For the probiotic sales page that I’m working on, that mechanism is clear: the specific strains
in the
How to sell probiotics with a lesson from Lucky Strike cigarettes - 11/05/2018
There’s a scene in the TV show Mad Men where the main character, Don Draper, hits on a moment
of advertising brilliance.
Don has been tasked with coming up with a new ad campaign for Lucky Strike cigarettes.
But he hasn’t come up with anything.
And so he’s sitting in the meeting with the client, and it’s going terribly. Since he hasn’t come up with
anything, he has to hand over the reins to a junior copywriter who pitches an angle that flops.
The frustrated and disappointed clients get up to leave.
And in that moment, Don hits on his inspired idea:
“We’ve got 6 identical companies selling 6 identical products. We can say anything we want. How do
you make your cigarettes?”
The owner of Lucky Strikes shrugs. “We grow it, cure it, toast it.”
“There you go,” Don says. And he writes the new (and now age-old) Lucky Strike slogan down on the
board:
“It’s toasted”
Now, if you know something about direct response marketing, this might seem like a typical example
of useless branding copy.
Where’s the benefit, after all?
Well, sometimes you don’t need to scream benefits, even in direct response copy.
I thought of this today while I was working on a sales page for a probiotic.
Probiotics are a huge market right now.
And many people are already aware of what probiotics do (gut health, immune system, etc).
The problem for many people at this stage is not, “How can I fix my awful bloating/indigestion/gas?”
Instead, the problem now is “How can I choose from this sea of probiotic products which all claim to
reduce my awful bloating/indigestion/gas?”
It’s something that the copywriting great Gene Schwartz called the 3rd stage of market sophistication.
From Gene’s book Breakthrough Advertising:
“If your market is at the stage where they’ve heard all claims, in all their extremes, then mere
repetition or exaggeration won’t work any longer. What this market needs now is a new device to
make all those old claims become fresh and believable to them again. In other words, A NEW
MECHANISM — a new way to make the old promise work. A different process — a fresh chance —
a brand-new possibility of success where only disappointment has resulted before.”
product have clinical studies showing they actually work. This sets the product apart from just about
any competitor on the market right now. Applying the Lucky Strike lesson, we could sum up the sales
message as:
“It’s clinically proven”
Now, in the Mad Men episode, Don winds up giving an inspiring speech about how advertising is all
about happiness.
The fact is, it’s more about hope — the hope that our problems can be solved.
And if your customers are a bit confused or jaded because of other similar products on the market,
then you have to give them hope that your product really is better or different than anything they’ve
seen before.
John Bejakovic
P.S. If you need copywriting in the health space that can either wow with benefits or cajole with
mechanisms, then you can get in touch with me here:
Why paid health info products may never die - 25/05/2018
About 18 months ago, I took up an ancient copywriting ritual.
Each day, I started devoting exactly 20 minutes to writing out an old, successful ad by hand.
This tedious strategy was first advocated by Gary Halbert, who claimed the process will neurally
imprint good copywriting into anyone who actually does the work. I’m not sure about the neural
imprinting, but this practice has paid dividends for me, by forcing me to read good promos more
carefully, and by exposing me to ads I would never have read otherwise.
Right now, I am making my way through a magalog by Gary Bencivenga, which he wrote for Rodale
back in the early 90’s.
The offer they were selling was a new book, a massive collection of 1,800 alternative health recipes,
called New Choices in Natural Healing.
It offered natural cures such as “Beat PMS — with nutrition!” and “Fight yeast infections — with
yogurt!” This offer probably killed it back when Gary B.’s promotion ran. But I’m not sure whether
such a general alternative-health book could be profitable today.
The trouble is that much of that information is free online on popular, well-established health sites. As
a result, all of Gary’s fascinating bullets are just a quick Google search away from being unmasked.
So does this mean that paid info products in the health space are on their way to the graveyard?
I’m banking on the opposite being true.
I’m currently writing a starter guide for using essential oils. When that’s done and published, I’m
planning on putting together a related video course in the aromatherapy niche.
I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I’m not concerned that there will be demand for either of
these info products when they comes out (it helps that I have an engaged email list of people who
are interested in the topic).
The fact is, science keeps advancing every day, and most of us have trouble keeping up with the new
research.
New alternative medicine approaches keep appearing, and it’s hard to tell what’s legit and what’s not.
This opens up the door to anybody who is willing to filter out the garbage, synthesize all the good
knowledge, and package it up in a better, more entertaining way than you can find for free online.
And that’s why I think paid health info products may never die.
John Bejakovic
P.S. When it comes time to putting together the video course I mentioned, I’m planning to take
another piece of advice from Gary Halbert, and to write the sales letter before designing the course.
After all, what better way to come up with a great course than to make it sales-worthy?
I mention this because I also do copywriting for clients in the health space. For anyone who’s
interested, here’s how to contact me:
Prematurely moving out of Maslow’s basement - 09/06/2018
Just coz it’s science don’t mean it’s true.
I’m currently reading Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick. This brotherly tome teaches you how to
present your ideas in a way that sticks in people’s minds — long after you’ve made your pitch.
Overall, I am digging this book.
But there’s one section that irked me when I read it. Somewhere along chapter 4 or so, the Heaths
talk about how to make people really “hear” your message. How to get them emotionally invested.
How to get them to care.
Of course, you can appeal to their self-interest, which is what direct response copywriters like myself
love to do.
But no, say the Heaths.
That’s short sighted, and there’s science to prove it. So they cite research where people are asked to
explain what would motivate them to take a new job:
Option 1: more security because the new position is so important
Option 2: more visibility because the new position is so important
Option 3: the great learning opportunity this important new position would provide
Apparently, most people choose 3 when explaining why they themselves would choose a new job.
But when asked what they think other people would be motivated by, they choose options 1 or 2.
(Short-sighted buggers, those other people.)
So the Heath brothers draw this conclusion, referring to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:
In other words, a lot of us think everyone else is living in Maslow’s basement — we may have a
penthouse apartment, but everyone else is living below. The result of spending too much time in
Maslow’s basement is that we may overlook lots of opportunities to motivate people.
To which I’d say, “Interesting… But do you prefer going to the movies or to the theater?” It’s a
question the grandpapa of modern-day direct marketing, Gary Halbert, asked once:
Once I asked at class at USC how many of them preferred to go to plays more than movies.
Lots of people raised their hands.
“Bull!” I said to them. “You are all fooling yourselves and I’m going to prove it.” I then asked for a
show of hands of those people who had seen a play in the last week or so.
No hands.
I then asked to see the hands of people who had seen a movie in the last week or so.
Many hands.
Does this mean you always have to appeal to brute self-interest when trying to convince people? Not
necessarily. This ad certainly doesn’t seem to:
MEN WANTED
for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger,
safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.
This was an ad put out by Sir Ernest Shackleton, a polar explorer, and it supposedly drew an
enormous response of men interested in accompanying Shackleton into the penguin-infested waters
of Antarctica.
The point of all this?
Maslow’s basement can work.
So can Maslow’s penthouse.
But talk is cheap, and what people say is not necessarily what they will do. Even if they themselves
wholeheartedly believe it.
So when choosing which appeal to go with in an advertisement, look at what people actually do,
rather than what they say they want.
7 types of infotainment to stuff into your information product - 10/06/2018
Right now, I am writing a book that I will sell through my essential oils site.
I know the subject matter very well, and I could drone on about it even if somebody slapped me
awake in the dead of night.
But it’s boring to just hear lots of facts and warnings and instructions, and I worry that my book will
turn out dull. Since I want people to actually read this book and to get something out of it, I have to
make it fun as well as informative.
Enter infotainment: entertainment combined with information. It’s something I first heard about from
email marketing headmaster Ben Settle. So for your benefit as well as mine, here are 7 different
types of infotainment you can stuff to make your dry-as-dust information product more exciting:
1. Cartoons
Cartoons. Every few pages. They can be used to add some color, to lighten the mood, and to
reinforce a point.
New Zealand marketing guru Sean D’Souza is a master of this. Here’s an example from one of
Sean’s articles on infotainment:
2. Vignettes
The New Yroker magazine does this.
Vignettes are like cartoons, but they are smaller, spread over multiple pages, and not directly
connected to the surrounding text. Here’s a couple of examples from the Aug. 22, 2016 issue:
3. Stories
Stories stick. They make otherwise boring content interesting. Plus they are fun to read.
I kick off my essential oils book by telling the true story of a 2-year-old boy who got burned in a fire,
how his mom used essential oils to help his wounds heal more quickly, and how the surgeons
marveled and approved from the sidelines. It’s a great story, and it illustrates the power of essential
oils way better than arguing with statistics or hand-waving about anti-inflammatory molecules.
4. Fun break
If you read some of the sales letters by Gary “greatest living copywriter” Bencivenga, you will
frequently come across sidebars.
Just like in a magazine, these sidebars serve as a fun break, a chance to talk about something
interesting, and to draw attention to it.
For example, in the book I’m writing, while talking about different proven health benefits of lavender
essential oil, I have a sidebar that talks about four entirely different locations around the world where
lavender is grown.
And I include some local color. One of the places has a mysterious monument that a crusader
supposedly set up. Another is a kind of Shangri-La, with perfect weather on an otherwise rainy and
cold mountain. A third served as a prison for the last monarch of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
5. Images
Like cartoons. Images are best when they are both relevant and surprising, beautiful and informative.
Kind of like the vignettes I included above.
6. Word fun
This is an area where Ben Settle shines. His emails are fun to read, and one of the big reasons why
is all the creative and colorful and unexpected language he uses.
Plus they sound super-conversational. In fact, they are more conversational than real conversation.
Poet Anthony Madrid, who writes for the Paris Review, is also a past master at this. Here’s an
example:
We take the phrase “once upon a time” for granted, but if you think about it, it’s quite oddball English.
Upon a time—? That’s just a strange construction. It would be pleasant to know its history: When,
more or less, does it get up on its legs? Around when does it become standard procedure? My
researches into this question, however, have yielded nothing conclusive.
7. Analogies
Analogies are like stories: they make boring or preachy content palatable.
A few weeks back, I was working on a probiotics sales page, and I compared probiotics you can buy
at the store to mystery meat in a rusty can. For the essential oils book, I’m planning on doing
something similar, I just haven’t figured out yet what dangerous-but-familiar image to compare
mommy blogs to.
So there you go. 7 ways to infotain. They are formulaic. They are mercenary. And they workses.
How to sell in paid products without alienating customers - 11/06/2018
Uh oh.
My post from yesterday gave a bunch of examples of infotainment I plan to put into my upcoming
book on essential oils.
But the examples I used were often taken from sales materials, rather than info products themselves.
Is this a giant screw-up on my part?
Let’s see.
Copywriting all-star Gary Bencivenga once said that sales material should be valuable enough to
read on its own.
On the other hand, prolific marketer Dan Kennedy embodies the idea that paid products should also
sell. (They can sell other products, or at least you as an expert.)
In other words, paid and free content can and should be quite similar. Here are a few other points to
think about:
Also, former Boardroom exec Brian Kurtz talked about the kinds of premiums (aka bonuses) that
Boardroom would give away with their books. What they found is that when somebody buys
something, the best thing is to sell or give them more of the same. So if they are buying a health
book, offer them 3 more health books as a bonus.
Finally, supplement marketer Justin Goff does something similar in the world of supplements: simply
offer the buyer more bottles of the same supplement as an upsell.
And here’s how this ties back to info products or sales pages (or sales emails) that promote those
products:
If somebody is “buying” your free promotional products… This might not sound like a great revelation, and in fact, it isn’t.

In other words, if they tune in regularly to hear your personality and stories and lame jokes and It’s what David said next that matters.
whatever else you use to spice up your free promotional content, whether that’s emails, or blog posts,
or speeches behind a podium…. “How do you develop confidence?”

Then it makes no sense to turn off that tap when you charge them money for an info product. Successes can help.

Of course, the paid product should be valuable and should close some of those loops that the free So can failures, if you learn from them.
content opens. But it should continue to be entertaining (and even to sell) in the same way as your
But according to David, neither of these is really the key to developing true confidence.
free stuff — or you will have some sore and disappointed customers.
Instead, he says that confidence comes from knowing that you can deal with the inevitable setbacks
And that in a nutshell, is why infotainment examples from sales letters — as well as more direct sales
that you will come across in any complex project. In other words, trusting that you will be able to
techniques — can go straight behind the paywalled curtain as well.
problem-solve when the need arises.

Why you should ride the void like Indiana Jones - 02/08/2018 I think the invisible bridge is a good metaphor for this.

Stepping out into the void The first time, it simply requires a leap of faith (that’s when you throw yourself into a situation without
certainty that you will succeed).
“You must believe, boy”
— Indiana Jones’s dad From then on however, the bridge becomes visible, and you know that you can succeed — you have
confidence — because success ultimately comes from handling real-life situations in real time.
There’s a scene in the 3rd Indiana Jones movie where Indy has to take a leap of faith.
And like I said, this isn’t limited to copywriting only.
His father has been shot, and the only way to save him is to retrieve the Holy Grail, which cures and
heals all. It applies to any situation in which you need confidence.

Only one problem. For example, I’ve heard similar advice from pick-up coaches.

The Holy Grail is on the other side of an enormous rocky chasm. The RSD guys have a popular mantra, “You are enough.” To me, this is ultimately about trusting that
you’ll be able to handle yourself in the moment.
There’s no bridge.
And daygame master Yad teaches something similar, except he phrases it as, “You have to learn to
No way across.
ride the void.” In other words, get comfortable with the tension of running out of things to say,
“No man can jump this,” says Indy. because that’s when the best things happen.

And then he realizes what he has to do. So why ride the void?

So he takes a deep breath. Closes his eyes. And steps out into the void. The same reason why Indiana takes the leap of faith.

…….. And yet he doesn’t fall. Because the Holy Grail is on the other side.

Instead, he has stepped onto an invisible bridge, which, now that he’s stepped onto it, actually
becomes visible, and leads him to the Grail. Father saved, evil guy defeated, the end.
The pigeonhole principle applied to email marketing - 11/08/2018
I thought of this scene because I am trying to illustrate (to myself) and important copywriting lesson I
In mathematics there is something called the “pigeonhole principle.”
heard today.
At first, it sounds immensely stupid. Something like:
It came from David “world’s greatest copywriting coach” Garfinkel.
“If you have 20 pigeons but only 19 pigeonholes, and each pigeon has to go into a pigeonhole, then
David was talking about the 6 main reasons that keep good copywriters from becoming great.
one pigeonhole will have more than one pigeon.”
The first of these, however, is not limited to copywriting. In a nutshell, David is saying this first reason
No sh– Sherlock. But with a little creativity, mathematicians have found all sorts of complex and
that holds copywriters back is a lack of confidence.
surprising applications of this simple principle. Still, they haven’t thought about marketing.
 Three pigeons, just one pigeonhole. Something’s got to give.
I recently came across a successful business owner who wanted to send a sequence of
“indoctrination” emails. Indoctrination emails are supposed to build a relationship without selling. I
don’t think they are a good idea for multiple reason. Today let’s just talk about one that has to do with
the pigeonhole principle.
When somebody subscribes to your email list, chances are very good they have subscribed
to many other email lists. Perhaps they opted in on some web page for a free PDF. Perhaps they
bought some supplement and put their email in when prompted. Perhaps they signed up to get
notified of a webinar or of a sale.
What happens to all the emails all those businesses are sending and will be sending? Yep,
they are arriving to the same inbox you are targeting. On the same day. And vying for the same
attention and time of the person who’s supposed to read them. It’s the pigeonhole principle, applied
to marketing.
Only, unlike in mathematics, this pigeonhole has limited space. You can’t fit infinitely many marketing
emails into a real person’s day.
Which means:
Some emails will get skipped, ignored, and passed over…
Today
Tomorrow
And forever
And here’s how this applies to the indoctrination sequence: If you send out a “good-will” or
“indoctrination” email (or two or seven), it might be the email that never gets read. That means that
once you do send a “sales” email, your prospect won’t be as warmed up or indoctrinated as you
might hope.
And yet, there’s a worse option still. And that’s when people read your indoctrination email, they
like you, but they don’t know you have anything for sale (or they can’t get at your sales page
easily)… And then, when your sales email arrives, it’s the one that gets ignored for good.
Now of course, this won’t happen all the time, and with every customer. And ultimatley, you still have
their email address on your list, so you can follow up.
But why shoot yourself in the hoof before you’ve even started trotting?
There’s a simple solution to this problem. When you have somebody’s attention (when they’ve
opened your email), build your relationship, build good-will, and offer your products for sale at the
same time.
Speaking of which, if you do need somebody to write emails for your business in this vein, get in
touch with me, because it’s a service I offer.
A bizarre example of disconnected infotainment - 12/08/2018
Photographer Leopold Kanzler worked with this beaver for two weeks hiding apple slices in his camera to get
this shot. “I’m not sure who had more fun, me or the beaver, but it seemed more than happy with receiving so
many tasty treats.”
I just finished reading the Dartboard Pricing book from Sean D’Souza. It’s the first of his paid
products that I’ve read. And there were many things from this book, besides the content, that I
thought were worth adopting.
Once upon a time I read an article of Sean’s on the topic of infotainment. He had various bits of
advice, and one of them was something like: “You can connect or disconnect the entertaining part to
the information part at will.”
In other words, if you are writing an email or a blog post or a book, it’s important that the email or blog
post or book is fun to read. It’s also important that it has valuable content. The entertainment and the
content can be connected, but they don’t always have to be.
In Sean’s Pricing book, he has lots of what you could call infotainment. Cartoons. Stories. And
then, there’s a recipe for chicken biryani, spread over 3 pages.
The cartoons and stories tie into the content of the book. The chicken biryani does not, at least
as far as I can see.
To sum up, connect or disconnect the infotainment at will. But my gut feeling is — there’s value
in occasionally disconnected infotainment — it keeps people surprised and gives a sense of wonder.
I don’t think it’s something to do all the time. But once in a while, it’s better to throw in something
fun and bizarre, rather than fun but reasonable.
The only way to evaluate copy - 13/08/2018
Professor Skridlov: Father Giovanni, how can you stay here instead of returning to Italy and giving
the people there something of the faith which you are now inspiring in me?
Father Giovanni: Ah Professor. You do not understand man’s psyche as well as you know
archeology. Faith cannot be given to men. Faith is not the result of thinking. It comes from direct
knowledge.
I started re-reading Gene Schwartz’s Breakthrough Advertising. And right on the first page, he offers
this warning:
“Copy cannot create desire for a product. It can only take the hopes, dreams, fears and desires in the
hearts of millions of people, and focus those already-existing desires on a particular product.”
And here’s another related quote, this from Gary Halbert:
“You know, I’m sick to death of people who can’t be bothered with the little nitty-gritty details of
“hands on” experience. Of people who believe that somehow they can know a thing without
experiencing it. Listen: It is possible to be “conversant” with something and really not have any kind
of “gut understanding” of it at all. I’m sorry, but no matter what your Mommy and Daddy told you, men
can never really understand the pain of childbirth, priests cannot comprehend the joys of sex,
“normies” can never understand alcoholics, and not one speck of true advertising wisdom has ever
been written by a PhD.”
And finally, a bit from a recent Ben Settle email:
“This is, btw, why I don’t do critiques anymore. (Besides the fact I hate doing copywriting critiques) As
Doug D’Anna put it in the same interview: ‘How can I offer somebody a copywriting critique on a
piece of sales copy for a product or a prospect that I am 100 percent unfamiliar with?'”
Here’s how this ties together in my head.
Nobody can really judge good copy unless they are a prospect and ready to buy. Nice-sounding copy
can bomb. Awful copy can sell.
So how do you write good copy? Research is important. So is experience. So is intuition. Then
there’s feedback from other experts.
All that stuff is great, but ultimately, none of it is conclusive.
Fortunately, direct response copywriting is one area where we don’t have to agree to disagree. We
can know which appeal is best. Even if we cannot see inside people’s hearts, and even though we
cannot have their problems (or faith). And that’s simply through sales.
Shooting off a couple of impossible bullets - 14/08/2018
There’s a video of Ricky Jay at the end of a poker night, doing one last trick for his friends.
He fills a glass with water, puts a playing card on top of it. He then rolls up a second playing card
into a little tube and puts this on top of the first playing card, and then puts an egg on top of the tube.
“Here’s the bet,” he tells the rest of the guys. “I bet you that by throwing a card I can make the egg
land inside the glass. Do I have any takers?”
It’s an impossible bet. The glass is covered by a card so there’s no way for the egg to get through.
And all he’s got is some playing cards to throw. Of course, somebody takes him up on the bet. And
yet, he throws the card, and gets the egg in the glass.
Today, I worked on a sales page for a video course on cryptocurrency investing. 80% of the
sales page was bullets. Warning and danger bullets. Straight up benefit bullets. Curiosity bullets. And
peppered in among these, a special breed, which I call impossibility bullets:
● How to get an extra 10% return on your Bitcoin investment — even if the price doesn’t move
one bit
● How to take advantage of a crypto bull run — even while you sleep
● How to safely use your cryptocurrencies — even on a computer infected with malware
Now that I’ve pulled them out, I realized they all had the same format:
HOW TO [GENERIC BENEFIT] — EVEN IF [SEEMINGLY INSURMOUNTABLE OBSTACLE]
In all 3 cases, the bullets wrote themselves, because there was an underlying mechanism which
offered a surprising benefit. At the same time, I don’t think I could get away with these kinds of bullets
too often — people would get skeptical instead of curious. (Unfortunately, copywriting isn’t a magic
show — and people don’t like to be fooled by a sales page.) In this case, I think it will work, because
the remaining 90% of the bullets are more moderate, and because there is other proof throughout the
rest of the copy.
The case against steak upsells - 15/08/2018
“Hell yeah we’ll take five more steaks if you cut the price”
Imagine going into a restaurant. You’re hungry and you’re raring for a steak. So you look over the
menu, find your steak, wince a bit at the price, but decide to get it.
“I’ll have the 12-ounce steak,” you say to the waiter. He writes this down patiently in his notebook
and then says,
“Would you like 18 more ounces of our fine steak at 50% off? You can always take it home with you if
you don’t finish.”
Because you’re hungry and it’s a tempting deal, you order the extra slab of meat at a discount. But of
course, when it arrives, you can’t finish it. You take it home, where it becomes more of a
responsibility than a joy, sitting there cold and hard in your fridge. A few days later you toss it out.
Next time, you stay away from that restaurant. Somehow, you have a bad feeling. You spent too
much money. You were emasculated by not finishing the steak. And you don’t need the temptation a
second time.
I’ve recently heard a couple of contrasting positions on upsells. Just yesterday, I listened to an
interview with successful copywriter and marketer Justin Goff. He talked about how the best upsells
are often more of the same.
“Buying one bottle of supplements? How about 3 more at a discount?”
At the same time, Justin talked about the incessant need most direct response businesses have for
new customers. According to Justin, new customers are the ones who buy the product, and even the
ones who take up affiliate offers. That’s position one.
Then there’s Sean D’Souza. Along with a copy of his Dartboard Pricing book, I got a copy of a talk
Sean did for the Ken McCarthy’s System Club. This talk is on the topic of consumption. And one of
the things Sean says explicitly is that you don’t want to overwhelm your customers with product, even
if they are willing to buy it.
Sean also talks about treating customers the way you would treat your kids — that is, looking out for
them and charting a path for them down the line.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Sean’s business seems to rely on a much smaller number of customers,
who happily keep coming back year after year and forking over thousands of dollars for Sean’s
courses and trainings. It’s what Sean calls a focus on consumption over conversion. That’s position
two.
So what’s the conclusion? I guess it depends on what kind of business you’re looking to run. If you
want to scale quickly and max out revenue, then aggressive “steak” upsells make sense. If you want
to have a long-term business, another strategy might be better.
For example, even in Sean’s way of running a business, the right kinds of upsells can have a place.
Imagine if in that restaurant, the waiter did something different. Imagine if instead of upselling
you on more steak, he recommended a special beer on tap, and his favorite salad off the menu. This
would still be an upsell, though it wouldn’t make as much money as selling more steak.
Your consumption experience would be much better. You’d be more likely to return. And the
restaurant wouldn’t have to constantly worry about digging up new customers.

