Ben Settle

A few months back, podcast coach Luis Congdon listed your pal elBenbo as part of “a list of the best damn people I’ve paid, worked with, and been privileged to learn from”:

“Ben Settle might not be your cup of tea if you can’t handle a little ego 😉 Ben’s emails, just the free ones, changed me and took me from broke and desperate to making lots more money.”

Two things about this:

(For full disclosure)

1. I don’t like people who drink tea, so I wouldn’t be in the cup

2. Re: ego — is it my fault the only way to talk to someone superior to me is to pray?

Anyhoo, on to bid’niz:

The November “Email Players” issue goes to the printer soon.

If you want to subscribe in time to get it, go ye here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

“Never underestimate the King of Hell, darling. I know a lot of swell tricks.”

— Crowley
King of Hell/King of the Crossroads
“Supernatural”

Here’s a fat Crowley Month lesson for you… behold one of the most valuable quotes you will ever read, if you have ears to see and eyes to hear:

“The great negotiators don’t create objections, so they don’t have to deal with them.”

That ditty is from the late Jim Camp.

(Called “the world’s most feared negotiator”)

I first heard that quote 10 years ago in an interview Jim Camp gave to Michael Senoff. And, it’s no exaggeration that unpacking and then applying that one-liner has probably been responsible for more sales in my emails and sales copy than any tactic, trick, or writing technique ever has.

Why?

Because objections are obviously a big part of why people don’t buy.

And, if you know how to write your copy (especially email copy) in a way where you don’t create anything to object to, then you automatically get rid of that which prevents them from buying from your emails and sales copy (and other selling endeavors — including face to face, phone, webinars, livestreams, whatever).

Very few copywriters do this in their copy.

(Much less teach it.)

But guess what, my Pet?

In the November “Email Players” issue Yours Unruly explains how this works in detail, including with an example so you can see exactly how it works.

I’m sending it to the printer soon.

If you want it in time, subscribe here today:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

“This isn’t Wall Street, this is Hell. We have a little something called integrity.”

— Crowley
King of Hell/King of the Crossroads

An observation:

There seems to be a growing number of people claiming to be “7-figure” earners/copywriters.

Maybe some are, maybe some aren’t.

But, like most Internet claims, the Crowley is in the details.

For example:

Not long ago, “Email Players” subscriber Lauren Hazel asked a question on Facebook about people claiming to be 7-figure copywriters. Do they mean they earned 7-figures per year as a copywriter, or have their ads generated over 7-figures in sales? Or, did they earn 7-figures ONE year but haven’t since?

And, I would add:

How do they know their ad created those 7-figures?

Copy is a sales multiplier, not a sales creator, in my experience. How many of those sales were from the offer/quality of the list/traffic, etc?

Yes, in some instances it can be tracked.

In others, not so much.

Anyway, to the legit ones I say all the power to ’em.

But, it’s amusing to watch the rationalization hamsters spin from those who aren’t, but pretend to be.

All right, on to bid’niz:

I won’t say my “Email Players” newsletter will make you a millionaire.

But, there are quite a few for-real millionaires who subscribe.

I wonder why…

More info here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

“I am a monster and I’ve done bad. I’ve done things you can’t even imagine. Horrible, evil, messy things. And I’ve loved every damn minute!”

— Crowley
King of the Crossroads/King of Hell
“Supernatural”

I’ve decided to make October:

“Crowley Month”

Crowley being the King of Hell/King of the Crossroads (the #1 crossroads demon salesman who sells people their greatest desires in exchange for collecting their souls in 10 years) from the hit TV show “Supernatural”.

Anyway, I’ll be talking about him a lot this month.

And, he is easily one of my all-time favorite TV characters.

In fact, there are many business lessons he teaches.

For example:

