Ben Settle

It always has been despite the email agencies that are really just glorified graphic design agencies want you to believe.

But I argue the lowly plain text email is going to become even more powerful.

To illustrate why, recently I saw an AI-generated video of younger people partying and being interviewed. At a glance it looked real. But when you stared at it long enough, you could see all kinds of spurious things going on from overly shiny skin, to timing being off between expressions and words, and that sort of thing.

Of course, the AI geek chorus will now chant in unison:

“AI is the worst it’s ever going to be!”

Maybe.

Then again, they said that about movie special effects too, which look like shyte compared to movies 20 years ago in some case.

Either way, what is definitely true is as this technology becomes more used and adopted, you will only have people more likely to be second guessing if what they’re seeing/hearing is real or fake.

Something that is already happening.

In fact, now people prompting generative AI are talking about purposely misspelling things, etc to make it look more “human.”

And just as the tech is the worst it’s supposedly ever going to be, humans are as naive and trusting about this phenomenon as they’re ever going to be.

i.e., As the tech gets better, so will the scrutiny, second guessing, accusing.

Especially in already jaded and skeptical markets/niches.

So that’s my prediction.

We’ll see how it plays out.

But until I see otherwise, I am standing by this prediction too:

In a world of AI videos constantly second guessed by jaded leads the plain text email is king.

On that note, you can learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter here:

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Ben Settle

I first read the following in an online forum full of screenwriters.

And there was a discussion about what to do when writing gets too convoluted, loses its way, you’re not sure where you’re going or if what you just wrote makes sense or if you are spending an inordinate amount of time writing, fixing your writing, editing, and obsessing over some writing that is stuck, not doing what you want, sucking up your patience & time.

This can be for any kind of writing:

From screenplays, to fiction, to non-fiction, emails, sales copy, VSL scripts, etc.

And this simple tip I am about to show you has been immensely helpful to me over the years, and has radically improved my work quality. It has also radically saved me time, even though it seems like it might take more time on the surface.

Anyway, here goes:

“When stuck, throw it all out.”

Yes, literally take your entire document, trash it, start over.

I don’t care if it’s an email, a 20-page sales letter, or even a 300-page novel.

Just sac up and delete the whole dayem thing.

If you’re too paranoid and/or too much of a cowardly mush cookie to do that, then put a copy somewhere on the cloud, but don’t even look at it after that. Instead, just start writing whatever it was totally from scratch. The reason this works and even saves you time is because what you remember (and what worked) about what you first wrote probably does belong, while what you forgot is almost certainly irrelevant and can safely be cut, forgotten, and left out anyway.

Too simple for you?

Well, I don’t know what tell you then, Hoss.

Other than, this may be one of the single most powerful tips for dealing with burnout, writers block, or feeling “stuck” that has ever been invented – especially by writers who sometimes have just 48 hours or less to churn out a completed script just to get paid and feed themselves.

Screenwriters have all kinds of valuable advice like this.

It’s one reason I like to study them, and recommend other email and other marketing-related writers do as well.

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Ben Settle

Let me tell you a true story.

Way back in 2002, a month before I finally hung out my shingle as a freelance copywriter, I was still shilling slinging MLM. And I was renting mailing lists and using direct mail to send leads to a video that’d sell them on the deal I was in. And to get better at it, I had just started listening to some free weekly teleseminars put on by a brilliant marketer named Art Jonak.

One of the teleseminars was about pricing.

And, specifically, why nobody really buys on price.

Instead, they buy on:

1. Comfort

2. Quality

3. Convenience

To prove this, he asked the listeners to go to the poorest part of town on a Sunday morning and look at peoples’ garbage cans and dumpsters and notice what they see. Chances are, you’d see a lot of pizza boxes, from the lowest income people in town.

Well guess what?

Ordering a pizza is the MOST expensive way to buy it.

The least expensive way would be to spend a few dollars, but invest lots of time to grow your own ingredients and make the pizzas yourself. It’d probably cost 1/10th or less of the price as one pays by ordering a pizza – especially if delivered, adding a tip, etc.

Another example Art gave:

Look at the cars driving up and down the street.

