So last year this post caused quite a ruckus in the IM world. It went viral all over Reddit, Facebook, and multiple telegram chats, resulting in thousands of hits a day for weeks (and even now, it still gets a ton of traffic). It even, somehow, caused many copywriters to have temporary reading disorders for about 24 hours.
Many of the amazing people who made the list last year went on to make more money, land better, high paying jobs, and even double the size of their email list.
People who didn’t make the list, silently (and not so silently), plotted my death.
And this year, I’m kicking it up a notch.
I’ve slashed the number of people on the list by 30%, making it that much more competitive. I’ve consulted multiple A-listers.
And I’ve scoured the internet for 6+ months looking for the best copy and the writers behind them.
Everyone on this list deserves to be here. Everyone who’s not on the list, well it’s for one of 3 reasons:
- I don’t know you (feel free to email me and say hi)
- I know you and you specifically asked me to not put you on the list for anonymity reasons (there’s quite a few of these shadow players)
- I know you and you have some work to do.
And just so we’re crystal clear, this IS NOT a paid list.
You can’t buy your way onto it (and yes, I’ve been offered cash for the top 10 spots)…
And you certainly can’t interview for it.
You have to earn it, by bleeding at the keyboard.
So on to the list…
#1 Dan Ferrari
The bearded Jesus takes the crown again, and it’s no surprise really. This year alone he’s managed to exit from Basement Beast, spend over 140 days surfing around the world, and have his hands in some of the biggest DR campaigns, from PaleoHacks to Fiscio and Credit secrets.
This is while he runs his tight knit mentorship group. The man doesn’t lose, ever, which is why he still reigns king as the #1 copywriter of 2023 to follow.
Follow him here.
#2 Alen Sultanic
This DR king holds onto the number 2 spot and has been on an absolute tear this year. NHB, NHB+, hands in the biggest offers on the internet… anyone who’s in DR or internet marketing knows him and his work. 2023 will be even bigger for him as he solidifies his reign as the NEW king of DR.
Follow him here.
#3 Pauline Longdon
Pauline has been an A-lister longer than most people have been writing copy. She’s been the “secret” copy coach for the industry’s best copywriting education programs (CA, Shiv Shetty’s CMMP, and Tina Lorenz’s programs) and has written and beaten more controls than I can count.
She’s also one of the coolest people I’ve met in the entire industry and only interested in helping better the world.
Follow her here.
#4 Chris Wright
For 18 months, the baby-faced Chris mentored me. And once that ended, he quietly decided to build the best health supplement copy agency on the planet – Your Conversion Partners.
He and his team have worked with multiple 7 & 8-figure supplement companies (including mine), an influencer with over 400k followers, the biggest financial publisher in the world, and one of Clickbank’s top affiliates whose single funnel has done more than $50 million in sales.
Follow him here.
#5 Stefan Georgi
The legend continues for Stefan. This year he took full control of Copy Accelerator, and rebuiding it into one of the best copy education communities on the planet. I’m also convinced he’s superman because he somehow manages to run a masterind, write
killer copy along side his proteges Luke & Mario, raise a kid, and launch ridiculoulsly profitable crypto projects. It’s insane how good he is.
Follow him here.
#6 Sean Kemp
Cole Gordon’s most recommended copywriter has found himself deep in the high ticket industry. Between managing email lists, monetizing FB groups, and producing VSLs Sean’s specialized in getting the hottest leads on your sales team’s calendar.
He’s also a close personal friend and one of the most jacked dudes I know – which is cool if you’re into, you know, health and stuff.
Follow him here.
#7 Peter Kell
The VSL king continues to tear it up. He’s currently cranking out world class VSLs with mind valley, helping scale past the 1B mark (yes, B for billion), and building companies for mergers and acquisitions.
Peter also currently holds the title to the #1 YouTube ad in the world.
Follow him here.
#8 Chris Haddad
The mythology of Chris’ moneyfingers continues. His breakthrough PIG method was a masterclass in not only world class copy, but also how to generate so much hype people are throwing themselves (and their credit cards) at you. Those who got in are lucky to learn from him.
His FOMO marketing was single handidly one of the most educational pieces of marketing I’ve ever witnessed. And I expect 2023 to be no different.
Follow him here.
#9 Lorrie “Lo” Morgan
Not many copywriters today can say they trained directly with Carlton, Halbert, and Kennedy, but this fiery redhead can. When Lorrie (or “Lo” as her friends call her) isn’t dispensing her two decades of wisdom to up-and-coming copywriters, she’s shooting guns, riding horses, and writing a historically factual western novel.
Follow her at www.redhotcopy.com.
#10 Mike Abramov
Mike Abramov is the go-to copywriter and strategist for celebrities like Mike Tyson and massive health and wellness brands. This 6’5 savage has controls in more industries than anyone I know.
He’s also one of the only marketers I trust when it comes to getting feedback on my own businesses. The man is a marketing weapon and a game changer if you can somehow get him to write for you.
Follow him here.
#11 Daniel Throssell
The Australian wordsmith is someone who I only was recently introduced too, but I knew from his first line of copy that this dude is world class. He’s spent the last few years winning every affiliate contest against A-listers, mastermind the bestselling book launch in Australian publishing history, and of course, telling the world about it.
This year he’s focused on growing his brand and working a variety of copy courses alongside his gangster monthly newsletter.
Follow him here
#12 Carline Anglade Cole
Carline Anglade-Cole is a copy powerhouse, writing a direct mail promo every month. Her specialty is edgy, attention-getting, hard-to-forget health copy! She is a “Control Queen,” with many of her promos achieving multi-year control status.
Last year, Carline brought together an impressive list of A-Listers for a tribute event to honor her much-loved mentor, Clayton Makepeace. She continues his legacy while adding to her own impressive copy trackrecord.
Follow here here.
#13 Zarak
Zarak is one of the hidden gems of the DR copy world. He runs all of Activation Health’s copy – who’s email revenue he tripled at just 18 years old.
His email copy agency, Mailer Profit, manages multiple millions in revenue for a variety of high profile health supplement brands, including my own Pup Labs. His private email list is a masterclass in marrying the best of direct response and brand marketing.
Follow him here.
#14 Mike Schauer
The man behind swiped.co is no stranger to fame. He’s got one of, if not the most popular site in copy, marketing and DR. Behind the scences his paid newsletter and work with celebrities is unmatched.
Plus his T-shirts are dope AF. This man pushes the industrty futher every year and was a huige inspiration behing me building beatyourcontrol.com.
Follow him here.
#15 Sean Vosler
Sean Vosler is the founder of Increase.Academy & Author of the best-selling book on copywriting, “7 Figure Marketing Copy“. He’s helped in the scaling of several 8 figures businesses along with designing dozens of 7-figure marketing campaigns for himself & clients.
He’s recently taken on the role of Affiliate Partnership Manager at Jasper.ai with the aim of helping bring the power of generative Ai to the masses.
Follow him here.
#16 Alex Cattoni
Alex is a copywriter, marketing strategist and branding expert. For over a decade, she worked behind-the-scenes launching successful brands and writing campaigns for many of the hottest transformational authors and businesses on the planet, including Mindvalley, Numerologist.com, Rising Woman and Evolving Wisdom.
In 2020, she founded the Copy Posse and in 2022, DigitalMarketer crowned her Marketer of the Year thanks to her fun, fresh and empathetic approach to marketing.
Follow her here.
#17 Justin Goff
Justin has been on his own not-so-quiet adventure this year. After exiting from Copy Aceelerator, he’s been quitely orchastrating the copy of some of the heaviest hitters.
Lately he’s been focused on building up new writer through email copy as well as hosting to-die-for copy workshops in sunny mexico.
Follow him here.
#18 Roy Furr
Roy keeps writing winners and controls for heavy hitters in the financial and opportunity markets, like he’s been doing since 2010. He’s also a content machine, peeling back the curtains on what works in direct response in his emails and episodes published every single day.
Plus as copy chief and mentor, he’s helped launch many successful copywriting careers — one of my copy mentor’s Chris Wright was one of Roy’s first coaching clients.
Follow him here.
#19 Nick Verge
The writer behind some of the most polarizing (and controversial) voices in the world, with clients like Alex Jones and Jordan Belfort, he’s mastered the ability to mimic any voice through his writing.
Nick focuses on building real relationships with the audience through storytelling, empathy, real value, and non-sleazy strategies that boost revenue.
