so stupid

“This is the short sighted shyt direct marketers do that riles up privacy advocates, prompts legislation to be drafted, and gets perfectly good marketing media neutered by the government”

So I told my biz partner at BerserkerMail Troy Broussard.

The context:

An article about “email laundering” where the owner spent $800k on the domain name.

This is where a service can link anonymous website visitors (by cookies, abandoned cart info, something like that in popular carts like Shopify, etc — it’s all rather shady in my opinion) to their email addresses so a business can then email those visitors selling them stuff.

In other words, there is no opt-in or permission.

I don’t know, Butch.

Sounds like a magnificent way to rile up the privacy wonks and give the government an excuse to revisit & give sharper teeth to CanSpam. I remember Email Players subscriber and internet marketing attorney Mike Young having a field day with this on Twitter.

Not to mention as Troy put it:

“One minor change to can spam law and him and his $800k domain go up in smoke”

My take:

Direct marketers enslaved to their hindbrains like this always are, always will be, and alway have been the weakest link in our industry. They’re obsessed with trying to “get away” with something shady by abusing perfectly sound marketing medias and tools, which then prompts opportunist attorney generals and politicians to want to “fix” things, which then just screws everything for everyone else doing things legitimately.

It’s happened with just about every media marketers have used.

And now they’re working hard to fook up email for the rest of us.

But, there is a way to help insulate your business from this sort of thing. And that is by creating such an airtight relationship with your list where, as they see all this shady nonsense going on, you are basically the only one they trust, read, pay any attention to in the inbox… and even if your media is taken away, they are more likely to follow you wherever you may roam next.

The good thing about spammers is it’s easy to stand out from them.

Even if, ironically, you wind up in the spam or promotions tabs.

On that note, for more on Email Players paid newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

I wrote the following on Twitter the other day “stream of consciousness” style.

I’ve slightly edited it for clarity.

But it’s quite timely for what’s coming down the pike, so I am sharing it again here:


 

One of the problems info publishers run into eventually are customers who bytch & moan about “too much info!” and “info overload!” and “I need time to implement!”

And it’s all hamster spinning.

Take my Email Players newsletter as an example.

It’s usually about 17-pages of content and 3-pages of ads. No particular reason for that many pages, incidentally. It used to be 16, another newsletter I used to publish was 12. If I was starting from scratch I’d make it only 8 pages, will not explain why here though.

Whatever the case:

Sometimes I do an extra-sized issue.

And, like in January next month, a Triple+ sized issue (64-pages — to commemorate the monthly newsletter’s 150th issue). I can’t say for sure, but I suspect this upcoming January 150th anniversary issue will get a bunch of people complaining and barking at the moon about how they don’t have time to read it all, yada yada yada.  And that is okay — as I figure 2024 would be as good a time as any to do some “new year cleaning” of the bums off the customer list anyway.

It’s not that I don’t want lots of subscribers.

It’s that I want the right kind of subscribers.

And people uncomfortable with too much info that can make them lots of money are so outside my realm of reality that I cannot comprehend their way of thinking, and have nothing to offer them. And while it may be anecdotal, my customer list has always, without exception, grown, along with my sales, the more aggressively I repelled and gotten rid of the crud.

It’s almost like it “makes room” for better customers.

Back to the point:

In a lot of ways doing a 64-page issue is the worst thing anyone can do in info publishing.

Too much info scares away the luke warm types, and they tend to make up the majority of most customer lists.  One reason why a lot of people in the subscription offer business (like newsletters, membership sites, SaaS, whatever it is) like to find the perfect balance (not too much, not too little) is they want to keep people as long as possible, almost hoping they forget about the offer, and just keep paying.

Retention is everything, after all.

You are not really in the “subscription offer” business if you sell a subscription offer, you’re in the — as Bob King told the great Gary Bencivenga — renewal business.

But I  have always run my newsletter differently.

I prefer the types who are so disorganized and have such jumbled life priorities (as business owners and marketers) they can’t read 17-pages a month get off my list (not just not buy, but leave my email list, stop following me on social media, etc) altogether.

Most of them are not ‘bad’ people.

But they do make bad customers for my business and always have. And so this 64-page issue is sure to drive a bunch of them away and, as always happens, they’ll be replaced with better and more higher quality customers.

It’s a weird phenomenon I cannot explain.

It does not even really sound all that logical.

Frankly, it almost borders on the woo-woo, although there is nothing woo-woo about it ultimately. If it was woo-woo I’d just reject it as bull shyt as I think all woo-woo, life coach, airy fairy, crystals & rainbows & pronouns is bull shyt.

What’s definitely not woo-woo though is the math.

Imagine a grown adult who votes and pays taxes not being able to read 17-pages per month of a newsletter where they need only pull out and apply ONE thing to make that issue’s money back in spades. Like, for example, this customer in the tennis niche (not sure he wants me naming him) does who told me just yesterday for his side business (he barely puts much time into):

“I only read your stuff and implement minimum one thing from every issue of Email Players. That works well.”

The punchline:

17 pages is a little over 1/2 a page of reading per day, for a newsletter that costs just $3.23 per day. The guys who can’t even do that are, I guarantee you, reading more than a 1/2 page of absolute horse shyt on social media or somewhere else each day and spending more than $3.23 per day on frivolous sugar coffees, or entertainment, or God-only-knows what else that does nothing to add to their business, their health, or their life.

Of course, 64-pages like the upcoming January issue is a lot more than 17-pages.

Or, more specifically, 61 pages of content and 3 pages of ads.

In this case someone need only read 2 pages per day before the February issue hits their mailbox to read it all (they can literally do that on the toilet while pinching a loaf if they want, instead of doom scrolling twitter or facebook or fapping or whatever they are doing), and read it with understanding — while spending a few minutes implementing just ONE of the dozens of ideas I am sharing inside this one.

All of which brings me to another point:

Recently a guy on his way out said:

“I look forward to returning in the future!”

And I told him —

“I don’t allow people to come back  – good luck”

To which he replied:

I was surprised and disappointed by your response to my cancellation request. As a fellow business owner, I understand the value of every customer, especially in challenging times. Your policy of not allowing customers to return is, frankly, unusual and seems counterproductive. It’s particularly unexpected coming from someone in your field, where communication is key.

I had hoped to return as a subscriber once my situation improved. However, your response has not only deterred me from doing so, but also makes it difficult for me to recommend your services to others. In business, as in life, bridges are better left unburnt. A respectful and considerate approach often leads to lasting relationships and opportunities.

No, Spanky, you got that backwards.

It’s precisely because of my policy that I do have such a strong, lasting relationship with my customers, list, and market — with a monthly newsletter that’s run for 150 consecutive issues/months, with more testimonials than I can possibly count at this point. Certainly it’s a far stronger relationship than the needy goo-roo types have with their customers, always nattering on about how they will happily take in anyone like a lonely wine aunt taking in stray cats.

More fun:

There was one goo-roo a couple years ago who said my policy was the result of a “scarcity mindset.” It was borderline Babylon Bee parody-level sounding to the people who sent it to me, and it made for great email fodder (to sell our Subscription Biz course the couple times we’ve promoted it), so it was useful.

However, at the same time:

It had to have been one of the single most backasswards takes ever uttered in the online marketing industry. Turning money away from people who should not be buying from your business is the exact, polar opposite of scarcity. It’s raw, unfiltered honesty, which is what everyone should be striving for to bring out truth, do right by your market, create real value and solve real problems… as opposed to creating a revolving door and letting anyone buy from you, many you can’t help and will just be wasting their money and time, which is like the poster child for scarcity mindset.

People make all kinds of idiotic assumptions about my no coming back policy.

Usually it’s from someone who I’ve blocked to-so-surprisingly.

And it’s as ironic as it is amusing that more and more legitimate players in our space are either following suit or considering it. Like, for example, Perry Marshall – who publicly admitted (in an email to his list) a couple years ago he shamelessly got the idea to have the same policy with his subscription offer buyers from me.

Same with my pal Doberman Dan.

And, I don’t know his name, but apparently one of the guys over at Agora Financial (in charge of a 8 or 9 figure wing of the company, not exactly sure what the details were, but no matter) was telling my pal & Email Players subscriber Tom Beal he was inspired by my no coming back policy to the point where he would like to do the same thing with his own subscription offer eventually.

