FREE Advertising doesn’t happen by accident. Most of the people who get free write ups in the magazines and newspapers, or get their stories aired on the T.V. news didn’t just get lucky. These people set out to get as much of this free advertising as they can. They make a business out of getting these magazines, newspapers and T.V. stations to give them FREE Advertising. Some people even hire public relation firms who do nothing but get them this type of advertising for very little cost. You can do the same thing on your own.

Here’s the secret to getting free advertising: Come up with some kind of unique angle to dramatize your product, service, or company. Then prepare a publicity kit that illustrates this story. Send this kit to all of the newspapers, radio and T.V. stations, and magazines. If your kit is prepared right, a percentage of them will use your story to fill their constant demand to come up with something new for their readers or listeners. Here are the simple steps you can take:

1) Make a story around your product or service.

How did you get started? Is there some way to dramatize the reasons why you are in this business? Human interest stories are BIG with editors and publishers. Is there some way your product, service, or company helps people or has the potential to help them? Is there some way you can make a story around this? Think hard. Be creative. Find a unique angle.

2) Prepare your publicity release with the same level of care and commitment as you would any other promotion.

Many people try to get free advertising in a lazy sort of way. They prepare a cheap flier or self mailer and send it to the publications and stations. These get trashed in a minute. Remember this: You are always judged by the quality of materials you use to promote yourself, company, or products. You must do everything first-class if you want people to take you seriously.

3) Create a list of all the reasons the editor of the magazine, newspaper, or T.V. station should use your story.

Turn your list into a sales letter. Give them the biggest reasons why it’s in their interest to use your story. Do your best to make a complete selling presentation.

4) Send them a well prepared package. Make it worth their time to look it over and take you seriously.

Half-hearted efforts produce weak results.

5) Make it easy for them to use your story by writing it for them.

Writing the story for the editors is a powerful secret used by the world’s most expensive public relation firms. This secret can work amazingly well. Here’s why: It takes great deal of work to fill the pages and “air time” of each newspaper, magazine and T.V. station. Giving them the actual copy they can use (in whole or in part) makes it easy for them to use your story. They will appreciate this. You’ll be helping them and helping yourself in the process.

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free publicity are given away every year. Start becoming aware of this. Look for the articles and T.V. spots other people are getting for free. Then think about these five simple steps above. How can you use these steps to get this kind of free advertising? The answers you come up with could be worth a small fortune!

Individual grant awards are $10,000 to $2,000,000. The program goal is to stimulate business growth, increase profits, and to ensure the success of each client.

For more information, write to Minority Business Development Agency, Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C. 20230, or contact a regional minority business development agency near you by referring to your telephone directory under “Government Agencies.”

Remember, there is a lot of money out there just waiting to be claimed. Smart people are taking advantage of it. This is just one of the ways you can get that money. If you are a minority, the government is more than willing to help you get started with your own business.

People are interested in financial security when they get older. They have worked hard all their life, and when they get on in years they want to be able to take it easy. They do not want charity, and they are not interested in living with their children. All they want is to be independent, healthy, and go where they want to go, and not have to worry about money. People feel that they should be able to enjoy peace, quiet, safety, and security when they grow older.

“Senior citizens” all need one thing - give it to them - and make mega dollars! That one thing is SECURITY. They want to know everything is going to be all right. Many businesses have been catching up with this fact as the elderly population has boomed over the last few decades. Real estate companies have created housing specifically for the elderly. Insurance companies have policies specifically for elderly people. The idea is out there, and it’s being put into successful practice by many diverse companies.

Another important factor that should be looked at when it comes to the elderly is the fact that over the last twenty years the number of elderly citizens in this nation has grown continuously. And, according to current polls, there is no end to this growth in sight for a while. That means that there is a large market out there that you can develop products and services for. The market is still growing. And, if your products and services are successful, you can possibly keep steadily making more profits!

There are many things that older people wanted to do in their younger years, but they never seemed to have enough time or money. They used to talk about a trip across America, but the years went by, and they never did travel far from home. There were too many responsibilities, too little money, and never enough time. There must be a sure, safe way to become financially independent, so that a person can enjoy life after he/she retires. (Can you think of a solution that would solve this problem?)

People pick out what interests them by scanning the headlines. Therefore, a headline must reveal, not conceal, a person’s self-interest. Self-interest is how to make sure your prospects instantly spot your ad as they flip the pages of their favorite magazine.

People do not read magazines in order to read your ad. This is important to keep in mind because many times people who run ads in magazines that go out to their market pay very close attention to the ads that are in it. Most of these ads are written by their competitors, plus their ad is in there too.