How to get going when you don’t know what to write - 16/08/2018
The first part of the Big Con happens on a train. I’m talking about the movie The Sting, where
Paul Newman plays Henry Gondorff, an expert con man, who’s looking to fleece a mob boss named
Lonnegan. (Lonnegan killed off one of Henry’s old pals.)
So Henry is now on a train, where Lonnegan regularly runs a poker game. Lonnegan cheats.
But Henry cheats better.
Of course, there’s a lot of detailed info necessary to out-cheat a cheat. That’s ok. Henry has got
a whole team of tricksters and confidence artists on his payroll. One of them, a guy named J.J.
Singleton, comes to give Henry the lowdown right before he goes in to join the poker game:
SINGLETON: “He usually plays with a Royal or a Cadenza. [handing him two sealed decks] I got you
one of each. He likes to cold deck low, 8’s or 9’s.”
“That’s nice work, J.J.”
Armed with this info, Henry goes into the poker game. He slaps some gin on his face, acts the
fool, and cleans up the table. Lonnegan is furious — and hooked for the rest of the Big Con.
Several times, I’ve written sales emails that started out just like this post. In other words, they
referenced a movie, and then tied it into what I was promoting.
Once, this was the X-Men — I talked about Professor X’s ability to read minds, and said how this
would help guys who want to please their women better (this was for a “rekindle your romance”
course). Another time, I started off talking about the Shawshank Redemption, and then tied this into
an ebook on treatments for chronic kidney disease.
The thing is, in both those emails, I was stuck at first. I knew the movie tied into what I wanted to
say, but I didn’t know how to make the link. I made several false starts that were weak or rambled on
for too long. The answer in both cases was to pick a specific scene, and lead off with that. And that’s
the marketing lesson I want to crystalize in this post:
When it’s hard to figure out what to write, the answer is almost always to look for more info.
Sometimes, that means going out and doing more research. Other times, it simply means focusing
more on the details that are already at my disposal — like picking a specific scene from a movie.
The best kind of proof - 17/08/2018
I want to give you a demonstration of spooky action at a distance
For this to work, all you have to do is read the instructions below, and then when you get to the part
that says “GO” carry them out. Once you’re done, simply keep reading this article.
So here are the instructions of my spooky-action-at-a-distance:
(Read through them once before you try them out)
1. Clasp your hands together with your fingers interlocked, thumb over thumb, index finger over index
finger, etc.
2. Now, stick your index fingers out straight, but keep them apart.
3. And then, simply look at the space between your index fingers until something spooky happens. It
might take as long as 10-15 seconds, but it might happen sooner as well.
Ready?
GO . . . .
Are you done?
That means my spooky-action-at-a-distance must have come through across time and space and
pushed your two index fingers together until they were touching.
At least, that’s the idea
Hopefully it worked. And in any case, the point is not really to convince you of action-at-a-distance,
but simply to illustrate the most powerful kind of proof. And that’s demonstration.
Product demonstrations work very well
You can take a car for a test-drive. You can try a shirt on at the store. You can walk around a home
before buying it.
Then there are performance demonstrations
In his farewell seminar, Gary Bencivenga told the story of Elisha Otis, who invented the first safe
elevator. Otis got in an open elevator in front of a crowd, while his assistant first cut one and then the
other cable holding the elevator in place. Otis’s safety mechanism kicked in, saving Otis and the
elevator, and finally convincing people that elevators are safe to use (hello skyscrapers).
This still works today
A while back, a video for the Purple mattress company went viral. The core of the video was a clever
demonstration — the raw egg test:
Sometimes though, the demonstration doesn’t even have to be of the product
Like in this post that you’re reading. Or in this Bill Jayme add for Smithsonian Magazine:
This clever demonstration seems to be about engagement
So what’s the conclusion?
Always try for a demonstration. There are many creative ways to do this, and it’s worth putting in
some thought to come up with one that works for you.
Bejakovic’s hierarchy of email marketing - 18/08/2018
What’s the most important thing in email marketing? Ben Settle, in my opinion the top guy
teaching this topic, has said that the number one thing he strives to do with email is to build a
relationship.
It made sense to me when I first read it. But it seemed to click in my mind in a different way today,
when I got an email from somebody in Ben’s sphere of influence.
The email had a Ben-style curiosity-drenched subject line. And yet, I purposefully chose not to
open the email, because I know from previous experience that I don’t care too much for what that
sender has to say.
That made me think a bit (specifically about the difference between levels 4 and 5 below). And the
conclusion is the following hierarchy of email marketing.
The levels are ranked from least sophisticated to most sophisticated. For each level, I’m including a
few examples of subject lines that represent that level, which I managed to dig up in my own inbox.
Level 1: Pointless Finally, there is the highest level, relationship email marketing. That’s when readers open up your
email and read it simply because they’ve grown to like and trust you over time.
These tend to be emails from corporations and big organizations that have heard email marketing is
important. However, since these organizations have no idea of what to put in their emails, they This is the only kind of email marketing where you’re not living “email to email” — in other words, you
usually blast out pointless newsletters that are focused on random aspects of their own corporate can get away sending all sorts of random and personal stuff, even in the subject line, and people will
existance (best case) or nothing at all (worst case). This is the lowest form of email marketing. still read on. In some way, this is coming full circle to the “Pointless” level — except that people
actually want to hear what your opinions are and what’s new with you, because you’ve built that
Example subject lines: relationship.
“New Bestcare website” Example subject lines:
“#MakeBaobabFamous”
“What’s new in MailChimp?” “Bensplaining the importance of daily emails”
“BUSTED!”
Level 2: Sale “My new project”
The next level up is when the sender makes an offer. The offer can be a sale, a coupon, or a new “One weird trick for reaching the top of the ziggurat”
product announcement. This works — if your readers are ready to buy and they just need to be
nudged with the right kind of carrot. Unfortunately, many companies doing email marketing Now, there’s an important distinction between levels 1-4 and level 5.
(especially in ecommerce) only ever send out these kinds of email.
Levels 1-4 are under your control. It’s simply a matter of what you put in the email.
Example subject lines:
However, you can’t force people to have a relationship with you. All you can really do is write
“Your favorite mist, on us” good emails that will hopefully resonate with some of the people on your list.
“Save 25% Now + Win a Trip to Maui”
“Get 33% OFF Absolutely EVERYTHING + FREE Shaker” Technical note: Being at the Relationship level doesn’t mean you only send out personal updates or
rants. Quite the opposite. You can and should still frequently mix and match content from the different
Level 3: Benefit levels — even within one email. That’s how you get to — and stay at — the top.

Now we’re getting into copywriting territory. “Sell the sizzle, not the steak!” This is where much of the The parable of the marketing apprentice - 20/1028
Internet Marketing world lives. This category of emails is all about announcing (and frequently
screaming) benefits — though I would also include transparent fear-mongering or urgency-based Do you know the parable of the sorceror’s apprentice?
emails here.
The sorcerer leaves the tower for a bit, and his apprentice uses what magic he’s learned to get the
Example subject lines: broom to come alive and start fetching pails of water. Except the stupid broom, once it has gotten the
command, won’t stop. The apprentice hasn’t learned this magic incantation yet.
“Higher T in 14 days”
“Boost your ranking with these SEO hacks” So more and more water keeps being sloshed into the tower. The apprentice starts to panic and
“Closing: On-Demand Video Views = Sales” decides to chop the broom in half. Not smart. His problems are now doubled — two brooms are
bringing twice the water.
Level 4: Curiosity
This is akin to what happens when people start learning about marketing and copywriting. For
This is still a higher level of email copywriting, which is trying to persuade more skeptical, more example, the very first bit of marketing advice you’ll hear is to focus on how your offer benefits the
sophisticated readers. At first blush, there can be overlap with emails in level 3, but these curiosity prospect.
emails tend to be less direct and more broadly interesting than the benefit emails. Email courses
(think Andre Chaperon) also go in this category. “Don’t make it about you, make it about them!”

Example subject lines: It’s a solid piece of advice. And it should be used, when and where it’s needed. But is it the only
incantation a marketer needs to know?
“Do NOT do keto if…”
“The shocking truth about exercise” I thought of this a few months back when I got a promotional email from a health coach
“Why drug expiration dates don’t matter” named Ari Whitten. Ari runs a very popular online course called the Energy Blueprint, and he was
sending an email to his list to promote his new book. The subject line? “My New Book is HERE!”
Level 5: Relationship
Who cares, right? Where’s the benefit? What’s in it for me, Ari?
Well, apparently, much of Ari’s list cares. Through motivating his own loyal followers — and
probably with a lot of affiliate help — Ari’s book shot up to the #2 spot in the health category on
Amazon, and within the top 40 of all books on Amazon.
In a way, this is reminiscent of what Gene Schwartz calls the “most aware” state of customer
awareness. From Gene’s Breakthrough Advertising:
The customer knows of your product — knows what it does — knows he wants it. At this point, he
just hasn’t gotten around to buying it yet. Your headline — in fact, your entire ad — need state little
more except the name of your product and a bargain price.
At the same time, this isn’t really about awareness of the product. Instead, the awareness is
about Ari himself. People know him and want what he has to offer, without taking too much care of
what his offer actually is.
But let’s tie this back to the sorcerer’s apprentice.
Wouldn’t Ari have been more successful if he had pitched the benefits of his new book right in the
subject line? Maybe, at least for selling this one book. That’s like telling your broom to go fetch the
water.
However, for the long term, always shouting benefits might not be the best strategy. If you
keep writing to the same people, and all you do is talk benefits, without doing other things to build a
bond with your readers (like entertaining them, teasing them with curiosity, or relating to them on a
personal level), then you eventually lose their attention and you make your job harder — or
impossible — for the long term.
That’s when you try chopping the axe in two. In the marketing world, that usually means making
more and more extreme promises and claims. When that doesn’t seem to work, you chop again and
again, making still more extreme claims.
That is, until the sorcerer comes back from his afternoon walk. He surveys the mess, throws the
sleeves of his robe back, and finally casts the magic spell (called “relationship”) to drive all these
marketing problems away.
The “Rule of One” applied to email copywriting - 21/08/2018
In the 2006 version of Casino Royale, there’s a classic James Bond pickup scene.
Bond is talking to the beautiful wife of one of the bad guys. After a bit of flirty banter, Bond looks
her straight in the eye and says, “What about a drink at my place?”
He stares at her. She stares at him. The tension builds.
“Your place,” she says breathlessly, “is it close?”
“Very,” says Bond.
Now imagine if Bond couldn’t play so cool. Instead of throwing out that one proposal, imagine if
he threw out three:
“What about a drink at my place? Or maybe some nachos? How about breakfast tomorrow in case
you’re busy now?”
Even with his ice-cold stare, odds are he wouldn’t get the same response.
“Bond. James Bond. You can call me Jim. Or James. Whichever is easier.”
A while ago, I was reading “Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath. This is the best book I’ve
come across on how to present ideas clearly and in a way that people will remember. One of the
things the Heaths say is, “Say one thing. If you say three things, you end up saying nothing at all.”
Michael Masterson and John Forde’s “Great Leads” emphasizes the same concept, which they call
“The Rule of One – One Big Idea.”
In fact, the book opens up with the story of two speeches that were given by two Agora copywriters.
One speech focused on one idea, the importance of clarity in writing. The other was something like
“12 rules I follow when writing copy.”
The audience thought both speeches were terrific. But at the end of the night, people were only
talking about the single idea in the first speech.
I’ve recently been working on some emails for a cool product. The product helps people make their
own fermented food. And the emails I’m writing are specifically for people who’ve stated that they
want to ferment for health reasons.
I’ve been going around in circles writing these emails. I need to get across a few ideas. One is
that fermented foods are important for your health. The second is that fermenting can be a hassle. A
third is that store-bought fermented foods aren’t a great choice compared to fermenting food yourself.
The problem is I’ve been trying to do this in the same email. This breaks the “Rule of One.” No
wonder I’ve been re-reading the emails and thinking they are somehow weak and unconvincing.
The fix is simple. Pick one idea. Develop it in detail. Present it clearly. And then do the same for the
other ideas, but in separate emails.
My checklist for email copywriting - 22/08/2018
In 1935, Boeing demonstrated its new plane, nicknamed the Flying Fortress, to military observers.
The demonstration was a mere formality, because the plane, a four-engine behemoth, exceeded the
army’s requirements in every way.
Except for one problem. During the demonstration, the plane took off, climbed steeply, stalled, and
crashed, killing the two pilots inside.
An examination determined that nothing mechanical had gone wrong. The crash was due to pilot
error. It seemed that the Flying Fortress was simply too much plane for one man to fly. Nonetheless,
the air corps purchased a few Flying Fortresses and tried to figure out what to do.
Their solution was very low-tech. Instead of changing anything about the plane, or insisting on
more training for the pilots, they simply came up with checklists to handle the complex procedures for
each operation: takeoff, landing, cruising, bombing…
Thanks in part to these checklists, the Flying Fortress eventually wound up playing a key role in
World War II, and became the third most produced bomber of all time.
I thought of this story today, because I came up with my first checklist for email copywriting.
Even though I’ve written hundreds of sales emails by now, I haven’t systematized the process, and
sometimes, I find myself crashing and burning for no good reason. Today, I became aware of how the
process goes when it goes well, and I want to write it down to make sure I don’t ever forget it ever
again.
So here it is, along with an example (one of the emails I was working on today, for a home fermenting
kit):
STEP 1. Get an idea for an angle or topic
I normally do a lot of research for the emails I write. This includes going through the sales letter,
testimonials, transcripts I did with people from the company, examining the product itself, digging
around on forums online, etc. As I do this, I write down possible topics and angles for emails.
For this particular project, I also went through a few hundred customer surveys. A lot of customers
mentioned that they were interested in fermenting because they wanted to lose weight.
My first idea was simply to try to connect fermented foods to weight loss. While I had a good
testimonial on this topic, the science seemed fairly vague and tenuous (more on this in step 2 below).
However, a related and relevant topic — antibiotics and weight gain — seemed very solid, so I
decided to go with that.
STEP 2. Search around for more details
If I know a lot about a topic, or I have a personal story I can share, I can skip this step.
However, I can’t simply riff about antibiotics and weight gain. It’s not a topic I know enough about, so I
needed to do more research. In particular, I wanted to find some kind of supporting scientific study
that actually made the connection. And ideally, I also wanted to find a story to kick off the entire
email.
I have a few go-to places for both kinds of resource. For scientific research, ScienceDaily seems to
have reliable summaries of recent research. For stories, articles that appear in The Atlantic and The
New Yorker tend to be good sources. Beyond this, a bit of googling will usually solve all research
problems.
For this particular email, I found a study from Johns Hopkins University that effectively said, “the
more antibiotics, the more weight gain.” The story I found was about a woman who went to the doctor
to get rid of her hormonal acne, but wound up with an extra 14 pounds, thanks to the antibiotics he
prescribed her.
STEP 3. Write up different subject lines
Keeping In mind the topic I want to cover, and the details of the research I want to include, I start to
write a bunch of different subject lines.
At this point, I have a fairly large stack of index cards with good headlines that I can use as templates
or inspiration. These aren’t “classic” direct response headlines (eg. “They laughed when I sat down at
the piano”).
Instead, they are the titles of articles I’ve found myself clicking on over the past sevreal years (eg.
“De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds”). Most of these are general-interest articles that
originally appeared on the front page of Hacker News, so they are vetted for being curiosity-inducing.
I force myself to write down 10-15 of these subject lines, even if I think they sound stupid. Then I just
pick the one that I think sounds the best, ties into the content I want to share, and ideally, gives me a
bit of edge I can use in the email (I can’t describe this any better right now).
For this particular email, the subject line I ended up with was “Antibiotics are shockingly good at
causing weight gain”.
STEP 4. Write the body of the email
At this point, all that’s left to do is to tie the pieces together. That means starting off with the story,
developing this a bit (in the example I’ve been using, that means talking about the supporting science
study), and then tying this in with the product I’m promoting.
I won’t include the entire completed email here. But it looks something like this:
Stuck on the emotional rollercoaster with nowhere to go - 23/08/2018
On May 28 of this year, many visitors to the Cedar Point amusement park, “The Rollercoaster Capital
of the World,” got a special thrill.
They boarded the Millennium Force “giga coaster” — the biggest rollercoaster in the world at the time
of its debut in 2000 — expecting a fast and gut-wrenching ride. Full of expectation, they started
climbing the initial 300-foot ascent, and were preparing themselves to rush down the other side at 93
miles an hour.
Instead, what they got was a long wait. Halfway up the climb, the power went out. A car
somewhere hit a utility pole, knocking out one third of the rides at Cedar Point. The folks on the
Millennium Force sat up there in the air for two hours, cooking in the 90-degree heat.
Now a few days ago, I made a case against indoctrination emails, meaning emails that aim to build
good will without trying to sell anything. My argument in that post was that people don’t read all your
emails, so when they do actually read your emails, it makes financial sense to give them a chance to
buy from you.
Today, I have a second argument against indoctrination emails (and other emails that don’t sell). This
second argument has to do with the situation of being stuck on a rollercoaster, ready to scream and
laugh — but not actually going anywhere.
“WOOHOOO!!! A way to resolve emotional tension!!!”
The rollercoaster I’m talking about is an emotional rollercoaster. In my experience, the best
emails stir emotion. This emotion can be curiosity, frustration, anger, disgust, fear, greed, outrage,
inspired benevolence, whatever.
Why emotion in emails? If you want people to open your emails day after day and to read them,
you have to give them an emotional jolt, and do so frequently. I don’t have a much better way of
explaining it than saying it’s simply what people want. I guess emotion gives color to an otherwise
drab day.
(Interesting and useful information is great once or twice. But without a little emotional color mixed in,
useful information quickly becomes a burden rather than a gift.)
Of course, emotion also makes sense from a different perspective. That’s because when people
get emotional about something, it’s much easier to get them to take action. Meaning it’s much easier
to get them to buy.
And here’s the thing. Getting people to buy when they are emotional isn’t just good for you. It’s
good for them. The act of buying resolves the tension that the emotion stirred up. And it replaces it
with a sense of purpose, hope, and resolution.
If you don’t believe me, think about the feeling you yourself had the last time you made a sizeable
purchase online. I know I’m usually relieved that the indecision of shopping has been resolved, and
I’m optimistic about what my new purchase will alow me to do.
So emotion + selling = good. But emotion without selling is like being stuck high up on a
rollercoaster, not moving and not being able to finish the ride. At first it might just be puzzling, after
that it becomes annoying.
What’s the alternative? Well, one option is to send out bland and boring emails that don’t stir
anybody up. A better option, in my opinion, is to get people a little emotional, and to then give them a
chance to buy a product or service that allows them to complete their rollercoaster ride.
The 7th pillar of influence - 24/08/2018
Fair warning: the following post contains some sexual, politically incorrect references. It might offend
some people.
It’s ok to click away. But if you insist on reading, here goes:
A hairy English man named Yad once shared the story of an out-of-body experience. It wasn’t
his experience, actually. Rather, it was the girl he was with who had this strange thing happen to her.
Now in case you don’t know, Yad is one of the world’s great masters of stopping a girl on the street,
in broad daylight, completely sober, to chat for a minute and ask for her phone number.
Well, most of the time, Yad asks for the number. Sometimes, he pushes it, and asks the girl on a
mini-date right away.
That’s what happened in this case. Except, the mini-date went well, and turned into a maxi-date. In
fact, even though they had just met on the street a few hours earlier, Yad and this girl wound up back
home in the evening, and found themselves in bed together. And that’s when the out-of-body
experience supposedly happened.
You see, the girl was amazed by Yad’s seemingly irresistable confidence at every step of the way,
from approaching her on the street, to asking her out, to moving her from bar to bar, and now getting
her naked and in bed.
She was wondering how much further this would go, and whether she was really willing to sleep with
a guy she had just met on the street only hours earlier.
In the end, she said something like, “We were having sex, but at the same time I felt like I was just
having this out-of-body experience, floating around above the bed, watching all this unfold and asking
myself, ‘Who is this guy and how is he so relaxed about this whole thing?'”
Well, I’m not here to plug Yad or his pickup skills today. Instead, I want to talk about the 7th pillar
of influence.
You might already know something about the first 6 pillars. They were identified and written up
by Robert Cialdini in his book Influence. These are the 6 golden rules that persuaders of all stripes
supposedly use — stuff like reciprocity, liking, social proof, etc.
But I believe there is another big pillar of influence that Cialdini left out. It’s in the story above.
My guess is that it also drives about 90% of Internet traffic today. And according to famous copywriter
Gary Halbert, it might even be the #1 reason that people buy stuff from advertisements.
Have you got it yet? Here’s a hint. It’s the common thread in all of the following headlines:
“Grains puffed to 8 times normal size”
“Its reputation and its odor precede it”
“The amazing money-making secret of a desperate nerd from Ohio”
“Why whales got so big”
I’m sure by now you have it so I’ll stop teasing. That 7th (and possibly most important) pillar is plain
old, tried and true…
Curiosity.
Yep, curiosity. Curiosity can drive clicks. It can sell products. And as you can read in the story above,
it can even get a girl to sleep with a hairy English man only hours after he’s met her.
Which is all good, but how do you go about creating curiosity? Good question. And it’s something
that I plan to answer in detail. But not today. If you want to get my take on it, you might want to sign
up to my daily email newsletter.
6 ways to stir up (and blow up) curiosity - 25/08/2018
No time to dilly-dally today. Straight into the meat of this post, which is about how to create and
amplify curiosity:
1 Use an open loop
I know of a fantastic way to stir up curiosity. It works particularly well with skeptical prospects,
because it can be go completely under the radar.
But before I talk more about that, let me tell you about a guy named Andre Chaperon. Andre is
famous in the copywriting world for a course called Autoresponder Madness, which teaches people
how to write successful, story-based autoresponder sequences.
Some big Internet publishing companies, such as Mindvalley and Velocity House, have based much
of their sales funnels on Andre’s teachings in Autoresponder Madness.
(Andre’s email methodology was the first I was exposed to when I started to learn about email
marketing. I thought it was great then, and I think it’s great still — only surpassed, or rather
complemented by, the stuff that Ben Settle teaches.)
Anyways, one clever trick that Andre uses throughout his email copy, and that he teaches people in
Autoresponder Madness, is called the “open loop.” You just saw an example of it four paragraphs
back. It’s when you announce something intriguing, and then you completely drop it to talk about
other things.
In my example above, the effect was probably not great, because you knew the suspense would be
relieved after only a few paragraphs. But Andre frequently uses it across emails that will be sent days
or even weeks apart.
Of course, the open loop is a standard technique in any story-telling medium. An extreme example is
a cliffhanger in old comics or TV shows (more on this at the end of this post).
2 Tease/Intensify
Do you know why teasing is so great? It’s simply this: it will make your readers itch with curiosity, to
the point where they’ll do anything to get the answer from you. And the thing about teasing is that it’s
simple to do. Many people have used even without knowing anything about persuasion.
I’ll tell you all about how to do it, in just a second. Or maybe two. All right, here goes:
Teasing, by my definition, is simply dragging things out without actually giving anything away. The
section above is one example.
You might find my teasing above annoying and transparent. But teasing can and should be part
of good copy, both to build up anticipation and to “intensify” whatever is being talked about.
Here’s a less hokey example from my post yesterday:
But I believe there is another big pillar of influence that Cialdini left out. It’s in the story above. My
guess is that it also drives about 90% of Internet traffic today. And according to famous copywriter
Gary Halbert, it might even be the #1 reason that people buy stuff from advertisements.
I’m not really giving anything away here. I’m just restating and intesifying the benefits, and buying a
bit of time in the process.
3 Tighten the knowledge gap
Here’s a puzzle for you. Why would a headline such as:
“Battery technology may emerge as a trillion-dollar threat to credit markets”
stir up more curiosity than a headline such as:
“Battery technology may emerge as a huge threat to other sectors”
After all, the second headline actually withholds much more information (Which sectors? How huge?)
than the first. Shouldn’t that cause more curiosity as well?
The answer to this lies in the concept of a “knowledge gap,” a term I first read in Chip and
Dan Heath’s Made to Stick. A knowledge gap is what ultimately creates curiosity — it’s the bit of
knowledge we don’t have and we want to have so we can complete the picture.
The thing is, if the amount of information that’s withheld is too great, you don’t create
curiosity. You create indifference. That’s what’s going on in the second headline above.
The way to create curiosity is to tighten the knowledge gap as much as possible without
giving the farm away. Some well-known copywriter (Ben Settle? David Deutsch?) talked about good
bullet points as giving away nine-tenths of what you need to know, but keeping that last bit so people
have to buy your product to find out. That’s the right attitude to have with the knowledge gap.
Tightening the knowledge gap isn’t just about combatting general disinterest. It can also be
used to hook skeptical, jaded prospects. Compare a subject line such as:
“The forbidden food you should be eating”
(which, by the way, is a real subject line from an email I got yesterday, and did not open) to a more
specific subject line:
“The forbidden breakfast food you should be eating after workouts”
To me, it seems that the second subject line (which I just made up) might get me to wonder, “which
breakfast food” and “why after workouts,” which might be enough to overcome my skepticism of
reading yet another sensationalist health blog post.
4 Flaunt the velvet pouch
This blog post has run on longer than expected. And I’m getting sleepy. I’ll pick it all up tomorrow —
starting with the secret of the velvet pouch.
“Until tomorrow — same time — same channel!”
6 ways to stir up curiosity (cont.) - 26/08/2018
Onwards and upwards. Continuing from my post yesterday, here are 3 more ways to create
and amplify curiosity:
4 Flaunt the velvet pouch
When it comes to copywriting, the method of the velvet pouch is possibly the sexiest, most
effective, and most profitable way to create curiosity. It certainly seems to be very prevalent
on the Internet today, particularly in long-form sales letters and VSLs.
In many ways, the velvet pouch idea is a combination of several of the techniques from
yesterday’s post. But I also feel like this method is tapping into human psychology on some
unique, fundamental level, and that’s why I decided to include it on its own.
I found out about the velvet pouch technique from Michael Masterson’s and John Forde’s
Great Leads. Here is the relevant section from the book, which is talking about lesson from a
door-to-door salesman named Harry:
After gaining admittance to the apartment, Harry would start his pitch about the quality of our
cookware, taking out the pots and pans individually from the case. But they were each
encased in plush, royal blue velvet pouches. As Harry described the features and benefits of
the cookware, he would gently massage the pots, first from outside over the velvet pouches,
and then by slipping his hands inside them but still keeping them hidden from the prospect.
“Just keep your eye on the customer,” he told me. “In the beginning they’ll be looking at you.
But as you go on, you’ll notice that they will shift their focus to the pots and pans. That lets
you know they are getting interested. Keep hitting them with the benefits while they stare at
what you’re doing. And never, ever tkae the pots out until you know they have the prospects’
full attention.”
Masterson and Forde use this story to kick off their chapter on what they call the secret lead.
In other words, the velvet pouch is all about the mystery and intrigue that builds up when a
secret is hovering around in the air.
In some ways, this is similar to a combination of the open loop and the teasing from
yesterday. But like I said, there also seems to be a fundamental human hunger for secrets,
even if they aren’t clearly associated with any benefits. I think that also explains why “secret”
and “mystery” are marketing power words that can in many ways make a headline on their
own.
By the way, I think trying to disqualify yourself (or what you’re offering) can sometimes work in
the same way as a secret. Once something is taken off the table, people suddenly become
more intrigued by it. That’s why I think the start of my post from two days ago is in some ways
also a secret lead:
Fair warning: the following post contains some sexual, politically incorrect references. It might
offend some people.
It’s ok to click away. But if you insist on reading, here goes:
5 Be different
6 Be new/Share news
When Gary Halbert died, Gary Bencivenga wrote a post explaining why Gary H.’s newsletters
were so interesting. The number one thing, according to Gary B.?
1. Gary shared news. Sometimes he was the news, sometimes it was a dramatic turn of
events in his tumultuous life, but often enough, he shared news of a technique or strategy
that would make your response and profits soar. You couldn’t afford to miss even one of
these gems, so you had to open every issue.
Many times, being new is sufficient unto itself, even if there’s no implied benefit, and not even
anything clearly different. Novelty seems to directly tap into human psychology. Remember
being in elementary school when a new kid appeared in class? Like in the photo above, that
new kid was automatically interesting, at least for a while.
About number 5 above…
I tried to be different with the “be different” section above, so I didn’t expand on it at all.
Maybe I should have just left it at that, because being different can be pretty straightforward.
Still, here are a few examples:
First off, there’s the picture from yesterday’s post: “WORLD’S ONLY FEATURE DANCER
WITH 3 BOOBS.” Is it a benefit? Hardly. A secret? Not at all. Just morbid fascination and
curiosity with something different.
Second, there’s the story I started with two days ago, about a guy named Yad sleeping with a
girl only a few hours after meeting her — just because he was different enough from other
guys to make her very curious.
Finally, a copywriting example from my own essential oils list. At one point, I was promoting
an online video series about longevity. The promise of the series was “How to live to a happy
and healthy old age.”
That’s a fine benefit, but everyone is already pushing the same. So I simply switched it
around to be different. I retold an ancient Greek myth about a Trojan prince who gets eternal
life but not eternal youth, and how it turns out to be a curse rather than a blessing. The
subject line for this inspiring email: “How to reach a frail and unhappy old age.” It worked
pretty well.
A clever persuasion tactic from a 1970s racist lackey - 27/08/2018
Here’s a bit of movie trivia:
Woody Allen has won the Academy Award for best original screenplay three times. Twice, he did it
alone. Once, in collaboration with Marshall Brickman.
Francis Ford Coppola has also won the same award three times, as have Billy Wilder and Charles
Brackett. Each of them has shared at least one of those awards.
Only one guy has ever won the Academy Award for the best screenplay three times, working entirely
by himself.
That guy is Paddy Chayefsky.
Right now, I’m rewatching my favorite Paddy Chayefsky Academy-Award-winning movie. It’s called
Network, and it deals with the network TV business in the 1970s.
Halfway through the movie, Diana Christiansen, a heartless new breed of TV exec, meets with a
representative of the Communist Party of the United States, Laureen Hobbs, in order to discuss
making a program based on live recordings of acts of political terrorism. This is how the introduction
goes:
Diana Christensen: Hi. I’m Diana Christensen, a racist lackey of the imperialist ruling circles.
Laureen Hobbs: I’m Laureen Hobbs, a badass commie nigger.
Diana Christensen: Sounds like the basis of a firm friendship.
Clever, right?
This introduction does a few things well. For one thing, Diana agrees with what Laureen already
believes (the Marxist idea of “class for itself”). At the same time, the introduction is entirely and
brutally honest, almost self-dismissing. It’s also very different from what is expected, immediately
stirring curiosity and buying a bit of time.
This kind of strategy is what negotiation coach Jim Camp called a “negative stripline.” A negative
stripline is when you go fully negative on some sensitive point, to the extent that the other side feels a
bit bad and wants to reel you back in towards more middle ground.
So how can you use negative striplining in marketing?
The trouble was, while the doctor did have a characteristic “voice” while speaking, when written
down, there wasn’t nearly as much there. He wasn’t really using any unique slang, or technical terms,
or telling lots of personal stories.
What to do? I swallowed my pride and rewrote parts of the emails. Here’s what I did:
1. Use some generic conversational patter
I always try to write in a conversational way. In this case, I amped it up even more using generic
conversational fluff, such as:

Well, if you’re sending out cold emails to prospect for new customers, you could try opening with “You know”
something like: “Well, what I’m talking about here is”
“Now I’ve got to warn you”
“Hello, my name is John Bejakovic and all I really want is some of your money. However, since I don’t
have the skills to rob you, I have to offer you something you’d value in exchange. In my case, the 2. Search more closely for stories and phrases
only thing I know well is sales copywriting.”
I went through all the transcripts a second time, and I did find some phrases that were subtly unique.
If you’re selling an ebook about aromatherapy (as I plan to do soon), you could start off the sales I wrote them all down, and one by one, I made sure to find a place in the copy to add each of them in.
letter by saying: Here are a few examples:

“There’s been a lot of hype about essential oils, and most of it has zero basis in reality. In fact, “I’ve had an awful lot of success”
essential oils have on occasion hurt people who tried using them. And yet, there are cases when “Boatloads of medicines”
essential oils are not completely worthless, and can even be used safely.” “It’s a jewel” [when describing something valuable]

If you’re selling a probiotic: 3. Add parenthetical remarks

“The human gut is enormously complex. Scientists know only a little about the myriad interactions These are simply moments to step back from a story, an explanation, or a pitch, and you talk
between gut bacteria, other species of gut bacteria, and our own bodies. Odds are, they won’t have a one-on-one, give an opinion, a personal comment, or insert a tiny other story.
good idea about it for another 100 years, and there’s no way to make any firm recommendations right
For example, when talking about one of the ingredients in this supplement, I took a step back to have
now. However, if you want to self-experiment as a way of fixing your digestive issues, then this
the doctor say, “You see, since I was a youngster, I’ve always had a love for nature and natural
probiotic might be worth a look. Here’s why.”
remedies. That’s why…”
I’ve never written anything this extreme for any of my clients. I don’t know if it would work. But if you
4. Insert consistent stories and illustrations
want me to write something brutally honest (and possibly disarming) for your business, here’s where
to go. This is perhaps the most impactful of all of these techniques.

How to nail a wise old doctor’s voice - 28/08/2018 I decided to simply add in stories and illustrations and images that are consistent with the persona of
the doctor, even if it’s stuff I never really heard him say, and even if it’s stuff he might not actually ever
I’m currently working on an email sequence for a memory enhancement supplement. say.

The spokesperson for this supplement is a doctor — male, white, I estimate in his mid-60s, with a
pleasant Southern drawl and a wise grandfatherly demeanor.
I wrote up the first batch of emails and delivered them to my client (the supplement company owner,
not the doctor).
“The angles and topics are all good,” the client said, “but can you work on adopting the good doctor’s
voice a little more?”
Honestly, I was a bit miffed at this, because I already had tried to adopt his voice (as I do with all copy
that I write). I had gone through the transcripts of an interview I had with the doctor, as well as
several videos he had done on YouTube where he talked about health and supplements.
For example, I told the story of a “beautiful and stately old tree” down the street from where the
doctor lives, which happens to be a ginkgo tree, one of the ingredients in the supplement. And I used
grandfatherly images like the following:
“His anger issues started disappearing like mist in the morning sun”
“She had a vice-like grip on her intelligence again”
So did all this work? Who knows. But the client was happy, and he wrote back right away to say I had
nailed the doctor’s voice perfectly.
Creative offers, exhibit 1 - 29/08/2018
I was talking to a friend yesterday and explaining how I’ve been doing well with sales copywriting.
“So what’s the trick to success?” he asked.
“Honestly, I said, “it’s to work with a client who’s got a great offer that people love. Even mediocre
marketing will sell a great product easy, while brilliant marketing won’t sell a bad offer.”
I guess I must have internalized that from Gary Halbert, who put it this way:
Know this: Strong copy will not overcome a weak offer but…
In Many Cases, A Strong Offer Will
Succeed In Spite Of Weak Copy Written
By Marketing Morons!
In this vein, I decided to start collecting creative and interesting and effective offers that I come
across.
The first of these is from Matt Stone AKA Buck Flogging. Starting with his 180 Degree Health blog,
Matt has had a a bunch of successful online businesses over the past decade.
(I’ve been on Matt’s various email lists for a while, and aside from Ben Settle, I think he has some of
the best emails, even though he only emails when he wants to pitch something. Unlike Ben, though,
Matt isn’t a copywriter by trade. He simply honed his skill by tireless writing of books and blog posts
and emails and managing the herds of people who interact with him daily.)
A couple of years ago, Matt made a course where he shared his approach to starting an online
business and having it make money. Interesting — due to Matt’s history of success online — but
pretty standard so far.
Here’s the creative bit about this offer comes in. Matt made the price of his course flexible. How
flexible? It was one day’s wage, whatever that may be for you.
The list price was $300. But right in the email where he was announcing the course, Matt sent a
bunch of coupon codes for discounts from 10% off to 90% off. He even had a “BANGLADESH”
coupon code, which I presume reduced the cost down to a dollar or so.
Could this possibly work? I remember getting this email and being almost instinctively carried away to
buy the course on the spot. I didn’t, because I figured I simply wouldn’t use it at that time.
However, I did buy the next year’s version, in part because I remembered this email from a year
earlier. And during that version of the course, Matt shared that this particular offer, and this particular
email, were one of the most successful he ever ran. So I’m filing it into my drawer of creative (and
successful) offers as example no. 1.
Interesting guarantees, part 1 - 03/09/2018
Guarantees are a penny-a-dozen throughout marketingworld. And even
double-your-money-back guarantees aren’t so unusual. Typically though, they are reserved to fairly
small offers.
Today however, I came across a version of a double-your-money-back guarantee that’s pretty
enormous. I heard about it on a conference call put on by Justin Goff and Ian Stanley. Both of these
guys are very successful marketers and copywriters, and they were on the call sharing their
experience and answering questions about marketing.
At the end of the call, Justin made a pitch for his Beat Your Control Seminar. This is a $25k affair
where he will share his 18 “control beaters” and work with businesses to improve on their marketing
funnels.
And that’s where the massive guarantee comes in. Justin’s promise is that he will beat these
companies’ controls within 48 hours, and make them an extra $100,000 to $5 million this year. If he
doesn’t, he will write them a check for double the money they spent to attend — a $50,000
guarantee.
Now I’m not sure whether Justin is really so experienced that he can beat every control out there. Or
whether it’s a marketing strategy. Or whether he is simply ok losing that money with a few customers
because he will recoup it with others, especially down the line.
Perhaps he’s simply counting on the quality of information that he’s sharing, and on his skills as a
consultant, so that for anyone who attends his seminar, the promise and the guarantee will become
irrelevant.
I remember reading something similar about Gary Bencivenga. When he joined an upstart
marketing agency, they ran an ad in the Wall Street Journal that said they will run a test — either they
beat your control or they will refund your ad spend costs. Apparently they got a ton of business from
that ad, but nobody was interested in running the test — they just wanted to hire Gary’s agency
outright.
Announcing a direct response advertising agency that will guarantee to outpull your best ad
A similar offer from 40 years ago.
Anyways, Justin’s guarantee was big and specific and impressive enough that I wanted to record it, in
a similar way that I recorded an interesting offer last time. I’ll keep recording interesting guarantees
and offers going forward. Which brings to mind something else Gary Bencivenga wrote:
So, Top Gun, what “red shirt” should you be looking for in your marketing campaign? What do you
think is the one thing that could most easily double your response? A breakthrough headline? Hot
new premium? A lapel-seizing lead for your letter?
Decide what it is, then start looking for it today. And don’t close your eyes until you find it.
The right way to respond when you hear “no” - 04/09/2018
“The easy part of playing negotiation is knowing when not to flinch”
Once upon a time, I threw a party and met a girl who came with some of my friends.
Throughout the evening, I circled around, talking to my various guests.
And each time I came across the girl, I could sense a growing interest from her side. Which was
great, because I was interested in her as well.
At some point, the party moved to a nearby club, where I found myself dancing with the girl. We
started kissing, and eventually, I said, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Ok.”
So we got our coats and were about to walk out of the club. Just as we were at the door, she took a
step back, furrowed up her eyebrows, and said: “Don’t think for a minute you’re taking me back to
your place tonight.”
Thanks to being tired and a bit buzzed, I didn’t flinch at this. Instead, I looked her in the eye and said,
“No problem. We’ll go to your place instead.”
She thought about this for a moment, and concluded that it was perfectly satisfactory. So we went to
her place, and spent the first of many nights together.
I’ve just started re-reading Jim Camp’s “No: The Only Negotiating System You Need for Work and
Home.” And here’s a relevant passage I just came across:
“If you’re a parent, you know that every child hears ‘no’ as the start of a negotiation, not the end of it.
As adults, however, we’ve been conditioned and trained to fear the word.”
I think that learning not to over-react to hearing “no” is not just good negotiation, but also one of the
fundamentals of persuasion.
And just so we’re clear: I’m not talking about being pushy, insensitive, or “not taking ‘no’ for an
answer”.
Instead, I’m talking about managing your own internal, emotional state, and keeping your sights on
your goal in spite of the decoys being launched in front of you.
A classic Hollywood trick for stronger sales letter leads - 05/09/2018
Frank Capra was desperate.
He reached for a lighter, struck up a flame, and set fire to his new film.
The year was 1937, and Capra had just finished shooting a new movie, called Lost Horizon. At the
time, Capra was already a huge Hollywood success, having won the Academy Award for best
director twice. However, this new film was long (three and a half hours), confusing, and test
audiences hated it.
The legend goes as follows:
After the first sneak preview, which was a complete failure, Capra started agonizing. How to fix this
monster of a film?
In a moment of inspiration, he hit upon the shocking solution. Even though it was dangerous and
possibly crazy, he burned the first two reels of his film. This eliminated the dull intro scenes, and put
the audience smack in the middle of the action.
Problem solved.
I thought of this Hollywood legend because I’m currently writing a new sales letter. It’s for
sun-protective clothing, and the angle for the sales letter is skin cancer. So I decided to open with a
story of a wife whose husband has been diagnosed with melanoma.
While I was planning this, I kept hearing Chris Haddad’s “Talk dirty to me” VSL in my head. It literally
opens up with the words “Talk dirty to me,” and then goes to tell the story of a woman whose
boyfriend made that request.
That’s some Frank Capra stuff.
Unfortunately, I haven’t yet been able to sum up my audience’s fears in such a clear and powerful
phrase.
But I do start the story immediately, with the husband in the hospital bed, his wife at his side, and the
doctor delivering a horrible verdict. It’s much better than beginning with a sermon about how skin
cancer is the most prevalent type of cancer.
So in short, if you want a stronger sales letter lead, look to cut out some filler. Make sure to get to the
dramatic stuff right away, and capture your audiences attention in the very first sentence.
Talk dirty to me…
Stressing out at exam time in Copywriting High -06/09/2018
Imagine you’re back in high school and you have an important exam coming up.
You know that if you don’t get at least a B, your parents will beat you, your dog will leave you, and
nobody will go with you to prom.
So what do you do? Naturally, you refuse to study for your exam. Or rather, you put off studying until
you only have time to cover about 30% of the material that’s likely to show up on the test.
Of course, on exam day, you’re panicking. Your mind races forward and sees how horrible life will be
when you get an F: the beatings, the dog breakup, the lonely nights.
Your mind then jolts back to the past, and to all the time you could have spent studying. Anger mixed
with guilt boil up inside of you.
As you’re cursing yourself, the teacher appears and hands out the exams. You look at the first
question with disgust and find…
You know the answer.
Then the second question. It’s also something you studied.
And so on with the third and the fourth questions. Before you know it, you’ve finished the exam. The
nightmare is over, and somehow you survived.
When the grades come out, it turns out you got an A. The parents put the bat away. Your dog doesn’t
leave. And you find somebody nice to go to prom with.
So what’s the lesson?
Well personally, I think the lesson is you still should have studied, and you should study in the future.
For one thing, you might not be so lucky next time. For another, all the stress and worry outweighed
the joy of procrastination.
And here’s why I’m inventing this little allegory.
Since I’ve been working as a copywriter, I’ve gradually developed certain criteria for the kinds of the ground showing where the road goes, he can move forward — slower than in perfect weather, but
clients I take on. forward, nonetheless.

For example, I don’t accept rush jobs. I don’t enjoy the stress they bring. Plus, rush jobs tend to
signal bad things about the client.
I also don’t work with clients who aren’t likely to get value out of my copy, regardless of how good I make it.
That could be because they have a bad offer, or because they don’t have any traffic, or because they don’t
know what they’re doing and they won’t even use my copy.
Well, recently I took on a client who failed to meet both of those common-sense criteria. The fault
was mine — I accepted the job before I got the full information about the client and their situation.
And because the promised pay was good, I refused to call off the project once I figured out what was
going on.
Inevitably, the project caused me a lot of stress. All along the way, I was cursing myself for ever
having accepted it. What’s more, the big money I was promised also became uncertain.
Keep your eyes on the lines and you’re fine
Incidentally, this is how I managed to write a 15-page sales letter recently in just a few days.
After about a week of research, I wrote an outline, broke it up into sections, arranged the sections
into a list of alternately important and easy things to do, and chugged away down the list, without
thinking too much along the way.
This is the difference between being fast and not ever finishing. If I had tried to simply sit and
write, it wouldn’t have just taken me longer. Odds are, I would have gotten bogged down completely,
and not moved past the first two or three pages.
How to sell investment newsletters using razor-and-blades - 09/09/2018

Long story short, the project finished. I managed to do a good job with the copy in spite of the rush. I In one form or another, you’ve probably heard of the Gillette principle:
delivered my work, the client paid me as agreed, it appears they are satisfied with the result, and they
might even get their money’s worth, in spite of fundamental problems with their marketing efforts. Give ’em the razor, sell ’em the blades”

So what’s the lesson?
Well, just like in the allegory above, it would have been better to do the right thing and stick to my
principles. It seems I got lucky this time, and the project worked out well. I might not be so lucky next
time. And in retrospect, I don’t think the stress was worth it anyhow.
How to lift the fog of procrastination - 08/09/2018
Cal Newport, a computer science professor who also writes about productivity, once had an
interesting theory about procrastination. In Cal’s own words:
This idea is also called the razor-and-blades strategy, and it’s often attributed to King Gillette, the guy
who invented Gillette razors.
Only the story doesn’t really appear to be true. Gillette originally priced his razors at $5, a princely
sum — a third of a workman’s weekly wages at the time, and roughly equivalent to about $150 in
today’s money.
It was only after the patents on Gillette’s safety razors expired, and the competition swooped in
offering cheap imitations, that Gillette the adopted its now-famous model.

“The evolutionary perspective on procrastination, by contrast, says we delay because our frontal lobe
doesn’t see a convincing plan behind our aspiration. The solution, therefore, is not to muster the
courage to blindly charge ahead, but to instead accept what our brain is telling us: our plans need
more hard work invested before they’re ready.”

(Put simply, we procrastinate when we don’t have a convincing plan.)

When I first read this theory, I thought it was flat-out stupid. I can’t remember why I disliked this
idea at first. Nonetheless, it stuck in my mind, and it’s grown on me with time.

That’s because I’ve noticed it’s exactly what’s happening whenever I procrastinate. If I’m ever
vague on my strategy for moving forward, I might be able to force myself to move for a while. Pretty
soon though, I find I can’t get myself to move at all. But where is he gonna get the blades???

I’ve also noticed the inverse. That is, I’ve noticed that when I improve on my plan, when I clean it
up and make it tighter, then suddenly I’m energized to get to work. Seemingly complex problems
often resolve themselves simply by writing down what needs to be done, and then putting those tasks
in some kind of sensible order.
It’s like a driver in a fog. With nothing to guide him, the driver will eventually slow down and stop,
confused and disoriented about where he’s going. However, if there are nice white lines painted on
However it originated, the razor-and-blades model was a good idea. It increased Gillette’s profits
back then, and it’s been a mainstay of a bunch of other industries — printers-and-toners,
consoles-and-games, Kindles-and-ebooks.
And that’s not all. In a slightly different form, razor-and-blades is also a part of the information
publishing world.
For example, when companies like Agora are selling their financial advisory newsletters, they don’t
focus their marketing on the newsletter itself. Instead, they focus it on a sexy bonus — which is given
away for free — when you subscribe to the newsletter. Typically, even if you unsubscribe from the
newsletter, you get to keep the bonus.
As an example, look at the End of America. This was a massive promotion for Stansberry
Research, an Agora subsidiary. After spending an hour convincing you how American society is
about to collapse because the dollar will soon be devalued, this promotion offered several related
bonuses.
The End of America promotion keeps changing to adapt the bonuses to current needs and
fears. The version I saw offered ones like “The Four Investment Assets You Do Not Have To Report
To The U.S. Government” and “The Gold Investor’s Bible”. You got these intriguing titles free, once
you subscribed to Porter Stansberry’s investment newsletter.
I thought of this today because I’m working on a sales letter for a crypto investing
membership program. The essence of this membership program is tried-and-true wisdom about
investing, culled from books written by the likes of Warren Buffet, along with a review of the current
state of the crypto market. Good stuff, but not too stirring.
So I recommended a razors-and-blades model to the guy behind the course. In his case, I think
something along the lines of “Top 3 Crypto Investment Opportunities For Q4 of 2018” could work well.
This doesn’t have to involve a lot of work. For example, for this membership program, the current
market reviews this guy does already have this “Top 3” information. It simply needs to be pulled out,
labeled with a sexy title, and given away to anyone who’s interested in trying the membership course.
Mother Theresa’s emotional manipulation advice - 12/09/2018
“If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”
— Mother Theresa
One of the most valuable lessons I learned in the early years of my copywriting education came from
Andre Chaperon’s Autoresponder Madness.
It didn’t have to do with autoresponders. It didn’t have to do with email. In fact, it was (and is)
completely applicable to any kind of sales copywriting, and more broadly, to any kind of mass
persuasion.
So what was the lesson?
It was how to understand your prospects on a deep level, and how develop empathy for the people
you’re writing to.
I won’t give away Andre’s exact tactics for doing this, but his general approach is simply a ton of
research. All of which culminates in a customer avatar.
This is not a demographic description. Instead, it’s a detailed story about a specific person who is
facing the problems that you’re looking to solve.
I’ve found that creating such an avatar isn’t just a matter of getting better insight into the audience.
There seems to be some kind of chemical switch in the brain that gets flipped when I’m writing to a
specific person with a name and a face — versus to a vague, shapeless, and nameless mass.
It’s something I’ve also heard A-list copywriter David Deutsch describe as the “Hey Mitch” method. In
other words, when David is writing copy, he (either literally or in his mind) says “Hey Mitch, here’s
how to…” and then he goes into his sales pitch.
This process of calling out a specific name has the effect of exposing fine sounding but unconvincing
phrases, which seemed fine just a minute ago. And it replaces them with natural words and ideas
which are relevant to your audience.
Anyways, this name/face/avatar concreteness isn’t just for hypnotizing yourself into writing better
copy.
In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath tell a story of hospital staff who were subtly manipulated into
caring about improving workflow. This is normally not a topic that staff would be enthusiastic about,
but in this case they were shown a video from the perspective of a patient — coming into the
hospital, being laid down on a gurney, waiting around, etc.
This concrete illustration got the hospital staff much more responsive and committed to helping
improve the situation than if they had been barraged by statistics or facts about nameless patients.
This idea is summed up nicely in the quote by Mother Theresa up top (which I also first read in Made
to Stick).
To wrap up: Concreteness, and looking at the individual, is powerful persuasion stuff on multiple
levels. It helps you empathize with your audience, and therefore makes you more persuasive. At the
same time, the same principle of being specific and concrete makes your audience more receptive to
your ideas — again making you more persuasive.
Marketing heresy from the world’s greatest living copywriter - 13/09/2018
A while back, I was writing a sales letter for a probiotic and I was stuck for a headline.
The unique thing about this probiotic was that the strains it contained were proven effective in clinical
studies (unlike just about every other supplement out there).
But that’s a really ugly, non-benefit-oriented feature to highlight in a headline.
So I borrowed a technique that I’d heard of in copywriting legend Gary Bencivenga’s farewell
seminar. The resulting headline went something like this:
“Announcing a doctor-formulated probiotic that’s been clinically proven in controlled human studies
to…”
And then it went on to list the 7 or 8 separate proven benefits that this probiotic was actually proven
to deliver.
When I first heard of this headline technique, it seemed weak to me. After all, isn’t all good
copywriting focused on a single, overriding idea? It certainly seems to be the conventional wisdom,
and even I’ve done my part in propagating this.
And yet, here we have Gary Bencivenga, widely acknowledged as the greatest living copywriter,
somebody who’s won control after control, and who’s been privy to the results of tens of millions of
dollars worth of advertising tests, saying that you can have a headline that’s effectively trumpeting a
half dozen separate benefits.
“Our *three* benefits are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency”
And Gary doesn’t stop there. I was just re-reading an interview he’s done with another famous
copywriter, Clayton Makepeace, and I came across the following:
“I know this sounds like heresy, but I’d much rather have in a good direct mail package three or four
or 10 good reasons to buy, than to have to sacrifice nine of them in favor of the one USP. The USP
really can be misapplied to direct marketing where you have the luxury of closing the sale on the spot
and can give one dominant reason to buy but also seven or eight other reasons. You don’t have to
abide so religiously to a single Unique Selling Proposition.”
So what to make of all of this?
Maybe Gary understands copywriting at such a deep level that he can afford to break rules that apply
to the rest of us.
Maybe he’s just stating in a slightly stronger form what many copywriters already do (“give one
dominant reason to buy but also seven or eight other reasons”).
But maybe, just maybe, the current emphasis on “The One Big Idea” is a bit of a fad, and maybe
there are other effective ways to create a successful direct marketing promotion.
The sink-or-swim sales letter close - 15/09/2018
Yesterday, I was finishing up a sales letter and I got to my least favorite part, the close.
That’s when you’ve made your offer, and now make one final big push to get the reader to buy.
Many times, this is where sales letters reiterate all the benefits of the thing they are selling. Other
times, they paint a bleak picture of how lonely and sad your life will be if you don’t buy.
I decided to do something different. I used an idea that I got from a sales letter from Ben Settle,
which he included along with his monthly print newsletter several months ago. The sales letter was
for a new $279 product for freelance copywriters that Ben was selling. it wrapped up with the
following:
“It’s sink or swim around here to encourage implementation. So if you don’t think you can make your
$279 back, simply don’t buy it. Otherwise, go here before April 1st to grab it for $100 off:”
Ben’s sales letter had a bunch of curiosity-soaked bullet points, but none of them pulled me in or
made me consider buying. However, this one final statement almost made me get my credit card
right away and order right away. Here’s why this close is so good:
1. It’s a challenge. This close doesn’t try to convince you. It doesn’t say “Just imagine how much
richer you will be with this information!” It does just the opposite — it tries to dismiss you. To me at
least, this was a challenge that I wanted to rise up to.
2. It creates vision. When I read this, I immediately asked myself, “Could I make $279 from this
information?” And I then started imagining different scenarios where that could happen. This is what
negotiation expert Jim Camp called creating vision in your adversary’s mind.
3. It’s different. Again, most other sales letters try to close you with high-pressure sales tactics. This
makes Ben’s approach stand out, and it creates curiosity and intrigue.
4. It’s non-needy. Again, no high-pressure tactics here. This signals you don’t need the sale (as you
genuinely don’t). Ironically, this will make it more likely for you to get the sale.
5. It repels the buyers you don’t want to have. “Repulsion marketing” is another cornerstone of
Ben’s philosophy, and this sales letter close embodies it perfectly.
6. It’s about consumption. This close isn’t about being a dick (though it might sound like that to
some). It’s about what’s good for you and for your prospects, something that Sean D’Souza calls an
emphasis on consumption. In other words, if some prospects won’t get value out of what you’re
selling, why would you sell it to them?
Now I’m sure this approach probably goes back many thousands of years, back to when the first
copywriters etched their sales letters in wet clay tablets.
But if it has a name yet, I haven’t heard it. And so, in honor and memory of Ben’s sales letter, where I
first saw it, I will call it the “sink-or-swim close” from now on.
A subject line that’s good enough for Groucho Marx - 17/09/2018
“Mrs. Briggs… I’ve known your husband for many years, and what’s good enough for him is good
enough for me.”
I’ve recently written several autoresponder sequences that culminate with a discount for the product
on sale. However, it’s no good to just announce this in the subject line by saying “15% off coupon
inside”.
Why not?
Because it’s boring.
Because everybody does it that way.
Because it only focuses on the hyper-buyers, and drives away everyone else.
Because with a little bit of work, it’s possible to get the same message across, while creating
curiosity, building a relationship, and thereby actually increasing response.
So how do you do it? Here are a few ideas:
#1 Tease. Announce that you’ve got an incredible offer in the subject line, without saying explicitly
what it is. Then carry this on throughout the email as long as possible without pissing the reader off.
Example: “A free fermenting offer you probably can’t refuse”.
#2 Testimonial connection. Include a testimonial in the body of the email and find an entertaining way
to tie into this in the subject line. Example: “A discount that will disappear like a late-night snack”.
#3 Pop culture reference. Find a movie, TV show, celebrity, PS4 game, whatever — and in some way
tie it in to the offer (or don’t tie it in — it’s more important that it’s entertaining than that it ties in
perfectly). Preferably, choose a bit of pop culture that won’t seem dated six months from now.
Example: “A discount that’s good enough for Groucho Marx”.
The content is in the list - 27/09/2018
For the past week or so, I’ve been stuck writing about aromatherapy diffusers. This is for a
book on essential oils I’m about to put out. (Diffusers are the little gadgets that you can use to
disperse aromatic essential oils.)
Basically, I needed to write a review article. But I didn’t feel like summarizing thousands of online
reviews for hundreds of separate diffusers. To make things worse, many of those reviews are either
biased, paid for, or very incomplete. That’s not good enough — I only wanted to make top-notch
recommendations to the people who will be reading my book.
So what to do? Well, I didn’t have a good plan, so I kept going back and forth. And back. And forth.
Fortunately, an idea hit me. I decided to write an email to my aromatherapy list, and ask for their
experiences. I explained exactly what I was doing — putting together a list of diffusers that work well
in practice, rather than just on paper. I explained the trouble with online reviews, and asked for
personal feedback.
And to sweeten a deal, I offered a bribe. I’ve asked questions of my list before and the response
hasn’t been overwhelming. So I took a page out of Ben Settle’s book, and offered something in
exchange for getting people to take action (specifically, I promised them a free copy of my upcoming
ebook once it’s finished).
The response has been great. I got lots of interesting feedback, including stuff I would never have
found otherwise. Writing the section on diffusers suddenly became easy. I’ll also be able to use the
same content (tweaked a bit) for an upcoming email, as well as for an article on my site.
And there have been some unexpected benefits as well. I got more engagement from my list. I
got some in-depth information, which makes it easier to imagine the people who read my emails as
real persons instead of just email addresses. Plus I got more people interested in my book than I
would have otherwise.
So to sum up:
The content is in the list. Whenever you are stuck for how to proceed with writing a piece of
content, canvass your list. Ask for opinions on a specific question, or even better, ask for personal
experiences on a specific topic. And give people something valuable in exchange for responding.
4 examples of shameless headline swiping - 29/09/2018
“Learning how to artfully swipe is probably the most important skill a copywriter can have.”
— Harlan Kilstein
I have a big swipe file of complete sales letters, but more than anything, I like to swipe
headlines
After all, each headline is really an angle, a hook in itself. If you get the headline right, much of the
copy writes itself.
My favorite source for headlines to swipe is not direct response copy
As I’ve mentioned before, I regularly go to Hacker News, a nerd bulletin board, and I pay attention to
which general interest articles I click on. I write all these headlines down on an index card and put
them in a growing stack under my pillow.
When it’s time to write copy, I go to my swiped headlines stack
And I force myself to write at least 10 or so headlines, using entirely different templates. Here are 4
such shamelessly swiped headlines, and the reasoning behind each:
1. Dog bites Trump -> The content is in the list
The original headline is brilliant, and it might seem that the second headline has nothing to do with it.
But what’s really going on? The first headline is simply a modification of saying that’s popular among
a specific audience (journalists: “Man bites dog”). Unfortunately, I couldn’t work the uber-clickable
“Trump” into my own headline, but I could tweak an existing popular saying (direct marketers: “The
money is in the list”).
2. Poland was shockingly liberal during 13th century -> Antibiotics can be shockingly good at
causing weight gain
I’m not crazy about power words like “shocking” because they’re overused — every wannabe viral
article or video is either “jaw-dropping”, “shocking”, or “epic”. That doesn’t mean that power words
cannot or do not work, particularly if the rest of the headline is actually interesting in itself. In both the
original headline and my own version, the headline was an interesting fact (rather than a screaming
benefit) and the “shocking” power word increased curiosity a notch or two.
3. Why you will marry the wrong person -> Why your kraut will develop mold
Ok, this one is straightforward: Why [major unspoken fear of your target audience]. (My version was
a subject line for an email promoting a home fermenting product.)
4. “Close to tears, he left at intermission”: How Stanley Kubrick upset Arthur C. Clarke ->
“Almost fell over at how bad I looked”: Essential oil adverse reaction report
This is a good example of a headline template that I never see in direct response copy — a dramatic
quote followed by a curiosity-baiting description of the content. Even though it’s not common for
direct response, it must work, because similar headlines have sucked millions of people into reading
articles.
Bejako suffers from sirocco - 27/10/2018
“It’s a punishment in itself, the mind becomes exhausted, the joy of living seeps out through blurred
eyes and darkened faces. You cannot even love yourself during sirocco, so how to make reasoned
decisions about others!”
— Tereza Buconić Gović
Legend says that in medieval Dubrovnik, on the Croatian coast, a law decreed that no political
decisions could ever be made during times of sirocco, a kind of nasty, hot, southerly wind that seems
to disturb the mind.
Sirocco is happening right now, and I can seriously feel it. It’s hot and humid outside like it’s the
middle of May. I’m not sleeping well, I’m tired, and my head hurts. I keep looking towards the horizon
and hoping for a storm that will clear this evil wind away.
So what’s the point of this?
Well, sirocco.
Was it all about the discounts (and was the copy largely irrelevant)?
Were the emails actually making any sales (the client hinted that they weren’t making any money
through email marketing)?
Too late to ask now, because the client seems to have moved on to greener pastures.
However, going forward, I’ll insist on this sales info for two reasons:
1) It will help me decide whether I can in fact write emails that will do better. It’s not just about seeing
the copy, but about finding out how that copy performs.

It’s an interesting and clear concept. Plus I can tie it into a personal story. 2) If I feel I can beat the emails, this info will give me useful clues about how to best do that.

In other words, it makes for a great opening for a bit of copy, most likely a sales email.
The thing is, these kinds of personal, clear, interesting concepts are lying around in plain sight, every
day. They just need to be noticed and (most probably) written down — and then, when the time
comes, used as a great idea to open an email with.
Maybe obvious. But even old Gary above didn’t think to ask for the results in his gutsy ad — which
makes me feel a bit better.
You should always judge a book by its cover - 29/10/2018

Former Smiths frontman Morrissey has a very polarizing public persona.

When infotaining emails fail - 28/10/2018
Unsurprisingly, he also has immensely devoted fans who have followed him for 30 years plus.
In 1975, the great copywriter Gary Bencivenga joined an upstart direct marketing agency.
I read a Billboard Magazine interview with Morrissey today. It struck me how this interview is full to
They soon put out a gutsy ad in the Wall Street Journal to hunt for new clients. The headline ran:
the gills of things anyone can copy to have a more dramatic public persona — and therefore a more
“ANNOUNCING A DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING AGENCY THAT WILL GUARANTEE TO devoted following.
OUTPULL YOUR BEST AD.”
Here are a few Morrissey lessons:
There were only two catches:
1. Agree and amplify
1) You had to give Gary & co. creative freedom on the kind of ad to write — only legal and factual
What’s the best way to respond when somebody accuses of you of something ugly? Agree and
approval was asked for and allowed.
amplify the nasty fact, with humor and without bitterness or trying too hard.
2) You actually needed better advertising. In Gary’s own words, “If we think your present advertising
BILLBOARD: “Feb. 20 marked the 30th anniversary of the release of the first Smiths album. How did
is excellent, we’ll tell you.”
you mark the occasion?”
I thought of this today because I’m looking over the wreckage of several email campaigns I wrote for
MORRISSEY: “Is it only 30 years? It feels like 60.”
a client over the past few months.
2. Use visual, colorful language
I put in serious work on these emails, and I thought I did a great job. When I handed them over to the
client, he loved them. But apparently, they are underperforming what he was using earlier. People’s brains work in pictures. So use visual language to make a point, and mix in surprising
expressions and metaphors. (The good news is that this doesn’t have to be spontaneous. You can
The thing is, I saw the earlier email sequences, and I was confident I could do better. They were dull
collect striking phrases, plan them ahead of time, and pull them out as needed.)
and too heavy on the teaching, and I was going to make them intriguing and infotaining.
BILLBOARD: “It’s been reported that you’re now working on a novel. Is that true? If so, what are you
But that’s not enough.
writing about?”
What I should have asked for in addition to seeing the email copy is a breakdown of where the sales
MORRISSEY: “I can’t christen the baby until I at least see its head. It’s bad form, somehow.”
were coming from.
3. Surprise by inverting
Were they all on day 0, and people weren’t even reading the emails?

Did sales trickle in as the relationship was established (which means that people actually liked
reading the old emails)?
Surprise shocks people into paying attention, and into remembering you. One way to surprise is
simply to defy expectations. For example, when people expect you to be serious, be lighthearted.
Focus on the trivial and irrelevant instead of the heavy and serious.
BILLBOARD: “In 2013, you endured a series of unfortunate maladies that forced you to cancel many
tour dates. Are you still ill?”
MORRISSEY: “Well, I’m expected to see Easter. It was a bad year. I was in hospitals so frequently
that the doctors were sick to death of me, and there’s nothing more ageing than lying in a hospital
bed, trying to recover from hospital food. If your illness doesn’t kill you then the hospital food sees
you off. That’s what it’s there for. Anyway, it was my time to go to pieces. Much overdue.”
4. Surprise by genuineness and sincerity
If you make a career of being tricky and irreverent, that becomes your norm. You can then surprise
people further by taking a serious, no-nonsense stance on an issue — particularly one you find
meaningful.
BILLBOARD: “You likened eating animals to pedophilia, a comparison some may find … extreme.
Care to defend your point of view?”
MORRISSEY: “I don’t need to defend my own point of view. When you eat an animal you subject it to
spiritual and physical rape, you eats its breasts … its rump … you cut off its genitals … whichever
way you care to look at it, eating animals is violence at its most extreme.”
5. Have high standards
If something doesn’t meet your standards, you can simply ignore it. Another option is to dismiss it or
mock it.
BILLBOARD: “Prince recently revealed that he’s an exceptional ping-pong player. What surprising,
secret talent do you have?”
MORRISSEY: “I’m an exceptional ping-pong player.”
6. … And go back to surprising by inverting
Inverting the expected into the unexpected is a deep well you can go back to over and over.
BILLBOARD: “Lastly, what’s one piece of advice you wish someone had given you in 1984?”
MORRISSEY: “You should always judge a book by its cover.”
How to succeed as a copywriter on Upwork - 30/10/2018
A guy named Nick Tubis interviewed me tonight for a product he’s making.
He actually hired me on the online freelance platform Upwork, to talk about how I became successful
as a copywriter, on Upwork.
So Nick and I talked for an hour, and I gave him the full story of my Upwork experience so far.
In the end, he asked me, “Do you have one hack you would recommend to anyone getting started?”
I told him the truth:
Anybody can compete for any copywriting job on Upwork.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how much copywriting experience you have.
How much Upwork history you have.
What your background is.
All you do need are a few pieces of relevant previous work.
In fact, even one piece of relevant sample work can set you above the rest of the hungry crowd of
freelancers crawling over each other to get a job.
Don’t believe me?
Let’s say a client just posted a job ad titled “Looking for 10-part email sequence to promote new
supplement.”
My “application” for a job like this would simply be:
“I specialize in email marketing and I’ve written a lot about supplements.
Here are a few relevant samples:
sample1
sample2
sample3
Take a look, and if you like what you see, let’s talk in more detail.”
I regularly get 4-figure copywriting projects — and I even got Nick to pay me for talking about my
Upwork expertise. And the stupid-simple template above is the only way I ever apply for a job.
“That’s great for you, John,” you might say. “But where am I supposed to get those relevant samples?
Nobody’s hired me, so I can’t build a portfolio, and therefore nobody will hire me!”
Easy, friend.
You don’t need any previous paying clients to build a small but highly targeted portfolio.
Simply find a job you would like to get.
Then write a sample that’s very close to what they are looking for.
For example, in the hypothetical job I invented above, you would just write one email promoting a
supplement.
Slap this into your application, send it over to the client, and you’re off to the races.
Will it work every time? No. But if you do this every day, I would expect you would have a paying
client by the end of the week.
By the way, even though I’ve had a lot of success on Upwork, I’m actively looking to move off the
platform for various reasons.
That’s why, if you are interested in hiring me to do your copy, don’t go to Upwork. Instead, get in
touch with me here.