On the other hand:

The gaggle of social media naysayers gossiping like little girls about my policy — none of who have ever bothered to ask me personally, and instead just post about it on social media (no social clout in asking me privately, I guess) — assume it’s because I’m trying to “trap” people or something. When anyone who spends more than a few minutes reading any of my content knows if anything I’m constantly curating, trying to “break” people for worthiness (I wrote a 40-page Email Players issue about this for the newsletter’s 10-year anniversary a couple years ago, it’s a deep topic, and important) to get rid of them, and am in full-on repel mode.

No, not as some kind of idiotic goo-roo trick.

But as curation.

A small curated list is far more valuable than a big non-curated list.

It’s much better, in my way of thinking, to have 4 shiny easy-to-manage quarters in your pocket than 100 sticky, dirty, God-only-knows-where-they’ve-been pennies stuck in there. It’s why some 15+ years ago I consciously started defying the norm of of “attraction marketing” and started aggressively implementing:

“repulsion marketing”

I never focus on attracting anyone, only on repelling people.

I don’t know if I am the first to coin the following term or not, but I call it:

“Sell by repel”

It’s automatic just by following my Email Players methodology that I follow myself each and every day:

* Daily emails repel by default

* Imposing your expectations on your customers repels

* Telling them the truth (the downsides, flaws, glaring problems with your offer) repels

* Keeping your sales copy as legally compliant as you repels since you’re not bull crapping anyone, and automatically turning away the new product junkies and other idiots who just buy and never use, whose attitudes are useless to both themselves and your business

* Making it abundantly clear who should NOT be buying from you, and why, repels

* Creating barriers to entry (opt in, buying, access to you, etc) repels

* And the list goes on

Repel who, exactly?

The lukewarm.

It’s a Biblical concept that works magnificently in marketing based on Revelation chapter 3. Jesus is talking to 7 churches and is displeased with 5 of them, only happy with 2 of them. One of the churches He is angry with does good deeds, etc but, they were, as He put it:

“Luke warm”

God would rather they be hot or cold.

But because they were luke warm He said He’d vomit them out.

Thaaaaaaat’s what I’m talkin’ about.

Vomit out the luke warm.

Force them to be hot or cold.

Hot is obviously good — they will buy if you stick with them long enough.

Cold is okay too, they will leave peacefully, on their own, and maybe even come back later. Email Players subscriber Russell Brunson told me, about 10 years ago at a mastermind I used to co-host while we were at dinner, that he originally hated me.

Guy couldn’t stand me or anything I said.

But he kept reading and I grew on him.

Until, he admitted, he went to that event just to hang with me.

That’s not something that happens a lot.

But it does happen when you sell by repel.

And in a lot of cases:

A cold lead will leave, go venture off into the great night of your market, see a bunch of horse shyt, maybe even get royally screwed over, realize you are indeed the real deal, and come back and be hot.

All these forces are impossible to control.

They’re too big.

But you can harness them by doing the right things, long enough, consistently as I once heard some motivational speaker (think it was Kevin Trudeau actually) say. And I have found it to be true in many other disciplines in life — not just business and marketing and copywriting.

It all comes down to:

Having standards (no, you don’t have to have my no coming back policy, you run your business in whatever way you see fit, this is not a checklist or “how to” post) and enforcing them mercilessly. Those left over will be the best, most successful, and most eager to spread the “gospel” of your business.

People want “value”.

But the best value is not a list of stuff to do.

It’s content that gives people a different way of looking at the world, at their business, at their problems.

Hopefully this post did just that.

If not?

That’s your problem for having read this far…


 

For more on the Email Players newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

I wouldn’t want James Gunn within 10,000 feet of Willis or any grade schools.

But he recently said something useful when talking about how the score for his upcoming Superman movie was mostly finished already, even though the composer hasn’t officially signed a deal or (presumably) gotten paid anything for it yet.

What he said was this:

“when you’re riding the waves of inspiration, what are you going to do? I wrote most of Peacemaker and all of Creature Commandos before I had a closed deal!)”

And for whatever reason, that got me to thinking about writers.

Specifically, the different “species” of writers.

Like, for example:

* A lot of writers are purely mercenaries — if they don’t get paid, they don’t write. A lot of old timey day screenwriters admitted to that. A lot of freelance copywriters, journalists, and work for hire types fit that bill too. So were a lot of pulp writers and anyone else who has to write or they don’t eat even though they don’t particularly enjoy writing and would rather be doing something, anything, else than writing. Gary Halbert once claimed to be this type of writer.

* Still others do it for the love of the craft — and it’s like an art form for them, where every sentence is like a brush stroke, every page like a canvas. They don’t tend to be the most commercially successful writers any more than artists tend to be commercially successful, although some obviously are enormously successful. I admire these types of writers in a lot of ways, but have absolutely nothing in common with them beyond the fact we both write stuff.

* Then there are those who are only writers in their own heads — they want to “have written” but never quite get around to actually writing anything on any kind of regular basis beyond social media takes or blog posts. And even then it’s only when they get inspired to write something.

* Finally, there are those of us who do it because it’s basically therapy — and/or from having so many ideas it’s like Niagara Falls and they gotta go somewhere, and we can’t not write whether or not we want to write, “feel” like writing, are inspired to write, or even if we don’t have the time to write. We’re not gonna win any writing awards, but nobody ever accuses us of not being shameless anyway.

There are writers who are probably a mixture of some or all the above.

And maybe there even whole other categories of writers I am completely unaware of.

That admittedly is probably the case, as I don’t really talk to a lot of writers.

i.e., I think Bukowski had a point when he said:

“The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of other writers. Like flies on the same turd.”

Not sure what the point of all this was.

Except, maybe, to write something..

On that note:

I was talking to Stefania recently about the idea of putting the screenplay I just finished (based on my first novel “Zombie Cop”) up on the internet for people to read or ridicule, enjoy or hate, mock or encourage, whatever the case may be. I am rewriting the entire novel in a couple weeks based on the screenplay either way, as when writing the screenplay I realized how:

(1) the novel is so bad and amateur and gross it makes the rest of the 8 books after it mostly inaccessible except to the most depraved minds…

(2) the screenplay is probably 100x better than the novel in its current form, and certainly I am 100x more proud of it vs how embarrassed I am of said novel – which I don’t even let my mom read for fear of her wondering how she failed her boy…

In the meantime, to check out the Email Players Newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Last month I did a deal with Email Players subscriber and syndicated talk radio show host Mark Kaye — where I gave him an hour of consulting in exchange for him plugging my opt-in page to his entire audience.

i.e., one long testimonial about lil’ ol’ me.

And I liked it so much I decided to swipe some of it.

Here goes:

Ben is a very reclusive, highly conservative business buddy of mine who is trapped in a very red part of a very blue state. He’s also the leading authority on email marketing and has written some of the most entertaining books I’ve ever consumed.

Re: what he said about how I’m trapped in a very blue state.

He is absolutely right about that.

This is the state that recently thought it was racist to make graduating students prove they can read and write. That’s what the pronoun socialist brigade bending to the will of the teachers union here think is a good idea — just like they thought decriminalizing hard drugs, tying the hands of law enforcement to stop a lot of crime, and a laundry list of other truly idiotic policies that have caused a great deal of pain, violence, and death are a good idea.

All in the name of equality and virtue, of course.

Whatever the case:

Yes, I am in a state so blue it makes the smurfs look albino.

But, to be truthful about it, I don’t really see the truly horrifying stuff.

Like I was telling a buddy recently:

“I’m more likely to see a Bigfoot than a drag queen in my neck of the woods”

Not yet, at least.

Although the California transplants work hard to turn wherever they land into what they fled from.

Back to Mark’s point though:

Another thing he talked about was how I sometimes go on tangents away from email, marketing, copywriting at times. And he’s right. And the reason I do that is because I write what I want to write and what pleases me to write, which also turns on and serves the kind of customers I want, while utterly repelling (or at least generating some free troll fodder from) the dingbats I don’t want anywhere near me – not online or offline.

The result?

A very curated list and customer base.

The kind that is the envy of many of my pals up in this niche.

And no, it’s not about veering into culture wars or whatever.

It’s not the “what” — it’s the mindset and approach.

