Ben Settle

If I’ve heard this question once, I heard it a thousand times:

“Does your way of doing email also work for a service or only information products? Thought I’d ask.”

Hey, good question.

And the answer is…

Whaddya, kidding me?

Of course it does.

Take my droog (and “Email Players” subscriber) Doc Carney. He once sent me an email about how he’s using my system for his brand spanking new clients in the medical field to get customers for some super laser treatment session dealybop.

And, well, I’ll let you see it in his own words:

They sent my first email to their list of 200 people.

Not a big list, but they sent it.

RESULTS:

He told me that he had just sent it out and he had already signed up SIX people to come back to their office for $299.00 each. That was for three sessions, so the email worked.

I wrote it in 10 minutes, “Settle Style”, and WAH-LAW…

INSTANT RESULTS.

SAME DAY RESULTS.

So I’m happy.

They’re happy.

My bank account is happy.

Word up, Doc.

So, uhm, yeah.

It works for getting clients, too.

In fact, there’s absolutely no big differences in using my system to get clients as selling information or any other kind of product.

It’s ALL the same.

Little things like response mechanism change.

(i.e. URL, phone call, etc)

But for all purposes & intents, it’s the same.

In fact, I argue it works even BETTER for clients.

Especially since most service providers (of all types) don’t have the ballz to do emails the way I teach and they stick out like an honest man in the White House.

Subscription info here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Let me tell you about my place.

It’s newer house that sits atop a tall hill overlooking a pretty crappy neighborhood (on my podcast I once said how I could literally see a meth house from my office window — I wish I was joking…) Even though I dig my place and my 3 neighbors on top of this hill (for the most part), I feel kinda like the grinch overlooking Whoville when I look out the window.

All the dam Who’s in the ‘hood.

Making noise.

Cluttering up the street.

(People park on BOTH sides of the street, even though it’s narrow and a sign clearly says “no parking on this side of the street” on one side).

And full of so many stray dogs, I daren’t walk my dog here.

Anyway, that said:

I do dig my place.

(The hill is too steep for the dregs to want to climb up here — hellz, I don’t even like walking up and down it to get my mail at the mailbox…)

Anyway, to the point:

One thing I don’t like about my place is all the earwigs.

Whenever the exterminator comes, he sprays around and, within hours, I got earwigs sneaking in through a crack in the front door dying on my kitchen floor.

It’s like the earwig apocalypse.

And, it’s kinda gross.

Anyway, why am I telling you this?

How does this help you?

Well, for the first year here, I just ignored it. Since I had a person cleaning my place, I simply didn’t worry about it. Especially since I spend 99% of my time upstairs either sleeping or in my office.

But eventually, it got to me.

All the friggin dead earwigs.

Now, if I was foolish I would’ve blamed the exterminators.

(I’ve gone through three.)

But, it’s not their fault.

It’s mine.

I didn’t seal the small opening in the door.

And no matter how skilled they were… no matter how precisely they sprayed… no matter how great their knowledge… until I sealed that hole, the bugs were coming in.

And, it’s the same online.

I’ve seen time after time and after time people complaining about their “copy” not working, when all the dead sales lying around had nothing to do with their copy.

Example:

One of my friends told me about a client he had.

His opt ins were abysmally low.

At first, the client blamed the copywriter. But it wasn’t the copy. It was a glitch in the code that was screwing something up and only a small fraction of people *could* opt in.

And until they fixed that, the copy didn’t matter.

They had to fix the crack in the door, first.

Only then, could sales flow.

Anyway, something to think about.

There’s a lot of profit in dropping the “ninja” mindset always looking for ways to tweak and geek your ads… and just look for obvious bottlenecks in your sites.

Enter the book “Obvious Adams”

I first heard of it when the great Gary Bencivenga sent it to me.

(He’s universally considered the world’s greatest living copywriter.)

And, he said he reads it once or twice per year.

And, that his mentor the late (great) ad man David Ogilvy insisted all his people read it — since it instills a certain, very rare mindset in you where you can see the obvious solutions to problems that plague the average, common marketer.

What about you?

Would you like to see this book?

(Actually, it’s a booklet — only about 20 pages or so.)

It’s on Kindle here:

www.BenSettle.com/obvious

And it only costs a “whopping” $2.99.

Ben Settle

Sigh.

Once again, someone (a cousin of mine of all people!) endorsed me on Linkedout for social media marketing.

He’s not the first to do so, either.

It’s happened more times than I can count.

And I simply don’t get it.