But, at the same time, it is dangerous when you start assuming that other people are also paying close attention to the ads. Granted, your competitors probably are, but what about the prospects and potential customers that are reading that magazine? The market doesn’t care about your ads. They don’t subscribe for the ads.

Therefore, these prospects and customers will look at ads in a very passive way. They just skim. They know that you’re trying to sell them something, so they have their defenses up.

Therefore, you have to have a clear, compelling ad that grabs their attention with a massive catering to their self-interest. The ad should seem to jump off the page. If you are able to make ads do this to readers, you will make money.

One of the greatest things about direct response marketing is your ability to measure one idea against another in terms of how it was accepted by the market that you're targeting. Testing is how to easily tell if one idea is better than another idea!

Let’s say we're testing long sales letters. The first page is different and the theme has been changed throughout the second sales letter. We will mail a thousand of each letter out to different prospects and compare the results to determine which letter pulled more response.

We all have opinions about things, and we all come up with ideas that we fall in love with and we think are the greatest. But we don't count. The only person that counts is the person we're trying to sell to. Marketing isn’t about you. It’s about the people in the market you're trying to serve.

Testing is how to find the shortest - safest - least expensive - most profitable marketing method that can make you RICH! Remember, you should start out with small tests so you don't take any big risks. You're just testing a small, inexpensive amount to find out what will work so you can emphasize it, expand it, and have it bring you more money.

Make your business plan marketing oriented. Let it serve a specific type of customer in as many ways as possible, and you’ll never have to worry about making enough money. Your business plan can allow you to make as much money as you want - for as long as you want - by doing these three things:

1) Center your plan around all the ways you can attract new customers and make repeat sales to them.

2) Always look for more ways to serve your best customers first. Then, develop simple strategies to attract more of these types of people to your business.

3) Constantly develop new promotions that bring you new customers. Then re-sell to these people as many times as you can. Make this a continual, on-going activity.

There’s nothing complicated about these steps. Find several people or companies that are using these three steps and study the things they do. Then use their ideas and methods in your own unique kind of way.

Here are the 7 things we have mastered to earn the biggest profits:

1.) The marriage between our front-end and back-end offers.

Develop products and services that are closely related to the item you initially sold to your customer the first time. The closer this “marriage” is between your front-end and back-end offers, the more money you can earn.

2.) The relationship with our customers. The key to getting rich is to develop strong relationships with the people you sell to. The more people who buy from you repeatedly, the more profits you can make. Just get enough people to repeatedly buy a large enough amount of your products and services, and you can eventually get rich.

3.) The method of segmenting our list. Your best customers must be segmented from the rest. You can segment your list by the products they buy, the frequency of their purchases, or the actual dollar amount they spend. Go back to these smaller groups of customers and make them special offers.

4.) The power of our Unique Selling Position.

Your U.S.P. is the compelling advantage that you offer your prospects and customers. It’s the main reason why they should do more business with you. Take a solid look at your market to find the things that are most important to the people you’re selling to. Then make the most important thing your U.S.P.

5.) Irresistible offers.

Make your prospects and customers offers that are so good they’re hard to refuse. Find other companies who are doing this and study their offers. Then use these ideas in your sales material. The profits can be tremendously high when you find the perfect way to do this.

6.) Long copy that educates.

Your job is not just to sell to people. It’s also to educate them. You must educate your customers and prospects on why you, your company, and your products or services can help them. Use long sales letters when you are writing to your customers. This gives you room to let them know everything about the products and services you want them to buy.

7.) The lead-generating system.

You must have a way to get people to do business with you the first time. That’s the hardest part. Once they do business with you, it becomes easy. THIS IS WHY YOU NEED A LEAD-GENERATING SYSTEM. Here’s how to do it: Just offer your best prospects something they really want. Give them a great deal. Then send them additional sales material on the other things you sell. Use your lead-generating sales material constantly and you’ll always have plenty of new customers. Then, develop relationships with these people to make huge profits.

These are the most important strategies we’ve used to earn millions of dollars. You can use these seven powerful methods to completely maximize your profits, too.

Small ads can give you tremendous leverage. You can run more of them in more publications more often because smaller ads are cheaper to develop and run.

Your overall advertising could be extremely profitable by advertising in many publications with small ads instead of using the same money on a larger ad that you can only afford to run in a few publications.

Let’s say that you have a small ad placed in a hundred different publications every month. Now let’s say that each of these ads, after taxes and any other cut in the money, finally brings in ten dollars each month. That’s a thousand dollars a month you can keep - and that’s just from making ten dollars per publication!

A short, attention-grabbing classified ad, for example, is often the lowest, most cost-effective method of advertising. They allow you to get the very best “dollar-for-dollar” return for every penny you spend on advertising.