I don’t care if you’re selling to that love child Castro had who runs Canada or to Trump himself — it’s not about “ooh! I need to talk about culture wars!” It’s about you writing what’s on your mind, making it relevant to those you want to sell to, and not giving a rat’s puckering bung hole if anyone else who is not your ideal customer or clients likes it, approves of it, or will whine and snark about it.

When you understand how this approach works a whole new world opens up.

You no longer fear the crowd’s disapproval you all but seek that disapproval out.

When that happens, in my experience, the real sales happen.

And possibly, very quickly.

Something to think about.

Especially if you’re interested in the Email Players newsletter.

Here’s the link:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Go to guys

I’ve talked many times about the audio I have where John Carlton interviewed Gary Halbert about:

“The Go To Guy”

I first heard it over 20 years ago (on audio cassette).

And I still listen to it several times per year now.

Not because there are any tactical, marketing, copywriting, selling, or any other tricks for making more sales in it, because there’s not. It’s because of the mindset and approach that you only really see or hear about when one gets to the top echelons of the business world. And they’re not something you’re going to see a cartoon avatar guy on Twitter pretending to be bigger and more powerful than they are, or some schmuck beating his chest on Facebook talk about, much less understand.

What do I mean by Go To Guy?

Well, it’s a term they used.

And to paraphrase what Gary said:

Imagine you needed a task done where the stakes are enormous. Literally if this task couldn’t be done, you would be beheaded, or your baby daughter would be killed right in front of your eyes, or some other horrifying thing where (as Gary put it):

“The stakes couldn’t be any higher”

And let’s say you don’t even know what the task is.

You just know it has to be done and you have to pick someone else to do it, and are not allowed to do it yourself. You also don’t know if it’s a big task that takes a year and requires multiple deals and connections… if it means traveling across the world and hopping across multiple continents… if it requires lots of physical strength… or even if it means committing some kind of violence or outright killing someone (or several someones).

In that situation… who you gonna call?

Whoever that is, that’s your Go To Guy.

Very few of us have one of these, incidentally (I certainly don’t).

And even fewer are a Go To Guy.

But basically, a  Go-to guy will not question any of it, and just do it. And once they are committed to doing whatever the task is, that person will not stop until it’s done or they die.

Period.

For them failure is not an option.

And, also for them, there are no limits to what they will do to achieve the goal.

Again, I don’t know any real life Go To Guys (to my knowledge).

And hopefully I never will require one.

But, I can think of some fictional examples.

Like, for instance:

* The Godfather — Don Corleone (who Gary mentions specifically) who is truly a no-limits guy willing to do whatever it takes to win

* Fidel Castro — who Gary also specifically mentions, admitting he doesn’t agree with anything Castro stood for, but he was such a survivor, with people trying to kill him for 40 years, there’s no way he’s going down until the job was done

* Rosie from Point Break — the psychopath that Bhodi (the villain) needs to do his dirty work (like kidnap and hold a knife to his ex-girlfriend’s throat to get Johnny Utah to do what he needs him to do, and killing her in cold blood if ol’ JU fails)

* Mike from Breaking Bad — I mean, really, is there any doubt that, whatever the job is, Mike would both get it done and not bother coming back if he didn’t?

* Jack Bauer — the most radical TV character probably ever created who did everything from hold up convenience stores to hijack airplanes to even dumping a bullet in the back of his boss’s head and executing him in cold blood just to save the US from a virus

* Marv from Sin City — Mr. “just give me a name” (when he sees his favorite dancer beaten up) himself who is another guy that, you just know is not going to back down, is not going to give up, and is not going to come back without getting the job finished, complete with carrying back someone’s decapitated head if need be

* John Rambo — a true Go to Guy who even though he was used, abused, even spit on by America, would do anything, especially die, just to get a single POW back

* The Terminator — not a man, so maybe this is cheating, but speaks for itself

There are obviously many more.

But hopefully the point here is made.

And also hopefully, it gave you something to think about beyond just email subject lines, headlines, sales copy, and your marketing for thinking big, and taking your business to the next thing you want to do.

To get even more ideas see my Email Players newsletter.

More here:

www.EmailPlayers.com 

Ben Settle

Let me tell you a story.

