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Table of Contents
Introduction 7
Chapter One: 13
The Best Business In the World
Chapter Two: 22
Products and Arithmetic
Chapter Three: 36
What It's Like When One
Of These Things Explodes
Chapter Four: 47
All About Mailing Lists
Chapter Five: 56
All About Magazine Advertising
Chapter Six: 66
Creating Your Swipe File
Chapter Seven: 68
The Back End
Chapter Eigh t: 75
Auto ship
Chapter Nine: 81
Lifetime Customer Value (LCV)
Chapter Ten: 85
The Two Step
Chapter Eleven: 95
An Irresistible Offer
)
Epilogue: 300
The Millionaire's Library
Introduction To
The i2-Month Millionaire
If you think being educated about a new profession from a guy who
plead guilty to Fraud and Money Laundering is a bad idea ... this is
not your book.
If you think discovering how to live the "good life" from a guy who
was facing 10 years in prison is a bad idea ... again ... this is not
your book.
But if you are looking for the real ... the genuine ... the no bullshit
way to become filthy rich- and at the same time- avoid any of the
pitfalls massive success comes with ... this will be the most
rewarding book you 11ever read.
You see, I've made over $100 Million in fewer than 10 years using
the very same techniques 111reveal to you in this book. I've also
nearly lost all of my fortune being stupid with my success. I'm
going to teach you how to make tons of money- and just as
importantly ... I'm going to show you how to keep your millions in
your bank by not being stupid like I was.
But there are paragraphs in this book- ideas in this book- whole
chapters in this book that I have never had the balls to put down
on paper before! And they will open doors to you- maybe as soon
as tomorrow- that otherwise might have taken a lifetime of waiting
for you to walk through.
r
Right now ... I'm sure you're skeptical as hell. You may even be
thinking to yourself that you have bought the diary of a madman.
But let me make you a small promise:
Once you learn what I have to teach you ... unless you somehow
lose your entire memory ... it would be impossible for you to ever be
"ordinary" again. It would be impossible for you to not know how to
make tons of money: starting with virtually nothing as I did 10
short years ago.
Anyway, before we jump into this thing with both feet... lets get
acquainted. Maybe I should tell you a little about myself, how I
grew up and where I came from.
because I had a passion for the finer things. I wanted the gold
Rolex, the sporty Mercedes, and the Million-Dollar Mega Mansion!
But when I looked in the mirror, 1 didn't like what I saw. I was
convinced the good life I wanted was just a dream.
But that was all about to change. Seriously- by the time I was 19, I
had a brand-new Corvette. At 20, I had 2 brand-new Mercedes
Benz automobiles. And at 21, I was the proud owner of a Rolls
Royce Silver Spur!
By the time I turned 28 ... I made over $100 Million in gross sales. I
profited over $50 Million. I owned two homes- one of them was
14.000 square feet and had a seven-car garage, a billiards room
and a resort-style pool with an underwater bar! And I paid cash for
the home!
In the year 2002, I made more money than the CEOs of Federal
Express ... eBay ... Amazon.com Time Warner. .. Apple Computer. ..
McDonalds ... Microsoft. .. Nike Yahoo ... Ford Motor Company ...
General Motors ... and Goodyear Tire- COMBINED!
Yes-COMBINED.
In the May 12th, 2003 issue, Forbes Magazine listed their top paid
500 CEOs in America. Of their prominent and prestigious list of
the 500 CEOs, I made more money than 483 of them.
Now, this may all seem like I'm some rich asshole bragging about
how rich I am ... and you're partly correct. I am bragging! But more
importantly, the reason why I'm telling you about all this is that
this book is about getting rich very quickly. If the talk of obscene
money makes you feel uncomfortable, or even angers you, maybe
you do not really want to be rich.
The reason why I'm telling you about all the toys I had when I was
just 28, is to prove to you that if an guy like me ... with a learning
disability ... a bad childhood ... and no formal education can get
filthy rich by the time I was 28 ... you can absolutely follow in my
footsteps and build yourself your very own empire of wealth!
Some preppy geek got out of the car with his sweater wrapped
around his neck and went to her front door. He was picking her up
for a weekend trip I presumed because she made him carry a small
duffel bag to the trunk of his shiny red Mercedes.
Things were sure different from when we were both in High School
together. Where that girl may have had no problem going out with
me back then ... nowadays her boyfriends had to be financially
accomplished. When I saw that freaking red Mercedes pull away
and drive past me, I remember saying to myself, "I've got to get my
shit together!" And I did. About a year later- I had the very same
model and color Mercedes Benz SL500 in my garage.
How did I get the car? I didn't steal it. I didn't win the lottery. I
sure didn't receive an inheritance from some long lost relative who
just kicked the bucket. I made the money on my own. I started
from scratch with nothing but a pen, a pad, and a crazy idea. I'm
now going to teach you how to do the same.
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J 2
Stop laughing. I'm being serious. And I'm going to guarantee it. If
this book fails to make you a millionaire within the next 12
months ... serioualy.T want you to send me a letter explaining what
you did in an attempt to get rich ... and I'll send you every dime you
paid for this book.
It's just as hard to tum one dollar into three dollars one hundred
times as it is to do it one million times, so why not do it to it's
fullest? I sure do.
So anyway, lets get this thing started right away. I'm so excited for
you. I remember when I was first leaming these secrets, piece-by-
piece over 10 years ago. It was like a mental orgasm. I couldn't
stop devouring this stuff from every source I could squeeze it out
of... whether it was spending $10,000 on books dating as far back
as the early 1900's ... or spending $5,000 to go to a single weekend
seminar ... or giving up my entire persona1life from age 19 until
24 ... including women ... just because I was so excited with what I
was discovering.
13
In my head, this book has been begging me to write it for the past
five years. I finally gave in and did it. Am I happy with the end
result? You bet I am. The very book you hold in your hands is not
just a bunch of paper, ink and glue ... it's literally a roadmap ... a
blueprint ... a formula for getting rich in America today.
These secrets are used equally by the single Mother trying to put
her child in a good private school, to the small businessperson
making a great living ... all the way to guys who are running ONE
BILLION DOLLAR Publicly-Traded Corporations such as The
Sharper Image. These techniques are not Mickey Mouse. They are
powerful. They are life altering. They can even be dangerous if they
are not used properly.
So, I'd like to welcome you to the "Best" of your life. I hope after
you make your millions you still remember this book and tell
everyone you know how it helped you.
Chapter One:
The Best Business In The World
Before you read this chapter, get a pen and a piece of paper.
These are the two main tools you need for this business.
When you add together the pen ... the paper ... this book. .. and a
simple idea for a product or service ... it could literally be worth
hundreds of millions of dollars.
And still worse, these traditional businesses cannot offer you the
rapid forced growth and wild profits of the wonderful business this
book teaches about.
The business this book speaks of allows you to start small, and
only after you have scientific proof and a valid and profitable idea,
would you then gradually invest more and more of your money. In
most cases, you'll be reinvesting profits.
The business I speak of in this book allows you to get rich even
when 99 out of 100 prospects don't want your product.
Another plus is that your "offering" is what gets judged ... not you-
Let me explain .. ,
You can be a midget... a gimp ... bald ... fat ... cock-eyed ... butt-
ugly ... toothless ... have bad breath ... etc. None of this will affect
your chance of success in this business.
You can be a high-school drop out, like 1was, and with the right
idea you can run circles around the Harvard MBA with the wrong
idea ...
You do not need any specific expertise in the product you plan to
sell. I've manufactured and sold golf clubs while I never played a
round of golf once. I've manufactured and sold vitamins, where I
am not any kind of Scientist or Doctor. That's the beauty of this
business.
And guess what is best about this business? You can be sitting in
your one bedroom, roach infested basement apartment right now ...
but as soon as you craft the right letter, selling the right product,
to the right people, for the right price, and at the right time in his
or her life... you can be in possession of some intellectual property
worth over $100 Million! And it'll take you just 7 to 10 days after
you mail your letters to know what you have. Seriously.
About five years ago, I was between businesses. I was not earning
any money. I was a little discouraged. I created a letter for a
product and I tested it and got 6-times my money back. It cost
16
$600 to mail 1000 letters and I got $3600 back, of which all was
profit, once I subtracted the $600 mailing cost.
Now, what I then knew was that the amount of names I could mail
the letter to allowed me to sell 40,000 new people every month for
$180. That means I'd make $7.2 Million in gross sales every 30
days. It would cost me $1.2 a month to advertise. So when
everything was said and done, ] was looking at $6 Million profit
every month.
What did it cost me to create this letter? A pen ... a legal pad ... a
good idea ... and the skills and secrets revealed in this very book!
Right now, we're going to focus just on mailing sales messages for
a product to a qualified mailing list. Later, we'll talk more about
magazine advertisements and TV and radio commercials.
the side of the bottle- which is required on the bottle by law ... and
they can knock-me-off instantly. So, basically I can take a bottle of
anything I find in the vitamin store or in any catalog and any local
vitamin manufacturer can make the identical pill for $2 a bottle or
so ... even if it is selling for $50 to $60 in stores!
No need for research. No need for clinical studies (if the other
company already sponsored one or there is one in the many
medical journals). You can have your very own brand name dietary
supplement for a few dollars a bottle.
I was quite amazed when I saw these pills advertised and sold for
$60 when I could make them for $2 ... and even less in larger
quantities!
I made up a name for my "new" product and had labels made for
the bottles through the pill manufacturer. Viola! My very own,
trademarked brand name dietary supplement in less than a week's
time!
So, I crafted a sales letter for this product and located a few
mailing lists to mail the sales letters to. Sometimes it's easier to
come up with a product by looking at the different types of mailing
lists on the market. For example, instead of thinking of a new
product to sell, look at all the different types of mailing lists on the
market and their sizes, and then fit a product to the list.
I'll talk more in great detail about mailing lists later in this book.
Anyway, the pills sold for $60 in my letter, and remember, I made
them for $2. It cost $1.50 to ship them to the customer including
the bubble bag. I charged $6.95 for shipping and handling, so this
fee covered the 1-800 phone bill, the order taker's paycheck, the
shipping fee, the credit card processing charge ... hell it even
covered the cost to make the damn pills themselves!
It's totally legal to do this. That's why it's called a shipping and
handling fee. You can charge whatever you want for "handling" ...
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even if your customer knows it costs just $2 to send his order and
you charged him $5 ... the difference is the handling fee.
So, basically, when a customer would call me and order these pills
for $60, plus $6.95 for the shipping and handling ... all $60 of the
selling price was pure eTO. eTO is short for Contribution To
Overhead.
eTO is what your business will net after you pay for goods sold.
Out of this eTO, you still have to pay for advertising, postage,
employees, etc.
Most people are amazed when I tell them that 50% to 100% of your
CTa may go to the advertising expense to bring in the customer!
Who pays 50% for advertising? In this business, you'd be lucky if
you can pay just 50% of your initial purchase eTO on advertising.
At the current time I tested this product, postage cost $370 for
every thousand stamps.
It would cost $100 per thousand for names to mail the sales letters
to.
It would cost about $100 per thousand to print and stuff the sales
letter we sent to the names on these lists.
When we're all finished, it's safe to assume it's going to cost $600
to mail 1000 sales letters to qualified groups of prospects.
Being my product sold for $60 ... I got to keep all $60 of it, as the
cost to manufacture the product is covered in the shipping and
handling fee.
Common sense would tell you that when I mail 1000 letters for
$600 ... I need at least 10 orders to break even and get my
advertising dollars back.
]9
Lets say my product was a new diet pill. Not just any diet pill, but
one that actually enlarges in size once it reaches your stomach so
it feels like you are full all the time.
Now, let's say the mailing lists we're mailing our sales letters to are
made up of people who have bought diet pills in the past, so we
know they are prime prospects.
OK- we're mailing our hot, new diet pill to 1000 people who
actually bought someone else's diet pill in the mail recently. Of the
1000, how many do you think would order our pill? Some would
say 250 of the 1000. I'd say that they're crazy. Some would say
100. Again, they're crazy. Let's say that 98% of the people we mail
our letters to, throw, our sales message right in the trash ... Let's
say just 2% of our prospects decide to purchase our new, super
diet pill. Let's do some math.
When it was all said and done, each customer was worth $180 in
CTO. Lets go back to the 2% who bought from my sales message.
We've got 20 orders at $180. That's $3600 in CTO for every 1000
sales letters I mail. It costs $600 to mail 1000 letters, so we can
safely say; 111profit $3000 for every 1000 letters I mail. That's $3 a
letter on average. What are you going to do when you get a diet pill
or a wrinkle serum to pull numbers like this when you test the
Victoria'S Secret mailing list that has 900,000 FRESH names a
20
month? Can you really make $2.7 Million from just one list? You
bet your ass!
And that example was for mailing sales letters to just one mailing
list! There are many ways to sell products via Direct Response. You
can sell products through magazine advertisements direct mail
sales letters (like we just spoke about) ... radio spots television
spots ... long format infomercials ... internet search terms ...
telemarketing ... and many more we'll go over in this book.
I used them all ... but only a handful are the ones that really work
well. We'll talk all about magazine ads ... direct mail.,; radio ...
television spots ... and some Internet promotion in this book. These
are the best ways I've discovered to make money in this business.
Are you having a hard time believing you can really strike it rich in
this business? Let me give you some examples of what people have
done in the past, and how their lives changed.
Carlton has been on TV for over 10 years and I'd bet he's made 100
times more money telling others how to buy real estate for no
money down than he has from actually using his own techniques ...
which is fine.
Remember the California gold rush? I'm sure the men selling the
picks, shovels, and overalls made more money than the men who
actually were in the mines trying to find the gold. Levis is still
making jeans ... but all the miners and their fortunes (if they ever
found any) are all long gone.
sheet of paper may cost nothing to produce ... but when that
simple sheet of paper is a winning lottery ticket; it can easily be
worth $10 Million and more!
Tae-Bo Videos:
Billy Blanks was a struggling California exercise instructor, as
most exercise instructors are. But what happens when you
videotape your amazing exercise routine and sell it via direct
response? If you were Billy, you'd be looking at selling 5 MILLION
copies of your video and more! I'm sure over $100 Million was
grossed with this amazing product. But did you know this: Billy
was teaching this unique Karate and boxing inspired fitness
techniques for years in Southern California gyms ... it took
someone with directresponse smarts to say, "Hey, let's get a
camera and film this guy. People allover the World would love to
do this in their own homes!"
Can you come up with a million-dollar idea? I hope so. What I'm
here to do is tell you what type of products you need to make for
this business to work for you. And once you have that winning
idea ... there is no better set of tools you can get than this book to
show you how to suck every ounce of money from your idea.
1
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Chapter Two:
Products and Arithmetic
In this chapter, we're going to talk about the types of products and
services that are best to promote through direct response.
,
I really do not care what I'm selling ... as long as it sells at a profit.
To me, the product I'm offering is just a means to an end. I'm in
this business to make a profit- hopefully a large one. I'm not
married to arty "type" of product or service. If I test a sales letter or
an advertisement for a product and if it fails ... I'll abandon the idea
like a red headed stepchild, and I advise you do the same.
Of course, the best products to sell are your own products. You
need big margins in this business, and selling someone else's
product is never going to allow you to make the large margins
needed to cover your advertising expenses.
You must have pretty damn close to 100% profit margins; meaning
the cost of goods has to be made up in the shipping and handling
fees you'll charge your customers.
My friend and mentor Gary Halbert says if he were given just one
thing when he is creating a product for sale through direct
response, he'd want a starving crowd.
Also, I've learned that people will not pay a cent for a
preventative ... but they'd give their lives for the cure.
Now, of course, there is no cure for cancer. .. especially one you can
manufacture. I'm just using this as an example.
Lucky for me, the product I was making $2.4 Million a month with
led to $4.8 Million more in back end sales as they reordered every
month.
Here's a quick way you can see if your idea has any chance of
success before you spend an ounce of your time and a cent of your
money testing: .
Your product has to sell for more than $50. Nowadays, it's so hard
to make a profit with a unit sale of under $50. Even if you were
selling a video for $19.95 and you got to keep all $19.95. Let's do
some math.
Say you're selling this video for $19.95 through direct response
sales letters. You need $600 in orders for every 1000 letters you
mail. In order to breakeven, you're going to need 3% of your
prospects to buy. In order for you to make some serious money,
you need 6% to buy. Six percent is not likely to respond.
Now, maybe if you can get 3% to buy the video and this video you
are selling is a monthly video, meaning your customers will
automatically receive a new video every month and you'll rebill
their credit cards. Maybe you can get this to work. .. but again, 3%
to buy is a high number.
Here's some great numbers I try to shoot for with any project I'm
looking to test. Let's say I've got a pill that I can sell for $59.95 and
all $59.95 is pure eTO. AlII need to get in response (orders) is 1%.
That's realistic. Now, let's say that each customer buys an average
of 4 bottles from you over the next months. Let's say the three
additional bottles they buy will cost $39.95 on an automatic
shipment. Your customer life value would be approximately $180.
This book is the Bible in the direct response business. What this
book is a book that comes out every 60 days and it lists the
mailing lists that are on the market for rent.
This book is the only legitimate place mailing list owners advertise
their lists for use by marketers like you and 1.
This book will have lists that are from other companies ... magazine
subscriber lists ... compiled lists ... etc.
In this book, you'll find the mailing lists of Adam and Eve Catalog
Buyers, Victoria's Secret Catalog Buyers, Subscriber Lists to
almost any magazine, etc.
What you can do is sit yourself down with this giant book and just
go through it. Look at the different types of lists that are available.
It may be easier for you as a beginner to fit a product to a mailing
list or group of mailing lists.
Here's an example. Let's say there's a list of the men who buy from
the Richlee Shoe Company. This is a company that sells Elevator
Shoes. These shoes have a hidden "lift" in them so the men who
wear them appear to be 1"... 2"... even three inches taller.
Now, it's safe to assume, the men who buy these shoes through
this catalog are short. .. or at least they crave to be taller. They
crave to be taller so much; they'll actually buy special shoes to do
so!
Now, I don't know if this company has their customer list on the
market, so let's just use this as an example. Let's say they have
20,000 people buying from their catalog every month. That's a
decent number of fresh prospects each and every month.
Why don't you come up with some sort of product that you think
can make these guys taller? I know there are stretching manuals
out there on the Internet that show men how to stretch their
cartilage and thus, grow taller.
Let's say that there are special amino acids that you can take to
keep your cartilage healthy and dense. What about if you get your
hands on the exercise manual and bring it to a personal trainer
and have him perform the exercise and you have it filmed.
You can burn the video onto a DVD. You can also then make a
dietary supplement that would aid in keeping the cartilage healthy
and dense. You can then create a "system" where for $59.95, the
customer can get the DVD of exercises ... and a bottle of the
"supplement" they need to keep the cartilage healthy.
Now, your sales letter can automatically enroll your customers into
a preferred customer club where they will receive a fresh supply of
pills every month for $39.95.
Let's say each customer lets you ship him or her on average 6
months worth of pills. The first bottle will get you $59.95 and the
remaining 5 will get you $39.95 each. This all comes to $259.70.
Now, when you sell this product, you'll charge a $6.95 shipping
and handling fee. This fee will cover the cost to manufacture the
DVD and the cost to manufacture the bottle of pills ... plus it will
also cover the cost to actually ship the product to them. It should
cost you no more than $2 in postage to get the DVD and the bottle
of pills to the customer's front door. Being you are doing this, the
$59.95 for the DVD and the first bottle of pills is pure eTO. Then
for the additional 5 bottles they1l1et you send them, you'll again
charge the $6.95 shipping and handling fee... so the entire $39.95
for the additional monthly bottles will also be 100% pure eTO.
29
Now, lets say you create a great sales letter with the tips you're
going to master later in this book. It's going to cost you $600 to
mail 1000 sales letters. Being that you are getting $259.70 ... how
many orders do you need to breakeven?
You need just 2.32 orders per 1000 letters to breakeven. Let's say
you get 2% of your prospects to order. .. that's $259.70 multiplied
by 20 orders. This comes to $5194 in CTO.
When you divide this figure by the $600 it cost you to get those
orders, you're looking at a promotion that yields 8.7 times it's cost!
That's a great number!
Now $5194 in CTO minus the $600 to solicit the prospects leaves
you with $4594 in profit for every 1000 letters you mail.
Remember, the mailing list gets 20,000 fresh prospects each and
every month. There's 20 thousands in 20,000, so that means you'll
make 20 times the $4594 you profit per 1000 letters. Do the math.
You'll earn $91,880 each and every month mailing just 20,000
names.
And don't forget, this was just one mailing list. Maybe there are
ot.her mailing list.s for "short" people. I know I've seen a few
clothing catalogs out there for men 5-foot-7 and under. If a man is
compelled to actually buy clothing from a catalog like this ... being
short angers him ... and when you offer him a solution to his
problem ... and if it. really works ... you're going to get filthy rich.
I know some of the people reading this book will say that diet pills
are huge. It seems like everyone is fat nowadays. But, on the flip
side of this ... every other direct marketer also knows of this and
even though diet pills are one hell of a powerful product ... there are
only so many slices of the pie ... and when there are 100 people
mailing to the diet lists offering their products ... your offering for
this type of product is greatly diluted.
30
massive success. We're all competing for the magic two percent to
buy.
Now, as for the CDs ... what you can do is order a few different
courses on this subject and simply make notes of the important
issues in each of the courses ... and when you are all done ... just
assemble all the stuff you put together into one super package you
can call your own!
Heck, you can even locate a few "experts" in Tax Deed Sales and
call them and see if they'l11et you buy an hour of their time over
the phone. You'll ask them all the questions you would have if you
were going into this business. Tape record them and simply turn
those cassette tapes into your CDs. Are you providing an expert's
information to your customers? Of course you are. Where the
expert may say he wants $200 for an hour of his time ... and if you
figure you need 4 hours of his time ... for $800 you can create an
excellent product you can then sell to thousands of people for $180
or so.
What you'll do next is come up with your offer. A good price for a
course like this would be three credit card payments of $59.95,
plus $9.95 shipping and handling.
The $9.95 will cover the cost to manufacture the CDs, the
directory, the case, and of course- the actual shipping charges to
get the thing delivered to your customer.
You'11get to keep most of the profit. Costs that eat at your profits
are customer refunds ... which will not exceed 10% in practically all
cases ... You'll have to pay for a few employees to answer the calls ...
you'll pay the electric bill, etc. If you were getting $599,400 in
profit... it's safe to assume you'll get to put around $500,000 in
your pocket to spend as you wish, each and every month!
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32
This Real Estate course did not have a back end to resell... but you
can look at the installment payments as your back end ... because
your prospects will not think they are paying $179.85 for the
course ... their mind tells them they are paying $59.95 ... three
times.
But that shouldn't stop you from still trying back end products.
You can put together a newsletter. .. videotapes of a seminar ... etc.
Another issue you have to take into consideration when looking for
a product is how many ways are out there for you to make money
from. If there is just one mailing list and it has just 2500 fresh
names added to it a month, this product is probably not worth
your time. If there are no lists that have even the slightest chance
of working for you, there's probably good reason for it- nobody
wants to buy that type of product. If there are no publications, or
publications that are smaller than 50,000 paid circulation every
month or every other month, consider another product.
A friend of mine was telling me about his friend who makes these
"really cool" clocks. He told his friend about me and his friend was
wondering if he could sell his clocks via direct response sales
letters. Let's do the math:
Even if there were, these clocks would have a hard time selling for
more than $50. We have to subtract $15 to make the clocks from
the $50 selling price and we're left with $35. Let's say we can
33
charge $10 for shipping and handling, and let's assume it would
really cost $5 to send the clock. .. so we can add another $5 to the
$35 CTO for a grand total of $40 CTO.
When we mail 1000 sales letters as a test, we'll need 15 orders just
to breakeven. So, lets say we need to do double over.,; which
means we need to make back double what we spent on mailing the
sales letters. That means we'll need 30 orders for this clock.
THREE PERCENT to buy.
Do you really think he's going to get three percent of his prospects
(if there were any) to buy his stupid clock, which he could never
make in large quantities anyway? Are you crazy? Of course not. So,
I had to offend him and tell him "what time it was." Bad product.
Bad, Bad, Bad.
What I would tell you to do is keep your eyes open for products you
have purchased in the past that fit the parameters explained in
this chapter. See if you can create your own version of it. You don't
have to be an expert or have any "qualifications" that you may
have thought you needed. When I first got into the dietary
supplements business, I thought you needed some sort of expertise
in this field ... boy was I wrong. Most vitamin manufacturers have
"house blends" of certain types of products that you can simply
"private label".
All vitamin companies have their own diet pill blends ... their own
arthritis blends ... etc. All it takes is a brand name and a label and
you're in the supplements business.
34
The sky is the limit ... as long as the mailing list or magazine is
there to advertise in and as long as the mathematics pan out.
If you really feel you have a great product and it'll cost you $75 to
make, and you think you can sell it for $300, plus $25 shipping
and handling- even though it goes against the principles I teach of
in this chapter ... if you feel strongly about it- maybe go for it.
You'll still make $225-$240 in eTO for every order. .. and guess
what? If you get 1% to buy ... you'd earn $2250 to $2400 in eTO
per 1000 letters mailed. When you subtract the $600 for the sales
letters .. l you're still left with $1650 - $1800 per every 1000 letters.
I know a lot of people who wouldn't cry about these numbers. And
we're not even going into talking about the back end this product
mayor may not have.
Or how about if you create a product you feel is not to your high
standards ... I wouldn't worry too much either, but let me clarify a
little. You should always shoot to sell and/or create the absolute
best product you can make, but sometimes this just cannot
happen.
Reasons may be, in order to hit a certain price point, you have to
skimp on a few key parts ... or use a lower grade. There's only one
person who has the right to tell you your product is crap ... and
that's your customer.
If you're getting more than 10% of your customers asking for their
money back, maybe you should look into what they are
complaining about and see if you can fix it... but even if you
cannot, later in this book, I'll tell you how to retain as many
customers as possible.
Any car manufacturer (even the Americans) can make a car to rival
a Rolls Royce (remember Dusenburgs?) ... but they choose not to as
they cannot do it at a profit,
Chapter Three:
What Its Like When One Of
These Things Explodes
In the last two chapters and in the introduction of this book, I have
been "peppering" you with my past successes. And before we go
any further, I think I should take you inside one of my largest
successes ... step-by-step ... and show you only what a few people
on the "inside" experienced.
Since 1994, I've been selling all different types of products through
direct response- wholesale membership clubs for consumer
electronics ... computer software ... how-to books and tapes ...
premium car wax ... you name it, I sold it ... but I had my largest
success in dietary supplements.
Over the years, I've had people try to persuade me to get into
dietary supplements ... but I could never really get excited about
this type of product- unless it was something radically different.
you or your spouse wants to try it with a passion ... there's a good
chance others will feel the same.
Within a few weeks we both noticed the product did in fact just
what it claimed to do ... and it did just as wen as their clinical study
said it would. This product was getting me more and more excited.
But I would still say the best part about this discovery was that
these pills ... the entire one month supply ... in a bottle ... with a
label affixed to it.,; didn't cost the $8 to $15 I thought it would cost
to make ... it cost just $2 a bottle when I bought them in 1000
lots ... and that price would go down even further when we'd order
larger quantities.
Now, this product had four things going for it so far ...
3. It was small and cheap to ship. J think at the time, the Post
Office was charging us $1.87 to ship a bottle in a bubble bag. I was
charging $6.95 to cover shipping and handling, so the cost to buy
the bag, the cost of Postage, the cost of the product itself, was all
covered in this fee. And these bottles are small, so they didn't
require a huge warehouse to stock them. You could easily stick
2000 bottles in a one-car garage bay.
4. Women had a huge problem with what this product was to help
them with ... and there was only one other product on the market
at that time offering to help with this problem And like I was saying
before, this other product's marketing was Mickey Mouse. A bunch
of "granola nuts" as I call them who knew everything about herbs
and didn't know a thing about advertising and marketing ... but I
sure as hell did!
1 sat at my brand new (at the time) orange iMac and just got
typing. 1 wrote a really good sales letter and found three mailing
lists that I thought were worth testing first.
I got 9000 sales letters printed up and I ordered the three mailing
lists. I was going to test 3000 names from each list. You can test
with as little as 1000 letters, but since I was already an established
marketer. .. 3000 is actually being frugal.
.c\O
letters and get 12 orders (sti112.4%) ... the 12 orders are NOT
enough to scientifically gauge a roll out's response percentage.
I mailed 9000 letters to 3 lists of 3000 names each. All 9000 got
the same exact letter. .. I had a coding device (which 111 talk about
later), which told me which mailing list they ordered from when
they were ordering. The orders started coming in, and I always like
to sit-in on tests ... as they are the very foundation of a million-
dollar promotion. You want to make sure everything is right. I once
deemed a sales letter selling golf clubs a failure because 1 didn't get
any orders from a test mailing. Little did I know, we had the wrong
800# on the letter. The letter with the right phone number was a
success. Nowadays I watch every test as if it were a child fresh off
her training wheels.
The first few orders start coming in. I vividly remember a lady
saying how much she identified with the writer of the sales letter. ..
and how it almost made her cry. She busted out her credit card
immediately. Sure, a woman may have signed the letter we sent
out ... but it was written by me ... a burley ... hairy-chested ... Italian
guy. I found this kind of funny. I guess that's when you know you
are a good copywriter. Sure, I got a lot of orders, but the final
response didn't impress me much ...
I was thinking I'd get 2% to buy ... I ended up with a lot less.
This is why you have to test different mailing lists ... you can have a
hit on one list ... and a disaster on another list... even if they are in
theory the same type of people on them! Logic makes no sense in
this business and even seasoned Professionals like me fail to bring
in enough orders from time to time.
41
So we had a list that broke even. Many direct marketers say that
breaking even is 90% if success is 100%. Now you have to do
things to better the promotion.
"And if you're one of the first 200 people to order, you'll receive
FREE ENROLLMENT into our Preferred Customer Club where
you'll qualify to receive a full $20 discount on all your future
bottles of (product name). And so you don't go a day without
(product name) in your system, you'll automatically receive a fresh
bottle every 30-days and your credit card will be billed the Club
Member Price of $39.95 plus $6.95 S/H- not the $59.95 fee non-
members have to pay. There are no minimum amounts of bottles to
buy and you can cancel at any time. The number to call is 1-800-
123-4567, and you can call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."
42
The addition of this paragraph was the only difference between the
initial sales letter that broke even. I ordered another batch of fresh
names from the list broker and had these new letters printed with
the magic paragraph. We mailed out 3000 and kept our fingers
crossed. You see while a back end is a must in this business ... an
"auto-ship" makes the back end 100 times more profitable. Notice
how the paragraph was worded as if I was doing them a favor of
making sure their fresh bottle was there on time. While it is true,
they were getting the auto delivery and a reduced price ... I was the
real winner, because I got to rebill their credit card automatically
every month until they called and told me to stop. This is super
profitable and absolutely legal to do.
Anyway ... lets get back to what happened when Lrernailed the
3000 sales letters with this added paragraph.
I rounded it off to 4 months. So, they would call and order a $50
bottle initially, then I'd send them 3 more bottles over the next 90
days for $40 each. Since it cost me $50 to bring in the $50 initial
sale (breakeven). _. the three $40 sales added up to $120 ... which
was an over 300% return on my initial advertising dollar. Where
else can you earn a 300% monthly ROl. .. That's an annual 3600%
ROI... and the promotion is just a breakeven ... not even one of my
bigger successes! .
The product I just told you about was my first attempt at dietary
supplements and after having a hit with the first product, I was
fascinated with this business. I was hot to come up with my next
success.
I wrote the sales letter. It was basically the very same offer I had
for the first supplement ... the first bottle for $59.95 plus $6.95
shipping and handling and then they would be automatically
enrolled into my Preferred Customer Club and receive automatic
monthly shipments.
Now I thought I was hot shit ... but this was nothing.
While you mayor may not wish to have this huge conglomerate
like I built ... I can tell you how to do it better than anyone else can.
I ACTUALLY DID IT. I suffered all the bruises when I messed
things up and got careless. III pass along all my successes and I'll
pass along all of my pains- so you can avoid them (or at least try
to).
Chapter Four:
All About Mailing Lists
Anyway ... we're now talking about mailing lists, so lets move on.
If you're just getting started in this business, and are still looking
for a product to sell... I'd tell you to spend a few days in the SRDS
book. Flip through the pages and see what types of lists are on the
market. Fit the product to the list. You'll have more success going
this route rather than trying to come up with a product and then
trying to fit the list to the product.
Remember, its better to have a good list with bad writing skills and
a poor product than it is to be the best copywriter in the world,
with a hot product, to the wrong list.
49
Anyway, I like BIG lists. I like BIG HOTLINE lists. When you're
looking through the SRDS book, you'11 see the counts for each list.
These counts will be the Universe (all the names on the list,
regardless of how long ago they were added), you'll see the 3, 6, 12
and maybe even the 24 month count- which is pretty easy to
understand ... and you Il see the HOTLINE count.
The HOTLINE count is the one I'm interested in. Because if I have
a hot letter and product that works when mailed to this list ... what
good is it if I run out of names in a few weeks once I mail the 12
month count? Or what about if their HOTLINE count were so
small... it would get wiped out as soon as you test it in small test
quantities?
I don't understand why, but every time I ask for a "reco" from a list
broker, they always send me these data cards for lists that are
5000 12-month names ... what the hell am I going to do with this
list? I'd probably get 4% of it to buy, but even if I got 4% ... its really
not going to make me any money because there's just 5000 names
a year added to the list.
When you get a mailing list to mail your stuff to ... its called
"renting" ... you're not "buying" the list... you're just "renting" it for
a one-time usage ... unless you pay more or get permission for
unlimited usage.
so
Now, you are the person who wants to RENT mailing lists to see if
you can sell your stuff to their customers, or their subscribers, etc.
DATA CARDS are the listing for a specific list. Do you know how a
realtor pulls a listing on a home for sale? Well, this is the same
thing. The Data cards are not actually "cards", they are just
listings in the SRDS book or sheets of paper a list broker will send
you.
You can get your hands on the SRDS book yourself and contact
the LIST MANAGER of each list yourself, or you can call a LIST
BROKER and they'll get the same lists for you ... and you won't
have to make 10 to 15 phone calls to different LIST MANAGERS.
LIST BROKERS are also supposed to help guide you to the best
mailing list for your offer. Basically, the way it works is you fax
them a copy of your sales message and they'll use their "expertise"
to locate you all the lists that have people ready to buy your
product.
In fantasyland, this is how this works ... but in the real world, if the
LIST BROKERS were so good, they sure wouldn't be RENTING lists
to you ... they'd be mailing their own shit to the lists they know
"work" so well.
But still, LIST BROKERS are useful because they don't add any
more money to the lists you rent (the list owner pays his
commissions) ... and they can make all the phone calls for you to
the other list managers ... and best of all, once you start rolling
out... the list broker can extend you 30 day credit terms on all the
lists you rent from numerous list managers.
