{"id":10176,"date":"2015-08-31T07:18:25","date_gmt":"2015-08-31T14:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/?page_id=10176"},"modified":"2015-08-31T07:18:25","modified_gmt":"2015-08-31T14:18:25","slug":"how-to-win-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/how-to-win-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Win The Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Hi, I\u2019m Michael Senoff, founder and CEO of www.HardToFindSeminars.com. For the last 5 years, I\u2019ve interviewed the world\u2019s best business and marketing minds. Along the way, I\u2019ve created a successful publishing business all from home, from my 2-car garage. Now my challenge is to build the world\u2019s largest free resource for online downloadable MP3 audio business interviews. I knew I needed a site that contained strategies, solutions, and inside angles to help you live better, to save and make more money, to save healthier, and to get more out of life. I\u2019ve learned a lot in the last 5 years and today, I\u2019m going to show you the skills you need to survive.<\/p>\n

For the guests who are just now joining us, can you give out your URL website and tell them what to do when they get there?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah, it\u2019s www.BenSettle.com<\/a> and if you go there you can opt in or not opt in, it\u2019s up to you. If you do opt in, I will send you the first issue of my Email Players newsletter. It will be a PDF, not the print version of the first issue. That\u2019s a very real $97 value. That\u2019s what it costs every month to be a member. No one ever gets a price break or anything like that. It\u2019s $97 a month. That\u2019s what that issue is legitimately worth, and it\u2019s got 24 different ways to make more money with your emails. I just went through 24 different things you can do \u2013 different openings and subject lines and approaches and ideas \u2013 and people absolutely make money on that, just going through that free issue because that\u2019s the goal. I want them to get a taste of what I have to offer them, and what better way than show them how to actually make some more sales? So that\u2019s free and if you don\u2019t opt in, that\u2019s fine too. You can go to the blog and I\u2019ve got well over 1000 pages\u2019 worth of content on there and a bunch of audio and video; it\u2019s all free so it\u2019s yours for the taking. You can download it listen to it, whatever you want to do; www.BenSettle.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Ben, for the listeners who don\u2019t really know who you are, have never heard of you, give them the Cliff Note version of how you got your start.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Okay. I was in college in the mid- to late-nineties, and when I graduated I knew I did not want to do the job thing forever. I just knew even at that age \u2013 I had an uncle pretty much the whole time I\u2019ve been alive I think he\u2019s been in Amway, and he was always trying to prep me for when I was old enough to do it, so he\u2019d always give me these inspirational books and all that. So when I got out of college, all I could think of, \u201cWell, if I\u2019m going to do business, this is the only kind of business I know how to do, MLM.\u201d I didn\u2019t join his thing; fortunately for him, actually.<\/p>\n

The last couple of days of college, I remember watching this infomercial that Kevin Trudeau was putting on \u2013 you remember Kevin Trudeau, the infomercial guy? He did pretty good infomercials and he was doing an infomercial on MLM. He was generating his own leads and sponsoring people in MLM through direct response PD, and I didn\u2019t understand what direct response or anything like that meant, but I was definitely persuaded to want to do what he was doing, so I called the number. A few days later this guy called me. His name was Derek Scott and we became good friends over the years and he sponsored me into it. It cost like $800 and that was when I was broke; I didn\u2019t have any money. I put it all on a credit card and got into debt. It actually got me started in business.<\/p>\n

A year and a half, I\u2019d gotten in so much debt, I had to find all these leads and the $100 a month auto thing they had you on, and other stuff, and all these bad financial decisions \u2013 I was married at the time \u2013 and things had gotten so bad that I had to live in an office because I couldn\u2019t afford a real place. It was either go to this office, which was $250 a month, or go live with my mother with a wife and those two did not get along very well, so the office it was. We went to this office and lived there.<\/p>\n

It was a two room office. There was a bathroom \u2013 there was a toilet basically and a sink, there was no shower or anything. This office was conjoined to the landlord\u2019s office, this older man who was on all these different prescription drugs and everything, and he\u2019d always fly through that door early in the morning right when he came into the office, to use the bathroom because that was on our side, and we didn\u2019t want him to know we were living there because that probably wouldn\u2019t have flown very well for him. What we\u2019d do is every morning, we\u2019d get up at 4:00 AM and we\u2019d go down to the gym, go play basketball or whatever and shower there and get dressed and then come back around 7:00 AM as if we\u2019re just coming in for the morning to get some work done or whatever.<\/p>\n

Anyway, this went on for about 5 or 6 months and then it was getting depressing. It was embarrassing. I was trying to hide the fact that this was going on from my friends and family because it was just humiliating, and we were both trying to work this MLM deal where we were getting to the point where we\u2019d go around time and hand out these audio cassette tapes. This is back in the cassette tape days. There was no MP3s and barely anybody was probably marketing online the way we know it today, and we\u2019re trying to hand out these cassette tapes and trying to recruit local business people kind of like door to door, and getting laughed at and humiliated. You know you\u2019re kind of getting that look from people like, \u201cOh, man, you poor schlubs.\u201d You know me, Michael; I\u2019m like this introverted guy. I like to just hang out by myself most of the time. I don\u2019t really like talking to a lot of people and all that.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really know why I got into that business, but whatever the case, it was very humiliating, very humbling, and one night, I remember this like it was yesterday because it\u2019s just seared into my brain, it was about 3:00 AM in the morning. We\u2019re both laying on the floor of the office \u2013 we didn\u2019t have a bed or anything \u2013 and I was just depressed off my butt. I\u2019m like this is just not working. I literally prayed to God that night like, \u201cGod, you don\u2019t want me doing this. I know you don\u2019t want me doing this because I suck at this. I hate being in this business, I hate everything about it. I hope there\u2019s something better for me.\u201d So I got up, wide awake, and went into the other part of the office where the bookcase was and I kind of looked at the bookshelf just to keep my mind occupied on something, and pulled out this book called The 7 Lost Secrets of Success by Joe Vitali.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Was this the office owner\u2019s book or your book?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> No, it was my book and I had read it a couple times before because it was the book of the month at the MLM company I was in \u2013 they sent us every month called book of the month \u2013 and I liked it. It was a short book and it was about this old school advertising guy named Bruce Barton.<\/p>\n

Now, hardly anybody knows who Bruce Barton is today. I bet if you asked 1 in 1000 people in marketing who Bruce Barton is, they wouldn\u2019t know, or they might know because he was the second B in the BBDO ad agency, but most people have no clue who he is, but in the early to mid-1900s this guy was everything. He was a household name. Everyone knew who he was. He was an open enemy of FDR; they both were public about that. The President of the United States was an enemy. He would advise Wall Street people and he ran for Congress and he helped found the BBDO agency, which was one of the biggest advertising agencies in the world. In fact, somebody said at the time it\u2019s hard to go anywhere, talk to anyone, and not hear the name Bruce Barton come up, and now he\u2019s a complete unknown, unfortunately. He was the kind of guy that would tell businesses like US Steel, \u201cYou can\u2019t stop advertising or people are going to forget about you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyway, the book is about him and these success secrets that Joe Vitali pulled out of studying this guy\u2019s life, and it\u2019s still one of my favorite books. Anyway, I was just thumbing through it and I turn to this page where he was telling a story about Bruce Barton back in 1919, which I believe was right on the tail end of World War I, and the economy was in a shambles and a lot of people were out of work, and he was this businessman in a big city, Chicago or New York or whatever, and this salesman actually came to him for advice in his office one day. This guy just basically asked Bruce, \u201cHelp me, man. Help me find a job.\u201d<\/p>\n

It turned out that this guy who came to Bruce was known for being good at writing sales letters. He was a salesman but apparently he\u2019d made a name for himself in the business as being very good at sales letters and Bruce Barton takes him to the window and says, \u201cYou\u2019re supposed to be good at writing sales letters; why don\u2019t you write a letter to one of these buildings out there,\u201d and he\u2019s like showing him all the buildings in the city, \u201cselling them on hiring you.\u201d Dude, there was something about that story that just clicked. I\u2019m like, \u201cSales letters? You can get paid for writing that, you can sell through a letter? I don\u2019t have to go door to door to call leads and cold calling and all that? I can actually sell by writing?\u201d That\u2019s like an introvert\u2019s wet dream. That\u2019s like exactly \u2013 I didn\u2019t even know there was this out there. I\u2019d heard of a term, \u201ccopywriting\u201d and everything but it was just a vague notion.<\/p>\n

That night, I got on the internet and started looking up sales letters and copywriting and ran into the names Dan Kennedy and Gary Hubbard and all the usual names people run into when they start studying direct response copywriting and it was like a rabbit hole. I just jumped into it. At first, I tried to sell MLM using sales letters and I did get some leads doing it, which was kind of nice, but I realized that MLM just wasn\u2019t my thing and I wanted to do freelancing and it wasn\u2019t long after that, maybe a couple years after that, where I actually ran into you and started working with you. That\u2019s where I really started honing my abilities because we were doing those projects where we were splitting everything 50\/50 so if my ads didn\u2019t convert, neither of us got paid but they did convert and we sold some good stuff and I remember paying off some debts and all kinds of good stuff with it, and that\u2019s how I got started.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> So you knew when you saw that, \u201cThis is going to be my thing to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah, I did. It was the thing, because when you\u2019re in MLM, at least at that time \u2013 I don\u2019t know how it is now \u2013 but at least at that time, it was very, very cultic. It\u2019s like \u201cYou\u2019ve got to do it our way, we have a system, it\u2019s got to be duplicatable,\u201d as they used to call it, \u201cYou can\u2019t go writing stuff because that\u2019s not part of what we do. You\u2019ve got this VHS tape, you have to use that and you have to show the plan in their way.\u201d The whole idea of writing a sales letter or generating your own list and all that and selling maybe some kind of low cost lead gen like they do today in MLM, or all the smart people do, they call it a funded proposal. You sell somebody a product on how to be better at network marketing generically promoting a company. People go through that product and they\u2019re like, \u201cMan, this person really knows what they\u2019re doing, maybe I should have him sponsor me,\u201d which is a much smarter way of doing it but back then it was very cultic; it was like you have to do it this way and you got indoctrinated with this and it never occurred to me to write sales letters or anything like that. Once I saw that you could do this and I saw that it actually worked, I couldn\u2019t imagine doing anything else.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> And it\u2019s your personality. It\u2019s a dream job for anyone who wants to sit on their butt, have their own time, have their privacy, and be able to make money from their kitchen table, literally.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> It\u2019s the ultimate kitchen table thing. In fact, back then I was duplicating video tapes. That\u2019s what I did for my job, I would go and duplicate tapes like Knight and Dale Cohen and all these other clients like that, and I somehow was able to get a spot on the second shift which means I have a certain time at night, like 7:00 at night, where nobody was there except me. Even better than that, I was able to get my work done early and I would practice handwriting ads out by hand and reading books and all that on the job.<\/p>\n

I remember when we were working on Art Hamel\u2019s stuff \u2013 that was how to buy a business using your own money \u2013 and I would listen to the interview you did with him over and over like on my lunch breaks, the drive to and from work, and just on my regular break. I wouldn\u2019t sit there in the lunch room with everyone. I would go out to my car and try to work on myself, try to make myself better at copywriting or study something. Back in those days, I was really on this Eugene Schwartz kick, Thought Break Through Advertising. I had this goal to read it 10 times and I was just immersing myself in this stuff, and you don\u2019t have to go to a college or university or anything; you can just do it right there at home or in a car or even at work.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Tell us about your commute.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> It was about a 30 minute commute, sometimes longer, and I would listen to stuff. If I was working on a project, for example, remember that Scooterport thing we were trying to sell?<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Yes.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> For example, the Scooterport. I wouldn\u2019t listen to the radio or anything. I would put that interview \u2013 or it wasn\u2019t even an interview; it was like a phone call you did with that guy \u2013 and I would just listen to that over and over while I\u2019m driving so I was like imbibing myself with the product and how to sell the product and how to write, and there\u2019s a lot to be said for talking to a client, recording it, and then listening to it over and over to get in the head of the product you\u2019re trying to sell and that sort of thing, but that\u2019s what I would do. I would listen to that or I\u2019d listen to copywriting training.<\/p>\n

I remember the Gene Schwartz product that you sell, and I would listen to that over and over and over. And when I made money, I would always reinvest it, especially in the beginning. I\u2019d always reinvest it back into more education. For example, the first paying gig I ever got was on Elance and this was probably back in 2002, I think I got paid like $800 or something for it, so I didn\u2019t really spend that money. I actually took that money and then I bought John Carlton\u2019s Kickass Copywriting Secrets course and I bought this collection of Gary Halbert copywriting newsletters and Scott Hanes, and I bought a bunch of books from Dan Kennedy and that sort of thing, and I think that\u2019s important for people to do when you\u2019re just getting started, reinvest those profits.<\/p>\n

Whatever it is you make, reinvest it and what that\u2019s going to do, I have found, Michael, is when you\u2019re broke like I was, it forces you to not fall for nonsense. You\u2019re not going to just fall for the latest hyped up launch or whatever. You actually do your homework on what you\u2019re going to buy. You don\u2019t just buy stuff because everyone\u2019s buying it. You only have limited funds; you got to invest in something that\u2019s going to pay off, so I think being broke was actually an asset because I was not making very much money at the time. If I had a bunch of disposable income, I\u2019d probably be like these guys today, man. They just go around buying from every launch just because it\u2019s popular or whatever, just because they\u2019re getting caught up in the hype of it, and here\u2019s something interesting, Michael.<\/p>\n

Back in like May or June, I was talking to this lady, her name is Michelle Spivel. I actually had her on my podcast to talk about this because she was telling me about how these biz op minded people and the people who just buy from one launch to the next and never actually implement anything, whatever it is, they just want to buy it. She says they\u2019re literally an addict. They get a dopamine drip every time they buy something new and it gives them that excitement and thrill and now they\u2019re looking fro that next hit. I\u2019m just really glad I never got into that because I see a lot of people in that situation where they always want their next dopamine drip and they never understand it\u2019s a cycle.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why these people will buy every e-book op and buy every course out there from every launch out there. This is not just copywriting but marketing in general; they buy everything and they never get anywhere. They\u2019re always spinning their wheels and that\u2019s a vicious cycle to be in. I think a lot of people need to be more aware that this is going on because there\u2019s a lot of addicts out there, man, and they don\u2019t even know it.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Here\u2019s a question from Alan Stacey. He says, \u201cDan Kennedy talks about the \u2018No BS\u2019 ways to build a herd. Then you often talk and write about thinning the herd. I\u2019d like to know what techniques you find most effective in driving off the bum steers while corralling hungry heifers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Interestingly enough, back in 2007, I was approached by this guy, Mike Dillard, who was pretty big in the MLM training world and he wanted me to write the sales letter for his Magnetic Sponsoring book, which is his flagship product and even to this day, nobody\u2019s beat that ad, but I learned something about that. They were big on what\u2019s called attraction marketing, and that\u2019s when you\u2019re trying to attract certain people to you in your life, and in your business and all that, and I think it\u2019s a perfectly valid way of marketing. I had no problem with it. I have found that you also get a lot of the bum steers, that way you attract a lot of what you don\u2019t want, too. That\u2019s just my observation in my own business. I\u2019m not saying everyone else has that experience but just for me, so I\u2019m big on trying to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know. Maybe it\u2019s a little rebel streak. Maybe I want to be like your teenage son, Michael, and I just want to do what everyone else is not doing and what I\u2019m told to do, not do it, but I have this idea of why don\u2019t I try something like the opposite? Repulsion marketing? So I like to repulse people away because I had this theory at the time, and there are other people who have discovered this. I\u2019m not the first to discover this or anything, but there are a lot of people who have had the same experience where if you focus on repelling the people you don\u2019t want, you kind of automatically do attract the people you do want and sometimes you flip people to your side who normally wouldn\u2019t be, because you\u2019re being so blatantly honest, and that\u2019s how you repulse people; by being blatantly honest. There are some people who for some reason think I\u2019m kind of a dick. I\u2019m not; I\u2019m just trying to repulse the people I don\u2019t want. It comes off that way to some people and if you do what I\u2019m about to say, you will be called names. I know people who are way more hostile than me out there, and I don\u2019t understand why I\u2019m the one who always gets picked on with this but whatever, it\u2019s all good.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> So it\u2019s a strategy?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> It\u2019s a strategy, and here\u2019s the thing: It\u2019s not done as like a trick or anything. Mike, it\u2019s just the righteous way by which I do business. I am going to repulse people away. For example, I don\u2019t want the dopamine addicts. I could make a lot of money. I\u2019d probably triple my sales if I did what everybody else is doing and I went with that and put a new product out all the time and living launch to launch, and serving that dopamine drip for people, I would probably make a lot of money but I would have a lot of headaches. I don\u2019t want to deal with those people. I don\u2019t think they make very good customers. They tend to be complainers, refunders, and people who want to do chargebacks and all that kind of stuff; that doesn\u2019t make them bad people. I just don\u2019t want them as customers, so to me it\u2019s a righteous way of doing business. It\u2019s a philosophy. It\u2019s like a rule, a maxim but which I do business. I am going to try to repulse away the people I don\u2019t want.<\/p>\n

I wrote an email that I was telling you about, the dopamine people and how they\u2019re literally addicts and all that, and I would write that because I want those people to know I don\u2019t want them buying. It\u2019s so weird. I will refund people\u2019s money right after they buy and subscribe to my email players newsletter, for example, because I know that they\u2019ve refunded a product of mine back when I used to have products I offered refunds for, or somebody I know, because some of these people don\u2019t even realize that they\u2019ve made a name for themselves. They\u2019re serial refunders, basically. I\u2019m not going to give them an ounce of my knowledge. They don\u2019t deserve it. They\u2019re not going to do anything with it. If that\u2019s their mindset, that\u2019s fine, if that\u2019s how they want to live their lives, but I don\u2019t want them in my customer list.<\/p>\n

I want a clean customer list of winners. I want people who are going to play to win and not play to not lose, which is what a lot of these people want to do, so I openly mock the people that I don\u2019t want. I don\u2019t do it in a way that passive aggressive or anything, I\u2019m just really blatant about stuff.
\nFor example, in the sales letter I have for Email Players, and I\u2019ll talk about this in email sometimes; if you\u2019re someone who complains about information overload, for example, don\u2019t buy from me. You\u2019re just going to be overloaded with more information and anybody who complains about more information is not applying it. There are certain people I do like, we want information. I can\u2019t imagine being overloaded with good information, so I want people like that who are implementing and applying. I don\u2019t want people that are going to complain that they got too much stuff and they can\u2019t handle it, and \u201cOh my god, I\u2019m overwhelmed.\u201d That means they\u2019re probably buying one thing after another, looking for that dopamine drip, and they\u2019ve probably got a closet full of products they never went through and I don\u2019t want those people.<\/p>\n

I want to be the priority in somebody\u2019s purchase. Let\u2019s say somebody follows me and five other people; I want to be at the top of that pile. That\u2019s how you do it, by repulsing away the people you don\u2019t want. You have a much better chance of that happening, so that\u2019s the way I do business. I\u2019m not saying that everybody should do it necessarily, but it sure does work for me.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Give me a couple of examples of some radio show personalities that have been very effective using this type of polarizing strategy.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> That\u2019s a very good question because part of my inspiration has always been talk radio personalities. Name any of the big ones; Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh. My personal favorite is Michael Savage. I haven\u2019t listened to him in a while but I love listening to him when I do. He has a lot of guests on lately but when he\u2019s on, he\u2019s about as polarizing and repulsive to people he doesn\u2019t want in his audience as you\u2019re going to get.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the irony of it all, at least in the talk radio business. I\u2019ve heard Rush Limbaugh say that 50% of his audience hates his guts, and yet they listen to see how much more mad they can get, and so his haters are supporting his show because he gets to charge more money for advertising based on the number of people who listen to the show and all that so he wants his haters and stuff on that. A little bit different tone than the way I run my business. I don\u2019t really want people who are never going to buy from me.<\/p>\n