A couple months ago my favorite news source ZeroHedge tweeted about how Elon Musk internally discussed blocking Twitter access in the EU. And I then quote tweeted it, talking about how I have, several times over the years, toyed with banning all EU countries from my shopping cart.

To which I was asked why I would do that by one of my loyal EU customers.

My answer:

Because almost all the problems with delivery… flakey “digital nomads” not keeping me up-to-date on their addresses as they flit from place to place… snobby entitlement attitudes… outright crooked customs agents… crazy invoicing demands (instead of just creating a template and pasting their receipt info in they want me to custom craft a unique invoice just for lil’ ol’ them each month — no…)… etc are primarily from my EU customers.

France and Spain are probably the worst culprits.

But it ain’t just them — I’ve noticed it amongst several of them.

It’s a pattern that repeats itself every single month.

So yes, I have considered just banning all of the EU whole cloth.

But I have not been able to do so.

And the reason why I have not been able to do so is because unlike Abraham who couldn’t find even one righteous person to justify to God why He shouldn’t smite Sodom & Gomorrah… I have way too many great customers in the EU who are not problem customers (just the opposite — total “salt of the earth” customers) and am not going to smite them for the sins of a few low class jackass bums who I simply find easier to eject and ban as they rear their fugly heads.

This won’t matter to any non-EU boys & ghouls reading this.

But there it is anyway.

For more info about Email Players go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com 

Ben Settle

A daily email reader writes:

“sometimes think of your emails as sex without the orgasm lol.”

Now we’re talkin’.

Whatever the case, the comment reminded me about a very safe & effective way to approach marketing and offers. And that is, if you can make giving your business money a overwhelmingly pleasurable & exciting act for your list, market, customers, and clients… and if you can make it something they not only don’t mind doing but look forward to doing and can’t wait to do again… and if you can make it an act where maybe even certain (natural & pleasant) chemical & hormonal reactions occur in their brains & bodies… I daresay you’d never have to worry about the income side of your business ever again.

I also daresay you’ll never have any real competition, either.

And, I further daresay you’ll have turned your business into something quite different than it is now, even with weak copywriting, email, selling, or other marketing-related skills.

More:

As certain smart business owners on my list will see, the fantasy of this is not only possible, it’s something you can start doing almost immediately — even the same day you learn how it’s done.

But that is a topic for another time.

In the meantime, to learn more about Email Players go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com 

Ben Settle

Came a drive-by comment from a grammar nazi:

(totally unedited, exactly how it showed in my inbox)

You really ought to fix the little error in your text…

“…emails now they see so lame in comparison”

Should be…

“…emails now, They seem so lame in comparison”

Sheer perfection.

The irony of his grammar nazi’s advice to edit a testimonial Ken McCarthy sent me, while the grammar nazi literally capitalized a letter after a comma in his grammar lesson to me, literally writes itself. No other commentary is probably necessary about how grammar nazi’ism is a literal mental disorder on the level of pronouns in the bio. But still, I’d be remiss if I didn’t add how it was recently shown that bad grammar causes actual, physical distress in certain people.

Now, think on that a minute:

They don’t just get annoyed.

Or just irritated.

No, these schlubs get legitimate physical distress.

In my (correct) way of thinking, they have a mental disorder over bad grammar.

And just like people with pronouns in their bios, they are all but begging to be mocked, marginalized, and then ignored by the rest of us — which, if you understand the part of the human brain that ignoring someone wrenches on, causes them even more stress.

We used to treat the mentally ill with compassion.

Now?

We let them type on the internet..

What’s the world coming to?

Anyway, the above will sound “mean!” to some people.

Probably it amused others.

And maybe it even offended (hopefully) a lot more who shouldn’t even be on my list anyway like the dingbat who was offended because I used the word “chick” last week, much less clicking any links I include in my emails.

All right, that’s enough fun for today.

To learn more about my Email Players newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com 

Ben Settle

Mostly I refer to copywriting clients.

But, really, this could apply to most any other service too.

Or can be adapted as such.

Anyway, here’s the whole “secret” —

1. Make list of companies whose products you already use & who already hire direct response copywriters (i.e., sell to buyers)

2. Contact them

3. Ask who to talk to about writing copy for them

4. Take it from there

Will this work 100% of the time? Will you get a client with every try? Will someone always even get back to you? Will this be the secret sauce you use forever, and that you can now go around re-teaching to the masses as if it’s new even though it’s just basic marketing 101?

