... and that reason is that they were tested infinitely. What you see in an old ad is the perfect combination of words, evolved over a long time, which can be hard or impossible to come up with in one sitting. Example: Yesterday I wrote an email to my list with the subject line: How an ex-copywriter makes $12k/month in a new kind of part-time job That subject line (and the entire email) are modeled on this ad: How I made $10,000 a Year In a New Kind of Business And when I say "modeled," I mean I used a bunch of the same words, same arguments, same structure. Results so far: 55 replies, many from people who are surprisingly qualified and serious about the offer. Would I have gotten the same kinds of results had I simply used my own copywriting brain to write this email? Maybe.... but my personal guess is no. I've had this experience before when I modeled old ads. Completely outsized response to what I normally get. I know it's familiar advice but it's worth repeating. Study old ads. And don't just study them. Apply them. Model them. Even word for word. Old ads are a treasure chest waiting to be opened, and the fact that the treasure chest has been sitting in an attic for the past 100 years doesn't change that.

Hello friends, as some of you may be aware, ThriveCart has had a couple major outages this year. Personally, I haven't been able to process a single transaction since March 5. Curious if anyone uses a different cart that works better than this thing that looks like a late 1990s website? Unfortunately I also use ThriveCart for course delivery so migration would mean moving all my courses too. Thank you for your time and hopefully your words of encouragement.

A couple days ago I was talking to @Kevin Hood and he asked: "What are your criteria for offers that you're looking to help promote?" My criteria for affiliate offers are pretty damn simple: 1. A real problem that people on my list have 2. A sexy new solution 3. Proof Those 3 points pay off the (*) in my headline above. And now that I think about it, you can add to them a fourth point: 4. A price/proposition that a) makes it likely my audience will actually want to buy and b) makes it worth my while to promote (Put all those four points together and you happen to get the Bencivenga Persuasion Equation.) The trouble is, it's been almost impossible for me to find affiliate offers that really satisfy all 4 of these criteria, or at least to find as many as my audience has an appetite for. I've tried to fix this in various ways, the most effective of which have been: 1. Networking like a beagle at the dog park 2. Starting a community of list and offer owners with the explicit purpose of finding new affiliate offers to promote (ie. starting my own dog park) 3. Working with offer owners on repackaging and repositioning their offers in a way that I know my audience will respond better to (err... I've run out of dog analogies) But once again, too little, too rarely. So I'm curious: Have you promoted an affiliate offer that worked out great for you? If so, where/how did you find the offer?

We need a thread for gratuitous fun: Stuff that has nothing to do with marketing, business, copy, daily emails... but that is fun for fun's sake. (Even a little bit of fun is better than none.) I'd like to kick things off with the attached (and real, not AI) photo of a beaver, which I put in an email a long time ago, apropos of nothing. If you have jokes, funny pictures, memes, ideas for "disconnected infotainment," put 'em in here. On Fridays... or really on any other days.

I've been recommending list swaps as a way to grow your email list. The #1 objection I hear is: "My list is too small to make it worth anybody's while." How small is too small? 4 people? 100 people? 200 people? I was recently on a call with a list owner who has a list of 1,500 entrepreneurs. He said he's worried his list is too small to do list swaps! That dude asked for my advice about approaching people for list swaps. What I told him is: 1. A fantastic lead magnet and solid emails will go a long way. Right now, I'm doing a list swap with somebody who has a list of 150 people... because he's willing to custom create a lead magnet I know my audience will get value from. Plus his emails are solid. 2. You can always offer to make things right. If somebody's list is bigger than yours, you can offer to promote them multiple times, now and then again in 6 months or in a year etc. (In the end, that's the deal I ended up striking with the guy in point 1.) 3. Money can plug the gap. You can always offer to both promote the other person AND to pay them something to make the exchange more equitable. So? Are you convinced now? Are you gonna rush out and start doing list swaps? I hope so. But if not, I gotta tell you my dark-psychology conclusion here: I don't think list size is really what's holding people back from doing list swaps. Rather, I think it's the same old culprit that holds back pretty much everybody, pretty much all the time: Fear of rejection. Putting yourself out there... and having somebody tell you no or ignore you... and feeling so small and worthless because of it. If that's your situation, then I'd suggest, in the words of business coach Rich Schefren, that you put your business goals ahead of your personal development goals. It would be great to not care about being rejected, or to just do stuff in spite of this fear. But while you work on that, it can make sense to look for alternate routes to achieve your business goals. I'd like to point you to an opportunity to do so right now.