In fact, Michael, I have another philosophy about which way I like to do business and it\u2019s actually based on the Book of Revelation of all things, but there\u2019s this letter to one of the churches from Jesus and he\u2019s like \u201cYou\u2019ve done all these good things but you\u2019re lukewarm. I would rather you be hot or cold. I\u2019m going to spew you out because you\u2019re lukewarm.\u201d That\u2019s the way I look at managing customers and lists. I want to spew out the lukewarm people. I want the people who are hot or cold. It\u2019s just what I teach and my personality, which I\u2019m not trying to force on anyone; it\u2019s just how I think. If I make someone cold where they\u2019re never going to buy, I have done them and myself a service because they\u2019re going to leave my list, peacefully most likely, and go on to other things and that\u2019s fine. That\u2019s good for both of us. If I can make people hot for what I have, they may not be able to buy right away but eventually they\u2019ll buy when they can. I like having them around. They make great customers and all that, but the lukewarm people, they just hang around and they\u2019re on your list to complain, like \u201cOh, man, you\u2019re sending me too many emails,\u201d and they\u2019re just like deleting your email or getting off of your list or whatever; those are the lukewarm people.<\/p>\n

Those are the people I want nothing to do with. My goal is to turn them hot or cold and by trying to repulse them away, that\u2019s what\u2019s going to happen. They\u2019re either going to turn cold on me and leave or they may in some cases actually become a believer in what I\u2019m doing and stick around. That\u2019s a whole other way of doing things. I think it\u2019s to spew off the lukewarm people.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> You\u2019re listening to an interview with Ben Settle. Ben, why don\u2019t you give the listeners your website? What is your URL?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> My website is www.BenSettle.com<\/a>. When you go there you have a choice. You can either opt in or just go to the blog from there. If you opt in, I send you the first issue of my Email Players newsletter as a PDF. It\u2019s a print newsletter that\u2019s $97 a month. I send you that first issue as a PDF. It\u2019s got 24 ways in there that you can immediately use to make more money with emails. I\u2019ve got people saying to me thousands of extra dollars just using that. You can get that if you opt in. If you don\u2019t opt in, you can still go to the blog. I have well over 1000, maybe 1500 pages of content on there and over a dozen hours of audio and video training that\u2019s free, so either way, if you opt in or you don\u2019t, there\u2019s a lot of stuff there worth checking out if you want to learn more about email.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Here\u2019s a question from Al Bravo. \u201cBen, if you land in an unknown city with no money and no one knows you, how would you go about getting to write, or simply said, how would you start your copy business from zero? How do you get to convince that first client that will get you going?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> It\u2019s kind of a two part thing. Getting started is not the easiest thing in the world if you don\u2019t have a network in place, but it\u2019s not impossible obviously and the first thing you got to know is what kind of clients to go for. A lot of people, if they were dropped in the middle of a city with a few dollars in their pocket and they wanted to start a copywriting business from scratch, they would probably go to companies that they think would need copywriting. They would go to local businesses, chiropractors, and they would say, \u201cHey, you could really use copywriting and here\u2019s why you should hire me.\u201d That\u2019s the wrong way to do it.<\/p>\n

The first thing you should do is do some research on who\u2019s already using copywriting, so people who are already paying someone or several someones to write copy for them. You want to go after people who are already buying what you\u2019re selling. Just doing that, this applies to any kind of product, not just copywriting. It\u2019s hard to convince people to want to use copywriting and have them behave in a way, but if you go to a company that\u2019s already hiring copywriting, they\u2019re already tracking their copy, they\u2019re already testing stuff, trust me, they\u2019re hungry for someone to come in and beat their control packages and all that and write better ads for them and make them an extra percentage point in sales. Those are the people to go after first, so that\u2019s the first thing, is research that.<\/p>\n

Secondly, a lot of copywriters don\u2019t want to hear this, but if you want to do this fast, start writing sales letters for your own product or service. I don\u2019t care if it\u2019s an affiliate, like if you go find a product that\u2019s selling really good on Clickbank if you want and maybe the sales letter isn\u2019t that great, write your own sales letter. Then you\u2019ll be able to show a client \u201cI was able to make more sales than whatever using this, than when I used their ad.\u201d Or create your own product, which I think is even a better idea, write your own ads for your own products and make some sales, and then you can honestly say \u201cLook, I write ads that make money.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s funny. I\u2019ve had this discussion with somebody recently, Michael, where a lot of copywriters, and I\u2019ve seen this over and over including from people that I have a lot of respect for and all that \u2013 I haven\u2019t talked to any of them about this but I wonder if they would agree with it or not \u2013 a lot of the newer people will go around and they will promote themselves by saying \u201cI\u2019ve studied under Jay Abraham and Dan Kennedy, I study all their stuff,\u201d and it\u2019s like that\u2019s going to benefit them. It kind of looks amateurish. Who\u2019s more likely to get a job, somebody who says \u201cI study Dan Kennedy and Gary Bensavenga,\u201d which is fine, nothing\u2019s wrong with studying those guys, I do, but it\u2019s not a selling point for getting clients. Most clients don\u2019t care. Even if they\u2019re like a Gary Halbert fanboy, it doesn\u2019t hurt to say \u201cI\u2019ve studied under Gary Halbert\u201d but what\u2019s more important is you say \u201cLook, I\u2019ve written ads and here\u2019s the response I\u2019ve gotten where I sell my own stuff. I don\u2019t just do this for clients. I do it for my own stuff. This is real world experience. I don\u2019t\u2019 rely on theory and hearsay, I actually know it works.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how I would go about it, those two things. You find somebody who\u2019s already buying copywriting service and you sell your own stuff before you even approach any of these guys and you show them that you\u2019re worth taking a chance on and chances are, if you go after the right people, they\u2019d be happy to give you a chance. They just don\u2019t want to waste their time with anyone.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Dave from Florida wants to know \u201cBen, how much have you and Jonathan, your producer from your podcast, tracked directly to your bottom lines from the podcast and from what sources?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I started the podcast the first week of February 2014 \u2013 it was like a year and a half ago \u2013 and the reason why I started is because a few months before that, I had a conversation with a guy named Danny Eine. His thing is he\u2019s called the Freddy Krueger of blogging; that was how he got his start and all that.<\/p>\n

Even more important than that, he kind of got me thinking differently about lists and all that and he\u2019s big on showing people not just how to build a list but how to build an audience. An audience is made up of more than just a list. The bigger your audience, probably the more money you\u2019re going to make. A list is part of your audience, your email list. Your direct mail list is part of your audience. Your social media list is part of your audience. All together, they\u2019re all part of your audience.<\/p>\n

Take a talk radio guy; say Rush Limbaugh, his listeners are part of his audience but not all of his listeners are necessarily yon his email list, and not everyone on his email list is listening to all of his shows, and people who follow him probably on social media, if he\u2019s even on social media, are not all necessarily listening to every show and they\u2019re not all on his email list. It\u2019s like the audience encompasses all of these different corners of your market that you can be exposed to and they got me thinking about that, and I started thinking about how maybe I should do a podcast.<\/p>\n

This is something I knew some people were doing. It\u2019s something I wanted to do just to hone my communication skills, which I\u2019m always trying to do, and that year I actually did some public speaking too and I wanted to get more comfortable with it, so I started up a podcast. What happened was in early January \u2013 I think it was January 1st that year \u2013 it was like a New Year\u2019s Day email I sent out talking about my goals for the year, and one of the goals for 2014 was to start a podcast. I had no idea how to do it. I didn\u2019t know the technical aspects of it. I had no idea how to get on iTunes or anything like that. My friend, Jonathan Rivera, who\u2019s been a customer of mine, player subscriber since 2011, he said, \u201cYou know, Ben, I\u2019d like to be a part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

As far as I know, he had never done any podcast stuff at that point so we were kind of learning it together. He became a producer. He had like a team in place of like audio people and all this stuff and we paid them through the profits from the show. We took a little bit longer selling stuff than we should have. That\u2019s a big mistake. We should have been selling stuff. The guy has his own list that\u2019s independent of my list. He runs that list and he takes care of the customer service and all that. He\u2019s kind of created his own little thing now called The Podcast Factory where he produces a lot of shows.<\/p>\n

So anyway, that\u2019s how I got started. It\u2019s kind of hard to track if a listener, how they found you and all this. I can tell you this: my sales have definitely gone up, whether they\u2019ve gone up from that or something else I can\u2019t say for sure, but I have had 10 or more people, they\u2019ve told me that. They found me through my podcast and then they started reading my other stuff and now they\u2019re a customer, and that\u2019s just the people who are telling me, so for every person who\u2019s telling me there are probably more people who aren\u2019t. I would say it\u2019s very worth it. It has been worth definitely the time and energy. I would do it though, Michael, I honestly would do it just to do because it\u2019s like therapy. I get to get on there for 20 minutes and just rant about whatever. I like doing it. It\u2019s a nice income stream and all that \u2013 it\u2019s starting to turn into one, at least. My goal is for Jonathan and I to both make five figures from that each but that might be a little bit off.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> How do you build a list from that podcast? Is it at the beginning of the podcast, you direct someone to a website specifically for the podcast list?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> It\u2019s not at the beginning. It\u2019s at the middle and the end; it\u2019 like this little commercial. This lady comes on \u2013 I recently found another girl to do the voice; we\u2019re just like three months ahead so it\u2019s going to be a while for that \u2013 but a voice comes on and says, \u201cWould you like a transcript for today\u2019s show,\u201d because a lot of people don\u2019t necessarily want to have to listen to it. Maybe they want to read it and dissect it. Well, if they opt in, they get a weekly transcript of every show so that\u2019s kind of like the carrot, but I also added in the free email players issue too that I give away on my regular site if they opt in.<\/p>\n

What happens is it goes out every Sunday; we have a new podcast episode up. Usually that Saturday, I\u2019ll promote my podcast. I\u2019ll tease them about what\u2019s going to be talked about on Sunday and I\u2019ll send them to sites where they can start listening to the show beforehand hopefully and they can download past episodes. We have like 82 episodes now so there\u2019s a lot for them to do. It\u2019s a very responsive list. We recently did an affiliate campaign selling Ken McCarthy\u2019s copywriting course. This is an interesting thing we\u2019ve done which kind of occurred to me as we were putting it together. I said, \u201cJonathan, let\u2019s try something here. Let\u2019s do an in depth interview with Ken. We\u2019ll do like a 2 hour interview with him and we\u2019ll break it up into four parts and we\u2019ll make like a four part podcast that goes out over the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n

We had one episode go out on Thursday, one go out on Friday, one Saturday, one Sunday. It was all the same interview but chopped up into four parts, like the first part was about headlines, the second part was about bullets, and I don\u2019t think we promoted his course in each one until that Sunday.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Did he come on the podcast show or did you interview him individually?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> It\u2019s funny, he\u2019s like the founding father of internet marketing but he\u2019s like, \u201cDude, I\u2019m going to be honest with you; I don\u2019t even know how to hook up a mic to my computer.\u201d It wasn\u2019t like this high level audio that we usually have, talking into microphones. It was a phone interview. It wasn\u2019t even the best connection so we had to do it that way, record a phone call and just chop it into four parts. I promoted that all weekend from Thursday to Sunday, just the podcast. I didn\u2019t promote his product at all to my main list because I wanted to do an experiment, but during the weekend, we did a Michael Senoff style, I will say, because I learned this from you, email promotion. I\u2019d send like two emails a day to the podcast list selling his course while they were listening to the interview, and then Sunday blast them with like five or six or seven emails just the way we always do it.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> How much did this course sell for?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> It was like $1000.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> And this is just to the podcast list?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Just to the podcast list; I never once promoted it to my main list. I wanted to see how responsive the podcast list was, so here\u2019s what happened. On Monday, I go, \u201cJonathan, how many sales did we make?\u201d He showed me the stats. There was like 500 clicks and zero sales according to the affiliate thing. I was like wow, that\u2019s a bust, whatever. Turns out though that the affiliate thing was just lagging a little. The software didn\u2019t register the sales until that Monday afternoon and I can\u2019t tell you how many sales I got but I can tell you it came out to like $28 a click. It was pretty successful, way beyond what I thought it was going to be promotion.<\/p>\n

It was so successful, Ken was like, \u201cCan I just license what campaign you used and I\u2019ll pay you half the sales of whatever my affiliates make?\u201d I was all for it. It was a great idea, but then I had to tell him, \u201cKen, to be honest with you, unless they have the exact same bond with their list as I have with mine, and unless they want to say they\u2019re me,\u201d because a lot of the emails were all very me-oriented because of the actual experience I had working with Ken, \u201cthey\u2019re not going to get anywhere near that.\u201d He\u2019s like yeah, you\u2019re right, it probably wouldn\u2019t work, but that\u2019s how well it did. He wanted to license it, like he wanted to capture that, bottle it, and reproduce it, which made perfect sense but the way I do email, it\u2019s kind of hard to pass my emails off to someone else to do that. It just wouldn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> So all four parts were done over the weekend, provided for anyone to listen to over the weekend, and at the same time you did the email promotion while it was being promoted?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yes, and I\u2019m going to be doing this again actually at the end of the year with my and Chris\u2019 Titans of Direct Response product because I sold that very successfully. In fact, I don\u2019t know for sure who\u2019s done the best with his affiliates but at the time, this is like a month or two ago, I\u2019m like, \u201cChris, I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve ever met Mike. He\u2019s like the classiest guy in the industry. He makes you want to be a better person, just talking to this guy.\u201d He\u2019s like, \u201cBen, your affiliates, I just want you to know you\u2019re beating Glaser Kennedy and her circle, you\u2019re beating Joe Polis, you\u2019re beating a couple other people, you\u2019re doing better than all of them in terms of conversions and sales,\u201d but I\u2019m thinking there\u2019s something to the way I email for affiliate marketers because people ask me all the time, \u201cCan I use your system for affiliate marketing?\u201d I\u2019m like I use it all the time for affiliate marketing.<\/p>\n

My friend, Ryan Levec, he\u2019s got this product that shows you how to survey your list and all that, a very good product, and he had a whole bunch of people who were promoting him \u2013 this is about a year ago \u2013 and including people who sell funnel products themselves, because their lists are far more likely to buy my list, and I kind of half-assed my promotion because I was really burned out and I was about to go on vacation and all that, and I still beat the closest guy by like 28%. In fact, one of his affiliates was joking with me. He was like, \u201cGod, Ben, I hate you.\u201d They should have been able to beat me just because their lists are more tuned to this, but it\u2019s just the way in which I do email and the way in which I teach people. It works even better I think for affiliate marketing that probably for your own products because you\u2019re standing out from everybody.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> I remember we emailed back and forth. You did incredible in that promotion. I didn\u2019t realize that other people were promoting it at the same time. I thought you had approached them and it was a product that had already been promoted and you said, \u201cCan I be an affiliate,\u201d and just promote this on your own. I didn\u2019t realize it was an active ongoing affiliate promotion with others at the same time.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> It was. When I was promoting it, I don\u2019t know who, if anyone, was promoting at the same time I was. There are at least three people I can think of who told me \u2013 because I get all these bonuses if they buy from me, over almost $6000 in actual retail value bonuses, including hard copy stuff I was giving away to people who bought from me because the commission was so big and it paid for it \u2013 there were at least three people who said, \u201cYou know, Ben, if I had known you were going to do this, I would have waited to buy it from you.\u201d That\u2019s part of the thing you got to give real value.<\/p>\n

Most people, when they do bonuses, they say, \u201cIf you buy this affiliate product, send me your receipt and I\u2019ll give you this bonus.\u201d That\u2019s fine; most people don\u2019t do it right. Most people are very lazy with that and they just attach whatever phony retail value they want to it. My bonuses always have a real retail value like for example; one of the bonuses they got was this book I have called Cryptomarketing Secrets, which is the entire 30 issues of my cryptomarketing newsletter I used to sell all bound in one book. Every issue cost $27 when that was going. That was like $810 of actual retail value in that book. If there\u2019s anything to be said about bonuses, you got to make them real retail value.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll fool some people and they\u2019ll get all excited, like the people looking for the dopamine high and all that, they\u2019ll buy whatever you put out there. If you want the skeptics, I believe the skeptics are like a 5 times bigger part of the market than these hyper buyers. If you want them, you have to offer them true value. It can\u2019t be like this fake stuff, all you do is download all this air. You and I have talked about that. Try to get physical stuff that you can mail to people. They will appreciate it so much more.<\/p>\n

Talk about a dopamine drip; did you notice, Michael, that when you get an email, you get a little dopamine drip? That\u2019s why we all keep checking our email throughout the day. It\u2019s kind of exciting. Probably goes the same with texts and instant messages and everything else. When you get an actual piece of mail that you want, that you\u2019re looking forward to, it\u2019s like 100 times stronger. That\u2019s a whole different animal than these hyper buyers. When you reward them with a dopamine drip, you\u2019re not just trying to geek one out of them because they\u2019ve earned it. It\u2019s just a whole different thing and people appreciate it so much more, and talk about being on top of the pile.<\/p>\n

There are people who will argue with me about this; \u201cWell, everything should be digital.\u201d You know what? The fact that everybody else is doing digital, what it means is when my physical product comes in the mail, it gets all the attention, it\u2019s looked at on the bookshelf, it\u2019s what\u2019s on their desk, and it doesn\u2019t get lost in a sea of other stuff. There are arguments to be made for both sides. I understand that and for some products, I think digital is better, but I\u2019m talking about high ticket stuff. It\u2019s amazing so few people do it.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Would you advise anyone who is all digital currently to integrate some form of their product delivery as a physical product? Tell me, you were all digital and you went with your physical email players newsletter; what has that meant for you?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> This is a very timely question because I\u2019m going to be speaking about this in Connecticut at this guy, Ryan Lee\u2019s, his event called Freedom Dust. I have a three step funnel. My main funnel is as follows \u2013 and I\u2019m not saying I couldn\u2019t do more; I could. I\u2019ve got the free opt in, and then once they\u2019re on my list I sell them the email players, which is a physical product, and that gets mailed to them. My back end sales, rarely do I sell anything by email to my customers. I do it once in a while but most of the stuff they get is included in the envelope they get with Email Players. I\u2019m already paying to have this thing sent out, this envelope. It doesn\u2019t make any sense not to slip an advertisement in there.<\/p>\n

For example, in every issue practically I put like a one or two page little promotion for a back issue that\u2019s popular, so the two popular ones I have are how I do my launch process just using email, and the other one is just my business structure, kind of like how I\u2019m explaining here. For some reason, those are the two highest selling back issues I have, so I usually put an ad for one of those two in each edition and it gets me sales. Sometimes I\u2019ll put a catalog of all the back issues for sale with Teaser Board. That\u2019s one way I get back end sales using direct mail from an email which starts with an email list.<\/p>\n

