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    The S.T.U.P.I.D. Email (Friday May 27th, 2022)

    (Swipe, Thought, Uplifting, Picture, Interesting, Drawing)

    This is a fun email for Friday May 27th, 2022. Hope you like it 🙂

    🎤 Listen to this email here:

     

    Swipe:

    The famous old-school copywriter Gary Halbert made his first million dollars at age 32 with a promotion called: The Coat of Arms Letter.

    This was the one-page letter to specific last names in the phonebook where he would sell "Coat of Arms" family crest you could buy through the mail (this was 1971 and that was the only way to buy):

    halbert-letter.jpg

    The product people received was literally a printed family crest.

    This was an example of the front & back of the Coat of Arms you would get:

    Shoutout to @eston_esau who sent me these pictures of his grandpa's framed Coat of Arms!

    FTi7WMdX0AA7HSW.jpg

    FTi7jULWUAUXSbB.jpg

     

     

     

    Thought:

    Some types of media take longer per minute to make than others.

    For example:

    Production Time -vs- Final Product ratio:
    • MOVIE: 12 months for 2 hours (4,300:1)
    • SONG: 100 hours for 3 minutes (2,000:1)
    • PODCAST: 2 hours for 1 hour (2:1)
    • LIVE VIDEO: 1 hour for 1 hour (1:1)

     

     

     

    Uplifting:

    This weekend we did a fun Spartan Race with some friends and it was a great time!

    I'm MAINLY just happy I didn't hurt myself! 😬

    It was 10k of running with 25 obstacles and challenges in between.

    We rented a nice house near the lake where the race was being held:

    before-the-race.jpg

    Goofing off before the race

     

    snack-time.jpg

    The morning of the race, having some snacks and getting ready

     

    off-to-the-race.jpg

    We arrive at the ranch where it's held

     

    race-start.jpg

    We're all still clean and about to start!

     

    nev-runnin.webp

    The race begins! Carrying a bucket fill of rocks

     

    nev-bars.webp

    There were lots of monkey-bar-type hanging obstacles

     

    noah-mud.jpg

    My friend Noah Kagan running through mud

     

    end-of-race.jpg

    We all completed the race!

     

    swimming-spartan.jpg

    Jumped in the lake to clean off

     

    hammak.jpg

    Enjoyed the rest of the weekend hanging with friends

     

    It was a good time, good friends, and we made a full weekend out of it on the lake 🙂

     

     

    Picture:

    On my iPhone always use a few unknown settings to make better pics.

    These 5 iOS photo modifiers make your pictures look WAY better (and doesn't wash out the photo)!

    On almost any photo you take, apply these:
    • Increase "Brilliance"
    • Increase "Shadows"
    • Increase "Vibrance"
    • Increase "Definition"
    • Straighten & Crop

    Here's an example:

    photo-editing-sid.jpg

    Here's an example of a photo ruined by lots of backlight, and simply increasing the exposure just washes out the picture, but if you do those 5 modifiers the photo becomes great:

    edit-photo-2.jpg

    This photo was almost unusable, but 20 seconds of:
    • Increase "Brilliance"
    • Increase "Shadows"
    • Increase "Vibrance"
    • Increase "Definition"
    • Straighten & Crop

    ...and we're in business!

    canoe.jpg

    Toggling these 5 settings is often the difference between a "meh" photo and an awesome photo. The magic is in the post-editing!

    edit-settings.jpg

     

     

     

    Interesting:

    A Copywriting Course member wanted to build an email list for sneaker deals:

    redit-full-page.jpg

    ↳ Progress for emails was slow, so he started his own sub-Reddit instead!
    ↳ 3,000 subs first month! 200,000 views. 2 viral hits.
    ↳ He tried a promotion but it failed.
    ↳ Then he made a Top 10 post, it hit and brought in revenue!

    best-sneaker-post.jpg

    ↳ The sub-Reddit is now 6,100 members in about ~2.5 months!
    ↳ He's been turning those members into email subs (currently 140+)
    ↳ Is now releasing a paid database of sneaker deals to them.

    sales-analytics-steve.jpg

    Kind of neat how email collection was going slow, but starting a Sub-Reddit was an immediate hit!

    See Sub-Reddit: https://Reddit.com/r/midsoledeals/
    Follow progress:
    https://Copywritingcourse.com/blogs/50 (you can see a full live-updated journal of progress here)

     

     

     

    Drawing:

    Here's a cool little artifact from the 1990's:

    A Simpsons drawing guide that Matt Groening created for the animators:

    simpsons-drawing-1.jpg

    He had these pages that would guide the writers to create a consistent product like he liked:

    lisa-simpson-animations.jpg

    This is pretty common in the animation world.

    For example this is "Mickey Mouse's Hand Guides" from Walt Disney:

    mickey-mouse-hands.jpg

    Cool to see these behind-the-scenes guides 🙂

     

    Hope you enjoyed these little tidbits, have a happy Friday! 
    Sincerely, 
    Neville Medhora - CopywritingCourse.com | @NevMed

    nev-head.webp

    8 Comments


    Recommended Comments

    • Administrator

    Appreciate that Nofiu, these are such helpful features on iOS, I use them all the time!

    Link to comment

    Hi, Neville. Was waiting for the Friday email, thanks.

    QUESTION: 
    I wanted to ask where start providing my  service offer of copy or advertisement (if no audience on any social media)?

    Have a great day!
    🙂

    Link to comment
    • Administrator

    Thank you Saima glad you enjoy these Friday posts! 

    As for your question about getting hired as a writer without much experience or a following you can see my answers to this here: https://copywritingcourse.com/freelance-writing-course/

    Also check this out...the template people use to make $100 the absolute fastest as a freelancer:
    https://copywritingcourse.com/how-to-make-100-dollars/

    Hope this helps!

    Link to comment

    Hey Neville,

    Your emails are great and I have read most of them.

    Can you please tell me which platform you use to create these gifs and images that you use in your emails. 

    Thank you for such amazing stuff. 

    Thank you. 

    Link to comment
    • Administrator

    Thank you Sarthak! 

    I cover a lot of this inside the course, but the short of it is:
    I use Photoshop, Google Drawings, Canva, and ConvertKit for editing images.

    From the 5-22-2022 Stupid Email I show some of the Google Presentation versions I make of my drawings:

    I've utilized drawing little stick figures and such for years, and it's always been difficult....but over the year's it's become easier.

    My original drawings were done on tablet computers or an iPad Pro and then edited in Photoshop:

    thinking.webp

    Then for a while I used a Google Presentation file with different body parts of StickGuy (heads, eyes, noses, mouths, bodies)....so I could just drag-n-drop them into different permutations like this:

    presentation-gif.gif

     

    Then I was using Canva a lot, and you can draw + add images:

    canva-drawing.webp

    Or you could use Canva pre-existing templated stuff:

    canva-template.webp

    Now I'll often edit and create images directly within ConvertKit (what I'm using to send this email):

    convertkit-image.webp

    Making images used to be this very skilled thing few people could do, but now it's become so much more accessible with better tools!

    Link to comment

    Thank you for this weekly creative stuff, Neville. I love it, save it, appreciate it.

    Truly a rewarding read every week. Have a great Friday.

    Link to comment
    • Administrator

    Thank you very much Susan, I appreciate that! I enjoy making these, and hope to keep them coming 🙂 

    Link to comment

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