“Spitballing” with a marketing genius part 1

Following is part 1 of a backroom conversation talk (that we recorded) I did about copywriting & online empire building with Ken McCarthy. Here are some fascinating facts about Ken: * He’s the literal “founding father” of online advertising as we know it — with even Time Magazine admitting his early discoveries (on click metrics) became the foundation for what built today’s biggest online advertising companies, like Google & other tech giants. * He’s also the founding father of email marketing too — not only writing the first published article on the subject back in the early 90’s (in the prestigious DM News)… not only being the lone wolf in Silicon Valley aggressively insisting everyone start collecting emails to market to them (he was the first to teach even guys like AOL founder Steve Case about the idea)… but, as far as anyone knows, Ken was also the first to create (an admittedly crude, that never went anywhere) autoresponder before anyone else did. * He is also the founding father of online video marketing — in 1994 he hired a highly respected reporter in silicon valley (Hank Duderstadt) to research the subject… to which Hank said, “You want me to write about THAT? Why? No one can do it.” Ken’s answer: “But someday people will be able to and when they can it will be the most powerful thing on the Internet. Let’s be ready.” It’s almost like Ken was on to something... * Tim Ferris was once asked what book had the biggest impact on his life… and he said it was Dan Kennedy's “How to Make Millions with Your Ideas.” The author of the chapter on online marketing in that book: Ken McCarthy. * He’s the “godfather” of nearly all the early heavy hitter marketing gurus you’ve heard of, and he gets the credit (or blame, in some cases) for personally leading, positioning, and first giving a teaching platform to them — including guys like Perry Marshall, I believe (don't quote me on that though, going on memory...) * He's the ONLY guy Dan Kennedy allowed to teach online marketing to his herd — no exaggeration, Dan didn't let anybody else talk about the internet at all to his customers except Ken. * On a personal note, he’s one of the 4 people on my “Mount Rushmore” (hat tip to Brian Kurtz for that nifty analogy) of copywriters I learned the most about copywriting from, as well as creating the copywriting course that gave me the “seeds” for creating a more or less “cult-like” following in my infamous elBenbo’s Lair Facebook group a few years back. * He created the “template” for merging direct response copywriting with info publishing to build not just online businesses but online empires — which is what this multi-part interview focuses on. This interview is long, detailed, and packed with for real value. Especially the value “between the lines.” It’s the kind of info you simply won’t see in any copywriting book or course. One more thing before you begin: This was more of a private telephone conversation than a formal “interview.” And that means it ain’t structured like a “do this, and this, and this” checklist talk. It’s free flowing and mostly Ken spitballing. i.e., thinking is required... All right, enough build up. Here goes: BEN SETTLE: How do you want to start this? What do you want to talk about? What do you fire it up about right now? KEN MCCARTHY: I want to talk about the history of the course and the ancient history of it because this is deep, this history is deep. I have to go back to the year origin, in the early 1990s. Nobody believed there could even be internet marketing. I'm telling you, I was there. I was in the ground zero and nobody believed it. There were like 10 of us maximum that thought it was even possible. But nobody was coming up with a solution. And I know this might not seem to relate to the copy course, but you're going to see how it flows together. Commerce was not permitted on the internet for its first many years in existence because it was a government thing. It was for the military, it was for universities, and the idea was, hey, this is a government utility, you can't sell your used car on it. So that was the rule. So the people that developed the internet didn't have a commercial bone in their bodies, right? Not one. So in 1989, whoever it was, I forget, but the government agency that could say it said: "All right, guys, now you can do business." Nothing happened in 1989. Nothing happened in 1990. Nothing happened in 1992. I mean, nothing. Nothing happened in 1993. In 1994, three things happened. One, Yahoo started. They were the first people to try to organize the internet so that you could actually find shit. The second one was a lot of people were starting stores and one guy decided to sell books on the internet and his name was Jeff Bezos. And he started Amazon and he got his advice from how to do that from a friend of mine named Steve O'Keefe, who was already selling books on the internet. So that's the second prong. The third prong- BEN SETTLE: Wait, hold on a second. We're not going to pass this up. KEN MCCARTHY: Okay. BEN SETTLE: Hold on. I remember our last conversation. So first of all, Google and Facebook owe you a check. KEN MCCARTHY: I know. BEN SETTLE: And from what I understand, now you correct me if I'm wrong here, AOL owes you a check because you told them, "Why don't you have a list?" And now you're telling me Bezos owes you. KEN MCCARTHY: He was just my friend who did the advice. I mean, we were longtime friends, we're still friends all these years later, but it was him that did that work. But I mean, that's how close I was to the beginning of it. But the third prong, the third leg of the chair is there was no immediate model to make money. You could sell stuff, okay, but there was nothing that it would encourage people to put content on and publish and do all that stuff. So Time Magazine even credits me with this. If you search Ken McCarthy Time Magazine clickthru, I was the first person that said you can put a little square on your page, and if you click on it, you'll go to a big page. That wasn't new. But the thing that was new was I said: "Look, guys, you can track how many people saw your little ad and how many people clicked, and that gives you a clickthru rate." And I know either of are in the supremacy of clickthru rates, but the reality is, still to this day, buying and selling clicks is still- BEN SETTLE: Yeah, that's how they charge for advertising. KEN MCCARTHY: Yeah. It's the foundation of everything. And this is a direct connection because I reached out to a lot of people because I was trying to get the answer to the question: “How do we advertise on the internet?” So I brought in this guy named Rick Boyce. And he was a media buyer for Hal Riney & Partners. And I said: "Look, this internet thing, if you track your clicks, you'll be able to go back to your advertisers and show how valuable ads are." He was the first person to sell banner ads in industrial scale quantity. He's the father, the grandfather, the pioneer, the Moses of banner ads, which is still a foundational thing on the internet. He literally was my student and he literally got that idea directly from me. I laid it all out for him. He went and did the work, but I laid it out. And he was great. He was charging ridiculous amounts. He was charging by placements like: "Hey, you could be on WIRED's website for only $10,000.” And he would go and he brought that to GM and they were paying the equivalent of $500 CPM. I mean, it was absurd. But people were looking at his numbers going: ”Oh my God, we could actually make money." That was the beginning of the gold rush of people creating websites and running advertising and hoping to have a content business. And I am the one that lit that fire. But the main point about that story is there was a huge problem that nobody could wrap their minds around, which was, how do we commercialize the traffic? I am the person that answered that. Okay, now flash forward to 2000, post dot com crash. Everybody had thrown their cards in. I mean, I tell you, you can't believe the economic devastation that occurred during the first .com crash. And I'm trying to think of that big conference. I can't think of the name, but anyway, it's the biggest conference in internet advertising. They were going to go bankrupt and just close the doors. That's how bad things were. Anyway, Overture and then later Google came up with the idea of having a click auction. And I then organized the first seminars in the history of mankind that showed people how you use these pay-per-click services to build a direct response-driven internet business. Okay. There were some guys of my generation like Corey Rudl, the greatest, really, dead, unfortunately, Jonathan Mizel still around, Declan Dunser. There were a handful of us in the '90s that were using direct marketing, but it was microscopic. Everybody was like flash and glamour and sock puppets. That was it. That was the state of the art. BEN SETTLE: Yeah. KEN MCCARTHY: So second big problem, how is the internet going to survive and how are little guys going to get involved? My System Seminar, which launched in 2002, gave the first like, yes, you can use long copy. Yes, you should follow up with your email. I mean, nobody was doing email follow up. So we democratized that. Yes, you should do this thing called A/B split testing. Google brags about introducing A/B split testing in 2000 in its company. I had been teaching that since 1994. But anyway, we did that long copy, relentless follow up, A/B split testing. Oh God, there was some other stuff, but that's the foundational stuff. Oh, yeah, test your headlines before you invest in them. Test your product ideas before you invest in them. Test your copy. These are for people that are setting up product sales machines. They got to come up with something that works and they're going to be spending millions of dollars in advertising. They got to test their headlines. They can't just wing it. So that was the second big problem. But the first big problem I solved was how are we going to commercialize internet advertising at all, which I solved. Then in 2002, I said: "How are we going to get the little guy on this in a way that makes sense?" Because what inspired me was one of my friends said: ”Hey, some guy offered to build a website for me for $15,000." And this is what was happening in those days. People were being skinned alive by web scammers who would just build them a website and everybody would think: ”Hey, I'm done. I got a website. I did it. I'm on the internet." And they'd pay $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $25,000. I knew one friend of my wife, $95,000 for nothing. So I was outraged by this and that's why I came back into the business and started doing the System Seminar and it really took off. So I stuck with it. Now, fast forward to 2004. The internet's percolating finally, there's a lot of entrepreneurial activity. A lot of it I helped get started and I noticed that there was a lot of bullshit copywriting advice. All of a sudden, all these copywriting scammers discovered the internet. I'm like, "Oh, great." And now I'm hearing the same story. “Hey, I paid, what's his face, $20,000 to write my copy!” I’m like: ”Oh, you can't afford that. You got to learn how to write your own copy." So I said: ”Okay, I better create a course on how to do copy." It wasn't my life's goal, but it was like I'm seeing all these guys get blown up by bogus copywriting advice. So I did my course. Now we're at the ... So three times, at least three times in my life, I've waded into a difficult problem, business problem, and been instrumental in solving it. So the course is interesting because it's uniquely foundational. I go to the ABCs in a way that nobody else really wants to because it's tedious, but I do. I cover every little foundational nuance of copywriting. And then I show that there's a lot of different ways to do it. You weren't around as a known person in those days, but I show this is how this guy does it, this is how this guy does it. There's fundamental principles and then there's styles that you can put on it, right? The second thing I said that was really important was I developed a course for everyone. I said: "Look, whether you're going to be a copywriter or not, you're going to need copy if you're going to be in this industry. You can't be in it without it. You got to have copy from some source." So you need to understand copy. So this course was created for the small business person to go from knowing absolutely nothing about copy to being able to either write their own or to intelligently assess who is a good copywriter and who's not. And I still believe that the most important skill. # # # So ends part 1 of my recent interview with the great Ken McCarthy. On another note: Ken’s offering his prestigious “Advanced Copywriting For Serious Info Marketers” course at a gigantic discount for my Horde only, until Friday, 1/12 at midnight EST. Plus, if you use my affiliate link and send me your receipt, the title of the book you want me to send you, & the shipping address by that deadline (not after — to be clear, you must send your receipt, shipping address, and the title you want to me, not just buy the course, BEFORE the deadline to get it), I will send you: 1. Free copy of any ONE book I sell I don’t care if it’s one of the bigger ticket ones or one of the more inexpensive ones. Simply buy Ken’s course by the deadline and then email me your receipt with your shipping address & the book you want me to send you (also by the deadline — if you send me your receipt, the title of the book you want, and your shipping address AFTER the above deadline, I am not sending you the book, let me be very clear about that here) 2. Live call with me and Ken about: The end of the world! I want to grill him about the economy. And the reason why is because Ken “came of age” in finance during the 80’s in Wall Street. I have learned more from him (and I told him this recently) about not just basic economics that is not taught in school than from anyone else, but he genuinely has given me a lot of peace of mind knowing what he does on this topic. Those who read this month’s Email Players issue will know what I mean by that. Not only peace of mind, but he has helped me position and adjust my own finances, what I invest in (it’s not investing advice, just by understanding what’s going on you can make better decisions), what I buy and don’t buy, how I think of money, how I am planning for the fallout of what’s been going on for over a decade and is about to completely unravel probably this year — maybe sooner than the end of the year, maybe later, but it’s inevitable — and the list goes on. This call (day & time TBA) will be live to customers of this promo. All right ‘nuff said about that. The deadline is Friday 1/12 at midnight EST to get Ken’s course at the discount, get any ONE book I sell (if you send me your receipt, shipping address, and the title of the book you want me to send you by the deadline, if you send the above to me after the deadline I will NOT send you the book, many-a-disappointed-customer who couldn’t tell time has learned this hard way…), plus access to the live call above. Hopefully that is all clear. Whatever the case, here is the link: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com/secret-course]( Ben Settle This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2024 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA