Ben Settle

One of my favorite “marketing” books is called:

“Mail-Order Mysteries”

The author, pop-culture historian Kirk Demarais, goes through some 150 products he bought from direct response comicbook ads back in the 60s, 70’s, and 80’s. Everything from authentic laser-gun plans, x-ray specs, and even 7-foot-tall monsters with glow-in-the-dark eyes… to 100 Toy Soldiers in a Footlocker… to Count Dante’s World’s Deadliest Fighting Secrets… to Hypno-Coins, Life-Size Monsters, Sea Monkeys, Soil From Dracula’s Castle, and a ho’ bunch more.

Spoiler:

Very few did anything near what they promised.

All the ads are well-worth studying, though. (The products sold, not so much)

But, one offer that was especially useful to read about was a book called:

“Very Special People”

It was a 400-page book about… the abnormal. Like, for example The Elephant Man (it was written by the author of the popular book The Elephant Man), the original Siamese twins, “Hop” The frog boy, the Mule-Faced Woman, the Elastic Skin Man, The Heaviest Man in the World, The Tallest Man in the World, Living Skeletons (ooh yeah!), Fat ladies, Bearded Ladies, and limbless men like Prince Randian the Caterpillar Man (who is pictured in the ad), and probably a bunch more.

It was a smash success, too, from what I understand.

The reason?

Because people are irresistibly and morbidly drawn to freak shows.

Case in point:

Elaine’s dancing in the TV show Seinfeld or, for that matter, Taylor Swift’s dancing everyone makes fun of. For a more down to earth example, take my Copy Troll book cover — which was intended to give people the creeps. It was inspired by a painting I saw in an hotel when speaking at one of Agora Financials’ offices many years ago, where the character in the dayem painting’s eyes followed me wherever I was in the room, and I couldn’t help but stare back and examine it.

Anyway, freaky things are hard NOT to look at.

We’re talking instant and probably near-guaranteed engagement.

And it’s one of many reasons why the visual & design-side of marketing is both so potentially very powerful, yet so extremely underrated for whatever reason. You can potentially get a lot of engagement, sales, and new customers by tapping into forces like this. What you do with that engagement, of course, is what determines if you are going to be able to monetize it or not.

Something to think about.

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Ben Settle

Not that anyone should particularly care, but today is my birthday.

And I’m celebrating with an admittedly pompous, arrogant, & totally self-indulgent email.

Once upon a time a reader asked:

“…on many lists and see lot of experts saying they are THE person to learn from. Why u? Everyone has testimonials and clams being the greatest. What makes u different? Do not take as trolling I am new trying to get handle on things thanks!”

At the risk of sounding like a megalomaniacal techno-despot, my answer is:

Seizing a corner of our industry and recreating it in my own image.

For example:

* While a bunch of boomer marketers are just now starting to dabble with text message marketing as if it’s the second coming of FAX… I’m over here helping design a fully integrated, multi-media messaging app for businesses that could make mere text message marketing look as archaic as sending smoke signals.

* While every online marketer and his father is drooling on the carpet mindlessly debating politics online all day… a few months ago I bought ownership in Email Players subscriber Richard Emmons’ Oregon Eagle newspaper, where we’re helping pro freedom candidates actually have a shot at winning against one of the most corrupt and evil political machines in the entire country.

* While copywriters are on social media grandstanding about the importance of “storytelling!”… I’ve written 9 novels (my Enoch Wars saga), turned the first novel into a screenplay (and soon a graphic novel), with a second fictional universe of novels on the way after I get done with that… plus a series of running comicbook-style ad storylines I’ve been publishing in Email Players these last few years, and will continue to write & publish next year.

* While everyone is crowing about how they are a world class expert at crypto and investing… I went and bought ownership in what is fast becoming THE premier Options trading coaching program (Low Stress Trading) on the planet…. with testimonials so surreal we probably can’t even really use a lot of them due to alphabet agency laws/rules/regulations (having to hire three different attorneys just to help us make sure we’re squared up with the copy before we start rolling out big with direct mail, which we are talking to the great Craig Simpson about tomorrow).