My social media “etiquette” is awful.

I’m as standoffish online as I am offline. Despise all the “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” favors, never thank people for retweets, shamelessly self promote, rarely engage in threads, take weeks to accept friend requests (I apply “fire fast, hire slow” to most everything) even as I unfriend innocent people for even the slightest of offenses.

Anyway, the point?

I’m the *last* person to listen to for social media.

(And I’m even worse to emulate on there.)

But…

While I suck out loud at social media, I do know a thing or two about email marketing — with the track record of sales (in multiple markets), training, successful students, clients, etc, to prove it. In fact, later this month even Agora Publishing ($200 million publishing company) is flying me in to Baltimore to teach their copywriters about email.

I also spoke at 3 events this year about email/copywriting.

(Including the biggest event in the home business market.)

And, “Oceans 4” mastermind clients have emailed me telling me how much smackola my email advice has made them.

I can talk about this stuff forever.

And, I unload my best info in my “Email Players” newsletter.

It’s expensive.

I won’t bother sugar coating it.

But, if you are willing to work hard, implement what you learn, keep building your list, and follow my simple instructions, I believe you can kick some gluteus assimus.

Only one way to find out.

And that’s to give it a whirl.

There’s no refunds.

And, no safety nets.

If you’re in, you’re “in.”

So don’t bother unless you’re 100% committed.

More info here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Heads up my little droogling:

I just posted a new lesson about how to explode your sales by injecting entertainment and fun into your marketing. It’s 52-minutes long. And, it shows you how to turn even the most mundane and boring aspects of your life into high selling emails, ads, videos, and any other methods you market with.

Here’s the link:

www.BenSettle.com/media

(Scroll down to where it says: “How To Use Sex, Hate Mail, And Terrorists To Make Your Ads Almost Irresistible To Buy From”)

All right.

Excelsior!

Ben Settle

Here’s a zinger of a subscriber comment…

“Ben I’ve tried to befriend you on Facebook and noticed you take a very long time to befriend me back and don’t follow very many people on Twitter. No offense but you’re kind of a narcissist on social media, that’s my friendly opinion 🙂 “

Agreed.

But don’t take it personally.

It’s not you, it really IS me.

You see, a little while back one of my friends urged me to take one of those personality tests just for S&G’s and turns out I’m a dyed-in-the-wool “INTJ.”

Some people had been telling me this for years.

(Guess they were right…)

We’re basically what a lot of movie villains are based on.

Detached.

Aloof.

Always living inside our own minds.

In fact, most Hollywood stories do evolve around an evil villain (INTJ) threatening the old order, so a nice guy hero comes around to save it, then everyone is happy again to preserve the precious “status quo” which my brood tends to despise.

We can’t be bothered by social pleasantries, either.

Mindless chit-chat irritates us.

Conversations without a purpose are a waste of time.

And, we’re easily bored by people.

It’s not personal — we’re simply FAR more interested in the endless string of random problems/solutions/experiments/questions circulating around in our brains at any given time than making “small talk” on Facebook or Twitter or whatever. (It’s like Ralphie in “A Christmas Story” when he’s waiting to see Santa, his mind intensely focused on asking for the Red Ryder BB gun and his response to the girl hitting on him in line is… “leave me a lone, I’m… thinking…” heh)

I suppose this carries over to social media, too.

Frankly, I find a lot of it amusing.

Especially the social media goo-roos with 900 photos of themselves, with 350 videos, etc, constantly prattling on about their feelings and being “social”, blah blah blah

Hey, we ALL have annoying faults.

So let me make mine abundantly clear:

I’m not social.

I’m quite antisocial.

Which is probably why I prefer Twitter — since it’s only 140 characters and it forces people to get to the point, with less noise, drama queening, and grandstanding.

So that’s the deal.

Never take my social media aloofness personal.

If anything, it’s all in my head…

Ben Settle

P.S. In my humble (but 100% biased) opinion… INTJ’s make the best email marketers, too.

I’ll explain why some day.

But first, head on over to…

www.EmailPlayers.com

Today’s the deadline for the December “Email Players” issue.

Here’s what’s inside:

• 37 email subject line templates served up on a silver platter. (Some can be used “as is” as subject lines, the rest are easily adapted to virtually any product, market, or service.)

• How to use email to persuade people to happily buy expensive products they didn’t even know existed 5 minutes earlier.

• The “fake cocaine” secret to multiplying the sales of your emails.

