88 Research™ is now on exclusive retainer with Patrick Bove’s FK7 agency that serves the Agora world. Unfortunately, I have no room for clients outside of this arrangement.
The 88 Method™
A new research process
The 88 Method™ is the new copywriting and research process behind the 88%-win rate we’ve achieved on our fin-pub offers (since we began using it).
It allows us to make a high-probability bet on where the mind of the fin-pub buyer might be 3-12 months into the future…
In short, by using the 88 Method™, one gets a good idea of:
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Themes the fin-pub buyer might be interested in…
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Investments they might think are hot…
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And perhaps most importantly, whether they'll be more responsive to fear or opportunity messaging…
This is how the teams I’ve worked with have consistently “skated to where the puck is going” and been among the first to launch offers in the hottest up-and-coming trends…
In short, while the rest of the industry is looking sideways at what each other is doing (you know how it goes!)…
The 88 Method™ will have you looking ahead to the horizon with eyes that see further than the competition…
Which means you’ll often beat other publishers to launching the hottest ideas while they still feel new, fresh and exciting in the fin-pub zeitgeist…
How the 88 Method™ helped us launch at the right time in the hottest up-and-coming themes
Case Study #1
We launched an AI energy FE in March 2022, just as AI started to breakthrough…
Thanks to the 88 Method™, we identified AI as an exciting front end theme very early on…
I wrote this to my team at Money & Markets on September 12, 2021:
“[Here’s] a topic we might explore:
Artificial Intelligence.
A huge and compelling “trail of proof” is often one of the hallmarks of a big idea. ESPECIALLY if that trail of proof hasn’t been fully explored/isn’t fully understood by the general populace.
And I feel like AI might sit in the sweet spot right now.
I feel like it’s similar in some ways to genomics: there are so many incredible (and scary) applications that people don’t understand (me included)… that it could be made to seem new, big, novel and extremely exciting.
If we thread the needle and do great research, I think we could generate an intense desire to invest in the industry.”
This is why in late 2021 we had our entire team at Money & Markets working on AI-related front ends…
It’s also why we ended up launching Infinite Energy, an AI-themed next-gen energy promo in March 2022, while AI was still mostly unexplored on the front end, and just as the topic was about to burst into popular consciousness…
It made ~25,000 orders on a relatively low allowable CPA before the Nasdaq bear market smashed tech-themed promos…
Case Study #2
We launched a “return of crypto” promo on January 28, 2023, right as bitcoin started its incredible recovery…
FTX imploded in November 2022, with bitcoin down 80%…
Yet we launched Big T’s FINAL Call – a crypto bull market promo – just two months later in January 2023…
It went on to make $6.4m, as the best converting back-end Legacy had launched since the bear market of 2022 turned the fin-pub buyer cold…
And while plenty of people thought it was nuts to be writing a crypto promo while Sam Bankman-Fried’s mugshot was all over the news and BTC was in the toilet…
The 88 Method™ gave me the confidence to know working on this promo was still a high-probability bet…
A higher probability bet than almost any other project I could have been working on at the time…
Case Study #3
We launched a “coming bull market” promo on April 11 2023 (while most other teams were still knee-deep in bear market promotions)…
In early 2023, bearish sentiment was at historic levels…
The WEF coined the term “polycrisis” to describe the converging threats of inflation, war in Europe and the most rapid rate rises in half a century…
That’s why the yearly price targets set by the big firms of Wall St were the most bearish in over 20 years (a period that included the Great Recession).
In the fin-pub industry, the bearish sentiment was felt just as deeply after declining revenue across the board...
Yet on February 28, 2023, I wrote this to my colleagues:
"[I believe] we've strongly entered a new bull market already, investor (and fin-pub) sentiment are just lagging this reality.
[Of course], even if we are in a new bull market, I still expect that bear feeling to persist until at least Q3 2023... probably more...
We may get a stronger renewal of the bear feeling with any dip in stocks over the next year (for example, right now)... where people feel we're experiencing a "bull trap"...
But I think by Q1, 2024… market sentiment may be at the point where they may be ready to accept it [i.e. the bull market]."
This read on financial markets was why we knew it was a good idea to be working on a bull market promotion, even while most other teams had their ideation focused on bear market promos…
But even deeper, it’s why we knew that while it was a good idea to be working on a bull market promo… launching it with bullish messaging was not a good idea…
So on April 11, 2023, we launched an opportunity/bull market back-end veiled in fear messaging – The Eleventh Hour…
It was a runaway hit, making $2.1m for a new-to-the-business guru who not only had zero front-end names…
He also had zero relationship with any list in the business…
Across the examples above, we were consistently ahead of the curve on getting into the right trend
And it’s all thanks to the 88 Method™
The 88 Method™ explained:
A unique way of researching that helps you come up with promo ideas that align with where the mind of the fin-pub buyer is likely to be three to twelve months into the future
It consists of three layers:
The first layer seeks to answer the question:
Should we be looking to write bull market or bear market promotions?
And further, is the fin-pub buyer more likely to respond to opportunity or fear messaging?
We attempt to glean the answer to these questions using a proprietary financial model I’ve developed over my time in fin-pub.
The model is the foundation of how the teams I’ve worked with have made high-probability bets on what kind of promotions we should be working on.
And thus, this first layer is the most important, because it can give you the insight to make the big decisions on steering your fin-pub business and deciding where to allocate resources...