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Volume 1:
Most Online Marketers Are Too Busy Optimizing Their Web Pages, Opting-In their
Investigative Author Blows The Lid Off “Make Money From Online Marketing”
Strategies And Details What Lays Claim To Be The Easiest Business On Earth!
A Confidential Report
Welcome!
While this new world is largely still underdeveloped, now is the perfect time to learn
Are you ready to kiss good-bye the old, worn out, not workable methods they have
My experience has been that the web is chock full of misleading, malformed and
misguided information. I tried a lot of things when I first got involved. Hardly
anything worked the way it was supposed to or as well as was depicted in the sales
materials.
Congratulations are in order! You have made a wise decision to purchase this
manual. You will see that it delivers the goods and everything that was depicted in
It is with great joy and pleasure that this success guide is presented to you.
One of the leading questions asked is “why, if these methods are so good, don’t
you just use them yourself to make sales”? The answer is, the methods ARE used
You might ask “why then share this info with anyone who wants it, why not just
keep it to yourself”? The answer to that is very clear too. I write a newsletter that is
the first of it’s kind and it focuses on using hard-hitting strategies that are powerful
and by giving you a glimpse of the possibilities in this e-book, I stand a better than
As I surfed the net, tried many “business plans” and “online marketing methods”
I ended up confused and more broke as time went on. After a while I said :
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
And after several twists of fate and events, this material crystallized, as if it was
meant to be. The common sentiment about “online marketing” is that yeah, things
may not work they way they are depicted, but let’s not upset the apple cart just yet
because there is plenty of money earned from creating and selling worthless tools,
concepts, e-books. Let’s just play along and not make waves.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
Let’s turn “online marketing” back into the powerful business it can be. Let’s
reverse the effects of all the hype which only result in giving it a bad name. Let’s
take online marketing back from the select few who “brew” the concoctions they call
success principles and give it back to the good, honest, forthright people.
I would like you to mark this day on your calendar for it is the first day of this
brave new world for you. May you find it as exciting, lucrative and beneficial as I
have.
If you would have told me that I was going to be an Internet entrepreneur and
would have written this book a year ago I would have thought you were nuts! Yet,
here I am, and I am happy for having done it. Writing a book, and subsequently
marketing it can be a challenge. But it also can be very rewarding both from a
I am going to give you my level best attempt at explaining things to you. You
may notice that my book, while rather large in number of pages, that it does contain
a lot of detail. I hate it when an author just glazes over a topic. It always leaves me
Another thing you may notice that is a bit different is my writing style. Who says
you have to have a Master Degree in English Literature to be an author? I write like
I speak. I call it coffee shop English. It may not always be grammatically correct,
Next, you will notice something else. A few of my chapters are almost identical
because I like to explain things a few different ways to further drive home the
points. I hate long, narrative, time consuming chapters. Studies indicate that we
adults have short attention spans. I feel if I split the longer chapters up into two, and
present them slightly differently, you stand a far greater chance of learning the
material than if I stuffed it all into one, long, time consuming chapter.
Another thing I hope you find is the complete nature of this book for the subject
provide you with the big picture and all the little pictures that go into forming one
large mosaic in this book. I did not want to make the book so big and so in-depth
that I had to charge $200 for it alone. You get the basics to mid-advanced topics
here. If you want more, you are just going to have to wait for the super-advanced
book to be made available. I realized not everyone was willing to fork out $200 to
The last things I personally hope you find is that, apart from being entertaining at
times, that this book provides some background, some fiber and some strong
foundation that helps you achieve success, beyond your wildest dreams.
it'
s early morning. A visitor to your web site has thought in his or her mind after
seeing your web page. "I would like to buy and read this" he or she says, reaches
for their credit card, goes to the order page and "click" in the time it took to send the
little electronic bit of information from their computer to the service provider you
have received money in your sales account. Again, in central Europe, another user
does the same thing - wham .. More money in your account. For many online
business owners this goes on, time in, time out all day long, generating money at
the speed of light. Times are changing. The direct response business is no
exception. It is easier, more convenient and as user friendly as can be today, using
I had some tough jobs in my life. I recall squatting in a 5-foot diameter around
tunnel, 65 feet below the ground level and 600 feet away from the open end of the
tunnel. To make matters worse, there were unexploded pieces of actual dynamite
all around. One false move, one spark and I could have been shot out of the tunnel
100 miles per hour, like a human rocket. "Fire in the hole" the job foreman would
shout. After piping in fresh air after the dynamite blast one of my jobs was to go in
and "muck out" the blasted rock. Let me ask you something ... do you know what it
is like to have to stay on your knees, 600 feet under ground, with a shovel, a small
art for loading rock with a rope tied to it and 1000 pounds of blasted rock to move in
less than an hour? Now that, was a tough job. There was no room for being lazy
there. What we were doing was driving a tunnel through solid rock that far
underground for a series of underground utilities. The tunnel went under a major
commuter rail systems, several roads and a field. To make matters worse it was
I had some jobs that required brute force and heavy, heavy labor. One time
myself and another young guy moved about 50 acres worth of timber, by hand, on
I call the job of writing and sending simple letters a lazy one. I really do not
mean that myself, or anyone that does it is lazy. As you will see, it takes some
them with dynamite and then having to clean the shot out by hand when you are
I believe anyone can write and send compelling, simple letters and postcards. I
call it the lazy wealth producer because one can run their business such that all
that has to be done is the writing of the copy that goes in the letters or postcards.
Everything else can be farmed out. The heaviest object that needs to be lifted is a
1/10 th ounce piece of paper or a half-ounce pencil. The rest can fully be
involved. But it sure beats loading your back with cut trees, loading them onto a
A Primer
This is the best time to get involved in this type business. The time has arrived
when the "information age" is thrust upon us. I want to though, present things in a
little bit different light. Money is made when things get sold. Things get sold when
potential prospects are given the information that will result in their purchase. The
goal is to reach the most amounts of people, in the shortest amount of time, at the
I have found throughout my travels in the "business opportunity" arena there are
some underlying themes. One of the themes is that I have found the vast majority
of business opportunity seekers are hard working, honest, trustworthy people who
are simply looking for a way to make some money on the side. A few of the people
I have talked to a great number of the fine, honest hard working people over the
years. I have been in the exact same place they are many a time. I can relate to
their dreams, hopes and ambitions. It is from this vantage point that I offer the
following info. I have seen quite a few business opportunity seeker types rise from
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special "something" that happens to them. There is one moment in time when they
place the "masses" are to grasp and hold onto success. It all starts with the inner
realization that you can do it. What anyone else has ever achieved you can
would have remarked that you are nuts! Yet, some evolving, and some time later
it'
s true.
I highly suggest you get yourself on the Unlimited Wealth . Com news mailing
Right now it’s limited to USA addresses only. It’s a real “paper and ink” publication
Another fantastic resource is, what I feel is the best affiliate marketing course on
the planet! Is it possible to make a full-time income doing nothing but selling other
people’s products? Yes! I think so. You will too when you get the info from a “grand
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As I explained in my original letter one day I decided I was going to enter and
succeed in the vast new arena of online marketing. I must admit, it WAS an
learning all the things you DO NOT WANT TO DO. Really, almost every time I set
my sites on trying a new "angle" I failed. I tried them all, the ad blasters, traffic
Then I went on to purchase a guide, and e-book, about building enormous amounts
of traffic, free. It too did not work. In fact, not only did it not work, many people who
bought that book complained that it was "a big rip-off" and many people wanted
I even got tired of listening to "online marketers". I would hear "Yeah, I am going
to get rich by ...____________” Fill in the blank. Even some of the most advanced
appearing marketers appeared not to know what the heck they were doing. Some
were living in a dream world! Online it seems everyone is trying to strategically get
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Nobody could answer me. Oh, one guy did. He confessed that his new e-book,
about romance, sold 350 copies at $20 a copy in a 5 week time period. That'
s not
too bad. But I venture to guess that most online marketers think the "high end
potential" for their e-book is 100,000 copies. Dream world! Some of the best e-
books, the hottest, the most in demand sell but less than 5000 per year. Bear in
mind that this figure is my educated guess combined with real life facts I'
ve
gathered. I know that most marketers think some books sell in the 100,000 range.
Only the savvy people like you now know, the ONLY potential to do that is with a
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starting and operating a business such as this, with web based sales as the money-
making mechanism and direct mail and other offline methods as the front-end -
business generator.
When you think about it - the "traditional" world of online marketing is presented
in a fashion that is way over complicated. Who wants to have to learn all that jazz
about technology issues, software, and programming? Me, I would rather make
money! It'
s as simple as that. I would rather make money than drown in the sea of
complications. I think you would too. I have a theory why so many people start
online marketing only to get themselves quickly involved with many, many technical
challenges. It'
s because most online marketing theories fail - and the person, who
It'
s as if there'
s a chant - To Be Success online marketing you have to get
deeply involved in online concepts. If that chant were repeated often enough - we,
as humans would tend to start believing it. Nobody opened up his or her eyes of
awareness. I call the business of setting up simple web sites, creating simple,
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inexpensive products and a sales "system" to go with it - then writing and sending
Stay tuned. I have been getting contacted by a lot of people. Tons of new ideas
are floating my way. I am learning a lot too about other aspects of marketing. The
new book should be a good one, just judging from my notes I use to kick off the
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Most Online Marketers Are Too Busy Optimizing Their Web Pages, Opting-In their
I draw upon the example of how people, unbeknownst to them at the time fall
through, because someone else is doing it, and because someone else is teaching
When you decide to get into an online business you go through an evolution
there too. You begin to investigate. You see and read things that make sense. You
tend to start believing in the various methods, techniques and approaches. You end
up thinking that this new thing you discovered will be the ticket! I know I'
ve been
there. Sadly, each time I tried the new thing, bought the new course or attempted
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One of the things a new person just getting into this has to realize is that it takes
just ONE home run hit to make the entire ball game. By that I mean, just one
successful project, over enough time can result in success beyond belief. I once
read a story about an online marketer. This chap claimed to have made millions
from the Web. I have no doubt to believe him. I did my check and double-check and
believed he was the real deal. His information was that he had accumulated a
mailing list of over 100,000 people. To make money, each day he'
d mail a different
"sales letter" to this group of people. Each time he mailed ( email ) he'
d wind up
raking in many thousands of dollars in profit. Then there was a story about another
marketer online. Who managed to make several hundred thousand in a few short
months. After investigating this gentleman too, I had no reason to doubt it.
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Not many people are going to learn the game of baseball one weekend and the
next week are hitting homerun after homerun. There are going to be some base
hits, some doubles and triples. There are also going to be some bunts, strikes and
mail order before the Web came into existence is - they bought some course or
success - problem is it took me 30 years to reach that one night". I believe this type
business offers the best opportunity for success. It sure beats trading hours for pay.
But you only need achieve that one, grand slam homer and you are set, for life! Is it
worth striving for? You bet. That is probably why so many people struggle for years
It may take a few attempts. It may take a little longer than a year or less, but one
"home run" can propel you into both fame and riches in record time.
As far as I can tell, it IS NOT going to happen to you using "only" traditional
online methods. It can only happen using a very good "offline" method that is tested
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In the beginning the marketing guru types were claiming online marketing was
so powerful because sending email was FREE. You could send a million emails,
make tons of sales and it cost you nothing! The reality is some very successful
marketers spend a great deal of money in their business. But so what? People who
say that if they had a million dollars they would not spend it often puzzle me. They
would not want to spend it. The only way I would spend a million dollars is if I knew
marketing business. You spend some in order to identify customers. You market
products to these prospects over and over. Soon, the costs are outweighed by the
profits. It can all be figured out. How much does it cost to identify a potential
prospect? If you place an ad for $100 and get 100 inquiries, it cost $1 per inquiry. If
There is no such thing as a free lunch. The super successful internet marketers
are fully aware of this. What they do though is control their costs, tweak their
The free and easy days on the Web are gone. I have tried many, but results
have rarely been obtained by a "free" service online. Again, pipe dreams and
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hypnosis keep people striving to find the magic lamp. IT does not exist. What does
exist is using smarts and a carefully structured plan. The real "costs" of doing large
volumes of business online have skyrocketed. Take a look at some of the popular
click, certainly not a qualified prospect. The cost of getting a qualified prospect
online can be as high as $29. If the products eventually sold to that $29 prospect is
over $29, then a profit can be made. There are many people claiming to be utilizing
The costs are relatively high and comparable to certain "offline" methods. The
"costs" of both businesses can be determined by the true costs of reaching every
possible potential prospect. In order to identify and make a sales offer to 100,000
people online, it may cost just as much as making that offer to 100,000 via a good
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Seems everyone these days have a product for sale on the web. An inherent
problem with marketing online is that there are so many people doing it. Take for
example the idea of becoming an affiliate and making sales for products that others
have created. Good idea, right? Well, it is a good idea. But the typical experience is
after joining an affiliate program and placing some links on a web site and attracting
some visitors who see the link. They may love the underlying product. They may
want to buy it. Do they go through your link, get all the info then hit "buy" ? No, why
would they. What typically happens is they get the details about the product, they
go to the seller’s web site, become an affiliate themselves then follow THEIR OWN
link to buy the product. This way they save 50% or more! Why not? It happens
links. IT really does not matter. Anyone can search on the title of an e-book and
end up at the seller’s site, become an affiliate and buy from their own link, thus
Affiliate sales are good though, if you are selling to prospects that are not online
marketers. However, here is the deal. You can split the entire world of people
online into two groups. Those WITH an interest in making money and those who
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are not. Most, who are, will become an affiliate themselves and thus create savings
Now you know why so many affiliates do not make any money.
There is a way to make money with affiliate programs. By being first and by
having the largest list of prospects already. Those that join the "latest" programs
make the most money. Be first, be the quickest, be the one with a large list of
prospects or ....
This is quite a quandary. Most of the hot selling products ARE products geared
to show online marketers how to make more money! Keep this in mind. There is
probably a market for any product you can think of but the best selling products are
those that are products that show online marketers how to make even more money.
It'
s funny how that works.
I venture to guess that the high-end sales potential for ANY product geared for
online marketers using TRADITIONAL ONLINE methods is about 5,000 sales per
year. I would think that such a product would be good for a few years at best. So
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tallying up the totals, that translates to about 15,000 copies of an e-book. Not bad -
high demand, much sought after and highly regarded product sold to marketers.
dollars worth at $100 per book! The only "problem" is that it might cost me 5 million
in order to do that! This is the problem, the old "chicken before the egg" question. If
you knew you could spend 5 million today to make 10 million back in a short
number of years, would you do it? The first challenge there is - most people don'
t
have an extra 5 million lying around to put towards selling e-books. And if they DID
.. most people would rather HANG ON to that 5 million rather than use it to make
10 million back.
Let me tell you a story. When I was handling volumes of mail quite a few of the
customers we had were real estate agents. They love to mail postcards and letters
to what they call their "farm area". A farm area is a specific number and location of
homes and families that the agent "works". The agent mails to the area continually.
They call and walk through the neighborhoods. They interact with the people in that
farm area with hopes of "growing" some listings and sales. Hence, the name "farm
area". Along comes a little old real estate lady. She seemed bright, elegant and
successful. She wanted to mail to a farm area using our services. When she found
out the price she said - "I can get my husband and Aunt to stuff the envelopes and
23
do the mailings at the same price". I repeatedly tried to tell her that while it was the
same real "cost" to her ... the difference was that her husband and Aunt would have
to spend many hours each time she wanted something mailed. She insisted on
doing it her way. The real reason was she was unwilling to pay ANY outside firm or
people are. They are afraid to spend money in order to get a lot more back, in
return. Fast-forward one year. Along comes another real estate agent "team".
These folks are all over the place. They come tell us they want to mail no fewer
than 30,000 pieces a month. They "farm" entire towns and mail to them continually.
We get them as clients. They mail each and every month in large numbers. They
become the top income earners in the entire state in the real estate business. I bet
that original lady is still struggling. See, the difference is, the new "team" was willing
to spend up to $10000 in costs in order to get a new listing or make a sale. Each
told me of a way, all I had to do was spend $10,000 and make $15,000 back, on
The same kind of rules applies to direct mail and mail order. The real "secret” to
this business is spending less than you take in, on average. Since you are talking
large numbers of mailings and large potential purchases, you have to consider the
"averages" and they must be in your favor. Tweaking, fine-tuning, and enhancing
the "basic" operation in any way makes the averages work out better! That'
s all it is.
24
Changes to copy, better lists, more compelling sales messages, etc.. All are geared
25
We see a lot of techniques win favor then go out of favor. A famous technique is
procedures that will help do just that. But, now, several years later, doing that can
result in a hefty fine, getting banned from the Web ISP you use, etc.
Most methods and techniques run through an evolution. They gain the
momentum as more and more people use them. Some people gain success from
doing them. They then create products that claim the methods are the best, and the
situation explodes. Then, just as quickly as it has expanded, it starts to lose power.
It happens time and time again with almost EVERY method. I'
m sure, within a few
years, THIS method is also going to lose some of its power. But hopefully after a
Are you starting to get a sense of what the web is all about? I hope so. Because,
it became evident to me, a long time ago that the path to profits on the web is to
26
work the "system" that is in place. The best product you can possibly produce is
one that caters to the hundreds of thousands of people who are already "online
marketers". That is, by the way, the reason I decided my products would be geared
27
It only takes a few days worth of signing up for various articles and newsletters
only to find the end result is an in-box loaded with messages. Once you "raise your
hand" and identify yourself as someone who is interested, look out! Here they
come. The emails all sound pretty interesting. Personally, I get fed-up after just a
little of this type logjam. It becomes a problem because so many newsletters and
email courses look pretty appealing. But it is a big fat pain too. Fortunately, there
By the same token the issue of “privacy” is big on the web. The “privacy” issue
has not surfaced too strongly in the field of direct mail yet. But, as you know, it HAS
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The first golden rule of making money online is to learn ways to generate tons of
traffic at the lowest possible cost. That traffic should also result in sales, new
affiliates and allow for the building of a huge mailing list. The winners in this
business learn how to build the biggest lists, in the least time, at the lowest cost.
Some do it fully online. Others do it using offline methods. I prefer using direct mail.
It works for me. I also use "online" methods as long as they prove to work.
Now bear in mind that creating traffic is a hot topic amongst online marketers.
There are tons of e-books about the subject. There are also tons of services that
are geared to help. I have not seen too many that really work as they claim. That
may change as things evolve. If there were a "magic bullet" then everyone would
be using it. There are a lot of hyped up schemes and "systems" but, show me one
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It'
s often called an enlightening experience. I usually call them "realizations"
because, somehow, thoughts, concepts and ideas seem to crystallize and form a
If you asked me the question "Why do most online marketers fail?" and you
asked it last year, I would tell you that I truly did not know. But, like I said, things
just crystallize and you begin to see "through" the shadows to the light.
Most online marketers fail because they "bought into" somebody else'
s ideas.
It'
s like the story of the old, savvy, dishonest marketer who used to sell "horse
racing picks". As the story goes, this clever marketer knew that all business was a
"numbers game". So many people bite on the initial offer; so many people become
loyal customers. Only this marketer stacked the odds in his favor.
What he did was work the numbers. First, he got a list of "horse racing
enthusiasts", you know, the guys who frequent the track very often and gamble
30
their hard earned pay away. The marketer knew some inherent things about these
gamblers. They all "thought" that one day, they too were gonna make it big. So
destined to make it big. Almost all serious gamblers have some motivational force,
in their heads that makes them keep coming back. I want to STOP and draw a
parallel here. But this parallel is not the main point, which will come later. It'
s just a
Most online marketers keep spending their money, their time and energy
pursuing the riches that can be obtained from online marketing because they too
know, deep in their hearts, that one day THEY TOO are going to make it big. This
thought keeps them in the game. It keeps them spending money and it keeps them
begging for "online marketing nuggets of gold" from the guru types. I'
m telling you
though, it'
s the WRONG thing to do. So just beware.
Hi, I'
m just a beginner marketing guy who wants to know just how many e-books
can be expected to be sold? I researched the entire web only to find some big
publishing groups said the figures for 2003 were not that good .. a total, TOTAL of
10 million dollars worth of e-books sold. Gee, the way the "guru" types make it
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seem, they EACH sell 10 million worth alone! What gives? Does anyone know
REAL substantiated sales figures for HOW MANY e-books of any variety get sold?
I got some replies. None of the replies were able to pinpoint any real numbers. I
had to find out some numbers myself. A typical "hot selling" e-book can sell
upwards of 5,000 copies a year. This was based on info I obtained from one of the
creator / marketers themselves. He offered me his 9 month total sales files of email
addresses of buyers. It was something like 3,800. This figure included affiliate
online marketers read my message, nobody had any real idea of the numbers!
Most of the others, probably hundreds of them, while they seemed like they were
savvy online marketers, had absolutely no idea what the expected e-book sales
statistics were!
My point is ... most online marketers, unless they are in the "guru" category, are
totally clueless about what to expect. They just "know" that they will, one day, they
marketers is hypnotized! Maybe that is the way the guru types want it - keep their
32
eyes glazed over and their head in the clouds, thinking they are gonna make it big,
Now back to the horseracing story. I think you get the point of the other story.
What this clever but dishonest marketer did was start to sell "racing tips sheets"
and a "telephone service" whereby a customer could call to get the "winners" of the
and concentrate on maybe 7 horses. If 700 people bought his service, he'
d give
EACH group of 100 ONE of the horses as their play of the day.
That means, following his advice 100 people would win a race, would have
probably bet heavy, and made a lump sum of cash, using Mr. Conemgood'
s advice.
Now, Mr. Conemgood has something good. He has 600 people who are
disappointed in his service. So he offers them a FREE tip. For the upcoming race,
he splits the horses up and gives 1/8th of the gamblers one of the horses as their
play.
they are ripe for the picking. Mr. Conemgood now calls them and offers his "secret
33
bet" advice. He charges each $100 and tells them they can make that back easily
The next race that Mr. Conemgood gives his advice on happens. Mr.
Mr. Conemgood is a genius and worth his weight in gold. 2 of the people actually
And each day Mr. Conemgood adds to his collection of prospects, and works his
"system". He cannot lose for there is always going to be a group of people who win
taking his advice. He always gives a different group a different winner. And so the
story goes. Each race goes off and Mr. Conemgood ends up the winner, because
I do not know if the story is true. I heard it back when I used to go to the track!
Hah hah. It sure drives home the point I was trying to make!
The moral of the story is there are quite a few parallels to be drawn from that
story. There'
s always going to be a certain number of people who find a formula,
system, method wins for them and they go on telling others what a great thing they
found, etc. I think this happens in the world of online marketing more times than
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naught. Sometimes methods, strategies and e-book ideas work out. Typically, if
you are talking about "traditional" online methods, they work out too, sometimes. So
there'
s always going to be people pushing and promoting them. It'
s the 90 people
out of a hundred who are going to be down on the idea. So they do not promote,
join or get on the bandwagon. So, as online marketers, we have to be very careful
because - the ones who are shouting the loudest about how great something is -
are the ones that have WON using the methods! Unfortunately, the people who
lose just move on and never look back; they go onto something new that might
work better. Hmmm, I wonder if Mr. Conemgood switched from horse racing to
online marketing?
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You must, without question, go about the web and get yourself on every opt-in,
want to get a good feel for who is making it BIG and pay close attention to the mail
they send you. Many times, they will have gone through a "testing" phase and the
e-mail they are sending you has passed muster. In other words, they will be testing
Back in the mail order days, this was common practice. If you were pinning all
your hopes and dreams on success in direct mail you had better get yourself on
every mailing list possible. Why? Because in direct mail, it was not uncommon for a
company to spend, literally MILLIONS of dollars perfecting their sales letter, offer,
package. It'
s like getting a million-dollar education mailed right to your house FREE!
and strategy.
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I strongly suggest you take some personal inventory. Might it be that you too
suffer a little bit of the “follow the leader” philosophy? I mean, do you tend to take
what you see online as gospel? That is where we can quickly get into trouble, by
“buying into” the mass hypnotism and believing all we read on the net. And if you
do happen to slip a little into those false beliefs, stop the ideas dead in their tracks.
The net is full of ideas, methods and strategies that are not worth the time it takes
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What'
s Really Happening with Online Marketing
I call it the "inner circle" versus the "outer circle". In order to understand this
concept you have to break up all online users into two groups. First is the
experienced and working "online marketers" and the rest, the "outer circle" is
Not all web users are desirous to make it via online marketing. Some are
though. Some will, over the next few years get tuned onto online marketing. For the
most part we can say there are approximately 50,000 avid online marketers. You
may only know the names of a few dozen. These are typically the big names in the
business. They can turn out a product and sell 10,000 copies in no time flat. But the
other 49,950 struggle to make ends meet online. Some make no money at all.
Others make a few bucks here and there. The majority though makes small sums
of money compared to the few biggies. All tolled, this is the "inner circle" of online
marketing.
It becomes apparent that the name of the game for the "biggies" is to build lists
of this "inner circle" and continually produce and sell products that are deemed
38
from this "inner circle" that make up the majority of all sales for "marketing" related
products. It'
s like one, big, happy family.
There are the product producers (the masters) and the consumers (the
followers) it'
s as almost if each "follower" believes in a great big white lie. This white
lie is that their intended market for their product is the entire planet of web users.
This is not so. The total number of prospects for such products is immediately
50,000. Same number as the number of "inner circle" marketing active people.
marketing. So, to make it big in online marketing you have to do a few basic things.
First, you have to produce products that the 50,000 people all want
Next, you have to find ways to build your list containing the e-mail details of the
same 50,000.
Last, you have to continually grow your list, produce more products, and market to
this audience.
39
OR.....
You have to develop a way to reach the "outside" circle world. The "inner circle"
people are all online, day in, day out. They are posting to forums, marketing their
products, building their sites and buying marketing products. The "outer circle" is by
and large unaware of what is actually going on. They may be promoted to take a
look at online marketing by receiving an email. Maybe they stumble upon a web
site. Other times a friend or associate tells them about a marketing opportunity. The
point is, the "inner circle" is limited, small, and heavily working and worked. They
are being pounded with the latest, greatest products. Typically they are all
ALREADY involved in the various affiliate commission programs. And chances are
they would not buy your affiliate product if you paid them good money. Why?
Because chances are they ALREADY saw the details and already bought it.
To sum things up - the affiliate and product promoting success comes with
proper timing. You have to be among the first to get involved and be able to turn
others onto the product. That is the way it is with the "inner circle". I recently saw an
TIMING!
40
You have to be quick, get in on the ground floor and be the first to market your new
OR...
You can focus on the "outer circle". If the "inner circle" is 50,000 people, the "outer
circle" is about 200 million, or roughly equals to the number of total Internet users
minus 50,000. It is THIS market that the writing and sending simple letters is most
geared toward.
Look, you can wrack your brains out trying to sell sand to someone living in the
sparkling spring water in the middle of the desert with no other place around to get
a drink! It'
s that much of a difference.
41
What I do is look for a "niche" market. There has to be the ability to locate rental
mailing lists for the intended market. I then search for related products for sale that
have affiliate programs with them. This way, I do not have to create a product right
away, I can use a product that is already done. But, truthfully, the best thing to do is
create a product in that category. This is because if you do, within a few short
weeks you can have an army of other people out there selling your product for you!