• A secret way the late (great) copywriter Eugene Schwartz used to make his ads almost irresistible to buy from. (Works just as well — if not better — in emails.)

• How to “embed” another dimension of persuasion to your emails. (Giving you a solid edge over any competition sending emails to the same people selling similar types of products or services.)

• An almost laughably simple way to turn stray brain farts into high selling emails.

• And lots more…

(Including a new book about list building for newbies.)

Today’s the deadline to get in on this issue.

Subscribe here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Someone recently asked me why the big craze in podcasts.

Seems everyone is podcasting.

(Or, wanting to.)

And, he wanted to know why.

Well, I can’t speak for any other podcasters. But for me it’s because I have so much I want to say about email, copywriting, marketing, the parallels between the dating and business world, and just life in general (i.e. life lessons that can be applied to business) it’s flat out therapeutic. Believe it or not, I often can’t even rap about this stuff with my business friends because I’m such an awful, terrible, obnoxious ball hog and never STFU. Whenever I’m given the “talking pillow” in a conversation I never give it back. I just yap yap yap yap yap on…

Thus, the podcast.

It’s like therapy.

And, I can’t *not* do it at this point.

(Just like I can’t *not* write emails each day.)

In the recently pre-recorded 50th podcast episode I even thank the listeners not just for listening, but for being my shrink.

Isn’t there a financial motive to podcasting?

Of course there is.

But it takes a back seat to my free therapy.

In fact, I daresay the listeners get FAR more financial value (assuming the info is being applied) from the show than I ever will. A lot of the information I share in these podcasts could (and should) be charged for.

But for now, it’s free.

And yours for the taking.

Plus, today we’re also practically giving the transcripts away (they cost just $20 for all the past transcripts and all future transcripts henceforth).

But, this $20 transcript offer ends tonight.

And I’m unsure if/when Producer Jonathan will offer it again.

If you want ’em, go ye here:

www.BenSettleShow.com/special

Ben Settle

This week’s life-changing super duper, double top secret probation “Ben Settle Show” podcast episode reveals:

• 4 “magic” words that can take all the awkwardness out of negotiating price. (Works for everything from buying cars to negotiating deals with clients.)

• The “ninja” question to ask someone before trying to sell them something that increases your chances of making the sale 10 fold.

• When never to get into a negotiation. (I don’t care how good everything looks, if you can’t meet this condition, GTF out and come back when you can.)

• What the world’s most feared negotiator says to do if you are broke and trying to negotiate a deal with a client.

• The dumb mistake almost everyone who gets into a negotiation does, that almost guarantees you lose the deal. (It also makes sure nobody can stand being around you.)

• How to “judo flip” high pressure negotiation tactics back onto the person throwing them at you.

• The #1 mistake people make when negotiating that builds huge barriers, destroys trust, and kills deals on the spot.

• The question mark secret to being almost superhumanly persuasive when negotiating. (This was used by the the world’s greatest salesman years ago, and is still used by the world’s greatest living copywriter today.)

• An “almost magic” way to get people to sell themselves on your product or service.

• How to instantly eliminate price objection… before you even mention the price!

• What to say to guarantee you never bore someone when selling, negotiating, or persuading someone to do something. (Boredom is the death of persuasion, just do this, and you almost can’t lose.)

• What to say to get someone to lower their price that works nearly 100% of the time you try it. (This is straight from one of history’s top producing salesmen.)

• And a ho’ bunch mo’.

Download it here:

www.BenSettleShow.com/itunes

Ben Settle

Got this from the TV show “Hardcore Pawn’s” former AdWords guy:

(re: my “Hardcore Pawn” negotiation email this morning)

“So cool that you mentioned hardcore pawn. I used to run their Adwords account. I just want to say that I can’t get enough of your emails and especially your podcast. Copywriting is my secret passion and your podcast is basically a crash course in only the best copywriting principles. I agree when you guys say it shouldn’t be free– not that I’m complaining. You could charge a ton but I will say this, I feel so indebted and guilt ridden for greedily taking all the free stuff you offer that I am itching to subscribe to email players. But I’m taking your advice and building a decent list first. Thanks for everything.

Paul keep

Believe you me, Jonathan wants to charge for it.

And, eventually, he’ll probably get his way.

But for now, the podcast is free to listen to — yours for the plundering. And, the transcripts are only $20 (for all the past transcripts and all future ones henceforth).

That is, until tomorrow night.

After that, this offer vanishes like a virgin on prom night.

Get yo transcript lovin here:

www.BenSettleShow.com/special

Ben Settle