The second way is I sometimes will put an affiliate offer in there, so for example, I had already done all the work to sell Brian Kurtz\u2019s Titans of Direct Response thing back in May and I asked him, \u201cCan I do this thing again in July to just my Email Players subscribers,\u201d and he\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, go ahead.\u201d So I put like the six page insert in there that just explains all the bonuses they get if they buy from my link and we got a couple sales last month from it. I made like $1800 just by slipping a few pages of paper in an envelope that\u2019s already going out, so that\u2019s the extent of my funnel.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> For the guests who are just now joining us, can you give out your URL website and tell them what to do when they get there?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah. It\u2019s www.BenSettle.com<\/a> and if you go there you can either opt in or not opt in. It\u2019s up to you. If you do opt in, I will send you the first issue of my Email Players newsletter. It\u2019ll be a PDF, not the print version of the first issue. That\u2019s a very real $97 value. That\u2019s what it costs every month to be a member. No one ever gets a price break or anything like that. It\u2019s $97 a month.\/ That\u2019s what that issue is legitimately worth, and it\u2019s got 24 different ways you can make money with your email. I just went through like 24 different things you can do, different openings and subject lines and approaches and ideas, and people absolutely make money on that, just going through that free issue because that\u2019s the goal. I want them to get a taste of what I have to offer them, and what better way than show them how to actually make some more sales, so that\u2019s free. If you don\u2019t opt in, that\u2019s fine too. You can go to the blog where I\u2019ve got well over 1000 pages worth of content on there and a bunch of audio and video. It\u2019s all free so it\u2019s yours for the taking. You can download it, listen to it, whatever you want to do; www.BenSettle.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Okay, let me recap your funnel: get them on your list, free opt in, sell them on Email Players, your subscription based physical email newsletter, and then back end from the physical offers in the newsletter.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I\u2019ll tell you what, if I was more motivated, I\u2019d be snail mailing offers to those buyers all month. I\u2019d probably send at least three promotions a month. I\u2019m just not that motivated. Right now I\u2019m more focused on getting paid traffic so for example, from February to like June, I was using paid Facebook traffic. My friend, Shane Hunter, he was doing it all for me. He\u2019s just a genius at this stuff and my subscription rate went way up. I was sold on paid advertising. Up until the end, I\u2019d just gotten organic traffic from search engines and word of mouth and doing a lot of podcast interviews, which I find are very good for getting quality traffic and sales. Then him and I both promoted our friend, Ray Higdon\u2019s 3 Minute Expert product back in June and for some reason, Facebook thought we were promoting a biz op, which we weren\u2019t. That Facebook advertising happens all the time and they shut you down for no reason and I got banned from using Facebook advertising. I could probably get back on there but why waste my time?<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Tell me what he did for your subscription, Shane Hunter. He was doing it all. What did you see occur? You weren\u2019t a big believer in Facebook advertising, were you?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I was a big believer in paid advertising, I just didn\u2019t really know how to do it and it didn\u2019t appeal to me to spend time doing it. It doesn\u2019t excite me to do it and it would be like a chore and I would hate it. I can just tell you this: I know I got at least four times as many new paying Email Players subscribers during those four months than I would have had I not used him, but it was crazy. It took me way past my goal. I mentioned my friend, Ray Higdon. I spoke at one of his Masterminds last year and I stayed over. I was there to speak, I wasn\u2019t necessarily there to learn, but he said something during that thing that just stuck with me. He said you can\u2019t scale free.<\/p>\n

For example, let\u2019s say you\u2019re getting traffic from paid Facebook ads. You find an ad in the campaign that\u2019s really working well. We were just spending like $10 a day at the time. Once you get it working, you want to throw as much money as you can; it doesn\u2019t make sense to not spend all the money you can because you know it\u2019s going to bring you more money back. You can\u2019t do that with free. You can\u2019t predict it. You can\u2019t control it. You can\u2019t control what the search engines are going to send you. You can\u2019t control who\u2019s going to listen to a podcast. You can\u2019t rule it out as they say in direct mail.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> You were impressed with the results with Facebook and you were using the same funnel; get them on your free list, sell them Email Players, and then back end sales from the physical newsletter, correct?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> That\u2019s been my funnel for over four years now. That\u2019s all I do. I\u2019ve got it so simplified. I got to say a warning, though, for people listening to this. I can get away with this because I\u2019m pretty good at what I do and I email daily and I\u2019m aggressive and I\u2019ve created a persona that people tend to like. I have fans in places that most people don\u2019t have. I only say this because selling a $100 a month continuity out of the gate like that is not easy for a lot of people to do. For most people who ask me about this, I recommend they sell the flagship product, so for example, if they\u2019re in a weight loss niche, sell the e-book that\u2019s about your philosophy of doing things and helps them lose weight, and then try to get them in continuity. I skip that part and I get them right into the continuity. I\u2019m not saying it can\u2019t be done, I\u2019m just saying that people should be careful. Don\u2019t just do it because Ben is doing it; it works. It took me 11 years to get that to work. I could never have done that out of the gate.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> How about cancellations? How long does the average Players subscriber stay on?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> You always get cancellations. You get people who come back too. Here\u2019s one of the things I do to prevent certain people from coming back which again, if I didn\u2019t do these things I\u2019d probably make a lot more money but I\u2019d be more miserable, and that is if I see somebody just subscribed and they didn\u2019t even get it like a few months before they arrived, I don\u2019t let them come back because they don\u2019t have the right mindset. This is a long term thing. This is something that you\u2019re going to learn long term and if you think you\u2019ve learned it all, you\u2019re crazy, because I\u2019ve been doing this for a long time and I haven\u2019t even learned it all. I\u2019m always teaching the new stuff I\u2019m learning and all it takes is one idea per issues that can put a lot of \u2013 my goal is this. There\u2019s no way an issue is going to be going out where I phone it in and I just put some crap in there. It\u2019s got to be stuff that has made me far more than the $97 they\u2019re paying so if they implement it, there\u2019s no way they\u2019re not going to make their money back in spades.<\/p>\n

If they didn\u2019t get it in a few months, it\u2019s kind of like someone who, maybe they take a health supplement, right? Maybe they take it and, \u201cNothing\u2019s happening. I haven\u2019t changed. This sucks.\u201d Well, it takes a few months to let something build up in your system to work. Or someone who goes to the gym, like \u201cOh man, I\u2019m sore. I hurt but I didn\u2019t really get bigger. Forget this. It doesn\u2019t work.\u201d That\u2019s the mindset these guys have and I don\u2019t want them back so even if they try to get back on, I don\u2019t let them. Once in a while somebody will sneak through; they don\u2019t last long. They usually quit right away again. Again, it doesn\u2019t cost me anything other than it\u2019s like I don\u2019t want to give people like that any of my knowledge. I think that they\u2019re better off getting a job. They\u2019ve wasted their money. I\u2019m doing them a disservice in a sense if I let them come back. I know they\u2019re not going to use that information. I know they\u2019re not going to profit from it. They just wanted their little dopamine drip. I don\u2019t want to fund their addiction. I don\u2019t\u2019 like letting people back who haven\u2019t stuck around for a while.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Give me the URL address of your website and then tell me what\u2019s the big promise that your email newsletter is going to provide someone?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> My main website is www.BenSettle.com<\/a> and if you opt in, I give you the first issue of Email Players free as a PDF. IT is a print newsletter but I\u2019ll give you the PDF of the first issue. It\u2019s a very real $97 retail value. I want to show you how to double your sales using email. To some people, that sounds like a big claim. I think it\u2019s a small claim. In fact, I recently asked my podcast producer, Jonathan Rivera, on the air, I put him on the spot and he could say whatever he want, I said, \u201cDo you think it\u2019s doubled your sales?\u201d He goes, \u201cDouble? I can\u2019t even put a number to it. It\u2019s like 10 times, 20 times, 30 times more sales. Double is a small number.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael, you\u2019re living proof of this. When you started emailing the way I showed you, your sales completely went up. I know they at least doubled from what they were, probably more than that, and that\u2019s what I show people how to do. Is it going to work for every single person? No, because there\u2019s a lot of people who don\u2019t have a list. There\u2019s people who don\u2019t have an offer that\u2019s converting already. It\u2019s not going to create sales for you; it\u2019s just going to multiply your current sales. That\u2019s all any kind of copywriting can do. A lot of people look to copywriting especially as a savior, a savior sales letter, but they don\u2019t have an offer in place, they have no good positioning, they don\u2019t have everything else they need to make good sales and if you\u2019re listening to this, it\u2019s not going to help you. You have to have a working offer, something that\u2019s selling already for it to double sales. You can\u2019t double zero. You\u2019ve got to have something coming in already.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Let\u2019s talk about the lifestyle. What does a typical day look like for Ben Settle?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> It\u2019s a little bit different depending on what time of the year it is. Right now I\u2019m spending almost all my working day on my next novel, my third novel, which should be completed by mid-September, hopefully. Right now I get up and I work on that for a few hours. I\u2019ve already written all my emails for the next month and a half. They\u2019re already pre-loaded in the auto responder as of today, and so I don\u2019t have to think about this. The rest of the time, like on a typical part of the year where I\u2019m not working on this novel, it\u2019s pretty simple. I get up, I write an email. Usually I write the next day\u2019s email. I write them a day before usually because I don\u2019t like being under pressure, and then I go off and I just don\u2019t do much after that. I\u2019ll go wine tasting or I\u2019ll go play with the dog or do something like that, or I\u2019ll go take off for the coast.<\/p>\n

Recently I\u2019ve got part ownership in a golf company so I work on that whenever they need something, which lately hasn\u2019t been very much but eventually I think that\u2019s going to take more of my time. It\u2019s a pretty laid back lifestyle. I joke I\u2019m like a bum who gets paid because I wanted to just only do one thing and I didn\u2019t want to do all this other stuff; I wanted to be lazy. I can get away with writing an email a day, it takes me about 15 minutes, and then I\u2019m done. I got divorced in 2012 and I moved from the state of Washington, town called Long Beach, back to Golda Beach, Oregon, where I\u2019m hoping to move again probably but I moved back down there.<\/p>\n

I was really burned out. I had worked my ass off for years doing client stuff, on retainer, trying to sell my own stuff, failure after failure. I finally got Email Players launched maybe 9 months earlier and I was burned out because I was trying to write a lot of issues ahead of time and all that kind of stuff to be ahead. It took me like a year to get un-burned out and I can tell you right now, most of my days, I will just recycle emails from like a year earlier, so we\u2019re talking 2 minutes of work and then I go walk my dog on the beach for several hours. I was just so burned out, I could never have done that if I didn\u2019t have things set up the way I do.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> What about your Email Players newsletter? Do you have issues already done for the next several months and if not, how much time does it take to create an issue and how do you schedule that?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I try to stay three months ahead. That doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re ready to go but they\u2019re like 90% ready to go three months ahead. I take a first draft. I try to add like a bonus thing every month. Most months I do, like a bonus interview or something, just something to make it a little more interesting or valuable, but generally it takes me 2 or 3 hours to write an issue because I\u2019m always thinking about this stuff. I\u2019m always doing this stuff. I have stories and ideas and case studies and stuff sitting in my head, and I have examples from my own emails that I\u2019m using or have used. It doesn\u2019t take me a whole lot of time.<\/p>\n

That said, there are some issues that take me a lot of time. I\u2019ve done issues like the one I told you about that explained the business structure I use. That one took me a lot of time because I had to sit there and really think about it. I don\u2019t\u2019 have a lot of white space in my issues. You get it every month. There\u2019s not a lot of white space. People even say \u201cBen, haven\u2019t you ever heard of the return key to break paragraphs up?\u201d But I don\u2019t. I want to keep it exactly 16 pages so it\u2019s predictable; they know what they\u2019re going to get.<\/p>\n

This is kind of a paradox for most people when they hear this but when I give too much information away, I get people saying \u201cBen, I can\u2019t keep up with this. This is too much.\u201d I get it. I\u2019m the same way. You can\u2019t overfeed somebody. You want to feed someone but you don\u2019t want them bloated and they can\u2019t move like if you were to feed someone food. You want to give them enough so they\u2019re satisfied but not full, satisfied they have enough information to implement, to make money, to make their money back in spades and not have analysis paralysis, so I\u2019d say it\u2019s kind of a weird paradox but keeping it at the same page number every month, it\u2019s less overwhelming for people and as long as I\u2019m delivering good value, if they\u2019re going to make their money back, to me it\u2019s not even an issue and it\u2019s not an issue for them either. If I give them too much, it\u2019s like \u201cWhere do I start? This is too much.\u201d We\u2019re all like that. In a way I understand the information overload people, but I don\u2019t\u2019 want people who complain about that buying because those tend to be people who are just looking for excuses.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Question from Marigold from the Philippines: \u201cBen, I\u2019m an aspiring copywriter and learned that there are lots of copywriting jobs that I can do, like writing copy for ads like Facebook and Google Adwords, writing emails, writing sales letters, writing videos and sales scripts, etc. Should I focus on learning email copywriting first?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> You know, I can\u2019t answer that for somebody. Everybody\u2019s got to do their own thing. Not everybody likes writing emails, especially daily. It can drag on some people. Focus on your strength. Whatever it is you\u2019re the best at of all the stuff that you can do, video scripts or Facebook ads or whatever, focus on becoming the best at that or at least excelling at it. It\u2019s always subjective who the best is, but excelling at that thing that you\u2019re already good at.<\/p>\n

Take that thing and specialize in it and now when you bill yourself to clients, you are the specialist, for example, at writing Facebook ads that convert. Somebody who\u2019s looking for someone to write their Facebook ad, if they can choose between you and some person who\u2019s got a whole menu of things they can do but they don\u2019t specialize, they\u2019re probably going to pick you because when it comes to paid advertising especially, every percentage of conversion counts. People don\u2019t want a half assed job so find whatever it is that you like doing the most and for a lot of people, they discover it\u2019s not email. They don\u2019t want to email a lot, they don\u2019t like doing it, they have a hard time, but a lot of copywriters are good at other stuff, so everyone has a thing they\u2019re strong at. Focus on your strength.<\/p>\n

This is the end of part one. Please continue to part two.<\/p>\n

This is the beginning of part two<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Scott wants to know: \u201cBen, has the massive shift to smart phones from computers substantially changed email format, content, and strategies?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> No, and I\u2019ll tell you there\u2019s a lot of people that disagree with me on this but I do not do anything differently than I did before the smart phone craze and when I do joint ventures, the sales don\u2019t suffer and I\u2019ll tell you why. A lot of people read their emails on their phones. There\u2019s no doubt about that, and especially for people obsessed over open rates, they\u2019ve got to get this through their heads; those open rates don\u2019t mean a damn thing when it comes to sales. There is a reason to track opens \u2013 I would never say don\u2019t do it \u2013 but people who brag about their open rates like it translates to sales, it doesn\u2019t. I\u2019ll tell you why.<\/p>\n

For one thing, your phone has to display HTML to even track an open. I have an Android phone and a lot of Androids have the HTML turned off by default because of viruses and that sort of thing. When I open someone\u2019s email, it doesn\u2019t even register. Now here\u2019s something else that someone recently showed me; my friend Jim Yaghi, actually. My friend Jim Yaghi is a computer scientist, so he actually does scientific experiments; he laughs at all these people who think they\u2019re scientifically testing emails. He laughs out loud. He\u2019s like \u201cThese guys don\u2019t even know this is what it takes to do a real scientific experiment, which is like impossible with email because there\u2019s so many changing factors all the time it\u2019s never the same. Your list is always changing. Your auto-responder could be on certain blacklists one day and not on the other. Somebody could check their email on their iPhone one day and their iPad the next day and that screws things up. There\u2019s always things that can change.\u201d<\/p>\n

He sent me this interesting news article that they did some study on the iPhone users and people who checked their emails on their iPhones, they mostly buy from their desktop. To me, I don\u2019t worry about it. I\u2019m going to get the emails out, I\u2019m going to make my sales pitch, they\u2019re either going to buy it or not, and that\u2019s fine. To me it doesn\u2019t matter. By the way, on formatting, I have had people debate me on this and that\u2019s okay; it\u2019s not against the law for them to be wrong or anything like that. If you look at my emails on a phone, they look like crap.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Are they HTML or are they text?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Mine are just plain text and it\u2019s weird because HTML doesn\u2019t always show up the same on everyone\u2019s phones either, because sometimes people have their table too wide and they have to use their finger to scroll to the side to read the whole thing, so HTML isn\u2019t perfect either. I just throw it out there as plain texts and it looks kind of messed up, but it\u2019s weird because it\u2019s easier to read that way. I have so many people say, \u201cBen, this looks so ugly but I got to be honest with you, it\u2019s so much easier to read than all these other ones I\u2019m getting from people with perfect HTML.\u201d There are ways to do it, like my friend, Jack Borne, he\u2019s a programmer. He created this tool called AWProTools \u2013 it\u2019s for Aweber users \u2013 and one of the things you can do is you can put your HTML email into this form and it\u2019ll format it so it can be read on all phones, and it\u2019s cool so I would say if you\u2019re going to do HTML, do that. There\u2019s a thing Gene Schwartz said in his speech to Phillips, the one that you saw, and he learned this test after test after test that his ugly layouts always beat the pretty layouts, and he said, \u201cThe reason why is because in a world of beauty the ugly thing stands out, and in this case, reading plain text on a phone, even if it looks like one sentence is longer than the other,\u201d \u2013 that\u2019s basically what I mean by looks messed up and ugly \u2013 \u201cit\u2019s actually way easier to read and it\u2019s very easy to read that kind of stuff.\u201d I would say if anything \u2013 now, full disclosure, I\u2019ve never split test this; by all means, test this if you want. Your results may vary, I admit it, but as far as I\u2019m concerned, it\u2019s probably helped me because of smart phones and all that.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> John wants to know \u201cDo you have the name of an ethical mailing list broker?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> There\u2019s different brokers that work with different niches. There is this guy \u2013 this isn\u2019t for direct mail but it is for email lists; I know that\u2019s not the question but since it came up \u2013 his name is Murdock. I can\u2019t remember his first name. He emailed me like a month or two ago and he was the guy who designed that boardroom ad whenever he\u2019s on an airplane, which is like a 30 year old ad probably, and he says he has all these really great email lists. I\u2019m sorry; I don\u2019t have his first name. I forgot but if you look up the last name Murdock, you\u2019ll find him, but for direct mail, I can\u2019t tell you because there\u2019s so many different factors and it\u2019s a swamp. What I will say is there\u2019s this one guy, Craig Simpson, he lives in Grants Pass, OR which is like an hour from here. It\u2019s amazing I haven\u2019t actually hung out with him at least once. He is like one of the top direct mail guys on the planet as far as teaching this especially, and I would say go to www.Simpson-Direct.com or Doberman Dan at www.DobermanDan.com.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Jen asked \u201cHow can a newbie make a mark in the competitive world of email marketing when there are lots of experts such as Ben Settle?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> First of all, the word \u201cExpert\u201d to me is the first thing; don\u2019t rry to be an expert. Try to be a leader because people will listen to experts but they\u2019ll follow leaders. The question is how do you become a leader? Well, the way to become a leader in your niche, whatever business you\u2019re in, my humble but accurate opinion is to email daily and demonstrate your knowledge and why they should be following you and build an audience, not just a list, like we were talking about earlier in this interview. I\u2019m not saying you have to have a podcast, I\u2019m not saying you have to do anything specific. I\u2019m just saying focus on building an audience and connecting with that audience every day with something that\u2019s interesting, something that\u2019s not going to be a waste of their time, something that\u2019s kind of entertaining and fun for them to consume because most people are very boring in their communication; just demonstrate that you know what you\u2019re talking about and by doing that, you will stand out like fart in study hall. You\u2019ll be fine.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> What big fears did you have to overcome when it was time for you to start emailing daily and what advice would you give someone who believes that emailing daily is just too much and they\u2019re going to upset their subscribers?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I remember that interview you did with Jim Camp. I\u2019ve listened to that thing so many times, I remember the guy who asked the question, Paul Flood. He asked Jim Camp \u201cHow could I be seen as someone who wants to help and not just like a piranha looking to increase their feed,\u201d and Jim Camp goes, \u201cIf you\u2019re looking like someone who\u2019s out there just to make money off of people, that\u2019s not a problem the prospect has, that\u2019s a problem you have. That\u2019s not their problem.\u201d And I would say it applies to this too. If you think a daily email is too much and you\u2019ve never even tried it, you\u2019re projecting what you think onto your market. People like to read good emails. If you\u2019re doing it the right way, you\u2019re not imposing on people. People look forward to it. They\u2019ll even ask you, \u201cHey, did you send one today? I didn\u2019t see it.\u201d There\u2019s people looking forward to it.<\/p>\n

