The ad: the International Living subscription letter – the one that launched Agora’s first publication
The copywriter: Bill Bonner, founder of Agora
The big idea: you can live like royalty in paradise… for half of what it costs you to stay home
The offer: a free report, “How to Retire in Paradise on $55 a Day”, with a subscription at an introductory price
The lesson: paint the dream so vividly that you don’t even need a headline – then back it with specifics.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about Agora before.
They’re a direct response giant that specializes exclusively in direct response marketing… (Wikipedia put their revenue at around $500 million back in 2015.)
And it’s THE place to be for the best copywriters on the planet.
However, even though Agora is such a powerhouse today, not many people know about its humble beginnings.
It all started in 1979… when founder & superstar copywriter Bill Bonner wrote an unusual sales letter that launched Agora’s first publication, International Living.
This one’s a really strange ad. But it’s definitely worth studying because we can learn so much from it.
(This is Day 6 of my 100-Day Proven Sales Letter Breakdown Challenge. Prefer video? Here’s the full breakdown.)
Who is Bill Bonner?
Bill Bonner founded Agora in Baltimore in 1978.
A year later, in 1979, it launched its first publication: International Living.
From that one newsletter grew one of the biggest direct response publishers in the world.
(He’s a writer too – books like Empire of Debt and Financial Reckoning Day.)
Can you start an ad without a headline?
Surprisingly… yes.
Instead of a short headline, this letter opens with FOUR paragraphs.
Packed into the spot where the headline should be.
Here’s how it starts:
(Want to read the full swipe – marked up with my personal notes and comments? It’s one of the 100 annotated sales letters inside my Million Dollar Copywriting Swipe Library.)
And then:
By painting this dreamscape, Bill grabs the reader’s attention – and makes them curious how such a thing is even possible.
Wouldn’t you be interested in learning more? And because the ad is written as a story, it’s naturally more engaging to read.
Sometimes it’s totally OK to break the “rules” of copywriting.
If you think you should always begin your promo with a headline, Bill Bonner has you in for a surprise!
Who was this letter for?
Mostly baby boomers dreaming about retirement. People who felt ripped off left and right at home.
High health care costs. An expensive lifestyle… and, let’s be honest, a pretty boring one.
Show, don’t tell
Look at how it’s done.
It doesn’t TELL you it makes sense to retire abroad.
It SHOWS you the life. The gardener. The sea. The maid. A $20 dinner for two that tastes like a five-star meal.
Show, don’t tell – in its purest form. And I love the “died and gone to heaven” line.
Why? Simple. That’s EXACTLY what people think when something sounds too good to be true.
Bill says it before they can.
(Would I open a promotion like this in crowded markets now? Probably not. But the concept still works. It’s the mother of all paint-the-dream copy.)
How Bill Bonner is painting the dream
First class travel for less than half the fare. The reader immediately feels he’s missing out.
The letter makes him visualize a luxurious lifestyle with almost no financial limits.
Plus, it shows how other people are ALREADY living like this – using tips from the magazine.
Isn’t that an irresistible offer? It opens the doors of possibility for people who are just trying to survive.
And to make it believable? Stories of real people who already did it.
Sell the bonus, not the subscription
Here’s something clever. The letter jumps almost straight into the offer… but not the subscription.
Subscriptions are HARD to sell. The content changes every month, so what exactly are you buying?
So Bill sells a free report instead:
The best fascinations often become headlines.
And this structure still works today.
When Justin Goff launched his print newsletter a few years ago, he led with a free course worth $2,000…
And you got it by subscribing.
Same playbook. Decades later.
Selling a subscription or a membership? Sell the free bonus they get for joining. The subscription comes along for the ride.
Three dreams, three readers
Then the letter “dimensionalizes” the dream: three different places, without naming any of them.
One: lush green valleys and mountains, with a near-perfect climate.
Two: the hustle and bustle of a city with Spanish colonial architecture and a never-ending program of festivals.
Three: a window looking out at a sparkling ocean and pristine beaches.
Three dreams. Three slightly different readers. All qualified.
Specific numbers kill the doubt
Then the specifics. A luxury apartment for as little as $600 a month.
A maid for $15 a week.
A general practitioner for $20–$25. A specialist for $25–$40.
That last one matters A LOT. For an older reader with rising health care costs, cheap doctors answer a huge objection before it’s even asked.
Only THEN do we hear about the magazine itself: “This report is yours free simply by taking a look at International Living.”
The desire under the desire
No other magazine covers the world like International Living, the letter says.
On the surface?
Cheap paradise. Maids. Sunshine.
But I think there’s something deeper going on. This letter gives the average Joe an EXCITING life.
Stories to tell at dinner. The chance to be the worldly, interesting one at the table, compared to the other schmucks who don’t know these secrets.
It doesn’t shove that in your face.
But it’s there.
Objections, proof… and more proof
Then an objection, answered:
Then proof.
David Hendrickson and his wife. More examples, with specific numbers.
And social proof:
Bill Bonner’s curiosity-inducing bullets
The ad uses many bullets to build curiosity and desire for the magazine.