• Master salesmanship — Drawing upon the same persuasion methodology used by the late Bernard Baruch (called “The Most Persuasive Man Of The 20th Century according to the great Gary Bencivenga) — Crowley finds out what people want, and shows them how to get it, and does it in such a way that he bypasses all reason, rationality, and, yes, even price resistance. (i.e. whatever they want in exchange for their souls)
• Branding — Crowley drinks his alcoholic beverage of choice out of a glass with an umbrella and a devil’s pitchfork, and the number 666 and a devil emoticon pops up on the phones of people he calls.
• Ambition — In the span of 300 years… from his mortal death to his soul burning in hell, to it being twisted into a demon, Crowley rose up through the ranks to be the top crossroads demon salesman (and king). Then, later, he seized the title of King of Hell as soon as the position opened. Considering there must be demons with hundreds, if not thousands, of years of more experience being a demon than him, that’s no small feat…
• Diligence — You could say he’s also the King of Gary Halbert’s “Operation Moneysuck” — as he does only the tasks only he can do, while delegating the rest to his minions and, in some cases (without them knowing) his enemies.
• Integrity — His love of loopholes notwithstanding, Crowley is also the King of Consumer Confidence, making sure his crossroads demons hold up their bargains with mortals, and severely torturing those who don’t. After all, if word got out that the crossroads demons were reneging on their deals, why would any humans even entertain the idea of doing business with them?
• Loyalty — Crowley is loyal to a fault to his joint venture business partners (and even his treacherous witch mother who tries to use, manipulate, and eventually kill him), even as their moronic incompetence and bad decisions put his own operations and machinations in peril.
• Visionary — Crowley’s first act as King of Hell was to upgrade hell — including turning it from a torture chamber to an endless waiting line souls never get to the front of for eternity. Although that later gets tossed to the side, the fact he was thinking that far outside the box is impressive, to say the least.

Crowley has many more valuable business attributes.

But, that doesn’t mean he’s without his flaws.

Like, for example, he sometimes shows very little patience.

Especially for a king.

And, frankly, that’s why it’s such a pity our postal workers are such poosies they won’t grant my request to deliver a signed copy of my “Persuasion Secrets Of The World’s Most Charismatic & Influential Villains” book to him in hell, in his throne room.

One of the big lessons inside is about Patience.

How it’s more rare than gold and a million times more valuable.

You, on the other hand, can read it, my little Minion.

Not only is it inexpensive, but it can be read in one sitting, and has gotten rave reviews not only on Amazon, but also from people like the Founding Father of Internet marketing as we know it — Ken McCarthy, who all pretty much say the same thing:

It’s the book they wish someone had handed them in their yutes.

One guy I know (who asked I don’t reveal his name for obvious reasons, but many an Internet marketer knows him) told me it even helped him pick up a hot chick he’d just met.

He simply handed the book to her and said:

“I do everything this guy talks about in here”

(Something like that, but that was the gist)

Again, I’ll be writing a lot more about Crowley this month.

In the meantime, check out my Villains book here:

www.EmailPlayers.com/villains

Ben Settle

Today is the deadline to get your dripping meat hooks on the special October Halloween issue of “Email Players”.

Here’s what’s inside:

• And email-friendly business plan so horrifyingly simple it’ll scare the living hell out of the broke, chest-beating marketers with all their complex funnels, dorky onboarding theories, and pointless nurturing sequences.
• A spine-tinglingly easy way for eCommerce marketers to hang their competition with their own digital intestines!
• How to plunge a sharp stake through the hearts of any merchant account monsters who delight in shutting you down for no reason.
• A frightfully effective subject line template created by a New York Times bestselling author.
• One blood-curdling reason to track opens (nothing to do with sales, but it could potentially prevent a particularly horrible goblin from leaping out of the shadows and killing your sales).
• A bone-chillingly fun way to turn deranged articles and topics into respectable “G-rated” emails people love to buy from.
• And a whole lot more…

Including, this 11-page bonus interview titled:

“How Professional Practices
Can Use My Evil Ways
To Bytch-Slap The Competition
While Still Looking ‘Professional’”

Some of the diabolically evil information inside includes:

• Ghastly examples (you can’t “un-see” in your mind) of how to use vision to make your email copy nearly impossible to ignore.
• My gruesome secret to selling the living dead out of your emails without mentioning any benefits or claims.
• A deliciously gory way to use Facebook to get into the psychology of people you sell to. (And without using any analytics, FB ads, etc.)
• A horrifically violent real-life example of a way to get people on Facebook to write your sales letter headlines for you. (I did this to create the best headline I ever used — and didn’t write a single word of it myself.)
• What a horridly-brilliant A-list copywriter taught me about how to structure a sales letter to eliminate objections.
• A secret way of writing your copy to make even ghoulishly high prices virtually irrelevant.
• What Mel Gibson did in the most profitable movies he directed that can make your emails stand out like a cackling, wart-faced witch in a beauty pageant. (And dwarf whatever sales your emails make you now — in some ways, this is the most powerful email lesson I can teach anyone.)
• How all those social media share buttons haunting your website could be murdering your opt-ins and sales in cold blood.

All right, enough of this cheezy horror flick wannabe email.