* While the content creation goo-roos and infloo-encers are busy nattering on all day about content creation, how to create content, how to sell content & be a content creator… I invested in a platform designed & created for ultra-engaged content creation & distribution (Learnistic) using mobile app technology.

* While every online marketing ex-spurt and his mother is debating about what the best shopping cart is our boys at Learnistic/BerserkerMail built our own online marketer’s “wet dream” cart platform (ContraCart) for the company’s internal offers that might (if we can work out the logistics) even eventually be for sale to the public (we are going to discuss next month when the team comes to my seaside Lair for a few days).

* While the the endless crop of social media experts spend all day trying to prove how social media savvy they are… I co-designed & built — and single-handedly financed the startup of — our own social media/membership site platform (SocialLair) designed for paying customers you want to serve in a private, big tech-free place untouched by Zuckerberg, Apple, Google, Amazon, or even the WEF.

* And maybe most important of all to a list like mine…

While other email guys are nattering on all day long to the make money online dorks about how much their emails make, fapping themselves blind to all their clients’ test results they pretend to have had more impact on than they really had, and droning on about their so-called open rates, click rates, and/or shilling whatever Soros and/or DEI approved email platform they are merely affiliates for… I have financed (with money made from, yes, ending emails selling my own offers to my own lists & businesses…) and co-built with Troy Broussard (former Navy Nuclear Engineer-turned-world class email marketing automation specialist who used to routinely do the sending/testing/tracking/automation of 30-50 million emails per month for his clients, and knows a little bit about how to get ‘em delivered and engaged with) our own platform called —

“BerserkerMail”

In other words:

I’m not just selling info and using other business’ platforms.

I’m helping to build, grow, & sell entire media & news platforms, paid for by the profits and based on the experiences I’ve gained via using email marketing & copywriting (selling my own offers, at my own risk, and at my own expense, not at some client’s expense & risk) day in and day out — for longer than a lot of these other guys have probably even been online.

All right, that’s my obnoxiously self righteous answer to what makes me different.

Take that info and do whatever you want with it, or do nothing with it.

So that’s all I got today.

Back I go to celebrating being another year closer to death…

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Ben Settle

An Email Players subscriber asks about my writing process:

“Do you write down every thought that comes while navigating your thinking awareness or do you just go deep to see where it leads… Curious to know – Can you elaborate on your thinking process?”

I’ll take a wack at answering his question:

I live inside my head, and write literally everything of note down, file it in a folder on my desktop where appropriate, determining if it will be an email, content for a book, content for Email Players, content for a audio or video… or maybe used for something else entirely or totally lost in the abyss, never to be used and totally forgotten, ignored and passed over for younger, hotter ideas as the original idea hit the wall. Then often ideas sit there for weeks or months or possibly a year or longer (several years in some cases)… and in the time between I write it down and do something with it, my brain is connecting dots, looking for connections to other stuff, maybe hitching a ride on something I’ve already written or created to parasite off that or build onto it or change it somehow.. and it’s all very organic and chaotic in many ways, and not something that is methodized other than the above.

Some of my emails and books and content and even fiction were “written” 1-2 years prior this way.

Ideas I had back as a kid or in college have made their way into fiction and emails 30+ years later in some cases.

I have whole Email Players issues already plotted out for the end of 2025 and at least one in 2026 (for the 15-year anniversary issue of the newsletter) — all based on filed away ideas that came to me out of the blue, while driving, in the shower, while walking, reading, watching something on TV, or from a stray brain fart someone said somewhere online or offline or maybe just something that occurred in a dream.

After that timing is everything.

Timing of offers, timing of when something will have most impact, timing of how something will relate or fit into the context already created by other content before it, or how it will effect what comes after… Sometimes timing changes and something I thought I’d do later gets done immediately (that happened a lot right before the lockdowns)… while stuff I want to do now gets put off for months or over a year for maximum impact and benefit to give the reader the best experience.

