.

Along with the usual objections — don’t need it, can’t afford it, already bought it — I got some surprises. For example, a few people wrote to say, “What can I do with an email list when I ain’t got no offers!”

So let me address that now.

If you got no offers, you can always decide to offer… consulting.

That’s Step 1 of my “Electrical Socket Offers” plan.

The problem is, “consulting” is a horrible, horrible offer. I say that without restraint because I’ve been guilty of offering “consulting” myself. I’ve also been guilty of making other horrible offers, like “coaching,” or “copywriting services.”

These offers are all horrible because they put the burden on the prospect. They say, “How am I supposed to know what I can help you with? I do have some knowledge and skill… but you tell me how you can use them.”

So Step 2 of my “Electrical Socket Offers” plan is to take the burden off the shoulders of your prospects.

You take the burden off by figuring out what problems your prospects have.

This is much easier to do than you might think. You simply ask. You can do it by digging around online. You can do it via email. Or, if you have the stomach for it, you can even do it over the phone.

Ask your prospects where they’re at… where they hope to go… what’s keeping them from getting there. Do this a few times, until you find a specific problem you can actually suggest a solution to.

BLAM!!

Suddenly, you’ve taken your horrible, horrible “consulting” offer, and you’ve transformed it into something wonderful and valuable — a solution to a specific problem that your prospects have.

Because really, when my laptop is running out of battery, I look for an electrical socket.

Once I find an electrical socket, I don’t stop and ask, “What manner of electricity does this socket supply? Was it electricity generated by a windmill? A hydroelectric dam? Solar?”

I really don’t care. I just want my laptop charged. Any socket I can plug into will do.

Same thing with people and their problems. People don’t care if you solve their problem via a digital course, consulting, or even a done-for-you service. Really, what they are after is a solution to their specific problem. They’re looking for a socket to plug into.

Step 3 of my plan is optional but highly valuable.

It’s to give your consulting offer a name, such as, for example, “Electrical Socket Offers.”

Because there is magic in giving things a name. It relieves any remaining burden on your prospects, and gives them just a simple, light word or three to hold in their mind.

So that’s the 3-step plan to create “Electric Socket Offers” out of thin air.

I imagine few people will take the above advice seriously.

I imagine even fewer will actually choose to implement it.

But if by chance, you’ve had the the light come on in your head… and you’ve realized that there is in fact nothing stopping you from selling attractive offers, starting today… then maybe it makes sense to build up an email list? You know, so you have people to sell your attractive offer to?

You decide. And if you decide that the answer is yes, then maybe take a look at the MyPEEPS offer I’m promoting. It comes with my free “Shotgun Messenger” bonus, which is live until this Sunday at 12 midnight PST. For the full details on this offer:

​https://bejakovic.com/shotgun​

Great headlines and subheads, great openers and closers, great subject lines and postscripts

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At the start of this year, I got a message from Matt Cascarino. Matt is the chief creative officer at FARM, a marketing agency that’s had among its clients the American Cancer Society, the SPCA, New Era (the company that makes Major League Baseball’s official caps), and Kelley Blue Book.

Matt had been going through my Copy Riddles program. And he wrote to say:

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Hey, John…

Bluntly, Copy Riddles is kicking my ass. But in a good way.

Despite my bullets missing the mark in the first nine rounds, I’m learning a ton and referring back to the material to craft sneaky-good bullets for my own communications.

It wasn’t until Round 10B that things began to click. See my three bullets below and the A-listers’ efforts after that. I laid an egg by overthinking #3, but I’m pretty happy with my first two.

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Below this message, Matt had pasted three of his sales bullets that he had written recently.

I took a look.

His bullets were great. Whatever he was doing to learn how to write bullets — hmm, I wonder what that could be — it was working.

For a while now, I’ve been beating on my tin pot and saying to anyone who would listen that sales bullets are the essence of effective sales copy. I’ve also been saying that bullets are as relevant today as they were when Gary Halbert and John Carlton wrote entire sales letters that were really just a pileup of sexy, bizarre, fascinating bullets.

But you might be skeptical when I promote the idea of learning to write bullets, since I sell a program on writing great bullets.

Fortunately, just yesterday (thanks to Thom Benny) I came upon a relevant passage from a well-known guy in this field, Eddie Shleyner of Very Good Copy. Eddie wrote:

“If you can write great bullets, you can also write great headlines and subheads, great openers and closers, great subject lines and postscripts.”

So there you go. Learn to write great bullets, and most other copywriting skills simply fall out as a side-effect.

As for how to write great bullets:

Copy Riddles is in all immodesty the best program to learn to write great sales bullets.

That’s not because I created Copy Riddles.

It’s because Copy Riddles doesn’t just tell you stuff.

Instead, Copy Riddles can do to you what it did to Matt. Get you practicing in a safe and controlled environment… correct you when you are not doing well enough… and within a matter of a few weeks, have you writing bullets that Halbert himself would be proud of.

For more info on Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

The uncertain result of my Newsletter XP promo

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Yesterday, ex-Agora copywriter Thom Benny, who I met up with in Barcelona last month, texted me and asked,

“How is the Newsletter XP promo doing?”

I threw up my arms at this. “How am I supposed to know? There’s a deep fog around the Bejako household, and I can’t see past my own nose.”

The Beehiiv people don’t normally do affiliate deals for this course. I had to ask them over and over to let me promote it.

When they finally agreed, it was a bit of a technical kludge to make it happen. So there’s no affiliate portal. There’s no direct way for me to know how many sales I’ve made.

I saw a buncha clicks. Two people wrote me to say they bought. I wrote my contact at Beehiiv now to ask what the final result was.

But if I had to bet, I would bet I made 3x-4x the money for writing these 7 emails than I ever made for any equivalent campaign I wrote back in my freelance copywriting days.

So let me repeat the core idea I was selling during this whole promo, even though I won’t get paid anything for it now. It’s this:

Start a newsletter. Or start growing a list. Or find another little asset that you can invest into regularly.

It might bear no fruit today. But keep watering it. And you will be pleased and surprised one day soon.

This concludes the first of three affiliate promotions I promised to do over the next few weeks.

The next affiliate promo I will do involves a writing course for business owners who want to build an audience on social media.

I’m going through this course myself right now. And I find myself repeatedly surprised by how well-done and insightful it is.

To make this offer even sweeter, I will add in my own free bonus. It will be equal in price to the actual course I am promoting.

This bonus is a rare training I once put on, after years of research. Several people told me this training has influenced their own writing a lot. But more about all that soon.