STARTING FROM SCRATCH...

    A lot of people are going to tell you that there are "no more secrets" to making the big profits in mail order.  These same people will laugh at you and call you a "fool" for wasting your time chasing rainbows that don't exist...

    But, don't you believe them, or even listen to them!  The opportunities for wealth beyond your wildest dreams - via the direct mail sales of a product or service - have never been greater!

    If you have an idea - a product or service - now is the time to capitalize on it via mail order selling.  You can definitely start "on your kitchen table" and parlay it into millions of dollars... others have done it, are doing it... and now, it's your turn for a piece of the pie.

    As with any other profitable business, the procedure of making "profits" by mail has its own set of rules.  Learn these rules, adhere to them, adjust them to your own circumstances - draw up a "battle plan" and work your plan...  Persevere, be aware of other people's marketing methods, continue upgrading your own product or service, and with determination, you can become a millionaire in our own right...  And then, you can look over your shoulder at those who were laughing at you, and perhaps help them in some small way...

    Knowledge, and the ability to use that knowledge, are the basic keys to success.  You must know what heights you want to attain, understand what it takes to attain those heights, and then dedicate yourself to getting there.

    The rules to achievement of success in direct mail success have to do wit  l) Market Research, 2) The use of the "right" mailing lists, 3) Customer Follow-Up...  If you can understand the "hows and whys" of these rules, then there's virtually no way you help but succeed in the field of mail order, even starting from scratch...

    Market Research has to do the selection of the proper product, identifying your "most-likely" buyers, and getting your product-offer to these people.

    Product selection is very basic, and thus the most important first step.  Stop and think - look around yourself - and listen to what the "people" are clamoring most for...

    In this day and age, much of the noise in the air has to do with:  How can I find a job...  How can I put together a resume that will get me a job when I spot an opening...  Where are the jobs...  With these thoughts in mind, the person who writes, publishes, and gets an instructional manual or even a newsletter relative to these questions, to the people, will sell as many as he can produce...

    So, step one is to "listen" to what the people are wanting, and then to satisfy those wants.  You do this by spending some time researching the subject.  Visit your local public library, interview a number of people involved who have succeeded in satisfying their wants, conduct a few "dry runs" for personal experience and then write your manual.

    The "secret" to ultimate wealth is the capability of producing a product that can be duplicated an unlimited number of times for pennies, and sold for dollars.  A great many people get "bogged down" within this "rule" because they don't under stand "time and motion" requirements.

    As an example, if you were to stage seminars for the unemployed in your area, to help them to find and land jobs, you would undoubtedly make a fortune very quickly.  But, you would be committed to a certain expenditure of time every time you prepared for, and staged a seminar.  Thus, you would be making a lot of money for yourself, but at the same time, you'd sustain a loss of time to enjoy your wealth doing the things you always wanted to do, once you became rich.  The only way around this would be to train and hire other people to prepare for, and stage the seminars which would mean you would then be dividing your profits.

    At the bottom-line then, the "only way" is to write something which can be duplicated as often as necessary, and sold virtually forever.  Look at it this way, you spend a full month organizing your material and writing a manual that costs you $1 per copy to
produce in quantity.  You sell it for $20 a copy, and over a period of three years, you sell three million copies - in essence, that amounts to $60,000,000 for one month's work!!!

    So, writing something "the people want," is the only way to go...  But, be careful...  Make sure you've done your homework and what you write about is what the majority of the people "will stand in line to buy..."  Listen to what the people want, and then give it to them...  This is the product selection part of your market research...

    By listening to the cries for help, and catering to them, you will not only have "discovered" the proper product, you will have also "identified" your buyers.  Do not try to interest the people in something that does not specifically fulfill one of their wants.  Don't mistake a casual interest or complaint as "the voice" of the masses. Spend some time "listening," and then write to satisfy what "the people" want.

    Once you've got your product ready for customers to buy, you should spend some time creating the proper sales letter and/or circular you'll use in presenting it to your potential customers.  Above all else, your sales materials must radiate an image of professionalism and sell - sell - sell...

    Use quality paper and printing in presenting your sales message.  Present what you have to say, not in manner that tells the prospect who you are, how well qualified you are to write on the subject, or how much work you put into the project; but from a stand point of how the customer is going to benefit from buying a copy of your manual.

    As an example - General Motors doesn't advertise cars by telling you how they were designed and engineered - built by college graduates or union workers - nor have you ever heard of someone walking up to a car in a dealer's showroom, kicking the tire and exclaiming,  "By, this sure looks like a safe one..."  In fact, new cars are sold by the smell and the image of the prospective owner sitting in the driver's seat and showing off by
driving through his neighborhood - just climb in there behind the wheel and see how she feels to you - go ahead and take it for a test drive - drive it home and see what your neighbors think...

    The benefits your prospective buyer is going to receive, that's the starting point from which all "winning" sales letters are written, circulars designed, and the "secret" of getting people to spend money on a product or service.

    Students from the advertising classes at your local college, free-lance advertising agency personnel, and - believe it or not - automobile dealership advertising managers, are the people to turn to for ideas and help.

    Next, is your follow-up piece.  Ideally, this is a simple one page listing of other "related" materials for your customers.  So, assuming you've sold him a manual on how to land a job - your follow-up piece might list manuals on how to dress to project a winning image, how to breeze through job interviews, and/or what to do after the in ter view, perhaps an opportunity for your buyer to subscribe to a quarterly newsletter listing job availabilities.

    It's important that you have your follow-up piece put together, and ready before you make your primary offer available to the public.  Then, when you start receiving orders, along with the manual the customer has ordered, simply also enclose your follow-up listing of other materials available.

    Thus, you make one sale and as a result of he first sale, you make further sales of related materials - the kind of "back end" sales that will keep you in business, and your profits multiplying.  Don't neglect the follow-up piece.

    Getting your offer to your most likely buyers is going to cost you money, and here's where most direct mail beginners drop the ball.  Do not try to save money, and send your offer out to just any old list of names.  Contact a reputable mailing list broker - visit your public library and ask the librarian for a copy of the Standard Rate & Data Services directory pertaining to mailing list brokers - tell the mailing list broker about your offer and ask for his help in choosing a mailing list that will be profitable for you.

    You'll probably have to rent a minimum of 5,000 names at a cost ranging be tween $35 and $95 per thousand, but in the end - you'll save a lot of time and money because with a good offer and a good mailing list you count on a tremendous response.

    For instance, the one time rental of a good mailing list may cost you $475 at $95 per thousand...  But then, a 20% response from such a list on a $20 manual, would mean $20,000 in your pocket...

    To spend your time compiling names and addresses from incoming mail order offers, or to rent and use a mailing list from any source other than a reputable broker, is not only foolish but a shortcut to the poor-house!  Identify your most-likely buyers, contact a reputable mailing list broker, match your "buyer profile" to his most responsive list, and you'll make money - lots of money - every time. Anything less is just an exercise in futility!

    There you have it - short & sweet - cut & dried - and, the "easy way" to the big profits in mail order starting from scratch...  These are the basics - the secrets to how others have done it, and how you can do it too - organize yourself, follow these guidelines and it'll be next to impossible for you not to succeed...

    Remember though, your best product will be "how-to" information.  Something the people "want" to learn.  Something you can research, write about, and produce for pennies, and then sell for dollars.

    And don't forget, once you're ready to start taking orders, make sure that you get your offer to the most likely buyers.  Get out of the "mail order circle" and to the people who want and will spend money for your product.

    It's easy - it's simple - and it can be very rewarding!  Understand the requirements, position yourself to succeed and do it! This time next year, you could be a millionaire!!! your neighbors think...

Talk is Cheap!

The Strange Story of the "Crackpot" Mail-Order Prophet

(or)

Five Things You Can Learn about Advertising from

Dr. Frank B. Robinson

by Joe Vitale

Are you having trouble selling your product or service?

Are you feeling like the chaotic state of the world

prevents you from succeeding? Are you wondering how you

can increase your sales in the most cost effective ways?

Are you feeling like your competition is breathing down

your neck?

Many of my clients feel the same way. They want to succeed,

to make a nice living in their business, but they feel

overwhelmed, uncertain, and even despondent. They feel they

have too much competition. They feel marketing doesn't work,

or takes too much work. They feel people don't have enough

money today to spend on what they are selling.

And that's why I think it's time to reveal the strange story

of the long forgotten "crackpot" mail-order prophet.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s the average person

didn't have enough money to feed themselves or their family,

let alone enough extra cash to order books through the mail.

Yet during those lean years one man made a fortune selling

books and courses entirely by mail. His name was

Frank B. Robinson. He founded "Psychiana," the world's

eighth largest religion and the world's largest mail-order

religion.

You may never have heard of him or his movement before today.

But during the 1930s and 40s, Robinson's name traveled around

the world. Millions of people read his books, studied his

lessons, and practiced his methods. The press called his

positive thinking, new thought religion a "media business"

because Robinson advertised so heavily.

In 1928 Robinson wrote an ad for his new philosophy that began

with the headline, "I TALKED WITH GOD." An advertising agency

in Spokane, Washington said the ad would never work. But Frank

believed in his message and trusted his hunches. He borrowed

$2,500 from people he barely knew, spent most of it on

printing his lessons, and invested $400 to place his ad in

"Psychology Magazine."

That ad pulled 5,300 responses. Robinson ran it in numerous

magazines and it always pulled a 3% to 21% response. Within a

year he had a full-time job fulfilling requests for his books

and lessons, soon shipping a million pieces of mail a year

out of his office in Moscow, Idaho. The post office in that

little town had to move into a bigger building to handle all

the mail.

Robinson's ads appeared in 140 newspapers, 180 magazines,

and on 60 radio stations, all at the same time. His postal

bill in 1938 amounted to $16,000 and his printing bill hit

$40,000. He received 60,000 pieces of mail a day, reached

more than two million people, and sent his message to 67

countries---all within one year of running his first ad.

"Advertising is educating the public to who you are, where

you are, and what service you have to offer," Robinson wrote.

"The only man or organization who should not advertise is

the one who has nothing to offer."

What can we learn from Frank B. Robinson?

1. He believed in his product. When you don't believe in what

you are trying to sell, it shows. It'll show in your lack of

commitment to your marketing, in poor advertising, in poor

service, or in other ways. As I mention in my book, The Seven

Lost Secrets of Success, sincerity is one of the "lost

secrets" to success. Robinson had sincerity. While his

movement made tons of money, Robinson accepted only $9,000

a year as his salary. Whether you call him a crackpot or

a savior, he believed in his product. He knew he had something

people wanted. In fact, Robinson sold his religious lessons

with a money-back guarantee.

2. He advertised relentlessly. If you don't tell people that

you exist, they won't know it. The reason you aren't aware of

Robinson or his movement today is because he's dead. (He died

in 1948). No one is advertising his message. Without consistent

and persistent advertising to educate the public, the world

won't know of your business.

3. He tracked his results. Robinson believed in the spiritual

world, but he also knew he lived on the earth plane where

numbers matter. He tracked responses from his ads to know what

worked and what didn't. For example, astrology magazines brought

him an 18% response to his ads while national weekly papers

brought 3%. Knowing that, Robinson could invest more money in

larger ads in the better pulling magazines. Find out where your

business comes from and focus more advertising in that area.

4. He continued to create products. Robinson knew once people

tasted his goods, they would want more. He wrote 28 books during

his short lifetime. These, along with his correspondence courses,

gave him a deep product line. Your current satisfied customers

will always be your goldmine. Create more for them to buy.

5. He remained optimistic. Despite the harsh reality of the Great

Depression years, and despite competition from religious

institutions that had been around for centuries, Robinson

flourished. He didn't believe anyone or anything could stop him.

When you have that strong of an inner conviction, nothing CAN

stop you. If you think you have competition with a similar

business in the same town, consider what it must have been like

for Robinson to have such empires as the Catholic Church, the

US government, and famous ministers and politicians trying to

close him down!

Whatever you may think of Robinson or "Psychiana," you have to

admit he knew how to advertise his business.

"After all, it's the results in human lives that count," he

wrote in his 1941 book, The Strange Autobiography of

Frank B. Robinson. "Talk is cheap."

What are you going to do now to increase your business?

Remember, talk is cheap!

-----------------------------------------------------------

Joe Vitale is widely recognized by many as the greatest

copywriter in America. Can you beat him? Try out the

"World's Shortest Advertising IQ Test" and see how you

stack up: http://www.createadvertisingthatsells.com

-----------------------------------------------------------

Featured Article: $10,000 a Month?

by Bill Myers
http://www.bmyers.com

One of the real milestones in this business is when you reach a point where you are able to consistently generate an income of $10,000 or more each month from your product development or entrepreneurial activities.

Once you reach this point you'll feel like you've made it in the product  development/marketing business. But reaching that point can be difficult . . . especially
if you don't understand exactly what it takes to consistently make $10,000 a month.

Understanding the Problem...

Perhaps the biggest hurdle to earning $10,000 a month is in understanding exactly what it takes to earn that kind of income. Most people don't understand the mathematics behind it, and as such don't develop a strategy of success.

In its most basic terms, earning $10,000 a month means you have to sell enough product to generate $10,000 in profit. That can be done by . . .

  Making just one sale of an item with a $10,000 profit

  Making 100 sales of an item with a $100 profit

  Making 1,000 sales of an item with a $10 profit

  Making 10,000 sales of a single item with a $1 profit

It's simple mathematics. But until you understand that the profit per unit dictates the number of sales you must make to reach your income goals, you may never understand why so many people fail at this.

The reason, simply stated is:

No matter what the product, it is generally far more difficult to make 1,000 sales than it is to make 100 sales.

The larger the number of sales you need to achieve your income goals, the more likely you are to fail. And the fewer the sales you need, the more likely you are to succeed.

If your product mix, business overhead, and lifestyle are arranged where you need to sell many hundreds, or even thousands of products a month to stay afloat, then chances are your boat is going to sink the moment you put it in the water.

On the other hand, if your product/business/lifestyle mix is such that it only takes a handful of sales each day to put you in profit, then your chances of success are pretty good. (That is one reason we choose to live in a low cost area, and pursue a low expense lifestyle - it makes success so much easier.)

-----------------------------------
  The Strategy to $10,000 a Month
-----------------------------------

The simplest strategy to reaching $10,000 a month in net income is to work to get just four sales a day of products which generate $100 profit each. If you can net $4OO a day, you'll exceed $10,000 a month in profits.

That is the strategy we used successfully for years and continue to use (as our plan B, today).

In the past, we offered a number of products (most priced between $9O and $2OO), and we worked to get at least four sales a day. That guaranteed us a minimum of $10,000 a month income (and pretty much assures we could stay in this business forever).

But we didn't stop there. We fortified our formula for reaching $10,000 a month by continually developing new products. We knew that each new product that generated
just one additional sale a day would increase our annual income by an average $3O,OOO.

If over the course of the year we developed ten new products, each averaging just one sale a day, the net increase in our income would be in excess of $300,000 - if we wanted to work that hard.

Making the Formula Work for You...

One of the things I've discovered in this business is that it's much more difficult to get four sales a day if you have just one product than it is if you have multiple products. The reason is quite simple.

In most cases, a customer will only purchase one copy of any one product you offer (that's all they can use). Which means if you offer only one product each customer can only do business with you one time, and every new sale requires you find a new customer! And
that's about the hardest way possible to run a business.

When you offer multiple products, each customer can account for multiple purchases. A customer could conceivably purchase one each of all your products. (And in fact, most customers do purchase more than one product when other products are offered.)

Having many different products can mean you don't need near as many customers to reach the four sales a day goal.

---------------------------------------
  The Secret to $10,000 a Month is...
---------------------------------------

The math behind making $10,000 a month is quite firm. You can't change it by simple wishing or desire. But you can greatly increase your chances of reaching $10,000 a month by . . .

 - Offering products with higher per unit profits (even if this means making fewer sales)

 - Offering multiple products (all with good profits)

 - Concentrating on finding and keeping repeat customers rather than making sales

 - Continually updating your product offerings to fulfill the wants of repeat customers

 - Reducing the number of sales needed per day, based on increased profits This is a very simple strategy to success. One followed by most of the successful people I know.

Pitfalls to Avoid...

I recently purchased a computer disk offered on the net for $4.95. I found the disk on eBay Auction, and saw that the seller had sold over 6o copies with just one offer.

Normally, that would be great... generating 6O sales with just one $2 ad on eBay auction (www.ebay.com) is pretty impressive.

But in this case the seller is probably losing money, because the math is against him.

If you figure it costs him $2 in time and materials to fill each order, then it means the seller only nets $2.95 per sale. To  make  $1,OOO it'll take 300 sales! To make $10,000 requires 3,000 sales!

Imagine the amount of labor involved in processing an order - entering it into the computer, printing an invoice and shipping label, packaging the item ordered, and then shipping it - and you'll understand why this guy is in a losing proposition.

He'd be much better off selling a disk for $97.50, and getting just two sales. His profit on that would be greater than the profit he is currently making on the 6o sales at $4.95.

Another pitfall many people can't seem to avoid is locking themselves into one or two products and not having any way to react should the demand for that product suddenly drop off.

I spoke to a publisher friend who told me that up until two months ago he was consistently earning $5,OOO a month by selling three books he had written. Then, without any warning, sales dropped to zero.

Seems that the public was no longer interested in books on his subject, so no one was buying. And my friend had no backup products. He had all his eggs in just one basket. And when those eggs turned to zeros, he was out of business.

He should have been building a diversified product line. He should have been adding new products to generate new sales as the older products matured. But he did none of this. (And now he is looking for a job.)

It boils down to this . . . get your product line and profits in order so that it only takes a few sales a day to reach $10,000 a month in earnings. And once you reach that point, continue adding and testing new products so that you not only maintain the $10,000 a
month, but build on it.