So, you pay a commission, but you get the cash rolling in quickly. One you have
products in mind you have to design a simple web site that sells those products. If
you create your own product, there are some loose ends you have to tie down to
get things rolling. At this point I start writing ideas for simple letters. I typically think
of both postcard writing and letter writing as the same thing. An effective postcard
I start testing various elements. I change headlines. I change body copy. I try to
ascertain which results in more responses. I try my best to capitalize on each visit.
Even if the visitor does not buy right away, I try to capture the name/address so I
something. There were times when I had to rapidly make things work. I would then
place along with the letters offers for product or service I thought nobody in their
42
right mind would pass up. This often resulted in increased revenue. Then, once the
"system" is working, time is devoted to plan out the follow-up phase. This is where
the REAL money is made in ANY direct marketing endeavor, from what is called
the "back end". The "front - end " is the first product a customer buys. The "back -
end" consists of eventual sales to the same person of similar products. The COSTS
of first getting that one purchase can be quite high. You need to work that list. I
knew of one marketer who would mail no fewer than 17 offers to a new prospect.
43
Let'
s go through each in greater detail.
This part should be easy. The hottest market is in the arena of internet
marketing. There are also other niche markets that can be pursued. There are also
products, e-books that concentrate on developing and finding niche markets. You
can probably take any idea, concept, aspect of business, aspect of hobbies, etc.,
and come up with a product for that market. A good place to start is to with areas
that interest you. It is a lot easier to work on projects that you are passionate about
or that you enjoy. You must be concerned though on how available mailing lists are
in the area of choice. A trip to the nearest library that has a copy of the books
SRDS is advisable. The SRDS or Standard Rates and Data Services books contain
you look for a market, look for one that is predisposed to having a readily
identifiable market.
44
` You want to sell products that have high appeal, great profit potential and lend
themselves toward giving the ability to sell online. Of course, the best product is an
info product like an e-book or a subscription to a web site. There are only a few
steps to follow if you are going to produce your own product. You'
ll research your
topic. You'
ll take notes and increase your knowledge. You'
ll then take your notes
and write an outline. What I do is write and outline AND write a sales letter.
Typically, the sales letter really drives home the ideas you want to put forth. Then I
go back and tailor the outline to match the sales letter. A little backwards but it
works. A long time ago, I learned of the outline method. I have a laptop computer
(an OLD laptop computer) and I place the outline in a file, then, as time permits, I fill
out the pages using notes and my own personal recollection of the subject matter. I
Finding viable products is easy as well. Many information type products also
have affiliate programs. As an affiliate, usually for free, you gain the ability to
market that product by sending people through a sales link. When a person buys,
your unique code gets recorded with the sale and you get credit. You can perform
your own web searches and find products. If I were searching for a product related
to horse racing I would type in "horse racing affiliate" and probably end up with
45
There are many free web site creation packages out there. I use the standard MS
FrontPage product. A search on "free HTML editor" in any of the search engines
will reveal the freebies. Remember that a web site that is geared toward selling a
product does not have to be sophisticated or full of artsy graphics. I suggest a very
simple site and a good sales letter in order to start. Please see the link and
resources section for web hosting details. I do not spend more than $5 a month for
each of my sites.
If you are creating your own product you definitely want to enlist the tens of
thousands of other online marketers to sell your product too. This is done by
utilizing the typical affiliate systems like Clickbank. There are others though.
There are many ways to use free and almost free online resources that may
result in sales. Forums, which are places where people can post and reply to
questions and articles, are a good place to start. You can search on "forum" and
46
By this time you are for sure getting your simple letters and basic postcard copy
ready to test. I try to do this AS I am writing the e-book or product. The letters foster
new ideas for the books, the books foster new ideas for the letters.
When I say "tweak" I mean try to change things so that the project makes a
profit. This may mean testing different prices and for sure testing different versions
This can be done in many forms. Actually, it is probably best done online by a
form you ask each prospect to fill in. The use of forms and pop-ups is quite
common on the web. No wonder, it is the pathway to riches because each name
has a value. The value is the residual income from subsequent sales over time. It
associated with each customer in the thousands of dollars. So, in that particular
47
If you were paying attention throughout this book you know that a great way to
find new products is to find out what other "successful" people are selling. In this
business success follows success. Nothing is worse than working for many hours,
sometimes days and weeks only to find out your selection of product won'
t cut it.
The best way, like previously mentioned, is to get yourself on the opt-in mailing
list of the professional marketers, the guys who derive a living from online
endeavors. I would stay away from the "blast and hope" marketers who send a
different email daily, touting a different product. Their plan is to through the
spaghetti at the wall, and some of it will stick. If you watch, listen and pay close
attention to the masters, they will give you insights into what products are selling
well for them. And you get this info free. You just join their lists!
There are some mailers who mail to their real mailing lists dozens of times
before giving up. Old psychology of selling theories says that a person may have to
be presented with an offer 7 times before they buy. I have seen online "guru" types
say the same thing about their opt-in email mailings. 7 times may seem like a lot.
48
effort.
49
things that "really do not matter" to me from a monetary point of view. For example,
I love to read and learn about quantum physics and all that theoretical stuff. But, it
does not matter to me one way or the other. I like it for enjoyment reasons. If you
told me I would have to learn to exploit the complete quantum theory in order to
The simpler a thing is the better. I try to "boil my processes down" to a few
simple things. Writing and sending simple letters is easy and very simple. So are
the other things I do, like creating and selling books from web sites. I do not, ever,
ever want to become a computer programmer, write and test CGI or PHP scripts
and the closest I want to get to JAVA is when it is in my cup in the morning!
Lucky thing for me is that I do not have to learn any of the complicated stuff. I
money from it. I just think it complicates things way too much!
50
THIS very book you are now reading. I am proud of it and indications are many
people have benefited from it. I call it a success. So, my plans include writing yet
another e-book. I am going to call it "The easiest business on earth" with a web site
of the same name. Because, having gone through this process I found it to be one
an e-book and sell it via mail order. This new book will be about the process,
So if you are going to act on any of this and try your hand at success using my
methods ... make sue you have your eye on the next project, the project where you
I wanted to add a little extra section on writing compelling copy for sales letters
51
My formula is simple. I love direct mail marketing. I love the new way of web
marketing. All I do is create a story, a true story using my experience. The goal of
the story is to get people to read it. While reading, they become slowly informed on
a topic that they might not know that much about. I try to outline the good things
and the bad. If you will notice, many of my sales letters tell a tale of woe, about the
current state of things. If you are going to help someone solve a problem, first they
So you see my letters telling s story, about problems and more importantly, how I
can help solve problems. All in all it makes for compelling copy and gets the job
done. I am never satisfied until I reach the point in my writing that I believe no sane
person could EVER refuse my offer. I am solving a big problem for them. I am
giving them the key to their future, they need only reach out for it. I think you will
52
As the title implies this involves tweaking more to squeeze more success and
profits out of the existing system you have set up. And it also means you are going
to accumulate all that you have learned and put the process into motion again, to
create another success. Only this time it will be easier, less of a headache, more
I know of a few franchises that will set you back $200,000 easy. This will be real
money that you will be responsible to pay back. If you wanted to buy another
franchise, that’ll set you back another $200,000. Should you decide to actually buy
a franchise you can look forward to working long hours, taking a lot of risk and
A mail order or direct mail based business that has a “web sales” process on the
back end is almost effortless, easy, less risky and more powerful than any other
business on earth. A few dollars worth of testing tells you the story, if it’ll work, or
not. If it only mildy works, it can be tweaked until it does work. To me, there is no
53
What a feeling - to drop a hundred thousand pieces of mail into the postal
system! 100,000 mail pieces may be costing you upwards of 35 grand! So you
better have done your homework and know what the results are going to be.
In direct mail you work on creating minute success. You want the mailing of 100
letters to be successful. You work at it. You then apply what you have found to
1000 letters. You make that work as well or better than before. You graduate up to
10,000 letters. If you get the process down and make 10,000 letters work well, you
can get on a schedule and mail 10,000 a day if you want. That’s the explosive
power of direct mail. Testing and continually improvement takes the pain out of the
process.
As you might imagine, there is great joy and anticipation in creating the process!
54
Ever since uncovering this amazing system I have also had the chance to
review of the sales materials put out there by the "guru" types. I laugh now. I see
that many times they are trying to make it seem too god to be true. From personal
experience, if it appears too good, it probably is. They’ll say or write just about
The guru types are scrambling, writing and re-writing the same old stuff that was
around 3 years ago. You will not have to really pay too much attention to a lot of
55
Once you attain some success it is easier and easier to believe in yourself. If
you are doing things right, YOU are going to be the creator of many "systems",
techniques and approaches. You will be inventing them rather than just using the
"systems" created by another. There is beauty in this message. After a short time
YOU are going to be the GURU and others will want to follow. You will never look
56
Since the idea is to make sales on the web, the best products to sell are non-
other than electronic information products. Why? Because they have a perceived
value way greater than their true cost. An e-book, complete and ready to sell can
cost you nothing but a little time involved in reading it. Most of what you need you
This business can be put completely on “auto-pilot”. Once the initial work is
done, the product and site set up – everything else can be done from a few phone
calls. The business then can “run itself” for many years in the future without doing
many readers of this book already know that. This is for those that do not know it
quite yet.
This brings us to an important point. This book you are now reading is geared
for two primary types of marketers. First is the new person. We must take the time
to explain just a bit about the basics to them. So, please, experienced marketers,
57
please take this into consideration. Then, when we are all on the same “page” we
can focus on the most important part – the direct mail part all together!
58
I simply write my e-books on the word processor that is on the PC. Sometimes I
use the simplistic note pad application from the existing PC software . Other times it
is done in Publisher or some hefty word processor. It really does not matter. I spent
time at 3 computers writing this e-book. I just kept a copy of the latest and greatest
version on a floppy disk. How simple is that? I have a laptop I use to plop anywhere
I want when I have a compelling something to write down. I use a desktop most of
the time in my tiny home office. Then, I get to use a fancy, high-end computer that
my wife got me for Christmas last year. It does not matter. It'
s as sophisticated as
spellchecker does not catch words that appear to be used out of context. I try to
sophisticated programs, like Publisher or Word, format the book, paginate it, and
add the footer and header information. From there, PDF is the de-facto standard
for printed, viewable and written info that is transferable between computers. The
file is then re-examined for how it turned out. I may have to go back and pretty
59
like those based on windows or Mac to access the file equally well.
I use a simple, free software program that converts files to PDF format. I know,
there exists fancier, expensive programs that do it too. I try to keep it as simple as
possible. It'
s free. You can find it at 995software.com. There'
s a link in the resource
Then it is a matter of loading it to a web site. I just use FTP to do it. I FTP the file
form my PC to the site. Then, all I have to do is test to make sure paying customers
can download it. There are a few other "selling system" details I do as well to make
sure thieves do not steal by work. I utilize a “protection” software package to make
my e-book inaccessible to thieves. More info on that is on the resource page too. .
But that is basically it. Most people are amazed at how simple it is.
60
Let'
s totally forget about the "online" world for a moment. The engine that pulls
my marketing train is really the driving force behind my success. It is the ability to
write and send simple letters and basic postcards. Along with that, is the ability to
find likely prospects in mailing lists. I am not relying on any sales that are gained
from "traditional online methods" In fact, I prefer not to even recognize them. They
exist, I just pretend they do not. Those type sales are gravy.
In the days of old, in direct mail, it was not uncommon for an author to sell
1000,00 copies of a self-published book. The sales were all obtained from direct
mail. The web was not even thought of yet. So then, tell me, please, why then do
web authors think they have made a "killing" if they sell 5,000 copies of an e-book?
That is an important difference. It is because of the engine that pulls the train.
Direct mail has lots of horsepower, the web has limited horsepower. Direct mail is
like using a laser guided smart bomb, the web methods are more like standard
artillery. There'
s a big, big difference in their ability to deliver buying customers.
61
The truth is, if I relied on "only" traditional online methods the sales of this e-
book might not amount to much. I imagine the sales would be quite a bit less.
Using direct mail, you can reach each potential prospect personally. Using
rely on affiliates and others who extend the reach of the marketing offers. That is
another way to look at the difference. With direct mail you can target and reach
web only or direct mail only, I would choose direct mail, hands down.
When I was writing this e-book and testing various ad copy, sales site details, I
was tempted to try many of advertising and traffic building systems being offered. I
had to remind myself that the method of using direct mail to drive traffic to a web
site cannot be beat. But sometimes the “online marketers” make their traffic
building systems look so good and easy. But talk to anyone who has used them
and you’ll find out quickly, there are few methods that work like they are advertised!
62
I hope you have come to the realization by now that the potential is so great, it
boggles the mind. Name any product or service sold and it can be applicable to this
approach. From Real Estate sales to mortgages, auto sales to financing, kids
clothing to furniture, medical needs to dentistry, info products and other hard
goods. I am sure there is an application that will work. So the only question is -
If you told me you were going to start and operate a sandwich shop I would tell
you that your income was going to be limited – by the number of hours in a day and
the number of sandwiches and sodas you could sell. Same goes for virtually ANY
business on earth – even the most sophisticated like an elegant spa, a hotel, a
fancy eatery or a trucking business. There are limits imposed by virtue of the TYPE
of business it is.
That is why direct mail has made so many people really wealthy. Many of the
63
Simple Letters
When I say simple letters I mean it. Mine are simple. Typically, my letters are
one page long. Sometimes they are more. I find that I am generally able to get the
the money in the sales letter, it is easier to do it with less space. It'
s a marketer’s
dream, to be able to write and send a very simple letter of no more than one page.
It keeps costs down. Sometimes, depending on the market, longer letters are
warranted. I tend to start always with a page. Many times I will test other length
letters. If the cost / result ratio improves with a longer letter then I do it. Some wise
direct mail marketers know that the more you can tell, the more you can sell. But
also, sometimes less is more. Less information can result in more curiosity.
64
Basic Postcards
There are some fantastic places to get 4 color, dynamic, incredible postcards. I
have never found a need to use them. To me, a basic postcard is one that is
printed in black ink on white card stock. When I want to be creative, I try colored
card stock ... whoopee. I am not in business to win awards in artwork, photography
all the better. One day I am going to try other type cards, but I am too busy with my
basic cards and simple letters. In order to lay claim to being the "easiest business
on earth", I like to keep it simple. The basic, black and white postcard does the trick
for me. You can get full color, fancy cards printed these days cheaply. But, the
good news is that the very “basic” postcards have been working and are cost
65
Direct Ad Strategy
I do want to mention the idea of using alternative approaches like direct ads.
When I was running a large, successful direct mail business I loved to use
classified ads. They are easy to create and inexpensive to place. They can work
too for online efforts if done right. Testing is the key again. Small classifieds in
magazines with themes that are related to your product can work wonders. Small
But please be careful in using print media ads because results can be drastically
different from venue to venue. Ads that work in one magazine may not work in
66
As you will learn, the idea of "mail order" being dead cannot be farther from the
truth. The web makes marketing a little easier and less expensive, but the
awesome power of direct mail has not died one bit. I will prove it to you. Do you
remember how many catalogs, brochures, and flyers your or your family received
this past holiday season? I am sure my family received over 100 pounds of
catalogs, easy. And they are still coming in strong. No, mail order has never died.
What did die was the "business opportunity" sector of mail order.
Let me explain it this way. Much like the web world is today, the majority of
"dealers" and "business opportunity seekers" and "home business" enthusiasts had
only one choice and that was to start a mail order business. Heck, there were
Just like today, all the "online marketers" tout the many benefits of starting one'
s
own "web business". The problem was most of the people who start web
businesses, just like the people who started mail order businesses, fail! It is one of
the space of one hour is difficult. I think if I attempted to try to show you how to
make it with online marketing, with all the bells and whistles, all the technical stuff
67
you'
d have to know, all the tips, strategies and all that you would fail too. But you
would not be alone. I venture to guess (just a guess) that 90% of all online
Back in the days when multilevel marketing or network marketing was king -
And back when "mail order" was king, 90% failed there too!
It is most amazing to me that this is the case. I have many ideas, theories and
"understandings" why this is. But the truth is nobody REALLY knows. Maybe
people just do not want to adapt, learn and have to struggle a little. Maybe people
are just lazier than we imagine. I do not know. But I know one thing ... history
repeats itself all over again with the net. 90% failure rate was what it was in
multilevel marketing. It was what it was in direct mail marketing. And it is about 90%
68
I have a few words of wisdom about that. If YOU want to get rich online, or in MLM,
or in direct mail for that matter - DO NOT DO WHAT THE 90% DO! Because THEY
Fail!
Aha! So NOW you are getting the idea! If you have been prone to following the
leader, you must realize that the "leader" may be failing miserably too!
So, I tell my friends and associates to stop doing al that unnecessary stuff, and
What'
s a good example of playing "follow the leader" online? Glad you asked
because I have a prime example. A while back I got an "electronic" postcard from a
If you are marketing online any product you MUST hurry and see what the state-
of-the-art method is, to use AUDIO in your sales messages .. Just click here
I was brought into a site that talked all about this new rave, audio files on
electronic postcards. A picture and "play" button appeared on the card. All I had to
do was click it and a powerful sales message would play. The site went onto say if
69
you did not switch over to using audio cards now, your business was doomed, and
I hate audio files on the PC. I just do not like them. They picked the wrong
person to send that mail to. First off, I can never get all the files to play correctly. It
always takes an effort to make them work. Either my sound is down or it takes too
long download and play. I do not think the average user on the net likes them
either. But the "online marketers" claim this is the rave! Wow! I am going to go out
of business if I do not use an audio file? Nonsense! But this is an example of the
blind leading the blind, follow the leader or hype based marketing. I really do not
70
There are a few of what I call "bad" areas to stay away from. There are a lot of
"scams" that abound on the web. Money games, chain letters, gifting programs and
the like all lend to giving the web a less than good rating in terms of reliability,
71
Getting Help
There are few places you can turn to for help using these methods. But I am one
you can turn to. I am contemplating putting up a special "by invitation only" forum
for people who are using direct mail for web based sales. I cannot promise
anything. I will try my best to do it. When you go to the resource page provided
elsewhere, it'
ll be on it. Right now, I have a few other fish to fry.
Do you think there is a need for an e-mail based consulting service geared
specifically for this type business? I am contemplating such a service but would like
72
Remember, Costs of Direct Mail and the Web Have Become Almost Equal
no interest in what you have to sell? The answer is always going to be the 10, if hey
web. Tons of emails, tons of surfers, most with zero real interest in the subject
matter. The reality is it all depends on what you are selling and who you are selling
to. The days of simply putting up a web site and creating a fortune are long gone. It
is difficult to determine but I am positive the relative costs of finding and attracting
If you tried direct mail processes to make web sales in 1997 I would venture to
guess you would not get too far. Back then, only 1 in 25 adults was "online". For
every 25 letters you would have mailed, 24 would go to waste. Those are terrible
good thing is, as far as I have been able to determine direct mail can outperform
any other method these days. There are many factors that contribute to this. I only
guess but the realistic, real "paper and ink" presentation makes direct mail many
73
One of the inherent problems associated with this business is, if you are going
to experience any kind of success, there will be those who rip off your ideas,
themes, e-book titles, etc. In the old days this was called "knock off". Sooner or
later, if you create some success, someone will come along and steal your ideas,
try to emulate your success, etc. This is called "knocking you off".
With direct mail you get to stall the process of getting "knocked off". Why?
Because you control how fast or slow your ideas are fed out into the world. Look, if
Today is February 5, 2004. I went on the net this morning to see if anyone,
anywhere has a product like this, an expose'on using direct mail for web based
sales. Nobody. I could not find even a mention of it. I am sure, within a few weeks
of its first anniversary, there are going to be a bunch of "knock offs" out there. Not
to worry though, my Lawyer, Bruno "the bone breaker" loves going after people
74
The science of testing is rigid. Basically, for every "element" of your sales
process you should do a test changing just one thing at a time, then creating a
chart to make sure each element gets tested with every other combination. For
example, let'
s make it easy. Let'
s say you have 2 different headlines. You have two
headline A with body copy A and closing A. then test headline A with body copy A
and closing B. You can see how the progression goes. Most of the time you want to
test the MAJOR elements. That is where the art comes into play. Who is to say
what is a major element? Sometimes they are easy to identify. Headlines can have
a dramatic impact on sales. So can the story line or body of copy. Guarantees also
play a major role. Knowing which to test is the art. The rest is simple science. You
want to test each major element with all the possible combinations of other major
elements. After a while, you get very close to a project and you just "know" what will
75
you that you can tweak things to make the mailing itself profitable no matter what
the end result of the goal is. For example, if I were to try to tweak my first
successful letter to where it would generate a profit from the mailing itself, I would
try to add an offer for product, or service that cost very little yet produced hefty
profit margins. For example, there is no mention of a price for my product in one of
my offers. All it does is get the prospect to go to the web site and read more. That
is the only goal. Most of the time the profits roll in. Sometimes, depending on the
test or the list, it does not. So, one of the things I might try is... still drive people to
the web site as usual. Still make that the number one goal. But I might try doing
something a little different. I would "beef up" the sales presentation to make it a little
line or two about how the report was available sent as a printed guide, and the cost
would be $20 or so. That way, all I needed would be 13 or 14 orders to make the
Nothing!
They would cost me zero! I have seen this done many times. They are referred to
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achieving the ability for the mailing to get paid for immediately from sales of a
product, or service.
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What the heck is the One Percent Solution? Is it a weird scientific experiment,
chemistry? No, I am talking about response rates. Whenever I mail, I try to set
things up so that a rough, one- percent response rate makes a profit. I have seen
others though, make it so a profit can be had at .5 percent. That means that 5 out
of every one thousands buys your product and this figure produces a profit. Let'
s
say that you are selling a product for $25. And further, it costs you about $300 per
thousand to get your offer in the mail. Maybe you are using postcards and first
class mail. $230 for postage plus $70 per 1000 printing. Forget about the labor cost
for a moment to get them mailed. That means a one percent response rate means
10 people order and each sale brings in $30 for a total of $300. Not good enough
for my "one percent solution". What I would do in this case is test a higher price. A
also try a lower price. 20 orders or 2% at just a $20 price brings in $400, a clear
profit. I would then adjust the price up to find the price/profit ratio that makes the
most sense. Sometimes the goal is to acquire new customers. In that case a lower
price/higher response rate makes more sense, as long as it makes profit. I always
strive for that 1-% solution. Why? That is a good question, grasshopper. Because,
in the years I spent in direct mail, 1% seems to be a realistic, doable response rate.
Anything over that is gravy. Anything over that can be extremely powerful. Now I
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tell you another little tidbit. The one-percent solution used to be called the half-
remember reading some older mail order books that told people to assume a 5%
response rate. The good news is that response rates have improved over the past
7 or so years. And, as long as they keep things relatively even, they will continue to
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There are some "numbers" you should be aware of. Cost per Inquiry. This is the
average cost it takes to get a person to raise their hand and say, "Yes, I'
m
interested". In the old days this was easy to calculate. If you were advertising in
print media, this cost was simply the cost of the ad divided by the number of
inquiries. That is, if the ad was asking someone to write, call or respond for more
info. Cost per Inquiry used to be as little as $1 or even 50 cents. Today, it'
s more
like $2 or more. This same cost can be applied to the web. An "inquiry" is
hours, $500 in software, $500 in pay-per-click fees, assuming you charge $20 an
hour for your time your total costs are $1,400. If you get 2,800 opt-in leads from
But wait ... a "lead" generated on the net is NOT the same as a lead generated
from print media. In the print media deal, people have to take the time to fill
something out, put a stamp on it and send it in, or pick up the phone and make a
call. They had to do more work and hence, if they devoted that kind of time and
energy, they must be BETTER qualified and more interested. Opt-in leads are less
qualified. It is so easy to put in your first name and email address and hit
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"subscribe" or send. The leads may be cheaper but they are probably less
responsive too.
There are other "numbers" that will be of concern to you. We will not be
discussing them here. Just know that they exist. As your business grows so should
you awareness and knowledge of these number gauges. For example, over a
period of time you can crunch your sales and repeat sales figures to determine "the
average value of a customer". You are probably going to find that some customers,
product you can come up with. On average, all customers divided by all sales
brings you to a figure. This is, on average, what a customer is worth to you in terms
Please check out the /resource page as it’ll contain some useful and
By definition, it is this number that is key. The lower your cost per inquiry and the
higher the number of inquiries dictates your overall success. Each niche market
has a finite number of potential prospects. Many of them are going to be easy to
find. Let'
s take gun collecting. You have an e-book about gun collecting. You find
that you can readily rent several lists of avid, active gun collectors. You can rent the
entire subscriber list of 3 major gun collector magazines. You can too, rent the lists
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of 5 major sellers of gun collector related items. All tolled, it comes in at about a
million names. Yet you know there are about 2 million active, avid gun collectors
out there. While a million of them are readily identifiable, the other million aren'
t.
So, keeping an eye on the "cost per inquiry" number, you know your costs for
reaching those 1 million is relatively fixed. The lists cost so much, the postcards
cost so much, and those efforts result in so many inquiries. Using direct mail you
are assured you can "saturate" the market of 1 million within a few months. No
problem. This results in so many inquiries and so many orders. No problem. Since
the costs are fixed and your methods produce results that can be verified, you find
that your cost per inquiry is $3. For every $3 you spend, you receive one good
inquiry. If your conversion ratio is 10%, in that 1 out of every 10 buy your product
when presented the offer that means your cost per order is $30. To the degree in
which you can sell your product over and above $30 is the degree of gross profit
margin.
That'
s why response rates are so important. Minute improvements translate to
big differences in terms of profitability. If you can bring your cost per inquiry down
just 25% and increase your inquiry to purchase conversion ratio by 25% you can
have a 300% improvement in profitability. For example, if your new cost per inquiry
is $2 and your conversion rate goes up to 20% that means 2 out of every 10 people
order and your cost per 10 inquiries is only $10. You may have just in effect,
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doubled your profit. Let'run through the example again using a $50 cost for your
product.
Under the 1% conversion ratio with a $3 cost per inquiry 10 inquiries cost $30.
Since only one person buys the product the gross profit is $20.
Under the 3% conversion ratio and a $2 cost per inquiry. Those same 10
inquiries cost $20 but since you got 3 buys, the gross profit is $150 meaning the
gross minus the costs is still $130! That is a big improvement over a $20 gross
profit.
When you are dealing with response rates, costs, averages, slight improvements
The important thing to remember here is to get to run your business by the
numbers. The other numbers are, in my opinion, reserved for the big, big
operations. I have seen people use the "cost per inquiry" number as their gauge
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When I gained my first success I found out something amazing. All of a sudden
there were numerous offers for other related businesses and I too had ideas for
other spin-off businesses. While doing computer fixing work we “spun-off” into the
mailing services business. When you are in business you’ll get approached and
products or services. For example; if you are in the mailing service business a
business.
While in the mailing services business we approached many printers who did
the envelope and letter printing but did not offer the mailing service. We simply
gave them an “inside” price and a big break on the fees. They in turn produced their
own brochure with their retail prices – and without much extra effort, got a bunch of
profitable mailing jobs. They did not have to do any of the work except get the
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order. We picked it up and accomplished the tasks as they came in. that was a
All In A Day'
s Work
I once had the opportunity to visit a mail order and direct marketing legend in his
home. I quickly noticed he was a collector and when asked he said “In direct mail
you have a lot of free time on your hands – time waiting, for mail, for checks and for
I suppose you can do with your free time whatever you choose. Personally, I do
not like to occupy my time with things that are not going to help secure my future.
