Dan Kennedy says: === INDUSTRY NORMS EQUAL AVERAGE RESULTS. Your success may very well be directly proportionate to the number of industry norms you violate, the extent to which you violate them, and the number of industry dinosaurs and self-important gasbags you offend in doing so. === This got me wondering, what are some email marketing norms? Even things that seem inviolable? I figure we could make a list, and then think about how to violate each of those norms, with our own emails and lists, for notoriety and profit.

I went to my Muay Thai training this morning. Apparently we were supposed to come in a Halloween costume. I didn't have one, so I was forced to wear a tutu (photo attached). Are you doing Halloween? Are you not doing Halloween? What or why, in either case? (There's almost certainly a daily email hiding in there, if you haven't written one for today. Write a comment about it below and you'll be 75% of the way done.)

Today, I sent a handraiser email. I ended the email asking folks to answer yes or no about their interest in a thing I'm hoping to put together next year: a multi-week workshop which should help them be a better writer. And I got some 20+ replies in affirmative. Considering I have a few thousand subscribers, 20 is a relatively small number. However, this is the third day I asked my subscribers to reply with a yes or no about this workshop... and it's only today that I got double-digit responses. On day-one, I got 1 response. Yesterday, I got 3 responses. But it was only today that I got 20+ replies. And I have no freakin' idea why. For example, yesterday's email that got 3 replies had more reasons for people to reply. My angle was that better writing can help people make more money. I even prepared receipts. And considering I'm in the make-money space, I figured it would get the most traction... but naah. Today's email, in comparison, had zero incentives... it was just a silly story. Not even that well executed, if I'm being honest. It was one of those days... I didn't know what to write, so I ended up rushing it, and sent it late.... And yet, somehow this one worked.... So yeah, anyway... clueless as I am, I figure this is reason enough to celebrate. This is the email in question if anyone's curious.

I am an opportunity seeker, in the most miserable sense of the term. I got started in high school, by responding to classified ads in the back of the local newspaper. I then followed the bizopp advice of online gurus... I bought courses... I invested in software because I thought it was the future. I keep looking for hot new things, secrets, and shortcuts. I've spent tens of thousands or possible hundreds of thousands of dollar chasing various business opportunities. It almost never works out. Sometimes it does. In fact, on a few occasions it's worked out so well (getting into copywriting, starting my own email list, creating info products) that it's allowed me to survive and even thrive. It's the reason I'm able to be here right now, writing you. Thanks to the many decades of my opportunity seeking, I've come up with 3 questions that help me evaluate new business opportunities these days. I am willing to tell you what these 3 questions are. I am wanting to tell you. I am WAITING to tell you. Except, I know from previous experience that if I just tell you, nothing much will come of it. So I'd like to invite you to think for a moment. What are some questions you might ask yourself to evaluate a business opportunity? Write them below. There are no wrong answers. If your question matches any of my questions, I'll let you know. And one way or another, if there is engagement enough and different questions enough, I'll gradually share my own business opportunity evaluation questions as well, even if nobody comes up with the exact same ones. But if folks aren't very interested in this... I am fine putting these back into the Bejako Trunk of Valuable Ideas to Keep for Myself. [Update: This riddle has been answered. You can find the answers below among the comments. But before you get to those, it makes sense, for your own benefit, to think about how you would answer this riddle. It's much more likely to stick in your mind in that way and to be useful to you in the future.]

Today, a biz owner whose emails I read sent out an email that opened with: "This email is for you if you want quality help on [achieving business outcome] but don't want to commit the [lotsa shekels] that top-shelf collaborators charge." I winced at this. The fact is, this guy is a legitimate expert, who deserves to get paid based on the business value of his services, and yet here he is, leading off the pitch for his new offer by saying, "It's cheap relative to what you might expect." I think there's a lot of value in raising your prices. I think it can even make sense to be the most expensive in your field. Sometimes, on occasion, it can still make sense to offer something at an "attractive" price. But in that case: 1. I don't think it makes sense to lead off with that. Instead, it makes sense to first and foremost fully sell the "quality help" that this biz owner only got to later, and to emphasize that before appealing to cheapness. 2. It makes sense to give a legit public reason for the "attractive" price, and that reason can never be "I am doing it because I'm afraid you won't pay the going rate for this," even if that is part of your private motivation. I wonder if we can come up with a list of such reasons. I'd like to invite you to think for a moment, and comment below with one or more reasons you could use to justify a particularly "attractive" price, which is lower than the going rate for whatever it is that you sell. I'm inviting you to do this for two reasons: 1. Because if you do it now, there's an excellent chance you will remember this important lesson, and you won't make the same mistake this biz owner made in his email today. 2. Because I'm running a little experimental contest. The last person to comment on this post wins $100, which I will PayPal to you in case you are the winner. How do we determine the last person? I will come back to this post periodically and check the comments. If when I come back, there have been no new comments with a reason to be cheap FOR A WHILE... then then last commenter will win and I will announce the fact.