Reach out to him via email if you want to connect: nicholasverge@gmail.com
#20 Ed Reay
Ed has had a monster pivot this year into teaching copywriters how to get clients that respect them and get paid what they’re worth.
He’s absolutely curshed it at this and continues to lead from the front with his world class copy, negotiating and leadership. Someone to keep an eye on as we go deep into 2023.
Follow him here.
#21 Samantha Novak
2022 was the year of massive growth for Samantha. She’s transformed from copywriter to marketer, helping companies scale as a CRO and CMO. She’s also joined the team at Nothing Held Back, helping to grow and retain the mastermind.
She loves being a secret weapon which is why you can’t really find anything about her online. She’ll be at the top in the next 2 years, I guarantee it.
Follow her here.
#22 John Romaniello & Wellspring Media
John Romaniello is one of the OG’s in the space, having multiple successful million dollar launches and a NYT bestseller. His agency wellspringMEDIA (Yogev Almog and Brett Kaufman) have worked with some of the largest brands such as Under Armour, Adidas, Clickbank, BioTrust, Onnit, and Reebok.
They’re experts at all things copy, email list management, and funnel conversions.
Connect with them here.
#23 Ian Stanley
Part time comedian and part time copywriter, Ian is the Founder of the company Almost Passive Income, that teaches people how to make more money, in less time, while having more fun. He also runs a group called the Email Collective that’s a high-end email marketing mastermind.
And alongside up-and-coming copywriter Conner Larkin they run a Email Marketing Agency where they manage multiple email lists for some of the internet’s biggest businesses.
Follow him here.
#24 Rob Bennett
Rob is one of the quietest copywriter’s in the game, and yet you’ve seen his work. He wrote Inbound Closer which we scaled to over 2M/month and every promo since then has scaled on cold, totalling well over 40M.
If you’re in biz opp, he’s the man who will beat your control.
Follow him here.
#25 Alec Rosa
Despite being 6’5 and the most handsome copywriter in the industry, Alec really doesnt like attention. Which is too bad because he’s one the best underated writers on the planet, mentoring under Dan Ferrari directly.
He’s written winners for many supplement companies and I see 2023 being a breakout year for him!
To connect, email him here: alecrosa11@gmail.com
#26 Kristen Ladas
And last but not least we have Kristen, a powerhouse writer from Canada. In the past she’s done a lot of work with coaches but now she’s pivoted to a lot heavier DR and is absolutly crushing it with clients.
I see her climbing the ranks fast in 2023 and leaving the competition in the dust.
Follow her here.
#27 David Deutsch
David Deutsch is one of the most successful and reclusive OGs of the copy world. David started on Madison Avenue, where he learned the art of “classy hard sell” under David Ogilvy.
His philosophy of “copyTHINKING beats Copywriting” has served him and his students well and reading his copy is a masterclass in bullet and fascination writing.
Follow him here.
#28 Peter Tzemis
What list isn’t complete without yours truly? This year will be my most profitable and growth focused year. I’ve moved to a new country, Pup Labs has exploded in growth, my mastermind is at 50 members, my new supplement offer is scaling, my SEO site has 10x’d in profits… Everything is just aligned. And I’m excited to see what the year brings!
If you want to keep up, jump on the email list or follow me on twitter.
Pour Conclure
This list was extremely difficult to make.
I originally started with over 65 copywriters and marketers, many of whom are truly excellent at their craft, and deserve to be on this list.
So if you didn’t make the list, don’t sweat it. I’m just some dude, sitting in his Medellin penthouse, having a bit of fun.
Plus there’s always other lists you can buy your way on too.
Or you can use this to light a fire under your ass in 2024, and say “fuck this, I’m gonna show Peter how wrong he was”.
And you know what, I honest-to-god hope you do.
Because even if you don’t make the 2024 list, you’ll have pushed yourself to be so much better, that you won’t even care about the list.
And then, you’ll finally understand why I really do this. Why, once a year, I make it a point to get most of an industry to hate my guts (it’s really not that fun).
Because nothing fuels creativity, excellence, and the best in people, like a good-ol-fashioned competition.
So roll ups your sleeves, do the hard work, stop wasting time reading this gossip (but share it all over the internet first plz)…
And go write some good great copy.
Peter Tzemis