But if you want you can do anything with the “Free time” you manage to gain.
I like to use my time to devote toward other new, exciting projects. I am always
occupied in one way or another with a project. It may be an unrelated projects but a
project still the same. I asked myself a serious question – “If I had the time and
freedom from money worries – what would I enjoy most doing?” the answer may
startle you. I would do just what I do now. I would start one project after another. In
that way a “days work” may be devoted toward working on one or more projects.
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When I first decided on an “online” business I struggled like anyone else. But, as
things progressed I became quicker and more proficient at doing what needed to
be done in order to accomplish my goals. When you have several “projects” it pays
to plan your day. Today I am going to get that new domain name, write a sales
letter for the new product. I am also going to complete some accounting tasks and
then I am going to surf the net in order to research and gain more knowledge. My
point is I find it a lot easier to plan “by the day”. I find that much can be
accomplished all in a days work. It is the accumulation of days that makes the
To say that another way – a mighty oak is best felled by taking smaller,
successive whacks with an axe. It is the accumulative effect that has the most
impact. I try to boil everything down into a “days worth” of work. I mention it to you
because many people see the entire project as complex and long in duration. If it’s
It really is all in a days work – it’s just that the overall success we look for is
when you add up all those days together in accomplishing the main goal.
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The Goal of most online marketers, similar to the goal of most direct marketers
is to build the largest list possible. Just imagine, if you could build a list of 100,000
names or names and e-mail addresses. You could expect a response rate of less
than 1% should you e-mail that entire list with an offer. Just 1% would be 1000
would translate to a cool $50,000 in profits. But the reality is that response rates to
e-mails typically is a lot less than 1% and, very few marketers have built lists that
size. But can you imagine, that size list and that type of income EACH TIME you
send an e-mail message to the list? The question becomes what do you have to do
in order to build that size of a list. There are many paths that can lead to that type
of a list. Almost as important is the cost factor of building that size of a list. If you
could build that kind of list - and earn $500,000 - what would you be willing to
numbers.
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If you buy into the idea that success is all in the list then, it is quite possible that
the correct price for a product is one that results in the most amount of buyers. It is
this buyer list that you also want to build as quickly as possible. A price too high will
result in fewer sales. A price too low and it might result in fewer sales. Sometimes
value is equated with price. So, you should have a game plan for setting price.
First thing to consider is are there any competitive products for sale? What is the
price they are asking for said products? You want to be the same or slightly lower
or slightly higher to begin with. Just like most aspects of direct marketing - testing is
the key. Set the price - judge how well or how poorly sales are going. Adjust again,
take another look at the effects of the change. Sooner or later you will arrive at the
"best" price. For argument sake, the "best" price is the one that accounts for the
most sales.
Please bear in mind that e-books like the one you are now reading are not that
common. If you took the subject of “copywriting” you can find tons of e-books and
books, courses on the subject. Since this is one of a kind, I can charge a higher
price for it. On top of that, I do not rely totally on the “online sales” aspect of it. I
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choose to promote via direct mail. Both of those factors together tell me that I can
When you use direct mail as your “sales engine” you have more lead way in
setting your price higher than usual. My rule of thumb is to charge at least 2 times
I know the power and nature of a book like this. This info, in the right hands can
be more like giving the reader the winning lottery numbers for a lottery drawing that
has not happened yet! I also want to be fair too. So I settle on a price that is neither
One of the mail order success stories in the late 1990’s said that he prices his
products at about 10 times what the real “cost” is. If a product costs $20 top
produce, he charges $200 as a starting price. That is the way it is with direct
marketing. You can charge whatever the market may bear. But there are limits. You
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Idea Generation
Coming up with new ideas is one of the most fun endeavors we marketers go
through. Its fun to conceptualize, surf, gain insight and knowledge and come up
with new ideas. Many times we come up with old ideas with new twists.
I once read a book about coming up with ideas. The author said coming up with
ideas is relatively simple. He said take a look at everyday products and make them
better. His example was the typical bath tub faucet mechanism. Everyone knows
that most people add a little hot water to the tub while they are in it. But the handles
to the faucets are at the bottom end of the tub. So some smart idea guy thought to
make this product better he was going to invent a faucet that you can operate with
your feet! Another bright person decided to design a tub that had the handles
toward the right side of the tub, so you can use your hands without bending way
down.
Sometimes you can generate ideas by transferring ideas that work in one
Now, the question – is there any room for improving anything in this country?
You are going to laugh but it is going to pin point how it is a lot clearer. Walk into
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any retail store in America and a sales person walks up to you and says “Can I help
you?” to which you, and every other person who is approached in this fashion relies
“No thank you – I’m just looking”. That is an example of how slow and how hypnotic
trends are. Is it effective to ask “May I help you?” in a retail situation? I do not think
so but you have to realize that this ineffective routine is duplicated hundreds of
You can look for inefficiencies in any business. You can also take concepts and
ideas that work in one but that are not commonly done in another, and do them in
another.
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Sometimes you can learn things free on the internet that could be worth millions.
I am not kidding. There are people who have earned great sums of money who
regularly inform, teach and share their info freely with others. You just have to know
where to look. I recall another visit to a very successful direct marketer. Along an
entire wall of a storage room was folder after folder of advertising material. He said
that many of the ads or sales letters or brochures have gone through extensive
testing by the firm or individual behind them. Some of the ads accounted for
millions of dollars worth of sales. Others have produced many millions in sales and
have cost the firm or individual a million or more to perfect. He called it the “million
dollar education” room each folder had in it about a million dollars worth of advice,
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Sales letters can make or break you. The way you get really good at writing
sales letters is to study great sales letters. Most of the old salts, the super
successful copywriters claim a big help in assisting you to become a great writer of
sales letters is to find successful sales letters and then copy them, over and over.
They claim that by doing so you gain a lot of wisdom, power and energy from the
material itself. So a good thing to do is start a file of great sales letters. There are
I have a particular way of writing sales letters. I like to present a big problem,
and really drive home how big of a problem it is. Then, in a systematic way, I bring
the reader out of the problem and provide the solution. I feel the reader must first
know that they have a problem and that the problem is that big!
Then, line by line, I try to bring the reader out from the confusion they sense
about their big problem, out into the light of day. Finally, I shine the light on the
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Then I overlay the entire two facets with facts. For instance, a fact is that 98.5%
of people do not know about these powerful methods. And the one in a hundred
I am talking about the long sales letters associated with the web sites. The other
letters, the simple ones are a bit different and covered elsewhere. In order to make
sales you must accomplish a few key things. You must establish credibility,
honesty, and trust and have the prospect learn something in the process. Notice
the sales letter for this e-book. There are tips scattered about it. A reader will learn
something if they indeed, read the entire letter. Most of the tips are very worth
knowing. So most readers do read them. This helps ensure that the entire letter is
read. I also say “please read this entire letter in the copy itself.
Then, you will see that a big negative story is unfolded. Online marketing IS
really bad and I outline all the reasons why. Readers can identify with the pitfalls
and perils of online marketing. If you took all the good things out of my letter and
left the bad, the reader would be so against online marketing they might never want
But, that’s only half the picture. The letter then details some good methods. It
also assures the reader they will never have to deal with all the negative stuff
again.
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At the same time, I interject some “psychological” factors. You have a lot of
power over a reader when you are the copywriter. The reader is, in fact, saying to
themselves what you are telling them to say. So what do you want them to do? I
want the reader to make judgements along the way …. “Is this for me?” While the
reader is reading my words I want them to take little mental breaks and ask
themselves “Is this for me?” , “Would I buy this?” and “Do I need this?”
And of course, I want the answer to be YES! So, scattered throughout I actually put
in the words YES. So the orchestra of thoughts in their mind begins playing “Do I
need this? YES” , “Can I use this? – YES” , “Will I buy this? Yes”
All of this is supposed to work together to result in, when asked, the reader says
YES in their mind to the question of whether or not they are going to buy it.
That is how I write. You may have other methods. There are tons of books,
courses, e-books about copywriting. Some are good. Some are not so good. I say
again the thing to do is practice and get hold of successful sales letters. The web is
chock full of sales sites that contain letters that work wonders for the business
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Wait until you realize this simple fact! Back in the days when I ran my own direct
mail only operation I devised a way to make every mailing more than pay for itself!
If I mailed $1000 worth of mailings, at least $1000 worth of money would flow back.
extra money. What was paid out for mailings, came back and then some. I'
m about
In the past I have had success with add-ins. An add-in is just like it sounds. I
have put together sales packages to sell one particular item but, instead of only
sending that out, I decided to add in a little new offer. Many times the new offer did
not damage results for the main offer but resulted in enough revenue to pay for the
entire mailing.
Another time I decided to change things a bit and add “reprint rights” to a book I
was selling. The book, by itself sold for $23.95. But, for $20 extra, I also sold the
rights to print copies of the book itself and the right to sell them. This extra $20
accounted for increasing order results by almost double and caused the income to
go up almost 3 fold. Again, that depends on the offer and business. But it’s a viable
way to go.
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Joint-ventures are a hot topic these days. One of the best ways to get into them
is by either creating the product that another might want to market or by having the
large list that you use to sell someone else’s product. I saw an offer on the web
recently for a joint-venture marketing seminar. The cost was something like $3000
and it touted the fact that everybody who was anybody in the industry was going to
be there. But in reality, you do not have to spend that kind of money to get into co-
or joint-ventures.
For example, if you have a hot product and you think I can do something with it,
by all means send me an email! Even better, take a day or two and compile a
REAL mailing list of the people who you would like to get into a joint-venture deal
with. A joint-venture or co-venture is just like a product itself so why not approach it
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The more pre-processing that is done by you, before the postal service gets
your mailings, the more you save. There are two choices. Either perform the
processing yourself or have it done by an outside firm. Each has its advantages
and caveats. The act of performing the processing yourself is time and labor
choice. If you have no interest in setting up your own "mail shop" then alternatively
In order to perform the processing and handle the mailings yourself you will
need to invest time, money and energy into the set-up. This takes form in getting
Minimally, this will run at least $5,000 per year and that is considering buying used
equipment and the very basics required to accomplish the task. The software alone
The risks of having an outside firm handle your mailings are not obvious. In
doing so you are "trusting" a bunch of "outsiders" to do the right thing and handle
your work efficiently, cost effectively and timely. The mailing houses have already
invested in the hardware and software and most have people quite capable of
98
doing the job. The difference is you pay for the right to have someone else do the
If you plan on performing very large-scale mailings then, obviously you want to
consider setting up your own "in-house" mailing operation. If you are going to be
doing a small to medium range of mailings, then it might make sense to have it
done for you, rather than go through the process of setting everything up yourself.
Either way, you can save big time in the costs of mailing by either having the
pre-processing done for you, or by doing it yourself. The biggest savings come
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In the period of time when direct marketing was done strictly via direct mail a
common approach was to utilize small, inexpensive ads such as classified ads to
get a prospect to "raise their hand" and identify themselves. A small, classified ad
who were probably interested in the subject matter would be subscribers or at least
newsstand readers. There are tons of niche market publications that cater to
The approach was that a small, inexpensive ad would raise the level of curiosity
enough to have the reader ask for more details. This was known as a two-step
process. The ads only job was to get the interested party to ask for additional
done to make the sales and to provide enough additional detail so the interested
This is sometimes being done for web based products. Not often though. The
pervasive thought is that it is much easier and more economical to send blind e-
mails than it is to actually spend money in efforts to identify prospects. This is not
100
very logical and does not always make sense. IF you can test a few, small,
then more power to you. Most people do not even consider doing it but I tell you, it
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It always astounds me about how too many times people worry about getting
"funding" or seed money with which to grow their business. If done right, any web
ANY money to be used to grow the business. It all has to do with doing one'
s
tiny profit, then all you need do is do more of that basic thing . Let me explain. If
you have worked on creating a simple letter that results in a profit on a small scale,
then all you need do is perform many more mailings, increasing the amount of
A mailing of 1000 produces a profit that can be used to perform 2000 letters
mailed out, which produces a profit whereby 4,000 can be mailed out, etc.. Many
really big enterprises have been built doing it this way. This is, not incidentally, one
of the main reasons quite a few people have earned vast fortunes in direct mail,
mail order and direct marketing. A success on s small scale can quickly translate to
102
Postcards are neat. They are small, easy and efficient. On top of all that, they
are relatively inexpensive. They do not have to be super sophisticated. There are
tons of sources for postcard printing. A quick search of the net shows me where to
get cards printed, in full color, or black and white at really great prices. The
question is how to capture all you want to say in the little space, make it grab the
recipient'
s attention enough so that they act on the info.
103
This is a wacky, fun, inspiring, difficult and exciting time we live in. It seems like
advances in technology have created a much faster moving life for all of us. We are
all connected and seemingly all part of the bigger whole. News and information
travels fast! The proliferation of the Internet and other electronic advances has its
effect on our everyday life. We feel the effects in all aspects of our lives. This is
make money. So we are going to concentrate only on the various aspects of this
new world we live in that pertain to making money. This is not a manual about the
stock market, investing, real estate or anything like that. It is not a book about multi-
level marketing or get rich quick scams. It is a book about using your resources to
help yourself. I had to help myself. Those before me had to help themselves too.
104
letter I talked about that infamous "cult" " You do remember, don'
t you? Good. This
cult'
s leader basically mesmerized, hypnotized and brainwashed the members into
believing only in his information. He got the entire group of people to believe the
right thing to do was to drink a "punch" spiked with poison. The result is everyone
died. How did he do it? How could otherwise normal people fall into such a pitiful
way of thinking?
I have been a student of life ever since I could remember. I love life, it'
s many
always just thought I was always to be involved from a consumer point of view -
versus a businessperson myself. Please do not think I am too far off when I say -
the entire society in which we live also lends itself to brainwashing, mesmerizing,
Let'
s take the education system. Everyone wants the best for their children.
Everyone wants to have their child attend the best schools, get the best grades,
105
etc. However, most of the really, REALLY successful people I know did not make
their fortune doing what they taught in school. In fact, there are some that say a
high degree of "formal" education actually can work against you, if making large
Yet, our entire society pushes and promotes education. A traditional education
usually, not always, usually has the educated person grow up to be a good worker
for some company. And as you may be aware, working a job will never, in a
thousand years result in real wealth. It will result more often in making just enough
to live. If the person is lucky, it may also result in the ability to retire. But retirement
is quickly becoming a thing of the past as 401 K plans get rubbed out, as company
sponsored pension plans are few and far between. Getting a traditional degree
locks a person into doing what they will do for the rest of their life. There are limits
on income. Name any occupation and there is a limit on the amount of money one
was rich beyond my wildest dreams. Really, I witnessed him make, almost single-
handedly several hundred thousand dollars per month! And he did that regularly.
Anyway, back to the point of the interview. I once asked him how and why he got
started doing what he was doing and he said something like this .... "Oh, I think I
read a book about how people who work for a living, work for a living and, I knew I
106
did not want to work for a living, so I started my own business" In a roundabout
way, that answers the question and drives the point home. Regardless of the pipe
dreams, aspirations and goals a person may have, if they are working for a living,
they will probably always have to work for a living. Interesting. I heard it put another
107
Many people end up doing what they would rather not be doing for a living. I'
ve
heard it once that by age 27 your entire financial destiny is locked - forever - unless
you DO SOMETHING about it. Notice I said DO SOMETHING. Many people dream
of doing things and few ever make up their mind to do it. Now do not get me wrong.
Many people never even think about things like this. Maybe it will make them upset
to see the truth. Maybe they just do not care. Or perhaps they just do not know how
to change things. Very few people stop what they are doing when they are in the
60'
s and go on to become multi-millionaires. Few people change what they are
you look around, you can see this is more fact than fiction.
Personally, I am a believer in the theory that people CAN do, and achieve
whatever they desire in life, at any age. It all has to do with one'
s conviction to
accomplish their goal. Paramount to that is a necessity of truly coming to terms with
where you are in life and, as fate has it, where you probably will end up. The good
news in all this is I changed. When I made up my mind, finally, after numerous
failed attempts, I locked onto my goal and would not let up until I reached it. Some
108
people will never lock onto their goal because it means that IF they fail, there will be
some pain.
realizing how great success can change you and the people around you.
109
Success changes both the successful and the people around them, sometimes
in very strange ways. Sometimes, others are affected more than the successful
person!
People tend to surround themselves with Like minded" others because it makes
same things. Many times this is a drawback. Many times it creates problems. When
you "break out" of the crowd be prepared for others not to appreciate it. They may
talk behind your back. They may poke fun at you. Because you dared to be
different and picked yourself up from the bootstraps - many will resent you. They
may resent you enough to get downright nasty, angry and spiteful regarding you.
How DARE that such and so make that kind of money - driving around in that fancy
car, taking those exotic vacations, the Rolex watch .... Who does he think he is???
Don'
t laugh. It happens. I want you to be prepared when it starts to happen for you
Nothing directly, but as you recall, I did want to leave no stone unturned. Okay,
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And as a writer of "wealth building" guides, for years I studied and learned all I
could about the great minds in marketing, direct mail, wealth creation,
involved as a spectator rather than a creator, writer, publisher. I always thought that
Like many readers, I dabbled here and there since the early 1980'
s with various
many others, that many attempts to make money from the umpteen business
opportunities available also end badly. I vowed that, if ever I were to produce an
information product that gets sold to others that I would do everything in my power
to make it the best possible, for I know how painful, disappointing it is to have
hopes that a particular business would work out, only to find it not work at all or at
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To That end, I sincerely hope that you get more from this guide than you ever
imagined you would. I was particularly careful not to make any outrageous claims
I know firsthand, that you CAN make money using this concept. I cannot
guarantee though that you make a thin dime. I have no control over how you utilize
this information. I have no control over your own personal abilities. I can guarantee
that I have done my level best to provide you, the reader, with as much "meat and
potatoes" as possible.
The concepts you are going to learn were not developed solely by me. I wish I
could take full credit for all the ideas and concepts contained here. I can'
t take all
the credit. There have been many, savvy, smart, successful marketers before me.
There are certainly many more super successful and smart web-based marketers
who are better than I am. I can only take credit for being a little creative, hopeful,
determined and willing enough to work out a plan whereby the best of the two most
powerful marketing mediums are combined, married, melded and leveraged with
I truly believe, on an even keel basis, that what you are about to learn comprises
lucrative.
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I know all too well that there are tens of thousands of people like me. In fact, for
the most part I venture to say that the majority of all "business opportunity"
participants are honest, hard working, creative people who are willing to take a
small calculated risk in order to make a few bucks. The unfortunate part is that not
all people creating and selling "business opportunity" type courses, products and
programs are as honest. Perhaps this is the reason why so many people try yet fail
when attempting the so called "business opportunity" type deals. I looked over the
various emails I had received this week. Many of them were sales messages. 60%
of them had within their subject line something about "nothing seems to be
working.... but this" or "they lied to you when they said you'
d make money".
Obviously, those of us who have bought into the various e-books, plans, are
I hope you find this work honest, trustworthy, workable and comprehensive enough
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The "information age" is upon us. We went from a purely agricultural based
economy and society to one largely industrial to this new information age. One
could draw conclusions from history and say that during the agricultural revolution
and a society based in agriculture that those that controlled, leveraged and owned
agricultural products became wealthy. It holds true about wealth building during the
industrial heyday. Those who built, owned and capitalized on industry also created
wealth. Ford, Dupont, Allied, GE, Monsanto, AT and T all come to mind. Many,
many millionaires have been created during that phase of history. And following
suit, the information age has, and will continue to create massive wealth. Take
Microsoft for example or IBM or Cisco Systems. The info age is still relatively new
and still developing, may have recently hit a little lull, but it'
s still taking shape and
form.
The Internet is part of the massive information age. It too is still developing and,
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This is going to be a revelation to you. I am going to spell out for you what you
knowledge, you may have thought what you really needed was the latest e-book,
the next best web site, the very best affiliate program, software or advertising
campaign. No. You do not necessarily need ANY of that. What you do need is a
If you are like I was, an "opportunity seeker" on the net, you are being pitched all
sorts of plans, programs, e-books and other stuff THEY say you'
ll need in order to
make money. I am going to challenge that right now. When you learn this you are
going to say to yourself "Aha, he is right!" And, you probably knew it all along. IT
has just been out of reach, on the "back burner" or just out of your thinking process.
What you need is a large group of people who know you, trust you, lend credence
to your opinion, have some respect for you and actively listen to you. You really
need to be able to sit behind a computer, from anywhere in the world, compile a
short, friendly e-mail to your list of friends and wham, in the instant you hit "Send" of
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your e-mail - you begin to make money - hundreds, thousands and even tens of
You need to be able to make money at will, wherever and whenever you want
Imagine this. You take your family away on vacation to Hawaii. You bring your
laptop computer with you. After a few days of fun n the sun and after coming back
from a perfect white marling fishing adventure you decide to make money. You get
to your hotel room, hook up the phone line to your laptop. You complete a very
easy e-mail message to your list of friends. You hit "send" and immediately, money
starts to flow into your accounts like magic. You unhook your computer having put
a good 10 minutes of work in, and decide to retire for the rest of the 2 week
vacation, knowing that as you are vacationing, your bank account is filling up with
Best of all, you are not doing anything illegal, unethical, dishonest or
questionable. You are simply living the dream, the life you have always knew you
would - one of luxury, content and freedom from the normal worries that occupy
most people.
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By this time others might not fully understand you. They may not even have a
clue what it is you do for a living other than it involves some sort of computer. And,
although some may grow very jealous of your success, your attitude and freedom,
you always are there to help out, lend a hand, and give some trustworthy advice.
Yes, by this time you are living the life of an "enlightened" soul. You have no
money cares whatsoever. If a money problem crops up, you banish it quickly with a
What you really need is to become that success story. And when you DO
become that success story, you are going to be so willing to assist, help and
Its true money is not going to solve all your problems. It is going to solve all the
Yes, what you need is the freedom, financial freedom, freedom to do what you
want, when you want it. You need the surety of knowing your loved ones are
Sound impossible?
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I do not think it is impossible at all. In fact, it is very likely that you find success.
This is one of the greatest times in history we live in. You need only find the pieces
I am going to tell you something now that may seem, at first, bizarre to you.
It is YOUR TIME right now that you understand this. You are part of a bigger
picture. Everything you do, every effect you have on others from this point forward
you that you fully understand this is not a matter to be taken lightly. When you DO
make it big, you are going to have a few extra burdens placed on you. It will
become much clearer to you as the months ahead unfold. I believe everything
happens for a reason. And according to some grand plan, the plan that is in store
for each of us individually and as a whole - you must pay heed to what it is you do
from now on. For some strange, unfathomable reason, you and this information has
henceforth go on to do....
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contact with.
This is very important. I believe that there are no accidents and everything
happens for a reason. Please keep this in mind from this point onward.
What you really need in order to make it big online is a large list of friends.
These friends will come to know you. They will come to respect you. The idea that
you are going to do only good will shine forth in everything you do from now on!
It is this large list of upwards of 100,000 friends that helps your success
happen.
You need this list of friends and, you also need a mechanism to regenerate
and continually enhance this list of people. You need a "system" that is foolproof,
works very well, is easy, inexpensive and continues for as long as you "work" if you
You really only need this list and the means to replenish this list. You are going to
be both helping the people on the list, enhancing their lives and extending your
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As if you are climbing the ladder of success, you will be receiving help, a pulling
up so to speak by those above you on the ladder. By the same token, you are to
continually lift up others who are behind you, under you on their climb.
That is the goal of all the "stuff" you see on the Internet. All of the plans,
Now many of the things you have seen on the web appear rather silly. People
joining ad blaster programs sending one another emails hoping to generate some
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One would imagine that along with the Internet came along the concepts of
making money by selling books, tapes, courses and various other informational
type products. But it really began many, many years ago. To understand the
marketing concepts of today, one must recall the marketing concepts of yesterday.
Really, if you look deep enough, the technology layer has changed, the other parts,
I remember one fine day as a young man of 15 or 16 years old I was reading a
copy of a daily, local newspaper, the Newark Star Ledger. On the pack section was
a full-page ad that seemed very interesting to me. I had already been working since
age 14 and this ad promised to show the person who ordered this specific book
how to make money rather easily. I thought, "This would sure beat working as a
custodian in the local school" so I begged my Mom to write a check for $14.95 so I
As I learned later, the book was to become famous in the direct marketing
impressed. Here a man that called himself "average" was able to generate millions
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of dollars for doing rather simple work. I remember the lead sentence of the ad and
it said, "Most people are too busy earning a living to make any real money".
Joe was one of the greatest mail order and direct marketers that ever lived.
Later, when I became a "student" of direct marketing I learned there were many
before Joe and many after. Joe made it famous, glamorous and sexy to become a
direct marketer. There were many before. In fact, the business of direct mail
The business of "direct marketing" which, for intents and purposes of this book
has not changed much, but rather the underlying technologies have. Today, it'
sa
popular thing to become an "Internet Millionaire or Dot Com Millionaire". Yet the
Many people make the mistake of thinking that making money via the Web is a new
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It would be wise to consider yourself a student of direct marketing too, versus a "dot
com entrepreneur" because doing so you might miss out on the hidden wealth of
There is a very, very important concept to fully come to terms with right off the
bat. I call it "setting oneself up" so to speak. If you were to want to start a business,
what kind of business would it be? What kind of money could it make possibly?
How much trouble or hassle would it be to set-up and run? Please do not skip over
There are tons of people who dream of making it big in their own business.
Growing up, I recall that most of my friends who found themselves working in a
business owned by someone else dreamed of getting their own business. The
mechanic dreams of having his own repair shop. The carpenter dreams of owning
his own building and construction company. The sales clerk in a retail store dreams
of owning their own store. You get the idea. What I am saying is be careful what
kind of business you dream about. There are different types of businesses with
different potentials. I know that when I ever consider a business I want to consider
ONLY a type of business that offers the most potential. The carpenter can only
drive so many nails. The mechanic can only fix so many cars. The clerk can work
only so many hours a day. You too want to be very considerate of the TYPE and
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The direct marketing / mail order / web based business is one that has a great,
almost unlimited potential. I know of several people who, from scratch, built large,
extremely profitable businesses. This is all due to one, beautiful facet of this type
business. I call it the leveraged time idea. See for most other business endeavors,
time works against you in terms of the inherent ability of that business to make
money. If you were to sell something door to door your income and potential is
limited to the number of doors you can knock upon. The real estate agent has the
same thing working against them. They can only make so many phone calls, make
so many contacts in a given period of time. The important thing to recall is that in
most businesses just by the very nature of the business, income potential will
The business of direct marketing has a time / money / leverage advantage over
owner you may have 200 people visit the store and make 200 sales. With direct
marketing, specifically with direct mail marketing, you can send out 2 million sales
letters in that 40 hour week and make 200,000 sales. It has a potential of being
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So, if you are starting fresh, rest assured your choice to become involved in this
amazing, powerful business is a very good one based on these facts alone!
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The Web is also a place that inherits the same leveraged ability to generate a lot
of sales very quickly. Yet, it too has limitations and is loaded with problems. Unless
you have been living on another planet some of the problems are very apparent. I
receive tons of emails all saying something like " I tried to make money on the net
but nothing worked" . The Internet is strange, wacky and incredibly interesting
place. The web sites geared toward selling something all tell of how riches have
been made if only you would buy their new e-book. In that regard, we, as
consumers, only get a part of the whole picture. The end result of this is we get a
slanted, overly positive and often misleading message that everyone is making a
One can view this situation as if there are a few, savvy online marketers who put
together information products and then put a big spin on them. For example, there
was a big push in the beginning on the concept of mass emailing sales letters in
order to make sales. As if the message given to us was "hey dope, everyone is
making a fortune by sending mass emails so here, buy my e-book, I will tell you
how you too will make a ton doing it". Unfortunately, many of the concepts are sold
in this manner. The concepts of e-zine marketing sold in the same manner. Lately
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the message is "you must be using pay per click advertising like Adwords if you are
Now here this, all and any concept regarding making money on the net is good,
as long as it works and can be called upon to make more money. Truthfully, I have
not found many concepts being sold via e-books they charge for that cannot be
The truth is that there are no magic bullets. Anything and everything can and
should be used as a marketing tool with which to utilize to make money. Hardly
Most people get frustrated because most of the concepts are sold as if they are
the miracle formula. Sooner or later they all fall short. One of the keys to success in
direct marketing is never to over sell a concept. If you do, the product will never
There are about 100 or so marketers who rule the Web. They continually look for
and exploit new ways to make more money on the net. They sell to several
thousand savvy, smart marketers who then begin to mass market. These tens of
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thousands then saturate the market and make any particular products sales take
marketer to create an e-book about that concept. And this process evolves and
flourishes util the new set of concepts are highlighted and sold.
It'
s a never-ending vicious cycle. A few marketers take the concept and write e-
books. These books are sold and some new savvy online marketers write their own
version of the e-books. This goes on and on repeating itself with each new concept.
Some of the early marketers make money. Generally, when there are tons of
affiliates selling the same item, sales begin to drop off and nobody makes the really
big money.
The name of the game on the net is to be first, be fast and rep the early
rewards. It seems many times to be a game of "follow the leader" .You will want to
remember this if you are planning on creating and/or selling any products that deal
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Tons of one-time very successful direct mail marketers have abandoned their
marketing. He was meeting with several other MLM enthusiasts and I was
introduced as someone deeply involved in mail order. Almost all of them at the
same time said " but mail order is dead, is not it? If there'
s one thing I learned it'
s
never try to talk a multilevel marketer out of that kind of business so, when faced
with this situation I just remained quiet. Little did they know that yes, mail order
died, but only mail order as they knew it. See they were part of a generation of mail
order people who relied heavily on sending first class mail and focused on the
"business opportunity" segment and MLM. That business DID die. It died for
several reasons. First and maybe foremost, it died due to increased costs and
decreased response rates. At and around 1995 costs for first class postage went
up. Response rates also went down. This was due to the great migration from
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For those of us in the business - we know that mail order did not die. What
happened in 1996 was something the postal service calls "the postal
reclassification of 1996". First class mail rates went up. They revamped the classes
of mail and brought into play a new class of mail called "standard mail". In addition,
the postal service designed systems that made it easier, more affordable and more
efficient to use "standard mail”. Basically, standard mail replaced the old "bulkmail"
In addition, the postal service made provisions that allowed mailers who wanted
to do more of the work needed to get mail processed to save money. The more
work, the more presorting, packaging and the like, the more discounts were
applied.
Even better was the USPS decision to mandate that all standard mail goes
through a bunch of steps before delivery to the post office. Since then, all standard
mail goes through a bunch of standardization and automation steps even before
Today, a mailer that takes advantage of the standard rates and who applies all
of the preprocessing steps can save up to 50% or more over first class rates. But
wait, you have heard before that bulk mail stinks, and many claim no serious mailer
ever should use it. Not true any longer. Perhaps that was true in days gone by
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when the rules of automation and preprocessing did not fare well. Now, the mail
gets sent faster and is more deliverable even though it costs a lot less by
comparison.
I remember performing a large mailing that went out across the country. The
offer was for a product where the buyer had to call on the phone to order. The mail
got dropped at the USPS on a Monday. On Tuesday the next day, phone orders
came in from NY, PA and CT. On Wednesday, orders came in from RI, MA, OH,
DE, VA, DC, On the Thursday, order started coming in from FL, TX, MI, IN, ME, IL,
NC, SC, TN. By Friday orders were coming in from every state in the US except
Alaska and Hawaii. By the following weeks orders were flowing from all states
equally and they kept coming for the next 2 weeks. Under the old pre-1996 system,
Every year since 1996 has brought enhancements and improvements on how
"standard mail" is processes and it moves quickly through the system. It is much
harder for postal workers to destroy, hide or not deliver the mail. All in all, each and
every year response rates actually increased. The only facet of direct mail that died
was the foolish, expensive and haphazard mailings of the novices in the business.
A single sales letter now goes through many checks and enhancements. Zip
code and Zip+4 gets applied directly to the envelope, Mail trays and bags actually
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get bar-coded themselves. Each address is verified ahead of time. We have one of
the most efficient and cost effective mail systems in the world!
Those in the mailing business know.... Mail order got better since 1996.
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Technology is at a stand still. The reason probably has to do with the economy
and the “dot com bubble” . I was just checking my email box shortly before writing
this paragraph. I was stunned to see that 50% of the emails I received had some
"nothing worked when I tried online marketing" slant to them. Honestly, one must
fully understand a few major things about online marketing before you can make
the more money you will make. The entire population of would-be online
entrepreneurs has been slammed with a lot of information on how to make money
online. For the longest time the ONLY WAY you could make money is by writing
and selling more "how to make money online" type info products. Well, the entire
world has been bombarded with this type info. One would guess that the world of
the web has been saturated with "how to make money" information. The real
problem comes about when everything that can possibly be said about making
money online has been said. There are hundreds upon hundreds of e-books, web
sites and there are no new technology enhancements coming down the pike. For a
while, the "online marketing" guru could turn out e-book after e-book each
online marketing began with guru types writing and selling books about how great it
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was to send bulk unsolicited email. Then came along autoresponders, e-zines, pay
Things get rather ugly when there are no new twists that would make the guru
just turning onto the web as a place one can make money - but for the most part
The "inner circle" is defined as the people who have held an interest in making
money o the web and who have bought, studied and tried many of the methods as
taught by the guru types. The inner circle is shrinking. Many have lost interest and
have also perhaps lost their shirts. Remember that many of the claims made by
guru types in selling their e-books are rather grandiose. Sometimes they are too
good to be true. It seems to me that many make outrageous claims in hopes that
the claims of easy, fast, huge income will tempt the reader into buying.
The guru'
s are scrambling. The newbies are frustrated. The honest, hard
working entrepreneur is just aching for an opportunity that truly is going to work for
them. Thanks to the evolution of the web, the times we live in, the dynamics of
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marketing and this report, you now have something you can devote your energies.
This something has proven to work well over the past 60 or so years and has
created many wealthy individuals. Your new methodology is direct mail. Your
There is another seemingly bad thing about net marketing. Many products being
sold on the net are geared toward other online marketers. In order to save money -
many people on the web determine that THEY TOO can become an affiliate for any
particular product and earn and save money on its purchase. That makes it difficult
harder. Your prospects may see and like your info about a product but then, using
your info, they go to the main site, the "sellers" site, become and affiliate
themselves and buy from their own link! This cuts you out of a commission
immediately. That'
s why it is highly recommended to come up with your own
products. That way even those "lifting" affiliate info and then buying under their own
affiliate link results in some income to you. Most of the people who might buy an e-
book about a concept that is a year old probably has already purchased it!
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A Perfect Marriage
Why not combine the best of both worlds? If you have two succinctly different
but somehow related platforms why not pick and select the best facets,
characteristics of each, blend them, meld them, marry them and exploit them? The
idea of using direct mail as the method to drive tons of traffic to a particular web site
is not totally new. Some firms and individuals do it anyway. You re sure to have
seen a direct mail letter that contained mention of how to get to a web site. The
web has its own terrific characteristics. So does direct mail. They can be married
perfectly and live happily forever, together. Direct mail is fantastic for targeting an
audience. It'
s a very evolved industry. Virtually any product or concept you can
think of, you can probably find several lists for rent that would contain people who
would buy.
that any product they order via the web would cut off a week or two of delivery time.
It makes payment easier too. All around, it adds a layer of convenience and ease to
the equation. Web business can be made “hands off”. Once set up, it can run
automatically.
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elements of the web and direct mail. Since testing any combination of elements can
be done easily and inexpensively, any combination can be tested. You might simply
send direct mail to drive people for free information that can be found on the web.
You can add a "quick order" method by sending people to a specific web address
where they can order quickly. You can try many combinations of techniques.
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It used to be that the high costs of direct mail made the Web look very attractive.
Several things are in play here though. The response rates and relative costs of
doing business solely on the web is catching up quickly to the costs of direct mail. A
big thing lately is the idea of paying per click. The idea is you can list certain search
terms and offer to pay a certain amount of money every time a prospects reads
your web site listing associated with the search term and clicks through to your site.
Some sites are paying as much as $5 per click! A click does not automatically
translate to a sale. The term that is very important here is the click through rate and
For example, it is realistic for sites to may 10 cents per click for a search term.
Let'
s say that your site is selling a book about making money trading stocks and
you set up a pay per click deal where you pay 10 cents for each click through on
the term stock trading. A realistic expectation is that only one in every 100 visitors
to your site ends up buying. If you are paying a dime per click it will cost $10 by the
As soon as the cost of getting a click approaches that of sending an actual letter
you might be much better off doing it all by mail versus relying on the net. As long
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as you have your numbers down, you can use direct mail to get a million clicks a
week instead of waiting 3 years to get the same traffic via internet only methods.
There comes a certain point where web only advertising and sales methods cost
the same or even more than equal action via direct mail. This is called the critical
mass. Why would anyone rely only on the web when they can generate much more
The true costs of doing business on the web are often misleading. They try to
make us think web marketing is cheap, easy and explosive. The truth is it is
expensive, time consuming and very, very slow. In almost all instances, one can
gear an entire marketing plan more effectively using direct mail than using web
methods only.
How long would it take you to reach a hundred thousand prospects to visit your
site if you are generating 100 visits per day? The answer is 1000 days of just short
of 3 years. With direct mail you can reach the same 100,000 prospects in a few
days.
So, the thing to focus on is finding hungry markets, finding products to offer
them and then doing it in a way that turns a profit - fast - instead of waiting years!
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There are no hard and fast rules. What works a little can be tweaked and refined
until it works really well. Maybe in one instance it can be a huge direct mail
postcard campaign geared toward getting a specific result on the web. Another
approach might be to generally try to sell a product directly from a sales letter or
sales package with an invitation to get some free info from the web.
Ask any old time “mailorder” person what the worst aspect of their business was
and they will tell you, processing the many incoming orders, doing al the books and
records, keeping up with distributors and dealers and shipping all those orders.
Well, guess what? The Web has allowed all that to be done for you! You do not
have to be all that concerned with any of that! A good affiliate program will handle
all the sales for you, including letting people use their credit cards to order. They
will handle all the dealers of “affiliates” as they are called today! They will help them
make more sales of your product! They will do most of the book keeping for you.
Your product will be delivered seamlessly and automatically. In short, all of the
headaches are handled FOR YOU in this new way of doing business!
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What to Sell
Since you are going to be attempting to profit by selling a product why not
choose a product that has high sales potential, has a better than usual profit
and one of the best products to offer is a self-created product of the informational
type. Info products have always sold well in traditional direct marketing and also
sell well via the web. Take a look at Clickbank and you will see some 10,000 web
Info products can be created rather quickly. No reason to slave over the creative
process in trying to create the great American novel. Most self-publishers write
using Common Street English. No need for fancy ten dollar words and grand,
that other people would pay for. "How to" info products sell well. So does info
products geared toward making money. Pick a subject that interests you and one
that you believe others would be interested in. It does not have to be a "mass
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How many e-books do you need to sell if you are making $30 each? Selling just
1000 would translate to 30 grand. There are some active marketers who produce
one e-book a month and have sales volumes that approach $30,000 per month.
This is not going to be a long, drawn out, rather boring lecture about the art and
found in plenty of places on the web that you can call upon to learn how to create
them.
It'
s time though to determine what to sell though. Take your time. Search all
corners and nooks and crannies of the web to get ideas. Undoubtedly, during your
preparation phase the idea will come to you. This is a low risk business. It is going
to cost you but some time to create the product and a tiny, tiny investment to see if
it will sell well enough to warrant a more in-depth marketing of that product. Not
every e-book marketer hits a home run each time at bat. It may take a few tries in
order to get to third base. But with some additional marketing power, you can go
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You hear the same sad story from all over the place. I tried such and such and it
didn'
t work. I tried online marketing and that just made me frustrated. There are
more bad stories about online marketing than good ones. That'
s because most
business opportunity seekers are told only the partial truth about online marketing.
The actual single endeavor of selling a product is but part of the picture.
marketing in the traditional approach the act of advertising (by direct mail,
Let me repeat that for clarity. Many of the ads and sales letters you see are
You see a full-page ad in a business magazine. The ad says "learn how to make
a fortune on the Internet" and you send off for the $30 book. You get the book, read
it, and fully understand it but when you try to use the info you fail, why? It happens
more often than it does not. "Oh, I tried that but it did not work". That'
s because
many of the ads, online and off are losing money. So if they are selling a product,
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an e-book that depicts ways to make money by setting up a web site, creating a
single e-book and mirroring the success of the author - it still loses money. Most
people give up just one or two steps away from making some serious money. It'
s
because they were never told the full story. Many of the marketing methods you
see used are losing money! True success in any venture begins with fully
understanding the business totally, the good, the bad and the ugly. Online and
The name of the game is list building. The winners in marketing both online and
off are the ones who learn how to build large, responsive lists of potential buyers.
He who builds the largest list at the least cost wins and wins big!
Many times the sale of any one individual product is not the entire business
model of the business in question but is just a part. The best quality list you can
build is a list of your own product buyers. It is the repeat sales over a longer period
Aha! So that is why you may have experienced failure when you tried some of
the wealth building plans. They do not tell the complete story. True long-term
success in marketing of any kind comes with repeat business derived from repeat
orders placed by existing customers. The best list to market to be a list of people
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So, in mastering the art and science of offline marketing methods you need fully
grasp this concept. The goal and only goal is not to necessarily make big sales
from the sending of direct mail but rather to be able to build a large, responsive list
of prospects.
It is VERY hard for a new person to go “online”, begin marketing and make any
money. Why is this? There are a number of reasons. First and foremost the number
one reason is timing. In the finite world of online marketing the thing that sells best
is tools for online marketing and e-books about online marketing. News travels fast
on the web and by the time you get some insight into selling some product or
service – the entire online marketing community has ALREADY SEEN IT. The
You can forget about selling any product online that is more than 4 months old.
The massive sales rally has already taken place. You are too late. So much for
The best bet is to come up with a better product on your own. You can then
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But do not get discouraged by that. The good news is, using exceptional direct
mail techniques, your chances of selling “affiliate” products goes way up.
Remember we stated earlier that for any given “online marketing” product there’s
an upper limit of about 10,000 product sales? At that point, sales dwindle and the
info becomes outdated. The potential when you use direct mail goes way up! You
are not limited to the small, inner-circle of online marketers. They exist online. You
are going to market offline using direct mail. Whether you plan on creating and
selling your own product or you plan on selling products someone else created for
a slice of the pie, you chances go way, way, way up using direct mail.
The goal then becomes, to build the largest, most effective mailing list possible,
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researching. Take any subject that you are personally interested in and a few hours
in front of the computer. Perform various searches using related search terms.
Soon you will have a list of sites that deal specifically with your subject. Then it
becomes a real challenge determining if that subject has enough action in it that
warrants more investigation. Bear in mind hat there are probably several hundred
thousand subject matter categories that will constitute a thriving potential market. At
the same time you can also determine if there are any affiliate programs that will
Take any subject matter you can think of, I’ll bet there is a niche market
associated with it. Please review the section on using the SRDS as an aid in finding
niche markets.
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As a direct marketer of any product your main task is to build a prospect and
main task is to make sales. The sales will come due to the database built. It is now
easy to see how and why many "beginner" marketers give up when the "initial"
sales attempt fail. They fail for the best of them now and then. The difference
between a successful marketer and the one that quits is the successful one realizes
this fact. Some of the largest, most successful direct marketing concerns LOSE
MONEY on their initial offers. Yet, the beginner perceives that these initial offers
make money and when they try similar attempts on their own and fail, they tend to
give up. The goal of any marketer, offline or online is to build the largest list
possible ( including an e-mail list for online marketers ) and to do so at the least
cost and quickest speed. The business or person with the biggest, most relevant
list wins and wins big. Knowing this, can you figure out how to build the largest list
Before I actually put THIS very book up for sale I did something unheard of. I
advertised it, drove traffic to the site and did everything I could think of to get the
site noticed but, I DID NOT Accept money for a sale for an e-book that did not quite
exist. I did however, put up a little form where people who would be interested
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could send in order to be placed n the announcement list. They were told they’d
receive a special e-mail when the book was finally ready for sale.
Each and every day people “signed up” to be placed on the announcement list.
It was in fact, much like “pre-selling” the e-book but no exchange of money took
place. This is vastly different than the highly illegal act of collecting funds for a book
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One of the crucial elements of your business will be the mailing list that you
mail business. There are many ways to build a list. What you do with the list to
following technique was first taught me by a list builder / list owner who managed to
create a specific list that numbered some 12 million names. This list was worth from
10 to 30 thousand dollars per month in list rental revenues due the owner. The list
was built once, enhanced and maintained each year thereafter. Is it worth doing
something big and build a list if you can reap rewards for some 20 years in the
future?
There are specific ways to build a list that are byproducts of doing business.
Everyone that buys a product from your direct mail using rented names go into your
master list. Results from classified ads and space ads can go into the list too.
Names gathered from telemarketing too can go into your list. But the best way to
build you list is to work closely with other list builders and TRADE your names for
theirs! This is how the gentleman mentioned before built his list to 12 million.
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them asking for a trade deal. Generally, on a name for name basis, you send the
owner your names and they send you an equal amount of yours! It costs almost
nothing to do this!
something good and ask for their mailing address. Some web sites do this and use
The advent of the web has made finding and dealing with other list owners with the
intentional of trading names a lot easier. Faster too ... all you need do is email the
names as an attachment.
There are some “common” file types when dealing with mailing lists. They are
comma or tab delimited, dbase ( also called .dbf ), access database and ASCII
delimited. Most of the time these files types are interchangeable with one another.
For example, you can open a .dbf file then save it as a comma delimited file and
vice-versa.
This becomes important when requesting mailing lists from rental firms.
Generally, I ask for dbase files ( .dbf ) as the mailing and printing software utilizes
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How Come When I Try Selling Some Affiliate Product, My Sales Numbers Stink?
people want to use in their business. Everyone knows that mass e mailing is illegal,
banned and can wind you up in a heap of trouble. For argument sake, this affiliate
deal took place 5 years ago, when mass e-mailing was the rave!
concise report, e-book on the subject so they did. They also put together a clever,
compact sales site in order to sell that book. They also joined a service so others (
affiliates ) could point people to that site, and get credit if a sale was made.
That'
s the basic premise. And, in our story, sales DID occur. They started small,
The original author / entrepreneur ended up making 2,000 sales on her OWN.
This was done by using the "traditional" methods. She posted to marketing forums.
She sent mails to her list. She invited others to join her, paid them a commission so
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when THEY IN TURN mailed to their lists - sales were made, commissions paid,
etc.
In its day - this was a GREAT PRODUCT. Within the first 4 months some 7,000
copies were sold. The author sold 3,000 and the early affiliates sold the other
4,000.
As time marched on, more and more people decided "Hey, I better join as an
So they did.
The first 6 months proved very lucrative. Over 10,000 info products sold. Almost
But by the 6 months mark, things began to dwindle. Sales trickled in. The
product was being sold, pointed to and promoted by many, many people online.
Enter me, the "newbie" affiliate. I see the fast, rampant action on this product. I
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So I do my best to promote it, using all the tactics I have learned thus far.
2 sales!
Nope and nope. What I did was believe that past performance indicates future
sales. The fact is, by the time I got involved as an affiliate almost ALL the other
people who wanted to purchase that product already did. Lesson 1. I was too late in
the game!
I noticed something else. I noticed that I got a lot of hits through my links, but
very, very few eventual sales. That is NOT what they told me, I would expect a 3%
conversion ratio.
I noticed that, through my web site statistics log that quite a few people DID go
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I saw that in one case, a person went through my link, got the details on the
product, thought it was a great idea, and eventually bought the product but...
Yet, I noticed in tracking things down, this new person ALSO became an
affiliate, touted the product as being awesome and went on their merry way.
I thought about it for a while. If I was doing all the work, and this person went
through my site, why then, did I not get a check for that sale?
As it turns out the person DID buy that product after going through my link. But
what they did next is something that happens many, many times each day. This
person was clever and frugal. They decided, since the affiliate program was FREE
to join, all they had to do was DELETE their cookies on the computer, join as an
affiliate, go through THEIR OWN link to buy the product then they THEMSELVES
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Now, at first I was mad. But after investigating a little further I saw that many,
about problems with online marketing. They call it link theft, sale theft, affiliate theft,
etc. I do not classify it as a "theft" at all. At first I was mad. But after while, realized
that most people, given the opportunity might be tempted to save 50% or more on
This problem gets attention all over the place. In fact, there'
s software and ways
to help protect oneself from this form of "theft" if you want to call it that.
But most of the time, sales of that type product are made to the "inner circle" of
There are a few things you can do to get yourself out of the weak position. First
Nest is to cloak your links, URLs, etc. this may help, but the majority of the time
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That'
s why I laugh at the programs, books, and systems that focus on affiliate
sales training. The "inner circle" of online marketers, the people who make the
engine run, know how to get around the situation and not always, but more times
than naught, will become an affiliate to save the added money. It'
s human nature.
Despite what is stated about the huge billions of dollars worth of sales of e-books,
they do not sell as well as they are often portrayed. If you are on the outside
looking in, it may seem like everyone is making a fortune selling his or her own e-
books. If you are on the inside looking out, you know sales are not as prolific as
marketing firm that polled about a dozen huge book retailers who also have web
sites geared toward selling E-book versions of traditional books. The estimate for
sales in 2003 was 10 million dollars worth. There are probably tens of thousands of
people trying to sell e-books so if you average it out; each sells about a thousand
dollars worth. Closer to reality I think is a figure of about 20 million. This particular
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research did not take into consideration the newer sites that focus specifically on e-
So, one can safely state that e-books sell, but not as abundantly as many people
think. But e-books are a good place to start. Generally people buy just about
anything and everything on the web from airline tickets and vacations to diamonds,
One of the best places to get a good idea if a particular type product will sell
well, visit Ebay. There you can perform searches on various products and get a
good idea if your intentions would work out. There are some marketers who do very
well with regular products and some that do well with e-books. The thing to
remember is get involved in selling products you like, trust, believe in and are
passionate about. You can most likely find a product to offer as your lead product
that will help you build a big database list. Remember though; stick to products that
A great many times people buy on the web for convenience. But in most cases,
especially with e-books they buy because the web is the only place a particular
product is available!
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There is another element of web based sales that is a bit different. Many people
buy off the web on impulse. It is so easy and so fast, a good sales letter often stops
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I know what the best business success model would be for me. It would be one
where I did not have to work so hard in creating products but one where I could
profit handsomely by selling products others create! Why re-invent the wheel? All
you need do is after zoning in on the subject matter you are interested in is to
search the net using that as keyword along with the term affiliate. Affiliate is a fancy
name for dealer. Someone who can get paid a commission for selling a product
solely on products that other people create but it will take longer. The profit margin
goes way down. If you create and sell your own products you keep 100% of the
profit. A typical commission for an affiliate program is that they pay you 40% - 50%
of the sales price. You have to make twice the amount of sales to make up the
involves affiliate only selling. That means that the firm or individual creates no
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If you have been observant over the past couple of years you will see that over
the web, the easiest products to produce and sell are those of the "information"
grade and called the "outline" method. You break up the main subject into specific
parts ( chapters ) and create an outline. Then, the writing becomes easier and a
matter of filling out the paragraphs with what you want to say. Typically, the product
( e-book ) contains a foreword and recap chapter. There are several "free" software
packages used to create the e-book. There are some free resources to call upon to
create an e-book cover. By and large most e-books are created in the Adobe
Acrobat format called a PDF. PDF files are easy to create and easy to read. They
get downloaded upon purchase and very easy to work with. A suggestion is to
purchase and read every book, e-book and magazine about a particular subject
and make copious notes. Explore and expound the ideas learned in your own
words. Do your own research and plug in your own, original ideas. You will want to
create the best product possible. Then, you want to create similar, related products
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There is a huge market for products sold via direct mail but delivered over the
web. Once you develop a mailing list of “web based mail order buyers” you can
derive profits and sales for years to come. You only need one list and it could
represent your “homerun” of a lifetime. That same list, over and over, can be
It is imperative to fully understand. In the past you may have come upon firms
and individuals who have made it big in direct mail or mailorder. Most of the time,
their success is not the result of a one time promotion or from one offer. No,
typically success follows those who work their business plan which includes
working the “back-end” of the business. The “back-end” simply means subsequent
Here is something nobody else has ever shared with marketers. A great many
times you see an offer and think “Gee, that company or person must be making a
fortune!” . The reality is, many promotions do not even turn a profit!
I will repeat that in a different way. You see a promotional offer, direct mail
solicitation, ad or something and think “Hey, this MUST BE making a killing for the
owner”. Then, you go do something similar, using almost the very same approach
and you fail! Why is this? The answer is simple. Many offers we see are not single,
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make it or break it offers but are part and parcel of a huge, much more grand plan.
There may be 15 parts to their whole success. When you see just one part, try it
yourself and fail, it’s because you are missing the other 14 parts.
This is the reason why, back in the old days of mailorder, that people failed.
They failed not because they did not try it, they failed because of what they tried.
We can learn a valuable lesson from this fact. The same thing holds true for
internet online marketing. Many times we see only part of the picture, a fleeting
You will begin to see this. Most successful online marketers build lists and sell
products, then add on more similar related products and sell to the same people.
This is called leveraging because the cost of identifying a prospect goes WAY
DOWN when you are marketing the second product to the same person and down
to zero when you are marketing the third product. That is why you will see online
marketers with 5, 9, even 12 different but related products! They are leveraging
their customer base and cross-selling along the way. Their hopes – of course, is
that every buyer of one of their products becomes a buyer of ALL of their products!
You have the specific knowledge now to compete with the “big boys”.
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Some of the ideas contained in this book are new and had to be pioneered. We
are pioneers in the concepts of using direct mail, sales letters and postcards to
make sales for web based products. You will not find a lot of information on the
subject of melding and marrying direct mail with the web. That'
s the bad news. You
interesting things get brought to our attention almost daily. When we learn of a
concept, method, strategy or resource that works, we tell our subscribers about it.
You to can get a free trial subscription of our newsletter. Each month it contains
incredible information. To get your own free trial newsletter subscription coming to
you go to UnlimitedWealth.Com/Subscribe and sign up. You will not want to miss a
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There is a particular formula that can be used to sell on the web. You create and
promote a simple yet effective web site that is really a grand "sales letter".
Typically, with electronic products you also let other people sell your product for a
commission. The total cost of getting set-up to make sales on the web should be
less than $100 for each site you put together. You probably should also focus
energies on creating one site for each product. There are a number of resources
you can call upon to get started. Once you follow all the steps to generate traffic to
your site you must then also devise a method for driving additional prospects using
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A letter designed to drive people to your site can be very, very simple. It can be
simply one sentence and a mention of your site URL address. For example...
Go to WWW.FREEMOOLAH.COM ...
Slightly more sophisticated that that approach would be to tell a little story. And
of course, end the story with details on how to get more info on the web.
The idea of a full blown sales letter might make sense if you want to stand a
better chance of driving traffic to the site. It all depends on the list that is receiving
that letter and the gross profit margins that can be obtained.
There is a simple formula to use if you get stuck. Headlines account for a vast
sentences. Tell the major benefits of receiving the product. Make it worthwhile for
sometimes long tend to tell the major benefit the prospect can expect if they visit
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the site. For example, a sales letter used to drive traffic to UnlimitedWealth.Com
might be...
"Free, Amazing E-book Reveals Incredibly Easy Ways To Make a Bundle On The
Net"
The sales letter story goes on to explain the true power in using direct mail and
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prospects can be readily identified and sought after via writing and sending simple
letters. But what goes along with the simple letter: The idea behind the simple letter
is to make an offer so irresistible that only a fool would pass up the opportunity.
You'
ve got to set-up your system so you can be assured that potential prospects
of free but very valuable information. The letters job is to sell your prospect on the
you are going to focus on a specific type of fishing. You are going to focus on fly
fisherman. You have done your homework and find out there are approximately
679,000 fly fishermen in the country. You know you can rent lists of fly fishing
magazines. You know you can rent lists of book buyers who have purchased books
about fly fishing. And you have found that you can rent lists of fly fishing product
buyers. You have a "niche" market. You are not concerned with fishermen in
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So you decide your simple letter is going to attempt to drive fly fisherman to your
site. Since the web is good at providing information at supersonic speed, you
decide you are going to lure fly fisherman to your site by offering not one, but 7 very
interesting e-books that will knock the socks off any fly fisherman worth their salt.
You want it so that only a fool would pass up the opportunity. So you do your
research. You read and re-read every interesting fly fishing information source
possible. You have, in the back of your mind a goal, so you are going to take notes
along the way. Your ideas are starting to crystallize as you learn more and more
about fly-fishing. You take one day to review your notes and write the titles for 7
1 Brown Trout Killer Fly Fishing Approach For Small to Medium Streams
How To Fly Fish Salt Water for ( Get This ) School Tuna and Bluefish
Build an "heirloom" Fly Rod Your Great Grand kids Will Cherish
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Okay, you get the idea. You want an array of interesting, unique, informative titles.
Now all you have to do is use your notes to write the pieces. Once written, you
goal of the site is to become a "landing site" for your prospects. Don'
t worry about
all the net stuff yet. A very simple site is all that'
s required. You'
ll be driving your
own traffic to the site. Later you can optimize, reorganize and make the site take off
When your prospects land on your site they will be interested in the info you told
them about. They will want the 7 free e-books you told them in your letter.
I would simply put up a page that asks each visitor to register for your free e-books.
Some won'
t. Most will. You simply tell them that they are going to get instant
access to the free e-books once they register. To sweeten the pot, you can also tell
them that when they register, they are going to receive something from you in the
mail. By that I mean wither the regular mail or email. Perhaps it'
s going to be
Your initial job is to obtain the name and address of your visitors. This is a way
to do it. For once you have this mailing list built you are half-way home. You can
then market and re-market all of the products you have lined up. You can sell and
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cross-sell more books, e-books, equipment, fishing trip deals, etc. For now, all you
I suggest attempting to "sell" only one product from within the pages of your e-book.
a fly rod building kit. The book on catching tuna and bluefish using a fly rod may
You can experiment with various strategies to find out what works best.
Remember that you are going to be presenting info to avid fly fisherman and hence,
Perhaps the best item you could sell, one that may offer the best profit situation
The mechanics of the web pages and site you set up can vary. They can get
able to create a profit situation. You can go overboard on technical aspects of the
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7 Totally Free Internet Books Reveal Never Before Heard Fly-Fishing TidBits
172
Dear Friend:
I spent the last 3 months seriously studying all the info I could find about fly-fishing.
I love it! I was "hooked" on fly fishing on the very first day I laid out a roll cast on the
quiet waters of the Delaware river and got an immediate strike by a massive brown
trout.
Some of the information I found while poking around is very, very interesting. For
can see why they called it the .... Every time I cast I got a hit or caught a fish! You
can read all about this in one of the free e-books I put on my site.
have a simple letter campaign tied to it. You may be saying that I am full of a lot of
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Sales letters require being tested. Test various headlines, body copy and
benefits. The best results are often obtained surprisingly in different ways than
expected. I once used a "secret weapon" to generate a lot of added results. I sent a
letter to merely tell the potential customer that they are to expect another letter, and
that the later letter was so important, it warranted a special letter just to announce
the second letter. I tried variations of that theme. I once put just a phone number on
the announcement letter. The phone rang off the hook, with calls from people
almost begging to be told what the info was! It went something like this...
Dear Friend:
This letter is to inform you that you are about to receive yet another letter very soon
in the mail. Why am I sending you a letter just to announce the fact that yet another
letter is due to arrive soon? You see the second letter is so important, you will not
want to miss it. You are going to be so thrilled and happy with the next letter. IT is
going to contain some remarkable and powerful information that affects you
personally. Please look out for the letter to arrive soon. It will be in a regular
envelope but will have big red letters "URGENT" stamped on the left side. Please
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*** The version of the letter I mentioned that got phone calls simply added the
sentence in the PS
Man alive, I have never seen anything come close to using that technique,
before that or after that. Not only did the phone ring off the hook, I imagine every
person who received that announcement letter, ran, not walked to their mailbox to
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Hidden Profits
There'
s gold hidden in the hills! You can earn substantial profits from renting
your mail lists out to other firms. Or if you have a large number of subscription
based recipients you can perform certain functions that also generate a profit. You
can sell advertising space in your publication. You can enter joint and co-venture
There are several "hidden" opportunities for extra profits. First off, your mailing
list itself will be of value. Many list owners rent their lists out to other firms for a tidy
profit. All it really takes is sending a quarterly update of the list to your list
management house. Then the list broker goes about business and gets other firms
and individuals to rent that list. Names rent for about $100 per thousand. Most of
that, it'
s possible to get your entire list rented from time to time. If you have 100,000
available names that translates to $10,000 in added revenue. It all adds up. Now,
you may question why rent your list out to other firms? Well, first of all, you get right
of refusal. If a notorious competitor wants your list you can say no. Next, most
people do not realize it but lists typically gain response abilities the more it is mailed
to time.
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There are other sources for hidden profits. You gain the ability to perform
endorsed mailings. Basically, you give other firms the right to mail to your list with
your endorsement.
You can always also create and operate seminars. No matter what the subject
matter, there will be some customers willing to give up a fee to attend a seminar. It
is not unheard of, for certain seminars to charge $500 per day per attendee.
Your "success" experience also has value. I have seen many a marketer create
their own success then go on to exploit that success. If you write a good e-book
and sell a million copies, you can turn that into a profit situation by creating a
Of course there are consulting fees you can charge. Many times, as you
experience a success other people will want to hire you to work on their success. It
is not unheard of for marketing consultants to charge $100 per hour for their
expertise.
Once you have a mailing list of buyers you can then form joint- and co-
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Once you have a mailing list in your possession of several hundred thousand
names of qualified web based buyers you will be able to make money at will. If you
Imagine this. You get on a schedule to mail your list every month. You expect a
of 10%. If you mail 1000000 letters, that translates to 10000 orders. If your profit is
just 10 bucks each that means a gross profit of 20000 per month based on a
200000 list! Of course this all depends on many factors. The offer, the overall profit,
the value perceived by your potential prospects, etc. Same gross profit applies to a
product that gets just 5% response rates but a higher sale figure of $20.
It is not so much to products that can be sold but rather the name of the game is
building the largest, most responsive lists. All those super successful people who
have made it in mail order realized that they were in the list building business first,
secondly they were in the marketing business selling various products. Remember
that. He or she who builds the largest list wins the most amount of money!
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The single largest problem that needs to be solved is the problem that strikes
many of us in that there are so many things that can be done it can get rather
When you think of the hundreds or thousands of potential ideas you can get
overwhelmed easily. I wish there were 30 hours in each day and 10 days in each
week. I have that much fun exploring, trying and perfecting this business.
Wouldn'
t it be nice to actually look forward to getting up and getting to work? IT
is that much fun - that much interesting and that much rewarding.
There are so many potential things to do that easiest thing to do is get started with
what interests you most. Action is the name of the game here. I spent way too
many hours worrying, fretting, over-analyzing and thinking. There are few obstacles
that ACTION cannot overcome. When in doubt- get busy actually working your
plan. I find that many times a nagging “problem” I am having goes away and was
not a problem at all, just needed some good old fashioned elbow grease applied
toward it .
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The traditional direct marketing business has a bunch of usual, customary and
standard practices. One of the practices is making your list available for rent by
others who are selling similar products. This is not the norm online. In fact, unless
depicted and in plain words that each customer can visually see, it is unlawful to
sell, rent or trade customer information from web based marketing efforts. Yet,
since the inception of the mailing system, mailing lists have been available for rent.
There are probably dozens of lists available for rent that deals with any one product
Let'
s make an example. There are about a dozen publishers that make their
mailing lists available that market gambling type products. This is how I would
approach this. I would get my hands on every book, e-book and info product that
deals with winning at the game of gambling. I would read them all. I would make
notes. I would explore the notes and fine tune the ideas behind them. I would not
plagiarize anything but I would use the books as fodder for deeper thinking. I would
then find each and every product that is related and sold over the web. I would join
the affiliate programs, dealer programs and then create a simple, cheap web site
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simple couple of paragraphs that I would translate into sales copy for postcards
I would then test market a few mailings. I would rent the list and after having put
the e-book in readable form on the web site I would check to see how many people
have read it. I would then tweak the sales copy until a reasonable amount of people
responded to the free offer to read the e-book. The copy might look like this...
* The One Casino Worker You MUST Talk to Who Will Help You Win
* The Worst Day OF The Week To Walk Into A Casino ( Never gamble on this day )
* Where To Get Plenty Of Gambling "Seed Money" To Play With ( use their
* What casino game to stay completely away from ( to play it means big
losses )
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* How To End Your Day Winning Even Bigger Playing This One Type of
Machine
You get the idea. You will want to make your free e-book so appealing only a
fool would pass up the chance to read it. If you do it right you can probably tweak
The goal is to get the potential customer, the hard-core gambler and the
weekend recreational gambler to visit your site and to get them to purchase some
of the other products. It is a numbers game. The better your sales message the
a sale.
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It'
s almost laughable. There are tons of books about making big money in mail
order but I have yet to find one that gave any details about how to get millions of
There are books written and sold by people pretending to be mail order experts.
Seems few ever got to the point they were sending millions of letters.
I strongly suggest testing your various sales letters and different mailing lists
using first class postage. IT gives you an immediate idea as to how fresh the
names are and how potentially responsive the offer is. I know, some experts say to
test with mailings of 5000 minimum. My experience tells me that you can get a
good idea after mailing as few as a few hundred letters. Test inexpensively. If you
are driving traffic to a particular site you can obviously set up a special page that
you ask prospects to visit. Then, using your web statistics, you can tell how many
people visited your site and get a good, general idea of the success, or failure of
your project. If this special page is set-up and the only way you can get to it is by
knowing it, then the majority of the traffic to that page is from your mailings, or ads.
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In the 1980'
s and 90'
s there were tons of home based mail order entrepreneurs.
Typically, they performed their own mailings in their home. They may have hired
out the job of mailing too to local friends, family, neighbors, etc.. But for volume
mailings you need to attack it from a totally different perspective. If you have a
I also suggest using standard mail. It will save upwards of 50% on the postage
fees. The quality of service with standard mail has gone way up. Delivery rates are
up. The costs are way down. You realize that many people have made their
fortunes via direct mail in the past. Did you also realize that by comparison,
There is a lot written both good and bad about using mailing service companies.
Under the old system, it was easy for a rogue firm to rip-off mailing clients. It is not
so easy today. I still however, recommend using several firms to accomplish your
mailing work. That way if one seems like the mail is always getting screwed up, is
problematic, or somehow seems to always result in poorer response rates you can
drop them. You will want to put your mailing endeavors on schedule. This is in
order to achieve a good cash flow and systematic way of doing business. I usually
use a weekly type system. So much mail gets out the door per week. It becomes
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Mailing services companies can be found in most major cities. They can be
found on the web too. Some do printing, preparation and mailing. Alternatively you
can learn how to perform your own large-scale mailings. This will require a permit,
some sophisticated software and equipment. The total costs of getting able to
perform 100000 letters a week can set you back $100,000. This depends on the
equipment you buy. Software to perform standard mailings cost about $1000 per
year. Ebay, the auction site has people selling various high-speed equipment.
You'
ll need a high speed envelope printer. Rena Systems and Pitney Bowes are
two major manufacturers of the high-speed envelope printers. You can buy a used
machine for about $1500. You may need a high speed envelope stuffer. Both the
envelope stuffer and the printers can produce output t the rate of about 5000 per
hour. A 100000 mail piece mailing can take 20 hours. If you do it yourself you can
save some money. But it will also take an investment in order to perform them
yourself. I recommend also always having a service you use regularly even if you
do it yourself. Farm out some of the work. Keep that relationship going. You never
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Other Spin-Offs
mail work. The focus of this company was to generate profits via direct mail and to
also perform all of the mailings ourselves. A spin-off business was created too.
Soon, as local friends, associates learned of this mailing thing, some of them
wanted to take advantage and also use our mailing abilities for their business. It
started with a friend of a friend who sold surgical tools to doctors. They began
mailing brochures to a list of doctors every 3 weeks. There was a charge and a
small profit for us in performing the mailing work. Then, a large-scale real estate
firm that mailed to tens of thousands of households every month were using these
services too. Soon, we had a nice number of regular clients using this service. We
then decided to go out and actually look for mailing services work instead of relying
on word of mouth. We mailed a postcard to all area businesses using our own
services. Soon, the phone was ringing off the hook and we were flush with
are literally dozens of offshoots and side businesses you can perform associated
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One major common trait super successful people have is that they worked on
yourself through in order to reach goals. For example, if you want to be a mail order
marketing master, making tons of money seemingly at will, you will want to learn
everything you can possibly about that business. This means that over the years
you may have to read 200 books on the subject. You may have to spend countless
hours at the computer and the net. You may have to subscribe to several dozen
There are only two types of successful people, self-made ones and lucky ones.
You may know people in each category. Self-made ones are just that, they made it
themselves. There is more of this type than the lucky ones. We all know some
lucky ones too. These people win large sums of money by sheer luck. They land
into a cushy; high paid job by accident or by knowing someone. While there'
s little
product about making money how do you really feel about it? Are you skeptical? Do
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you end up hating yourself for making a "foolish decision to buy it? OR do you learn
Since this book is about direct mail you should know that there'
s a ton of
incredibly valuable information about it for free on the web. I often call it a "million
dollar education" because I believe direct mail is one business where the odds are
There are some web sites that I think you should go to and absorb all of the info
you can possibly. They are listed in the /resources.htm page on the
simpleletters.com site. On a few of the sites you will find info that has accounted for
There are some more sites that you should take the time to read every word.
You will find them too on the page listed above. Please note, that the page is
protected and you will need to use your sign on and password to get to it.
Just like the miners of the Klondike if you take the time to get a lay of the land,
learn how to search it out and "mine" it, there are tons of sources of good, quality
information to be found on the web for free. I believe that if you dig hard enough
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Just a side note. The super successful web sites of the future are going to be
geared at providing lots of high quality information. The challenge of the new
millennium is going to be how best to bring the information together and utilize it.
This phenomenon is happening right now more and more. The most successful
web sites are also the best at giving away free valuable information.
The trend is to pile the good, useful info high and wide in order to attract new
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Resources / Contacts
I really hate reading e-books that have numerous links in them. I just do not like
to be jumping from place to place and back again all the time. I think other people
must hate it too. It’s confusing and time consuming. Once I’ve digested something
then, it’s fine to go on an internet hunt tracking things down. But when I am ready
As a result the links, contacts, resources are all online on a different page.
WWW.SIMPLELETTERS.COM/RESOURCES.HTM
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You only need know how to put the pieces together. There are some very
wealthy people who got that way on the Web. The Web was, for the past few years
and continues to be a place where anyone using a bit of intelligence, some faith in
themselves and willingness to get some know-how can make it big! I mean BIG.
Some top web marketers can earn upwards of a million dollars per year! Some of
their "systems" they have put into place can earn big money for years into the
future. So where does this bring us? You only need to know 3 things. Brace
all the time this one paragraph has changed their world so significantly, they will
never, ever forget it. First, you understand that there are specific "systems" or ways
to bring in big bucks on the Web. Next you need to fully understand that all web
income is a direct result of the marketer’s ability to build a mailing list. Last, you
need to know that there are ways to use mail order to drive hundreds of thousands
of new visitors to your web site at no cost whatsoever. When you put the 3 things
together you have the winning combination. There will be nothing stopping you.
There will be nothing preventing you from attaining true, unadulterated Unlimited
Wealth. Now you know why people are referring to me as a moneymaking genius. I
am proud that some people have that high of a regard for me. I suppose my words
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have made the lives of others a lot brighter. I do it out of pure joy of doing it. Let me
Like most people in this day and age I always got by. I sometimes worked 2 at
times 3 jobs to make a living, but I always managed. I also believed in always being
honest, truthful, and tried to act in the enlightened fashion. Until one fateful year.
year things got bleak. I witnessed the company I worked for lay-off about 1000
people. Even worse, the company also announced plans to send a large portion of
the work overseas. My days were numbered. It was apparent in the way the
company treated others and me. The work environment went downhill fast. The
company began dropping employee benefits. They also began cutting bonuses,
tried to get away with zero pay increases, etc. While I did not actually lose my
position all this was cause for serious alarm. The economy was such that if I did get
laid off, I would probably not be able to find work in my chosen field ever again. For
the first time in my life I felt totally vulnerable. I felt like I was just one negative
experience away from total failure, the virtual end of my life as I knew it.
One winter day, I took our children to a park to play. God, I love those kids and
want to give them every advantage possible. I would do anything for them. For a
moment, while they played I began to see into the possible future. "What if I did
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lose my job ... their lives would be terrible" I thought to myself. And I imagined
having to sell the house, move to an apartment - and say goodbye to a "good life". I
saw where my life would become one big struggle. I felt how it would just kill me to
not be able to provide for my family. I felt tears well up in my eyes. I almost broke
down fully that winter day. And that fateful day I vowed to put together a plan for
ending this nonsense. I started putting together a plan to get as far away of that
for myself, sure. But more importantly I wanted to become a huge success for my
children. And I knew deep down that many people were in the same boat as I was,
some much worse. I really wanted to make a difference in other people’s lives. The
work I do now is more rewarding, more fulfilling and satisfying than ever before. I
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A Remarkable Experience
and setbacks. I tried a lot of various moneymaking plans over the years. Some
were okay, most were not. I find that most people I'
ve encountered in the
marketing online field are honest, hard working and worthy of a big break. I am
about to give you that big break. What you do with it is up to you.
We'
ve already discussed some of the principles of success required to make it
big. The key ingredients of course are: Have a good product to sell, a great sales
message and vehicle by which you sell it, an untapped endless market to whom to
sell to, a way to present your offer, of in this case, a way to get tons of traffic to your
web site. Traffic converts to sales. Traffic results in the building of a mailing list. The
lists become your best prospects to sell other related products to.
I'
ve probably spent a small fortune buying and studying "how to" information
both on and off the web. I just love business and the idea of making money. It was
not until I realized something that I really began to make substantial money. I found
that I was enthralled with the "dream" state that happens to us when we discover
a heroin addict, I found I was actually addicted to the feelings, states of mind,
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dreaming state after I received some new material about making money. What
happened was I would quickly read and study the material then, my mind would
take off for a while. Maybe not right away, but within a day or two it would. I would
put myself in the situations and play out, in my minds eye what it would be to
Now, it'
s not bad to do some constructive dreaming and feel a situation out.
What I found was that I was actually getting some sort of benefit from all the
and...
reason is if I kept ordering new money-making plans, dabbling here, trying there but
always stopping just short of committing to make it work - I was satisfying a deep
down need and avoiding some sort of pain. See, as long as I was struggling, trying
new things, I was NOT failing. And, the constructive daydreaming about what
success would be became something I was used to living with, it was part of me. It
takes great courage and understanding to see yourself in this light. I was a real
dope, idiot, dummy for doing things that way. I was so wrapped up in being an
"opportunity junky" that it was almost as bad as being a real life heroin junky! I
195
share this with you at the risk of some ridicule and embarrassment. It'
s true though.
Under the old way, there was no way I could succeed! I needed to do some inner
work" on myself and understand things better before I got to square one. I offer this
to you as food for thought. Perhaps you too need a little internal housekeeping? It
Naturally, the goal is to make money but, mulling over exactly the “how” to make
money part I think you and I will be much better off if we actually enhanced the lives
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First and foremost you must realize that despite all the hype, web based
who produce products, books and the like mostly for the hundreds of thousands of
"wanna be" successful online marketers. IT really is a smaller, inner circle of people
who both produce and buy the products. But is does not have to be that way.
You can create and work your very own niche market. IT does not have to be a
large market either. But once you choose it; it should lend itself to allowing you to
create some "products" that others interested in the same thing might purchase.
Perhaps the best product would be an electronic book, or e-book. You can
create the book, make it available for sale, get others to sell it for you and reap the
benefits.
The first steps of course would be to actually write the book. I us a simple
outline formula. I write the subheads or sub titles for the entire book. Then, over a
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period of time round it out and write each section under each head section title.
All you really need do is write it the same way you would write to a friend. The
get your points across in the simplest, most effective manner possible. Don'
t worry
could understand. Remember, the idea is to make money - not win world acclaim
You can write using any means you have. No need to go out and get a fancy
$2,000 computer. I use an old 486 laptop and first write in the old Windows 3.1
word document, then html or PDF file. A PDF file is more or less the standard for
creating e-books. You can use other programs that create an .exe executable e-
At the time you are writing you should also be concerned about your marketing
materials and web site. I use very simple, inexpensive web sites and write a sales
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Typically, you will begin developing the web site at the same time too. It all goes
hand in hand. After doing it one or two times, it becomes a lot easier. There are
some very successful online marketers who turn out a new product every 3 months.
If you have 10 products each bringing in $5,000 per month in sales I would say you
have made it big! One product can bring a lot of money too ... but you must pay
attention to an old direct marketing law. The law states that it is 4 times easier to
get someone to buy your product if they HAVE already bought another one of your
products than it is to get a new customer to purchase cold. Repeat business is the
key.
That is why I really, really do not understand some people. You know the series
of books "Chicken Soup for the Soul" ... and there are probably 10 add-on books
along the same lines ... and there should be. I have read the book "Conversations
with God". And a little while after it came out the book "Conversations with
Millionaires" came out. Another example are the “One Minute” books. “The One
Minute Manager” started it all off. There are tons of similar examples. They are ride
the success of the previous title and gain momentum from it, successively.
There is a relatively well known very young marketer who wrote a book about
internet success. Actually, the book was written for him. It was a compilation and
collaboration of many successful marketers. But this guy got them all together,
asked them a bunch of questions about achieving success, captured it all into an e-
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book and published it . After sales of the original e-book started to die off he went
on to write another book. This time, it was about HIS process he used in writing the
As your e-book, sales letter, web site and project comes together it is time to do
some testing. If you have done your homework you know that there is a market
existing for the type product you have created. Time to rent some mailing lists and
try your approach, tweak it, twist it until it works to make a profit. I know, I know ..
You are asking but how do you do that ... you cannot tell if a particular hit on a web
site comes from within the Internet or from your mailing! That is easy and every
person trying this for the first time encounters it. You can send your simple letter
customers to a special page or series of web pages so you can track it. Most web
site accounts come with statistics that allow you to see where a person comes
from, what pages got hit. If your "special page" gets hit, you know it was from your
direct mail.
Most of the time things do not always work out perfectly from the start. It needs
means breaking even on the direct mail. Now brace yourself ... this next paragraph
is going to contain a very advanced and very little known "secret" I'
ve used for a
long time.
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The secret to making it with direct mail is to at least break even on the mailings
from the get go. I tried many ways to do this over the early years. I fund the best
way t be either to include an offer for a very low cost product whose only job is to
make the mailing break even. Do you know what power lies in that formula? As
long as you break even, and as long as there are prospects - you can mail
MILLIONS of letters!
As you are testing you are further developing your web site and online
approach.
Now it'
s time to start submitting your web site to the search engines for it takes as
long as 4 or 5 months in some cases to get indexed and posted in the search
engines.
You have some choices as far as making sales. The easiest, most efficient
means of making sales and gaining affiliates is to get others to sell your e-book for
Once you have the mechanism down and the bugs worked out of your project
you can now start to promote more heavily. This usually involves getting on a
regular mailing schedule. I recommend using several mailing services. In the trade
they are called letter shops. As a rule, I only let one company perform 10,000
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pieces of mail at a time, per week. That way, if someone decides to get smart, rip
whatever, or me off, I have not placed all the eggs in one basket.
Another approach may be to run your own mailings. This can save 25% of the
In another section I’m going to explain to you just how you can accomplish
everything right from your computer! That’s right. You entire campaign can be done
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A Primer
candid fashion. I was a failure at “traditional” online marketing. I know now though,
that anyone put in the same spot I was would also be a failure. There is just no way
to make it work without some luck, some help and some experience. The entire
“make money by marketing online” industry is betting that I would continue, like
most others, n the gerbil wheel, buying product after product, failing repeatedly. If I
You could be a member of Mensa with a MBA in marketing and still fail
That’s why I had to forge a new way, a fabulous new and explosive approach to
web based sales, using direct mail. And that is why you, knowing now what you
know can agree, it is the only way to go. You must forge your own way too. Either
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If you read my "sales letter" you will remember that none of this came too easy
for me. I looked around the web, tried a lot of stuff, and failed continually. That is
not a good feeling. It got so bad; I almost hated to go online. I would just be hit with
more "hey follow me, I found a way to get rich" type emails. They usually made me
feel worse rather than better. It seemed, after a while that the entire Internet
marketing game was a bunch of bull. It seemed that the guru "cats" were always
using some new "cheese" to catch us mice. The "cheese" took form as some new
fantastic approach to online marketing. Really, take a good look at some of the e-
books you see for sale. They are sometimes pitiful. Titles like "How I sipped
cappuccino and made a million dollars online". Well, maybe not that pathetic, but
you get my drift. They come up with some real doozies. All geared to hook you and
I into buying the products. Every step of the way I was hit with some new way of
making it big. Problem was nothing I tried worked. So, if you are in the mode
whereby you have tried but rarely found the success you deserve, rejoice you are
not alone. I got mad. I got pissed and I got tired of the hogwash. As you recall from
my sales letter I was almost down for the count willing to let go of any dreams of
making it on the net. I am lucky I did not give up and gave it one more last try.
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Most Online Marketers Are Too Busy fixing up their software to make any real
money
You see quite a few people playing follow the leader online. It all has to do with
stance. I mean, if one guru takes the position that the latest technique or tool is
what all other marketers need, then they believe it and tout it like there'
s no
tomorrow, then a certain number of others will believe it too. It is easy to fall into
the trap.
A major problem regarding “online marketing” is that early on, and for some time
thereafter, the business of creating and selling other “online marketing” materials
accounted for the most sales and business. In other words, marketers were busy
creating more “how to make money online” e-books, courses, guides which in turn,
causes the readers to start, own and operate more online businesses that focus on
There has to be an end to the vicious cycle. I think the end is near. More and
more marketers are finding it difficult to make any money online let alone making
money by creating and selling more “how to make money online” type stuff.
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This is causing the entire industry to look for additional ways to apply their craft.
A big thing today is the idea of “niche” markets. A niche market is simply an
identifiable market with a lot less then broad appeal. A typical niche market may
When you put it on terms like that my own market is a niche market. I certainly
do not cater to the traditional online marketing crowd. In fact, most of them detest
the fact I came up with this concept. I try to do it delicately but I manage to get a
few of them mad when I tell it like it is. The chances for them to break into and
thrive in the business where they themselves create and sell “how to make money
online” type products is somewhere between slim and none. When faced with facts
some people refuse to deal with it. They would rather chalk up my experience as
someone else’s and not close to their own experience. You cannot fault me for
how they feel. But I will tell you this, smart people have a passion for determining
their own faults and failings first, correcting them and moving on. I imagine a few
“die hard” people who still think they are going to make it big using “traditional”
online marketing will be still struggling nest year this time, and the year after that
and the year after that. Sometimes it’s easier to face the realities sooner rather than
later. This is what I hope you are doing currently upon reading this material.
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I want to remind you that while you are struggling to get something going the
goal of having a big hit, home run ever looms. You really only need one great
Some of the best, biggest, largest and most successful online products only sell a
I repeat, using traditional online methods - even the best products only sell a few
Let'
s look at the potential. A $30 selling 3,000 copies brings in $90,000 in gross
income. Not bad but a good direct mail campaign can account for HUNDREDS of
thousands of sales!
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One big hit can set you up for life. But you have to ride the tide, take care of
business and exploit any success to the nth degree. What do I mean by that? Let'
s
say you author and sell an e-book entitled Secrets of Online Riches. Assume you
sell a few thousand copies the first year. What I would do is write another e-book,
entitled Secrets To Online Real Estate Riches, and another one, Secrets to Stock
Market Riches, and another one, Secrets to Lottery Riches and on and on. Exploit
Once you build a large, responsive mailing list – the rest should be easy. I am
told that in years gone by, direct mail was so powerful that some big names in the
industry used to be able to process the orders, fulfill them and then …
Imagine that? These days it is a little less powerful but it is close to being what it
was years ago. Today, the buyer names that come into your possession are like
gold. Most of the time the response rates for offers sent to those type names can
pull 15%, 20% and even as high as 25%. Now that’s powerful. Let’s just assume
that you have a product that sells for $50. And further assume that you sell 100,000
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of them. That’s 5 MILLION dollars worth! But forget about that for a moment.
Assume that in order to sell 5 million dollars worth it cost you 3 million in fees, costs
and purchases. This includes mailing service, mailing list and postage costs.
Now you have 100,000 names on your database. That is NOT large by any
stretch of the imagination! I once had a list of 1.6 million names! Anyway, with just
those 100,000 buyer names – you decide to send offer #2. Offer #2 is better,
stronger and more accepted by your customers. A mere 15% response rate to offer
#2 results in 15,000 new orders! For argument sake let’s say that offer #2 sells for
$50 too. That amounts to $750,000 worth of sales! Offer #3, a few months later
may not draw the same response, but let’s assume it does receive 10% response.
Notice something? The sales figures typically used in direct mail make the web
I must digress now because the time is ripe for explaining a very, very, VERY
important concept! This concept alone may be worth a king’s ransom to you.
Do you recall the part when I said 1% solution and that possibly “break even”
was really in actuality a “winning” situation? You do? Good. Let me take that a step
further. Go back to the example above where you gross 5 million dollars but it cost
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you 3 million in order to accomplish that. You get the idea, right? Good. Let’s say
that instead of 3 million that it cost you 5 million in order to generate 5 million in
sales! That is a “break even” deal. You spent 5 million to get 5 million back.
We are getting somewhere, hold on, and this “somewhere:” we are getting to is
going to shine an entire new light on all that you do from now on! And I am
confident, while some of the biggest marketers, both online and off do it, they
NEVER breath a word about it to anyone. It is the biggest marketing secret known
Many big direct marketers, both online and off PRAY that they will break even!
Why? Because breaking even is actually winning! See, they know that the real
money is on offer #2, 3, 4, 5 and so on, until the list of buyers eventually becomes
See, you can easily wait 6 months, work your butt off only to break even, to go
on to rake in incredible profits month after month for years to come as a result!
I know what you are saying! This IS the reason that you see someone selling a
product of service, either online or off, but when YOU try the same thing – you lose
money, break even or only make a small sum. It’s because – rarely are direct
marketers involved for the “one time shot”. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say, it is
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Wow! You mean to tell me that many of the offers I see only break even? Yes,
that is exactly what I am saying. Even better, it is possible to run a very, very
Wait a minute! That explains why many people try various opportunities only to
be let down with dismal results! It is possible to lose money on a large, grand
following up!
That is why the list is so important! It is the base, the framework on which all
else is built!
Now, let’s go back and partially analyze what is going on with online marketing
as we know it. The guru types, the “successful” marketers are creating and selling
products. You know now the reason why, although there are plenty out there that
they create similar products! For example, everyone has a “How to create and sell
your own e-book in 17 seconds” type of an offer. The reason they all have their own
afloat!
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That is why, you will hardly EVER see the big name, hard-hitting Guru types
touting affiliate programs only! Why, because they know their job is to build the
largest, most responsive list possible. When you join an affiliate program you send
people to the web site of another person. Chances are, many of the visitors will
NOT buy. But they will do something that drastically hurts the original online
marketer – they join the free opt-in e-zine, free newsletter or offer via a pop-up ad
on the other person’s site. Then THIS prospect becomes a prospect for Guru #2.
And Guru #2 then markets the heck out of them until they either buy, or die!
He or she who controls the prospect lists wins! And that is precisely why direct
mail and mail order methods work so well. You get to control the pace and
precision by which prospects become buyers, and single product buyers become
I see you are progressing nicely in your understanding. Time for one more big
Go back to the example when you have 100,000 buyer names on your
database. And, remember that you are going to be offering more products over
time to this list. Well, get this, experienced marketers, both online AND off learn
how to “mine” their customer base. They come up with progressively more
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expensive offers! Fewer and fewer prospects become buyers, but according to a
I recall doing some consulting work for a very large and very successful direct
marketing firm. They had about 700,000 actual buyers on their databases. The
buyers would get mailed offers that were successively higher in cost. They “boiled
down” the 700,000 to about 5,000. There was something special about these 5,000
people! Before we expose what was so special remember that to mail to just 5,000
costs way less than a large, general offer. The cost to mail 5,000 was about $2,500
at the time. But each and every person on the list of 5,000 had the potential to
spend – up to $10,000 each on their future success! They would enroll in and come
to success seminars, they would buy large, expensive audio tape courses, and they
would buy just about ANYTHING that was placed in front of them!
Imagine that? If you had a list of only 5,000 and each person had the propensity
to purchase 10 thousand dollars worth of “stuff” if they all did that would translate
In the case above it paid dearly to “data mine” the customer base looking for the
gold! I give you this as example and the reason why it is so important to work on
building your lists as quickly and economically as possible! Now, as things go, not
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every person on that list bought 10 grand worth. But a percentage did and this kind
Now you know some “secrets” that you probably did not know before. You can
see the forest for the trees so to speak. What appears to the naked eye on the
outset often is not the big picture. The big picture is that the list and data may get
mined for all its gold way after the initial sale.
Does this make sense to you? I hope so. It was the exact moment I learned of
these secrets that my entire business turned around incredibly! I learned that there
is more to marketing than meets the eye or that is contained in one promotion. True
success comes to those that take the time to learn. Oh yeah, you also have to have
a “mentor” or someone who is willing to show you the ropes! It was the moment I
learned this that the pressure stopped! I learned that “break even” was good
enough. I learned that losing a small sum up front, as long as you had the plan to
recover later on, was okay too. I learned that all a person really needed in order to
make it BIG in this business was s small, tiny profit from any front-end offer.
You probably will never hear anything like that from anyone again. I am sure
that nobody ever told you that before either. I learned it in the “back room” of a
giant, lucrative business. I kid you not. I witnessed the “books” get reviewed
monthly. Each month several hundred thousand got spent on the “front-end”
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marketing ( generating the lists at break even or better ) and each month, the
“back-end” delivered millions of dollars in profits! I doubt that there are any
“traditional online marketers” who even know. But you do now. That’s important!
I offer this to you for two reasons. One, I want to cement home the fact the “stuff”
you are reading is not made up, fiction or make believe. Second, I want you to
experience the same thing I did, when I realized how easy it is to experience
success, when the pressure is off and you boil down the process to include sound,
So, in the future, if you ever hear of anyone complain “Oh that new marketing
thing I did just broke even “ slap them silly and ask them if you can take over their
entire operation! Break even can be turned into super profit position in no time.
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I know, they all tout how they did some free thing and made millions. Most of
that is hogwash. The true, real costs of doing business purely on the web have
grown in leaps and bounds. They all talk about how free this is and that. But in
order to be successful you have to spend a lot of money using traditional online
only techniques.
So, you see, the only way to go is by using direct mail if you are serious about
making it. Either that, or resign yourself to spending big bucks trying to make it
work otherwise.
Now you have a reference point. You know that break even is a win to those
that follow successful principles! And costs play a big factor! If you can devise a
way to bring in $1 for every $1 you spend do it as fast as you can and to the extent
to which you can do it. I am not saying that costs on the web make it impossible. I
am just saying that you have to take it all into proper context.
The main point is that the real “costs” of web business and that of direct mail are
similar and, direct mail offers many advantages over traditional web based sales.
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As time marches on, more and more similar products appear. It’s like there is a
race to see which online guru can create the most similar products before the
others. Take the idea of writing and selling e-books. There are about 39 e-books
that are dedicated to showing you how to write and sell your own e-books.
Using direct mail competition is almost eliminated. The market for your product
is probably 100 to 1000 times bigger than if you used only online marketing
methods. That fact alone tells you why you should concentrate on direct mail as
popular products. They will each have their own version of “How to promote a web
product”. They will each have their own “E-book profit” book. And so on. Why?
Because the want to maintain control and jurisdiction over the lists themselves!
They will want to keep the lists to themselves as much as possible because in the
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You name it, if it is being done for online marketing today, it will lose its power in
a short time. Take pop-ups for example. Once touted as the online marketers
“secret weapon” they are quickly becoming a nuisance, banned by some ISP’s and
The bottom line is that as marketing tools become available, they will be
exploited by the online marketing community. Everyone wants video and audio on
the sales web site. Everyone uses pop-ups to enlist sign-ups for e-zines and the
like. Everyone “cloaks” their affiliate links. All online marketers are deploying joint-
ventures. The main problem is that technology advances a little slower now than in
Using direct mail “front-end” methods none of the advances should bother you
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The average person gets a ton of marketing related e-mails on a daily basis.
They are annoying at best. A wise marketer who held the “secrets” to online
success close to his chest said e-mail marketing is several thousand times less
effective than real mail. It’s no wonder. I go through my in-box with my delete
button every time I sign onto the web. Nobody welcomes spam mail. Although
recent legislation prevents it – there seems to be no stopping it. Maybe when big
The bad part about all this “traditional” online marketing is … most of the time it
relies heavily on e-mailing prospects with a sales message. I even get to dislike
receiving the e-mails that I have asked for or “opted-in” to. No sane human can
possibly read all those mails. They are so pathetic that e-mail marketing becomes
very, very inefficient and problematic. Do you want to base your success on a
Since the majority of people online hate receiving any form of unsolicited e-mails
I imagine there is going to be even more legislation against doing it in any shape,
way or form.
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Someone once asked me what was the “first” golden rule of online marketing. I
had to think long and hard about it. I recalled my first experience with discovering
online marketing. Back then, I tried many, many approaches to online marketing
Back then there were only a few choices to get “online”. The web was not even
ready yet. There was Prodigy, Compuserve than later, America Online. I tried the
various marketing techniques being taught by the guru types. Not many of them
worked. I did find one that did. It was simple. I placed small, free or inexpensive
“classified ads” on those major computer services. I asked that the person reply
with their real name and “snail mail” address. Each night, I would log onto each
service and hand write the names down. Later on I got sophisticated and “cut and
pasted” the names into a file. I would then send real sales letters, postage and all.
I would say the first golden rule is to find a way to obtain the real name and
“snail mail” address of your prospects. I experimented with doing this on the web. I
made it simple. I touted an offer for a free, real, “paper and ink” newsletter trial. All I
asked was that the person supply their name and address. The first day it was live
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names started to flow in. Of course, they got added to my larger marketing
In all of your reviews, investigations and digging into what others are doing –
keep in mind the question “What is happening to the list?” You will find this the
hallmark of the business and the most important aspect of the operation of any
online business.
You are starting to see things a little differently? I hope so. Because most of the
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Most beginning online marketers fail because they truly do not understand the
realities of online marketing. They see or perceive many sales pitches. They think
almost automatically that if someone is doing it and this other someone says they
are making it big, then they must be making it big. They take it a step further. If that
person is making it big, then I can do the same thing to make it big too.
A wise old marketer once said that the online world is nothing but new online
marketers re-writing and re-selling the same old “how to make money online” type
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Again, all I do is set up simple sites that sell simple, affordable and powerful
products, allow others to sell them too, then write and send simple letters. That'
s it
of people, from all walks of life, from all manner and means who happen to be
many people choose this market. There is a reason why most "online" marketers
choose this market segment. There are good numbers of people included in this
market. The prospects of selling something to them are high. If you take a look at
history, in mail order, it was this exact market that resulted in more than a few
people to become absolutely rich. If you look today, you will see the super
successful on the Web, also catering to this market. There are, of course, other
markets that you can concentrate on. This one would be the first place I would look
personally because of the aforementioned facts. There are tons of available mailing
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lists for rent in this market. There are also tons of places to advertise "offline" as
well.
The old saying that within everyone there lies a great novel is true. Well, it may
not be a novel, per say, but rather it might be a "how to book" or a business guide,
compilation piece or other work that can be translated into a product then sold. I
happened to choose to create a product that "cost" me very little, yet the perceived
value is great - a book, or rather, an e-book which is just a fancy name for a book
that is only available via a computer and the Internet. There are also many, many
Many of them allow a "dealer" or "affiliate" to point people to a special web site,
make a purchase and my account gets credited with the sale. There are people
who claim to be making almost half a million a year on the net, selling nothing but
products other people have created. You can start with a product other people
created and work your way up to products you create and then offer a mix, of self-
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Really, if you take a look at my web site you will see what makes it so powerful
is NOT the fancy graphics, links, pictures and layout. What makes it powerful is the
story it tells and the ability it has to make people read the entire sales letter. It is a
story within a sales letter. I doubt any person who is serious about making money
The surprising thing is the entire web site, from inception to putting up the sales
The online world is full of people who are not quite so "enlightened" enough to
realize what is going on yet. Many of these people are intent on NOT using any of
the methods mentioned here but are still relying upon the "traditional" online
marketing methods. As you know, many of which just do not work. Yet still, there
are some 50,000 people who are involved in one way or another in online
marketing. Forget about the fact they are not as "enlightened" as you are now.
They need products to sell. They need to make commissions. They need to do it
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All you need do is place your product for sale on any of the variety of web sites
or "systems" that offer affiliate programs. This means that by doing so you are
giving others the right to sell your products for a commission. By doing this you can
get an army of sales people out there trying to sell your product for you.
I am unsure however; I am told that you can expect a large number of your
sales to arise from affiliates. In other words, if you sell 10,000 copies of your e-
book, up to 9,000 of them might result from sales other people made and to whom
Most of the larger affiliate sites have a small charge to get set up as a seller. But
they also handle all the accounting, sales reporting and commission payments on
your behalf. They tend to charge a small fee per order too. But the ease and safety
longer to begin to drive traffic to your sales site from the major search engines.
Publishing your URL or submitting it to the engines themselves does this. The best
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way is to manually submit. You can though, use a service to do this or a software
package.
I did my first "project" backwards. I wrote several sales letters first, then did my
best to make my product live up to the standards and precepts set in the sales
letters. I have tried letters with as little as 5 sentences. You do not have to write
long, literary masterpieces in order to get your point across. All I do is place a folder
on my PC and start writing, placing each version of the letter in that folder. Realize
that one simple letter, a letter that takes you a few minutes can be a winner and get
This is actually fun. There are several "fine tuning" opportunities you can take
care of on your project. First, of course, is your sales letter. I try as many as 30
versions of letters for a particular project. I change things like headlines, first
sentence, PS and captions. You may have to locate different mailing lists and rent
them to "test" their response rates. Sometimes, not always, I send traffic to a
specific URL or address so I can judge the results almost instantly. I send the
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letters. I sign on and check to see how much traffic goes to that particular address.
Sometimes the price of the product has to be changed to see the overall effect. I
generally start at the bare minimum and work my way upward, keeping a finger on
the "sales pulse" along the way. You want to stop at the highest price that does not
result in too many lost sales. For example, if your purchase to view ratio is .05%
which means that only 5 out of every 1000 visitors buys then this confirms the price
is getting too high. It may also prove that the copy has to be changed.
If you look at some of the really large, very successful sites you will see one
thing. They tend to capture info on their prospect right up front. I know of one site
that generates upwards of 250,000 customers a month and they make it so that
you cannot make a move without "registering" first. They do it via a simple form n
You will need this data as time marches on. It is notable that, in the days of old,
when mail order was king, many successful marketers made money not off any
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initial product order but by subsequent sales over time. The sale of products or
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If you are doing things right, you are very keenly aware of your customers
sell your customers. I enjoy this part. I want to be thought of, in the minds of my
customers to be the guy who literally saved their life, made their life much more
rewarding and otherwise, rescued them from a life that may have not been so
good. I love my customers and really enjoy being the person who can help, assist,
An old "salt" of direct mail marketing told me one time, when I asked "how many
times should I mail to a customer list or in-house built list?" He replied - you mail
and mail, dozens, perhaps even hundreds of times until the numbers go bad. That
means your "back-end": should be endless. For intents and purposes here, you
should be prepared to mail at least 20 times. I have found that 20 seems to be the
"magic number" whereby sales drop off to the diminished point resulting in no
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This not only means follow up to existing customers but also to inquiries, seekers
and anyone else who identifies themselves as being interested in what you have to
offer. I have seen orders come in up to 2 or 3 years after the last mailing went out. I
have seen people order only after receiving about 7 identical mailings over time. It
all depends. The same, exact letter can be mailed multiple times. I have changed a
few things in letters and mailed them again. I may start off a letter with something
like this:
Dear Friend:
This is the third time I am writing to you. I have not seen your order. If you have
ordered recently then please excuse my temporary ignorance. We are very busy
processing incoming orders and so far, people are quite happy with their newfound
silly. I really hate complicated matters. They give me a headache and often not only
the better. No needs for making customers jump through hoops. In my days as a
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mail order guru and expert, I witnessed people who were literally making millions,
who worked form their home, and the "work" they did to make that kind of money
was so simple, it is hard to believe. Would you want to be like someone who stays
at home, picks up the phone once or twice a week, goes to the bank 2 or 3 times a
week to make deposits and spends a few hours a day taking care of business? The
rest of the time is spent thinking of creative ways to make more money. It is not
uncommon for the super wealthy who have used direct marketing as their primary
method of making it big to have plenty of time consuming hobbies, like flying
airplanes, deep sea fishing, collecting antique cars, buying and fixing up upscale
homes and the like. After a few triples, a home run or two you have both the time
and the money to be able to do what you want with your time.
I vowed early on that if I were to "make it big" I was going to write a book entitled
straightforward account of all the steps I took to get there. And this new book, I
would then package into a product itself, and market it too. That may seem extreme
but if you have ever been hungry the thought of going back into a poverty situation
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some of the reasons they do is my sincerity and compelling stories I call my "sales
letters". I try to convey the real story, good, bad or indifferent. I try to show some
good things and point out some bad things too. When I create a sales piece or web
site I do it honestly and in a forthright fashion. I may lose some sales because at
times I am too honest. But I would rather be up-front with people rather than to
make them think my product is going to make them fabulously rich. The truth is I
am not going to "make" them rich at all. They are going to do it for themselves. I am
many of my own days in life, struggling, worrying and hoping for some relief to my
money problems.
By the time one "project" is fully up, operational and making a profit you probably
should be working on the next. The problem is there are only so many hours in a
day, days in a week, and weeks in a year. I wish I could spend ALL my time
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I LOVE IT! I love helping people. I love helping people see that glimmer of hope. I
love knowing that the info I try to give can help tremendously. But, the truth is, if it is
meant to happen, it is also meant to happen in due time. When the student is
"grasshopper". I do not think money makes the man. I know some people with tons
of money for whom I have little respect, or regard. I know some dirt poor people for
whom I have nothing but respect. It all has to do with fundamental values.
I hope you realize by now a big "secret" about success of any endeavor. True
success comes from within. I think you have to be ready. I am not very "religious"
but I am very spiritual in nature. I know deep in my heart that you can be the next
bright shining star in the lives of many others, if you so choose. It is attainable, that
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I once sold newspaper subscriptions door to door. I was part of a "crew" of kids
who got picked up in a van at 4 PM each day, taken to a destination, dropped off to
go knock on doors and tell a sob story about how I was working my way through
school and had a chance to win a new bike, something I never had the chance for
before ... and try to beg that the person who answers the door signed up.
The rules were easy. You got 1 point for each new subscription sold. You
needed 200 points to get that new bike. Of course, you were paid the equivalent of
This was BEFORE the days of telemarketing. I tried to get that job one last time
at about age 16 and the man who ran the business for the newspaper said "Kid ...
when you worked for me you could knock on only 50 doors a night ... I have a office
full of ladies making phone calls and they make 200 calls each night ... they got you
beat by 4 fold.
The following season I tried again. This time the man said, in his New Joisey
accent "Kid, you know those ladies that were making those calls last time?" I said
"yes, what about them". He said "Well, I found out that I could send a simple
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subscription offer along with each newspaper and without any help, I can knock on
I did not realize it but that guy taught me a valuable lesson. I did not realize it
until I became involved in direct mail. In effect, direct mail has the same result of
salespeople who can knock on millions of doors each week if that is your aim. The
That is the power of leverage. That is the power of duplication. That is the power
of direct mail.
I have seen fortunes earned starting with nothing more than a very simple idea,
a product that can be sold and a vehicle by which to sell it. There are only a few
vehicles worth pursuing in my book. They all have to do with direct marketing. And
direct mail ranks at the top for its simplicity, ease and power.
The direct mail business is one of the few I know where you can start small and
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First off, pay a visit to the USPS web site WWW.USPS.COM. There you will find
a plethora of user friendly information, including all about using various forms of
mail. It used to be dealing with the USPS was much like dealing with a "typical"
break room - "Management has decided that effective IMMEDIATELY, there will be
a $10,000 cash fine to ANYONE who is caught actually working" Well, things have
gotten a good deal better both inside and outside the postal service. They are more
user friendly and they have to be. They are faced, like all other big businesses, with
pressures to treat customers right, make it easy for them, etc. so the first stop,
Next, make an appointment with the local Postmaster. Tell him or her you are a
local business that wants to find out all about performing business mail. Chances
are, you'
ll find someone ready, willing and able to answer all your questions, and
point you in the fight direction if they do not have immediate answers. You may
want to make contact too with the local "bulk mail guru". They are usually found at
the bulk mail facilities. Many times questions come up and you realize it will take
too long to get the answers. So a quick call is often what it takes.
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The postal service in general is eager to do business. Like previously stated, the
mail system has progressed in leaps and bounds over the past 20 years. Do you
recall when the prevailing sentiment was that e-mail was going to totally replace the
mail system/? That never happened, thankfully. Most people look upon e-mail as a
There are also some ancillary sites that deal with mailing that you will want to
become familiar with. Just imagine, when you create the simple letter or basic
postcard that works – and all you must do after that is keep your mailings on target
and on schedule. Then you will appreciate the advances that the postal service has
made.
Did you know that you can design direct mail pieces right online, provide the
mailing list and all your mailing can be performed for you from online? It’s true. The
USPS has teamed up with some service providers to perform mailing services. As
of this writing the prices are pretty good for “basic postcards” but are a little pricey
You can get a template, fill it out, provide it to the service along with a mailing
list and of course, proper payment and it will ALL be done for you. This is a case
where the USPS has teamed up with private companies and has made some
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Obtain and Learn How To Use The SRDS Direct Mailing List Guide.
This is a big thick manual that contains info on almost every conceivable mailing
list that is available for rent. Check out SRDS.COM. No matter what niche market,
what type of prospect you are after, chances are you will find that there is a list for
rent. This SRDS direct mailing list book is the source, the "bible" of the direct
mailing industry. The price tag is hefty at about $561 per year, but well worth it
The key elements to focus on with respect to mailing lists are recency,
frequency and unit of cost. Recency is a term used to value how fresh or recent the
names were generated. Obviously, names that were obtained in the last 3 months
are worth more in terms of response than names compiled from a year ago.
Frequency is another term. Multi-buyers mean just that, people who have
purchased not one, but multiple related products. Those that show the propensity to
purchase multiple times usually continue doing that. And unit of cost is another
term for how much they spent. All 3 elements will be clearly stated on the data
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Bear in mind that you can find out what list brokers or managers can help you
best because they tend to focus on specific industries. You can then choose
amongst them when you want to have your lists managed and marketed for a fee!
There are of course alternatives to using the SRDS which may be a bit pricey for
a beginner. A great thing about being in the “business opportunity” space is that
mailing lists for rent are very abundant. I will let you know a little secret that few
others are willing to share. When you are testing a promising mailing campaign
start with the lowest class, cheapest and most abundant names possible. Why?
Because as the quality of the names increases so will your response rates. I try to
use the big, large, readily available lists to test with. If you can turn a profit there,
you can turn a profit anywhere. Sometimes though, it makes you work harder and
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A list broker is the person who assists a direct marketing or direct mail outfit locate
and rent suitable mailing lists. They typically work off of a percentage commission,
of 15% or 20%.
A list manager on the other hand represents the direct marketing company'
s
asset, their mailing list to the rest of the marketing world. They too work off a
commission.
What'
s the difference? Suppose you are a direct mail marketing company and
you have 100,000 names of buyers each quarter. You figure you want to capitalize
on this resource and rent them out for a fee to the other marketing companies. You
do this through the services of a list manager. The manager compiles all the info
about your list. They make up "data cards" so that with a glance, list brokers can tell
if your list meets the requirements for rentals. The list manager will typically prefer
that you send you list to a "service bureau. The lists are put on the service
companies computers. The list manager publishes details about the lists to other
brokers and managers. When a company tells their broker they want to rent your
list, this generates a fax or phone call to the list manager. The list manager then will
request of the service company the required number of names be delivered to the
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requestor'
s appropriate address on the format required too ( tape, disk, print, labels
). The list manager receives payment from the broker, who receives payment from
request. Each month the list management company sends the list owner, you in
this case, a check and a report of the list rental activity. There are variations to this.
Some list owners want to give the okay before granting the okay for any rentals.
They may even ask for a copy of the sales literature going out to the list. This is a
good way to get ideas and to see what others are doing to achieve success. Some
list management / rental firms just do the renting without regard to the giving of the
Lists typically rent for $80 to $120 per 1,000 depending on the lists qualities.
Generally, there is a minimum rental too of 5,000 names. You can get the names
List managers can also act as list brokers and vice versa. The rental
agreements are much like that of real estate brokerage. There is a pre-defined,
customary agreement, who gets paid what on a rental deal. So that leaves us to a
very important question. Who can qualify as a list broker, list manager or both?
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Good question grasshopper! There is no easy answer. The typical "spin" put on
by list managers as to whom they will pay a commission is "any list broker
There are some list managers that specialize in one and only one type of list.
They may have 100 list rental customers for whom they manage their list rentals.
Each month a listing is produced of the total number of names available on each
rental firm'
s house list. In addition, the "hot list" or hotline is the previous 3 months
accumulated names. They all eventually go on the master list for the firm in
question. The most recent the names, the more valuable, sought after, and
You can make money renting your own names when you get real "buyer" names
and addresses. You probably need to be generating at least 5,000 new names per
every 3 months. Anything other than this really is not worth the time of the list
The question is "do you really want to rent your list to your competitors?". The
answer is, it depends. One school of thought is that the people on the list already
bought from you so why not, it generates extra revenue for doing, nothing. The
other school of thought is, heck no, why would I give the competition the results of
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the option to review and give the okay on all incoming rentals. Let me tell you, it
may sound good on the outset but after a few weeks worth of reviewing fazes you
Then, there'
s the third point of view that says "the more often a list is mailed to,
even from competitors, the more responsive it becomes for everyone! This one you
It is thrilling to get a big fat letter in the mail with a big fat check along with a
listing of all the rentals your list made for the month!
I suggest you utilize the services of a good list manager that already represents
lists of a similar nature. They have the build-in contacts and can get your list
of waiting al the time and spending all the energy to locate them all yourself, all you
need do is find someone who already knows. It saves time, money and energy
There are just a few more important aspects of lists I want to share with you. I'
ve
both rented my fair share of lists and marketed my own lists. The lists must be all
actual buyers. I will give you example "response rates" and the difference. I once
rented a cold, out of house, general purpose, inexpensive list for a promotion I was
doing. The list cost just $40 per 1000. I rented 400,000 names. The response rate
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to this list was good at just short of 2%. If you know about direct mail, you can
make good money at just a 2% response rate. I then rented some expensive, hot
buyer lists. They rented for $110 per 1000. The response rate of this list was 7%.
The cost was more than double but so was the response rate. Which list was
better? The $110 one was by far. Remember that small increments in response
rates have a much greater effect on the bottom line. The response rate was more
than 3 times better but the cost was less than 3 times the cost of the first list!
You can too try to rent your own list out to others. You can act as broker,
years stuck to doing that and only that and have made good money. But, like
vehicle you use to get your sales info out in front of people who will rent the list!
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From experience I can honestly say that I have not found one "guru" who was
teaching, saying or promoting anything that I could not find out on my own, free,
elsewhere. You have to remember that online marketers are there to sell you a
product or service. They make them sound so good too. It is easy to want their
products. Some offer good tips and techniques. Some offer great software
products. Not all-online marketing gurus are bad people. They are in business to
One surf through the net and you are likely to encounter quite a few “guru”
types. You can spot them a mile away …. Lately they are all trying to get you to join
their conference call. If anything is going to give online marketing a bad name it is
the reputation it is getting from some of these guru types. They are turning a
appears to be nothing more than a confidence game. I hate it when I venture onto a
web site and get pounded with “do this and money will flow to you like water” . On
the other hand, you can be proud of a business that sells a web based product but
utilizes direct mail to make the sales. You won’t have to listen to any “guru” type
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All you need is a bit of success and feedback that the path you are on can lead
to great success. At that point you are going to have much more faith and belief in
my methods are. If you build your knowledge by surfing and learning online, YOU
are going to be you own net marketing guru. A little success and others are going
The concept of “breaking even” is “winning” alone is worth its weight in gold. I
guess that you could actually take that concept and apply it in business as a
consultant. Do you remember Steve Martin in the movie “The Jerk” ? The
character Steve was playing was dejected thinking he was a big failure. If you
felt sorry for himself. He could not get anyone’s weight correct. He always had to
give out a prize. He was totally deflated when the manager came over to talk to
him. The manager told him that he was not a failure at all. No, because the prizes
cost the carnival 25 cents each and Steve was charging 50 cents to guess the
weight. Each time he was wrong – he made a 25 cent profit! Steve brightened up
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and all was okay after that, well, sort of. He had many other issues and problems to
The moral of the story behind “The Jerk” as it applies to marketing? Well, things
are not often exactly how they appear on the outside. Many times the “secrets”
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We covered this before. We, as marketers always want to sell products that
OTHER PEOPLE WANT. Wants and desires are things. The best way to provide
some sort of satisfaction is through educational products in the form of e-books and
other info products. If you are like me and target the “opportunity” crowd you must
realize that this market segment has always been great, good times or bad.
If you develop a good process, strategy, method of making money , then this is
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Using a simple word processor al you need do is write, edit and then create your
e-book. I do it in the KISS method. Keep It Simple Silly. Once the test is created the
process I use is to print the file to a "special" printer. The software I use is actually a
print driver. Once you print to the special printer - a PDF e-book is created as
output. It'
s this PDF file that is the crux of the e-book.
The amazing part of this business is that there are no limits to the amount of e-
I keep things very simple. I will detail the exact steps later. It is as simple as
printing your document on a “special” print driver that then actually creates a file on
your computer.
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The engine that pulls the train is my ability to drive traffic to the site using direct
mail. If you were to watch me on any given day you will see me creating and
sending first class letters and postcards. You will see me producing quantities of
mail using automated methods. You will also witness me make deals on having
the word “qualified”. If a person has enough desire to read your letter or postcard,
save it then go to your web site to see more info … they are “super” qualified. That
beats getting hits from mildly interested people from the net any day!
While online marketers are busy trying to figure things out, I stay busy and
idea. I am not listening to some really stupid approach as taught on the net. I
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I can think of no fewer than 17 projects I would like to pursue right now. I aim to
get to actually work on some of them. I guess, the thing to do is rank them in terms
of how important they are to me that I do them. But this sure drives the point home
that in this gig there is NEVER a lack of work if you want it.
Can you think of a potential market where this might NOT work? It’s easier to
find things that might not work because, truthfully, I can devise a way to make it
work rather easy. It may have to be tweaked or changed slightly to fit the
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Simple Letters
I am going to give you some examples of simple letters I have used to offer
THIS e-book.
• * * * * Letter # 1
Dear Friend:
What if I told you that recently I have discovered a unique, workable, realistic way
All I do is mail very simple letters, much like this letter in order to make sales of my
web based product. The letters point people with an interest to a web site – the web
site does the selling – and all the rest is handled for me automatically!
Some are calling it the easiest business on earth. I am finding it the best business I
ever got involved in – it’s not MLM, money-making schemes or anything like that.
To find out more go to WWW.SimpleLetters.Com today! You will find a robust, free
report that will give you all the glorious details. Thanks
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* * * Sample Letter # 2
Dear Friend:
Are you walking past a fortune that is sitting within your personal computer?
Ever since home computers have become popular people have been trying various
ways to make money using their home PC. I believe I have found “the better way”.
All I do is write and send simple letters ( a child can do it ). The letters drive people
to a web site, the web site does the real work and all the “Selling”. All I have to do is
write and send letters. With a little luck, this simple letter, the one you are now
reading may make me a cool $50,000 extra. The amazing thing is, there’s hardly
any competition and it’s a business you can be proud of. It’s nothing to do with
MLM or network marketing or any of those other “scam” sounding things. To get
WWW.SimpleLetters.Com to get your free added info about this amazing opportunity.
Thanks
PS. Does it work? All I do is write ( takes about 1/2 hour ) simple letters and send
them ( I am planning to have 100,000 letters sent this year alone ) I’ll say it works,
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The main point is the letters do not have to be sophisticated at all. In fact, the
more simple, the better! Of course, there will be times when a very short letter
may not be enough to get your point across and to have the desired effects.
Then, you want to experiment with longer letters of a more complex design. I
like to stick to the bare minimum. There is an old direct marketing saying that
says “the more you tell, the more you will sell” that refers to the length of a sales
letter. The idea is that if someone is interested enough, they will read every
word. Further I’ve heard it explained that the purpose or goal of a headline is to
get the reader to focus on the first word of the first sentence. And the first word’s
goal or job is to get the reader to focus on the first entire sentence. Then the
first sentence task if to get the reader to read the next sentence and so on. Bear
in mind that I stick to one goal, to get the reader to get o the web site and that is
basically it. That can be accomplished in one sentence or one small letter.
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Basic Postcards
Postcards can be invaluable too. They can be used when you only need a little
bit of space on which to tell your story in order to get the reader to visit your site. In
most cases, postcards will work well for Web based selling strategies. When I say
“basic” postcards I mean black ink on inexpensive paper stock that are inexpensive
to produce or print. The more basic the better. The goal is to drive people to the
web site. If that can be done with a single color black and white postcard, all the
better.
typical “simple letter”. I will give you a sample version of a basic postcard that
Investigative Author Blows the Lid Off “Get Rich Using The Internet” Plans
… finds anyone can enjoy the easiest business on earth regardless of the
How many times have you wished you could find a workable, honest and easy
business you can perform from home that still has the potential like it was a big
business? No, I am not talking about MLM scams or “How to get rich” scams. All I
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do is write and send simple letters and basic postcards ( just like this one ) that
direct people to a special web site. The web site does all the selling. I never have to
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Direct Ad Strategy
It is possible to drive traffic to a particular web site using ads. They can be in the
form of classified ads or even space ads. Of course the goal would be to determine
their cost effectiveness. For ages, classified ads outperformed any other form of
advertising from the cost perspective. I must have placed tens upon tens of
thousands of dollars worth of classified ads for various projects. At best, some
Testing is the key to making ads work. One must test headlines, attention
grabbers and offers. Naturally, if your goal is to obtain visits to a web site that has
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asinine methods that are taught on the web about online marketing! You are getting
an education that you will never find anywhere else. Mai order is not dead. It can be
the fastest, safest, surest route to ultimate success. Do you care if most people
think mail order is dead? Maybe it’s better that most people still believe that,
because it’ll make it all the more powerful for us, those who know the truth!
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Getting Help
There are few resources that you can call upon to get real help. You can
however, get all kinds of help in mastering the art and science of mail order and
direct mail. In the circumstance where you believe you have a winner and have
been testing it and still need help … I’ll be glad to step in and help you out! I am not
kidding. We might then both profit handsomely from the efforts. There are a few
caveats though.
First, please do not write to me and tell me “Hey, well, I think I have this idea
that, ah, well, might work but maybe it won’t, but, etc”. I will not probably even
respond. See, we are all adults here. We realize that our own success is our own
doing. We do not make excises and, we always do our homework. There have
been many projects I’ve worked on until 2:00 AM, never knowing if it was going to
be a success or not. Plenty of hours burning the proverbial midnight oil. I have
never once blamed anyone but myself for my failures. And I have had plenty of
failures.
Please do not waste my time or yours with just an “idea” that you might have.
On the other hands, if you are a real player and have done your homework, have
tested things, have sourced lists, have written and tested simple letters, basic
postcards and have your web site up to snuff and you still need help – let me
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know. I love to work with motivated, savvy entrepreneurs. We all know that
the positive side, we know how to enjoy the fruits of our success, for we have
earned it. For help in accordance with this issue, please feel free to e-mail me –
John @ SimpleLetters.Com. It may take a little bit to get back in touch with you, but
I will.
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Remember, Costs of Direct Mail and the Web Have Become Almost Equal
The true "costs" of success on the web have inched up and overtaken the costs
of direct mail. I believe that as of this writing, direct mail, as a marketing medium is
BETTER and more COST EFFECTIVE than straight web based marketing. Sure,
you can get a few "Free" visits by simply listing your site on search engines. But
that is no longer going to cut it. Come to think of it, we have to define success. I
think a good level of success with this is to gain the ability to sell about 5,000 of
your product. I think a stellar success is anything over 15,000 units of sale. And I
define mega-success as anything over 20,000. Just think, 20,000 units and if each
unit sells for $10 that is $200,000 in gross profits. In the days of old, in direct mail
I have done a great deal of research about "traditional" web based marketing. A
super success is translated to sales of over 5,000 units. Okay success is between
2,000 and 5,000 units and a mild success is anything up to 2,000 units. That is the
current state of "straight" web based selling. I think the only shot in the world
anyone has in doing more is by tapping the incredible power of direct mail. It
became quite evident after talking to many people who tried various aspects of
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traditional online marketing that most of the quick, easy, cheap ways that are touted
This e-book is NOT about using online methods at all. It’s about using a direct
mail strategy. I’m sure, if you devoted the time, energy and money you could devise
methods that work online only. I can come to a conclusion that in reality, what you
have to do to become successful online is going to cost you. Yet, I hope you have
learned many facts, strategies and methods that you can call upon if you decide to
go that route.
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It happens all the time. Product ideas, e-book ideas, web site ideas get "ripped
off". Just when you least expect it, your attention gets drawn to a new web site
touting a product that is very, very similar to yours. This is called in the industry the
"copycat" method. Some lazy marketers think the thing to do it copy what someone
else is doing. That way they do not have to put in any "sweat equity" in producing a
product. They may buy yours, change the words around and remarked it. It'
sa
all my ducks lined up, so to speak, so that when the marketing trigger is pulled, the
One of the benefits of using direct mail is that your info does not necessarily get
tossed around the net at record speeds so that every person who WILL rip you off
will know about your projects. There is a layer of privacy and secrecy in direct mail.
Sure they ARE going to learn of your success - but hopefully, AFTER you have
made a home run hit! By the time someone decides to "rip you off" by creating and
selling a similar product, you have made it to the bank already. Direct mail allows
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So my advice is not to be too eager to get the “online” part of your process
going. You can always go back after your main process is up, running and making
profits.
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The challenge of building the largest list, in the least amount of time, using the
least amount of money is the key. The better you are at controlling costs, the better.
The faster you can build the list, the better. The list is the asset most sought after in
your business. The person with the largest list usually wins. That brings about an
important point. It is possible to create a "system" whose only job it is to build the
list.
You know that many “online” email lists are built using pop-ups and the like. You
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The question of “how to price a product” looms large in the mind of every
marketer. The answer is, it all depends. But for the most part, since the traffic you
drive to your site will not have the luxury of surfing for hours comparing prices. And,
since your product will most likely be “one of a kind” you are free to produce your
There will be a price however, that accounts for maximum profits. What that
price is depends on the subject, the availability of other such related materials and
the target market. You can start at a reasonable, comparable price and adjust up
Sometimes your goal is to build the largest database. In that case, success will
come from a somewhat lower price. But be careful not to lower it too much as to
“under value” it in the eyes of the purchaser. A lot of psychology comes into play. If
The fact that you can set your own price coupled with the aforementioned facts
makes this a very interesting business. You can charge whatever you see fit. But
remember, adjustments to price will have their net affects on the profit picture.
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You have to take it all into consideration. Since the cost of delivering and
packaging a product are negligible, it should have no real impact on the profits. In
direct mail with actual paper and ink products, the cost of fulfillment must be taken
into account.
I price my products fairly. Some say they are a bit higher than expected. Others
say I price them too low. One good measure is of course, sales figures. How many
visitors are being converted to sales? At what price point do sales drop off?
By now you realize that this is hard work but nothing you cannot accomplish.
You have a right to be paid and paid handsomely for your work. This is what makes
direct marketing so powerful. Your unique product, not available anywhere else in
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will be your favorite too. The amazing power in a business like this is it requires
only a tiny amount of seed money. The seed money goes to testing and perfecting.
But once you work up something that produces a profit - all you have to do is slowly
increase your business. If it is mailing that produces results for you, then start
small. Send 100 letters at first. Capture your profits, build your list and work that list.
Then take the profits and do more mailings. You can easily double and triple your
mailing of 1000 might bring in enough to perform a 4,000 mailing. Soon, using the
profits from each subsequent mailing you can build to 100,000 at a clip. When you
are mailing in numbers in the tens of thousands you are preparing the way for a
home run. That'the beauty of this business. You work on tweaking your approach
so that x amount of dollars initially invested brings in 2x in return. It does not take
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Method 1. Offer something FREE as a side benefit and make it so the product is
recipient the fact they are about to receive yet another letter, soon!
Method 3. Send your mail out timing it so it arrives on a Friday. The lowest mail
day by volume is Monday for some reason. Time your mailings so they arrive
Monday or Tuesday.
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Once you have a "success" under your belt it is far easier to obtain your next,
subsequent success. Let each experience feed and foster the nest, positive
experience. It may sound silly at first but many successful marketers got that way
by learning how to build on their own success stories. A prime example is Gary
Halbert, who made it big in a traditional "mail order / direct mail business". He went
on to publish one of the most widely read newsletters on the subject of direct mail -
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toward fulfilling your needs along lines of self-publishing, internet marketing, e-book
authoring, etc. Sorry, it’s limited to US addresses only for right now. Go to
WWW.UnlimitedWealth.Com/Subscribe today!
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The "traditional" world of online marketing has its share of problems. It also has
its share of small things that work a little bit, but that can add up to become a big
help. I'
ve yet to find one, and only one avenue, technique, method that solves ALL
problems. Even direct mail has its limits. It is a little harder to execute. But the
rewards can be far greater than that of straight "traditional" online marketing.
We covered it a little bit in another section. You recall it was when I went on a
mini-tirade about the hype that often surrounds online marketing. I have put
together a resource page for the things that I feel can help, assist and better your
online marketing experience. But bear in mind I am not saying you can get rich by
any means doing online marking, especially "traditional" online marketing how it'
s
taught.
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Recommended Reading
If one thing is certain it is the fact that most successful direct marketers, both
online and off, have a success library and do a lot of reading, learning and
education.
I have prepared a short list of books, courses and materials that I have found
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per 1000 to mail our offer. Why not offer, as a service, other people to "ride along"
with your mailing for half that amount? This way, if you share your expenses you
each only pay $150 per 1000. Why not let a third, or fourth business ride along too?
That way, you can mail for $75 or less! Heck, why not then let 3 others mail along
with you for a total of 4 mailers. You charge them 1/3 each. If a mailing costs $300
per 1000 and each pay $100 - you in effect have gotten your mail out...
ABSOLUTELY FREE!
I have seen this done before. Is it legal, honest? What I would be concerned
about is does it make economic sense for each mailer? Are the offers too similar?
Does one detract from the other? IT might be possible to do it even when the offers
ARE similar. Why not start your own co-op mailing service?
I offer this to my best customers. I try to be as fair about the cost splits as
possible, but you have a right to "earn" some money, even if it is in the form of a fee
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some more. Then I urge them to test very slowly the co-op mailing program! Verify,
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What To Do Next
If I were you I would start studying, real hard. Life is like an exam. When it'
s time
to take the test, you had better be ready and well studied.
I'
ve given you resource pages loaded with links. Take the time to gain as much
insight, knowledge and power contained from reading though to all those links.
Paint a picture, get a feeling in your mind and your heart. This is it.
The next thing I would do, aside from “preparing” is to take some action. I would
focus on a product you want to sell this way. It can be a product someone else
produces or a self-created one. Sit down and write the best simple letter you can
possibly as if you were going to mail it out the same day. I always put some self-
created pressure on myself. I try to act like I have to write one letter and my life
literally depends on it. If I send 100 letters out and do not get one visit, one sale,
then I will literally be shot by firing squad. I do my best under pressure. Then set
that letter aside and write another one, this time with a different approach. What
you are trying to do is come up with the elements of your eventual tests. What
headlines work best with which body copy and which overall approach works best.
I find that writing the simple letters keep me motivated. I try to add or write a new
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By this time your mind is churning with profit potentials. As well it should be! But
I want to point out a couple of things. First, now that you know the power of using
direct mail and other “offline” methods you undoubtedly are going to do your own
research on the web about related topics. You are not going to find a lot of info on
the subject, just dribs and drabs, here and there. You will though, find info on a
couple of people who have amassed tons of profits using these methods. If it
wasn’t for this e-book, you probably would let that info fly by you without really
taking notice. I really would like for you to go to the major search engines and
marketing” just to satisfy both you and me, that there is real power in these
methods. I guess everyone else is too busy doing all that techno stuff, to pay close
attention. But they SHOULD pay attention, as you now know. I am going to give
Right now, since direct mail is still “dead” in the hearts and minds of many online
marketers it won’t be that way for long. And that is where you can profit
buying and selling “mailing lists” for direct mail business. In fact, it is almost industry
standard and makes the business what it is today. Yet, there are few mailing lists
available that are specifically geared for this new “old” way of doing business.
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For example … do you think anyone would be interested in renting your list if
you could provide a list of super affiliates? They sure would. That list would be a
gold mine in itself. It may not be a big list but it could provide revenue for many
years if kept up to date. How do you build a list like that? Well, one good way I
already mentioned – trade others for it. I’ve built large lists by “trading” others for
their names on a one for one basis. Simply e-mail them, call them or send mail ….
How about the income potential if you owned a list of “web based home
business product buyers”? These would be names and addresses of others who
have purchased e-books after having been sent good old regular mail! Hmmm, I
would be interested in renting your list if you built one like that! I’m sure every other
You could probably build a list of every possible facet of the online-offline
business and get it rented. For example – online buyers of domain names, online
buyers of hosting services, etc. The list of potential lists is almost endless.
process of building a list of “list dealers” including those with lists that are willing to
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trade, rent or sell lists. This is a perfect “ground floor” opportunity to really build a
business. Just think for one moment …. The person or persons who produces or
builds the biggest lists, wins in the game of online OR offline marketing. List
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I will take you through the basic steps I did when decided to start, own and
Necessity is the mother of invention. I got started in the direct mail business not
because I wanted to make a fortune in the business but rather because that'
s what
I ended up doing. Two other guys and I decided we were going to get into "some
kind" of computer related business. At the time, the Web was not really there yet.
This was a few years before the first "online" services like Prodigy, AOL and
CompuServe.
business experience as well. We called one of the well known "corporation shops"
While we defining exactly WHAT we were going to specialize in, work started
flowing toward us. At first, we got calls from people who needed their computer
systems fixed, upgraded or set-up properly to work. That was good but nothing we
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One of us had an idea to create a "local" BBS service geared for one of the
nation’s largest industries - the Real estate brokerage business. We got out heads
together laid out the specs for a new BBS that would allow anyone to log on, view
listings of houses for sale, get real estate agent info, town info, etc. As things went,
it was a pretty sophisticated piece of software. The partner who did the
programming really knew what he was doing and he quickly came up with a
technical solution to the problem - give home shoppers a clever, neat, efficient way
First, you need a trunk of phone lines. There is no sense having someone call you
only to find the line busy. Then you need some fancy hardware, multi-port modem
technology. That set us back about $2000. And as long as you have a good
commission, who would call on real estate agents, brokers, and multiple listing
services to get their inventory online. The cash flow model was to have each "lister"
pay a small fee to have their home online. This would include pictures, maps, etc.
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We interviewed a handful of candidates but nobody wanted to do it. First off, few
people understood the idea. Next, nobody wanted to even try it on a commission
only basis.
Within a few months of doing "odd computer jobs" coding some software,
installing systems, etc., along came America Online. Our original idea was left in
what we had to offer, we decided to let the market dictate to us what was needed. It
worked. As we went along we just asked "do you have any needs that a couple of
computer guys could handle for you?" We got immediate results. The first business
need a way of contacting every surgical team in the country and Canada to send
them my brochure and catalog - can you guys help me?" We sure were able to. Our
first capital purchase was an old IBM 4019 laser printer. It was the boss, in its day.
The reason we needed this machine was ... it had an option, an electronic envelope
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We did not even have an official "office" yet so we set-up shop in that vendors
office. We would go in, a few hours at a time and print envelopes, then take them to
a retiree who would stuff them. The client was happy. We were happy. We found a
good business that only required some doing ( computer work ) and we got all the
software ( envelope printing products ) and the hardware ( our 4019 unit ) for less
than $1000. But in a few short weeks we made back the small investment and then
some.
Incidentally, the clients managed to control and dominate the entire market in
their particular niche by using direct mail. Their system was simple. Send specialist
surgeons great deals on surgical equipment. The surgical team would call an 800
number to place the order; it would be drop-shipped from the manufacturer. The
client built a multi-million dollar business from doing this over, and over and over
again.
money in our own direct mail campaign. We put out postcards that went something
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Let our super fast, inexpensive "mailing" service help you identify and obtain new
The calls came rolling in. All sorts of businesses, including real estate agents and
offices, dentist and doctors offices, retail businesses, restaurants, etc. Each time a
letter was prepared or processed by us, we made a few cents. The amazing thing
was once you got the technique down it was really easy work.
We became one of our own best customers. We essentially obtained new clients,
new work, by utilizing our own mailing services. We never, ever placed an ad, did
On top of doing all of that work for outside clients we developed an interest in
large scale direct mail marketing. This means utilizing the mail to make sales of a
particular product or service. Our fist product was a book about marketing. So in its
busiest time we had work from many outside clients, our own "mailing service"
mailing campaigns and our own "direct marketing" branch of the business. Things
I want to now tell you the steps needed to go from small, one laser printer, and
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Bear in mind that you may take alternate routes. This is just the basic we
First, unless you have unlimited sources of money you have to start somewhere
this business. But you can get started for a lot less.
There are only a few elements of direct mail services. I categorize them along
three lines. The software, the hardware and the process. Let'
s look at each one.
The postal service made changes that offloaded a lot of the "work" that they had
to do onto the customer. I do not know what they were thinking but they did. The
premise is the more "work" a customer does in preparation of their mail, the less it
is going to cost the customer. You do this by using software and specialized
In the old days mail was sorted by hand, packaged and identified by "stickers"
placed on the rubber band bundled packets. It was sorted by Zip Code. The advent
of easy to use software made this job a lot easier. Instead of having to first produce
the finished mailing and then sorting it, the list gets sorted and the mail gets printed
in proper order. This saves a lot of time. So the majority of the "processing" is done
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by a regular PC using "mailing" software and the pre-sorted list is then sent to a
Let'
s go through a typical mailing slowly so you get the idea.
The printing for the mailing is complete. For our example it consists of an
envelope, a reply envelope, two brochures and a sales letter. Each of the items that
goes into a mailing gets set-up on a high-speed envelope inserter. The main
envelope goes in one stack. The reply envelope in another. Each of the brochures
go onto two stacks and the sales letter into another stack. A press of a button and
some fine tuning and whammo - at speeds up to 20,000 per hour, the brochures
get slapped together and folded and then sent down a conveyor. It combines with
the sales letter that gets sucked into the machine and folded. Then the package is
put together with a reply envelope and all of this is stuffed into the main envelope,
the glue strip is wetted with a special liquid and out on the end pops finished and
Bear in mind that the envelopes are plain but can be pre-printed with either
postal permit indicia, return address, etc. But the address of the recipient is blank.
addresses applied. You know that if you tried this at home with your ink-jet or laser
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printer, you'
d be there for 3 weeks trying to print addresses on 20,000 letters. This
is how it'
s done. The majority of the time there is use of a special high-speed
printer. But wait, before we print we have to take the time to process the list, so that
it meets postal guidelines and is pre-sorted. Why print random names and
addresses and then have to physically sort them again, why not print in proper
order?
Now you are thinking like a big mailer! See it takes a little getting used to but the
Please refer to the section on making the USPS your friend for more info about
the classes of mail, permits available, etc. Naturally, if you are from another
country, your procedures will vary. You can always though, utilize the mail system
This particular mailing is going to a rented list of 20,000 prospects. These are
highly qualified prospects as they are buyers of product similar to what we are
The raw names get loaded into a software program that is "certified" by the
postal service as being able to process, pre-process, sort and reprocess mail.
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The files get loaded into a data file on the PC. The software program is fired up.
A menu pops up and gives a step by step approach to processing this list. First
thing it does is VERIFY that every address on the list is indeed an address that
exists on the postal service list of known, valid addresses. Those that are not, it
attempts to correct. At the same time, since it is reading each name / address, it is
also going to append the ZIP+4 info into the file itself. You know those last 4 digits
that get lopped onto a zip code that nobody really cares about but are needed
somehow? Well, the post office needs them to make their life easier. They know
exactly where and address is, in any particular town by those zip+4 identifiers. So
the first run is to "clean" the addresses. The software fixes those that it can and
flags the ones it cannot as "bad" addresses. In addition, the file now has all 9 zip
The addresses are verified and the new file, with only good addresses is
produced. This file also has every zip+4 appended to it. Now comes the time to sort
and pre-sort the file. The file needs to be sorted, not the mailing itself!
In the old days mailings were produced then they were physically sorted
A few clicks of the mouse and the file gets placed into a new file, this time in
perfect sorted order. The software also does some other really neat things. It allows
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you to put in specifications like how much each mail piece weighs, how thick each
one is and it then calculates how many mailing trays, cartons or bags are needed to
For the most part, our operation was based using "standard" mail. So, to get
empty trays we just paid our nearest bulk facility a call, and asked for 300, 400, 500
So now the mailing list is sorted, and processed. The software calculates the
degree of saturation, sorting and calculates the postage costs. It also produces the
Then, using the software, a mock envelope is bought up on the computer, and
the desired location of the address, return address, any graphics and marks to be
It'
s time to print, in perfect sorted order. There are options on the software so a
special identifier gets stuck on particular envelopes. The software knows how much
a bunch of envelopes weighs and how thick they are, so it knows how many should
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Back to the printing part we left off at before. Not just any printer will do a fast,
accurate job at printing envelopes. There are several manufacturers who specialize
in high speed envelope printers. Our first printer was a Pitney-Bowes W700. It was
capable of printing about 10,000 addresses on envelopes per hour. Most of the
printers have their basis in ink-jet technology. So many of them use the standard
were going to design a printer to do a special job, like to only print envelopes it
does not have to move that fast or too often. I mean, the print heads do not have to
go, from lets say the top of an 8.5 x 11 inch page to the bottom and back and forth.
It only has to apply an address. Most addresses are small in size, perhaps 50
characters long and only 3 or 4 lines from top to bottom. So the printer does not
have to be built to move a lot, it just has to move a little, but at much faster speeds.
There are printers that "stack" print heads along the path of a mail piece so that
each print head stays stationary but only has to "spray" ink for about 50 characters.
While one head does this line, the others do the other lines. So one pass produces
a full, complete address but it can be done at supersonic speeds. There are also
other options for these type Printers. Fast drying ink can be used for jobs that
require the ink to dry faster than when the piece runs off the conveyor. In other
words, while the mail stacks up at the end of the process, if the ink takes too long to
dry it can smudge. And the postal service does not like smudged addresses. Their
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machines cannot read it too well. And, if it happens enough, your entire mail can be
rejected.
So here you are, a big stack of blank envelopes already stuffed and a high
speed printer ready to accept them one by one off a stacker or elevator. You get to
the software and hit "print" the first 1000 but you select "test print" for the first few
and inspect the finished printing on the first 3 envelopes. Looks good, let her rip! So
in a matter of minutes, the names/ addresses of the 1st 1000 on your list, in proper
order, get printed. You see the mark and take the first stack and place it into the
tray. Then the next, and you continue this process until the entire mailing is printed.
Oh, I almost forgot. Those little "bar codes" that are on most mail in the US?
Well, those are also needed in order to get discounts. But luckily your printer
software takes the delivery point bar code and creates the graphic bar code and
It is the amount and degree of this pre-processing that the postal service
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Once the mailing is trayed, the bard-coded tray tags then get printed. These get
slipped in into the little plastic holder on the end of the tray. It tells the postal service
Not bad you say! It actually sounds like fun, getting this equipment all to work in
harmony and efficiently. It is fun when you create a well-oiled "mailing machine" of
First, you are going to have to get a permit. I think today a permit costs $150 per
year. This gives you the right to mail without applying postage. You just print the
"postage indicia" that comes along with the permit. Usually, the software you get
will do this for you. There is an application fee too. So the first year it'
s gonna cost
you about $300 just for the permits. If you are going to mail first class or first class
pre-sorted you are going to need more permits. The best resource I can point you
to is your local Postmaster or bulk mail center. Generally, the larger post offices
have a bulk mail department. But your local Postmaster, the manager of the entire
There'
s more. More rules and regulations. I won'
t go into detail because I do not
want to deter you from doing it if you think you might. There'
s a thing called Merlin.
Merlin is a mechanism, a machine that the postal service uses to make sure you
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mail is prepared to its standards. It will tell you, for instance if your bar codes are
acceptable. The next thing you should be aware of is the trays themselves, usually
have to be strapped and sometimes wrapped in plastic. There are sources for this
Next, you should be aware of the special discounts afforded to mailers who do
even more work. For example, if you have a permit at your local post office but your
bulk mail ends up going to a regional facility for processing, it might make sense to
get a permit to mail within the regional facility to begin with. It can result in more
discount if you mail directly to them. These are the big processing centers with
trucks going in and out all times of the day. There are typically no local mail carriers
working, just big rigs and rough and ready workers moving massive amounts of
mail.
So what can you expect to pay to get started? We covered the permit fees. They
vary from time to time so they may have gone up by the time you go to get one. A
great place to view is the USPS Web site. It has a ton of info available. Of course,
you local Postmaster would be the place I would want to start. A high speed,
special envelope printer can set you back easily $10,000. I have seen them sold on
Ebay for less than $1000 used. Look for Rena systems, Rena, Pitney Bowes,
Ascom-Hasler and Bryce as the main manufacturers. There are several web sites.
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equipment. They sell used machines too. Same thing applies to automatic
envelope stuffers. RENA, Neopost, Pitney Bowes, Ascom-Hasler and Bryce. I did a
search on Ebay with the search terms "Printer Bryce" , "Printer Pitney Bowes" and
"Printer Rena" and got tons of hits for used equipment. An envelope machine might
It depends on how many different forms of mailings you are going to do. You
might need a "tabbing" machine for self-mailers. Please visit the web page
WWW.SimpleLetters.Com/Resources/ for more info. I have put all the links that
may have otherwise been strewn throughout this book on the page to make it easy
for you.
Incidentally, if YOU are going to be a good customer and make money by doing
mailing - it may pay to advertise your mailing services locally. A tiny bit of effort
I did not cover any of the mundane topics like getting set up as a business,
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Be sure to check out some of the links I just mentioned. There are even forums
and boards where people pose, ask and answer questions related to mailing
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There are some FABULOUS business ideas, plans and promotions on the web.
I have seen some with million dollar potential. There are also a lot of "do this and
get rich" stuff that does not make sense. The key is to know a good idea, plan or
It always pays to "overlay" my offer, book, idea or business plan with the following
question. "If THIS is so good, why then, is not this person just doing it, instead of
Let'
s apply that concept to THIS BOOK that you are now reading. The answer is
the author ACTUALKY DOES the methods, strategies and techniques outlined
here.
I have seen many an "e-book" tout some clever concept. "The easy way to
mega-millions of free hits to your web site" or something like that. Ask yourself the
following question "If that chap had the ability to draw mega-millions of hits to his
gobs of money".
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There are some stellar, fabulous ideas about where the net is headed. If I had to
guess, I would say that prices are going to continue to get lower, information is
going to grow in leaps and bounds and the entire online experience is going to
change drastically.
Remember when they said Web Television was going to be all the rage? It
never really, really happened. I guess the reason is, people would rather use
latest rage was a valiant effort but it did not really, really take off.
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You are going to LOVE this section. I have to warn you though; the "secret" site
may not be totally ready by the time you read this. But it WILL be ready within a
This e-book explores the enormous potentials and powers of the methods
outlined. Most of the time, when you read an e-book you are left with the looming
question "what do I do next?" and the rest of the story is up to you, totally.
Most authors have one thing as a goal, and that is to sell you some new "info"
Instead of constantly sending you e-mail marketing messages from now until the
proverbial cows come home. The "secret" site, which you will have access to is
called...
USPS.Com
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I put myself in the same place as most people reading this e-book for the first
time. A new reader would say, fine, well and good, but how do I get started? I have
to track down all the resources, make the deals, get things rolling and otherwise
I know what your reaction is ….. that is the US Postal Service site, that’s NOT a
“secret” site. I know. But most marketers are totally unaware that the USPS has an
arrangement with another service provider whereby you, as a “direct mail” marketer
So, my “secret” site is not so “secret” but, it is just as good unless you have
already stumbled upon it. Now, I have to say something in all fairness to the USPS
and their service providers. I warn you though, it is not going to be too kind. While
they are great at creating, processing and delivering mail, they stink at marketing
their own services. I think it has to do with the USPS still being a huge entity that
link is also contained on the /resources site. Recall that I hate to have people jump
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Things are changing rapidly on the net in certain segments of business. The
Postal Service is rapidly getting into the customer service end of things and
adapting. As this part is being written they already are handling the creation,
production and mailing of basic postcards. We are keeping our eye on the situation.
You have to agree with me, this site is marketed as if it’s a “secret”. The joke
though, is not on me, on you or on them as we can all probably make good use of
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giving you a blow by blow description of the manner in which I put THIS book and
and the ideas behind it all. It is a fair representation of the actual steps. But don'
t
hold me to every detail. I had to re-create it after the fact. It is a fair representation
of the strategies.
First, of course, is the idea to start an online business. Believe it or not, this is a
goal. My goal is simple. To enlighten and inspire others using online marketing. I
think that a goal should always be to inspire, help, educate and enlighten. So,
reducing my goal down into a form that I can easily understand, I write it.
and sell a powerful e-book that is destined to educate, inspire and enlighten the fine
people who read it. I further set a goal of 60 days. At the end of 60 days I will have
a thriving online business and the success that comes from it.
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Next, naturally, you need an idea. My idea came to me easily. It just happened,
like it was meant to be. Sometimes you have to search, create and otherwise
formulate your idea. Ideas, truthfully, are a common commodity. Everyone has a
million-dollar idea inside them. It just takes fortitude, inspiration, belief and hard
work to take the ideas from thought-form to reality. I like ideas that solve problems.
As most online marketers will tell you, there are BIG problems with online
marketing. The methods, strategies and procedures are not that good. But your
idea may be about something totally different. Perhaps you are passionate about
No money ever gets made unless something is sold. So, you must have a
product, or service related to your subject matter. Honestly, if you look at any
endeavor where the potential is high, it is in the area of SALES. Now most people
do not fancy themselves as the sales type. No matter. With online marketing you do
not have to "sell" anything. Your sales letter, web site and marketing do the selling
for you. But you do have to become familiar with online direct response marketing,
There is a reason that some business segments hold way more potential than
others. Take any endeavor where you trade your time, let'
s say hourly, for pay.
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There are only so many hours in a day, and so much money you can make. You
can expand this idea to most businesses. This does NOT apply to direct response
business whether it is direct mail, Internet related, or print media direct marketing.
because there are few "time" limits. If you are a retail store, only so many people
visit per day. Online, you can have 1000, 10,000 or 100,000 visitors a day. The
Next comes the domain name from which to market your product or service. I
pick names that match the product or service. I try to limit the names to as small as
Once you have your idea and your domain name it'
s time to get your web site. I
In the case of this e-book I wrote the sales letter first, before writing the actual e-
book. I have also put up the complete web site, sales page and all before the e-
book was ready. Notice, I did NOT say I pre-sold an e-book that was not ready.
That is against the law. What I did was put the pages up and instead of an order
link I simply said the e-book was not ready, but to get on the announcement list to
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be notified when it WAS ready, send your e-mail address. A big difference. There
The sales letter and e-book writings go hand in hand. Sometimes, while writing
the sales page I get a flash of insight, something to be added to the book, and vice-
versa.
I use whatever word processor is available and, believe it or not, I put my e-book
on a 3.5" floppy disk. I keep it in .TXT format so I can freely use whatever word
processor happens to be on the computer I am using. I always save the last edition
When the e-book is written it gets a healthy dose of overview, spell checker, and
editing. Once properly formatted its time to turn the .TXT or .DOC version into a
PDF file. PDF files are a common denominator across families of computers. Most
documents into PDF files. I know, you can spend up to $700 on fancy software. I
use the software from Software995.com. They have the PDF creator and PDF
editor. Both work fine for my purposes. I am not looking for awards for graphics,
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book.
The way you create the PDF file is to go onto the word processor and "print" it to
a special driver. It is the special driver that converts it to PDF format. It is that
simple!
Naturally, you want to convert your sales letter into a web friendly sales site. I
use Microsoft FrontPage. But I do not have to. Sales pages are typically not
sophisticated. There are other equally effective HTML web page producing
Now the book is done, the sales site is done. Time to start marketing.
I advocate using whatever means works best. Initially, before I get all my "simple
direct mail sales letters" ready, I use some "traditional" online marketing methods.
First, I optimize the web pages with the proper keywords and meta-tags. Then, I
use Dynamic Submission V 7 to post the info to the various search engines. It may
take 3, 4 or months until the engines know about my page and list it correctly. So I
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I also utilize some of the free submission services. Add-URL.Com being one.
There'
s a ton of others who submit your web to search engines free.
Now I'
m ready to start cooking. This is where I leave the others in the dust in the
race for online success. Now it is time to create and test various simple letters and
basic postcards.
I start very simple. I put "landing pages" on the site. It is the landing page I use to
point prospects to my site. Each "test" gets a different landing site. That way I know
how effective a particular campaign is by using the ISP provided web statistics, I
see how many people visit the page and when they do it.
I may test, try and tweak a dozen simple letters. I select the most effective
overall then go through it one more time to see if I can make it even more
responsive.
Once I have the "winner" I go about testing various lists using it. When a list is
found that turns a profit, then I begin to put it on "autopilot". By that, I mean, I might
schedule mailings of 5,000 per week, using a specific list and a specific letter. For
the most part, I only use outside mailing services when I must. I can save even
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With a little luck, the list is large and continues to work. The results must be
I then go onto creating and testing new letters and postcards for new lists. And
There, I gave you the routine basics. I think you will agree it'
s not hard.
Although, I may start using outside mailing services as I do not want to work all that
hard. Why not, if you can still pull a profit and have someone else do the hard work,
why not?
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I have found in my travels on the net that one can find sites that help and point
them in the right direction or visits to certain sites can take a person way off track.
Like stated previously the web is a wonderful, complex and powerful place.
affiliate links. But throughout this book and on the site are mention and pointers to
beginning?” I can tell you what I would do, what I think would be the most beneficial
is to read every single one of Gary Halberts newsletters. They provide a wealth of
information when it comes to marketing. You can find them mentioned elsewhere
I would also pay a visit to a few of the forums. They too can be found on the
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Another item of interest will be an easy way to drive more traffic to your site. I
have used the services of the site LinksToYou.Com. What they do is provide links
to web sites and boost rankings based on how many other sites link to yours. This
is a factor in “optimizing” web sites. It is a bit of a pain but worth it if you want extra
provide low cost or even free services that can result in traffic.
I have not yet tried trading, buying or renting e-mail addresses or “safelists” as
they are called. I have a big problem with sending unsolicited e-mails to begin with.
I feel if a person did not ask for my info specifically, I have no right to be sending
My goals have always been to locate and exploit “offline” methods to accomplish
my goals. Only a fool would pass up on free traffic if it were that easy to get.
I think the most successful web sites are going to be the ones that make doing
business easier. Take the USPS site that allows you to create, strategize and send
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Almost each day I find some new, interesting and potentially powerful sites,
methods and strategies. I set aside some time to just “search” not looking for
anything in particular but tracking down interesting threads, links and ideas.
Another source of traffic if you are just starting is posting to forums. Of course,
most forum operators will not like it if you blatantly advertise but most allow you to
contribute and also include a link to your site in the process. I’ve picked up 10 to 30
“leads” each time I did it. I suppose you can spend days just doing it and get a lot of
I do not think anything can replace the power of direct mail though, and that’s
been my focus. When they invent an easier, more powerful way using only online
I hope you make good use of the pointers and tips in this section. Good luck!
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Each marketer whether they are online or offline have their own ideas about
what constitutes a good sales letter. Their opinions vary widely. They are all correct
and all are wrong. As you know by now the best way to create a sales letter is any
I like to use a “negative” selling technique most of the time. This involves telling
a rather nasty story about how bad it is, depending on the subject. As you see, I
really “hit home” on the aspects of online marketing that stink! Most online
marketers can identify with that. I hit hard and often, in preparing the reader to “see
the light” later on in the letter. By the way, one of my most successful “direct mail”
offers in the 1980’s did the same thing – with a letter about how bad MLM was (
and it still is bad ) and how the product I had specially prepared was the key.
The goal of any sales letter is to get the reader to read the entire letter. If there’s
an interest in the subject matter, they will read it all. I try to sweeten the experience
by interspersing little tidbits and tips throughout. Really, no sane person would by-
pass the opportunity to learn something in the subject matter they are interested in.
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I try to tell a story. I have seen many sales letters where the stories behind them
are totally untrue and made up. I write TRUE stories. It’s the only way I can feel
Now we come to the point of how to create the web page. This is very hard for
the first time creator. It is very easy after the first one. So, if you are going to do
your first one I invite you to get my site “SimpleLetters.Com” up in your browser and
“save source as” an HTML file on your PC. From there, you can edit, change and
otherwise customize your own letter using mine as a template. It’s the least I can
do. When I first tried to create a sales page I had great difficulty because everything
was new. I have a theory now – there was only ever one sales page in history and
all others are a customized version of that. I bet many sales pages are copied from
another and then customized. By the way, check out the resources page. On it
I want to leave you with a few concepts that are geared to take you far in your
success with sales pages. The first few words are going to have a “yes” or “no”
impact on your reader. Yes, they will continue to read or no, they really are not that
interested. So the top part of your page, should contain enough hot stuff to keep
their interest. The goal of the top portion of the page, the part that appears in the
browser, is to make sure the reader scrolls down. Hopefully in the next moment,
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within the first few viewable pages you have captured the reader’s interest enough
I know, many of you say sales letters for the web are to be vastly different than
sales letters in direct mail. I have never found that to be the case. The thing is to
test various versions of the letter. I like long, story-line letters. Others claim they are
too long to be able to retain the reader’s attention. You must test in order to confirm
I also like to make the sales letter informative. It is like getting a free e-book on
the subject. This accounts for more interest and readability. You must admit,
anyone interested in offline methods or direct mail will read my entire letter as
simpleletters.com. How can they resist? I’m not saying that to toot my own horn, it’s
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The approach often called the “two step” has been around since the beginning
front is simply to generate the name and address of a prospect. Then, step two
takes over and is accomplished with the sending of follow-up materials to that
prospect.
It has many applications on the web. In fact, it is already being done hundreds of
thousands of times a day. You just know it as a different term, the opt-in. Step one
is to present the web pages with the pertinent info and offer a free newsletter, e-
zine or info pack that the prospect can get via an autoresponder or by opting-in to a
newsletter. Many times this step involves a long 7 or more volume follow-up. Of
You can play with many variations of this. You can create a scaled down, mini
version of your e-book to send in parts over time. You can also try requesting real
name/address and send a follow on “paper and ink” report. Test, test and test
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For many years the direct marketing industry marveled as a firm managed to
generate several million dollars per year using classified ads and toll-free numbers.
A variation of the “two-step” is the two-step with a twist. While using traditional
methods to make sales of a book, one smart marketer decided his book was going
to be informative, power-packed and reasonably priced but it, in and of itself was
really a big, huge, sales letter for an even bigger, higher priced product.
All of these processes are geared to take the prospect, a little bit at a time
toward the goal, the bigger sale. It’s like the old saying about how best does one
chop down a mighty oak tree? The answer is one chop of the axe at a time. The
smaller, easier to take “chops” over time, accumulate to fell the mighty oak.
Bear this in mind, it’s easier to take a prospect from initial point to eventual sale
in smaller, easier to handle chunks. Now you know the “theories” behind many of
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It is possible to operate on autopilot these days. This means that once set up,
your business can run on minimal amounts of added time. By the way, time is the
critical element when creating wealth. Most of the vehicles used to create wealth
You can create, test and have your letters and postcards mailed from the
vantage point of sitting home in your underwear. You can have the sales,
accounting and business processes performed on your behalf with little intervention
on your part. If done right, you can do it all, from the comfort and safety of home
and let your business run on “autopilot”. This should free up time for other ventures.
There is going to be a little bit of work in getting things set. But you can run for
years afterwards only devoting a small amount of time each week to your project.
All you really need is one success … which is going to take some hard work.
Then you can pattern your successful pursuits after that success.
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Quick Review
I believe I have presented to you the facts. Not myths, hype, BS. If you look
back at my sales letter you will see that I have delivered on each of my points,
promises and positions. Bear in mind I cannot create your success, only you can do
that. I have tied my level best to share with you some of the methods I have
Some of the wealthiest people on the planet, the most cash rich people on
earth, have used some form of "direct marketing" to get that way.
I gave you my own formula. I gave you insights, real life stories and truthful
depictions of the reality of making it big. I tried not to fluff it up by one word. Each
word carefully crafted to give you a boost in learning these techniques. I shared
with you some of my personal triumphs, and failures. We are all but human. I have
I do not think you can point to one sentence, let alone one section that you
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While my writing style takes a little getting used to, I tried to put the points
across, one after the other, in tight, concise format so that you could grasp the crux
of the matter.
I tried hard to keep you intensified, interested and positively motivated. Truth be
known, I too, from time to time get "de-motivated" due to some outside event, force,
I realize that each reader is at a different point in their own, personal business
evolution. I tried to dispel myths, expose the madness and help set you on the right
path. It'
s up to you to continue.
While I cannot claim total responsibility for these powerful methods, I can claim
that I was the first, or at least amongst the first to bring them into the light of day.
Mail order and direct mail marketing has been around for ages. There was just this
"invisible line" that separated the two. There is not difference in marketing, just
powerful knowledge and insight that propels you to the ranks of "master marketer".
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There is one thing for sure. Most, if not all of the smartest, most successful,
something is also something that YOU share. In almost every instance, they were
masters at learning first. They learn from reading. They learn from others. There is
an old saying "some learn by wisdom, others by woe". Wisdom to me is looking out
in to the world, gathering and accumulating facts and learning from the
experiences of others and learning what mistakes to avoid. Woe is, on the other
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Conclusion
You have just read what may be the most important e-book on earth. If you are
like most people who have been struggling with making money on the web, you
realize now you are not alone. For the most part, what is taught via the traditional
way stinks! For the most part a lot of the plans, programs, systems and methods
taught about making online profits do not work. You know now some of the best
kept secrets of the "inner circle" of the industry. Bear in mind though that this is still
in the pioneer stages. This means you are going to have to work to perfect your
own way to use the methods. There are not a lot of previous success cases to draw
upon and leverage off of. The good news is that you have just as much opportunity
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Disclaimer
money placed "at risk" can and often does get lost. For specific advice please
the respective property of the holder. This material is protected. It may not be used
circumstances. Any names used are not to depict any person living or otherwise
and are mere examples. Use any and all information contained herein at your own
risk. The provider of this info makes no warranties either implied or specific. No
The book deals with subject matter that may be very speculative in nature. Losses
may occur at any stage and in any amount. It is best to proceed with the advice of a
competent professional.
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Guarantee
I believe I have done a great job in providing you information that met or
exceeded all the stuff in the sales letter. We explored a lot. I laid down the
strategies, methodologies and plans in a “short but sweet” manner. I have made it a
point to contain no “fluff” whatsoever. You received the info covering each point
made in the sales letter plus, you got the bonus information that was right on. I do
not think there is any e-book on the market, past or present that has given you so
You have read, absorbed and understood the details surrounding what I call the
easiest business on earth. You cannot give that knowledge, insight and power back
to me in the advent you feel you want a refund. However, if you still feel you are
entitled you can get a no questions asked refund upon proving you have given it
the old college try. So, to do that you must provide some details. Don’t worry,
providing the details won’t take but a moment provided that you have really,
include: 1) the URL of the Web site from which you tried to sell a product or service
using these methods ( naturally, this must be one owned or wholly directed by you
), 2) Copies of 3 variations of your “test” letters you used to sell the product or
service ( can be postcard copy as well ) and 3) Details of the mailing list you used
to send the letters or cards to ( tell the list name, broker or list rental company
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name, telephone number, number of records you requested, cost, date of mailing
and finally 4) the date / amount on the receipt related to postage costs associated
with your mailing campaign. All of the receipts, orders, confirmations naturally
should be dated AFTER your purchase date for this book as proof you actually
lived up to your end and tried the methods. Please be aware that phone calls may
be made in order to verify proper documentation. Please note that refunds are
limited to the original purchase price of this e-book. As with all “how to” or
educational guides, we cannot be held responsible for any losses incurred from
following any ideas, advice or info in the material. Use any and all information at
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Wrap-Up
Are you excited? You should be as you have just learned some of the most
powerful methods and strategies known to mankind. Many of the looming questions
that were nagging you regarding “traditional” online marketing should be answered.
On top of that, you were given the proverbial keys to the kingdom. You will never
look at web based marketing the same again and with good reason.
I want to leave you on a good note. I’ve tried to impart to you some of the most
advanced yet most simple information I could possibly. The “fluff” is gone. I felt
every word found in this e-book was important. I also tried to keep each section
short in order to hold your utmost attention. There is good reason. This e-book, as
the title suggests is Volume 1. The work on volume 2 is diligently being pursued
right now. And, in similar fashion to this e-book, it will be made available for anyone
with an inner desire for ultimate success much like this e-book was made available.
The “good note” I want to leave you with is this – in almost every instance the
majority of my own success was a direct result of having read some tips,
information and getting some guidance from a book, tape or manual. I hope that
you realize that you, yourself, have the same opportunity for success as I have and
as the many people who have gone the route of “entrepreneur” before us.
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sorts of great stuff. You will find links to free tools such as the HTML editor, pop-up
generator and sales page template. And come back to check it out again after a
This report is especially informative and beneficial since there is a lot of pending
PS. Please do not forget to subscribe the the Unlimited Wealth . Com newsletter.
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