Why scammy copy works,
and what I did about it.

Especially when I saw what was really scaling.

Years ago, I was hired to run all cold traffic for Paradigm Press, one of the major publishers under the Agora Financial umbrella. And I got to see behind the curtain — what worked, what didn’t, and what really moved the needle.

And… much to my dismay… what moved the needle was often scammy.

One of the top promotions at the time was called the “Free ATM.”

It promised people they could make $500 in 30 minutes using options trading — “so easy a kid could do it.” But here’s the truth: options are risky. Most beginners lose money. In fact, most individual investors lose money, trading options.

Here is the reason why:

Since options are a “zero-sum” game… hedge funds only make money when they profit off someone who “guessed” the wrong way.

The fact that hedge funds manage more than $4 Trillion dollars in assets shows you just how often the individual investor loses, when they trade options…

And so, the “Free ATM” promotion wasn’t persuasion — it was manipulation.

… But it worked.

In fact, it worked so well that there were clones of it, all over Agora Financial.

Every division had their own version of the “Free ATM” promotion…

Every copywriter churned out packages that mimicked the “Free ATM” promotion…

Every publisher asked for more variations of the “Free ATM” promotion…

… And everyone thought they were damn clever doing it.

As someone who spent the last 17 years studying direct response copywriting, that was frustrating, to me.

I wanted to believe good copy would win in the long run. That authenticity and strong fundamentals would come out ahead. But I saw it across every vertical: in finance, supplements, info products… the highest-scaling promos kept inching closer to the line — and then crossing it.

One niche that really got to me? Blood sugar supplements.

These offers would suggest that people could stop taking their medications if they just used this “natural cure.” That’s not just false — it’s dangerous. And yet, it was one of the most profitable niches in the entire supplement space.

And so, when I started Skullrosa, I knew exactly what I wanted to change.

Most scammy copy doesn’t come from bad people.

It comes from good people who just don’t know how to persuade, or the mechanics behind scale.

So they lean on hype. They over-promise. They write what they think will work.

But there’s a better way.

Today, I help founders scale to 8 figures without losing their soul in the process.

We build stronger positioning. We design better offers. We write hooks that stand out — not because they’re outrageous, but because they’re hooks.

And now, with AI running ad targeting, your copy lands in front of exactly the people it’s meant for. So the hype game? It’s got less shelf life than ever.

I’ve seen scammy copy work.

It works because it stokes powerful emotions — desire, fear, hope — often in the most vulnerable people. And if you’ve been in the game long enough, you know: that emotional charge is what drives scale.

But the lie isn’t necessary.

What I’ve learned is this:

If you know how to channel that same emotional energy — without the deception — you can scale just as hard, and sleep at night doing it.