I’m sending this issue to the printer today.

To get it in time before it’s too late, go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

A little while back, I saw a book title by an “Email Players” subscriber and New York Times bestselling author (one of the things that makes best selling books is the ability of the author to write titles that demand attention, and this one has the gift) that makes for a perfect email subject line template.

It’s got everything a great subject line should have:

• Embedded curiosity
• Invalidating enemies (via mockery — one of my favorite ways)
• Uses an emotionally charged word everyone is familiar with (in this case, “Facebook”)
• Perfect for selling against type (which are hard to ignore for most people)
• Crawls right into the psychology of your reader if done right

Anyway, it’s a beauty you can probably only use once per year or so.

(Lest you overuse it)

But, a perfect subject line for when you have to get attention.

A sort of “nuclear option” subject line.

If you’d like to see this template, and examples of how to use it (some of which you can probably just use “as is” depending on what market you’re in), turn to pages 11 and 12 in the October “Email Players” issue which goes to the printer in about 48 hours.

After that, it’ll be too late to get it.

Here’s the link to get your lovin’ while the gettin’s good:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

I’ve told this real life tale of terror from Email Players subscriber Doberman Dan Gallapoo many times.

Too many times to count.

But, I do so because it bears repeating over and over and over.

Anyway, about 6 years ago, I was talking to him about merchant accounts. Dan had been selling health supplements for over a decade, had an impeccable “money trail” record to look at as being ethical and transparent. And, he has always run a business as honest as the day is long.

But, that didn’t stop the merchant account monsters from attacking.

He said one day all was going great.

No chargebacks or problems, happy customers.

The next?

Out of the blue, he woke up to a bunch of declined orders.

Talk about a Halloween-level horror story…

Imagine having your business running like normal, then one day waking up to dozens (maybe hundreds) of declined orders. With no warning. And, no “heads up” whatsoever. Someone at the bank decides your business is suddenly “high risk” (even though you have hardly any charge backs or complaints on file) and your business is effectively shut down… in the blink of a bureaucrat’s eye.

Yikes.

Now, you may be thinking:

“But Ben! I don’t sell supplements. I sell an eBook — information — with nothing controversial about it…”

You think that makes you safe?

Forget regular merchant accounts for a second.

Even 3rd party payment processors that have been selling info products for years are following suit.

Take Yours Unruly, for example.

Around that time I was gearing up to promote a high ticket product with affiliates. It was a physical product, and I didn’t want to mess with paying affiliates myself. So I thought I’d use 2Checkout. They’d been around a while and were reputable. Plus, I have even been an affiliate for info publishers who have used them to sell products very similar in content and price as my product.

But, after I tried setting my product up, I got an email that said:

“Unfortunately, we can no longer support sales from any website that would be classified as a direct marketing website by Visa and MasterCard regulations. This is a policy that has been passed down to us from our merchant provider.”

i.e. Application denied.

(Notice, their merchant account made the decision, not them.)

Again, you may be thinking:

“Yeah, but I use clickbank and paypal…”

So?

Who’s to say clickbank won’t do this?

Or even PayPal?

Or your precious Stripe account?

Hellz, even bush league amateurs who use sites like shopify, wix, etc are at rysk.

What makes you so sure any of these sites won’t decide to ban selling products from all “direct marketing” sites?

We live in strange times, where anything can happen.

(Just ask Doberman Dan.)

Fortunately, there is a solution to this.

And, just this last Spring at a mastermind I attended, I heard an 8 word “game plan” from someone in the biz opp market (where merchant accounts are notorious for shutting marketers down cold on a whim, without explanation or warning) — that anyone with a merchant account can follow to protect yourself — like a near-impenetrable suit of armor — from the merchant account monsters.

Yes, just 8 words, that if you follow will protect you.

Or, at least put your mind way more at ease.

And guess what?

In the October “Email Players” issue I reveal what this secret is.

And, how to get the ball rolling with immediately.

But, she goes to the printer in 3 days.

If you want in, best high tail it to this link and subscriber today:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

“Email Players” subscriber Jake Lunniss partakes of elBenbo’s evil fruit, and prefers it to the rotten guru vines:

“…four years ago I started an Infusionsoft consultancy, and after 18 months had the largest Infusionsoft company (called “Benelds”) in APAC. We sold almost 1000 apps, had about $120k a year in commissions, and for reasons I’ll go into if you’re interested, I was fat and miserable. In April I picked up my mat and ball and jumped ship. I left the company with my ex (who I also ran the business with, and also left), along with all the commissions, customers, employees and revenue.

All I took with me was an old, cold, contact list.

I’ve been shouting for years that the most effective way to make sales is with direct email, and a question I get more times than I can remember is “how often should I email?” People always want to hear “Wednesday at 11:03 is the #1 to convert a sale…”. My glib answer was always “as often as is necessary” or “every day. No one will care until you get boring”. 

I chanced upon your daily email one day, and it struck a chord. Here was someone who actually emails every day.

I also like that you slam gurus and every fucktard with a facebook ad. In my Infusionsoft world  has a loud voice, and I loathe the way he teaches people to email. So I signed up, partly because I love the bagging that the gurus get, and partly because I learned so much from the free emails that I felt you a) deserved it (see, reciprocity is a thing), and b) like everyone else, if I can make money writing an email a day, I’ll be happy with that.

So, onto that B2B thing. I’m a consultant: I don’t have products to sell. So I made one up. The audit. Really it’s just a consult people pay for, that most consultants do for free as the sales process.

How many have I sold? One. But I’ve also picked up some consulting and implementation clients, none of which would have happened if I hadn’t been emailing every day. 

When I walked away in May I had $1k and nowhere to live.

I just got home from a month holidaying the US, moved into a new apartment, and have $15k in savings. I still have no idea how I managed to pull that off in 3 months. But the emailing definitely got people talking – talking about me, what was happening at Benelds, I got offered a full time job, and people who I hadn’t spoken to in years got in touch. Relationship building 101, hey.

Now it must be said – results not typical etc – that I’m already well known in Infusionsoftlandia. I was on a committee there, represented at three ICONs, and have been a loud voice for years. My product knowledge is second to none, and I can command a high price. But this list was stone cold, and I genuinely left with no money and no safety net. With the way the business had developed, I’d been out of the game for a while.

Every day I would get replies to my emails. Some simply words of affirmation and support (which, when you’re in the swing off a full-blown midlife, is nice to get), others enquiring about services, others challenging or questioning my content. I introduced a “pre-order my book” in the most recent emails and have sold at least one pre-order ($47, not cheap, no “limited offer”, just “buy this if you want”) every time the link has been in an email.

There were a few unsubs in the beginning, but they quickly settled down. Open rates have been consistently above 30%. CTR, where has been a link, has been consistently 25%.

. . .

Thanks for doing what you do. There’s every possibility that your method is the main reason I’m still eating.”

There was actually quite a bit more from Jake.

(He was writing me originally to tell me how he used my system for B2B purposes.)

But, you get the gist.

Anyway, all this hoopla I write about is real.

It works.

And, it can work for you, if you work it, and if you have a list and an offer.

The October issue goes to the printer in less than 4 days.

Here’s where to get it, while you still can:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

“I sell eCommerce – how is your email methodology going to help me??”

The above is a variation of a question that rolls in and out of here every now and then. Not every day. But, often enough where I’ve decided to address it in an “Email Players” issue. In fact, the October “Email Players” issue has an eCommerce marketing plan laid out for you (in less than a page — it ain’t complicated at all) on a golden platter being used by one of my subscribers now with ridiculously great success, probably scaring the hades out of any competition watching him rise through the ranks.

It’s ridiculously simple, too.

Which is probably why so few eCommerce people do it, opting for complicated instead, because funnels or whatever.

In fact, true story:

A while back, one of my marketing pals was telling me how they spent a small fortune to learn how to implement continuity with their business. Apparently, he spent a few days and a ton of money to learn what he did. And, while I didn’t have the heart to tell him at time… pretty much everything he told me he learned can be found in a $3.99 eBook I sell on Kindle. (Which is far more an indictment of me than anything, I have clearly been grossly under-charging for my information over the years — something I’ll be remedying in 2018 and beyond.)

Anyway, back to eCommerce:

It goes to show what I’ve been saying for years:

eCommerce, B2B, MLM, getting freelance clients, brick & mortar businesses… all these businesses that are supposedly different or whatever — at the end of the day, it’s just simple direct response marketing.

You build a list and mail it.

You mail those buyers other related stuff.

And, if you have an especially big eCommerce product line (like the “Email Players” subscriber whose marketing plan I share in the next issue) you simply do it how he does it, and you’ll be just fine.

That’s all I got for today.

The October issue goes to the printer in 4 days.

It’s a great jumping on issue for newer people to my world, especially.

Here’s the link:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle