Mail Order - Part I
by
Marty Foley
MONEY-MAKING MAIL ORDER: PITFALLS AND PROFIT TIPS
(C) 1996, Marty Foley
WARNING! Please read this before spending any more time
or money on Mail Order! When it works right, Mail Order (or
Direct Marketing) is an ideal business. Briefly consider
some of it's advantages:
* It can be used to expand and increase the profits of many
different types of existing businesses;
* You can start with little investment and low risk;
* You can start in your spare time and build into full
time;
* You can test an offer, product, or service inexpensively
to find out if it's a winner;
* It can be operated most anywhere you want to live, as
long as you have access to postal service;
* Using the tremendous power and reach possible through
direct response marketing techniques, you can run a
national, even a multi- national enterprise from the
convenience of your own home;
* It can be quite profitable.
But let's face some cold, hard facts: A vast majority
of newcomers jump into the mail order waters with both feet,
before they get a basic education about what works and what
doesn't . . . and they usually end up drowning.
All too often, instead of being given the honest,
sobering facts they really need to succeed, they get excited
by a lot of hype and get-rich-quick schemes promoted by some
in this business. They run an ad here, mail a few flyers
there, etc., then sit back and wait for the big profits
to roll in . . . and wait . . . and wait . . . only to
realize they've wasted their time and money on an expensive
(but largely avoidable) mail order education. Instead of
finding profits, they find disappointment and soon give up.
So that you don't end up in the same unfortunate
position, here are some common mail order mistakes and tips
on solving them. DISREGARD THEM AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Mistake: Not Selling Products That You Control
Now don't get me wrong; you can make money selling
products produced by others. It's a fast way to start, and a
good way to expand your product line (another key to success
- stay tuned for more on that), but consider the advantages
your own products give you:
* You get all the profit;
* When you have exclusive rights to a product, there is no
direct competition. True, there may be similar products
on the market, but to get your unique delivery of the
information, people must go through you - directly or
indirectly - to obtain it. Either way,
you profit.
* The best mail order products are unique, or at least not
easily obtainable elsewhere. Information products, that
you have exclusive rights to, fit this category.
(Tip: You can get exclusive rights to information products
by:
# Creating and copyrighting them yourself.
#Hiring someone else to create them for you (while maintaining
exclusive rights to them);
# Buying the rights for existing products from someone else
who has already created them.
Some other advantages of information products are:
* Inexpensive to test;
* Low production expense/high profit
margin;
* Hold up comparatively well under rough shipping and
handling;
* Lightweight and compact, and so require little storage
space and are inexpensive to ship;
* Potential to make you money for years.
These advantages make information products among the best around.
Mistake: Expecting to Get Rich Quick With Little Effort
Just recently I received a letter promising me that I
could learn how to make an easy $50,000 within just 90 days,
from the comfort of my own home, if I only paid them so much
money for their system. If such schemes are so profitable,
why can't they afford to have their marketing materials
printed professionally, instead of what so often looks like
cheap, tenth-generation photocopies? If so lucrative, why do
they put forth so much effort trying to sell the system to
me, when they could be making more money working the system
themselves? A healthy dose of skepticism is needed when it
comes to such "business opportunities," because not all are
legitimate.
Let me let you in on a little "secret" that many mail
order promoters either won't tell you, or don't want you to
know: Although big money can be made in a short time in mail
order/direct marketing, as proven by many real life
examples, that is the exception, rather than the rule. So
beware of inflated claims and get-rich-quick promises.
I'm not trying to scare you away from mail order. I
just want you to have realistic expectations, instead of
expecting too much too soon. Success in mail order, more
often than not, takes time, knowledge and patient
persistence. If you're willing to do what it takes, you can
succeed, but if you expect to make a lot of fast money with
little effort, the odds are stacked against you. Save
yourself some disappointment by not getting involved in it.
(It's better that I lay the facts out on the table now,
before you learn them from bitter personal experience.)
Since you probably won't get rich quick in mail order
with little effort, you need to:
* Exercise patience and persistence. Remember that such
persistence pays. Too many quit when success is
just within their grasp, if they would only keep trying.
On the other hand, you need to know when to quit. Don't
continue to throw money away on a losing proposition if
it isn't working out for you after thorough testing. Go
on to something else.
* Move slowly and cautiously. As I mentioned earlier, one
of the advantages of mail order is that you can test
inexpensively to find out if you have a winner. Even if a
test fails, it's not a total loss. Although experience
isn't always the best teacher, you gain insight into what
works and what doesn't. You can steadily expand on your
successes and revise or drop what doesn't work for you.
Remember that one success can more than make up for
several failures.
* Keep your expenses to a minimum (without sacrificing
quality where quality counts) following the guidelines
I'll suggest shortly.
* Reinvest most or all of the money you bring in back into
the business until you build sufficient capital to use as
a 'safety cushion.'
By doing these things, you'll have a better chance of
being able to endure your mistakes (which are bound to
occur) so you can continue testing, refining and improving
your operation until you come up with a profitable formula.
Mistake: Not Seeking Out And Implementing The Most
Cost-
Effective Ways To Operate A Mail Order Business
Especially when you're new to mail order, you need to
be extra cautious with the way you use your limited capital.
To get the most value from your limited resources, you have
to look at all areas of your operation with a critical
eye for ways of accomplishing the same (or better) results
for less cost.
Consider the following techniques of reducing some of
your major expenses: marketing and postage.
* Take advantage of free publicity and other forms of low-
cost promotion. These cost little, but are valuable for
marketing products and services. Since I've learned how
to benefit from them, I rarely pay for ads anymore. And
yet, I receive a steady stream of inquiries and orders as
a result of such low-cost methods.
* Develop a catalog of related offers. Lawson Traphagen
Hill (founder of two multi-million dollar mail order
catalog companies) wrote: "...almost all successful mail
order businesses, sooner or later, end up with a
catalog." As Julian Simon said in the fourth edition of
his book, How To Start And Operate A Mail Order Business,
"In truth, operating without a catalog of offerings
is likely to be impossible for most mail-order ventures."
Your own catalog can start out as a small mini-catalog
promoting just a few related offers, and grow from there.
This is the end of part one of this article. Part II and Part III follow - Bob
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Bob
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