Again, it goes to getting rid of the lukewarm people anyway. If someone is on your list who would complain that\u2019s too much, is that really a good prospect? Ask yourself, are they at that point where they would really want to buy something to solve whatever problem your product solves? The answer is no. If somebody has a problem or a desire for something, it doesn\u2019t matter what it is and if they\u2019re ready to buy it, you can\u2019t send them enough information. They want to know before they spend their money and all that. They want to be offered stuff. Someone who\u2019s overweight and they\u2019re sad about it all the time and they\u2019re sick of their doctors saying they\u2019re going to have cardiac problems if they don\u2019t do something, they\u2019re sick of their so called passive aggressive friends doing things like tagging their heavy pictures in Facebook, which is something that happens believe it or not, which is really a mean thing to do to someone if they\u2019re trying to lose weight, and they\u2019re really upset before their next driver\u2019s license picture is taken, that they don\u2019t want to look heavy; think about that person. Do you really think you can send them too many interesting thought provoking offers that are going to help them? No, they want a solution. They just want to know that you\u2019re going to help them. They want proof that you\u2019re the one that\u2019s going to actually help them versus everyone just lobbing blatant pictures at them all the time, which does come off like they\u2019re just trying to get money and not try to help anyone.<\/p>\n

I would say that is projection. Someone who would say that is simply projecting or they don\u2019t want to do the work to mail daily. I don\u2019t blame them either. If the thought of writing a daily email makes you feel weak and tired, you probably shouldn\u2019t do it. Outsource it to someone else. It\u2019s like me trying to do Paperclip. I got to outsource it. Don\u2019t project what you think on other people because I\u2019m telling you \u2013 real life example, Michael. During that Titans of Direct Response affiliate campaign I did, there were four days I sent like 17 or 18 emails. Even by your or my standards, that\u2019s a lot.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Were you a little bit worried about it?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I was a tiny bit just because I had never sent that many before. Usually I only send like 13 during a four day period. I knew that was a $2000 product and it was not selling internet marketing, which is what most people on my list are looking for, it was more old school stuff, so it needed more of a sales job and I just did it. If I had listened to people who emailed me that weekend \u2013 a few people emailed me saying \u201cBen, this is too many, you should stop, this is dumb\u201d \u2013 if I had listened to them, I can tell you right now that last day especially, as I was sending those emails, I watched those sales go up about 10 minutes after each email that went out. That wouldn\u2019t be considered a scientific test by any means but just an observation that something is happening every email because it was like 5-10 minutes after the email went out, I would see 2 or 3 sales and the rest of the hour, nothing until the next email went out. Had I listened to people instead of doing what I knew was right to do, I would have been out probably several sales. I\u2019ll never know how many exactly.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> If you had chickened out on the last day, you would probably have missed out on at least 50% of your sales.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Oh yeah, easily. I know that for a fact because I remember tracking the sales. I got more than half on the last day.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> If there\u2019s one thing I remember from my interview with Jay Conrad Levinson, and it didn\u2019t really make sense until years later, he talked about the commitment to a promotion and the commitment to take that promotion all the way through rather than chickening out. You and I both know that at least 50% of the sales in most cases come from the last 2 or 3 hours of the promotion.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Oh, yeah, it\u2019s just the deadline. People always buy at the last minute and that\u2019s just normal. Most sales do come in right around the deadline. By the way, here\u2019s an interesting number for you. All in all, when all was said and done, I sold $34,000 worth of Titans of Direct Response. That was the gross sales. We ended up with two refunds. One of those guys was an Email Players subscriber; he was now banned after that because I\u2019m not going to sell to people who refund things, especially quality stuff like that.<\/p>\n

If somebody\u2019s going to refund something because it\u2019s a bad product or they got crappy customer service, that\u2019s one thing. You don\u2019t buy something if you don\u2019t want it. That doesn\u2019t\u2019 make someone a bad person, just not someone I want on my list. Anyway, we did $34,000 in sales to a list of less than 10,000 people selling a product that\u2019s kind of hard to sell to my kind of list. It\u2019s a lot of offline people and all that, very little internet marketing stuff in there, and I believe I had around 200 opt out, so let me just weigh the scales there. What\u2019s more important, keeping those 200 opt outs or $34,000 in sales? You\u2019ve got to really think about that and this goes back to the mentality are you going to play to win or play not to lose?<\/p>\n

The people who worry about the opt outs and don\u2019t see it through and are scared, there\u2019s nothing wrong with being scared about this stuff. It does make you a little nervous. To chicken out when you have a plan and not go through with it because a couple people complained hat\u2019s playing to not lose. That\u2019s like what the Republicans do in politics. They always play to not lose. They try to appease everyone to not lose. The Democrats are very smart about this stuff; they go after their base and they don\u2019t lose, they win. You can watch this in politics. People who play to not lose, lose, and people who play to win, win. I think in advertising you got to do the same thing, you\u2019ve got to play to win and if you\u2019re not going to play to win, get out of the game because otherwise you\u2019re just in everyone\u2019s way.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> For the listeners who are just joining us, can you give the listeners your URL and your website, and instruct the listeners on what to do when they get there?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> It\u2019s www.BenSettle.com<\/a> and when you get there, you have a choice. You can opt in and if you do, I\u2019ll send you the first issue of my Email Players newsletter as a PDF. It\u2019s a print newsletter that usually gets mailed to people but if you opt in, I\u2019ll send you a PDF of the first issue. I have absolutely had people tell me they made thousands of dollars just getting information on that. In fact, I had this one girl, she was working for this company that I guess had a pretty nice sized list and she goes, \u201cBen, I\u2019m not even buying your stuff. I\u2019m just using your free stuff and I\u2019ve wrote some emails that brought in $50,000 extra in revenue that would normally not have come in for my boss just by using your free stuff.\u201d So that\u2019s kind of what you can expect. If you don\u2019t opt in, that\u2019s fine. You can just bypass that and go to the blog and I\u2019ve got over 1000 pages of content on there and well over a dozen hours of audio and video on there that\u2019s all free. You don\u2019t have to pay for anything. I\u2019m trying to demonstrate that I\u2019m worth listening to. If you don\u2019t like anything, then don\u2019t worry about opting in. It\u2019s all good. You can get the free issue and walk away and it\u2019s all good.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Here\u2019s a question from Paul Howard at www.IGuaranteeSales.com. \u201cBen, I just did a marketing analysis for a small local retail sporting goods store. One of the biggest assets I found was that they have an email list of over 15,000 past buyers from over the last 4 years through eBay. They have done no marketing or follow up and don\u2019t even have the list compiled into a database yet. What steps would you take and implement an effective email marketing campaign to first introduce a new USP, then to send out regular offers? Also, how often would you keep in contact emailing them? Also, is there an email service provider that you would recommend that would work well for a small retailer looking to move toward online selling? I\u2019m a big fan. Thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> There are several ways you could do this. My first idea and it\u2019s not like you have to do this or this is even the best way of doing it, is to not email those buyers and snail mail them instead. Snail mail them a reactivation letter. It\u2019s not unusual to get like a 30% response to reactivate a past customer. I\u2019ve seen numbers like that in the chiropractic world so maybe it\u2019s not that big for retail, but still, send them a snail mail letter sending them and offer and getting back into their consciousness so they know who you are again.<\/p>\n

If you insist on doing it with email, you\u2019ll have to find a provider that will import all of them without making them double opt in, which a lot of the ones will do it these days but that\u2019s something to be mindful of. Make sure you segment it and send them an email saying, \u201cHey, you bought XYZ product on XYZ date. I just want you to know I\u2019m sorry it took me this long to keep in contact with you. I\u2019m going to start sending you daily tips or ideas,\u201d whatever it is that fits sporting goods, so I would probably start sending them tips on how to be better at sporting related things; how to be better at certain sports, how to pick better equipment, how to maintain equipment, just useful stuff to people who are buying that kind of stuff, and start sending them daily emails like that and make some kind of offer in every email.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s an offer to get them to come into the store, that\u2019s even better. Then you don\u2019t even have to ask them to click a link or anything; \u201cHey, come into the store today and show us this email,\u201d or whatever you want to do, whatever qualifier, \u201cand we\u2019ll give you 10% off today only. We just want to see you come in the store today. We\u2019ll give you 50% off something.\u201d You want to give them something irresistible; \u201cIf you come into the store by tomorrow, certain time, we will give you up to $100 in store credit to spend on anything you want,\u201d so think about offers. This is less about email and email technique and it\u2019s more about offers.<\/p>\n

The more offers you can think of, and for retail, you can just come up with different offers all the time. As a matter of fact, that\u2019s what the retail clothing industry does; every couple of months it\u2019s a new offer. That\u2019s what they do. It\u2019s a very strategic thing and you could do the same thing, just keep rotating offers around. \u201cBuy one get one free of this, come in and get 10% off that or 20% off that,\u201d just keep thinking of new offers. What kind of new offers can we give these guys to get them to come in here? Because very few people go into a store and just buy one thing. Chances are, if they\u2019re buying at a discount, they go yeah; I saved some money on that, I can spend some money on this instead. I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re already doing this but let\u2019s assume they\u2019re not, Michael.<\/p>\n

They should check out your course on how to get into Walmart. If I had a retail store, that course would be perfect because it talks about putting like products next to each other. That\u2019s what Walmart looks at, at least when you\u2019re doing that product. Like that guy says, Walmart doesn\u2019t look at the product. They look at how your product can help sell the other products around it. It\u2019s got nothing to do with email but it\u2019s something to think about.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> \u201cBen, for years you\u2019ve discouraged your followers from using social media. In the last year or so, you\u2019ve begun using it yourself. Why the change of heart and what have you learned from your foray into the medium?\u201d This is from Bob Hingine.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know if I really discouraged it. I used to make fun of it and mock it for a while. I still call it \u201cFlakebook\u201d and all that because a lot of what\u2019s on there is just garbage. It\u2019s a time waste, it\u2019s a time suck. People actually have to do what they call Facebook fasts to unplug from it because they become so obsessed with it. It goes back to that dopamine drip. I do use it but it\u2019s not blatant. It\u2019s more disguised now than it used to be because Facebook\u2019s frowning on what I used to do but what I\u2019m doing is self-promotion.<\/p>\n

For example, when this interview is up, I\u2019ll definitely tell my Facebook friends about it. There\u2019s no doubt about it. I have a Facebook fan page now because when I was working with Shane Hunter and he was doing my Facebook ads, he\u2019s like \u201cYeah, you want to get a Facebook page because it\u2019s so much easier to sell to them once you have a Facebook page. You have all these demographics and psychographics and all this information on them and it\u2019s just another way of getting your audience together.\u201d I\u2019m not saying never use it. I just think people should use it wisely. Here\u2019s why in the past I have discouraged it in some ways.<\/p>\n

I remember doing a post once and everyone\u2019s like \u201cDon\u2019t let Facebook steal your balls.\u201d There\u2019s a lot of emoting going on. This is for guys. This isn\u2019t for girls. Girls like to emote. That\u2019s just how they get rid of their stress. Guys generally don\u2019t emote but there\u2019s a lot of girls on there emoting, complaining about all this stuff, and that\u2019s just how they deal with problems. It\u2019s not good or bad or anything and I\u2019ve seen a lot of guys doing the same thing. They\u2019re starting to act like it because a lot of guys are on Facebook to stalk girls, unfortunately. If you want to see an example of this, find any pretty girl that you know on Facebook. Watch the next time she posts something irrelevant and irreverent. She\u2019ll tell you more guys are liking and commenting on it than girls, so I just noticed a lot of guys start to act like girls and I still think it applies today but if you\u2019re using it to keep in touch with your market, there\u2019s nothing wrong with it. You don\u2019t even have to be promoting anything. Just keeping in contact with them, it can be a good tool for that.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m probably more of a Twitter guy these days. On Twitter you can follow a lot of thought leaders and movement builders, people who are actually trying to create a movement for a cause and it\u2019s very fascinating. I only follow like 95 people on Twitter and I would say a good dozen or so are part of trying to create a movement or cause or something and it\u2019s very fascinating to watch that because it\u2019s a good education in how to build an audience and how to get your audience to become your troops on your side, they\u2019re with you. I think it\u2019s a good study.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> How do you use Twitter?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I don\u2019t use it in a way where I would track anything. Most of my time on Twitter is actually not business related. My blog and email through Aweber are automatically sent to Twitter because Aweber has this function where you can have a link to your email on Aweber\u2019s servers just automatically posted on your Twitter thing, so I have that go out and my blog has the same thing. Other than that, I mostly just read it for entertainment because to me it\u2019s like TV for people with really short attention spans, and I just observe how certain people are leading their movements and industries. Other than, I don\u2019t\u2019 really use it all that much other than those things.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> \u201cGreetings from sunny Italy. What kind of books do you read or have you read that helped you most with your story telling? Could you name one or two of them, or the most important ones, of course?\u201d This is a question from Elvis.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever read a book on story-telling. I think it\u2019s just something you do. I don\u2019t know how much you can learn about story telling other than just reading stories and then telling stories. We\u2019re all natural born story tellers, every single one of us. I guarantee you that you can tell a story, that you\u2019ve told stories to people in your life, and it\u2019s no different than when you\u2019re writing copy or emails. I\u2019ll tell you something about stories, though. This is how powerful they are. I remember when I was in my last year of college, and I was like a complete C student through all the grades, K-12 and community college and all of that, I was always like a straight C student. As a matter of fact, I graduated 150 out of 300 people so I\u2019m about as C student as you can get, but the very last year of college, I went to this one hour long seminar \u2013 I paid $30 to go to it \u2013 on memory training and I got almost straight A\u2019s that year just from doing this and studying for maybe 15 minutes. One of the things they taught you was if you want to memorize a bunch of facts and stuff is to put those facts in the form of a story because your brain is just automatically tuned to picking up information via stories. IT wants to hear stories. That\u2019s why it\u2019s so powerful. People are hardwired to be persuaded by stories. That\u2019s why if you read the New Testament, the Gospel is practically all parables. They\u2019re all stories because that\u2019s how you get across everything. In that book I mentioned earlier, the 7 Lost Secrets of Success by Joe Vitali, he made a good point in that book.<\/p>\n

He was like, \u201cThere was a parable where Jesus is talking to these people and he\u2019s like \u2018So, this man went down from Jerusalem and fell amongst thieves,\u2019\u201d and that\u2019s how it started, and Joe Vitali is like, \u201cIsn\u2019t that more interesting than saying be a good neighbor,\u201d because that was the point of that parable, because he told a story that everyone there could identify with. Everyone in those times had either run afoul of thieves on that Jerusalem turnpike or they knew someone who had, it was very relevant to them, so when he told these things in a story, it had a lot more relevance than facts.<\/p>\n

Story telling is important but the way to learn it is just do it. Read ads that are very story driven. One of the reason I like Gary Halbert ads so much and read Gary Halbert ads is because he was really good at this. If anything, I probably learned more about story-telling and emails and copywriting just by reading Gary Halbert ads.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> What exactly do you mean by \u201cinfotainment\u201d and how do you integrate that with story-telling?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Infotainment is you\u2019re merging information with entertainment, so you\u2019re giving information that would normally probably be dry or just kind of linear and ABC, here\u2019s the facts, but you\u2019re adding a little entertainment to it, so story telling for example is natural entertainment. When I say entertainment, it doesn\u2019t have to be like slapstick funny \u2013 it can be humorous; humor is really good if you can work it in and it makes sense \u2013 but we all like to be entertained because let\u2019s face it; we live in a celebrity obsessed culture these days. People need to be entertained all the time. They\u2019re always glued to their phones and the TV and the movies, everyone\u2019s got a Kindle and an iPad and they\u2019re always watching videos.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons videos is becoming so popular is because it lends itself to entertainment. When I say information meets entertainment, I want to go back to a video you actually sent me like in 2009 by that guy Don Hewitt, the guy who founded 60 Minutes. He had died and they were interviewing his friend, Alan Alda, the guy who played Hawkeye in MASH, and they asked Alan Alda, \u201cWhy do you think 60 Minutes is so popular?\u201d He said, \u201cIt\u2019s because they gave you a hot dog but it nourished you like broccoli,\u201d so it wasn\u2019t like it was hard news. Today everyone does this; Fox and MSNBC and CNN, they all do infotainment now but back then, ti was just hard news and this is what you get on CBS and NBC and ABC, but what they would do is put an entertaining twist on everything. It was infotainment. It was basically like a hot dog that nourished you like broccoli. It looks tasty, it looks wonderful, it looks fun, but it gives you a little bit of nourishment. It\u2019s not like you just walked away with nothing and I think emails that do that are very powerful because you don\u2019t want to overload people with hard content.<\/p>\n

People will just get bored of that. They\u2019ll appreciate it, they\u2019ll tell you the love it, but they\u2019re not probably going to buy it from you, but if you use infotainment, you take something that informational \u2013 not hard teaching, not \u201cHere\u2019s 5 ways to lose weight using these super secret techniques\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s like telling a story about someone in the weight loss niche who was humiliated because people were tagging her heavy Facebook pictures. By the way, I\u2019ve used that example twice in this call because I actually wrote an email about that and it did extremely well. I\u2019m not in that niche anymore; I have some friends who are really high level affiliates who say \u201cI\u2019ve used that email\u201d and they did and they said \u201cI\u2019ve done over $1000 a day with this\u201d and it\u2019s just these little things.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s infotaining. It\u2019s not a happy story but it\u2019s infotaining. It\u2019s information and it\u2019s entertainment by being a voyeur on someone\u2019s life and watching what they\u2019re doing and how they react and it\u2019s just like watching a television show unfold, so very powerful stuff.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Question from John Iams: \u201cBen, if you could give only one piece of email advice given your years of email experience, specifically what would it be and how would it best be implemented?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I would say be personality driven. I really believe this and I\u2019ve heard this analogy before from other people, that email is talk radio. It\u2019s your talk radio show. It doesn\u2019t have to be political but you\u2019re just going to go out there and be a personality, a unique you. You\u2019re not swiping anybody, you\u2019re not copying anybody else, you\u2019re literally going out there and you\u2019re using your personality just the way you would talk if you were talking in real life to someone, your slangs and your peculiarities and your way of doing this, of communicating. It\u2019s not going to be perfect. It shouldn\u2019t be perfect. You\u2019re not going to sound like a robot. You\u2019re going to sound like a person, a human being that people can bond with and trust. That is the thing that\u2019s lacking from so many emails today.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another thing. He only asked for one but here\u2019s another thing. This is kind of a subjective thing. I wrote about this in my Email Players newsletter once. Actually, it\u2019s going to come out in a future issue soon. There\u2019s this movie called Apocalypse Now and I think most people have seen it. Francis Ford Coppola directed it. It\u2019s a Vietnam movie and there\u2019s this scene in there with \u2013 I don\u2019t know what his rank was, a colonel or something \u2013 and he\u2019s played by Robert Duvall. His name is Kilgore in the movie. He\u2019s like this guy leading all these people in Vietnam but he\u2019s making them surf between attacks. This guy is crazy. He\u2019s like \u201cI want you guys to go out there and surf,\u201d while all this carnage is going on. He\u2019s all about surfing and the character, the one who\u2019s narrating the movie, he\u2019s like this guy is kind of crazy but people in his unit, they know they\u2019re going to come home okay because of this guy\u2019s person. He made them feel like no matter what\u2019s going on out there in Vietnam, my guys are going to come home okay and I think that\u2019s the feeling I strive for.<\/p>\n