All the cars are different.

Some are expensive, some are cheap.

But if everyone bought on price, they’d all be the same cars – and likely beaters that cost $100, that barely run, but still get them from point A to point B, with any repairs costing way less than getting a car note, paying interest, or getting something of quality that won’t need repairs or break down for years.

He also said to look in the apartments and houses.

Do they sit on lawn chairs or the floor (cheap, or free)?

Or did they buy couches, chairs, etc?

Anyway, you get the picture.

There will always be some people who have to buy 100% based on price.

Can’t help that – most everyone experiences being legitimately broke at some point. But for the most part, nobody really buys on price and price alone. And that was Art’s point: They first and foremost buy on  (1) comfort, (2) quality, and (3) convenience.

But I would also add a 4th reason:

STATUS.

People will spend money they don’t have, go into lots of debt, and even resort to risking their very freedom and dignity to get something that his high Status.

So this is why I don’t listen to liars who tell you the only buy on price.

They can take that shyt to Reddit or wherever they hang out.

That said, not all price shoppers are liars. There are a ‘good’ kind. And they are the ones who buy something BECAUSE a price is high. These boys & ghouls are great. Not only are they easier to deal with, but they are far more likely to consume, apply, and benefit from what they bought.

They also value time over money.

In many cases, they use price as a curation tool to save time, if nothing else.

They also are the kind of customers I target for my own offers, including the paid Email Players newsletter, which simply is not intended for, nor does it appeal to, cheapskates.

You can learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter here:

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Ben Settle

A while back, I wrote a bit in my free Settleheads Facebook group, about a documentary I have watched many times, and have extracted much marketing & selling wisdom from.

The documentary was about the late Rich Piana, a fitness “influencer” who died young from steroid abuse.

He literally looked like a human He-Man action figure.

And the guy had some savvy and clever ways to market himself that are well worth studying.

Anyway, most people in the group who piped up found it interesting, and a few even checked it out. But, not everyone was happy with your humble daily email horror host. One of my AI-cheerleader, and now former, customers got righteously indignant.

He said:

“Love you ben but sorry, but there is not a goddam thing worth positive about this sad story. bodybuilding is joke today. . .this is beyond steroids, this is like multiple drugs and then oil injections on top of that. this guy should rest in hell. should not be glorified. you are the best in the world at what you do – stay in your lane – you dont know about PEDs”

Ooh.

It’s hard to imagine even one single person on the planet who will watch, or has watched, that documentary walking away thinking they now need to start abusing PEDs or anything else. It’d be the equivalent of watching a scene with the meth chick Wendy in Breaking Bad and her nasty teeth, and thinking it’d be cool to do drugs.

Such is the state of mind of the typical reply guy though.

Typing just to hear themselves write.

And so, to turn others like him away, I followed up with this post:

After yesterday’s Rich Piana documentary post that turned into an unexpectedly useful customer Curation device (i.e., I will be doing more such posts going forward).. below are more people you can study, and extract many legitimate & ethical principles they used for success, without endorsing them or going “darkside” yourself:

* Serial killer Ted Bundy

* Hugh Hefner

* John Brinkley (the doctor who conned men to let him sew goat testicles on them to beef up their libidos – Dan Kennedy has a whole course and also a book about this guy)

* Saul Alinsky

* Lenin

* Stalin

* Hitler

* Andrew Tate

* Any of the cultural marxists who seized control of the West for the past 50 years, right under everyone’s noses, including not only liberals who love that shyt and vote for it in droves, but also “conservatives” who prop up their ideas to this day

* FDR and Abraham Lincoln – neither of who I like, respect, or think as anything but tyrants & fiends

Dan Kennedy once said something about this that applies:

“What works to sell the incredible, works even better to sell the credible.” 

i.e., why one should study old National Enquirer ads, etc. Not to mimic the bogus offers, but to extract the legitimate principles & tactics of persuasion to sell legitimate offers that genuinely serve your customers or clients.

Same with the Rich Piana documentary and list of fiends above.

And so it goes.

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Ben Settle

The late copywriter Jim Rutz once told a story about how something he wrote accidentally went viral.