No.

What the above does is get you in the game.

Gets you meeting, making connections, and ideally interacting with someone (or several someones) passionately about their offers, as not just a copywriter but a consumer of what they sell.

More:

The above is just step one.

And step #4 “Take it from there” is obviously very obscure, because there are millions of things that can happen — more often than not totally unpredictable — from there. And that’s where having the right approach to not just freelancing… but business and even life itself (how you approach all your relationships) comes into play.

From there is it 99% relationships.

To learn more about email for your business go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Once in a while, some eager beaver soul will ask if I have an affiliate program — especially for Email Players or any of my other higher ticket books.

And the answer has always been no.

A few (not all) of the reasons include:

* Physical products are a pain in the arse to sell via affiliates

* FTC rules mean me having to “police” what affiliates say

* I am a awful money manager and don’t want to deal with paying affiliates

* I preach to the already-initiated, and never the uninitiated in my advertising, and my offers are not-at-all unsuitable for anyone not already on my list, sold “on” me, and who does not know me or is at least somewhat familiar with how I operate, think, and do things

So those are a few reasons.

I may license (to qualified businesses) certain of my books out some day.

But I doubt I’ll ever have an actual affiliate program.

That said:

The software company I co-own does have such a program.

One of the offers is BerserkerMail which is a great subscription offer upon which a cunning marketer could back end sell other offers, coaching, services, be a one-man cottage industry leader to. And the other is Learnistic Pro (our mobile app platform) which pays out extremely high commissions to the point where a marketer with his act together could probably turn it into a 6 and maybe even possibly a 7-figure operation over time, especially if one was to approach is shrewdly, and is a good salesman.

Most affiliate marketers don’t think very big though.

So neither of the above will likely appeal to them.

But for the cunning & ambitious business owner?

Maybe one or both offers would be worth looking at selling.

If you are interested in one or the other or both… reply back to this email and tell me why you want to be an affiliate for us. You don’t have to give me your life story or impress me. I just want to see if what you’re doing is compatible or not, to save us both time.

If I think you are compatible?

I’ll forward your request to our COO Nicole English who will further “vet” you.

And then from there we’ll see what happens.

To read more about my monthly paid Email Players newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

BEN SETTLE

  • Email Markauteur
  • Book & Tabloid Newsletter Publisher
  • Pulp Novelist
  • Software & Newspaper Investor
  • Client-less Copywriter

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WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING

Even when you’re simply just selling stuff, your emails are, in effect, brilliant content for marketers who want to see how to make sales copy incapable of being ignored by their core market. You are a master of this rare skill, Ben, and I tip my hat in respect.

Gary Bencivenga

(Universally acknowledged as the world’s greatest living copywriter)

www.MarketingBullets.com

I confess that I have only begun watching Ben closely and corresponding with him fairly recently, my mistake. At this point, it is, bluntly, very rare to discover somebody I find intelligent, informed, interesting and inspiring, and that is how I would describe Ben Settle.

Dan S. Kennedy

Author, ’No BS’ book series

Ben is one of the sharpest marketing minds on the planet, and he runs his membership “Email Players” better than just about any other I’ve seen. I highly recommend it.

Perry Marshall

Author of 8 books whose Google book laid the foundations for the $100 billion Pay Per Click industry, whose prestigious 80/20 work has been used by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs, and whose historic reinvention of the Pareto Principle is published in Harvard Business Review.

www.PerryMarshall.com

I think Ben is the light heavyweight champion of email copywriting. I ass-lo think we’d make Mayweather money in a unification title bout!

Matt Furey

www.MattFurey.com

Zen Master Of The Internet®

President of The Psycho-Cybernetics Foundation

Just want you to know I get great advice and at least one chuckle… or a slap on the forehead “duh”… every time I read your emails!

Carline Anglade-Cole

AWAI’s Copywriter of the Year Award winner and A-list copywriter who has written for Oprah and continually writes control packages for the world’s most prestigious (and competitive) alternative health direct marketing companies

www.CarlineCole.com

I’ve been reading your stuff for about a month. I love it. You are saying, in very arresting ways, things I’ve been trying to teach marketers and copywriters for 30 years. Keep up the good work!

Mark Ford

aka Michael Masterson

Cofounder of AWAI

www.AwaiOnline.com

The business is so big now. Prob 4x the revenue since when we first met… and had you in! Claim credit, as it did correlate!

Joseph Schriefer

(Copy Chief at Agora Financial)

www.AgoraFinancial.com

I wake up to READ YOUR WORDS. I learn from you and study exactly how you combine words + feelings together. Like no other. YOU go DEEP and HARD.”

Lori Haller

(“A-List” designer who has worked on control sales letters and other projects for Oprah Winfrey, Gary Bencivenga, Clayton Makepeace, Jim Rutz, and more.

www.ShadowOakStudio.com

I love your emails. Your e-mail style is stunningly effective.

Bob Bly

The man McGrawHill calls

America’s top copywriter

and bestselling author of over 75 books

www.Bly.com

Ben might be a freaking genius. Just one insight he shared at the last Oceans 4 mastermind I can guarantee you will end up netting me at least an extra $100k in the next year.

Daegan Smith

www.Maximum-Leverage.com

Ben Settle is a great contemporary source of copywriting wisdom. I’ve been a big admirer of Ben’s writing for a long time, and he’s the only copywriter I’ve ever hired and been satisfied with

Ken McCarthy

One of the “founding fathers”

of Internet marketing

www.KenMcCarthy.com

I start my day with reading from the Holy Bible and Ben Settle’s email, not necessarily in that order.

Richard Armstrong

A List direct mail copywriter

whose clients have included

Rodale, Boardroom, Reader’s Digest,

Men’s Health, Newsweek,

Prevention Health Magazine, the ASCPA

and, even, The Limbaugh Letter.

www.FreeSampleBook.com

Of all the people I follow there’s so much stuff that comes into my inbox from various copywriters and direct marketers and creatives, your stuff is about as good as it gets.

Brian Kurtz

Former Executive VP of Boardroom Inc. Named Marketer of the Year by Target Marketing magazine

www.BrianKurtz.me

The f’in’ hottest email copywriter on the web now.

David Garfinkel

The World’s Greatest Copywriting Coach

www.FastEffectiveCopy.com

Ben Settle is my email marketing mentor.

Tom Woods

Senior fellow of the Mises Institute, New York Times Bestselling Author, Prominent libertarian historian & author, and host of one of the longest running and most popular libertarian podcasts on the planet

www.TomWoods.com

I’ve read your stuff and you have some of the best hooks. You really know how to work the hook and the angles.

Brian Clark

www.CopyBlogger.com

Ben writes some of the most compelling subject lines I’ve ever seen, and implements a very unique style in his blog. Honestly, I can’t help but look when I get an email, or see a new post from him in my Google Reader.

Dr. Glenn Livingston

www.GlennLivingston.com

There are very, very few copywriters whose copy I not only read but save so I can study it… and Ben is on that short list. In fact, he’s so good… he kinda pisses me off. But don’t tell him I said that. 😉

Ray Edwards

Direct Response Copywriter

www.RayEdwards.com

You’re damn brilliant, dude…I really DO admire your work, my friend!

Brian Keith Voiles

A-list copywriter who has written winning ads for prestigious clients such as Jay Abraham, Ted Nicholas, Dr. Stephen R. Covey, Robert Allen, and Gary Halbert.

www.AdvertisingMagicCopywriting.com

We finally got to meet in person and you delivered a killer talk. Your emails are one of the very few I read and study. And your laid back style.. is just perfect!

Ryan Lee

Best-selling Author

“Entrepreneur” Magazine columnist

www.RyanLee.com

There’s been a recent flood of copy writing “gurus” lately and I only trust ONE! And that’s @BenSettle

Bryan Sharpe

AKA Hotep Jesus

www.BooksByBryan.com

www.HotepNation.com

I’m so busy but there’s some guys like Ben Settle w/incredible daily emails that I always read.

Russell Brunson

World class Internet marketer, author, and speaker

www.RussellBrunson.com

Type in your primary email address below to open Ben's daily email tips and a free digital copy of his prestigious Email Players newsletter.

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