It’s just one strand, one string, one tentacle at a time.

All of them sally forth’ing out, looking to plug into something else, often being diverted, or enhanced, sometimes deleted… based on whatever else is going on in the world, with my own interests, with mistakes made, insights gained, opportunities arising… or just changing trajectory based on what I think may go on, what has gone on, what is suddenly going on.. or could go on, or that I want to happen or not to happen.

A guy can go a bit bat shyt existing like this sometimes.

And it can be hard to quiet your mind, almost like slipping into despair.

It can even cause some weird dreams, too.

But at least you don’t get bored.

So that’s my answer to that.

All right, enough of this.

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Ben Settle

Over the past several months I’ve been hearing from customers bummed out.

Some have gone into long, detailed explanations about watching their engagement drop, their numbers going down, and a rise in marketplace ‘noise’ and competition amongst other things depending on what market they are in, or what market their client is in. Totally caught them off guard, and they don’t know what to do or where to turn.

If that is you I’ve heard your cries, and I will tell you exactly what to do.

You should get excited.

Why?

Because downturns like this have always been an app-solute opportunity for those smart enough to see the signs, and who have the ambition to begin tripling down on marketing/copywriting knowledge acquisition (it is why I’ve been publishing extra-sized and even double & triple-sized Email Players issues the last year and a half… my boys & ghouls will be prepared), list building, service level you provide, the works. People always wait to do these things until things get bad, and then just stand around with their John Thomas in their hands.

Well you can safely put your John Thomas away.

These things are not only cyclical but downright predictable at this point.

For example:

A lot of what happened during the dot com crash is happening now:

Billions thrown at internet startups, artificially inflated valuations, bank loan dependency, dumb money investors backing bright shiny objects like it’s a sport, people who are great at building followings but can’t market their way out of a paper bag pounding their chests about how great they are as they produce shyt products sold by “sock puppet-level” advertising.

But when it all crashed?

It happened fast.

And people legit didn’t see it coming.

Yes, even despite the big flashing warning signs that always precede such events.

A lot of gurus then ended up moving back home and parking cars for a living.

They all thought the party would never end.

Happened again later again with Google AdWords and SEO slaps, draconian Facebook ad rules, Internet Marketing Syndicate collusion, push-send affiliate offers, Salty Droid-inspired goo-roo counter culture rising up… all of which put a big spotlight on the glut of dumb marketers who thought they were smart just because the government made sure credit was easy to access and their customers had money to spend.

Ask yourself where half the gurus and forum chest pounders back then are today.

History is about to repeat again, or at least be a very loud echo.

This time it’s the glut of ‘startups’, e-commerce brands, cold email bros clogging up inboxes all over hell and gone, AI nerds flooding the internet with lies and hype, and dumb money corporate suits paying influencers to shill nonsense to TikTok brain-addled scrollers who have no intention of every actually buying anything. Even if Clown World wasn’t going to draft half these people to fight in the next younger and hotter war, it would all collapse.

It’s inevitable.

Social media has admittedly made the bubble bigger and last longer.

But it won’t end any different than the others.

Just more fireworks, probably.

And all that artificial noise diluting the legitimate voices (like yours) who are doing the equivalent of sock puppet marketing today with their idiotic TikTok videos and hiding behind cartoon avatars being doxed left and right, showing who they really are (i.e., not who they pretended to be)?

They will disappear like a fart in the wind.

It’s already happening, and it’s only going to accelerate.

All of which means:

Now is the time to position your business to profit from the chaos. Now is the time to double down on investing in your marketing education, your lead gen, your networking, copywriting skills, and list building. Now is the time to start building and growing an EMAIL list (not just your social media following). Now is the time to look for problems to solve for the people on that list, find or create offers to sell them that solve those problems, and start growing a real relationship with them.

Something else:

Later this year I will have a course for freelance copywriters wanting help with this. i.e., The reboot of my 10-Minute Workday program — which is a totally different offer, for totally different times like we’re in now, that also is probably about 80%+ different information than the original, as so much has changed since 2016 when I created that.