Everyone\u2019s going through different challenges, everyone\u2019s in a different place in life. You want to be that person, no matter what you\u2019re selling \u2013 it doesn\u2019t have to be business to business \u2013 you want to be that person that they just feel like if I\u2019m reading this person\u2019s emails every day, I\u2019m going to be okay. I just know everything\u2019s going to turn out okay. I think that\u2019s something that\u2019s lacking in pretty much everyone\u2019s emails and it\u2019s something that you have to work toward. It comes with building trust and a bond in your market. It comes with knowing your market better than everyone else and always studying it. It comes with knowing your product is the best or you have an excellent product, and all these things come together when you start mailing daily. People start to feel, \u201cHey, if I follow this Michael guy, everything\u2019s going to be okay; if I\u2019m in a hell of a jam right now financially,\u201d or whatever the problem is; they\u2019re not going to verbally say this but that\u2019s the feeling you want them to have. They look forward to your email. You\u2019re the cut man in their corner that they just know you\u2019re going to be there to help them and they\u2019re going to buy from you eventually, because they trust you.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> What if someone listening to this says and believes that they have not one ounce of personality? Is there still a way that they can create a personality even if they don\u2019t have it, to find their own voice or create a voice to sell using email?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Well, there are people who lack a sense of humor and they\u2019re really literal and I understand that. There are ways to be sort of infotaining and entertaining even if you\u2019re not naturally that way. Telling stories is one way. It doesn\u2019t matter if you have a personality or not if you can tell a story, but another thing I would recommend, there\u2019s this book by Dan Kennedy \u2013 I think it\u2019s Make Them Laugh and Take Their Money or something like that \u2013 and it\u2019s all about using entertainment when you\u2019re selling, and it\u2019s really good, and I think it\u2019s only like $10 on Amazon or something, it\u2019s a great book and one of the things he says that just stood out to me is people buy and they buy in abundance when they\u2019re in good humor, so it\u2019s a very important skill to have. If you don\u2019t naturally have it, you can cultivate it.<\/p>\n

Another thing you can do and should be doing is pick one or two of the best comedians out there that you like. I was talking to this guy, Kevin Rogers, he\u2019s a copywriter and he used to be a stand-up comic and this is some advice he gives to people, which I thought was interesting: \u201cPick a comic, a stand-up comic that you like and study that person. Watch them on YouTube. Just study them. Look at how they tell jokes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another person to watch is Johnny Carson. You can find all kind s of clips of his monologues on YouTube. That guy was an absolute genius, using comedy and social commentary and all these things to make a point. All these things can be applied to your communications in business and in selling. Carson monologues were so well received that 20 million people watched his show every night, and apparently more well known than the President during his 30 years of doing it every night, and people would just get the whole family together just to watch his 9 minute monologues. They wouldn\u2019t even watch the whole show sometimes. They were so good.<\/p>\n

Watch the show Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld is just a great, brilliant communicator when it comes to comedy and entertainment. Pay attention to the metaphors they use in that show, the stories they tell, how they make things funny, how they take the most ordinary things. They even said it was a show about nothing, that\u2019s the joke, and yet it was probably the most popular sitcom of the \u201890s. I don\u2019t know about viewership, it\u2019s probably one of the most popular that\u2019s ever been around, so sitcoms are good. The best talk radio personalities; Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Howard Stern. These guys are all great entertainers and you can learn a lot by observing and then just applying it to your communications.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Here\u2019s a question from Carlos: \u201cBen, when it comes to coming up with topics for an email, are there any topics that you personally wouldn\u2019t write about to your list? Is there a specific topic that makes you think twice before you hit your finger on the send button?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Not really. You always want to have good taste. You always want to know your market and your list. Every list is different. It\u2019s interesting. I was talking about that Dan Kennedy book. He used to give 300 talks a year. He\u2019s a funny guy, Dan Kennedy, and he\u2019s like \u201cThere\u2019s two topics you can never joke about. Just don\u2019t even bother. I don\u2019t care what you sell, just don\u2019t even bother. One is JFK and you can\u2019t joke about Martin Luther King.\u201d You might want to stay away from those topics if someone like him isn\u2019t even going there and believe me, Dan Kennedy has no fear and that guy has no problem skewering everyone in the room and offending everyone in the room, and he said those two topics you just cannot make work if you\u2019re going to try to be funny and entertaining and that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> How can one use the rant email technique in their favor?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> This must be an Email Players subscriber. I think I\u2019ve only taught that in Email Players but that\u2019s where you\u2019re just ranting about something. For example, I once had a copywriting apprentice for a very short period of time before I realized I\u2019m the worst teacher in the world and I have no business doing such things.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> How did that copywrite apprentice occur? How did that happen?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Well, she was cleaning my house. She used to be my housecleaner and then later on she would cook meals for me and she had a service cooking meals and delivering them to people. She had a pretty good email list. She was writing emails. I thought these are actually pretty good, you should get into this copywriting thing. One thing turned into another and suddenly I started being her kind of mentor, I supposed you could say, which ties into the rant thing, by the way.<\/p>\n

One of her emails that she sent out that I thought was good was that she was ranting about Minute rice, like how stupid Minute rice is and how you should have real rice, so it was like a rant. She ranted and then she turned it into a reason why you should buy her ready-made meals. I thought this is actually pretty good and I\u2019m going to use this as an example in the Email Players newsletter and that\u2019s what I meant by a rant thing, where you just go on a rant about something. It could be something as insignificant as rice or it could be something real like minimum wage for business owners, like \u201cHey, I\u2019m being forced to pay this person more money than they\u2019re worth\u201d; that can be a rant, so that\u2019s different than when you turn somebody\u2019s\u2019 negative email into a reason to buy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give you an example of what they\u2019re asking about. I have this e-book on Kindle called Blue Chip Email Secrets which is basically, Michael, that interview you and I did about email where I just took the transcription and turned it into a book. We got a lot of good information there. Yeah, it\u2019s an interview and some people don\u2019t like that format and this guy gave me a one star review after saying he liked the information, it was great information, and he just went on this tirade about how crappy the spelling was and how the format was done and it\u2019s just an interview and it\u2019s not even a real book, and it\u2019s stupid because if you like the information, who cares? I took his one star review and reprinted it and then I basically tore it apart, dismantled it point by point because it didn\u2019t really make a lot of sense, what he was complaining about, and then next day I put that into an email with my reply and then he actually went on Kindle and changed it to a four star review and was like, \u201cYeah, I was a little out of line with that. I\u2019m still not liking the format but you\u2019re right, it was really good information,\u201d so that\u2019s an example of taking someone\u2019s hate mail and using it to make sales with it. That just did wonders for my credibility with people who read that. They wanted to buy that book then.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t always go smoothly people changing their mind, but it doesn\u2019t matter. If you\u2019re getting hate mail from people or complaint mail, that means you\u2019re probably doing something right and you should keep doing it and don\u2019t let that discourage you because you\u2019re probably turning on the audience you do want while making these lukewarm people mad and turning them cold, and that\u2019s what you want so that\u2019s good. They\u2019re handing you fodder. I don\u2019t recommend printing somebody\u2019s name or smearing someone\u2019s reputation or anything like that. Just take the message. You don\u2019t have to name them or anything. Sometimes you don\u2019t even have to reprint what they said, just retell what they said; \u201cSo this guy emailed me and was complaining about XYZ.\u201d You don\u2019t even have to reprint what they did.<\/p>\n

The people on your side who understand where you\u2019re coming from, they\u2019re more emboldened and come to your side and they\u2019ll root for you and they\u2019re bonding with you more and you\u2019re bonding with them more and everyone\u2019s happy, while the people who don\u2019t like you will hate you more and that\u2019s good. You don\u2019t really want everyone liking you. You should have a healthy balance with half the people liking you and half the people hating you. If all you\u2019re getting is fluffy mail with how much people love you, you\u2019re probably not pushing hard enough and you should not fear negativity because you can take that negative energy like I explained and use that against them. It\u2019s not unlike, Michael, this kung fu I\u2019ve been learning the last six months that\u2019s called wing chun, and you take that energy that someone\u2019s coming at you with and you use it against them so you hit them 10 times harder than you could have on your own. It\u2019s the exact same principle talking about emails, reusing people\u2019s hate mail and turning it into reasons to buy.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> By polarizing your list when you get that hate mail, have you seen any negative effects from the people who hate you?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> What happens is you get the people who just don\u2019t like you and they stick around anyway, kind of like the Rush Limbaugh Syndrome and the Howard Stern Syndrome. He\u2019s got the same thing where he\u2019s got a bunch of people who keep listening to him because they want to see how much more mad they can get. It\u2019s not unlike in the 1908s when Marvel Comics turned the green raging Hulk into a smart gray Hulk, and all the green Hulk fans apparently were pissed and were like, \u201cNever reading this again,\u201d but they found that sales are going up. You know they\u2019re getting all this hate mail because people want to see how much more mad they can get, so it\u2019s something people have to get used to. I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s easy for everyone but if you\u2019re going to do anything significant, people are going to take shots at you.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Do you see if there\u2019s negative shit on you on the internet on any of the message boards or you don\u2019t even bother?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I don\u2019t actively look for it but one thing I do, and I think everybody should do this just to do it, is you can use Google Alerts to put your name or anything you want really in there to alert you when that phrase comes up. Every time my name is indexed somewhere in Google, I get an alert about it, so sometimes I\u2019ve caught some people on the Warrior forum complaining about me. It\u2019s endless fodder. It\u2019s almost like they\u2019re handing you money because usually, places like that where people are just whining and complaining because they don\u2019t like somebody, it\u2019s almost like a gift, especially the more detailed they are.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not like you\u2019re using it against them, you\u2019re just using it for yourself to make more sales because they\u2019re bringing up objections and giving you a chance to give your side of things privately to your list where you have a captive audience. It\u2019s awesome. There\u2019s none of this back and forth arguing stuff.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> What\u2019s the reason you use a lot of slang in your emails and you make up interesting words and misspellings? Is there a method to your madness?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> The Matt Fury email marketing methodology, I learned a lot studying him and his stuffy and he\u2019s really the one who mastered that sort of thing and I give him all the credit because he was big on just making up words for the entertainment value or misspelling the word, but it\u2019s like an obvious spelling. It\u2019s not like a typo, he would just purposely misspell words and it worked out in his favor that the spam filters weren\u2019t as bad on him because of that because he would change the word \u201cmoney\u201d to \u201cmunny\u201d which was an obvious misspelling; it didn\u2019t look like an incompetent typo. There\u2019s an entertainment value to it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s powerful but here\u2019s what people don\u2019t understand, you don\u2019t\u2019 want to go copying what other people are doing. There are people on my list and I know they do this because I see it and their friends will even tell me \u201cSo-and-so is using all your slang and all the words you use,\u201d and they don\u2019t realize how they look like wannabes doing that. I didn\u2019t trademark any of these words but I know I\u2019m the first one to misspell guru \u201cgoo-roo\u201d and now everybody\u2019s using it like they all invented it but they all just sound like wannabe me\u2019s, so it\u2019s something to be careful of. In an email, you\u2019ve got to be your own thing.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not unlike the jazz world. There\u2019s this book that Ken McCarthy put together called The System Club Letters, which System Club is his like $100 a month membership website and I guess he writes a letter to them every week, like a 500 word letter, and he compiled a bunch of them together \u2013 it\u2019s probably my all time favorite business book, it\u2019s so good \u2013 but one of the early chapters is about the similarities between the jazz world and the business world. He\u2019s like, in jazz, the copycats don\u2019t last. In fact, they do not exist in jazz because if you don\u2019t have something new and unique to bring to the table, nobody\u2019s going to pay attention to you.<\/p>\n

He goes, in business we have the same thing and you might last a little longer than you will in the jazz world but eventually you\u2019re going to be knocked out of it because people want a new take on things. They don\u2019t want a warmed over version of somebody else. They want a unique you. Most people who go around swiping and copying emails, I guarantee they don\u2019t sit there and talk to their family and friends pretending to be someone else. They\u2019re probably themselves. They\u2019re really shooting themselves in the foot by swiping and copying other people. They really should be an original and work hard and not try to take shortcuts because they\u2019re just hurting themselves.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Is there a place for swipe files for an email copywriter, and do you use swipe files to come up with some of your ideas for either sales letters or email copy?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I don\u2019t. I don\u2019t have a huge swipe file. I recommend your site, Hard To Find Ads, to everybody, which I think is such an under-known site because people could really use that kind of information. In the beginning, I would read ads and copy ads by hand every day. That was my main thing until I actually started getting clients, so I\u2019m not anti-swipe file but for emails, I think you can study other emails. You can see how people approach their emails. How did that person tell that story? How did they structure that email? Look at how they made that concise and tight? Look how they made that entertaining, something so boring.<\/p>\n

You can study and get inspiration from these things but I\u2019m totally against word for word, whole cloth paragraph and stuff swiping because it just doesn\u2019t sound authentic. Forget the ethical side of things \u2013 there\u2019s that obviously \u2013 if you ever saw the movie Transformers, there\u2019s that robot, Bumblebee, the yellow car. He can\u2019t talk. The way he speaks, it\u2019s like he uses radio transmissions from various songs and news reports and clips to talk. That\u2019s kind of what email swiping sounds like. It\u2019s like all these different voices in one email and it sounds clunky, it sounds very clumsy, and it doesn\u2019t sound right. People know it. They may not be able to verbalize why they can\u2019t stand reading it or why it bores them, but they know, as opposed to an authentic voice, someone who\u2019s an original to them, they\u2019re giving their opinion, they\u2019re giving what they want to say and it\u2019s coming from the heart and it\u2019s coming from their way of speaking, that\u2019s going to stand out. I guarantee it.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> For the guests who are joining us now, can you give out your main website URL and tell the listener what to do when they get there?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> It\u2019s www.BenSettle.com<\/a> and you\u2019ll have a choice when you get there. You can either opt in, which I recommend and in my biased opinion you should opt in. If you don\u2019t opt in, that\u2019s fine. You can still go to the main site but if you do opt in, I will send you the first issue via PDF, not the print version. It\u2019s a print newsletter, my Email Players newsletter, and I\u2019m telling you, even today people are like, \u201cOh man, I made all this money just applying the stuff from that first issue that you gave me free; thank you,\u201d and a lot of those people become subscribers as a result. You get that free just for opting in. If you don\u2019t opt in, that\u2019s fine too. You can go to the blog. There\u2019s over 1000 pages of content on there and there\u2019s well over a dozen hours of audio and video content on there too, touching on various aspects of email and selling, everything from \u201cHere\u2019s how you can use emails to get clients,\u201d \u201cHere\u2019s how you can use emails for entertaining,\u201d I try to keep them nice and diverse and that\u2019s all free. I\u2019m big on demonstrating so if after all that you don\u2019t think I\u2019m worth listening to, no big deal.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Here\u2019s a question from Rich French and he\u2019s from Chicago. \u201cBen, one of the hot topics in the guru space today is marketing automation in terms of building complicated structures to send emails based on your prospect\u2019s behavior. I love the simplicity of Ben\u2019s daily emails and would be interested to hear what he thinks about these latest tactics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I think if they work, you should do it. I keep as simple a funnel as I can for my main thing, but that said, it\u2019s because I don\u2019t want to have to hire things out and outsource things and write a bunch of auto responders. I just don\u2019t want to do it. I got better things to do with my time and I have a nice little thing going now, but that said, there is a lot to be said for segmenting customers and people and having them tagged.<\/p>\n

For example, there\u2019s software out there where you can tag someone where they may not be segmented necessarily but you can tag them so that they receive certain information if you want to send it out. I think if you\u2019re into that, then do it because there\u2019s a lot of power in segmenting when it comes to people\u2019s interests and that sort of thing. That is definitely something we\u2019re going to be doing in this golf company I have a partnership in. We\u2019re going to be getting into all that because that\u2019s a market where you can just slice and dice up a list a million ways and it\u2019s all good, so I\u2019m all for it. I just don\u2019t do it. It\u2019s like I\u2019m all for paid per click but I personally don\u2019t do it. I just don\u2019t do it for my main site. I don\u2019t\u2019 feel like spending any time on it but if you have the software to do it, you have the time and patience to do it, or you have a team to do it, I\u2019m all for it. I think it\u2019s a great thing.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> What are some of the no-nos in one\u2019s subject line and body copy that can get email banned or rank as spam? What are some of the best practices that can keep one out of the spam filters?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Stop doing what spammers do. For example, there are people who do this who I have the utmost respect for except when they do this. I just shake my head when I see some of these things, where they\u2019ll put the letters \u201cRE\u201d with a colon like they\u2019re replying to something just to get someone\u2019s attention so it looks like their replying. I\u2019m not saying it doesn\u2019t\u2019 work on the weak-minded, I\u2019m sure it does, but it\u2019s so shady and I believe, and I\u2019m a not a lawyer so I can\u2019t say this is a law, I\u2019m pretty sure that violates the Canned Spam Act because I don\u2019t think Aweber lets you do that for that very reason. The same thing with people who put \u201cFWD:\u201d like they\u2019re being forwarded something, or people who put at the end of an email \u201cSent from iPhone.\u201d It\u2019s a list email sent from an iPhone.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying it won\u2019t work. For all I know, it might jack your response up. I don\u2019t know but in the long run, really, for the people who think and the people who are skeptics, which is a much bigger section of a lot of niches than people realize, you just turned off a light switch and that\u2019s not coming back on easily, the light switch of trust, so I would say stop doing those things. Read your spam. If you\u2019re using Gmail, it\u2019s really easy. Just look at your spam folder. Look at the things spammers are doing that are getting them there.<\/p>\n

For example, one popular subject line is \u201cFrom\u201d and then the person\u2019s name. Now, I don\u2019t know why someone would put that as a subject line anyway, but don\u2019t do it because it\u2019s obviously ending up in the spam folder, so look at your spam folder, look at all the subject lines, and don\u2019t do what they\u2019re doing. There are caveats to this. If you end up opening a piece of spam because they got you to open it, you want to look at what they did to get you to open it. I\u2019m not saying you got to copy it or anything like that, but they did something right and that\u2019s the only way a spammer can survive. In a lot of ways, they\u2019re leading the edge in how to get emails opened but avoid the things that are getting sent to your spam folder. That\u2019s why they\u2019re in the spam folder.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> What kind of auto-responder do you use? Can you recommend any one company over another?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I can\u2019t and I\u2019ll tell you why, because all of these companies are prone to going dark side. They\u2019re all prone to doing things that I don\u2019t like and I don\u2019t want to recommend one and then suddenly they make some dumb change or they bring in too many of the wrong people and suddenly all the customers\u2019 emails aren\u2019t getting delivered because they\u2019re put on a spam list, because that can happen. I can\u2019t recommend one over the other. What I can recommend is go to the big ones, the reputable ones like Aweber and Get Response and Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, all the ones that are reputable. They\u2019ve been around. They have relationships with spam blacklist companies so they\u2019re on your side with that. They all offer like a trial. I think they all do. I\u2019d be surprised if they don\u2019t. Most of them at least offer like a $1 trial or $3 trail or something, and use whichever one\u2019s interface you like the most.<\/p>\n

For example, I\u2019ve been using Aweber since 2003. Right now at this time, I like them. That could change, so for example, I like the company but I don\u2019t like some of the changes they do. In fact, every time they make a change, I cringe, and I\u2019m not the only one. There are a lot of heavy emailers that use Aweber that are like \u201cOh god, I hope they didn\u2019t do something to make this more complicated,\u201d but luckily in their case, they let those of us who have had Aweber since like 10 years ago grandfathered in where we can still use the old interface. The new interface takes more steps to send an email than the old one did. I don\u2019t know why they did that, other than maybe it\u2019s more simple for a newer person to follow one screen at a time just to walk them through it, baby steps maybe, which is fine.<\/p>\n

Google does the same thing. If you log into to Gmail nowadays, you can\u2019t type in your username and password. All they\u2019ll let you put in is your username and then once you put that in, the password field will show up. I can see why this appeals to brand new people who don\u2019t know anything about anything, but it\u2019s more steps. I want less steps so that\u2019s why I\u2019m not going to endorse any of them, even the ones that I\u2019m using. I also use One Shopping Cart. Maybe one day I won\u2019t. I don\u2019t know. I can\u2019t tell you. They\u2019ve done the same thing where they\u2019ve made it so I can\u2019t send plain text emails, which bothers me. It\u2019s not enough to not use them anymore because I don\u2019t do a lot of email from there, it\u2019s just my customer list is on there and I do most of my customer selling through direct mail, but that\u2019s what I\u2019m saying.<\/p>\n