Jim was, no exaggeration, one of the top 3 copywriters on the planet in his day.

And he said he’d write a financial promo and put one of his own opinions in almost as a throw-away thought… and suddenly it sails through the process of approval from the client, the legal department, and the editors and is being quoted as fact in the financial news – even though it was an opinion, from a copywriter, who is admittedly not an expert at all on the subject.

Christopher Nolan said the same happened when Batman Begins came out.

There is a scene where Bruce Wayne falls through some ice.

Next, he’s in front of a fire freezing & shivering, being told:

“Rub your chest, your arms will take care of themselves”

Sounds legit?

Maybe it is, maybe not. But Nolan said it was a bit hair-raising when he noticed suddenly it was being taught to boy scouts as some kind of survival tip, even though he basically pulled that throw-away line right out of his arse!

Another example:

Many years ago I decided to probe around in the prostate problem niche.

I wrote an eBook with a backend offer in place, started generating traffic via a particularly aggressive kind of SEO (that briefly worked in the early 2010’s, does not work anymore) that was getting me sales and things were looking pretty good.

So good, something I said as a throwaway opinion was suddenly popping up in a bunch of forums, etc.

It was not something that would hurt anyone (it was not a “health” tip – just a tip about an obscure kind of doctor people might want to get an opinion from that had nothing to do with urology). But it was being quoted as some kind of breakthrough for a few weeks around various forums, etc before petering out.

Another example:

Last year, I wrote an email about actor Viggo Morgensen.

And, specifically, how when making the Lord of The Rings movies (he played Aragorn), he got so “in” character he was sleeping outside, carrying his sword everywhere, wandering off in the wilderness alone, basically becoming “one” with Aragorn, where the other actors didn’t know where Viggo ended and Aragorn began.

To which I got a reply guy chiming in with this myth:

“Dustin Hoffman did the same in the movie Marathon man with Lawrence Olivier. In order to look tired, Dustin did not sleep. He told so to Sir Lawrence Olivier who told Dustin: “Young man , how about acting? This answer stung young Dustin. I think Sir Lawrence Olivier was right.”

Nope.

Reply guy was suckered by a similar urban legend that went viral on its own.

According to customer Brian Timoney – one of the greatest Method Acting teachers on the planet, with the track record and students to prove it – it went down like this:

Dustin was filming one of the scenes in LA. Went to an industry party, was a bit worse for wear, and then took a night flight to New York for the next scene that was being shot there. He didn’t sleep much.

He turns up on set looking like hell, and Laurence asks why he looks like he does, and he explains he went to a party and had a night flight but it didn’t matter much, in fact, it was somewhat helpful as the scenes they were doing were the torturing scenes and he should look disheveled and discombobulated.

Laurence, as a joke, says to him, “Why don’t you try acting, dear boy?”

That’s how Dustin tells the story and hates it when it’s mistold.

The truth is, they got on like a house on fire. They really liked working with each other and became lifelong friends. Dustin also tells how Olivier often asked him if he was “too big” in a scene.

Olivier knew he was a stage actor, and Dustin was a film actor mainly, and he took advice from Dustin on how to pitch the level in a scene.

But of course, every misinformed anti-method person loves to mis-tell that story as some sort of evidence that method is mad, bad and crazy. Even though the world’s best actors use it, go figure. Having said that, if they can put Jesus on the cross, anyone is fair game.

One more example of fabrications going viral:

There is a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon episode where he’s mocks & insults Elmer Fudd who was hunting him by calling him “Nimrod.” Nimrod, of course, being a character in the book of Genesis who was a mighty hunter and tyrant.

i.e., he was mocking Elmer Fudd for being a terrible hunter.

After that?

Calling people “Nimrod” became slang for being an idiot, foolish, inept, etc.

But that had nothing to do with the context.

The “crowd” has been wrong about that, too, as it almost always is.

I don’t know where else I’m going with this.

So I will wrap up with, you can learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

I don’t know if this’ll add anything to your life or not.