A classified ad is simply a good headline with a call for action. That’s it. Always remember, though, a headline is the number one benefit expressed in the most clear, dramatic, and compelling way.

Unique Selling Propositions (U.S.P.) are how to “kill” your competitors in the marketplace!

There isn’t anything unique that sets aside most companies. There’s nothing that separates them from every other company in their marketplace except for perhaps the company name.

Find out what your customers really want. Find out why your customers really buy. Find out what they aren’t getting right now. Make that your U.S.P. Make it known to your market. If the U.S.P. is beneficial enough to the customers and prospects, you can set yourself aside from all of the other businesses in your market and make more profits than ever before.

Developing a good U.S.P. is how to carve a very profitable niche out of your market. It’s how to attract customers away from your competition.

A U.S.P. that separates you from every other business is going to attract the attention of your market. It will attract prospects and customers away from the other, carbon-copy businesses out there because you will have more to offer than everyone else does.

You have to think of reasons people should do business with you. It’s not good enough to say, “We have the best products and services guaranteed!” Almost every business goes through this rhetoric, and it’s too commonplace. You have to come up with something bigger, rarer, and more to the benefit of the prospects and customers.

Give them something unique. The closer it is hinged onto things that really bother the prospects and customers the better!

Believability is a crucial thing. You are trying to make promises to the prospect or customer who is reading your copy. Those promises have to be compelling. The prospect or customer needs to visualize what you’re trying to tell them about your product or service. However, if the copy is not believable, you have failed. If they don’t believe you, THEY’RE NOT GOING TO BUY FROM YOU.

Believability is a factor you have to pay extremely close attention to. You can’t make outrageous promises or claims. If you do, most people will see right through them.

If you had something that said, “Earn up to a million dollars your first DAY!” the kind of people who would accept such an outrageous statement would not be the kind of people you want as your customer base. These are unstable people given to whims and fancy.

The trick is, you should have promises of perceived benefits that are compelling, giving your specific prospects and customers something they really do want. But they also have to be believable so that the person reading that advertisement can see themselves using and/or enjoying the benefits that your product has to offer. If people can really see themselves doing it, you can make a lot of money!

Many of the same people you want to do business with you are the same people that your competition wants. Yes, this does sound like common sense. But, from what we’ve seen other businesses do over the years, we don't think some businesspeople ever figure this out.

It’s crucial that you understand this principle and how to use this information to your advantage if you are going to attempt to pull business away from your competition.

You are trying to pull business away from your competition. The U.S.P. is a marketing tool you use to set yourself apart in a more favorable light from your competitors. Find the weak spots of your competition, fill that weak spot, and you will be able to pull business away from your competitors.

When we first got into the mail-order business we started with one $300 ad. At the time we had a little carpet-cleaning business. Until the mail-order profits really started coming in, we were working both of the businesses at the same time.

We started out with our mail-order business part-time, but the profits grew and grew to the point where we retired from the carpet-cleaning business altogether and made our mail-order business our full-time occupation.

This is, in fact, a very smart way to start a mail-order business. It is not wise to take big risks like quitting your job and throwing your life savings away on an early promotion. If you do it part-time, though, you can have money to fall back on until you find that promotion that really works for you. This is the SMART WAY to make money starting with zero!

Did you know that there are fourteen things you can give people and they can help to make you thousands and thousands of dollars?

Here they are:

1) Give Them Better Quality.
2) Give Them A Way To Save Time.
3) Give Them A Way To Save Money.
4) Give Them Convenience.
5) Give Them A Way To Make Money.
6) Give Them State-Of-The-Art Products & Services.
7) Give Them A Way To Make Life Less Difficult.
8) Give Them A Way To Enhance Their Looks (real or perceived).
9) Give Them Items That Have Multiple Uses.

10) Give Them Items That Are Durable And Long-Lasting.
11) Give Them Items That Will Solve A Problem They Have.
12) Give Them Items That Are More Effective.
13) Give Them Items That Make Life More Enjoyable.
14) Give Them Items That Offer Multiple Benefits.

You should find a way that your product can fill as many of these needs as possible. The more needs your product fills, the more likely you are to make a sale! Go back over this list again. Find the things that make your product stand out above the competition. Point these things out to your customers, and they will want to buy from you!

Don’t sell books. Sell results. Sell benefits. Sell solutions. Dramatize. Make them want the end results... This is the millionaires secret to selling thousands of books. Here are a few other tips, tricks, and strategies:

(1) Tell a story about the successes that you or someone else has had with the benefits in your book.

(2) Sell these books to the hottest market, to the people who place the biggest value on the benefits you offer.