:) 1
1. There are BUYER lists: These are lists made up of actual people
who bought from the company. Victoria's Secret Catalog Buyers is
a list of all the people who bought from their catalog, and you can
select them by date. The last 12-month names, the last 6-month
names, the last 3-month names, even the HOTLlNES for the past
month's buyers. Buyer Lists are the most powerful mailing lists to
rent.
2. There are SUBSCRIBER lists: These lists are what they say they
are ... subscribers to a magazine ... or to a newsletter. While these
lists are great, and they are some of the bigger lists, they are less
powerful than the actual "buyer" lists ... part of the reason is that
subscriptions are sold numerous ways. Direct mail sold
subscribers Sweepstakes sold subscribers (Publisher's Clearing
House-types) 3-month free trial subscriptions ... Bill-Me-Later
subscriptions, etc. Where a buyer is a buyer is a buyer ...
subscribers can come into the list many different ways. Obviously,
the best subscribers are DIRECT MAIL SOLD subscribers. So, if
you can, sometimes I eliminate all the SWEEPS SOLD subscribers
from the lists I test.
3. There's COMPILED lists: These lists are the least powerful of the
three, but I did get them to work for me sometimes. Compiled lists
are made up of data complied in some way and organized. Year's
ago a company RL POLK (now owned by EQUIFAX) had a compiled
list I tested and it worked for me TWICE on two separate offers.
This list was compiled by way of warranty cards. You know when
you buy a computer and the warranty card has a million and one
questions on it and you feel obligated to fill out each and every
question or else your warranty may be voided ... well, that data
went straight to RL POLK.
I like mailing lists where the customers paid a lot of money to get
on the list ... hopefully more than I'm selling my product for. You'll
see this stat listed on the AVG. UNIT SALE part of the data card.
This is another reason why magazine subscriber lists don't pull as
well as buyer lists ... magazine subscriptions are cheap- usually
under $20.
But I've also made the majority of my money from subscriber lists
and this is for at least two reasons. Magazine subscriber lists are
usually huge. I'd rather earn a dollar on one million names than
earn four dollars on 25,000 names ... wouldn't you agree? There's a
difference between powerful and profitable.
I tested a well-known adult video catalog vs. one I never heard of.
One got 3% to buy ... the one I never heard of got less th an a.
quarter of a percent to buy. These are the same type of lists in
theory- adult video buyers ... but if this was really the case, why the
difference in response? Could the unknown list have phonebook
53
Something really good about subscriber lists ... is that if you can
get your letter to pull profitable in themail. .. it'll be a smash
success when you advertise it in the magazine itself.
Jay Abraham, another of my mentors ... and probably the man who
influenced me the most in this business tells a story of some
bodybuilder clients he was working for. They had this manual they
were trying to sell to the subscribers of some of the bodybuilding
magazine and the letter was just breaking even.
What he did was condense the sales letter down to 4 pages and he
struck a deal with the magazine to place his ad. Well, where the
direct mail just broke even ... the print ad version of the sales letter
pulled 200% to 300% over what the advertisement cost to place.
even for him. So he got himself a 22-page block of ads and the
damn thing made him a huge profit. This 22-page ad in
Entrepreneur Magazine back in 1995 was the ad I responded to
and bought his $5,000 seminar. Just imagine what will happen
when you get a winner on a subscriber list and then you take it
over to print ads ...
I had a product that was pulling six times cost on the subscriber
list, but when I placed the ad in the magazine on four pages ... I got
not six times our money back. .. we got back nearly ten times our
money!
Most books on direct mail will tell you about the RFM guidelines to
keep in mind when you are selecting a mailing list. I think they're
worth going over.
R F M
Recency:
The most important. This means how recent the name is. People
have a habit of buying in surges. You want to get them while
they're in that surge. It may last 30 days ... it may last 6 months.
Obviously, the fresher the better. This is where logic makes no
sense. You'd think if someone just bought a diet pill last month ...
they wouldn't be ready to try your brand for at least two months.
But it doesn't work this way. The same goes for opportunity
seekers. You'd think if someone bought a book on how to make
money last month ... they wouldn't buy another book on how to
make money for at least a few months ... or until they realize they
don't want to ... or can't do what the product says they have to do.
But it doesn't work this way. If they bought a diet pill last month ...
r
55
you'll have an easier time selling them another pill 4 weeks later
than you would if it were 12 months later.
Frequency:
This is the second most important. Frequency means how many
times this particular customer bought. MULTI-BUYERS are what
they are called in the mailing list world. Multi-buyers are twice as
likely to buy as one-time buyers. So, the more times they bought,
the more powerful they are.
Monetary:
This is the least important of the three, but it is important.
Monetary means how much this customer spent to get on this list.
I was just telling you about this a few pages back. Obviously, you'll
have an easier time trying to sell your $60 product to a list of
customers who all paid $500 to buy something, rather than trying
to sell the same $60 product to a list of people who put out $10 to
buy the product that got them on the mailing list. Maybe they
cannot afford your $60 product, where you know for a fact the list
of the $500 buyers can afford your $60 gizmo.
Now, in the perfect world, you'd rent only mailing lists of people
who bought similar products as yours ... and the last time they
bought it was last month ... and they bought the same thing seven
times in the past ... and they put out five times more money on it
than what your product is being offered to them for.
I've never found a list like this one. If you did, by the time you slice
it down ... you'd be looking at a just few thousand names.
But you should strive for as close to perfection as you think you
can get. You'll never find the perfect list like I was saying before ...
but why not try to get as close as you can to perfection?
Usage Reports:
Something you can request from a list manager or a list broker is
the USAGE REPORT for a particular mailing list you are looking to
rent. This report is broken down in two sections. One is
"Continuations" and the other is "Tests".
Basically, when someone tests a list, the manager should add it to
the report ... when someone is continuing to use the list after a
test ... they get added to the report. Obviously, a continuation only
occurs when a marketer tests a list and it works. So if you get a
usage report for a list you're interested in and it has a huge
amount of Tests and few Continuations ... that should tell you
something. A lot of people test the list ... only to find out it sucks.