But behold some New Year resolutions I make every year, but never get around to doing:

1. Regular Twitter Spaces calls

2. Live Zoom calls to my list

3. Granting paying Email Players subscribers Marco Polo app access to me in addition to email access they have always gotten

4. Writing a 4th Villains book

5. Writing the graphic novel/comicbook adaption script for my first Enoch Wars novel Zombie Cop

Very unlikely I’ll do any of these in 2026 either.

i.e. Anti-resolutions.

What I will be focusing on instead:

* Getting a coherent 1st draft for the 7 (possibly 8 or 9) part series of novels I started writing in September

* Growing my options trading account as quickly & ruthlessly as possible to keep making cashflow faster than the government inflation can destroy it (what our Low Stress Trading framework does)

* Helping take our Low Stress Trading company itself to $10 million – as we did just a hair less than half that in 2025, 600%+ growth (people are hungry for what it does, to say the least)

* Putting out more “bait” for high quality Low Stress Trading affiliates, while turning off the low class/low quality/low info affiliates

* Making the 15-year anniversary Email Players issue (the August 2026 issue) the best, most valuable, most intense of them all so far

* Writing another Email Players “annual” issue

* Going to the first mastermind I’ve attended since late 2018, especially since it’s hosted by my pal Trevor Mauch and will be in the Burgle, which is less than 3 hours’ drive and I drive up there once a month anyway

* Possibly co-hosting our first “Vortex” event for our Low Stress Trading students in Bandon, OR, an hour from where I live – and in the very same wine bar/restaurant where my business partner in BerserkerMail and Low Stress Trading Troy Broussard & I plotted our first event (a one-off even we called “Wine Villains”), that ultimately led to our various biz ventures like software and trading

* Revamping my home page to optimize it for better and higher quality opt-ins

* Assembling & launching the sequel to my Copy Salesliloquies: Vol 1 book later this year

Again, I don’t know if this adds anything to anyone’s life.

But I have found writing all that out clarifying. And this sort of exercise is a way to get more done, even if for no other reason than it helps eliminate thinking about all the stuff you thought you’d do, but never really had any intention of doing it.

If you have not done the same for your 2026, I highly suggest it.

You can learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter here:

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Ben Settle

Below is my latest Oregon Eagle newspaper article.

The Oregon Eagle was founded by Email Players subscriber Richard Emmons that I bought some ownership in a couple years ago. And the advice below is to our state’s Republican politicians who are arguably the most incompetent & toothless, weak-minded & cowardly, and LEAST persuasive & influential people in the entire nation.

Much of this can be directly applied to your business & marketing:

How Oregon Republicans Can Stop Being Laughingstocks

Let me tell you a story.

A few years ago, the homeless coalition in Curry County wanted a grant to purchase hotels across the street from the Gold Beach high school to house homeless people. Gold Beach is a small, two stoplights town dependent on tourism. And at the time we already had some homeless leaving dirty drug needles & feces on the slide at the park where children play.

The proposal was controversial, to say the least.

But even more controversial was how they wouldn’t show the public their grant proposal.

Its supporters (including the Mayor) dismissively said to just trust them, and people in the local Facebook groups started debating it – including Oregon Eagle staff writer Stefania Settle. She grew up in Manhattan and experienced what happens – first hand – when politicians create such places.

Especially near children.

So, Stefania wrote a response to a post about it.

But it was all facts, statistics, and appeals to logic.

And I told her to set fire to that post and totally rewrite it in a way that gives readers a Vision instead. The example I gave her was Dr. Antony Levatino’s House Judiciary Committee hearing testimony about Planned Parenthood’s medical procedures after he performed over 1200 abortions.

He argued nothing and debated nothing.

He simply gave a Vision of the gruesome procedure by recounting an abortion performed on a 17-year-old girl who’d felt her baby kick for weeks. He showed the clamp used to pull out the baby’s legs, arms, spine, intestines, heart, and lungs. He also described the white liquid that was the baby’s brain draining onto a tray, and said:

“And if you have a day like I had a lot of times, sometimes a little face comes back and stares at you.”

It was pure Vision that was far more persuasive than citing 50+ years of dry data, statistics, or appeals to morality.

Thus, Stefania’s revised “Vision” post:

I grew up in Upper East Side of Manhattan, in one of the country’s wealthiest zip codes. . .and a townhouse was converted into halfway housing for the homeless by a similar coalition with similar reasoning (almost word-for-word), the street I grew up on quickly became hazardous and downright dangerous. 

A few examples: 

-A shelter “tenant” regularly masturbated right out on the street across from my building which I witnessed many times, starting when I was in middle school. 

– Dodging human feces and drug paraphernalia became such a knee-jerk habit I still look at the ground to watch where I’m walking to this day. 

– Going to the local pizza place with my friends after school always involved at least one of us walking in on someone shooting up in the bathroom. 

– At just 12, I was regularly followed and sexually harassed on my way home from school (three blocks away) to the point I had to carry personal protection for my own safety. (Which has given me a level of hypervigilance that only until moving here did I learn is not normal.) 

-Among other stories, many worse, I won’t share as they’re too graphic and personal. 

This happened in a neighborhood with a median income of $150,000-200,000 – not an inner-city or “bad area”-with a police precinct only a few blocks away. And, while this was in the late 90s, it’s only gotten worse – for instance, someone was stabbed in front of that shelter last month, in broad daylight, on a Saturday morning. 

I’m going to assume none of you want your kids to go through what I did, especially with the high school being so close to these motels that may potentially become a shelter like the one across the street from my old house.  

I grew up far too quickly at too young an age due to this and would never wish this on any child in the community, and certainly not on my own son. 

This initiative may be well-meaning, but they don’t know what they’re getting us into. I understand bringing up my childhood in NYC may seem extreme and even hyperbolic, but this was my lived experience.  

I cannot fathom how this project will do anything but create these same if not more dangerous conditions: like Oregon, the homeless in NYC are protected as a vulnerable population with the police unable to do much of anything.  

And considering this county doesn’t have nearly the tax revenue, police force, or political clout Manhattan does, I can’t even imagine how disastrous this could be. 

If you think that didn’t move the needle, think again.

People started asking if the coalition was being paid per homeless person, with a financial interest to have as many homeless people haunting Gold Beach as possible.

Stefania’s post changed hearts and minds not with boring data, statistics, or posturing… but with Vision.

Which brings me to Oregon Republicans:

Whatever their consultants are telling them to do obviously isn’t working.

They’re laughingstocks who’ve been losing for 40+ years both at the ballot box and in the House and Senate chambers. I argue a big part of that is their milquetoast ads and toothless “strongly worded” press releases Tina & her media cronies laugh at.

But Oregon Republicans can start winning again if they use Vision – especially in their ads, interviews, speeches, emails, social media, and local outreach.

It’s never been about money, arguments, walkouts, or voting harder.

It’s always been about Vision.

Democrats have used Vision for decades to sell everything from socialism and gun control to pronouns, porn in children’s schoolbooks, men in girls bathrooms, drug decriminalization, magic dirt immigration fairy tale theories, crooked mail-in ballots, masks, fake vaccines, and so on.

And if Republicans want to win elections, they’ll start using Vision, too.

And so it is ’round these here parts.

More on the paid Email Players newsletter here:

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Ben Settle

A self-described Zoomer copywriter says:

…navigating this online business world full of different business models, ideas, and opportunity. Learning as much as I can, observing what other successful people such as yourself are doing, and trying to find my mission and purpose because I know I was also meant to do something.

I read your emails every day and love studying the way you tell stories, and your intent behind every email.

I kind of see you as this wise old guy who has a lot experience in writing & online business which I admire a lot. I remember watching your interview with Rebecca Matter for your Client-less Copywriter program and thinking, “this guy has life behind his eyes. This guy has done some stuff.”

Anyway to get to the point:

I think you should write a book giving writing & business advice to zoomers such as myself. I think you would play that persona very well and I think you’d do it very well. 

Just an idea though, and you clearly don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.

It was mighty write of him to grant me permission to not create such a book.

I will just say this:

Zoomers generally don’t want to hear what I have to say.

Those particular boys & ghouls mostly have to hit bottom before being receptive to my stuff. So they don’t need me to write a book. They need to go broke buying and following the info in everyone else’s books, courses, horse crap first.

I’m like the old timey day preacher with these guys:

I gotta get ‘em lost before I can get ’em found.

On the other hand:

Earlier this year I did some consults for several customers.

And most of them were Zoomers, it turned out. And each and every one of these particular Zoomers was not only extremely savvy and successful in their respective businesses (and not all were even “online” businesses, believe it or not), but in at least one case the guy was selling to Boomers TWICE his age in a very snobby and snooty professional niche.

In other words, as far as MY Zoomers go:

The kids are gonna be all right.

In fact, these guys I talked to will be ruling the roost in 20 years.

I take great pride in that, incidentally, as they were very generous in giving me credit.

Zoomers get a lot of bad PR.

Much of it well-deserved.

But all generations have their trauma bragging and problems. And it’s all fractal, and what’s most important is just doing the right things, long enough, consistently. Do that and Zoomer or Boomer you’re gonna eventually win.

As for specific Zoomer advice for copywriting and selling online?

I’d say read the daily emails, and if you think you’re ready, and aren’t afraid to work and are not looking for “shortcuts” or whatever… then check out the paid Email Players newsletter.

More here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

In my humble-but-accurate opinion, today every online marketer should watch:

“A Miracle on 34th Street”

(The 1947 version)

It’s about a Macy’s department store Santa named Kris Kringle who claims to be the real Santa. And as Macy’s Santa, he starts doing something that would horrify your typical online marketing goo-roo fapping to his metrics all day, and that almost gets him fired by Macy’s, until they realize what he did was making them more sales, creating more loyal customers, and resulting in a more new business for them.

What did Kris do?

He started sending customers to the Macy’s arch nemesis competitor Gimbels!

Why did he do this?

Because Kris didn’t give a crap about Macy’s “metrics.”

He only cared about Serving Macy’s customers.

And there were many cases where Macy’s customers could find something the store did not sell, or that the customer could get a better deal on even if Macy’s did have it, and so Kris told them about it – putting the customer first.

The result?

Customers ended up spending more money at Macys.

So much so, the owner made it a policy for all the employees to do as Kris did.

Obviously, that’s a movie.

But what about in the real world?

Does this paradox of sales persuasion “work?”

Let’s just say, while the online marketing goo-roo mind cannot comprehend it, yes this is a real phenomenon that does indeed work. But not as “tactic” – only as an ethic. I have experienced this exact same thing both as marketer/business and as customer. If you legitimately want the best for your friends, your peers, your customers, students, etc why would you not want them to know about those who can help – even if that business/person ain’t you?

I’m not saying to be a charity.

But if, for example, you were a doctor, and a patient with a potentially fatal condition came to you, and you KNEW he would be better served (and his life saved) by a doctor with more experience & a better track record for helping with the particular condition he suffers from than yourself, would you greedily not refer them to the guy who can better save his life?

There’s a lot of psychological resistance to this.

People will knee-jerk wonder if their customers will leave & forsake them.

First off, that’s probably not going to happen, and if anything’ll be the opposite.

And secondly, if they leave you forever, so what? There are millions of potential customers even in super obscure niches. If someone you showed actual concern for hits the bricks, who cares?

Let ‘em go haunt someone else, and make sure the door doesn’t hit them in arse.

Something else to keep in mind:

If your marketing game is tight, they’ll almost certainly be replaced with someone better soon enough. But, the reality is, if you fear these things, then that means your game is weak and you got bigger problems than some customers fleeing. Plus, that way of thinking shows a naiveté about how buyer psychology works that’s holding you back in ways you probably can’t even fathom.

It’s also pure, unadulterated Neediness.

Really, there is no other explanation.

And nothing will destroy your influence like Neediness.

Neediness is the business crusher, the brand destroyer, and the sales annihilator.

People smell Neediness like crap on a shoe.

And if you have this dreadful disease of the psyche it’ll seep out in subtle ways in not only your content but even in the way you move, look, sound, speak, write, behave, react, and make decisions.

All right have ye a Merry Christmas.

And if you want to “gift” yourself to an Email Players newsletter subscription go here:

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Ben Settle