(3) Create a STRONG MARRIAGE between your sales message, market, and media.

Don’t try to be everything for everyone. Focus on that one person you are trying to reach... Then find as many ways as possible to give that person something they really want. These three strategies can help you sell thousands of books or other informational products every year just like they have for us.

Once you know how to use testing to its optimum ability, you will continue to improve. You will get something to work and make you money. Then you should focus it. Look for ways to make it better and better. You will find ways to make products that are already successful even more successful.

This is why some people never have to worry about making huge amounts of money. They are always testing and finding out what’s working the best, so they can focus on those things and make the most money possible with them.

You should also test new things. When you have something else that is really working well for you and is bringing in money, you should start testing some new things to have another winner ready to bring you more money.

Many people in business wait till business gets bad to bring out new things. They “fall asleep at the wheel.” When business gets bad they become keenly aware like an animal trapped in a corner. Their awareness is at an all-time high . . . and this awareness causes them to create a great new product. Sometimes this happens, but sometimes . . .

When you have something working, test some new ideas and find some new things that will make you money. If you don’t and you find business going bad, you could end up in a corner with no way out except to lose.

The answer is: lists you get from reliable list sources. They will help you make the biggest amount of money from the very first day you start!

There are many mailing lists on the market, but there are only a few reputable list brokers. Reputable list brokers can give you specific data on different mailing lists, and that’s exactly what you need to know so you can decide whether or not the list will be a winner for you.

You need to know exactly where the names came from, whose customers they were, what they bought before, how much money they spent, and how recent the list is.

Remember this: a good list broker is like a good stock broker. They make their money by helping you make your money. They’re not out to sell you a list and then disappear. They want to build a good relationship with you because they’ll want you to keep coming back over and over again. That’s how they can keep making their own money.

A list broker helps you find the names and addresses of prospects you will mail your offer to. The more names they can find for you to profit from, the more you will go back to them and rent their lists. They make their money through helping you make money by providing you with lists of good, qualified prospects.

List brokers get a minimum of 20% commission every time they get out there and find mailing lists for you to rent. If they happen to manage those lists, they tend to get up to 30% to 40%. They are making their money by helping you make money. The more money you make, the more money they make.

A list broker’s responsibilities include:

1. Acting as a clearing house for data: A list broker is a one-stop shopping source that can provide you with all the information you require regarding which list will most likely work for you.
2. Locating new lists: A professional list broker makes a living by providing lists, and is continually seeking out new lists that will be suitable for his/her clientele.

3. Encouraging list owners to rent their lists is a constant effort that must be pursued daily just to stay in business.
4. List performance data: A list broker keeps accurate records on the past performance of all lists his/her clients have used. Therefore, they have a working knowledge of what will pull in any given situation. A broker will carefully screen all information provided by the owner of a list. Additionally, he/she may even verify the information if a list owner is new and has not yet established a trustworthy business relationship.

The broker must have knowledge of the makeup of a list to determine what constitutes a representative cross section of the list. Any error in determining a cross section would invalidate the desired test results, and possibly eliminate a group of names that might have been responsive to a particular offer.

Learning the secrets of writing great advertising copy can make you HUGE amounts of money. There have been times when we have earned as much as $1,000 and more for every hour we spent writing our ads and sales letters. The same thing could potentially happen to you, too. Here are ten copywriting secrets the best copywriters use:

1. They do everything possible to know every aspect of their products and services. They look for uniqueness, special features, and benefits they can offer to the prospect or customer.
2. They learn everything they can about the market their sales material is targeted to reach.
3. They know the right words, phrases, or approaches that will make their offer more effective.
4. They learn everything they can about the competition. They find out how their products compare in value and quality. And they know what type of promotional techniques can be useful to outsell the competition.
5. They know how to gather testimonials to increase the response of their ads and sales letters.

6. They collect and study ads that have offered similar products. They do this to get creative ideas that help them with their ads. They seek out ads that have been running continually. These ads help them avoid duplicating unsuccessful efforts of others.
7. They focus on the ultimate goal of each ad or sales letter. To whom is it written? What is the end result they are after?
8. They know how to create irresistible offers that make people want to buy.
9. They know the importance of testing as many different elements as possible, and they do this.
10. They know how to close. They know how to create strong sales presentations, and how to make the sale.

Great advertising copywriters are made - not born. You can learn these ten things and possibly earn a fortune in the process. Listen closely: Advertising copywriters charge up to $15,000 or more just to write a simple Direct-Mail package. They get paid these huge fees because of all the money their sales material can generate. But remember this: You’ll always make more money writing your own advertising copy then you could ever earn by freelancing for others. Learn these skills for yourself, to sell your own products or services. These skills can help you make money for the rest of your life.

If you are involved in a joint venture, you could have your partner send out cassette tapes that you put together describing your business, your concepts, your products, and whatever else you desire to tell them.

Essentially, you are having them send their customers free publicity items that will get those prospects interested in you and, hopefully, wanting to buy from you. This is how to make $1,000,000 giving your product away for FREE!

Give them a sample, a teaser, something they can use that is very limited. Let them know that you have more, though, and that they can get it from you. As a result of this, you can potentially increase your profits beyond your own customer base and bring in money from your partner=s customer base. Many businesses have found this profitable, and some have made even millions of dollars. You have the same potential, as well!

Never worry so much about the cost of acquiring customers, because customers are money in the bank. Your philosophy toward your customers is the real secret of how to make 50 times more money from them.

Many times people who don't take the larger view of things try to just run promotions where they make the most money right away - as instantaneously as possible. They don't realize that a good customer can potentially be worth huge amounts of money. Therefore, they don't have the attitude of investment.

It helps greatly to have the attitude of an investor. Investors realize that, although it will cost them a certain amount of money for now, that money is being spent to bring them more money over a longer period of time.

Always remember that good customers are just like money in the bank. Invest in good customers whenever you can! That way you can gain customers that won't just buy from you once, but they will keep buying from you. This will enable you to potentially make 50 times or more from your investment.

Just follow these 12 simple steps to achieve major success in Direct-Response Marketing:

1. Know who you are trying to reach with your unique selling position (U.S.P.).
2. Choose the right market for your selling message. Make sure your product or service meets the interest and expectations of your target group.
3. Make sure your offer is targeted to the right people. Pick your lists and media carefully
4. Make your offer irresistible. Fill it with self-interest benefits. be clear and direct in your copy. Let the receiver know what your U.S.P. is and how it will benefit him/her.
5. Make your offer sincere and believable. Many people are skeptical when they receive a direct mailing, especially if they have never done business with you before. Sincere and believable copy will eliminate doubts and mistrust, and it will motivate a reader to place an order.
6. Make sure your graphics fit your copy. The right illustrations can enhance a mailing piece, but too many can cause a distraction, which means you’ll lose sales. Your copy and graphics must be blended together to make the BIGGEST impact.

7. Plan your promotions. Allow enough time to think ahead so that you have everything scheduled to run smoothly.
8. Check every detail of your promotion before it goes out, the printing, and the layout. Is the order form complicated, too small to fill out, too hard to read? Small details count. Be picky.
9. Is your fulfillment department organized and ready to ship your products? Make sure you ship fast. Super fast. Only sell good products and services to make sure your customers are happy.
10. Include back-end offers with every order. This is smart because it doesn’t cost you any extra shipping charges to throw in any related types of offers you have. This is a good way to make money with your “marginal” products or services that can’t normally turn a profit on their own.
11. Follow up with all of your customers. Do repeated mailings to them. Build a relationship with them by letting them know you care about them. Remember, your customers represent your greatest potential source of repeat business. Your own customer list will RADICALLY out-pull other mailing lists on the market.
12. Test as many new things as you can. Find out what makes you the BIGGEST PROFITS - and develop your own 58 marketing system around those strategies. Keep this system fine-tuned, and you can get rich.

Installment-plan offers generate more sales than would otherwise be made. Many successful direct-response-marketing ads have featured the easy-payment appeal in their headlines.

Here are six things you can use in your ads to make it super easy for your customers to spend their money with you!!

Remember, though, you are trying to find ways to lower people’s barriers and get them to trust you and what you say. These are six good examples that have been used successfully by many companies - including us!:

1. First payment due in 30 days!
2. Only 3 payments of $49
3. Send no money... We’ll bill you later!
4. Your credit is pre-approved!
5. Use your Visa/MasterCard!
6. We’ll send it C.O.D.

Here are the simple steps we use to create our own million-dollar ads and sales letters.

1. Use Direct-Response Marketing. Each ad or sales letter must ask your prospect or customer for their order, or try to get them to take some kind of action.
2. Track all your results carefully. This will tell you exactly what’s making the most money.
3. Create a checklist of the most important things every ad or sales letter must have. Check your sales material against this list.
4. Test carefully. Only roll out with the winners.
5. Match each sales message to the right market. And make your reader an irresistible offer.
6. Expand your knowledge of the market you are serving.

These are the same steps we’ve used to make a fortune. They have the potential to work just as well for you. You can make up to TEN TIMES MORE MONEY from every ad you run by following these simple steps.

To plan a successful direct-mail program, you should follow proven marketing methods. The following twelve guidelines will help you avoid the most commonly made mistakes:

1) You must know who you are trying to reach with your mailings.

You must understand the market you are trying to reach. You must be able to get the best list available that targets your market. If you do not know who your market is, you won’t be able to make your offer as appealing as it needs to be. Always keep in mind that it doesn’t matter how many names you mail your offer to if they are the wrong names! The quality of your names is more important than the quantity!

2) Choose the right market for your product or service.

You must make sure your product meets the needs of the market. In other words, if you are selling lawnmowers, don’t mail your ad to that section of New York where everyone lives in apartments with no yards!

3) Make certain your ad copy is aimed at the right people.

Make sure that your ad copy matches the type of people you are mailing your offer to. If your mailing list contains people who have purchased mail-order products that cost no more than $50, and you are trying to get them to spend $500, you may not have the right mailing list.

4) Make your mailing package hard to refuse.

Your offer must fit the interests of the reader. Pack it full of value and benefits the customer can’t refuse. Be clear and direct with your offer. Don’t ramble on about things that don’t move the reader closer to the sale. Tell them what you have, how it will benefit them, and how they can get it from you now! Remember, if you confuse ‘em, you will lose ‘em!

5) Make your offer sincere and believable.

Don’t ever sacrifice good hard-hitting advertising copy in order to sound sincere. Just make sure you sound believable. Because of the amount of direct-mail people receive each day, they have become skeptical about everything they receive. The successful advertising piece will calm their nerves, make them feel like they know you, and make them feel they will be missing out on something important if they don’t order your product!

6) Make sure your graphics fit your copy.

The right graphics can really enhance the visual effect of ad copy. But, be careful. Overdoing your graphics will only confuse the reader. If you have too many graphics, the reader will pay more attention to the artwork than to your ad copy itself. This will cost you orders. In short, make sure your graphics blend well with your ad copy and help the reader move closer to making a buying decision.

7) Coordinate your time.

Make sure you are working with the clock and not against it. Keep ahead of schedule. All it takes is a

little planning and coordination. If you have to have a project done in 30 days, figure out how much of it you need to get done each week, and then break that down into how much you need to have done every day! This will help you stay focused and on track. It will keep you from having a mailing that was “supposed” to go out last week!

8) Check every detail before you begin.

Before you actually begin mailing, you must make sure that everything is correct and ready to go. Hopefully you have been doing a quality check here and there along the way. But, you should do it again. Check the sales piece. Does everything look right? Do you notice any typing errors? How about the return envelope? Is the return address correct? Did they get your postage-paid permit number on it right? Is your order form right? Is it easy to read & easy to fill out? Every small detail must be checked out before any of your mail is sent out! One small error could dramatically hurt your response.

9) Is your fulfillment department organized and ready to go?

This is one of the most important things to prepare for! When your customer places the order, they are as excited about placing the order as you are about getting it! You must be totally prepared to take the order. Can you fill the order in 24 hours? If not, why? Your customers expect and deserve fast service and turn-around time! Make sure you can deliver!

10) Always include back-end offers!

Every successful marketer knows that the way to make the most money possible is to always include a back-end offer. You can do this when you mail their product to them, or you can do it in a future mailing. But, if putting an extra sales piece in your delivery package doesn’t increase postage, why waste the money on a future mailing?

The best time to reach a customer with a new offer is shortly after they first order from you. So, why not just send them an offer with their package. A lot of businesses do this! Whenever you order from the JC Penney Catalog, don’t they ALWAYS send you another catalog? Of course they do! They understand this principle! Now you can profit from it! If it doesn’t cost you any extra postage to send the offer out with their order; it can only stand to make you more money!

11) Establish a long-term relationship with your customers.

Once you accumulate your own customer list, don’t allow it to get stale. These customers represent your easiest sale. They already proved to you that they trust you, or they wouldn’t have ordered from you the first time! If you are developing new products and services like you know you should, then your customer list should be the first to get these offers. Your own customer list can out-pull an untried list three-to-one!

A good suggestion is to mail to your customer base once every three to four months! Let them know that you appreciate them as customers, and that you would like to give them the first chance to check out a new product or service you are offering! They will appreciate you telling them this and some of them will order your latest product or service.

12) Is your marketing strategy set up for maximum results?

Are you always in contact with your mailing list broker? Do you work closely with your printers and suppliers? Are you renting your mailing lists to other businesses to maximize your profit potential? Is your fulfillment department operating to its full potential? Are you always looking for new products and services you can offer your customers? Is every aspect of your business working to make you more money? If not, find a way to fix it. Remember, your goal is to SELL, SELL, SELL - And MAKE MONEY, MAKE MONEY, MAKE MONEY!

These twelve things will help you make the most money possible - if you will use them. Take another look at them, and ask yourself how your business is performing in each of these areas. Are there ways you can improve your business’s profit potential?

Your best sources for saleable information are from your own knowledge and experiences, combined with research reference materials. It is a sad fact that people tend to have more knowledge than they give themselves credit for. People are continuously taking for granted the things that are the best assets for them.

A great example of this is our own publishing empire. We built this empire simply because we had a lot of knowledge about the same type of products that we now publish. Before we ever started we were good customers of the very same companies that are now our competitors.

That is where we gained a lot of our knowledge of what the prospects and customers in the market want. So, when we decided to go into the business of publishing these kinds of materials ourselves, we knew what the market wanted. Because of this we were able to establish that rapport with our customers that is essential.

It is important to take advantage of the things that you know. Often times people are looking everywhere trying to come with ideas of what to sell, but they never even consider the things that they do know best.

What are you interested in? What do you buy? What products do you wish existed? Remember, you are involved in a market, too And, chances are, the majority of people who are also in your market want and need the same sorts of things. Once you have established your best asset, you may be well on your way to success.

Thousands of people are utilizing the powerful concept of direct-response marketing. So, why isn’t everyone successful? The answer is simple. Not everyone knows about the two main ingredients you must have to be successful.

Those two ingredients are Knowledge and Experience. Once you have both of these things working for you together, you are almost guaranteed success! The key is to gain this knowledge and experience while you go. The best way to do that is to study the success of others who have done it already!

Slowly, over time, you can learn the business and gain the knowledge and experience it takes to be successful! As you study other peoples’ success stories, you will learn a lot! Soon, everyone else’s knowledge will become your own! Soon you will have the experience that will make you a success story!

So, get ready to be a success! Get all the knowledge you can. Read about other people who are successful. Find out what got them there. Incorporate their ideas and strategies with your own. Just keep learning. Never feel like you are done learning. The most successful direct-response marketers will tell you that they are always learning new strategies and incorporating them into their own direct-mail programs!

Here are four ideas for making money with other people’s secrets:

(1) Legally steal. Look for marketing materials and ideas other people are using. Be a detective. Snoop.

(2) Value the sales materials others are using.

Keep these materials. Study them. Spend time analyzing them.

(3) Find ways to use these valuable ideas. Weave them into your marketing plan and sales material.

(4) Teach yourself how to see the “big picture.” Look for the unrelated ideas others are using. Determine the ideas that are behind the strategies. Ask yourself “why are they doing this?” Play with these ideas in your mind...

See if there are ways you can incorporate these ideas into your products/services or company... Remember, the money-making ideas that are working for others right now are secrets because: (A) Most people don’t recognize them. (B) Most people don’t think there’s any way to use these ideas in their business.

It does not matter if your ad is small or large, simple or complex; the first problem is to get a reader’s attention.

The headline’s main purpose is to get people to read the body copy of an ad. A headline must entice readers into the main copy, which moves them to act.

Getting their attention and interest is how to “entice” new prospects - who have never even heard of you and your company - into doing business with you!

We suggest that you use these small ads as a way to attract people to you who have never done business with you, the people that you most want to reach, the people that your business exists to serve. “Flag them down” with the headline first and foremost. Then use subheads to help draw these prospects in. Use compelling body copy

This way, you can gain the most for your advertising dollar, but you don’t have to try to make a complete sale; these ads don’t allow enough space for a complete selling job. Instead, use your small ads to gain the prospect. Then send the prospect your complete selling job in the form of a sales letter or direct mailing if some sort.

Confidence builders are how to give people the confidence they need to do business with you. They are all of the things you can do to make people feel good about what you’re doing.

People want to know why they should do business with you. They want to know what advantages you offer that others don’t. They want to know that they aren’t losing anything by accepting your offer. Once again, it’s giving people what they want, and they want risk-reversal.

Risk reversal plays a very important part in giving your advertising credibility. It shows the prospect that, if they don’t like what they’ve bought from you, they are not going to end up losing anything. It takes the risk off of their shoulders and puts it on yours. Risk-reversal is a key item you should use to give your ads credibility.

This is an easy way to give people a reason to send you their money as soon as possible! Don’t let them procrastinate! Give them a reason! You have to use words and phrases that convince people to DO IT NOW . . . NOT WAIT!

It helps greatly to have a very focused target market. In our company, for example, we advertise to people who read opportunity magazines. By looking at the other companies’ ads and knowing which ads worked and didn’t work - through seeing which ads disappear quickly and which ads keep running - we get a handle on what’s making money for others and what isn’t. We will see an ad that runs maybe three or four times and then disappears, and we know that ad didn’t work for the company that placed it.

The truth is, the information about how well the ad did or didn’t do is confidential, but people can find out anything if they know where to look. You don’t have to get in contact with another competing company and ask them how their ad did. All you have to do is see how long it ran.

If it didn’t run long, it didn’t make enough money. This is how to get confidential information about which products are selling like dynamite - and which ones didn’t make it! This is a MAJOR SHORTCUT for coming up with your own super money-making ad that will guarantee your success!

You can go to libraries and look through magazines that you want to advertise in. Find ads that ran consistently. All you have to do is look at the magazines that go back a couple of years, find the ads that ran the longest in that period of time, and in a matter of a couple of hours - if even that long - you have found a successful advertisement! This is a MAJOR SHORTCUT for coming up with your own super money-making ads that will guarantee your success!

To be a marketer is to be able to serve other people and show people that you can give them what they want with your product or service.

There is a false belief that salespeople and marketers are greedy, self-absorbed people who conjure up schemes to get people's money. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

A marketer always thinks about the other person, not himself or herself. A marketer is constantly thinking about how to give those people the benefits they want the most in terms of a product or service.

A marketer studies people. A marketer studies why people buy certain kinds of products and services, and how they can influence people's decisions.

Why can it make you rich? Through advertising a marketer, is able to reach millions of prospects, which is the key to making the big bucks. If you have the right advertising, you can sell to millions of people - and get rich.

Personalization can make you a fortune because people want to feel special. Here are some of the methods you can use to make them feel special:

1. You can personalize each sales letter. The technology to do this is getting cheaper all the time.
2. Or, you can segment your list by what people order. Your customers can be placed into different positions that are called different names such as: “Preferred Customer” – “Exclusive Distributor” – “Founding Member” etc. This lets you mail to the whole group, avoid the personalization charge and still make it “feel” personalized.
3. You can do things to make the customer feel special. You can write to them a certain kind of friendly way. You can record cassette tapes to them. Send your picture with every offer and do other things to make them feel special.

It is actually possible to create a bond with the people you do business with... Make them value you. Build an actual personal relationship with them. That may sound corny, but think about it. Think about what a personal relationship is all about, and you’ll see that you probably have a few of these relationships with the people you like doing business with the most. Now set out to build these kinds of relationships with your customers.

Simplicity is a simple way to get more people to respond to your offer. The easier it is for people to respond, the more likely it is that they will respond.

If your customer reads your sales letter, and is really excited, then gets to the order form, what happens? You could start out with 1,000 people who read your sales letter. Then, if they have to mail in the order, some will drop out. If they have to put a stamp on it, still more will drop out. Then, if they actually have to get it to the post office, still more will drop out. You will have lost a lot of people along the way who intended to order your product.

Think of how many sales you could have saved if the customer could have simply picked up the phone and called with their credit card. The answer is that quite a lot of those sales could have been saved!

Whatever product you are marketing, make sure that you have as many ways as possible for your customers to respond. The three most common ways to accept orders are:

1) By Mail - with either cash, check, money-order, or credit card.
2) By Phone - with credit card
3) By Fax - with credit card.

Some companies now even accept checks by fax and phone! In the future, there will be more and more ways for you to make it easier to accept orders. Right now people are starting to use the Internet! In closing, you should try to come up with as many ways as possible to take your customer’s order! The more options they have, the more money you will make!

Many of the best mail-order companies send their sales material to their mailing list many times a year - sometimes even as high as fifty times a year. They keep going back to the customers that have bought from them and make offers for additional related products and services.

When you are using your own mailing list, you are sending your offers out to the people that have bought from you before. They know you, and they trust you. When you write to them, you’re writing to a friend.

This is why some mailing lists are more valuable than gold or diamonds! The barriers of skepticism and cynicism have, to a point, been stripped away by your previous sales to these customers. Consequently, the chances of finding your success become much higher.

Plus, the more you sell to these customers, the more you break through the barriers of skepticism and cynicism. Consequently, your profit potential rises even higher!

Sell information. These kinds of profits are common when you produce and sell your own informational products. You can sell these informational products every day of the week and make BIG - ALMOST UNHEARD OF PROFITS!

The secret to making awesome profits with your own informational products is simple: IT’S THE HIGH PERCEIVED VALUE OF THESE PRODUCTS.

Think of a painting that sells for millions of dollars. How much money was spent on the canvas and paint? Does that really matter? Does that affect the price? NO! It’s not the cost of the canvas and paint that’s important. It’s the perception of value that people have in their minds about the painting and the artist who painted it that drives up the price. This perception can turn $100 worth of paint and canvas into well over $1,000,000! The same is true for informational products, the more these products are wanted the higher the price can be that you sell them for.