Woman cheats on fiancé with ghost, marries poltergeist - 31/10/2018
A UK woman by the name of Amethyst Realm claims to have had sex with a ghost.
In fact, this spectral affair caused the breakup of her flesh-and-blood engagement, after her fiancé
caught her in bed with said ghoul.
“He saw the shape of a man through the window when he pulled up outside,” Amethyst said.
Amethyst went on a bit of a romp after the breakup, sleeping with over a dozen more ghosts.
Her promiscuous days are done, however. She is settling down and getting married to an Australian
poltergeist.
“When I was in Australia taking a walk out in the bush, just suddenly it approached me. Just
something you feel, an emotional physical presence,” she said.
How did the marriage proposal happen?
“There was no going down on one knee,” Amethyst explained. “He doesn’t have knees. But for the
first time, I heard him speak.”
The couple are now planning a countryside wedding.
“I fell in love with it I guess. It’s the one,” Amethyst said.
It’s not Valentine’s day today, so why am I bringing up this romantic story?
Two reasons.
One, it’s pretty fascinating.
Two, I want to contrast it with some Halloween-themed emails I’ve been getting all day long.
These emails are all about the ghoulish and ghostly and creepy things that happen to copywriters,
particularly when dealing with clients. The pitch is for some kind of copywriting product.
The trouble is, the emails are weak. The scenarios they describe are generic and simply not concrete
or gruesome enough. It seems like the copywriter who wrote the emails just made these scenarios
up.
To me, this just signals laziness.
After all, a bit of research will unearth a graveyard full of chilling or bizarre stories that readers won’t
be able to ignore.
This is the kind of stuff that even the best writers cannot make up.
I’ve accepted this fact, and that’s why I don’t shy away from lurking on sex forums, tabloid websites,
and conspiracy-theory Facebook groups.
That’s where you find the choicest treats, like the story of Amethyst Realm.
If this is the kind of copywriting you need for your business, you can contact me here.
A failed coup for Hugh - 05/11/2018
I was just on the English seaside, and, along with a few friends, I decided to revisit an English
classic:
Bridget Jones’ Diary.
One scene sticks out.
Daniel Cleaver (played by Hugh Grant) is talking to his ex-girlfriend, Bridget Jones (played by Renée
Zellweger).
Daniel is a bit of a cad — he cheated on Bridget and left her for another woman.
Now he’s back.
And after getting into a fight with Bridget’s new beau, he tries to win Bridget over with the infinitely
romantic line:
“If I can’t make it with you, I can’t make it with anyone.”
To which Bridget bites her lip and says,
“Mm… that’s not a good enough offer for me.”
“Let me tell you what I want from this negotiation…”
I’m just re-reading Jim Camp’s Start with No.
Camp makes a big deal about negotiators having a “mission and purpose” statement, defined and
written out for every negotiation, regardless of how small or informal.
So for example, in the case above, Daniel Cleaver apparently wrote out the following mission and
purpose before heading over to Bridget’s:
“I want to get Bridget back because if I can’t make it with her, I can’t make it with anyone.”
“Wrong!” says Camp.
Daniel has made a classic negotiating mistake: he set his mission and purpose in his own world.
That won’t work. You can’t focus on what you want because your ultimate goal is to get the other
person to make a decision. And you can only influence her indirectly.
That’s why you have to make your mission and purpose set in her world — not yours.
Daniel wants Bridget to take him back. So Camp would advise Daniel to change his mission and
purpose to something like:
“I want to help Bridget see and decide that she will be happy in a new relationship with me,
because I am a changed man.”
Better, right? He now has a fighting chance.
But here’s the trouble.
I feel that this second type of mission and purpose statement still doesn’t go far enough.
I feel like it’s too easy to change the first type of M&P into the second type:
I want something -> I want to help my adversary see and decide that what I want is also the
best for them
This kind of lame mission and purpose can create all sorts of problems.
For example, not trying to understand your adversary as well as you should.
Or not building enough vision in her mind.
Or even getting needy.
All three of these are cardinal sins in the Jim Camp system of negotiation. So I’m surprised he didn’t
think of them when talking about the mission and purpose statement.
The good news is it’s easy to fix this mission & purpose problem. In fact, the fix requires just one
word.
Even though this fix is simple, the effects on how you negotiate — and how you’re perceived by the
adversary — can be enormous.
But I’m still tired from my trip. So I’ll cover all this, including the magic M&P word, in full detail
tomorrow.
The one-word fix for rock-solid negotiation mindsets - 06/11/2018
Continuing from yesterday’s discussion of negotiating lessons from Bridget Jones’ Diary:
I promised that a single word can transform a self-serving (and therefore ineffective)
mission-and-purpose statement (ie. negotiation goal) into one that is rock-solid.
Let’s quickly revisit the 3 options from the scene in Bridget Jones’ Diary that illustrates this situation.
The scene: Hugh Grant’s character tries to win Bridget back.
Original version:
“I want to get Bridget back because if I can’t make it with her, I can’t make it with anyone.”
Not good, because completely self-serving and without regard to what Bridget wants. Sure enough,
Bridget rejects this offer in the actual movie.
Second, a Jim Camp-style version:
“I want to help Bridget see and decide that she will be happy in a new relationship with me,
because I am a changed man.”
Better, but in my opinion, still focused too tightly on the goal of winning the negotiation (ie. winning
Bridget back).
Like I wrote yesterday, it’s too easy to transfer the first kind of mission-and-purpose statement into
this second version, by pretending to care about what the other side wants.
So what’s the fix for this?
Simple.
Use the word “whether”:
“I want to help Bridget see and decide whether she will be happy in a new relationship with
me, now that I am a changed man.”
It seems like a small change, but the effects in mindset — and how you negotiate — can be dramatic.
(At least, they were whenever I took this attitude in various negotiations.)
Suddenly, you are not focused on trying to get to your pre-determined goal.
Instead, you are calmly and patiently working with the adversary to reach a solution that will last.
Does this work in real life to actually achieve your desired outcome?
Sometimes.
Sometimes not.
It depends on what Bridget (or your adversary) really wants, and how vividly you create the vision of
her being happy and of yourself as a changed man.
And yes, there is a real chance that even if you do everything right, the negotiation will still fall
through. Bridget might decide that she doesn’t believe you, that she’s been hurt too many times, that
she in fact loves someone else now.
Nonetheless, by genuinely allowing yourself the chance to be rejected, you increase your chances of
success as well, by negotiating with less neediness and more focus on what the other side wants.
Now of course, this whole discussion ignores the cruel realities of male-female relations, and the fact
that many women find selfish and pushy men attractive.
But still, taking this attitude in negotiations — whether romantic or business — is likely to attract the
best partners into your life, and to create negotiated solutions that last for the long term.
Announcing Profitable Health Emails - 07/11/2018
I’m putting together a book tentatively titled Profitable Health Emails.
It’s going to collect what I’ve learned so far about email marketing, and what I’ve used to help
companies such as RealDose Nutrition, Australian Digestive Excellence, and Vitality Now make
some money.
I’m expecting to finish the book by January 2019.
In case you’d like a free copy when it’s done, you can sign up for it here:
https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails
 David asked Brian about the biggest mistake he sees with funnels. This was Brian’s response:
The Bohemian Rhapsody trick for creating a big opening - 08/11/2018
“[Businesses] are not split-testing enough. We assume — copywriters are the same — we assume
I just watched Bohemian Rhapsody. we know what would work best.”

The film is a pretty straightforward retelling of the story of Queen, with of course, a focus on Freddie
Mercury.
It traces the band from their time meeting behind a local concert hall and follows them for the next
decade or so, all the way to the climactic concert at Wembley Stadium, where they performed to an
ecstatic audience of close to 100,000.
Isn’t that what you pay a copywriter for though?
A good copywriter — an A-lister like Brian — can be expected to get top-gun results much of the
time, or at least drastically outperform some schmuck off the street.
Right?

In fact, that’s how the movie opens up. Maybe not.

While the rest of the script is chronologically linear, the opening is all about Freddie waking up, Here’s what Dan Ferrari, another big name who writes sales copy for the Motley Fool, has to say on
trimming his mustache, making his way through his mansion (populated by dozens of filthy cats), the topic:
being driven in a Rolls-Royce to the stadium, and then warming up as he walks up to the stage.
“The C-level marketers that test 50 promos per year will beat the A-list marketers that test 5.”
The camera follows him as the curtain is drawn and a sea of chanting people filling the stadium to
What?
capacity roars on from the other side.
Come on, Dan.
It’s a good way to start a movie.
Seriously.
And the same holds for starting emails.
What about guys like Gary Bencivenga, whose copy never lost, always became the control, and
You need to capture people’s attention straight away.
made his clients millions of dollars without fail?
And even though you probably have a linear script in mind for what you’d like to say, that’s probably
Well, here’s Gary Bencivenga himself, describing a part of his decision process on whether he would
not the best way to present the information.
accept a project or not:
The good news is, it’s not hard to spruce up a regular ol’ email and make it into a sexy email.
“What I really want to know about the advertising is whether or not I see an easy way for me to beat
Just go in once it’s written, find the highlight of the email, and splice it in up top. it. If the advertising was created by somebody like Clayton Makepeace, it’s an immediate turnoff.”

You can keep the rest of the email as is. The fact is, Gary wasn’t “selling ice to eskimos.”

This isn’t cheating in any way — you’re simply giving people a preview of the interesting things to He would only take on “easy” projects where he had a great chance of succeeding right up front (no
come, and a reason to keep reading. harm there, it’s a smart strategy).

Once you have people’s attention, you can then take them to your important and serious message. And even then, he would spend months and months upon research, to ensure he would really get the
best angle.
Such as for example, my upcoming book on email marketing for health products.
Which leads me to the final quote, this from Ben Settle (I’m paraphrasing):
It’s not out yet.
“Copywriting isn’t hard if you know your market well.”
But if you would like a free copy when it does come out, you can sign up here:
The thing is, copywriting isn’t some dark art where you either know the magic spell or you die.
4 quotes about the unimportance of sales copy - 09/11/2018
Instead, it mainly comes down to two things:
I was listening to the latest edition of the Copywriters Podcast, in which David Garfinkel interviews
1. Researching your market.
Brian Cassingena.
2. Testing to see which appeal works best.
Brian used to be the head copywriter at Mindvalley, and now he seems to have gone rogue, helping
individual businesses improve their sales funnels.
If you want to see how this simple 2-step approach can successfully be used in practice (specifically,
for selling health products such as supplements), you might like my upcoming book on email
marketing for the health space.
It’s not out yet, but you can sign up to get it for free when I do finish it. Here’s the link:
Jim Camp and the desert kite - 11/11/2018
Somewhere in the Middle East, there’s an area called the Black Desert.
Apparently, it’s a horrible place, dry and barren and inhospitable to life.
The Bedouins who knew this area best even called it Bilad esh-Shaytan — the Land of Satan. (It
rather sounds like Mordor.)
Anyways, deep inside the Black Desert, there are these strange formations:
Low walls, made up of loose stones, which stretch out for miles at a time.
They were first discovered about a hundred years ago, by aviators flying overhead, who named them
“desert kites.”
For a long time, nobody knew who made these desert kites, or when, or why.
Scientists now believe they were used for hunting large herds of gazelles and antelopes.
The gazelle herds would come upon these walls.
And unsuspectingly, they’d keep walking along.
And walking.
And walking.
And eventually, they would fall into a man-made enclosure, where the locals would have their grisly
way with them.
So what’s the point of all this?
Well, let me explain it with an anecdote from negotiation expert Jim Camp:
“According to family tradition, my great-grandfather used to say about one of the mules on his farm,
‘To get his attention you have to hit him between the eyes with a two-by-four. When you have his
attention, he can see what he ought to do.'”
Jim Camp taught people how to win negotiations.
And one of the pillars of his approach was the idea that you have to create a vision of pain in your
adversary’s mind in order to get a real decision or action out of them.
The trouble, however — according to Camp — is that people are not mules.
Meaning you can’t just blind them with the pain, the way his grandfather would do to the mule with
the two-by-four.
Instead, you have to guide them along gently, allowing them a little bit of emotional respite, while still
using pain to move them along to your intended destination.
So to sum up:
Yes, people aren’t mules.
But they might just be gazelles.
And in that case, your sales copy becomes a desert kite built out of your target audience’s pain,
gradually leading them where you want them to go.
If you want to see how this can be done in practice with email, specifically for the grisly goal of selling
health products, here’s where to go:
How to use Disney movies to sell health info courses - 12/11/2018
Below you’ll find a Pinocchio-themed email I wrote a year ago for a new course on essential oils.
This email is short (I wish I could always write such short emails).
And yet, it has all the elements that I normally put in to promote a health product:
1. Something cute/funny/interesting
2. Something informative/useful
3. A related call to action
Here goes:
SUBJECT: Essential Oil Pleasure Island
In Disney’s fantastic 1940 film Pinocchio, there’s a place called Pleasure Island.
Pinocchio winds up there on the advice of a sly fox called Honest John.
At first, Pleasure Island appears to be every boy’s dream.
You can do whatever you choose: play pool, smoke cigarettes, even get drunk.
However, the place hides a horrible curse.
The stray boys who end up there eventually turn into donkeys and are sold into slave labor.
That’s exactly what happens to Pinocchio’s friend Lampwick, while Pinocchio manages to get away
with only some donkey ears and a tail.
This is the cute part — simply telling a cautionary tale that’s clear, easy to understand, and is likely to
draw a smile. Continuing:
Now I’m sure this Pleasure Island can be a metaphor for many things in life.
But if you’re curious about essential oils, then I just want to warn you about the many “Honest John”
characters out there on the Internet.
They’ll tell you to do whatever you want with essential oils: drink them, massage them onto your skin That’s not how I found this particular story, however.
undiluted, even cook with them.
I actually came across it on Hacker News.
Beware.
This is a news website where serious and professional nerds go to do intellectual battle with each
There’s a price to pay for listening to that misleading advice, usually in the form of a rash or a burn or other, submitting serious and professional stories (mainly about programming and business), and
an allergic reaction. showing off their intelligence by writing comments that illustrate how nobody can make a fool of them.

This is the informative part. Nothing super heavy here, but useful to essential oil newbies — the And yet, the above story, flimsy UFOs and all, made the front page of Hacker News, alongside
target audience for this course. articles about new programming languages and $8 billion company exits.

The fact is, safe and reasonable use of essential oils might not seem as exciting at first, but it’s a lot What explains the success of this clickbaity story?
more sustainable and useful in the long run.
Well, I believe it was a combination of two things.
My new EO Pioneers course tells you how to avoid Essential Oil Pleasure Island, or if you’ve already
landed there, how to get away without donkey ears or a tail. The first clearly being the curiosity-evoking power of UFOs.

If you don’t want sly foxes leading you by the nose, here’s more information on this new course:
www.unusualhealth.com/essential-oil-pioneers/
Finally, this is the call to action. Again, nothing complex here — simply a brief explanation of what the
course is about, and how it can help you if you’re new to essential oils (along with a bit of call-back
humor).
And that’s all it really takes.
But you have to remember that this story bubbled up among an audience of very left-brained, logical,
skeptical engineers and computer programmers.
So there’s a second, more subtle, but equally crucial element that allowed this story to go viral.
And it’s something that can be used to sell as well as to simply draw clicks.
In fact, if you’re in a crowded, jaded marketplace such as weight-loss supplements, this second
element is absolutely crucial.

As easy as 1-2-3. I’ll discuss this second element in full detail in my upcoming book on email marketing for health
products.
If you want more examples of how I’ve used this simple template to sell supplements as well as
health info courses, you might like to sign up for a free copy of my upcoming book on email This book is not out yet, but if you want to get a free copy when I do finish it, you can sing up here:
marketing:
Omnipresent and unexplained email content - 14/11/2018
How to sell UFOs to skeptical, jaded audiences - 13/11/2018
Pop quiz:
Last Friday, a British Airways pilot spotted something strange through her cockpit window.
What do the following headlines all have in common?
She was flying from Montreal to London, and as her plane neared the coast of Ireland, she saw a
1. How did cool become such a big deal?
bright light approach her plane — before seeing it veer off at great speed to the north.
2. Why it’s hard to sound like Jimi Hendrix
“Astronomical, it was like Mach 2,” said a second pilot about how fast this mysterious light was. 3. A comprehensive guide to yellow stripey things
4. Why whales got so big
To this day, nobody knows what this strange thing was.
(The third one, by the way, was for an infographic on the differences between wasps, bees, yellow
Maybe, just maybe, it was a UFO. After all, jackets, hoverflies and dirt daubers.)

“UFOs spotted off Irish coast under investigation” Think you have it?

was the headline this story ran with, and it’s the headline that caught my attention this morning, so I Ok, let’s compare answers. Here’s what I had in mind:
can report on it to you now.
Each of these headlines promises to explain a part of your world that is so obvious that it’s actually
But here’s the thing. not understood. Something you’re well aware of, but you’d never really thought about before.
Something that gets you saying, “Yeah, that’s right! Why is that?”
I’ve written before how I like to haunt tabloid websites and sex forums and conspiracy theory
Facebook groups.
These kinds of topics can easily be modeled to write interesting emails. For example, applying them
to various health markets, we get:
1. How did essential oils suddenly become such a big deal?
2. Why it’s hard to avoid belly fat past 35
3. A comprehensive guide to different types of erectile dysfunction
4. Why your joints don’t self-repair like other tissue
(Health markets are in fact a very good match for this kind of topic. We all have a lot of experience
with our bodies, and yet much about them remains a mystery.)
In short: find something omnipresent but still unexplained (at least to non-specialists). Put it in your
subject line, and then write a short email surprising people and opening their eyes with the answer.
And then, tie this into whatever you’re selling.
Easy.
Peasy.
By the weasel, this is one of about two dozen email topic ideas I will be sharing in my upcoming book
about email marketing for health products.
If you want to find out what the other ones are (they’re very exciting), you’ll need to read the book.
You can sign up here to get it when it comes out:
How a hardened criminal won over a nation in 16 minutes - 15/11/2018
I just watched the most remarkable interview.
It was done on one of the local TV stations in Croatia, by one of the country’s most respected TV
anchors.
The interviewee was one Olivera Ćirković:
Yes, Olivera is a statuesque and handsome blonde. But there’s much more to her than just looks.
Back in her native Serbia, she was the child of a wealthy family, a straight-A student, and even a
professional basketball player for Red Star Belgrade.
More interestingly, she is also a former jewel thief who has organized dozens of heists and has stolen
millions of dollars worth of valuables.
And she’s also somebody who has done prison time on at least 3 occasions, and who made a daring
and successful escape her last time in the hoosegow, earning herself the unusual credential of being
the only woman ever to escape from a Greek prison.
Now, Olivera is a published author (an autobiography, predictably), with an eye to a big Hollywood
movie deal about her life.
And yet:
All of these exceptional things are not what is most unique or impressive about this real-life Pink
Panther.
Instead, it is her attitude and her way of speaking and carrying herself that is pure gold (or
diamonds).
In fact, during this 16-minute interview, she managed to visibly charm and win over the normally
serious and hardened TV anchor.
And by what I’ve heard from my secret contacts on the streets of Zagreb, she seems to have done
the same with just about everyone who saw her on TV.
What’s Olivera’s secret?
Well, I can think of at least five separate things.
And I’ll be expanding on them in full detail in my upcoming book on email marketing.
You see, this book will contain a section about the mindset and attitude that you should have when
communicating with your audience through email.
This attitude section won’t be relevant for all situations. But if you’re planning on sending out daily
emails, particularly in a first-person, hello-from-the-CEO style, then there’s a lot you can learn from
Olivera and her natural charisma.
Anyways, if you want to Pink Panther your way to a free copy of my book, you’re in luck. All you need
to do is sign up at the link below, and I’ll send you a copy when it’s out:
The good, the bad, and the ugly of product names - 16/11/2018
What’s in a name?
Quite a bit, my young Shakespeare.
I should know, having been blessed with an almost unpronounceable, unreadable name for all but a
small part of this planet’s population (“John” is just my “professional” name).
As for people, so for products: names matter.
Yes, sometimes a great product can sell even in spite of an awful name (hello Psycho-Cybernetics).
But why not give yourself the best advantage by having both a good product and a good name?
Let’s look at some products I’ve bought in the last year to see what makes a good name:
“Quit in 6”
Buck Flogging’s course on making it with your own business. Buck says a good name will say what a
product is, while a great name will say what a product will do for you. I guess he took his own advice.
“Email Client Machine”
Ben Settle’s product explaining how to get booked with clients using his email tactics. A good name
in my opinion: it also says what it will do for you, and the word “machine” draws attention because it’s
unusual in this context.
“Energy Blueprint”
Ari Whitten’s course on increasing your (physical) energy. There was a spate of these “blueprint” There’s only one thing this greatest PR video doesn’t have. It’s a small thing. But pretty, pretty
courses over the past decade. Today I think “blueprint” products have become cliche, putting this important. Particularly if you’re ever looking to influence anybody, and get them to do something.
name into the good-but-not-great category.
I’m talking about a call-to-action.
“Dartboard Pricing”
NASA’s video doesn’t give you a link to a webpage where you can find out more. It doesn’t ask you to
Sean D’Souza’s product on how to set and raise your prices. It’s named after the methodology — support them by sending in donations. It doesn’t even ask you to study hard so you can become a
how to set your prices — rather than the outcome. However, it definitely gets bonus points for the NASA engineer one day.
unusual, attention-grabbing term “dartboard.”
Instead, it just leaves you hanging.
“Email Players”
Maybe that’s ok for NASA.
This is Ben Settle’s monthly newsletter on email marketing. I think the “Players” bit is a reference to
Gary Halbert and the way he used that word. If that’s true, then I don’t think this name is really about But it’s definitely not ok if you’re writing sales copy.
what the product will do for you… rather, it’s about the identity of the kind of people that Ben wants to
Especially if you do a good job pumping up your readers’ emotional juice (like the NASA video
assemble as his customers. Knowing Ben’s emphasis on building relationships, this would make
certainly does).
sense.
The thing is, including a call-to-action in your copy doesn’t have to be difficult, nasty, or salesy.
So what makes a good name? I’d say you have two options:
It can be clean and simple.
Appeal to self-interest.
For example:
Or appeal to identity.
I’ll soon be putting out a book on email marketing, with a focus on the health space. If you’re in the
The decision will depend on what kind of clients you want to get, but that’s a topic for another day.
health space (or you hope to be one day, if you study hard ), then it might of interest to you. To get a
Either way, you get bonus points if you can make the name fresh (of course, without making it free copy when it comes out, sign up here:
confusing).
Roger Federer offers a bit of negotiation wisdom - 18/11/2018
Here’s why I bring all this up.
Last night, Roger Federer lost in the semifinals of the ATP year-closing tournament.
I’ve been playing around with the name of my upcoming book on email marketing for the health
space (the ugly “Health Email Splash” has gone out the window). This means that Federer, possibly the greatest player who has ever played tennis, still has just 99
titles under his belt.
Whatever the final name will be, the offer remains the same. If you sign up now, you can get a copy
for free when it comes out. Here’s the link: Asked by a journalist whether he needs that elusive 100th title, Federer responded:

“I don’t NEED it. I will breathe air if not.”

The trouble with the best PR video of all time - 17/11/2018
It might sound as if Federer is simply debating semantics, or that he’s even a little testy after his loss.
A very popular Reddit thread appeared today, titled
That’s not what’s going on.
“NASA Just Published the Best PR Video of All Time”
Here’s a bit from an interview earlier in the week when he was asked a similar question:
It turns out we’re going back to the moon. This time, we’re staying. And that’s just the start.
“Personally I’m still not thinking of the number 100. I won’t let that get in my head, make me go crazy
There’s awesome adventure…
because it should be something I’m excited about and not something I should feel extra pressure
Exciting exploration… about.”

Sexy science… This exactly mirrors what negotiation coach Jim Camp says.

Top-notch technology… One of Camp’s main rules is not to get needy. In other words, don’t trick yourself into thinking you
need something when you actually don’t, and when you have all the things (like air) that you actually
This video’s got it all. do need.
There was a time when I didn’t fully get the importance of this. Not a good time to try to vie for attention, especially since I plan to do so starting on a Thursday and
ending on a Monday.
“There’s no difference,” I used to think, “between really wanting something and needing it.”
I’ll have to wait a week.
If that’s how you feel now, I won’t be able to convince you otherwise.
No problem though, because it will give me time to write all my promotional emails ahead of time.
All I can do is tell you that I noticed, personally, that needing something actually seems to take place
in an entirely different part of the brain than wanting that same thing. It seems to be an entirely And there will be a lot of them.
different chemical process, and an entirely different emotion.
I’m largely following the product-launch strategy that Ben Settle outlined in his September 2017 issue
In short, even though it might seem needing and wanting are closely related, in truth they couldn’t be of Email Players.
further apart.
And it’s something I’ve applied once before, with a lot of success, for a big client, RealDose Nutrition.
As Jim Camp himself wrote in his book Start with No:
This is an 8-figure company in the supplement space.
“As a negotiator aspiring to excellence, you must, at all costs, avoid showing need. In order to avoid
showing need, you must never feel it. You do not need this deal. But what happens if we simply I rewrote their front-end autoresponder along the same lines I will be using for my own product
substitute the word and the emotion ‘want’ for ‘need’? The dynamics change. […] ‘Need’ is death, launch.
‘want’ is life.”
The outcome was a 30% increase in sales — and that’s for a company built on direct response, and
I doubt Federer read Camp’s Start with No, but he seems to have learned the same lesson on his one that already relied heavily on email marketing.
own.
If you want to get the full details of what I did for RealDose, you’re in luck.
And even though he only has 99 titles to his name, it’s hard to say his focus on wanting instead of
Because this will be an ongoing case study in my upcoming book on email marketing for the health
needing has left him with a lack of motivation or success.
space.
Something to think about, whatever your chosen field is.
The book is not out yet, but if you want a free copy when it does come out (it will sell for $17 after
A special note if you happen to be in the health field and you want (not need) more effective that), you can sign up here:
marketing:
“Show and sell” day at Copywriting High - 21/11/2018
You might like my upcoming book on email marketing in the health space.
I listened to another episode of David Garfinkel’s Copywriters Podcast today.
Along with advice on actually writing emails and structuring email marketing sequences to sell
supplements and health info courses, this book will also have a section on the mindset you should This episode was about the old writing maxim “Show, don’t tell.”
adopt to be successful in today’s marketing-saturated world — such as the Roger Federer/Jim Camp
I wasn’t 100% clear what David’s position was on this idea.
lesson above.
But it did get me thinking of the sales letter I am currently writing, for my own book on essential oils.
Anyways, if you’d like a free copy of this book when it comes out (I’m planning to sell it for $17 when
it is out), put your red RF headband on, and sign up at the link below: The version 1.0 lead for this sales letter was a placeholder, and a lame placeholder at that:

Thanksgiving frustrates Bejako’s turkey - 19/11/2018 Essential oils — Mother Nature’s miracle cure…

I’m preparing to launch my new book on essential oils, and while I’m pretty much ready to pop this Or an expensive gimmick peddled by multi-level-marketing companies?
turkey in the oven, there’s a snag:
Well, a little bit of both.
This Thursday is Thanksgiving.
Here’s the truth: essential oils can really be a wonderful help for issues like… [yadda yadda yadda]
The day after is “Black Friday.”
After I listened to David’s podcast, I went back and rewrote this in a “Show, don’t tell” way:
And the Monday after is “Cyber Monday.”
Back in May 2017, a woman in Florida thought she was preparing a nice bath for herself.
Which means every retailer, online and offline, will be bombarding their email lists with offers and
special discounts. Like many times before, she added some essential oils to Epsom salts, and let this sit for 30 minutes
before adding it to her bathwater.
She then got in. And she’s definitely got a point.

This time, however, the bath wasn’t the usual relaxing nighttime routine.
Instead, she got painful burns on her back.
“Normal brand essential oils,” she later wrote, “and coconut oil took the red burns away, but did I do
something wrong?”
[it then goes on to explain what she should have done]
More effective?
I think it is.
This “show, don’t tell” approach is something I actually do all the time when writing sales emails.
For example, when I look at the 10 emails I wrote for RealDose Nutrition’s new front-end email
sequence, exactly half kick off with a story that “shows” either the problem or the benefit.
Does it work?
Well, the new sequence is outperforming the old one by 30%.
So you can say it’s “Show and sell.”
Anyways, if you want to know more about the little tricks I built into that email sequence, and others I
wrote for RealDose, check out my upcoming book. It’s free if you sign up for it now, $17 when it goes
on sale:
The mere puffery of sales pages - 22/11/2018
Even though this sales page features some valuable information (thanks Gary Bencivenga) and a
bunch of curiosity-baiting bullet points, I’m not sure I would read it all myself if I were my own
potential customer.
No surprise there.
In fact, for many of the online purchases I’ve made in the last year or so, I did not read the sales
page. I was already sold long before I got there, and I just scrolled straight to the end to the “BUY
NOW ” button.
I expect the same to happen with my customers — because they can only get to this sales page from
my emails, and I expect them to be pre-sold thanks to those emails.
So is the sales page mere puffery in that case?
In other words, is it just empty advertising that doesn’t influence buyer behavior?
It might well be.
After all, several respected marketers I follow have had successful product launches by sending
people straight to the checkout, no sales page in sight.
It’s something I might try in the future, as I get more experience selling to this particular audience.
For now though, if you want to get an idea of the kinds of emails I will be writing to actually sell this
course, sign up below to get a free copy of my upcoming book.
It deals with email marketing for the health space, including for info products like the one I’m
launching. Here’s the link:

Back in 1997, Pizza Hut sued Papa John’s Pizza.

What’s the frequency, Brian? - 24/11/2018
They claimed that Papa John’s slogan — “Better ingredients. Better pizza” — was misleading
Did you know a group of ladybugs is called a “loveliness”?
advertising.
Entomologists might not use this term, but it is what former CBS anchorman Dan Rather seems to
After all, who’s to say that better ingredients do indeed make for a better pizza? It sounds like some
call a ladybug congress. I found this out from a Tweet that Dan posted today.
kind of tomato-industry propaganda.
He seems very chipper these days, does old Dan, enjoying being retired and spending time with his
Anyways, the initial ruling was in Pizza Hut’s favor. On appeal, however, Papa John’s won out.
grandson. But it wasn’t always so.
The court decided that Papa John’s slogan was mere puffery — meaning an empty exaggeration that
As you probably know, poor Dan got beat up on the streets of New York back in ’86 by a guy who
didn’t influence buyer behavior.
kept yelling, “Kenneth, what is the frequency?”
I thought of this today because I finished up the sales letter for my new book on essential oils.
The “Kenneth” phrase became a kind of 80’s meme and inspired the big R.E.M. hit, “What’s the
And as usual, I sent it over to my trusty proofreader and copy editor. frequency, Kenneth?”

AKA my mom. The song’s lyrics are opaque and also include the line, “Richard said, ‘Withdrawal in disgust is not the
same as apathy.'” This in turn comes from a scene in the movie Slacker, directed by Richard
“It’s good,” she said, “I just feel like it might be a little too broad.” Linklater, in which one of the characters offers Oblique Strategy cards to a passerby, and the
“Whithdrawal in disgust” card is what the guy picks.
“You mean it’s too long?”

“Yes,” she replied. “It reads nicely, I’m just not sure that anybody would read all this.”
Oblique Strategies, by the way, are cards designed by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt. They hold short,
cryptic instructions to help with creative work.
This links back to the R.E.M. song, which slows down at the end. Apparently, the bass player had
appendicitis as the song was being recorded, and they had to stop playing and rush him to the
hospital. They never finished the recording properly. I don’t think this was one of Brian Eno’s Oblique
Strategies, but it runs in the same vein.
You may think this is aimless rambling. And it is — but there is a point to it as well.
A while back, Ben Settle linked to a video that he said was very influential in how he wrote emails.
The video is titled “Admiralty Law: Word Controlled Humans & The Law of Money” and it’s the
recording of a presentation of one Jordan Maxwell, a world-famous conspiracy theorist.
The video is kind of mind-bending to watch, and the email marketing lesson I drew from it is the
power of stringing two ideas together in surprising ways. Each idea has to be somewhat interesting
on its own, at least to you. The way you string them together is also up to you — it doesn’t have to
make too much sense.
Why do this?
Well, one reason is that surprising people is always a good thing. It wakes them up and makes them
pay attention.
But there’s a second, and possibly more important reason. And that is:
Because these are your curious associations between different facts and ideas, they give your
unique flavor to what you write. It’s this unique voice that helps you build a relationship with your
readers. And ultimately, building a relationship is the highest level of email marketing.
So developing your own voice can be done consciously, like I did with the “Kenneth” stuff above.
The thing is, this association game is not the only way to develop a unique voice for your copywriting.
There are several other strategies. I’ll go over them in similar detail in my upcoming book on email
marketing. If you want to get a free copy when it comes out, sign up here:
Secrets of the dead magus - 25/11/2018
I read today that Ricky Jay is dead.
It was strange to read, because I’ve spent a lot of time this year reading about the man and watching
videos of him performing. (I’ve even mentioned him on this blog before.)
While alive, Ricky Jay was (so the experts say) one of the best sleight-of-hand artists in the world. He
could also turn playing cards into weapons, and throw them in such a way as to pierce the thick
pachydermous outer layer of a watermelon. He was a historian of magic, an author of a dozen books,
and a chronicler of bizarre or transgressive occupations, such as confidence men, bearded ladies,
and mind readers.
And if you are interested in copywriting and persuasion, Ricky Jay was definitely somebody you
could learn from.
Why?
My feeling is that magic, as practiced by top performers like Ricky Jay, is about controlling the
audience’s attention, about painting mental pictures, about entertaining, about building curiosity, all
the while guiding people to a tightly controlled desired outcome — the magician’s desired outcome.
With some small tweaks, that also sounds like the job of a copywriter, or more broadly, any
persuader.
So no pitching about email marketing from me today. Instead, I will leave off with an immoral
anecdote about a time that Ricky Jay asked for advice from one of his idols and mentors, Dai Vernon:
“Professor,” I protested, “I really want to know how I can improve my technique and performance. I
want to take lessons from you. I really want advice.”
Vernon smiled his patented half smile, and with a delicate movement of his eyes beckoned me
closer. I leaned forward with anticipation, almost unable to contain my excitement, about to receive
my benediction from the master. “You want advice, Ricky,” he said. “I’ll give you advice. Fuck as
many different women as you can. Not the same one. Not the same one. Fuck many different
women. Many different women.”
If you want to learn more about Ricky Jay, I can recommend the wonderful article that introduced me
to the man, a New Yorker profile from 1993 titled “Secrets of the Magus.” Here’s the link:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/04/05/secrets-of-the-magus
Freelancing incels on Upwork - 26/11/2018
Around April of this year, a polarizing new term entered everyday language.
The word is “incel,” short for involuntary celibate.
This is typically a man, one who meets three criteria:
First, he’s not getting laid, and he can’t see a way to get women into his life.
Second, he’s suffering for it.
Third (and possibly most important), he wants to feel like a victim.
These incel guys have had a lot of hate piled onto them once their secret Internet lairs became
exposed. I’m not sure that’s wise or fair, considering that A) these guys are suffering and B) many
other people in our society like to feel like victims.
Consider for example, a post I saw in a copywriting group on Facebook a few days ago. The text
read,
“Well, then. Serves me right for trying Upwork again.”
… and below this was a screenshot of a message that this freelancer got from a potential Upwork
client. The client was trying to clarify what the freelancer’s rates were: 0.15 cents per word (which
seemed too low), or 15 cents per word (which the potential client said was way out of their budget).
Now, I’m not here to discuss these rates, but rather the attitude. You see, this post and the thread
that followed seemed to be made up of unsuccessful freelancers wringing their hands and shaking
their heads about how Upwork clients are terrible and how they don’t offer fair wages for fair work.
To me, this sounds a lot like those other incels. Their problems are different, but the victim mentality
is the same.
The fact is, there are good clients on Upwork. I know, because I work with them, month after month,
year after year. And yes, I know they are far outnumbered by people who cannot or will not pay you
what you want. That doesn’t mean you cannot make Upwork work.
But the thing is, nobody owes you anything.
And so, rather than going on Facebook and complaining about how you can’t find good clients on
Upwork (or going on Reddit and complaining about how you can’t get a girlfriend), I think it’s much
better to take the attitude that this situation is your own fault and your own responsibility to improve.
So how to improve it?
As I mentioned a while back, I was interviewed about how I managed to become successful on
Upwork. I’ve had that interview transcribed, and I’m going to expand it a bit and make it into a little
Kindle ebook. For now though, if you want to read the raw transcript itself and see how to become a
top-rated, well-paid copywriter on Upwork, write me an email, and I’ll send you a copy. Here’s how to
get in touch:
Gattefossé’s un-accidental discovery - 28/11/2018
The legend goes like this:
The year was 1910. And a French perfumery chemist, named René-Maurice Gattefossé, was
working in his laboratory as per uzh.
Except this day, the lab experiment went bad. There was an explosion, and Gattefossé’s hand got
badly burned.
In a moment of fright and shock, Gattefossé dipped his burned hand into the nearest vat of liquid,
which just happened to be…
Lavender essential oil. (He was a perfumery chemist, remember?)
Over the coming days, Gattefossé observed the disgusting pulp of his hand. It was healing well.
Scarring was minimal. He recovered wonderfully.
Impressed by these results, he went on to dedicate his life to studying the health benefits of essential
oils. And, the legend concludes, that’s how the modern field of aromatherapy was born.
The end. Only one problem:
This is not exactly how it happened.
Gattefossé tells the actual story himself in his book Aromatherapie.
Yes, his hand got burned (in fact, both his hands), and yes, he used lavender oil to help the healing.
But the most dramatic element of the story — the accidental dipping into the vat of lavender oil —
seems to be made up. Instead, Gattefossé already knew of the healing benefits of lavender oil, and
he used lavender oil in a methodical process to treat his hand once the fire was already out.
Somehow though, the true story doesn’t sell.
Which brings up an important point if you ever want to persuade people. Just because a story is true,
doesn’t automatically make it good sales copy fodder.
For example, the “accidental discovery” plot will almost always beat out the “slow and methodical
progress” plot.
My gut feeling is that this comes down to that old Jim Camp favorite, vision.
It’s easy and dramatic to imagine Gattefossé screaming out in pain and dunking his hand into the
nearest vat of liquid. It’s not so easy to imagine him, at some uncertain time later on, using lavender
oil to perform a precise and tedious intervention on his burn.
Of course, this applies to emails as well.
And no, you don’t have to make anything up to have successful sales emails. But you do have to
choose your stories well.
If you want to see some of the stories I’ve successfully used to promote health products
(supplements, info courses), then take a look inside my upcoming book on email marketing for the
health space. You can get a free copy when it comes out by signing up below:
The worst aromatherapy book Broadway has ever seen - 29/11/2018
The Producers — a brave and brilliant comedy from back in 1968.
The basic plot goes as follows:
A Broadway producer named Max Bialystock meets an accountant named Leo Bloom.
Together, they realize that a play that flops could earn more money than a big hit.
So they set out to produce the worst play in the history of Broadway. It’s titled:
“Springtime for Hitler”
It’s shocking, it’s campy, it’s offensive, and it’s guaranteed to fail. Except, against all odds, it becomes
a hit.
Well, I am currently having my “Springtime for Hitler” moment.
You see, once upon a time, I got into the aromatherapy niche. This was mostly a marketing exercise,
and the main reason I chose aromatherapy was the big interest I saw among Amazon best selling
books on the topic.
In other words, I expected it to be a quick cash grab or more likely a flop.
Fast forward a few years, and I am genuinely interested in essential oils (I use them myself), I’ve
spent hours upon hours researching and writing about the topic, and I’ve even become a low-level
expert on the matter.
And now, I have my very own book to prove it.
As of today, my first book about essential oils, Essential Oil Quick Start Guide, is live for sale.
And while it’s not a Broadway hit yet, I do have my first sales trickling in.
Anyways, you can see the sales page at the link below.
If you have zero interest in reading about essential oils, it probably won’t make you buy. Still, it might
be worth looking at just to see how I weave in valuable information (suggestion: Gary Bencivenga)
with a non-stop barrage of bullets (suggestion: Gene Schwartz). Here’s the link:
http://www.unusualhealth.com/quick-start-guide/
Scientists confirm the seductive power of this hidden button - 30/11/2018
A new scientific study out of the University of Reading confirms:
Deep inside the human mind, probably shaped by millions of years of evolution, there is a hidden and
very powerful button.
If you can reach in and press this button, you can seduce almost any person.
You can get them to act against their own interests.
You can even get them to willingly expose themselves to physical risks. In fact, in the scientific study I
mentioned, people were willing to risk electric shocks when this mental button was pressed.
And what do people get in exchange for all this pain and misery and risk they take on when this
button is pressed?
It’s not their physical needs that are satisfied.
It’s not money, or status, or validation they will get.
Instead, the gains are trivial, meaningless, and passing.
What’s more, the poor seduced person whose button has been pressed knows this up front, and still
allows for the seduction to happen. That’s because — and this is what this study was all about — it
seems this button activates the same brain area as physical hunger. It blocks out everything else,
and focuses our motivation on just this trivial goal.
And here’s the kicker:
This button isn’t hard to press. It can be done without talent. Almost mechanically. Over and over,
dozens of times a day.
If you’ve read this post carefully, you know what the button is and what I’m talking about. I’ve even
written about it on this blog earlier.
And I’m going to write about it some more. As you can imagine, pressing this button is a great way to
get people to buy — and to enjoy buying.
That’s why you can find out all about this big red button, and how to press it over and over, in my
upcoming book:
The secret online fountain of the truth - 02/12/2018
“You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about in parties, you WANT me
to be overweight, you NEED me to be overweight.”
Sometimes you gotta probe a little.
For example, I heard Ben Settle mention on his podcast, and maybe in a recent Email Players issue,
how you get to the bottom of your market’s worst fears.
You first ask them (for example), “Why would you want to lose weight?”
“Because I don’t like the way I look and it’s unhealthy.”
“I see. Any other reasons?”
And then they think. And think. And if you’re lucky, the real story comes out:
“To tell you the truth, I was in a store yesterday and as soon as I came in, this snotty-looking sales
girl intercepted me at the door and she said, ‘We don’t have anything in your size.’ I just got so
humiliated and furious I decided something had to change.” (True story, by the way.)
You see, it’s that second, follow-up question which really gets the deep, dark, painful reasons why
people do what they do.
It’s like the climax in A Few Good Men.
Tom Cruise’s character keeps probing and probing, asking just one more question…
Until he gets Colonel Jessup, played by Jack Nicholson, to expose himself and yell out the famous
line:
“YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!”
Well, as a copywriter and a marketer, the issue is not that I can’t handle the truth.
Rather, the trouble is that I often can’t get at it.
After all, I rarely have my prospects before me.
I don’t have Colonel Jessup sitting in a courtroom either, waiting for my interrogation.
Instead, I have to go online and do some sleuthing to try to uncover THE TRUTH rather than those
surface-level answers everybody is programmed to give.
The trouble is, all the typical places that you will hear recommended — Facebook, Instagram,
personal blogs — are full of social posturing, and they don’t actually show people’s dark and scaly
underbellies.
However, I do have a reliable way of getting that information.
In fact, just as an exercise, I tried to come up with THE TRUTH for a typical person interested in
essential oils.
Within a few minutes, I had an avatar.
Yes, I found out what this person looks like, what her hobbies are, what her favorite TV show is…
But I also found out what rare disease she has, her personality type, and her insecurities around her
friends .
This is NOT stuff that you will ever find on Facebook.
But it is out there, right on on the Internet savannah — if you know where to look. And though it might
seem creepy, it’s a necessary part of the research you have to do if you are going to target an
audience effectively.
Anyways, if you want to know what this deep fountain of personal information is, you’re in luck.
I’ll talk about it in more detail in my upcoming book.
Sign up below and I’ll send you a free copy when I’m finished with it:
The Dwight Schrute school of email marketing - 03/12/2018
“I like the people I work with, generally, with four exceptions. But someone committed a crime, and I
did not become a Lackawanna County volunteer sheriff’s deputy to make friends. And by the way, I
haven’t.”
— Dwight Schrute, The Office
This morning I concluded the launch weekend of my new aromatherapy book.
Spoiler alert: everything went according to plan.
I sent out a lot of emails.
I sold quite a few books — in fact, more than I had anticipated.
And I also got some unsubscribes.
It’s this last bit that I want to talk about.
Before I started this promotional launch (which spanned 4 days and involved 9 promo emails), I sent
out an “email avalanche warning” to my subscribers.
I told them what the email forecast was for the weekend, and I also told them that, in case they don’t
want to hear me pitching my book, they have two options:
1. They can ignore my emails until next week
2. They can unsubscribe
And sure enough, a few people (though not very many) did unsubscribe at that point.
However, once the email launch actually kicked off last Thursday, more people unsubscribed,
including a few who had been faithful readers of my blog and email newsletter for several years.
And my reaction, without any bitterness or sarcasm, was Schrute-like. (In case you don’t know,
Dwight Schrute is the jackhammering, hard-working, merciless alpha male assistant to the regional
manager from the TV show The Office.)
You see, with a few exceptions, I generally like the people who are subscribed to my email
newsletter.
But I’m selling a book and trying to make a solid business out of my Unusual Health website.
And I did not become a low-level aromatherapy expert to make friends.
In other words, when people who would never buy anything from me unsubscribe from my emails, I
actually feel glad to see them go.
Anyways, if you want more details about my ebook launch strategy, including the reasoning behind
the emails I sent and the schedule I used, you’ll want to get a copy of my upcoming book on email
marketing for the health space.
Fact: It’s not out yet, but you can get a free copy when I do finish it.
Here’s where you can find out more:
The Trojan horse of lead generation - 04/12/2018
“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:
Romancing the story - 05/12/2018
Diane Thomas was working late one night at the Coral Beach Cantina on the Pacific Coast Highway.
Even though Thomas had a degree in business from UCLA and a background as a copywriter, she
was now working as a waitress.
Tonight, she was just about to close up.
And that’s when he walked in.
Handsome.
Confident.
Famous.
Michael Douglas.
Douglas was already a big deal in Hollywood at this point, both as an actor (The China Syndrome,
Coma) and as a producer (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).
So Thomas rolled up her apron and took her shot.
You see, just like everybody else in Hollywood, Thomas had written a movie script.
So she approached Douglas and she pitched him on it.
Long story short, Douglas bought the screenplay off her…
Produced the resulting movie…
End even starred in it.
I just watched it. It’s called “Romancing the Stone,” and it not only made Douglas an even bigger star
in Hollywood, but it also transformed Thomas’s life (and even led to her death, but more on that
another time).
But here’s the thing.
The above story — specifically, the late-night restaurant meetup — is most likely made up.
Yes, there is a legend that says that’s exactly how it happened.
But the truth seems to be that, in spite of being a waitress, Thomas actually had an agent, who
shopped her script around town for just one week, before Douglas snatched it up .
In spite of this impressive true story, the accidental cafe meetup seems to sell better.
Now, I recently wrote how “the accidental discovery” is a powerful story motif, which seems to be
stronger than whatever truth it was based on.
The “chance meeting” motif, like in the story of Diane Thomas, seems to be something similar.
It’s something to keep in mind when you’re writing to persuade an audience.
Or when you are thinking of how to present the history of your product or service.
Anyhow, on an unrelated note, I am still romancing my book on email marketing for the health space.
If you want to get a free copy when it’s out, you just have to sign up (no casting this time). Here’s the
link:
A non-plastic straw to stir up creativity - 06/12/2018
Somewhere in the jungles and rain forests of Bali, a woman named Elora Hardy has built a house.
It’s not any usual house mind you, but something pretty spectacular and otherworldly:
The thing is, this crazy design didn’t just arise from Hardy’s brain, or from the brain of the other
designers at Ibuku, her architecture company.
Instead, it was largely a response to the demands of bamboo, the building material they chose to
use. In Hardy’s own words:
“The construction industry, the design world, just relies on materials that will bend to your will. Like
plastic. People love plastic because you can just make whatever shape you want out of it. You can
mould it, you can color it, it’s like the ultimate vanity. […] The team and I could never have come up
with this on our own. It was totally driven by the form and the shape of the material we chose to use.”
And yes, this design stuff also applies to copywriting.
Namely:
If you are having trouble coming up with a good idea, odds are you are allowing yourself way too
many options.
Enforce some quick barriers, and watch the ideas pour in.
Here are a few such barriers I’ve set up for myself on earlier posts in this blog:
1. Tie in the latest movie I’ve seen
2. Demonstrate the marketing principle I’m talking about
3. Work in 2 or 3 randomly chosen and unusual phrases
4. End with a call to action
5. Tease the main idea without giving it away
6. Tell a story
You get the idea.
There are a lot more of these creative barriers or requirements.
And setting them up for yourself is not just a cute game — not by a long chalk.
It’s serious business. Instead, it’s straight from the late negotiation expert Jim Camp, who said his students always love to
hear that phrase. “Cut to the chase” means the other side is getting worn out and they are ready to
Because the resulting copy that you write will be much more interesting, much more lively and agree to just about anything.
unique, and will therefore sell much better.
So how do you get to that point?
In other words, thunderbolt city.
Well, you do what the good reverend did.
This is is why I’m putting together a list of such effective self-imposed barriers — including the ones
above, but also many more. Which is something that doesn’t just apply to local politics or crime movies.

And I’ll put it in my upcoming book on profitable email marketing for the health space. In fact, it’s another tenet of Camp’s negotiating method.

For a free copy when it comes out, head on over here:
A lesson from Widows: How to tell you’re winning a negotiation - 07/12/2018
I just saw the surprisingly good Widows.
There are many scenes in this movie that would make for good email — or blog — fodder.
And it’s even something that’s been adapted to writing more effective sales emails by that devoted
Camp disciple, Ben Settle.
You can try to glean what I’m talking about by closely reading the script above.
Or you can get a copy of my upcoming book when it comes out, where I will cover this topic in much
more detail, and give several examples of emails where I’ve used this same strategy.

One that sticks out is the following: The choice is yours. If you want the second option, here’s the link:

Jamal Manning is a former crime boss who’s looking to get respectable, so he’s running for alderman How to spoil an almost-closed sale - 08/12/2018
in Chicago’s 16th district.
“When the locomotive starts to chug from a standing start, it really works hard. The amount of
And in this scene, he visits the reverend of the largest congregation in his district, trying to get commitment and energy that the train must exert is monumental. But once the train starts to move,
support. the next few feet become easier and the next few even easier. So it is with copy.”
Joe Sugarman, The Adweek Copywriting Handbook
The reverend speaks first:
I’ve been writing a lot of advertorials lately.
“Election’s in less than a month. If I was a doctor, I’d be telling you to get your affairs in order. Three
weeks from now, you won’t need a doctor. You’ll be asking someone like me to give you last rites.” This is for a client based out of Bangkok, who sells physical products online.
Manning is getting impatient. He thinks the reverend has already decided to endorse his opponent. Their funnel works as follows:
“I didn’t say that,” says the good reverend. Prospects first see a video ad on Facebook which demonstrates the product.
He then suggests he’s still keeping his options open. They then click through, and are taken to an advertorial (that’s where I come in).
Finally, Manning can’t take any more. He blurts out: If they like what they read, they click through once more to the sales page, where they get a chance
to buy.
“I’m gonna cut to the chase here, reverend. I’m in the driver’s seat. I just don’t have a set of wheels.
All I need is your endorsement and your contribution to help me get across the finish line.” And here’s one recent lesson from this project:
And there it is. It has to do with a first-person, story-based, blog-style advertorial I wrote for a neck brace.
The phrase that tells you you’ve been negotiating right, and are near to crossing the finish line. The first version of the advertorial was profitable, though barely so. The client asked me to come up
with another version, to see whether we could increase conversions. I told him to simply test out two
Did you catch it?
small changes:
“I’m gonna cut to the chase.”
1. Swap out the current headline for a Gary Halbert-style classic along the lines of “The Amazing
That’s not my wisdom. Direct Mail Secret Of A Desperate Nerd From Ohio”

2. Insert a new lead that immediately offers a discount, with a link to the sales page (only then
followed by the current story lead)
My client tested these two things out. Things like Go and chess.

The new headline seems to have made quite an improvement, and is beating the old control by about
30%.
The new lead however, is underperforming the old control.
It seems that, even though prospects already know what the product is all about (thanks to the long
video ad on Facebook) and are largely sold on it, they still need to read copy, and a lot of it, to get
fully convinced to buy.
It was worth testing.
Now that the results are in, however, it’s really a reiteration of some old-school copywriting principles.
Very much along the lines of what Joe Sugarman, who ran a direct marketing empire that included
such classics as BluBlockers, talks about in the quote up top.
The thing is, it doesn’t need any human help.
You don’t have to teach it, train it, or tweak it to the specifics of the game.
You just tell it the rules.
And within a few days time, the thing learns how to play on its own.
How good is it?
Well, within three days, this Skynet embryo taught itself to play Go.
And it then beat another DeepMind program, which made history earlier because it beat one of the
best human Go players on the planet. (This earlier program required months of training and
hand-holding, unlike AlphaZero.)

You’ve got to get people reading. Now Go isn’t real life.

You’ve got to get the train moving. It’s not even poker.

And only once it’s full steam ahead can you break through the last bit of buying resistance that’s But just wait.
holding prospects back.
I’m sure the guys at DeepMind are already working on it.
Anyways, enough about advertorials.
You might think I’m bringing this up because I’m afraid DeepMind and AlphaZero are coming for our
Onwards and upwards to sales emails. copywriting and marketing jobs.

If you haven’t yet signed up to get a free copy of my upcoming book on email marketing, perhaps this
post has stoked the old steam engine enough to get you interested.
If that’s the case, here’s where you can sign up:
That’s not it. (When Skynet arrives, who’s gonna care about advertorials any more?)
Instead, I think this story is a good illustration of an important and valuable principle. The idea is this:
Creating something new will often sweep away hard and narrow problems.

AI summer is here - 09/12/2018 AlphaZero has been designed to play any game, and incidentally, it learns to play better than any
human-designed program that plays just one game.
Back in the 1980s, artificial intelligence faced a cold, barren winter.
As in AI, so in persuasion. It just might be described using different words.
Funding became scarce.
For example, copywriting and marketing experts Matt Furey might say, “Stop solving problems.
Researchers started abandoning the field.
Create instead.”
And critics piled on, saying that the big promises AI was supposed to fulfill did not and will not
Daygame guru Jon Matrix might say, “Play to win, don’t play not to lose.”
happen, ever.
However you say it, I think it’s an important idea to keep close to your heart at all times.
Well, the winter is long gone.
In my own experience, it seems to have a magical ability to guide you to easy (or easier) success.
And summer seems to be here.
Anyways, enough about Skynet.
I just read a fascinating and frightening article that confirms it.
Back to more earthly things.
DeepMind, an artificial intelligence lab owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, has come up
with a new little program called AlphaZero. Such as weight loss supplements, plantar fasciitis insoles, and kidney disease ebooks.

AlphaZero plays games.

If you sell any of those — or something like them — you might be interested in my new book. It talks But that’s because it really appears to be true.
about email marketing for the health space, and it brings together some lessons I’ve learned by
writing copy for those exact products above. Nothing seems to convince, entertain, and move us quite like a story.

For more info: Nothing even comes close.

Anyways, if you want more on the topic of stories (and weight loss supplements), take a look at for
How to influence the President of the United States to take action - 10/12/2018
my upcoming book.
President Ronald Reagan put his index cards down and looked around the room.
It will talk about stories, and how to use them in your emails to sell health products.
“Has anybody else seen this movie?” he asked.
The book is free if you sign up to get a copy now.
His National Security advisors shuffled uncomfortably in their seats. Nobody else had seen
Here’s the link with more info:
WarGames, the Matthew Broderick movie that was weighing on Reagan’s mind. So the president
described the plot:
Dog takes bus, Upwork success ensues - 11/12/2018
A teenage hacker randomly dials numbers using his 1980s computer modem.
A dog named Eclipse rides the bus by herself several times each week.
He gains access to a military supercomputer.
She even has her own bus pass.
He starts playing a game with it, not realizing that the computer is connected to the entire nuclear
Her owner is waiting for her at the dog park, and Eclipse takes the bus to meet him. It all happened
arsenal of the United States.
by accident the first time — she got on first, the guy stayed behind — but now they’ve made a habit
And he comes within a thumbtack of initiating World War III. out of it.

“Could something like this really happen?” Reagan was asking. The other passengers don’t seem to mind.

Nobody knew. I guess it helps all this is happening in Seattle.

So General John W. Vessey Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he would look into it. The liberal home of Amazon.

One week later, the general returned with the report. “Mr. president,” he said, “the problem is much The platform on which I am planning on publishing my upcoming book on Upwork freelancing.
worse than you think.”
The book is titled:
Long story short, Reagan set a process in motion that culminated with the Computer Fraud and
“How to become a $150/hr, top-rated sales copywriter on Upwork”
Abuse Act 3 years later. This is still the main piece of legislation on the sensitive topic of hacking.
And it’s going to share my experiences with the business (rather than the craft) of sales copywriting
But here’s the thing.
for clients on Upwork.
How did General Vessey come up with that report within just one week?
If you want to get notified when this book comes out, you can sign up at the link below.
Well, it’s because a group of scientists working within the government were already concerned about
And when I finish up the book, I’ll write an email, put it on the bus with its own bus pass, and send it
the very same issue. Analyses had been done. Papers had been written. And the outcome of all this
your way. To sign up:
well-researched and deliberate data was:

Nothing. Why you should disqualify your best prospects - 12/08/2018

Crickets. A true marketing tale:

Instead, it took a Hollywood movie, which Reagan watched for entertainment, to get anybody to act. Yesterday morning I got an email from a well-known copywriter.

That’s the power of a story. It was a long content piece, talking about where the world of copywriting and direct response was
going.
It’s become a cliche to say that our brains are wired for stories.
It was interesting, even inspiring.
At the end, the guy introduced his offer: mentoring for copywriters who want to take advantage of all
these coming changes to become the top 1%. He wasn’t selling anything directly — rather just trying
to get people to set up a kind of strategy call.
A good sales pitch.
And I was ready.
But I couldn’t really tell if it was right for me.
I still had questions, and even the free call seemed like too much commitment to make.
Now this email was probably over a thousand words long. But these doubts I had at the end could
have been resolved with a few lines at most. Something like: “This offer isn’t right for you if x, y, or z.”
Would it have turned me off if I didn’t match these criteria?
Sure.
But I didn’t act anyhow.
There was still some hesitation and resistance, even though this expert copywriter did everything
else right.
This hesitation can be overcome, by all things, when you state who your offer is not right for.
Don’t try to massage it either.
Be blunt and honest.
After all, why would you want people who are not qualified leads taking you up on your offer?
Just my attitude.
And it’s the same attitude I take when I talk to prospective copywriting clients.
It’s served me well so far. I’m not as far along as the A-list copywriter I’ve been writing about. But I
am well-paid, and on Upwork, where I still get most of my clients, I’ve got a 100% rating.
Only taking on jobs where I know I can deliver is a big part of this. It’s another thing that disqualifying
prospects helps with.
Anyways, if you want to know more of my Upwork strategy, and how I’ve managed to get to a $150/hr
rate on the site that clients are happy to pay, then you’ll want to read my upcoming book on freelance
copywriting on Upwork.
This book isn’t for you in case you’re looking to learn the craft of copywriting. It will only cover the
business side, and only on Upwork.
If that’s something you want more info about, then sign up below, and I’ll notify you when the book is
out:
How to properly toot your own horn on Upwork - 13/12/2018
A while back, I was lurking in the CopyHour Facebook group when a post caught my eye.
By the way, CopyHour is a course offered by Derek Johansen.
It’s a structured take on Gary Halbert’s idea of neural imprinting — basically, copying out
successful sales letters by hand each day.
Anyways, the post in the CopyHour group was by a guy going through the course, and trying
to get started on Upwork as a sales copywriter.
He was asking for feedback on his profile overview statement. That’s the description about
yourself you put on Upwork to tell potential clients about yourself. The trouble is, copywriters,
especially new copywriters, mistake this for an opportunity to display their copywriting skills.
That’s exactly what this guy did.
He wrote a long, conversational post.
He tried to make the skeleton dance (“I’m new and inexperienced but that means I’ll work
extra hard”).
And he even used a “secret” lead.
In my opinion, this is not the right way to toot your own horn as a sales copywriter on Upwork.
So I responded to this guy with my thoughts, which might be relevant to you as well if you’re
starting on Upwork:
1. Don’t be clever. There are good clients on Upwork but they are outnumbered by people
who need miracles for under $50. To me it seems your description would appeal more to the
second group than to the first.
2. Don’t apologize for starting out. The majority of people offering services on Upwork are
incompetent to begin with — odds are, you’re already better. Instead, tell potential clients in
detail what you will do for them, and give them reasons to believe you will deliver (beyond
just trying hard).
You see, Upwork is basically a B2B platform.
People who are searching for freelancers on there already have a pretty good idea what they
need. They just want to make sure you’re it. And that’s why fancy copywriting tricks that are
designed to suck in prospects from cold traffic will only get in your way.
Instead, I think it’s much better to be direct with your Upwork self-description.
Yes, there are some tricks to making your description stand out, and making it more
convincing. Though it’s more about putting on your marketing hat, rather than your
copywriting hat.
Anyways, if you want to find out what these tricks are, and how I used them to write my own
Upwork profile, you’ll be able to read about it in my upcoming book on the business of
Upwork freelancing.
I’m planning to finish this book by the end of the month.
And if you want me to notify you when it’s out, simply sign up below: If that’s something you’re interested in, and you want to get notified when I finish up this book, you
can sign up here:
Cogsworth wisdom for long-term Upwork success - 14/12/2018
Gary Halbert’s first and most important lesson - 15/12/2018
“This is yet another example of the late neoclassic Baroque period. And, as I always say, ‘If it’s not
Baroque, don’t fix it!'” A long time ago, in a beautiful city far, far away…
— Cogsworth, Beauty and the Beast
I worked as an IT office drudge, and I decided I had had enough.
A few weeks back, I was interviewed about freelancing on Upwork.
Fortunately, I knew a guy who was doing freelance copywriting.
Nick Tubis, the guy who interviewed me, said something along the lines of, “Most successful
I thought I could do the same, so I took a week off my regular IT job to sit at home and try it out.
freelancers get invited to jobs. What would you do if you’re not getting invited?”
I wanted to see if I could do the writing, and what it would be like to work by myself.
To which I told him the truth:
The writing part was fine, and I decided that I would give the freelance life a shot.
Yes, I regularly get invited to Upwork jobs.
However, there was one problem.
And I also regularly scroll through listed jobs, and apply to any for which I might be a good match. It
worked for me at the start of my time on Upwork, and it’s working for me still. In the words of Two days after starting my stay-at-home work experiment, I started to get depressed.
Cogsworth: If it’s not Baroque, don’t fix it!
Not sad.
Let me give you an example:
Not hopeless.
Earlier this year, I landed a daily email writing gig this way.
Just my nervous system seemed to be slowly shutting down, and I found it hard to concentrate or feel
It paid $150/hr. very motivated about achieving anything.
I didn’t get invited to this job. I found it and applied. And again, this happened just two days after trying to work from home by myself.
If I hadn’t searched for jobs that day, and I hadn’t applied, I wouldn’t have gotten this contract, which The good thing was, I had a suspicion of what the problem was.
netted me about $6k before the client decided to take the work in-house.
And I had a quick fix for it.
The fact is, many potential clients who might be a perfect match for you will never find your profile.
In fact, it’s an idea I got from the Prince of Print, old Gary Halbert himself.
They won’t invite you to their job.
It’s something that Gary once called his first and most important lesson.
They will pass like a ship in the night.
And it’s something I continue to apply to this day, and that I consider to be vital in making me a
So my strategy now is the same as my strategy when I started on Upwork. successful freelance copywriter.
Each day, I take a bit of time, and go through the newest job listings. The thing is, this has nothing to do with writing.
And then, if I find something good, I send in a very brief and yet very effective job application. Nothing to do with persuasion.
It usually takes me about 2 minutes to write. And yet, without it, I could never have succeeded in making a comfortable career, working a couple
of hours a day, usually in my pajamas.
And yet, it routinely wins me 4-figure contracts, just like that daily email writing job.
Anyways, if you want to know what this important lesson is, you can rifle through the thousands of
I’ll lay out how I write this typical job application in my upcoming book about freelance copywriting on
pages of content that Gary Halbert has left online as his legacy. It won’t be a waste of your time.
Upwork.
However, if for any reason you don’t want to go that route, there is a second option.
This book won’t teach you how to write copy.
You can also consult my upcoming book, which covers freelance copywriting on Upwork.
Just how to win jobs, deal with clients, and get paid better and better rates on Upwork.
I’m making my way through all the sections I’ve planned out for this book, and I should be finished
with it by the end of the month.
If you want to get notified once it’s out, simply sign up below, and I’ll send you an email to let you
know when I finish. And then, you’ll have Gary’s secret lesson all to yourself. Here’s the link to get
notified:
How to use satanism to sell your product - 16/12/2018
A couple of weeks ago, a festive satanic statue was placed inside the Illinois statehouse.
It’s the holiday season, after all, and all religious organizations that wanted to could be represented.
Predictably, this led to outrage by conservative groups.
Shocked coverage on news outlets across the world.
And a jump in applications to join the Temple of Satan, the body behind the statue.
So what is it that these satanists are promoting? What evil, filthy, depraved trick are they hoping to
play on the rest of the world?
Well, the statue itself has the inscription, “Knowledge is the greatest gift,” and it shows a hand,
holding an apple, with a snake coiled around it.
And here are some tenets of the satanist faith, taken from their website (I’m cherrypicking):
– Compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason
– Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world
– The freedoms of others should be respected
It seems these satanists want compassion, reason, empathy, a solid scientific education, and respect
for others.
In other words, the Temple of Satan sounds like it’s a cross between the Public Library Association
and Amnesty International.
Pretty, pretty boring.
Well intentioned, yes.
But not inspiring or viral at all.
And yet, here we are, reading and talking about them, all because it’s under the satanist umbrella.
Which, of course, is a very good lesson to learn. It’s something that expert copywriter and direct
marketer, Joe Sugarman, who made millions selling tech gadgets and blue-blocking sunglasses,
called “concept selling.”
Concepts sell better than products.
The Temple of Satan gets attention and new applications to join.
Compassion and empathy — not so much.
So if you’re selling a good, solid, healthy product or service, then it might be time to think of a
concept like “satanism” to sell more of it.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be satanism itself. But with a bit of work, you too can come up with a
dramatic, attention-grabbing concept, without offending too many religious groups in the process.
If you want a few case studies of how I’ve done this for my own products and for clients, sign up
below, and get a free copy of my ebook on email marketing for the health space (ETA February
2019):
A swiped skeleton for solutions to chronic problems - 17/12/2018
A while ago, I listened to an interview with Harlan Kilstein, a big copywriter in the health space.
One thing Harlan talked about how he swipes ideas from other marketers.
“The key,” Harlan said, “is to swipe across industries.”
In other words, don’t copy weight loss promotions if you’re selling weight loss. But do look to weight
loss promotions if you’re selling, say, a kidney disease book. Which is exactly what I did a couple of
years ago.
I was supposed to write a new version of the VSL for The Kidney Disease Solution. At the time, this
was a top-50 Clickbank product.
Look, I thought to myself, kidney disease is a chronic condition.
So is weight loss.
Why don’t I look at what the best weight loss promotions are doing?
And so I took the skeleton of possibly the biggest weight loss VSL of all time, Mike Geary’s Truth
about Abs. It was written by Jon Benson, I believe. And it goes roughly as follows:
1. Opening story — feeling LOUSY
2. Statement of the problem
3. Success story — feeling GREAT
4. Debunking myths and disqualifying the competition
5. Introducing the product, etc.
Like I said, I applied this Truth about Abs skeleton to The Kidney Disease Solution VSL.
And the result was a 30% boost in conversion.
But that’s not all.
I believe this simple formula — basically a before-and-after story lead — works more broadly for
chronic conditions.
I’ve just used it to write about an upper back brace used to improve poor posture. I could also
imagine it being used for selling dating products, memory supplements, probiotics — in short, any
solution to an ongoing, throbbing pain, rather than a sharp, momentary pain.
Of course, the devil is in the details.
How do you choose the right stories for the before and after?
Which myths do you debunk so that you simultaneously build up your own offer?
Well, that’s simply a matter of jog-trotty legwork.
In other words, trying out different ideas, and seeing what seems to sparkle, based on your research
and your knowledge of the market you’re writing for.
Anyways, on to a completely different topic:
The chronic problem of not having enough copywriting clients.
And my solution to it.
That is, my Upwork book. It won’t teach you about the craft of copy, or even the boring legwork that’s
sometimes required to come up with a thunderbolt of a VSL. Instead, it will only cover the business of
copywriting. Specifically, how to get good clients through the online platform Upwork.
If this is something that interests you, then sign up below, and I’ll send you an email when I finish this
book and put it up for sale:
4 lessons from the ongoing Parris bonanza - 18/12/2018
Earlier today, I contributed $297 to help a guy named Taki beat cancer.
I’ve never met Taki. I have no special connection to him. I’m also not naturally the type to contribute
to charitable causes. So what gives?
Well, as the GoFundMe page says,
“If you donate $297 or more, Parris Lampropoulos will send you a thank-you gift. Just email
him your donation receipt.”
Let me explain what this is all about.
1. Name recognition
I’d first heard of Parris Lampropoulos through an interview on Clayton Makepeace’s site.
Clayton is (or was?) a super successful copywriter.
And he regularly interviewed other super successful copywriters, including Parris.
After reading the interview, I was curious to see whether Parris had a blog, or a newsletter, or a book,
or a copywriting course…
And he didn’t. He seemed to be a secretive, off-line kind of guy. A shame, I thought, and I filed the
name Parris Lampropoulus away for later.
That’s an important point — I knew the name. Because then…
2. Touch-point barrage
About a week ago, it started to trickle in.
First, I read an email from Ben Settle.
Parris Lampropoulus is finally making available his copywriting wisdom! And for ridiculously cheap!
And all in an effort to help his cousin Taki beat cancer!
Ben was the first, but certainly not the last, to make this announcement.
Over the next few days, I saw David Garfinkel, Brian Kurtz, Abbey Woodcock, David Deutsch, and
probably somebody else I’m forgetting also promoting Parris’s offer. Here’s why this barrage
mattered:
3. Sell to buyers
After I first heard of the Parris offer, I got excited. I then told myself to cool off.
“You’ve got enough copywriting books and courses to last you the next five years,” I said to myself.
“Why buy more?”
But the thing is, over the past year or two, I’ve started freely spending money on good information.
And I’ve found I never regret it.
In other words, I always get more out of the info I bought than what I paid for it. Maybe through
winning new client work, or through being able to charge more, or through some mysterious
opportunities opening up.
So in many ways, I was an ideal prospect for this offer. And when I got a second reminder about
Parris’s offer — and a third, and a fourth, all from independent quarters — my initial resistance wore
down quickly.
And there was one last thing that helped.
4. The charitable opportunity
Some people probably took up Parris on his offer specifically because they wanted to help Taki. But
like I said, I’m not the type to contribute to charitable causes (yet — maybe this first experience will
be a crack in the floodgates).
Still, the charitable offer did help to convince me to pony up $297. I realized this when I considered
the alternative.
If this had simply been a new course launch, I probably would have held off.
A part of why is urgency — Parris will take this offer down once the funding goal is reached, and that
probably wouldn’t have been true with a regular course.
But another part of it is the fire sale element of all this.
People rush to a fire sale because they feel they must be getting a steal. Because they think they are
taking advantage of somebody else’s time of need.
I’m not proud of it, but I realize that, somewhere not very deep down, there was an element of this in
my motivation to seize this opportunity.
So there you have it.
My analysis of an easy, enjoyable $297 sale, or rather purchase.
I think Gary Halbert once wrote that, if you want to do direct mail, you should buy stuff through mail,
and allow yourself to enjoy the process. That way, you can understand what the process is like for
one of your customers — to have doubts, to make the decision, to be excited about the purchase.
That’s what I did today. Besides, of course, helping a guy named Taki and getting a valuable and rare
item for my copywriting library.
Anyways, if you’re selling something online, I believe you should be able to use any of the four points
above to sell a little more of whatever it is you’re selling.
And if you’re interested in taking Parris up on his offer, before the fundraising target is met, here’s the
link to the page that describes everything you get:
The trouble is, even if they don’t make a nasty technical snafu like the “night of the yellow ad,” they
aren’t really experts in marketing.
And I don’t think their advice really has my best interests in mind.
So instead, when I make my PPC campaigns, I keep it simple.
Instead of relying on the fancy advice of companies like Facebook and Google, I apply 100-year-old
principles from Claude Hopkins’s Scientific Advertising, and go from there.
Does this apply to you?
Probably not. But it might be something to keep in mind in case you run (or are planning to run) paid
ads.
On a related note:

If you are getting started as a freelancer on Upwork, I would also not go with the recommendations of
The night of the yellow ad - 19/12/2018
that particular company for how to become successful.
On the evening of December 5th of this year, websites across the Internet started displaying an
Instead, I would recommend another resource.
unusual ad.
It’s not 100 years old.
There was no text on the ad.
In fact, it’s not even published yet.
No image.
It’s an ebook I’m putting together right now, called How to Become a $150/hr, Top-Rated Sales
Nothing was being advertised.
Copywriter on Upwork.
It was just a plain, 300×250 yellow square.
If you want to get notified when I’m finished with this book and it becomes available, sign up below
And to make things weirder, the revenues from these ads were huge. Some websites saw an 800% and I’ll keep you in the loop:
increase in their ad revenue. Altogether, this little yellow square, running for less than an hour, was
responsible for somewhere between $1.6 million and $10 million in ad spend. The “fresh fish” sales argument - 20/12/2018

Was it all a brilliant marketing campaign? Here’s a true story about hypocrisy:

Or some behemoth company that could afford to throw away millions of dollars on a bizarre stunt? It has to do with DVDs.

Neither, actually. The company behind the yellow ad was a small Australian ecommerce fashion About 10 years ago, if you bought a DVD to play at home, you would first have to sit through a little
brand called The Iconic. And the whole thing was a mistake, made by an ad team at Google, which educational video. The short video had a driving, Prodigy-like soundtrack, and it said:
helps companies learn how to use its ad platform.
“You wouldn’t steal a car…”
(The Iconic apparently won’t be billed for Google’s mistake, and publishers will still be paid, I guess
“You wouldn’t steal a television…”
out of Google’s deep pockets.)
“Downloading pirated films is stealing.”
Now I’ve recently been dabbling with pay-per-click.
“Piracy. It’s a crime”
Not on Google, but on Facebook and, more recently, on Amazon.
Tell me more, Mr. DVD.
So the story above is pretty relevant to me.
You see, it turns out that driving Prodigy-like music in the background, which was used in the original
You see, any of these companies will gladly tell you how you should run your ad campaigns. They will
video and was distributed to millions of DVDs, was actually pirated.
give you advice. They will even offer to automate away much of the work.
A Dutch musician by the name of Melchior Reitveldt wrote the music for the Dutch royalty
organization, under the agreement that it was to be used one time at a local music festival.
Once Reitveldt realized his music was being used across the world without his permission, it took him
quite a bit of time and effort to actually collect his royalties from that same Dutch royalty organization,
which had cheated him earlier and which was crying about piracy.
Anyhow, I’m not here to talk about copyright.
But copywriting, on the other hand, we can discuss.
You see, today I was writing an advertorial for a dog seat belt. I didn’t even know these existed until a
few days ago, but it makes perfect sense.
Your dog goes in the car.
If he’s not restrained, he can jump in your lap while you’re driving, jump out the window when he sees
a biker, or get catapulted when you hit the brakes.
It seems that woke dog owners are fully aware of this fact.
And one statement many dog owners repeatedly made was an echo of the piracy ad:
“You wouldn’t let your toddler walk up and down the back seat… So why would you let your dog do
it?”
There’s something here.
In fact, the great Gary Bencivenga used this argument as well, when selling premium, fresh-pressed,
mail-order olive oil:
“You and I insist on fresh milk, fresh eggs, fresh fish, fresh meat, and fresh produce. Don’t we
deserve fresh olive oil???”
So in short, this “You wouldn’t… So why would you…” formula can often (not always, see the piracy
ad above) be an effective sales argument to throw in.
And since I first noticed this argument in that Gary B. sales letter, I will from now on call it the “fresh
fish” argument to help me remember it for the future.
On an entirely other note:
If you need fresh advice on how to get started as a copywriter, specifically on the online platform
Upwork, you might be interested in my upcoming book on the topic.
To get notified when I finish it up and make it available, sign up below:
The illogical root of all buying decisions - 21/12/2018
Back in 1985, a strange case came to light.
It had to do with a man only known as Elliot.
This Elliot was a man of above average intelligence, a successful businessman, and happily married.
It then turned out he had a big brain tumor, which doctors successfully operated to remove.
Elliot seemed to be fine after the surgery. His intelligence, memories, perceptual skills, learning were
all in tact. Only one thing was missing.
Elliot had lost most of his emotional capacity. Doctors figured this out by showing Elliot gruesome
videos, which didn’t create any kind of reaction in him.
That part was expected, because the surgery removed a part of the amygdala, which is involved in
emotions.
What wasn’t expected were some bizarre effects of this.
After the surgery, Elliot would take 30 minutes to decide which color pen to use. He’d take several
hours to decide where to eat lunch. He wasn’t functioning at work any more, he lost his job, and
eventually his wife divorced him as well.
What was happening?
Elliot could no longer make a decision.
It turned out that emotions, filthy illogical emotions, are actually necessary to making a decision. This
includes all decisions (including buying decisions), even ones that seems to be made based on logic
alone.
And here’s something interesting.
Antonio Damasio, the neuroscientist who examined Elliot and published a book about his case, has a
theory about how the brain makes decisions, and how emotions come into play.
If Damasio is right, then the most effective way to stir emotions is not trough hype.
Or power words.
Or melodrama.
Instead, it’s something much simpler, more subtle, and effective.
I’ve even done it in this email. If you look close enough, you’ll be able to spot it.
I’ll also discuss it in more detail in my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space. To get
your free copy when I finish this book up, sign up below:
How Slack got too big to racially profile - 22/12/2018
A few days ago, an Iranian guy studying in Canada gut kicked off messaging platform Slack.
U.S. companies are not allowed to do business with people from Iran, and somehow, Slack picked
this guy out even though he was based in Canada.
Who cares?
Everybody. Slack is valued at over $7 billion, and the story of the Iranian guy quickly went viral and
made the front pages of news aggregators, under accusations of racial profiling.
That’s incredible, when you think about the history of the company.
Slack started as an offshoot of a failed game company run by a guy named Stewart Butterfield.
Glitch, the game they were developing, never went anywhere. But they took their internal messaging
platform and turned it into a multi-billion dollar business.
And this isn’t the first time Butterfield has done this. He had another failed game before Glitch, and
another side-project that emerged from that game which became a successful company. You might
have even used it yourself — it’s Flickr, the photo sharing platform.
So what’s the point?
Well, it’s simply the attitude of pivoting to what the market actually needs.
As it is for tech entrepreneurs like Stewart Butterfield, so it is for copywriters, or even information
marketers.
For example, when I got started on Upwork as a copywriter, I was trying to focus on writing
autoresponder sequences. I think the title on my Upwork profile read “Email copywriter for soap
opera sequences.”
There wasn’t that much demand. However, people started hiring me to write cold emails, even
though I didn’t even know what the hell those are. So I become a “Cold email specialist.”
I eventually moved on from cold emails (I don’t believe they work well, and when they do, you don’t
need a copywriter). But then lots of clients started hiring me for advertorials and writing Ben
Settle-style daily emails, so I pivoted again. I’m currently selling “Hype-free sale copy (Emails,
Advertorials, and Sales Letters).”
What does this mean for you?
If you’re looking to build up your freelancing career on Upwork, get going now. The market will quickly
tell you which services you should offer, which ones you should drop, and which skills you should
develop.
And if you’re looking to maximize your Upwork success, from a guy who gets paid $150/hr and has a
100% job satisfaction rating, check out my upcoming book. It won’t make you a Slack-like success.
But with the info inside and with a little dedication and work, you will soon be an Upwork force to
reckon with.
For more info, check out the following:
Cross-dressing for negotiation success - 23/12/2018
“No, I wear men’s suits. I got this out of a bin.”
— Michael Scott, Dunder Mifflin Inc.
Here’s an inadvertent but brilliant negotiation lesson from the TV show The Office:
Michael Scott, the regional manager, is about to have a salary negotiation with one of his employees,
Darryl. Michael is dreading the negotiation, and he’s preparing with some awful negotiation tactics he
got from Wikipedia. But when the actual negotiation starts, it all falls apart quickly.
Darryl states his demands.
Michael lamely tries to refuse, and then:
Darryl notices that Michael is wearing “lady clothes.”
Could it really be that Michael is dressed in a Hillary-like women’s pant suit?
Let’s see.
The buttons are on the wrong side.
There are no pockets on the pants.
And the label inside the jacket reveals it’s made by the MISSterious label.
The thing is, though unintentional, this is straight out of the book of expert negotiation coach Jim
Camp.
One of Camp’s tenets was:
In a negotiation, only one person can feel unokay, and that person is you.
In other words, contrary to conventional wisdom, you don’t want to dominate or lord over the other
person when you negotiate. Not if you want a negotiation outcome that sticks. Instead, you want to
make the other person feel okay — with themselves, and with the interaction.
One way to do this is to be unokay yourself.
For example, by accidentally dropping your papers all over the floor.
Or forgetting your briefcase at home and asking for a pen and paper.
Or, as Michael did, by inadvertently dressing in a women’s pant suit.
Does it work?
Camp used to swear by it. And by the end of the The Office episode, Michael winds up getting a raise
for both himself and Darryl. As he says, “win-win-win.”
Personally, I haven’t tried these unokay gambits myself. But the underlying message — make the
other person feel okay — is something I regularly use when talking to potential Upwork clients, and
it’s served me well.
If you want to know more about my Upwork strategy, including how I got to be a top-rated sales
copywriter on the site and how I get paid $150/hr, then sign up below. I’m currently putting together a
book about my Upwork experience, and if you sign up, I’ll let you know when the book is out. Here’s
the link:
A Christmas Problem - 24/12/2018
It’s Christmas Eve tonight, so I wanted to write a Christmas-themed post.
I rummaged around my brain, and remembered a great scene from the movie “A Christmas Story.”
Little pudgy Ralph, the main character, gets a snowball to the eye from the neighborhood bully, Scut
Farkus. Scut then taunts him:
“What are you gonna cry now? Come on, cry baby, cry for me. Come on!”
But instead of crying, instead of running off, instead of just standing there and taking a beating, little
Ralphie slowly but surely goes berserk.
He jumps on Scut and beats him to a pulp while a “steady torrent of obscenities” pours out of him.
A problem, about to become an opportunity
Great scene. All I needed for my post was to tie this scene in with some kind of marketing lesson.
One problem though.
I couldn’t come up with anything.
I went through a long list of marketing lessons I’ve collected over time. I went through lots of
half-baked email ideas I’ve previously laid aside. I sat and stared at the ceiling and hoped for
inspiration.
But nothing.
So I gave up. And I went back to re-reading Joe Sugarman’s Adweek Copywriting Handbook. And in
there, Joe mentions off-handedly how he always looks at problems as opportunities.
For example, one time he was selling a calculator below the recommended price through an ad in the
Wall Street Journal. The manufacturer then complained to Joe about the low price.
“No problem,” said Joe. “I’ll fix it.”
And he wrote a second ad for the WSJ, explaining how he has to raise the price because the
manufacturer is complaining, and inviting customers to buy the calculator before the price goes up.
Problem? Yes, and an opportunity too. The second ad outpulled the first one.
So I decided to apply this lesson to my problem (no marketing idea for today’s post), and here we
are, you and I, learning something together.
Anyways, no Christmas post would be complete without a present. The present I have for you is
currently in the oven, and should be ready in a few days’ time.
It’s my book on becoming a successful sales copywriter on the online platform Upwork.
If you want to get notified when I finish it up, sign up at the link below. And of course, have a merry
Christmas, and may you wake up tomorrow to a Red Ryder range model air rifle waiting for you
under the Christmas tree.
Sticking your tongue to a frozen pole and other marketing tricks - 25/12/2018
Continuing from yesterday, here’s another hidden marketing lesson from A Christmas Story:
Two boys, Flick and Schwartz, are having a scientific discussion while walking to school on a winter
morning. Says Schwartz to Flick:
“Hey, listen, smart ass. I asked my old man about sticking your tongue to metal light poles in winter.
And he says it will freeze right to the pole just like I told you.”
Flick considers this and replies:
“Baloney. What would your old man know about anything?”
And the next thing you know, the kids are out in the school playground. One triple dog dare later, and
the unbelieving Flick is sticking his tongue to the frozen flagpole. Sure enough, his tongue is stuck,
and the fire department has to come to get him unglued.
So what’s the marketing lesson here?
Well, this morning I was listening to an interview with one of the most successful, most highly paid
copywriters in the world, Parris Lampropoulos.
Parris was asked what the biggest problems are that he sees with sales copy.
The first was hackneyed claims (ie. “get rich at the push of a button”).
The second was a lack of proof.
Specifically, Parris said many ads only have one kind of proof, and that’s testimonials.
Now testimonials can be great. If you have good testimonials, they can certainly help you make the
sale. But not all testimonials are convincing. After all, what does your old man know about anything?
And even if you can get a testimonial from somebody who’s not a direct member of your family, there
are often other, stronger kinds of proof you should include.
Like asking people to stick their tongue to a frozen pole to try it themselves.
Or explaining how the sticking effect has to do with the extreme difference in thermal conductivity
between pole and tongue.
Or appealing to authorities like Bill Nye The Science Guy — or even Parris Lampropoulos.
Anyways, this is a big topic and I will cover it in more detail later. For now, just one more thing:
If you are looking to convince potential freelancing clients that you would be a good person to hire,
then testimonials can help.
For other forms of proof that can help you win freelancing work, check out my upcoming book on
making a career as a sales copywriter on Upwork. More info here:
How to get copywriting clients quicker than a jackrabbit on a date - 26/12/2018
After three days, I’ve finally finished watching A Christmas Story.
So let me share one final lesson with you from this great movie.
In one scene, while setting up the lights on the Christmas tree, the fuse blows out. No problem. As
the narrator says:
“The old man could replace fuses quicker than a jackrabbit on a date.”
Which suggestive image I guess is one for the parents watching. In his hand, he carries a waffle. That’s because he doesn’t know what he wants, or he cannot
express it. So his job listing is ominously broad:
It’s also a great phrase, and it’s going in my great phrases list, which also includes gems such as:
“Looking for an expert to help me grow my business through marketing. You need to know video
lost like an idiot on a moor editing and design and copywriting. Added bonus if you’re good at Excel.”
a lame invalid of a sofa
oppression olympics What this horseman is really saying is, “My business isn’t profitable yet. But heavy is my burden of
horse it in small, confusing tasks. Come inside my empire and you will be rewarded meagerly.”
a curable romantic
3. The pied pier horseman
… and many, many more.
This horseman can be recognized from afar by the symbol blazing on his chest. It reads:
Why use these weird phrases?
“Rewrite this paragraph to prove to us you’re right for this job.”
Well, as Parris Lampropoulos says in the new episode of David Garfinkel’s Copywriters Podcast,
when you tell people something new, it creates a dopamine dump in their brain. They literally become The pied piper horseman does not do this because he’s trying to cheat you or get something for
addicted to reading your copy. nothing. Instead, it’s because he thinks of freelancers like lemmings: small, requiring tight corralling,
and incapable of independent thought.
Now Parris was talking about new facts and new ideas. But methinks new and surprising phrases
have the same effect. And that’s why I’ve been putting together this list, and reaching into it regularly. Beware of following the pied piper horseman, because he will lead you over the cliff into
uninteresting, menial work.
Anyways, if you want to rustle up copywriting clients quicker than a jackrabbit on a date, I have
something that can light your fuse. 4. The grim reaper horseman

It’s my upcoming book on the business of freelance copywriting on Upwork. More info here: The Upwork grim reaper does not hold a scythe in his hand. Instead, he carries an hourglass, which
has just run out of time. This horseman has a tight deadline, requiring an 8,000-word VSL, which
The four horsemen of the Upwork apocalypse - 27/12/2018 needs to be done by this Thursday. And he needs you to start work on it NOW.

A friend asked me about Upwork recently. If you allow this horseman to wrap you up in his raven’s wings, expect untold stress to descend upon
you. At least until Thursday, and possibly even later.
He wanted to know, are there red flags for job listings? In other words, are there some jobs you
should never apply for, because the clients are guaranteed to be trouble? Now these creatures and others haunt the Upwork job listings page.

And lo, I had a vision. They are not evil. But neither are they righteous clients.

Four horsemen. Each more awe-inspiring than the one before.
Now these four horsemen do not bring death, pestilence, famine, and war. But they do bring
frustration, low wages, uninteresting projects, and stress. Let me tear open the four seals of my
upcoming Upwork Bible, and tell you about them:
1. The blue banana horseman
Riding on a perfectly normal job listing, this horseman carries a banner. And on that banner, it is
written:
I advise you to stay away from them, and focus on better work. And as for that Bible I mentioned at
the start:
You might like it if you are wandering through valley of Upwork. It will show you how to avoid the
unrighteous clients, and to stay on the path that leads to the light ie. high hourly rates. To get notified
once I complete this book (in the next week or two), inscribe your name on the following:
The natural and complete cure for hair loss - 28/12/2018
Let’s talk about a guy named Rob.

“Add the words ‘blue banana’ at the top of your application so I know you read this whole thing.” Around the age of 16, Rob started losing his hair.

This horseman is very clever. And he’s too clever by far for any decent freelancer. If you engage with He went to the doctor, and the diagnosis was uninspiring:
him, be warned, it will end in frustration.
Male pattern baldness. Prognosis: slick and shiny.
2. The waffle horseman
Rob started on the available treatments right away, including laser therapy and Rogaine. This slowed
This horseman arrives in a cloud of mist. the hair loss, but it didn’t stop it, and it certainly didn’t reverse it.
Fast forward about ten years.
What would you expect has happened to Rob in the meantime?
Surprisingly, Rob has regained all his lost hair, completely naturally, without drugs, transplants, wigs,
toupees, or that blackening hair spray that used to be sold through infomercials.
So how did Rob do it? In a nutshell:
Detumescence therapy.
Basically, Rob performed a special massage on his scalp, twice a day, every day, for about a year.
After month five or so, hair slowly started growing back. By the end of the year, he regrew most of the
hair he had lost over the previous decade.
So what’s going on?
Well, there are a few legitimate ways that detumescence therapy might actually work.
One is that the massage releases excess sebum that’s been stored in the scalp, which is slowly
choking off hair follicles. Another is that it possibly breaks up and even reverses calcification of the
scalp, which has been implicated in hair loss. A third way is that it increases blood flow to the scalp,
which is basically the same mechanism that drugs such as Rogaine depend on.
But don’t take my word for it.
Detumescence therapy was first described in a scientific paper back in 2012, by a team out of the
University of Hong Kong. It was based on a clinical study in which 100% of the subjects regrew 90%
of their hair.
And it has been supported by additional studies out of Japan, which looked at the effects of massage
and acute inflammation on hair regrowth.
Anyhow, I’m not here to pitch detumescence therapy to you. (If you want to find out more about it, I
recommend Rob’s site Perfect Hair Health.)
All I wanted to do was to illustrate a technique I just learned from an interview with one of the most
successful copywriters of all times, Parris Lampropoulos.
Parris writes a lot in the health space.
And in this interview, he shared a three-step process for presenting outrageous (but true) health
claims, and convincing prospects that they are real. You can see an example of it in this post. It
basically goes story-explanation-studies.
And if you want more such examples, or a breakdown of other ways to present health claims, sign up
for my upcoming book.
It deals with email marketing for the health space.
It’s not out yet. But you can get a free copy when I finish it up if you sign up now:
The salutary effect of paying for traffic - 29/12/2018
Right now, I’m running a paid Facebook ad campaign.
It’s promoting a lead magnet for my aromatherapy website, titled The Little Black Book of Essential
Oil Scams.
I don’t know much about running ads on Facebook, but it seems like I’m getting leads for pretty
cheap. On the other hand, they don’t seem to be the highest-quality leads — many people who opt in
never even download the lead magnet.
But that’s ok.
Because the very fact of paying for traffic is having a salutary effect on me.
I got that phrase from negotiation master Jim Camp, who talked about “the salutary effect of cold
calling.” When you cold call, Camp used to say, you have no expectations, and you have a great
opportunity to eliminate all your neediness (one of the main pillars of Camp’s negotiation system).
Well, paying for traffic doesn’t have the same salutary effect.
But it does make me want to write emails every day to these leads. What’s more, it makes me want
to write emails that get read and get people stirred up. In other words, I’m no longer just writing for
the sake of being able to say I’ve done it. Instead, I’m writing to make sales.
That’s both because I’m spending money on traffic now (rather than counting on an indefinite stream
of leads from Google)…
And it’s also because it becomes a game — can I make back the money that I will spend on ads, so I
can do this all over again on a bigger scale?
Speaking of games, I’m running another ad campaign, and that’s on Amazon.
I’m promoting the aromatherapy books I have .
And once I finish up my new book, about being a successful freelancer on Upwork, I’ll put it up on
Amazon, and promote it through ads as well.
However, before I do that, I will probably take advantage of Amazon’s free promotion period. This
means, for a few days, once the book is published, it will be available to download for free.
In case you want to get notified when this happens, sign up below, and I’ll keep you in the loop:
How to use goons and other criminal elements to make more sales - 30/12/2018
“They don’t want you to score goals! They want blood! They’re booing ya!”
— Reggie Dunlop, Charlestown Chiefs
I’ve been laid up sick for the past few days.
So I’ve been watching lots of movies, including a nostalgic 1977 look at the bad old days of
professional hockey, titled:
“Slap Shot.”
It stars Paul Newman as Reggie Dunlop, an aging player and coach of the Charlestown Chiefs, a
losing team that’s about to be shut down.
Reggie thinks that if he can start filling up the stadium again, he might save the team.
So he resorts to a proven, age-old strategy to increase engagement, curiosity, and sales:
Drama.
For example, he regularly starts playing the Hanson brothers, a trio of teenaged goons wearing
identical coke-bottle glasses, who are ready to start a fight at any moment — including during
warmups, before the game has begun.
He also puts out a bounty on an opposing team’s captain, saying he’ll pay $100, out of his own
pocket, to the first of his players to “nail that creep.”
Is it illegal?
Probably.
Reggie doesn’t care.
Nor does he stop there.
For example, he hires an ambulance to circle the stadium with the siren running, signalling the
bloodbath that happens inside to the whole town.
And when the thuggish and criminal reputation of the the Chiefs becomes known throughout the
league, and opposing teams’ fans wait to protest as the Chiefs arrive into town, he gets the whole
team to moon the hecklers.
Yes, it’s becoming a freak show rather than a sports contest.
But it’s working.
The stadium is full, fans are ecstatic, and the Chiefs themselves are so motivated they even wind up
winning the championship.
And so for you.
If you can work in some drama into your marketing copy — and you can — it will increase increase
your engagement, curiosity, and sales.
Anyways, while I’ve been laid up watching movies, my book on Upwork success is still progressing.
And if you want to know when I publish it on Amazon, and run the initial free promotion, then skate on
over to the page below, and slap your email address in:
Creative guarantees vol. 2: Consumers Hero - 31/12/2018
How do you double your conversion rate?
Well, you can try changing your headline. You can tweak the price or your offer itself. Or you can do
what Joe Sugarman did back in the 1970s for one ad he ran in magazines like Popular Science.
Sugarman was the genius behind BluBlocker sunglasses — he sold around $300 million worth of
those. But he also sold a lot of other random stuff through ads in magazines, even including an
airplane.
For instance, the ad I’m talking about today was for something called Consumers Hero. This was
basically a membership club with a $5 signup fee, which allowed you to buy refurbished goods at
cut-throat prices.
Old Joe, marketing maven that he was, tested everything.
A new headline improved response by 20%.
A different price didn’t seem to have much effect at all.
But changing just the guarantee — or as Sugarman calls it, “satisfaction conviction” — doubled the
response. So let’s look at these guarantees, before and after.
The old one was pretty vanilla, something along the lines of:
“If you don’t buy anything through your membership and you want to cancel, I’ll refund the
unused portion of your membership.”
Standard, right? But now, here’s the one that doubled response:
“But what if you never buy from us and your two-year membership expires? Fine. Send us
just your membership card and we’ll fully refund your five dollars plus send you interest on
your money.”
Creative. And likely to make potential customers think, “he’s going to lose his shirt!” According to
Sugarman, that’s the kind of reaction you’re looking for when writing a guarantee.
By the way, I got all this info from Joe Sugarman’s book on copywriting, original titled “Advertising
Secrets of the Written Word.” It’s one of my goto’s for copywriting wisdom.
That’s why it’s going on my “Copywriters Hero” bonus that I’m making available for free to people
who get my upcoming book on freelance copywriting on Upwork.
The book itself will teach you the business side of getting set up on Upwork, getting clients, and
charging increasingly expensive rates for your copywriting services. But it won’t teach you anything
about the craft of copywriting. You’re on your own for that.
However, the “Copywriters Hero” bonus will include a list of the best resources I’ve used to actually
learn about the craft of copywriting, and ones that any newbie can use to get up to speed fast.
If you want to get a copy of the Upwork book when it goes live on Amazon in a couple of weeks
(there will be a short free promo period), sign up below to get notified when it’s out: