Tom Yevsikov Interview

Editor:

This time, I'm pleased to welcome Tom Yevsikov, who for the last 10 years or so has been a full-time digital marketer and copywriter. He's achieved extraordinary success in that time and has on average been able to generate consistent sales of around about a million dollars or so a year through his endeavours. He started out from zero, like everyone, so I think this is going to be a fascinating conversation. Tom, it's lovely to meet you.

Tom Yevsikov:

Hey, thank you very much, man. Thank you very much for bringing me here. I've never done this before, so feel free to take the lead and let me know.

Editor:

No problem at all, Tom. Well, first of all, it's great to have you here. I would like to start, though, by asking a bit more about you and your background.

Tom Yevsikov:

Okay, so my background, look, I got into this, so I'm pretty young. Right? I'm 30-years-old right now. I got into this 12 years ago when I was 18 years old. But I didn't make a full-time income. I lost money for two-and-a-half years. Basically the classic marketing story, started out, tried everything, you name it, just any kind of business model. Nothing really worked, found out it was information overload, started to refocus myself. But since then, I've been doing this on a daily basis. Really, my life is not very exciting, I'll tell you that.

Editor:

Whereabouts are you based, Tom?

Tom Yevsikov:

I'm from Israel.

Editor:

How did you find it? When you first started, when you first made that decision at 18 years old that this is the direction I want to go in, how easy or how difficult did you find it?

Tom Yevsikov:

Extremely difficult. Very confusing for me it was in the beginning. Right now, looking back, I know the mistakes I made, but it was very difficult for me at the beginning, the way I got into this industry. I got into this whole online thing purely, strictly for money. I needed money. I grew up in a fairly rough and environment in all terms, and especially financially. My standards were low, so I was like, "If all I needed was to earn $1,500 a month for with my business," that would be good enough for me back then to quit my job. But it took me two and a half years to make that money in profit. So two and a half years until I started making money in profit into the numbers that I needed. Yeah,

Editor:

How did you find that at first? I mean, obviously like everyone, it can be a struggle to get started at the beginning. But what made you want to do online marketing and copywriting anyway?

Tom Yevsikov:

Well, copywriting is kind of a skill that I just got slid into after starting online. I went online and I tried everything. What got me online is a friend, my friend who used to tell me he's making a lot of money online, I don't know. It turns out later I found out he was a scammer. So yeah, that's not very good. I found out he was a scammer, but he did get me into the online world. Once I saw what he did, I didn't like it. That's not the direction I wanted to follow. He was doing MLM stuff, stuff like that, and I decided I want to follow something more legit, like digital marketing, online marketing, email marketing, et cetera. From there I got into copywriting literally as, I mean, this business, the business online marketing and selling in general has some degree of copywriting involved all the time, so it's not like I got into copywriting at some phase of my life. I've always been doing some in order to try and sell, but it's only in around 2014 where I really was able to figure out some things which I'll share today, hopefully as much as I can, to figure out the things, and I got into it more seriously. Actually, I've been a copywriter for clients, as someone who does copywriting, only for the past two years. Before that, all the copywriting I've done has been for my own projects.

Editor:

Tell us about a few of your projects, a few of the products that you've put together yourself.

Tom Yevsikov:

A bunch of products, mostly softwares in the past seven years, mostly softwares, online solutions like Rank Snap. It's a product that helps businesses rank higher on Google using back links, it builds back links. That's a project that was very successful, actually, my most successful one. I launched it, it's roughly at a million dollars or so, maybe a little bit less throughout the three launches that we had, so roughly average $300,000 a launch. I wrote the copy for all of them. It was a major success. It's definitely my best-selling and my best product. It's still live and kicking and selling even six, five years after.

Editor:

How much success do you attribute to the copywriting that went into that?

Tom Yevsikov:

Oh yeah, 70%, I would say. 70%, easily. 30% is the affiliates, people who promote, the connections and all that stuff, and 70% copywriting. I think even on Rank Snap, I believe we really went fairly cheap on the design, so it wasn't like an amazing design. It was a fairly basic design. I would say copy is 70, at the very minimum, 60%.

Editor:

For anyone who's not heard of copywriting, what is it and why is it so important?

Tom Yevsikov:

Well, actually, I'm sorry, this is the question that's the trickiest for me, but I'm still going to try and answer it. There's a definition obviously to copywriting online, which I don't remember. For me, copywriting is just an extension of a life skill that we all have at a certain level when we want to convince someone to give us something in exchange for value. Right? It's really an extension. It's going to be a little bit difficult for me to convey this point, I'm sorry, but I need to, because that's the way I think about it. In my opinion, copy is more of an extension of a very basic life skill that I believe personally all humans have. I believe everyone, anyone can be a copywriter. Not necessarily a professional copywriter or an expert or whatever, but anyone can create copy or write copy that is going to be profitable. What copy is in a nutshell, essentially, is just the text version of front, of the direct face-to-face selling. In face-to-face, you want to sell something and that person will have objections and you need to answer and tackle those objections on the spot. Right? With copywriting, it's essentially transferring that into more into an online text-based kind of medium. Before online it was print, right now it's all online. But copywriting is just, we see it everywhere all the time, every headline, anything that captures attention. Even the act of if I wrote a paragraph on a blog post and I shared my information, what I like, and then I went and I edited and I said, "Okay, I want a headline that's going to stick out like this and it's going to pull them into the rest of the text, and here I want to create ..." Even that is already a process of copywriting. You're already doing that.

Editor:

One of the things I did want to ask is that I've read that you credit most of your success to copywriting, but also to creating long-term partnerships, and rather bizarrely, you say about being a cockroach. Can you tell me more about the cockroach approach?

Tom Yevsikov:

Sure. Okay. Yeah, perfect. Yeah. I've been doing this, like I said, 10 years full-time or so. Copywriting is definitely the most major skill to my success, definite, a hundred percent. That's the only skill I actually leverage, I am able to leverage when doing partnership. For me, a huge part of my success over the years and the reason I think I really went big, quote-unquote big. I don't know what big is, to each their own, but big for me back then. The reason I went big is because I partnered with someone who completed my skillset. He was very good at hyping people up, getting people excited. He was more of a people person, and I was more of a sit behind the desk and do my thing. We completed each other, and my skill that I brought to the table was copywriting. Now, here's the thing. This was 2014, early 2014, I was not an expert copywriter. I never wrote copy for a client. I was not a copywriter. I never called myself a copywriter. Back then, I was just a marketer who finally was able to create copy that sells and all that stuff. I wasn't confident, I wasn't anything, and yet when I came to him, to my partner back then, and I told him about the deal I want to make, I want us to partner up, et cetera, he asked me what I can bring to the table. I told him I'm going to create copy. We started out and it worked out fine. And the reason I'm saying this and the story is because, first off, copywriting, I was very not confident. By the way, until today, I haven't went through any formal training or something like that. Right? None of that stuff. It's literally been all trial and error and a few resources that I have. I would also today to recommend some resources and maybe if we'll have time to give a gift, something my own resources.

Editor:

That'd be great. Absolutely.

Tom Yevsikov:

Yeah, sure, of course. And yeah, the reason, the point I wanted to drive home is that in copywriting, the only factor that matters in my opinion is conversions. Right? That's the only factor that matters. Technically even if you just, forgive my language, rewrite some bullshit on the keyboard and just write, write, write, and it sells, then you've done your job successfully as a copywriter because it sells. That's the only factor in my opinion for copy. There is only one way to make a copy successful, and that's it sells, it converts, and according to the respective industry you're writing it at. That's the only factor. Now, there are many ways to mess up copy, right? There's many ways to have a bad copy. For example, if you have top-notch structure, top-notch copy, all that stuff, it's all good, but you have a bad angle or a bad USP, which is also part of copywriting, then you messed it up. It's not going to sell. Even though you have everything in place according to the formula and according to the books and according to what your coach says and all that stuff, it should work, but it doesn't. I always say that the only factor in copywriting is the conversions: the results, the results that generates. There's no need to worry about anything else. No perfectionism. In fact, perfectionism is really bad for a copy, and really just focus on conversions. How to get that specifically, we'll get through this call. I'll send a resource. Once we finish the call, I'll send you a link so you can send people to download my template, my copywriting template. It's free, it's public, and it's going to be great, I think.

Editor:

That sounds great. That sounds really good. And particularly because you know are a person that not only talks the talk, but you walk the walk as well. You've achieved great success. And to go over the last 10 years, on average, about a million dollars a year through sales, I mean, I think a lot of people are going to sit up and take notice of that. And if you have a template that you can share, I mean, that's a great shortcut for people to be able to just look over your shoulder and see how they can perhaps model what you've done. Are there any particular successes or even setbacks that you've encountered on your journey, Tom?

Tom Yevsikov:

Successes, well, it's ups and downs. That's the business. And plus, like I said, I am a little bit reluctant to speak, because my results speak for themselves. I know I write copy and all that stuff. I'm successful with that and I still don't feel as confident as I should be. Right? Yeah, I guess, I don't know. My mind works like that. It's very hard for me to. For me, as I write copy, that's why I have the template. That's why I have these things. These things refocus me. But for me, I could sit down and write copy without any template and still make it convert, write nothing to rely on nothing. And I would not be able to tell you how I did that after I wrote the copy. I'll write it out, no template, it will most likely sell. I'm not going to publish a copy that doesn't sell or that in my opinion won't sell. But let's assume so it sells. The thing with that is that I won't be able to tell you or anyone why I've done what I've done in the last few hours or few days that I've wrote the copy. It's only in hindsight that I go look at my work and then I start breaking it down into something that is a template, basically, or stuff like that. That's how I work and that's why I feel so not confident talking about this. Even though the results speak for themselves, I feel like it's difficult for me to convey this information, which is also why I never took on copywriting coaching clients. Right?

Editor:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. This is why we're super grateful for you to take the time today though, Tom, to chat with us regarding this. Because as you say, this isn't something that you would normally talk about. You'd normally want to get on with the job in hand as opposed to be talking about what you've been doing. But if you were starting out now, is there anything that you would do differently?

Tom Yevsikov:

If I were starting out right now, yeah, I would do differently. First off, there's something I call personally the law of commonalities. It's a bad name, but it pretty much explains exactly what I mean. This is what I would've done as a beginner. It doesn't matter if you want to be a copywriter or a digital marketer, because you're going to incorporate some form of copywriting into your marketing regardless. You have to if you're doing an online marketing. You will need to. Okay, so once we accept that, I can give the advice of the law of commonalities, which is essentially, and I wish I knew that before. It's essentially reverse engineering patterns on other sales pages in the same industry. What it means, and I know it may sound a little bit complicated, like, "How do I reverse engineer?" Going to the most basic of this law is that you take a look, you open three, four, 5 sales pages of the top-selling products right now or in the past 30 days or 60 days or whatever, whatever's relevant, the most top-selling relevant products in your niche that you want to sell in or promote or whatever, whatever you want to do in that niche. Let's take for example, a CEO niche, right? You are a CEO marketer and you want your service to rank higher on Google and you want people to be convinced when they visit your page to hire for services. I would look at the sales pages of three, four, 5 other SEO offers, ideally as diverse as possible, which means not one product that is almost exactly as the other one. Ideally, right? It doesn't have to be perfect, but just keep it simple. Look at three, four, five, open five tabs, and just scroll through them real quick and see what kind of patterns you find, in any term. But let's give, for example, a specific example, is what kind of words they're using to speak to the marketplace that you can find in every sales page, or at least in 80% of the sales pages? You can look and you can see if they're using a lot of words like buyer, or using words like traffic, or using words like easy. Those are power words, but it doesn't matter for now. Right? You see what kind of things repeat across the successful sellers. Not something that only one successful seller has, because that's their USP speed, that's their unique thing. You're not going to be able to do anything with that. However, you look at those commonalities, you write them down in a swipe file, I strongly recommend you have a swipe file. It can be even a notepad and just with notes. Write it down there, write down the words, the sentences, anything you can find that is across all of those you can find across those patterns. And then take that as your swipe file, which contains just a gold mine of words, sentences, approaches, angles, et cetera for your target market, for your niche. Right? And then you use the template, which I'll give you, or whatever want to do, use the template or you just write it out. You use those words to make, to fill the spaces, basically the text. What happens is, the reason I recommend it so much, obviously it's faster. Two, it's you're not stealing anything. You're just taking inspiration from words, specific word. No one owns the right of the word traffic. Right, for example. The third-biggest benefit is that you get to learn on the job. You get to learn on the job. You get to see exactly what makes this market tick. Or your target market, what kind of words everyone is using, because if everyone is using those words, these words must be on the sales page. And saves you time. You're going to have higher conversions. I think my problem with this has been for many years, and why I didn't practise this principle for the longest time, and that's because I was scared because I thought, okay, I cannot use someone else's word. I've got to invent something myself. For the longest time, I had this mindset of reinventing the wheel. I'm sure you've heard a lot of marketers saying don't reinvent the wheel. Right? I heard that a million times and I still did that, because I thought I need to bring something unique. I thought that was kind of the goal. I didn't realise that there is a market out there of millions of people, or billions, whatever, currently buying from other people in the same industry. Okay, basically, I didn't see it from their perspective. I thought I need to come up with something unique, reinvent the wheel, I've got to come up with my own thing, and use as little inspiration as possible from other people and just use templates and stuff like that. That's because I wanted to be unique. And then I realised the market really doesn't care. They are in many cases, just look, they already know what they want and you just get in the mix. Right?

Editor:

Mm-hmm.

Tom Yevsikov:

That's kind of how I realised it works. This is also basically another big benefit of this law of commonalities, which is more of a mindset approach to everything I do. Which is if it's legal, it's ethical, it's going to save you time and it's proven, right? It's proven right now. Not proven five years ago, proven right now because you've looked at the relevant sellers, do it. Why not? That's one piece of advice I would say. One million percent, when you're a beginner, regardless of what you do, make sure you do that.

Editor:

In terms of the template of yours, Tom, that you mentioned, where can we find that? Where do we need to go to find that?

Tom Yevsikov:

First off, for the template, I'm going to give you a link. I have a downloadable link and I have a training on YouTube, which also has this link attached. Basically it's a PDF, it's a mind map, which shows my basic template. I mean, it's a full template, but I really don't go there, into coaching super details, you know?

Editor:

Mm-hmm.

Tom Yevsikov:

But it has everything people need to know. It's going to make a lot of sense what you just heard in this call with this file. And there's a video which explains it on YouTube. I'm going to send you the link after the call, and feel free to it send to the people here, and you guys and girls watching, listening, feel free to check it out. It's free. It's very beneficial. I mean, personally, I can say a hundred percent, this formula that I'm giving you, the template made me roughly, roughly, right, because I haven't counted specifically, roughly nine to 10 million dollars overall. That's the amount of sales. So yeah, not super rich and everything, but successful enough to prove my worth, I guess, and my perspective on this.

Editor:

For anybody who is listening right now who wants that link, the best place to go would be the show notes to find the information that Tom is going to share is that you can download that free resource. Tom, thank you so much for your time with this, and to your continued success.

Tom Yevsikov:

Thank you, man. I thank you for the opportunity and I hope this was good enough. I hope people appreciate it.