Even if I\u2019m using them, I\u2019m not going to whole cloth endorse anyone because it could change at any time but you got to use the ones where the interface makes the most sense for you because you shouldn\u2019t\u2019 be spending a lot of time on emails. I don\u2019t think, at least. There are some people who will spend days on an email and tracking every nook and cranny and I\u2019m a big money is attracted to speed kind of guy. The faster I can write it, get it in there and get it out, the faster I make money so that\u2019s kind of the way I look at those things but either way, take the trials, look at the interface that makes the most sense, and go with that.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Here\u2019s a question from Tony Polizzi. \u201cWhat do you see as one of the biggest mistakes people are making when it comes to the length and style of copy in our attention deficit social media obsessed world?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Nothing\u2019s really changed. I would give the same advice 15 years earlier even when there wasn\u2019t that much competition. I didn\u2019t make this saying up, I just applied it to email. You want your emails to be like a woman\u2019s skirt; short enough to get attention and long enough to cover the details. As long as you\u2019re not boring and as long as you\u2019re not long-winded, you should be okay. So many emails are just long-winded and they\u2019re boring because nobody wants to hear the information, and that\u2019s a disconnect with somebody\u2019s market. It\u2019s not even the length of the emails. You could probably get away with writing a long, rambling email as long as it\u2019s fascinating information to the market.<\/p>\n

Most people, even when they write concise emails, the people that are struggling, the reason they\u2019re struggling is because there\u2019s a market disconnect. They\u2019re not connecting with their market, they don\u2019t know their market, all they study is their product, and you got to study your product but the market comes first. In fact, when I brought up the wing chun kung fu earlier, when you start learning that, and I\u2019m sure it\u2019s like this with a lot of other arts too, but the first thing they teach you is the form. There\u2019s a Chinese term for it but I\u2019ll just call it the form, where you get in this stance and your body is in complete harmony with nature. Everything you do is connected with gravity. You\u2019re using all of gravity to strike. You\u2019re balanced by gravity, it\u2019s harder to move you, you\u2019re just in a position of power no matter how big or strong you are, it doesn\u2019t matter, or how weak you are.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a very powerful position, and you start going through this series of movements in this form with your hands and your arms and your wrists and your elbows and that form basically encompasses all of the moves you\u2019re ever going to use in this art, it\u2019s just done in a specific way and you just practice it every day. Well, the guy who\u2019s teaching this, we call him \u201csifu\u201d \u2013 that just means \u201cteacher\u201d \u2013 the sifu who\u2019s teaching this, he\u2019s like \u201cWhenever you get stuck in this, when you\u2019re trying to practice something or learn it\u201d \u2013 like when I\u2019m practicing it at home on my training dummy \u2013 \u201cjust remember this; the answer to what you\u2019re looking for is always in the form. Just go back to the form. You will find the answer there because all the movements are in the form.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same in marketing. If you run into a problem or you think your stuff is too long-winded or you\u2019re not saying the right stuff, you\u2019re not getting attention, go back to the market. All of the answers are in the market. This goes for any kind of writing copy. It\u2019s in the product too, but mostly it\u2019s in the market. I can actually write emails now where I don\u2019t even see the product and I can sell the product. I did this recently.<\/p>\n

As you know, I\u2019ve been selling this Pross-ID book, people that process problems; teamed up with this guy, Eric MacMillan. He kind of runs the traffic to it. We use my emails. We haven\u2019t done much with it because neither of us wants to create content and we don\u2019t want to screw around with supplements and FTC rules. We just kind of let it to the side. We\u2019re both kind of focusing on this golf thing. It kind of pays for itself right now. Eventually we\u2019ll get to it but recently, like as of last month, he was on Clickbank. He\u2019s like, \u201cLet\u2019s sell something to these buyers,\u201d so he went on Clickbank and he found certainly one of the highest selling informational products for people with erectile dysfunction.<\/p>\n

Now, Michael, I can honestly say I\u2019ve never had erectile dysfunction. I don\u2019t know the pains of that market. I\u2019m not in that market. I can\u2019t even imagine that market other than what any other guy could imagine. I didn\u2019t even have the patience to sit through the sales pitch because it\u2019s like a video sales letter. I can\u2019t stand video sales letters. He\u2019s like, \u201cHey, can we sell this,\u201d and I said, \u201cWell, I didn\u2019t get the product,\u201d so I never saw the product and I didn\u2019t even sell the sales pitch, but I wrote an email in about 5 minutes with about 5 minutes of research and 5 minutes to write it.<\/p>\n

Last I heard we were doing like $2 and some cents earnings per click which for our sized list and the cost of the product was actually really good, he was telling me. I just knew how to study that market very quickly using Google, I found out a few of their pains, I told a story around it, and then in the bottom of that email, I admitted it. I came full disclosure; I said, \u201cLook, I\u2019ve never used this product. I don\u2019t have this problem. I can\u2019t make any guarantees but I hear it\u2019s helped a lot of people and you should give it a shot,\u201d and that was the email. It was a story and then a full disclosure I\u2019ve never even used it and we got a lot of sales. In fact, I need to get off my butt and write more emails for that product. Once you know your market, even just a little bit about that market, as long as you know their hot buttons and what pains them, what plagues them every night, email becomes a very powerful weapon for selling. It\u2019s all about the market.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> That\u2019s good, so this may segue into this question. It\u2019s from DJ Hart. She wants to know \u201cHow does Ben research a topic he has no previous knowledge of,\u201d just like you expressed in the story, \u201cin order to write a 750 word email?\u201d So why don\u2019t you use that example? Where did you go to do the research to come up with the email for this specific topic that you knew nothing about, and could one copycat that technique for developing content for something they don\u2019t know about that they want to sell?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Generally stick with markets that I\u2019m in, so like the golf market \u2013 I\u2019m not an avid golfer but I\u2019m enough of a golfer where I know the frustrations and pains and I can easily get the answers I need from other golfers. For example, when I sold in the weight loss niche, I\u2019m not an overweight female. I can\u2019t just instantly connect and say, \u201cOh, I understand that market.\u201d I had to talk to overweight women. One of the shortcuts I would do is I would go on Google and I would be like a fly on the wall in their chatrooms.<\/p>\n

Understand this: On the internet, people think they have anonymity. They do to a certain extent, but they feel free to say whatever they want especially if they\u2019re not giving their real name, so whatever market you\u2019re in, you can do the same thing. Go to chatrooms and forums and blog comments and they will tell you stories that you can use in your emails. In fact, forums are perfect for that. A lot of forum software, you can sort forum threads by the number of views so that the highest viewed ones are the top so maybe one topic got a million views while the other ones only have like 3000 or 4000. There\u2019s something about that forum thread that\u2019s resonating and it\u2019s likely they\u2019ve given you a subject line or the makings of a subject line in the title of that thread, so that\u2019s one good way.<\/p>\n

Another way you do it is even direct mail lists are applicable. Not everything lends itself to this, but I know in the prostate niche, I would do this. I would get on a bunch of lists for prostate supplements and these copywriters are doing all the work for me. They did all the research for me, all the scientific studies; they researched it for me and put it in their ads. I\u2019m not saying I would copy and paste what they were saying, but they were giving me information I could then put into emails. By the way, a 750 word email is really long. Chances are if your email is that long, and this isn\u2019t going to be every case, but in a lot of cases, people write long emails that are really two or three emails that they could break up in 200-300 word emails. Just something to think about.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> How long should an email be?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Like I was saying before, just long enough. Like a woman\u2019s skirt, short enough to get attention, long enough to cover the details, just depends. I strive to keep mine under 300 words but I rarely ever do, but I think that\u2019s a good starting point. Do a word count on your next email and try to remove 50 words from it. Make it an exercise, and you\u2019ll start forcing your brain to think of ways to condense ideas into smaller chunks and make things more clear. You might find that you\u2019re actually talking about two things. If you\u2019re talking about two different topics in the same email, just separate that into two different emails so you don\u2019t overwhelm people. Think of email as a talk radio segment. So if you ever listen to talk radio, it\u2019s segmented. The first 15 minutes is the monologue and then they take calls, but each segment is like a topic in and of itself. They don\u2019t go into five different topics. It\u2019s this segment we\u2019re going to talk about X, Y, and Z, and then they go to commercial and that\u2019s how email should be too.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> What other consistent marketing have you been doing that has helped you build a good following? You\u2019ve got your podcast. You\u2019ve got a little bit of Facebook. You\u2019re getting into some paid Adwords; anything else?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah, I would say probably the best of all of them, and it\u2019s hard to track this but you just get a feel for it, I suppose it could be tracked but it would take too much work than I want to do, but I can just see it working because people say, \u201cI heard about you from XYZ,\u201d and that is start doing podcast interviews where you make yourself available to be interviewed on other people\u2019s podcasts. Most podcasts out there that I have heard, at least, and I don\u2019t listen to a lot of podcasts, but very few of them are just one guy talking. Most of them are interview based. That\u2019s how they do it for whatever reason, financial reasons, whatever, they can monetize it better; they like to do interview based podcasts where they always interview someone new.<\/p>\n

Understand that someone who listens to a half hour podcast or an hour long podcast all the way to the end and then goes to your site is a very qualified lead. You\u2019re not going to get a lot of traffic like that, but the traffic you do get tends to be very, very high quality; high quality customers, high quality people, people who are just into whatever it is you\u2019re selling, the topic, and so I would say make yourself available to do those things. There\u2019s a site called www.RadioGuestlist.com where podcasters and real radio shows \u2013 and I\u2019ve gotten on real radio shows doing this \u2013 they will say \u201cWe\u2019re looking for an expert about XYZ to interview on our show,\u201d and they\u2019re basically saying \u201cSend me an email and pitch me on why I should interview you.\u201d I\u2019ve used that pretty successfully but just find podcasts and look at them. A lot of them are looking for good content. They need it. You\u2019re not imposing on these people at all; they need you, so if you have something good to share, start doing that.<\/p>\n

In fact, for our podcast, my producer Jonathan Rivera hired this lady to go out and find people to interview me, so she\u2019s always researching other podcasts and getting me booked. It\u2019s like her job. I\u2019ve been doing a lot of that over the last several months and it pays off because people do say \u201cI\u2019ve heard about you from XYZ show, I keep hearing your name pop up.\u201d I think they say that because they\u2019re listening to all the same podcasts and certain names do pop up over and over. It\u2019s very powerful. I don\u2019t know how you would track it unless you created a unique URL for every show that you were going to plug that URL on a different show, but you\u2019ll see your sales and traffic go up.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> How about joint ventures? When I first met you, you were married, you were pretty tied down; you\u2019re pretty much solo Ben. Over the recent years you\u2019ve gotten out there and done a lot of networking, you\u2019re speaking at seminars, and you\u2019re connecting more with the internet marketing community, so are you doing JVs out there with these new connections and are joint ventures a source for new subscribers as well?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> They certainly can be. There\u2019s a lot of people who owe me a solid because I\u2019ll promote certain people not because I want a favor from them or anything but because they\u2019re selling something that I think my list would want, so I don\u2019t do a lot of the \u201cYou scratch my back, I\u2019ll scratch yours.\u201d When I joint venture it\u2019s usually me selling someone else\u2019s stuff and that\u2019s really rare. I can count the number of people on one hand whose stuff I\u2019m going to take the time to sell and it\u2019s good to be choosey like that. That is a good way to do it. You absolutely could. I remember you and I did a joint venture once where I was like, \u201cHey, Michael, how about I write you 10 press releases or something and you plug my site to your list,\u201d and your list was like 14,000 people at the time and mine was only like 4000 and that was a very big success. I always tell people to make deals like that if you can.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> What was the seminar that you promote in Las Vegas? It was a real small Mastermind group. Is that a JV situation?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> It\u2019s called Ocean\u2019s Four. It\u2019s four of us. It\u2019s me, Jack Borne, Ryan Levec, and Andre Chaperon where people, like 6, 7, 8, even the 9 figure business where they come and we put them on a hot seat and we tear apart their funnel, we tear apart their strategy, we tear apart their offers, we tear apart their emails and their copy. The four of us each bring different strengths to the table. I\u2019m not the funnel guy. That\u2019s Ryan Levec\u2019s thing and he can just tear a funnel apart by looking at it. I\u2019ll go through all their emails and go through one by one and say \u201cDo this, do this, do this.\u201d Andre does the same thing and Jack Borne\u2019s like a programmer and he\u2019s also Jack Marshall\u2019s affiliate manager and he knows all this stuff about the mechanics of a website and the mechanics of an offer and what\u2019s working and what\u2019s not working, so we all just bring different things to the table. It\u2019s a joint venture in the sense that we all just combine forces, so you could say it\u2019s a joint venture.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Do you all split the money?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah, we split the money and we don\u2019t make very much when all is said and done. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s worth taking a weekend to do it, but what\u2019s worth it is there\u2019s so many ideas flying around the room that the four of us get as much out of it as the attendees. We make a little bit of money on it but that\u2019s not even the goal of it. If we were trying to make money on it, we would double the price. It\u2019s actually relatively inexpensive to go and we have four or five people who just come every year, every time we do one, and then we get some new people come and go, and it\u2019s been more successful than we thought. It was really only supposed to be a one-time thing. We may not even do another one, just depends on our schedules getting crazier. If we do, it might be once a year from now on but we\u2019ve done like six of them I think. It\u2019s been very successful.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Can a skilled email marketer expect better response if sending multiple emails per day?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I\u2019ll just put it this way. Everyone\u2019s results may vary but if I was more motivated than I am now and I wanted to put the time into it and the thought power into it, I would be sending two a day, if not three. I think as long as they\u2019re good and interesting, you\u2019re okay. If they\u2019re boring emails and it\u2019s just blatant pitching all day, it\u2019s probably not going to do too good for you, but if you are interesting and have something to say \u2013 I know people who do three a day. Dagan Smith, for example, I know he does like three a day sometimes and it\u2019s like the more he sends, the more money he makes. It\u2019s not unlike when we do our offers leading up to deadlines. Again, you have to kind of take the temperature of your list. Maybe your list really is going to get pissed at you if you send three a day. It\u2019s kind of hard to answer that as a blanket thing but personally, I would send two a day and I do sometimes, if I was more motivated, because I know it would make me more money.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Bill Mueller from San Diego here \u2013 he\u2019s a fellow copywriter \u2013 he wants to know, \u201cDo you survey your list?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I don\u2019t remember the last time I surveyed the list. If you\u2019re going to survey a list, do it in a way that\u2019s very meticulous, kind of like how Ryan Levec does that sort of thing. If I did survey my list, I would ask one question and one question only. I would ask \u201cWhat were the last two or three or products you\u2019ve bought and what are the URLs,\u201d because they\u2019re telling you what they\u2019re actually spending on other than what they think you want to hear or guessing. People will say one thing but they don\u2019t mean it. If you ask people \u201cWhat\u2019s better, reading a novel or watching a movie,\u201d \u201cWell, I read the novel.\u201d Most of them have never read a novel in their lives. They just want to sound sophisticated. \u201cWhat\u2019s your favorite book?\u201d \u201cMy favorite book is the Bible.\u201d I can tell you most people who say that have never read their Bible.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re just getting a feel good answer, or sometimes people just don\u2019t know what they want and so they think they want one thing but you\u2019re noticing they\u2019re spending money on something else. It goes back to what are they buying \u2013 not what they say they want to buy, but what are they buying? You might find that they bought the same kind of product the last three times they bought, three different versions of that product, and what would be the best thing to sell them is that same kind of product, only better.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> For the guests who are just now joining us, can you give out your URL website and tell them what to do when they get there?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah. It\u2019s www.BenSettle.com<\/a> and if you go there, you can either opt in or not opt in. It\u2019s up to you. If you do opt in, I will send you the first issue of my Email Players newsletter. It\u2019ll be a PDF, not the print version of the first issue. That\u2019s a very real $97 value. That\u2019s what it costs every month to be a member. No one ever gets a price break or anything like that. It\u2019s $97 a month. That\u2019s what that issue is legitimately worth and it\u2019s got 24 different ways to make more money with your emails. I just went through 24 different things you can do \u2013 different openings and subject lines and approaches and ideas \u2013 and people absolutely make money on just going through that free issue because that\u2019s the goal. I want them to get a taste of what I have to offer them and what better way than to show them how to make some more sales? That\u2019s free, and if you don\u2019t opt in, that\u2019s fine too. You can go to the blog where I\u2019ve got well over 1000 pages\u2019 worth of content on there and a bunch of audio and video. It\u2019s all free so it\u2019s yours for the taking. You can download it, listen to it, whatever you want to do; www.BenSettle.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> When it comes to subject lines, if you had to choose one subject line template idea for someone who wants to ramp up their response in email, could you share maybe one of your favorites even though they\u2019re going to get it when they log in to your site?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> This probably is in that free issue but when in doubt, go for maximum curiosity. Curiosity gets the click. Curiosity is actually more persuasive in selling than self-interest. In fact, here\u2019s a story I learned from Scott Hanes. Scott Hanes was one of Gary Halbert\u2019s only true prot\u00e9g\u00e9s. Gary only had a handful from what I understand and he was one of them. I\u2019ve actually met Scott Hanes and I\u2019ve sold his copywriting course; he\u2019s a really good guy, very, very high level copywriter. I remember many years ago when I interviewed him once for my site, he told a story about how Gary Halbert would take him out on a boat all day right before the deadline. They\u2019re cruising around on a boat because that\u2019s how he would get ideas, and one day he asked Scott, \u201cScott, what do you think the most important part of advertising is, of a sales letter?\u201d Scott said, \u201cThat\u2019s easy, self-interest,\u201d and Gary Halbert said, \u201cNo, you\u2019re wrong. It\u2019s curiosity. People will buy because you made them curious on page 8 of an ad in a book and it\u2019s a very, very powerful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

People will buy very expensive products they didn\u2019t even know about 5 minutes earlier because of some kind of curiosity thing in a sales pitch, so it even double applies to email. If you want to stick out in that inbox, you go for maximum curiosity. That\u2019s not the only way to do it, and I teach dozens of ways to do it, but that\u2019s the go-to way.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Here\u2019s a question from Dr. Lance Zimney, DC; Life in Motion Chiropractic and Wellness at www.LifeToTheFull.com. \u201cBen, as a doctor of chiropractic, is it better to write the bulk of my emails on more controversial issues in healthcare or stay relatively even keel and throw in more bold controversial subjects few and far between? Note: I\u2019ve purchased some of Ben\u2019s products in the past and I know he can get quite controversial. I\u2019m trying to gain the thick skin that Ben has. :)\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Well, I\u2019ll tell you what, I think you should give your opinion and if your opinion happens to be controversial, so be it. I don\u2019t necessarily think you have to go out of your way to invent something. That\u2019s not a bad idea either to stay controversial, but a few people come to mind in the health niche. One is Dr. Mercola; www.Mercola.com is probably the biggest independent natural health advice and product site on the internet, certainly one of the biggest. That guy never says anything in the mainstream. You almost want to get angry at him because he\u2019ll make you think you\u2019re going to die if you use anyone else\u2019s product but his and he\u2019s very good at that. Is he trying to be controversial? Is he up there ranting and raving? No, he\u2019s very even keeled and very methodical and logical and all that but it\u2019s just inherently controversial because he just doesn\u2019t agree with the mainstream.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s this other guy, Dr. William Campbell Douglas, he\u2019s got a print newsletter that\u2019s like $39 a year and I highly recommend getting on that too because he goes out of his way to be controversial. This guy will pick anything that the mainstream says and \u2013 in an infotaining way, I might add \u2013 he will skewer it and it\u2019s so fun reading his stuff, so yeah, I would recommend it. It doesn\u2019t mean that you have to be obnoxious about it. You can just have a counter opinion.<\/p>\n

Now, chiropractors have a lot of uphill battles as it is. You have a lot of competition from each other and you have the mainstream always downing you and saying you\u2019re frauds and quacks and all that, so if people are going to paint you as a villain, this is my way of looking at things, Michael. I\u2019m not saying everyone needs to adopt this but this is how I look at it; if someone\u2019s going to cast me as a villain, I\u2019m going to play the part well. I\u2019m just going to run with it, so I think you should. And do you need a thick skin? Yeah, you\u2019ll get it over time.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s kind of like the Thai boxers over in Thailand. Thai boxing is a very interesting sport. The movie Kickboxer kind of went into it a little bit, they Hollywood-ized it a little bit, but they will sit there and kick a banana tree until their shin breaks and then they\u2019ll let it heal and then they\u2019ll kick that tree again and let it break again. And they\u2019ll keep doing that because every time they kick that tree and break their shin, what happens is they call it calcification or it\u2019s calcifying or whatever \u2013 a good chiropractor would probably know more about this than I would \u2013 but the little cracks in the bone and all that start to harden so your shins become rock hard eventually and it\u2019s the same thing when you\u2019re dealing with the internet and all the trolls and haters out there.<\/p>\n

At first, yeah, it\u2019s a little hair raising but then you start to realize \u2013 this one guy who was on Twitter, I can never pronounce his last name; it\u2019s something like Mike Serlovich, I\u2019m probably butchering his name \u2013 but he said something like the whole internet, its\u2019 basically just pro wrestling. All of the controversy you see on the internet, it\u2019s like pro wrestling and once you realize that, that that\u2019s the mentality of what\u2019s going on out there, it\u2019s not worth getting upset about it. It\u2019s not worth letting it keep you awake at night. People who are attacking you tend to be losers with no lives of their own and they\u2019re attacking you because they want to be heard and that\u2019s the only way they know how to be heard. That\u2019s what they do. It\u2019s a very troll-like thing and like I said, if you\u2019re not getting that kind of reaction, you\u2019re probably not pushing hard enough anyway.<\/p>\n

If I was the chiropractor, I would. I\u2019d go all in. If you\u2019re going to paint me as a villain and a quack and all that stuff, then I\u2019m going to pay the part well. In fact, I would play that up. I would call myself \u201cthe quack that actually knows what he\u2019s talking about\u201d or something like that. It\u2019s called agree and amplify. If someone\u2019s going to accuse you of something, agree with it and then take it another step higher. Go ahead and agree with them but then make it like a cartoon like thing. It tends to shut people up. It makes the people attacking you look stupid. It\u2019s fun. It\u2019s entertaining naturally. You just won\u2019t care what people think too much after that.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Ben, how important are the use of bullets in your personal sales copy and emails?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I don\u2019t use them a lot on emails except when I\u2019m promoting the Email players newsletter, like the last day they can get it that month. Bullets are everything. Ken McCarthy, he has a really good take on this I think. He\u2019s like the most important skill to learn in copywriting is bullets even if you\u2019re not writing bullets for your ad, everything is really chunked down into bullets, little sound bites. A whole ad can just be a bunch of bullets thrown together in a paragraph. Think about how the human mind takes in information. It wants things bulleted. When you go to the grocery store, you don\u2019t bring a grocery story or a grocery paragraph, you bring a grocery list, a bullet thing. It\u2019s a very, very powerful thing. Paul Hartounian, the publicity guru, I\u2019m a big fan of his and he\u2019s really big on bullets because he uses those in his press releases all the time because that\u2019s what gets reporters to call him. He says whenever he\u2019s writing a note to somebody, like leaving a phone message for someone, he always puts everything in bullet form. He\u2019s always writing bullets. I think it\u2019s a good habit to get into.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> How many emails would you send to the same recipient before recycling them? Do you recycle the same emails?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I do. Practically all of July\u2019s emails are recycled. Sometimes you just need a break.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Do you change them up at all?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Maybe a little bit. Maybe I\u2019ve learned something since the last time and I can make it better, but I look for the ones I can use verbatim. I don\u2019t do it an awful lot. I just do it when I want to do other things and I don\u2019t want to think about it. Generally speaking, I look a year earlier. It\u2019s not a hard and fast rule; it\u2019s just what I like to do. Some people might remember. They don\u2019t care. They\u2019re on your list because they want to hear from you and most people won\u2019t remember anyway. I\u2019ve had people respond to the same email. I\u2019ve noted that someone responded to the same email a year ago will respond to that same email as if it was the first time they heard it today, so you can do it. Here\u2019s another interesting thing. This goes back to testing emails and why I think you\u2019ve got to be careful if you\u2019re going to do this. In copywriting, you have the A\/B test, so you test two sales letter and the winner, that\u2019s your control.<\/p>\n

With email, it\u2019s not quite that black and white because I have done this so many times that it\u2019s not even a question to me anymore. I\u2019ve taken an email that didn\u2019t get any sales the first time I used it for whatever reason, but it\u2019s still a good email and I\u2019ll reuse it like a year later, 8 or 9 months later, maybe two years later, and I\u2019ll get a lot of sales. I\u2019ve had emails that I\u2019ve sent out that did really well and I reused them again and they didn\u2019t do anything. I throw that in there because I\u2019m very distrustful of people who say they test emails and \u201cthis thing kicked butt.\u201d Well, when you\u2019re doing daily emails the way I teach \u2013 maybe you\u2019re sending out one email a year \u2013 but a lot of that has to do with where your market\u2019s at, where people are financially when they\u2019re ready to buy, what they think of you. There are so many factors at play that you can just keep reusing these things and maybe you\u2019ll get more sales, maybe you\u2019ll get less, who knows. The key is to get something out there every day.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Do you have a method for the time of day you let your emails go out; morning, evening, afternoon?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I used to have them go out 6:30 AM Eastern Time just because that\u2019s the default time in Aweber, which is 3:30 my time over here on the coast, and then I got to talking to Andre Chaperon about this. I haven\u2019t even taken the time to test it or not. I think that would be an ongoing test you would have to do forever because it\u2019s hard to test these things with email because email lists are always changing. The variables are always changing. It\u2019s not stagnant like a sales letter. He\u2019s like, the way I do it, I want my emails to get to people around 9:30 in the morning Eastern Time because it seems like most of the population is over there on the east coast, all those cities. He finds that 9:30 \u2013 this is not to say I want you to say 9:30. It could be 9:00; it could be 10:00 AM. I just chose it because I want mine to go out early because I like to see the reaction at that time of the day so I don\u2019t\u2019 have to think about it anymore. He\u2019s like, they\u2019ve gotten their morning rush of email at 6:00 or 7:00 AM or at 8:00 AM when they\u2019ve gotten to work. Their inbox is less crowded later in the morning than earlier in the morning.<\/p>\n

Now, have I seen any tests on this and can I prove it? No, I just took his word for it. He\u2019s a very smart email guy. He knows what he\u2019s talking about, and I did that. Did I see a rise in sales or anything? I didn\u2019t notice it but to me it made sense. That said, I have no problem sending emails out later. In fact, eventually when I get around to it, I\u2019ll probably start sending mine out at night time just to see what happens and I\u2019ll do that for a year or two. I have done that in the past where I\u2019ve sent them out at like 8:00 at night. Have I ever seen a huge uptick in sales or drop in sales doing this? Never, because it\u2019s not the time that matters, it\u2019s you. It\u2019s about your uniqueness that people are reading and buying from. It\u2019s not the time of the day so that\u2019s something to think about too.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> How are you using yourself on Kindle? Do you have any strategies? What do you have up on Kindle? Have you been able to determine if it generates leads for you, generates sales? What\u2019s your strategy with Kindle?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> My friend Greg Perry publishes all my Kindle stuff and he encouraged me several years ago to do this. He\u2019s like, \u201cAnything you\u2019ve written, let\u2019s package it and put it on Kindle.\u201d It could have been a 12 page e-book but it\u2019s good information. I put all this stuff up there so I have a lot of books up there on different subjects. My strategy for that is maybe random people buy it and then they\u2019re going to find me. It\u2019s just a way to build an audience. I know my copywriting e-book, which is like $2.99, if I wanted to package this thing, I could easily sell it for $100 or more, and I have that on there and that tends to bring me a lot of leads actually, so there\u2019s a strategy there. It\u2019s not something I think about a lot but it makes me a decent little side income stream. I like having it there and it\u2019s very consistent and every time I put new books up there, it goes up a little bit more. I think if people already have content just sitting on their hard drive \u2013 dude, I\u2019ve talked about that, like all those interviews you\u2019ve done, if you\u2019re already having them transcribed, why not just throw them up on Kindle and then don\u2019t even think about it? Just write a description for them and let them do their thing. Maybe they make you money, maybe they don\u2019t but they\u2019re not making any money not being used, so I would give that advice to anybody.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> That\u2019s good. Here\u2019s a question from Leo Restrich. \u201cIs a discounted price more effective than other type offerings?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> It can be. The offer is more important than the copy so you want to put a lot of thought into that. I think discounts can be good. I think it can be really good. It\u2019s not something I do a lot of because I like to have a higher air of quality. Discounting kind of cheapens things sometimes; not all the time. If I\u2019m doing an affiliate offer for somebody, I want to have a unique case so they buy from me and not someone else, I say \u201cHey, can you give my list a little discount,\u201d and when people say yes to that, it\u2019s great. It definitely helps. People like the word \u201csale.\u201d If you want to have a little cash flow surge, have a sale on something. The best way to have a sale is just discount something you\u2019re already selling for a limited time and see what happens.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Barb wants to know, \u201cHow should I use guarantees when selling my products online? Do you use a guarantee when selling your products and if not, why?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Well, it really depends. My stuff at www.BenSettle.com<\/a>, like my Email Players newsletter, my copywriting grab bag product, my Crackerjack Selling Secrets e-book, I don\u2019t give any guarantees on that. I really believe it\u2019s high quality stuff that\u2019s going to make people a lot of money. It\u2019s an education. It\u2019s like a university education. If you go to the university and say I want my money back, they\u2019re going to laugh at you. If you\u2019ve taken the classes or bought the classes and didn\u2019t attend, it doesn\u2019t\u2019 matter. They\u2019re not going to give you your money back, so why should I do that with my stuff when I consider my stuff more valuable than what someone can get at a university? Plus I like the mentality that it has when people buy and they know there\u2019s no guarantee and it\u2019s very clear there\u2019s no guarantee and it\u2019s sink or swim. It\u2019s like that story we\u2019ve talked about before. I don\u2019t know how true it is or not, but when Cortez came over to the Americas and he burned all his ships so they\u2019d have to conquer. It\u2019s that mindset I want in my customers. I could probably double or triple my sales if I did what everyone else is doing, but I\u2019d have a lesser quality of customer.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a big believer, Michael, in having four quarters instead of a hundred pennies, because I\u2019d rather have a few really high quality customers than a lot of mixed bag customers. If you have a hundred pennies, some of them might be clean and shiny, some of them are going to be sticky; you don\u2019t know how many of them were in a stripper\u2019s underwear at one time or something, and I guess you could say that about quarters too. That analogy breaks down after a while, but I\u2019m a big believer in that so for my stuff, I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Other stuff that I sell, for example in the golf market, it\u2019s a ridiculous guarantee. They can join our online golf membership club for like $29.99 for an entire year and they get the first 30 days free no matter what and for the next year, they can get their money back even if it\u2019s the last day of the year. If you\u2019re selling mass market like that, I think you do have a bold guarantee, or see what happens when you take away that guarantee. You might find that it doesn\u2019t affect your sales either way, so it\u2019s not like a blanket answer for everyone that. It\u2019s just the way I look at various things. I think every product, every niche, every market is unique, and every product is unique and everything from the guarantee to the offer to the copy to the headline to the branding to the positioning, it\u2019s all going to be unique to this one time in history, to these exact people and this exact market so it\u2019s all different. That\u2019s the way I look at it, at least for my stuff. Most of my stuff I do not have a guarantee with.<\/p>\n

In our market, the internet marketing world, I don\u2019t like the type of people that are attracted to a guarantee. If you don\u2019t believe I\u2019m going to deliver, then don\u2019t buy from me. I tell people this in my emails for selling Email Players. After getting my daily emails and maybe you\u2019ve listened to some of my stuff on my site, you might have heard an interview like this, if you\u2019re still on the fence, maybe I just said something that you\u2019re not feeling easy about, do not buy. I don\u2019t want you to buy. I want you to buy when you\u2019re in, you\u2019re ready. You\u2019re not only showing up to the job but you\u2019re ready to work. There\u2019s something to be said for people who not only show up but show up on time and ready to work. That\u2019s like 99% of the battle in the job world and so it is when you\u2019re buying high quality information, whether it be stuff I sell or anyone else sells. You should be ready to go or not buy at all.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want people who buy something and just let it sit on the shelf because it just makes them feel good knowing it\u2019s there. For example, people who have eating disorders in some cases, not all eating disorders, but maybe they were starved a little bit as a child and all this and they have a little bit of a hang up about food. I know someone who had this happen to her. \u201cI don\u2019t eat all this junk food, I just like to have it because it makes me feel safe like it\u2019s there if I ever need it,\u201d and she\u2019ll never eat it. It\u2019s never going to be eaten but it\u2019s there, and it\u2019s actually tied to that dopamine drip thing we were talking about earlier. I don\u2019t really want that mentality buying my products, if they\u2019re thinking of my products that way. It\u2019s not something you get and just put it in a binder and never read it and you\u2019ll get it to someday. Don\u2019t buy it if you\u2019re going to do that. You\u2019re wasting your money and you\u2019re wasting my time and I don\u2019t like it, but when I\u2019m selling mass market and there\u2019s a team in place that can handle all the refunds and all that stuff, yeah, I\u2019m all for it.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> If I\u2019m interested in starting my own physical newsletter, can you give me a few tips on how to handle the outsourcing for the design and the printing and the mailing? How do you handle that?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Well, I\u2019ve done two print newsletters. I did the Cryptomarketing newsletter which lasted 30 issues and then the only reason I ended that is I was selling the Email Players newsletter at the same time and serving two masters never works, and Email Players was far more profitable so I just let Cryptomarketing die after 30 issues, and I had pretty much said everything I needed to say in it. It was just generalized marketing information.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve done two of them and I\u2019ve learned a lot of things, made a lot of mistakes, but one thing I recommend is for the printing and fulfillment that you use Richard Selby at www.SelbyMarketing.com, and I\u2019m telling you I\u2019ve been through several printers since I started selling my own stuff back in 2009 and these guys have been the best, and I\u2019m talking people \u2013 I\u2019ve used companies that came well recommended by big name gurus and I\u2019m like, this is who they recommend? These people are a joke. There were orders not going out and excuses and these weird ridiculous minimum quantities that didn\u2019t make any sense, and I went to Selby and I said hey, all I want is to be able to do this. I have it rigged to my shopping cart so that you guys will get an email every time I get a sale. It\u2019ll have the customer\u2019s information. I just want it to go out the same day or the next day if it\u2019s kind of late, and I want a tracking number. He goes, \u201cBen, you\u2019re not challenging me.\u201d The thing is at the other places I used; it was hard to get them to do that. You\u2019d be amazed at how incompetent some of these printers are.<\/p>\n

I highly recommend www.Selby.com and they can do a lot more than that. They can actually do whole campaigns for you and segment your list, do sequences, but they make it very simple. It\u2019s like as easy as if you\u2019re selling an e-book because it\u2019s all automated. They take care of it. The only time I have to deal with anything is if the post office doesn\u2019t deliver something, the customer says, \u201cHey, I didn\u2019t get this,\u201d and I\u2019ll just forward that email over to Michelle \u2013 she\u2019s the girl I deal with over there at Selby \u2013 and she just takes care of it. She\u2019s on it like white on rice. I can\u2019t recommend them enough so that\u2019s one thing.<\/p>\n

As far as the design, I used this guy, he calls himself Mr. Subtle. He used to be big in the Warrior forum and Michelle Thornton\u2019s copywriting board that is no longer up anymore but that\u2019s how I learned about him. He\u2019s a direct response guy by trade. I think he\u2019s at www.marketingbrainfarts.com. For all marketing related products, that\u2019s who I use. If you\u2019re not selling something business related, the best thing you can do is just put it out there like on social media or an Elance type of site and just put out there what you\u2019re looking for and you\u2019ll get bids and people will show you their samples and you just pick the one that makes sense to you. It\u2019s kind of a subjective thing who\u2019s\u2019 the best. I used that dude when it came to my newsletter design.<\/p>\n

My first newsletter, the Cryptomarketing newsletter, I had this dude I knew \u2013 back when I was 19, I worked with him at a pottery store \u2013 he\u2019s an artist and he hand draws his own fonts and I thought man, can you create Cryptomarketing newsletter masthead for me? He hand did it and it was really bizarre looking and cool, that sort of thing. The most important thing is to find someone who matches the personality and the feel that you want. If you want something professional, find someone who kind of does slick and professional. If you want something that\u2019s a little bit edgy, find an artist who does edgier stuff.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> So your newsletter is a template that he helped you design and you just pull that up every month and try and follow it?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I don\u2019t even have it that sophisticated. I don\u2019t even have a template other than what I created using Pages. I kind of modeled mine after how Gary Halbert did his. Mine\u2019s a little bit different. It\u2019s not like 8 pages on one subject; it\u2019s multiple topics within the same thing, but it\u2019s basically letter style. It\u2019s written as a letter to somebody. You don\u2019t have to do that. There are people who use two columns like a newsletter would do sometimes. You can do it however you want it. I just want mine to look friendly and warm like a letter. Some people don\u2019t write that way. They write very differently and they should go with a more professional layout, like maybe have someone do that. There\u2019s no one answer. It\u2019s all up to you and the feeling you want people to have when they see it.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Now when someone goes to your website, www.BenSettle.com<\/a>, pretty much you\u2019re forced to opt in, right?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> No, I use what\u2019s called a splash squeeze page. They\u2019ve been around forever. They fell out of popularity for like a decade, I don\u2019t know why. There was a time when people were doing this all the time like in the late \u201890s, early 2000s, and then people just went to straight squeeze pages or they went to no squeeze pages and they sent people to content for like SEO reasons and there\u2019s all these different reasons. Back in 2012, I think it was, I used to subscribe to Dan Kennedy\u2019s No BS Marketing letter. I don\u2019t think he owns it anymore, but there was an article in there by Ryan Dice, talking about how they were testing all these different ways of doing squeeze pages and he talked about the splash squeeze page where it\u2019s still a squeeze page but you give them the option to click through if they don\u2019t want to opt in, and his example was that\u2019s what the Obama campaign was doing. At that time, they were trying to get votes for the 2012 election or getting leads. If you go to www.archive.org, you can look at old websites and if you go back to the www.WhiteHouse.org site using that site, you can go back to late 2011, maybe early 2012, you\u2019ll see an example; it\u2019s like Obama sitting there at his desk and just an opt in saying \u201cjoin our list\u201d or you can just \u201cno thank you\u201d and click through, and that\u2019s what his example was. I did that. Id don\u2019t remember the exact percentage but my opt ins went up immediately after that so I was a believer after that one.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Yeah, this looks good. I don\u2019t remember seeing it like this. When did you change it to this format or this design?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Well, I\u2019ve had a splash squeeze page since 2012 but I\u2019ve recently hired the only designer I\u2019ve dealt with on the internet who\u2019s not like a complete flake. His name is Keith Commons and he\u2019s out of Ireland, and the guy is direct response trained. He\u2019s just the best guy you can work with as a designer, in my opinion, but he\u2019s worth it and I had him go through this and he created what you\u2019re seeing there now on the site and we\u2019re split testing two right now, actually. I\u2019m not sure which one you\u2019re seeing. There\u2019s one where I\u2019m kind of sitting against the wall and there\u2019s another one where I\u2019m kind of staring at you, and the one where I\u2019m sitting against the wall is pretty much the winner but those are going to dismantled very soon because Jim Yagi is taking over my Adwords stuff and he\u2019s going to test landing pages that he knows works very well for Adwords, so it\u2019s going to be changing very soon and that\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n

You always want to keep things in motion. You always want to be using the best thing, so we\u2019ll see what happens with that, but I think it\u2019s definitely worth it to hire someone who\u2019s a professional, who understands direct response design, who understands from our point of few. He\u2019s not an artist. He\u2019s\u2019 not an artsy-fartsy kind of guy. He\u2019s looking at it from a sales point of view and a response point of view. Very few people out there like that but if anyone wants to hire him, I have him on retainer every month so I pay him money so I can just email him if I want something done and it\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> It looks good. It\u2019s very clean design.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah, I also had him redo the www.EmailPlayers.com sales letter. I said okay, I want to try something different. I have found that when I split test sales letters for my own stuff, my leads, it makes almost no difference because the emails are doing all the selling but I wanted to have something that looked a little bit better. The way I had it before is still kind of cool looking but it wasn\u2019t really mobile friendly. It was old. It was like old HTML that I created back in 2007 or something, maybe even earlier than that. Actually, I think I created it back in 2005 or \u201906. It was just out of date so he updated all that, made it mobile friendly, which your sites have to be if you want them indexed in Google from what I understand now, so it\u2019s worth it to hire a designer. It doesn\u2019t have to be him but any designer that you can trust, who knows what they\u2019re doing. It\u2019s worth the money.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> How often do people contact you and want to hire you to write email copy or sales letters for them and are you currently taking clients?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I haven\u2019t done clients in exactly 4 years. When I launched Email Players, I was thinking I\u2019d be lucky to get 20 subscribers when I launched because it was a high ticket thing and my list was only 5000 people at the time and I ended up getting 82 people on the launch, and I\u2019m like that\u2019s it, I do not need to do client work anymore. I haven\u2019t done client work since July of 2007, so I don\u2019t want to do client work, God willing I\u2019ll never have to do client work again. I don\u2019t like it. That said, I have on my website this thing at the top that says \u201cFAQs for the uninitiated,\u201d people who don\u2019t know me, and I spend time in there saying I don\u2019t take clients and if I did, here\u2019s what I would charge. I put that in there and people who don\u2019t read that will sometimes ask me, \u201cHey, are you taking clients on,\u201d and I don\u2019t. What I do is I pass client jobs that come across my desk, as long as it\u2019s someone who\u2019s legitimate \u2013 no one\u2019s going to work on spec that I\u2019m going to pass it to \u2013 if they\u2019re legitimate, worthy clients, I will tell my Email Players subscribers about it because there\u2019s some freelancers who subscribe. I think you\u2019re in good hands, but I always tell everyone it\u2019s a private thing between the two people. Don\u2019t bring me into it. If something goes wrong, it\u2019s between you guys. I\u2019m just letting you guys know each other exists.<\/p>\n

I will do that for people every now and then. I may even start charging for that. If it becomes this thing where I\u2019m getting lots of people wanting me to tell my paying customers about their client project, if it gets to the point where I get like 10 of these a week or something, which is starting to get to that point almost, I may start charging with these clients to advertise them because this is valuable. These are the people I\u2019m training month after month; they\u2019re paying me $100 a month to learn this stuff. They\u2019re serious, but generally I don\u2019t take clients.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> About the website; are you using WordPress for the back end?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah, it\u2019s all WordPress based \u2013 not the Email Players newsletter by itself, but my blog is definitely WordPress based and that\u2019s why I use Keith Commons, because he understands WordPress. I know nothing about technical stuff. I spent so many hours in the early years trying to figure out how to put up HTML \u2013 I wasted so much time. I was so broke back then, I could have outsourced anything if I wanted to. They didn\u2019t have Fiver back then, but I\u2019m a big believer in outsourcing all this stuff if you\u2019re not good at it or don\u2019t like doing it. Just be nice to yourself and outsource it.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> You want to share with the listeners the story about you being part owner with the golf company? How did that come about? What is it? What are you guys going to sell?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah, like I said, the guy who helps me sell in the prostate niche, I\u2019ve known him a few years and he\u2019s got this friend, Marty McDonald. We\u2019ve run in the same circles for years, I just never met the guy until spring of 2014. He came to me and said look, we\u2019re putting this golf deal together. Eric\u2019s going to do all the traffic stuff. Marty, the other guy, Marty McDonald, he\u2019s like the rainmaker. He\u2019s the one doing all the deals, making all these deals and stuff and getting things set up. It\u2019s his vision. It\u2019s his conception. It\u2019s his baby, really, and he calls it Golfing Fanatics. They use social media to get their clients sales and likes and all that, so he\u2019s a real direct response, smart savvy, guy, and he had this idea for an online private golf club.<\/p>\n

If someone listening to this plays golf, they know what I\u2019m talking about. There\u2019s country clubs out there, private golf clubs that can cost as much as $100 a month to as much as $50,000 a year. Sometimes they\u2019re even more expensive than that. I think it\u2019s like $100,000 a year to belong to one of these, and some of the perks that you get when you join these clubs is you get free stuff. Major golf manufacturers don\u2019t really know how to market themselves \u2013 we\u2019re talking about apparel manufacturers and golf clubs and gadgets and equipment \u2013 they\u2019re not very good at marketing themselves. In fact, a lot of them are struggling, so they rely on these private golf clubs to do demos there.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll send people there with a bunch of clubs and they\u2019ll give people a bunch of free stuff just so they\u2019ll use it and review it and let their friends see that they\u2019re using it. For example, let\u2019s say you\u2019ve got a new golf driver and wow, you\u2019re hitting better. You best believe that the people you play with who are hardcore golfers are going to want to buy that same thing. We\u2019re all working for that edge, so that\u2019s kind of what they rely on. They actually give free stuff away to these types of clubs so that people will use and review this stuff. If it\u2019s clothing, they\u2019ll go wear it and then all their friends will want to buy it. They\u2019re just not very sophisticated marketers. I don\u2019t understand it either because it\u2019s like the most rabid market out there. You\u2019d think that all the best marketers would be in this, but they\u2019re not. Anyway, his idea was what if we created an online golf club that was private, that we charge like $30 a year instead of $50,000 a year, but they get most of these same benefits?<\/p>\n

So he\u2019s made all these relationships with brand name manufactures at that, and they\u2019re agreeing to send us stuff that we can send to our members so they can review it and use it and they get to keep everything. It\u2019s not like they have to send anything back. He\u2019s just a very unique guy. He\u2019s got connections in the PGA where he lives in Pennsylvania and now he\u2019s going nationwide. We\u2019ve got some really high level golf coaches, like people who teach, PGA magazine, the Golf Channel, got people like that involved with us to do the training side. So we have this membership site where if you sign up, you\u2019re eligible to get free stuff, whatever we can get to you, and that\u2019s what\u2019s taking us so long to launch this thing; we want to have everything in place so that we have stuff to give people. You fill out your measurements and you fill out the stuff you want and there\u2019s no guarantees but you\u2019re eligible for all of this stuff just by being a member for $30 a year. At the moment, it\u2019s that. We\u2019ll probably start charging a monthly thing of like $20 a month or something eventually but as of now, summer of 32015, that\u2019s our price. So we\u2019re doing that. There\u2019s also high level training insights from PGA pros and PGA master professionals. A PGA master professional is kind of like the graduate PhD version of a golf instructor, just a very rigorous thing they have to go through to prove their philosophy. We have a lot of experts in there.<\/p>\n

A lot of people don\u2019t realize this but golfers get what I\u2019m saying here, is that golfing is kind of a lonely game to play. This actually happens where a guy will go out and hit a hole in one, which is the coolest thing you can do in golf is hit a hole in one, and they\u2019ll go home and tell their wife and she\u2019ll say \u201cThat\u2019s nice\u201d but she doesn\u2019t\u2019 get it. She\u2019s not a golfer. It\u2019s not like she doesn\u2019t\u2019 care but she doesn\u2019t get excited by it. He wants to go tell somebody but he can\u2019t because none of his friends are playing golf either, so it\u2019s like a camaraderie there in these types of golf clubs too, so we\u2019ve got that built into it. It\u2019s like a real club experience but it\u2019s all online and people can get discounts on travel; that\u2019s in the works. We\u2019re putting things like uploading video of your golf swing, put that in the forum, everybody can critique it and help each other out, but the main thing is you\u2019re eligible to get free stuff which is really cool, I think, and that\u2019s how that came about.<\/p>\n

They came to me and said, \u201cCan you do the copywriting and email?\u201d I said hell yeah, count me in, so it\u2019s like the three of us co-own it together. We\u2019ve got the majority position in it. We\u2019ve got some other people who we\u2019re giving a little bit of the company just to keep them in, but it\u2019s our thing and we already soft launched it once in the springtime and we\u2019re going to do a second soft launch very soon and even at our soft launch, we were getting $5 buyers to ice cold traffic, which Eric tells me is really good. The offer I wrote is converting like crazy, everything is in place. We just want to make sure we have everything to give people before we really roll this thing out. I think it\u2019s going to be big.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> And it\u2019s going to be rolled out through paid advertising?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Not just paid advertising like the normal stuff like pay per view ads and pay per click ads and Facebook, but also Groupon and Living Social type sites. It\u2019s perfect for those types of things, so once we get this thing rolled out \u2013 I don\u2019t\u2019 want to say it\u2019s a sure thing because there\u2019s never a sure thing \u2013 but the three of us are extremely excited by it. It\u2019s something we can all dig into and build something big, and that\u2019s perfect because I don\u2019t have to do all the administrative stuff. I can just do what I do and probably hand it off to some other copywriter later. That\u2019s kind of the ultimate goal, is to build this thing up and let other people run it and go start something else.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Sounds good. It\u2019s a great market too. Hey, I\u2019m looking at some of the testimonials on your www.BenSettle.com<\/a> site, and I got a question from Pat Murray from New South Wales, Australia. \u201cRussell Bronson; is he the real deal?\u201d And he goes, \u201cMichael, I know Ben did a Mastermind with him at some stages and has talked him up quite a bit,\u201d and he\u2019s one of your subscribers, I\u2019m pretty sure.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah, I have nothing but respect for Russell Bronson. I\u2019ve been a big fan of his for many years. He paid to attend Ocean\u2019s Four once. He said a couple things to me that I found was kind of interesting and kind of inflated my ego a little bit. He said, \u201cBen, you\u2019re kind of the only reason I came to this. I just really wanted to meet you. I\u2019m on your list and I\u2019m just amazed at how you mail daily and are able to consistently do that.\u201d I guess he\u2019s been a fan of mine for a little while too, which is kind of interesting. We were having dinner one of those nights and we were talking, and he goes, \u201cBen, I used to just really hate you.\u201d He\u2019s like, \u201cI don\u2019t know why, I just didn\u2019t like you. I just couldn\u2019t\u2019 stand you.\u201d If you know this guy, he\u2019s not that kind of guy. He doesn\u2019t come off like a hater in any way. He\u2019s like the classiest guy you\u2019ll meet. I was a little taken back by that, but he goes, \u201cNow I have to read your stuff; now I like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I thought that was kind of interesting, but he has this book if you go to www.DotComSecretsLab.com I think is the URL, where you can get a copy of this book he wrote, I think it\u2019s called 108 Split Tests. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the title, but it\u2019s all these split tests he\u2019s done and with email, he\u2019s confirmed a lot of stuff that I\u2019ve often suspected and been too lazy to test myself. All you pay for is shipping so he\u2019s obviously getting you on a list and he sells to the internet marketing crowd so he\u2019s got to use the stuff that works on them. In my opinion, just from my observation, not speaking for him by any means, it looks like he\u2019s going after the mainstream marketing crowd, the dopamine drip people, so he\u2019s got to market to them in a way that they\u2019ll buy. I think that\u2019s why sometimes people will ask about this, but if you talk to this guy, if you read any of his stuff, if you listen to his podcast, you can just tell he eats, breathes, and craps marketing. This dude is like an encyclopedia of marketing knowledge. Talking to this guy is a fascinating experience and I can\u2019t recommend this guy enough. I like what he teaches, I like what he does. As a matter of fact, I didn\u2019t even know he had a print newsletter until yesterday, so I subscribed to it right away. I can\u2019t wait to get my first issue. He just really knows his stuff. Is he perfect? No. Are any of us? No. We all have things that are probably going to repulse you but I think he\u2019s the real deal.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Can you recommend some direct mail podcasts that you listen to and learn a lot from?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> About direct mail?<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Direct mail, email, marketing, any podcast that you\u2019re getting into that you find a lot of value in.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Here\u2019s the irony: I\u2019m a podcaster but I don\u2019t\u2019 really listen to other podcasts. I\u2019m a novelist but I don\u2019t\u2019 really read other novels. I\u2019m an email marketer. I don\u2019t really read a lot of emails. I don\u2019t know a lot of them but I can tell you this. Jonathan Rivera, who produces my podcast, he produces other people\u2019s podcasts. He\u2019s building a little syndicate, like a network of his people, and I know Doberman Dan\u2019s podcast is on there. You can trust him. His stuff is really good. If you go to www.PodcastFactory.com, that\u2019s Jonathan\u2019s site, you can see all his podcasts and I would say he\u2019s not going to associate himself with bad people or anything, so I would think you could trust those podcasts. I haven\u2019t heard them but I know Jonathan\u2019s not going to put his reputation on the line with garbage, so www.PodcastFactory.com is a good place to start.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard a couple of Russell Bronson\u2019s podcasts, just a couple episodes. I think he does them while he\u2019s in the car. He records himself while he\u2019s in the car driving somewhere, which is an interesting way of doing it, and I listened to a couple of them. They\u2019re really good. They\u2019re short, they\u2019re like 8 minutes long, so I would recommend his. And if you\u2019re in network marketing, my friend Ray Higdon has a daily podcast like 3 or 4 minutes each, so that\u2019s a good length. I think he has like 100,000 downloads a month or something so he\u2019s obviously resonating. You can start with those.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Great. Have you heard anything about the Halbert brothers? Do you know if Kevin and Bond are doing anything worthwhile when it comes to marketing?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t really read their stuff. I\u2019m on their list but it\u2019s like something they send out once in a while and I just don\u2019t get to it. That said, from what I understand \u2013 this is all hearsay; I don\u2019t really know the guys \u2013 they probably do have some things planned. I would guess they would. I hope so. They have a tremendous legacy to share with everyone. I remember on Facebook once, this is kind of a side note, I remember Russell Bronson said something to Bond Halbert on his wall \u2013 because you can see when your friends post on other people\u2019s stuff sometimes \u2013 and he\u2019s like, \u201cCan I just buy everything your dad did? I want to buy everything. Can you guys offer that?\u201d I hope one day they do that. Maybe for some reason they can\u2019t, but I would love it if they would make all his stuff available for sale. I know a lot of us would be buying that left and right. I\u2019d be on that like white on rice.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> All right, one other question, and you referred me over to Andrew when I was having problems with people counterfeiting the HMA system, and what advice would you give for someone with online marketing when it comes to digital products and what to look for with all the counterfeiters out there?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah, Alastair Evans, I think his name is. Gosh, his URL escapes me. I don\u2019t know if you remember what it is.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Not off the top of my head.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> But if you look up Alastair Evans, I\u2019m sure it\u2019ll come up and they do a really good service. People who are sharing your stuff illegally, the pirates, they\u2019ll file all these things with Google and get them removed from Google so nobody can find them, and they give you a report every month so you get to see exactly what they\u2019re doing. I love their service. I told the guy \u201cMan, you\u2019re really doing a service\u201d \u2013 there\u2019s a lot of people that don\u2019t worry about this stuff and they have a good point, people who say, \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t be wasting your time. Just sell and don\u2019t worry about it.\u201d I get it. They have a good point there. Obsessing over this is not going to do you any good.<\/p>\n

At the same time, to me it\u2019s kind of an ego thing and it\u2019s kind of the principle of the matter. If you go and sell to your market, you actually care about your market, which I do. I don\u2019t think you should sell in a market if you don\u2019t really care enough about it the people there. You\u2019re doing your market a disservice if you\u2019re allowing stuff to be downloaded for free because they\u2019re never going to apply it, they\u2019re never going to do anything with it, they\u2019re not going to respect it, and it doesn\u2019t\u2019 help anybody, so if anything, it\u2019s going to hurt people, is my way of looking at it. To me, it goes beyond just money and this and that. It probably doesn\u2019t even hurt people\u2019s sales.<\/p>\n

People who are going to pirate your stuff weren\u2019t going to buy it anyway but it\u2019s the principle of the matter. Why share the stuff that you\u2019re busting your ass to learn and experience? Why let people just walk into your house and steal it? It doesn\u2019t make any sense. You do what you can but Alastair Evans, he definitely does have a good service for that. I referred you and several people to him and you get that printout, I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Yeah, he\u2019s done an incredible job.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I think it\u2019s called www.TakedownCzar.com. It\u2019s good stuff. I highly recommend it.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> All right, one last time for this interview if anyone is just now checking in. Can you give out your URL for your website and tell them what to do when they get there?<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Yeah, it\u2019s www.BenSettle.com<\/a> and when you get there, if you\u2019re so inclined, you can opt in or not, you don\u2019t have to opt in, but if you do opt in, I will send you the first issue of my email players newsletter. It\u2019s a very real, legitimate, $97 retail value. That\u2019s what each issue costs. Now, it\u2019s a PDF. It\u2019s not a print version like people actually subscribe to it. They get a print version for their money, but you get this free, this first issue, just for opting in. If you don\u2019t opt in, that\u2019s fine. There\u2019s like 1000 plus some pages of content on the site, a ton of audio and video training, it\u2019s all free. I get testimonials from people who have just applied the free stuff that says they\u2019ve doubled their sales.<\/p>\n

Now, a lot of them have gone on to subscribe but I was telling you earlier about the lady who emailed me and said \u201cI\u2019ve just got your free stuff so far. I didn\u2019t have a chance to subscribe or anything and it put like $50,000 of extra profit in my bosses\u2019 last sale we did, just using your stuff, that they never would have got otherwise and they\u2019re really excited now,\u201d so this stuff works. Now, I\u2019m not saying you\u2019re going to make that much necessarily. That was probably a big list, but people are making money just with that free issue, so go ahead and use it.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Perfect. Ben, that wraps it up, man. This has been a kickass interview. I think we\u2019ve covered a lot of topics here, so I really appreciate you doing this.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Absolutely. It\u2019s been a long time, man, since we\u2019ve done one of these.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> I know. It\u2019s been a long time coming, so I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll get some value out of it.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> Do you remember the first time you interviewed me? I was so nervous.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> Yeah. Dude, you\u2019ve come a long way but you\u2019ve earned it. You were a shy little kitten.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I\u2019m like a cranky old tomcat now.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> You\u2019re a tiger. You\u2019ve busted your ass. You\u2019ve earned it. You\u2019ve worked incredibly hard so you deserve all the success that you have. That\u2019s what it comes down to, man. Hopefully more to come.<\/p>\n

Ben Settle:<\/strong> I\u2019m sure.<\/p>\n

Michael Senoff:<\/strong> That\u2019s the end of our series. I hope you found it helpful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Senoff: Hi, I\u2019m Michael Senoff, founder and CEO of www.HardToFindSeminars.com. For the last 5 years, I\u2019ve interviewed the world\u2019s best business and marketing minds. Along the way, I\u2019ve created a successful publishing business all from home, from my 2-car garage. Now my challenge is to build the world\u2019s largest free resource for online downloadable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-10176","page","type-page","status-publish"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}