They’re grouped by category.
Here’s a taste, straight from the letter:
Real estate + travel
“Discover some of the cheapest beachfront properties in the world.”
Beachfront + cheap. Two words that usually don’t go together.
“How you can own your own Irish pub.”
Pure daydream fuel.
“How to make sure that you never – ever – pay full fare for an airline ticket again.”
Greed + a tiny bit of revenge on the airlines.
“Travel where tourists can’t go. See Cuba.”
Exclusivity. You get to go where others can’t.
“Why you should never refuse dessert in Finland…”
Ha. You HAVE to know now.
Taxes + retirement
“How to earn $91,400 overseas tax-free.”
A weirdly specific number = believable.
“Cut your taxes 95% – by living in paradise.”
Big benefit, and the mechanism is the dream itself.
“How to enjoy a million-dollar retirement – without touching your savings.”
The fear of running out of money… handled.
“Where you can find dinner for two at an excellent restaurant for $15, including wine.”
Specifics again. You can almost taste it.
“The safest country in the world… the cheapest country in the world… the healthiest country in the world…”
Three ellipses, three open loops. Which countries?!
Any good ad takes the reader to an idealized state. This one keeps him imagining himself in villas, on islands, in Hong Kong.
And it makes all of it feel achievable.
(If life after retirement can be this good, who wouldn’t want it?)
The one thing I’d improve: page numbers. Boardroom did this brilliantly later – “…revealed on page 29.” It makes the secret feel within reach.
One bullet tips them over
You never know which bullet will tip someone over.
Maybe they’ve always wanted to take the kids to Europe, but they’re scared of it.
Then they read “how to take your kids to Europe and still enjoy the trip”. And that’s the one.
More bullets = more chances for that moment.
The reader, mentally, by this point.
The deal
Then more bonuses. (The version I read even had “email postcards” – so it’s a newer version than the 1979 original.)
Then the introductory offer: not $69… only $49 for a whole year. Go for two years and save even more – with another bonus on top.
Bonuses on bonuses. Benefits on benefits.
“Heck, I spend more than that on my gardener!”
What I’d improve: a bigger price drop with a value stack.
Show what each bonus is worth… add it up… and $49 looks even smaller.
Then a guarantee. Then a nice touch: “International Living is entertaining as well as informative.”
People don’t want homework.
The P.S. for the skimmers
Then a quick recap and the call to action:
International Living is “your passport to a brighter, more exciting, more adventuresome future.”
And a P.S. for the skimmers who scrolled straight to the bottom. One more summary. One more chance to say yes.
Did it work?
Using greed and the fear of missing out (FOMO) proved to be highly effective – resulting in a 3X ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) on cold traffic.
That’s like a license to print money. Every dollar in… three back.
Even after three decades, this sales letter continued to generate new subscriptions.
That’s the power of a well-written sales letter!
Would the International Living letter still work today?
The structure? Yes.
Sell the free bonus. Paint the dream. Prove it with specifics. Close with a deal.
The opening… less so.
Four paragraphs of daydreaming before a single hint of what you’re reading is a big ask in a skeptical market.
Today I’d put a short headline on top. Then the dream.
But the paint-the-dream lead itself?
People still want to be the guy on the porch, looking at the sea.
5 lessons to steal from Bill Bonner
1 – Show the life, don’t describe the product. The gardener and the breakfast in bed sell more than any feature list.
2 – Sell the free bonus. “How to Retire in Paradise on $55 a Day” is easier to want than “a subscription”.
3 – Answer the money objection with numbers. $600 rent, $15 maids, $20 doctors.
4 – Find the desire under the desire. Cheap paradise on top… being the interesting one at dinner underneath.
5 – Write enough bullets to catch every reader. One of them is the one that tips them over.
What’s the ONE thing you learned from this sales letter? I’d love to know.
That’s Day 6.
See all the proven sales letter breakdowns →
Another subscription classic: the Wall Street Journal “Two Young Men” letter · more from Agora: the Stockman “prediction” lead · all the proven sales letter breakdowns
More like this: Aharon Grundman’s “Couch Potato Wizards”
And if you want the “secret recipe” behind ads like this one – the persuasion pattern I kept seeing over and over during these 100 days – grab it here:
Free cheat sheet
Steal the “Secret Recipe” Behind the Most Profitable Sales Letters of All Time
The 7-part structure I kept finding in proven sales letters – plus a 26-point checklist that catches the holes in your copy before it goes live.
Send Me the Secret Recipe →-Csaba
P.S. – A lot of people have been asking about the sales letter swipes I’ve used for this 100-day challenge…
They’d love to get access not just to the swipes themselves…
…But to my detailed notes, annotations and comments on them as well.
So I put them all together in my Million Dollar Copywriting Swipe Library – 100 of the best sales letters of all time, annotated and marked up. Plus a 2,000+ page swipe vault of emails, sales pages and Facebook ads.
It’s less than a buck per annotated sales letter… and some of these bad boys are 50+ pages long!
(PRO TIP: you can even feed them into your AI tools to make them that much smarter.)