But in the meantime?

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Ben Settle

Except for, at least, the great Dan Kennedy:

“I finally went through elBenbo Press page by page during the past couple days. To say the least, it is impressive. As you know, l’ve been in this field for more than 50 years and have seen a lot of “how I do it” books, courses, etc., and have long labeled most as “B.S.”. Rarely does somebody lay out, truthfully, exactly what they have done and do to create and sustain and earn tremendous success as an information marketer, author, publisher. A very few of the ‘old masters’ like Ted Nicholas, Lyman Wood, George Haylings and Dean F. DuVall did. Your magnum opus is more valuable than any of their works.”

At least someone is reading this shyt…

Anyway, elBenbo Press is not currently for sale. I only bring this up because it gives you an idea, I believe, of the kind of quality info you can expect if you’ve never bought anything from me.

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Ben Settle

I recently read quite an interesting insight from a movie writer/producer (I don’t know who it was, he was hidden behind a screen name and avatar) that was as equally obvious as it was profound and eerily timely for anyone up in the marketing world to hear.

The comment he made was:

“Everybody’s famous but nobody’s talented.”

Ain’t that the troof.

It was not like this nearly as much before the rise of social media.

Back then — and especially pre-internet — you had to basically earn any fame.

Now?

You don’t need any talent, knowledge, experience.

I remember even Madonna saying this about her daughter once – that she just shows up on Instagram and gets millions of fans. But she didn’t work for that fame, didn’t earn it with any real accomplishments other than being born to someone who did. And didn’t sweat/bleed/face trials by fire for it… and that it was not a good thing at all.

This is rife in the online business world, too.

When you see someone come out of nowhere, say nothing but some empty platitude or political commentary, and then get all kinds of unusually high praise and adoration… just watch what happens. Most never last long, although social media has extended their half lives I suppose. And those who do last longer than their usefulness tend to self destruct for the reason Earl Nightingale talked about decades ago: they know they aren’t getting paid (in this case, paid not just in money but engagement, likes, whatever) in proportion to their service/knowledge/usefulness.

The results it they burn really bright, then fizzle out just as fast.

I lost count of how many marketing goo-roos this has happened with since the early 2000’s.

It’s practically a trope.

In some cases the boys & ghouls may even have talent. But because they are relying only on a social media platform and it’s constantly-changing algorithms controlled by God-knows-who… they lose everything once that platform is taken away (or the algorithm that favored them changes) and then they don’t know what to do with themselves. And it’s all because they never built anything other than an audience they didn’t have the wisdom to put on a list they could export and, thus, own, like email or direct mail.

I’ve also seen it happen in copywriting more times than I can remember.

For example:

It’s why you have copywriting coaches selling high priced coaching while admitting to guys like me (yes, I know where quite a few of these particular bodies are buried) they feel like imposters because they aren’t all that great at copywriting but everyone likes and believes them on Facebook. Same with all these supposed experts popping up selling whatever the flavor-of-the-month BSO is.

Lots of fame, no talent.

Both fame and talent can be good to have.

But both are all but useless without the other. This has been a plot point in stories for probably thousands of years: guy asks the devil to become talented at art or music or something. Devil gives him that talent. But guy dies penniless and alone anyway, realizing he should have wished for fame and talent not just talent alone…

Anyway, all of this is why the “influencer” bubble is just a Faustian deal.

It will pop or just continue hissing air through an ever-widening gaping puncture hole.

But when it’s over it will also be humbling and devastating to many.

Ans as for these little broccoli heads running around sliding into your DMs pitching you on how to help you make 6-figures when they are literally broke still living at home, spanking out cold DMs from a template they bought, and probably spanking something else too in their basement… while waiting for mom to finish making supper?

They’ll have to get real jobs soon enough.

This goes for a lot of these boys & ghouls with fame but no talent.

Something else:

Now that Creepy Joe is forcing the young’uns to register for selective service that is very likely a prelude to a draft for some new bull shyt war to make a bunch of bankers and wealthy elite richer and you poorer, hoping people are dumb enough to fall for whatever lie is trotted out again to rally everyone together.

Ever hear that phrase “There’s a silver lining in every cloud?”

In this case, due to drafting a lot of them to fight for Satan and his henchmen in Washington DC the number of broccoli heads for the next bull shyt war is guaranteed to cut down on the endless number of cold emails plaguing inboxes the world over.

At least we’ll get some inbox relief, I suppose.

That’s my opinion and forecast.

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Ben Settle

So said the actress and star of one of my all-time favorite 80’s horror movies (Night of the Comet) who has been consulting me on my Zombie Cop screenplay:

Kelli Maroni.

She has told me that several times.

And the context is not to worry about what anyone necessarily thinks. Just write a cool story first and foremost. To illustrate this, she showed me a note written many years ago that said:

To Dan O’Bannon

Dear Dan:

Pursuant to our discussion, I am returning ALIEN.

Thank you for the submission.

Yours very truly,

Louis S. Arkoff

Even ALIEN was rejected… by someone paid a lot of money who clearly did not know anything.

Today the franchise has been (so far) worth nearly $2 billion.

Nobody knows anything indeed.

We got a lot of this in the direct marketing world, too.

Case in point:

One of my Email Players and I recently got to back-and-forthing over a question he had about segmenting and selling subscription offers up front or doing it later. And when answering his question I mentioned it was discussed at length (but not solved — there is no “one” solution to it, just options to try, test, and tinker with) in my upcoming entirely re-recorded and completely re-branded 10-Minute Workday program with AWAI (it won’t be called 10-Minute Workday anymore, totally different offer, so much has changed since 2016…)

And I also told him:

“The older I get, the more I realize nobody really knows anything. Which is ironic in a day and age where everyone thinks they know everything. What a time to be alive..”

So always remember:

Nobody really knows anything. I don’t care what their tests say. I don’t care what your favorite goo-roo says. I don’t even care what the old masters say, what I say, or what anyone else says. There’s a big difference between “what’s working now” for someone else’s business and just “what works” for your business, whether anyone else agrees, blesses, or approves of it.

Focus on the former and you’ll be chasing the market from now until Christmas.

Focus on the latter and the market will chase you.

That’s been my experience.

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Ben Settle

Or at least can give people the will to keep living, trying, not give up.

For example:

About 20 or so years ago I remember listening to a doctor talk about someone who had a terminal illness. I was especially interested in this topic at that time because my dad had a late stage potentially terminal illness himself. And for whatever reason, this patient the doctor was talking about went and holed himself up in a hotel room with nothing but Marx Brothers films. As the story went, the patient emerged weeks later totally health — having literally “laughed himself back to health.”

I’m not making any claims or giving medical advice here.

Let the pedantic types take note…

I’m simply telling you the story I heard about the potential power of entertainment. Many entertainers, movie producers/directors, and writers know full well how entertainment can and does change lives. Not long ago Bounding Into Comics ran an article quoting the director of the ‘Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’ game saying the purpose of entertainment is:

“To give the people the will to live, today and tomorrow.”

The late Stan Lee would talk about this a lot as well.

One of my favorite quotes from him was:

“…I have come to realize that entertainment is not easily dismissed…Without it, lives can be dull. Singing a song, playing sports — anything that entertains, that takes people away from their own problems, is good.”

Then there’s the Rocky films.

How many lives have been changed, extended, improved by those movies? How many people got into shape, avoided amputated limbs, strokes, early heart attacks because they saw Rocky and got inspired? We’ll never know. But just anecdotally it’s a lot of people I have known over the years. I suspect many reading this can attest to that as well.

More:

Back in the last Depression it was a known phenomenon that people depressed, out on their arse, unemployed would spend their last few cents not on food but to watch a movie — as it was the ultimate in self medication. Many people reading this on their $900 iPhone who have never missed a meal in their lives would bark about how that was irresponsible. But I’d argue it was very likely a way to psychologically regroup and find the strength to keep going.

My point:

Entertainment is an extremely powerful force.

And if you’re not using it in your marketing/copywriting/emails you’re almost certainly missing out on a ho bunch of sales, happy customers, and opportunities to help your market and bond them to your business in ways your boring competition just parroting the same benefits as everyone else cannot touch with a 12 foot cattle prod.

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Ben Settle

By forces of evil I refer to gov and corporate bureaucrats with lots of power who take a, shall I say… “interest” in your righteous business.

In no particular order:

* Have 10+ merchant accounts, minimum and even more if you can find them, and use a gateway service that lets you rotate them so no one merchant account gets all the sales at any given time

* Make it a goal to become a platform unto yourself like all the extremely polarizing people you either love to hate or hate to love who always grow more influential the more they are attacked, hated, prosecuted, and persecuted

* It only takes one rogue employee or bureaucrat at a tech platform or bank or in the government who doesn’t like you to lose access to all your data and ability to sell

* Have an email list on a privately owned platform that is not run or financed (i.e., corporate or bank loan funded) you mail regularly and back up daily to at least 3 places besides your phone: like a secure cloud untouched by any big tech… your own hard drive of course… and if you’re really paranoid put it on a flash drive on a keychain you take with you everywhere you go…

* Realize any device with a speaker in your home or place of business can and probably will be turned into a microphone…

* Never say or write anything online (anywhere, in any app, in any email exchange, yes, even if you think it is “private” and secure — including in Gmail even if a draft you don’t send) you wouldn’t say in front of a judge or jury deciding your fate, the police, a hostile reporter, and especially the folks who provide you merchant account, banking, or other professional services your business relies on

* In other words… before writing that joke or making that flippant reply imagine it being discussed at a deposition passed around the room (happened to me once… very sobering) or in front of a jury or group of alphabet agency people trying to decide what to do to you and then proceed accordingly…

* Assume there is no such thing as truly being “anon” — hiding behind a cartoon or statue avatar on Twitter is fine and well, but assume you’ll be ratted out or discovered some day and behave accordingly now, if you want to have a chance to save yourself from a lot of potential bull shyt later

* Assume every sales page on your site, every email to your list, every webinar pitch you give will be looked at by a competitor with one of the alphabet agencies in his hip pocket wondering if you’re competition

* The above is where legitimately advanced copywriting, email, & selling game comes into play

* Have all ads and sales pages reviewed by a sharp attorney

* Impose harsher and stricter rules for any claims in your advertising and in following direct marketing laws than even the alphabet agencies require

* Learn how to make the skeleton dance (turn legitimate flaws into benefits/reasons to buy) and  learns how to monetize haters/trolls/slanderers/1-star reviewers/media reporters/goo-roos, etc — not only can it be good for sales, but can also help make your business the proverbial “porcupine” surrounded by aggressive creatures wanting to bring you down

* However paranoid you think you are, you ain’t nearly paranoid enough

* You’ll know you’re probably doing it right when the death threats, black mailing, doxing, swatting, and coordinated de-platforming attempts begin…

* Read Gary Halbert’s The Dark Side of Success newsletter issue (easily found online), then read it again, and again… and again… and then read it several more times, especially if you are seeing quick success and find yourself getting overly arrogant

* Consider alternate forms of generating income that do NOT rely at-all on merchant accounts, customers, clients, or being in the spotlight in any way like investing/Options trading (like taught at Low Stress Trading) or a local side business in your community (one of the things we will be doing with Stefania’s business when Willis is a little older), etc

* When your business gets big enough you might want to have your business and asset affairs set up like politicians set theirs up… (will not explain, and, frankly, am not even qualified to)

* It probably won’t always be this way, just ride it out for the next 5-15 years, after the inevitable collapse it will straighten out depending what part of the country you live (if in the US, at least) when it happens

None of this is legal advice obviously

And it won’t all apply to most reading this anyway.

Just depends on your business, niche, market, product category, size, revenue, etc.

But I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately for reasons I won’t go into here.

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Ben Settle