It really can narrow down some lists to test in the future. But there
are errors in usage reports as well. I remember being a continuing
customer for a certain catalog company. I saw a copy of their usage
report and I was not on it. Not that I even want to be on it ... I like
to operate in silence ... but if I wasn't on it ... how many other
companies are not on it ... and is it even accurate? Everything in
this business has to be questioned numerous times and in
numerous ways, as nothing is as it seems- especially in mailing
lists.
Don't call a list broker until after your sales letter is crafted. Go to
the library and look through the SRDS book yourself and open
your mind. The ideas will just start flying in, one after another!
57
Chapter Five:
All About Magazine Advertising
The last chapter, we focused on mailing lists- the different types ...
how to fit products to them ... and how to gauge the "good" ones
from the bad ones.
Now, where I told you about selecting a mailing list then fitting a
product to it ... I would not advise doing this with magazine
advertisements. And if you're testing a new product ...
It's very possible to send out 3000 sales letters and not receive one
single order! I mailed a test of 4000 letters a few months ago and I
didn't get one single freakin' order!
5X
That's another good thing I like about magazine ads is that you
can negotiate your price. In direct mail. .. it's hard to get a huge
discount on printing ... it's hard to get a huge discount on mailing
lists ... and it is IMPOSSIBLE to get any discount on postage.
With magazine ads ... I feel like the publisher is ripping me off if I
can't get at least a 50% discount from their "rate card".
If you have a product related to a niche market like car stereo and
a new car stereo magazine comes out, I'd say it was worth a test as
that magazine is a "specialized" magazine. The people who picked
it up at the newsstand were probably car stereo nuts. And they
were not ordinary guys picking up a copy of EDGE ... a MAXIM
knockoff.
Here are a few examples of new men's magazines that came and
went in less than a few years' time:
GEAR
STUN
EDGE
RAMP
CONTROVERSY
RADAR
59
I have tested a few new magazines with great success ... but only
after I knew I had a successful advertisement. I had a car stereo
membership club that I advertised in two new car audio
magazines, CARSOUND and AUTOTRONICS. Both books were new
and both books failed, but I did have great success advertising in
them. The same goes for MIND AND MUSCLE POWER. This was a
magazine by the Publisher of Penthouse. I was in their first issue. I
needed 1000 orders to breakeven, and I ended up with 500!
Unfortunately, MIND AND MUSCLE POWER is also out of
business. Bottom line: NEW MAGAZINES DO NOT MAKE IT TO
YEAR TWO.
Tell the advertising rep that you are skeptical as hell because they
are new. Tell them to run your ad for free and if it works, you'll give
them a full 12-month contract. If they are not game ... forget them.
If you have a full page ad working very well for you in Publication A
and you are paying $25/M for a full page ad ... when you go to
advertise in Publication B... you'll want to pay $25/M or less.
Always try to pay less. The less you pay, the more cash you get to
keep, and that's the name of this game.
Audited Circulation.
Magazines can lie about their circulation. Many new publications
do. In order for businesses to fairly gauge the different magazines
to advertise in, there are two 3rd party circulation-auditors
magazines hire to validate their readership numbers. ABC is the
one most magazines are audited by.
The real important figures you need to look at on the pink audit
sheet are the paid subscribers and the paid newsstand. Add these
two together and then gauge your CPM from this count.
If you're lucky enough to have a magazine tell you about their total
"readers" ... tell them that's nice ... but you are interested in how
many PAID CIRCULATION they have each issue. PAID
CIRCULATIONis the only number you care about. When you ask
this question, Magazine A, who was just raving about 500,000
readers will have to tell you they sell 100,000 copies each and
every month, but a survey they performed says their magazines get
read by 4 other people, other than the guy who originally
purchased it. This is also called "pass along" readership.
Frequency.
Magazines come out in all different types of frequency. Some come
out every month ... some every two months ... some every quarter ...
some EVERY WEEK! Here's what I can tell you about frequency.
Monthly publications are great. Bimonthly publications are good
and they give you a little more time to make your money before
their next issue comes out. Quarterly publications are not worth
advertising in, and weekly's or biweekly's come out too fast for you
to recoup your advertising dollars from the previous issue.
subscription could have been a gift from someone else ... hell, he
may not even check his mail for months on end. Newsstand
readers are better quality. Look for 50/50 ... and if there is a higher
percentage of newsstand, that's good. But, just understand if a
magazine is 90% subscribers and 10% newsstand, your ad may
burn out quicker.
You will get better results if you are on the right hand side of the
magazine. It's as simple as that. Many magazines may not want to
guarantee you a right hand page ... but make sure you get your
point across that you want a right hand page. Don't be fooled by
magazines ... they want your business. If you're going to walk away
over which side they put your ad on ... they'll make sure they don't
lose the sale.
I don't even like to mess around with this stuff anymore. Nowadays
I place three pages ads that are right, left, right. I'm guaranteed my
right hand page.
If you are doing an ad smaller than a full page, you 11 still want it
on the right hand page and as far up front as you can get it.
Fractional Advertisements.
Maybe you don't have the big dollars to place full-page ads just yet,
and that's fine. You can place fractional ads. These ads are 1/3
page ... 1/2 page ... 2/3 page ... even 1/12 page.
Negotiating Ad Cost.
Here's some proven ways to get the Publisher way down on his
prices. First of all, tell the ad rep you are your own in-house
advertising agency. These words will save you 15% right off the
top. Advertising agencies get 15% commission on all ads. Next,
make sure to tell them you are a direct response advertiser. This
could get you an entirely new rate that will be as much as 25%
lower. The reason for this is simple. Publishers know if you are a
mail order advertiservyou are going to be counting the sales from
your ad. General advertisers do not do this, so the publisher
knows he can gouge them. The general advertiser's ad agency
doesn't care about this too much, because they earn a commission
of 15% for the entire cost of the ad the company runs. The more
the magazine charges, the more the agency makes in commissions.
Ad agencies are useless. In fact, by the time you are finished with
this book, you could probably go to Madison Avenue in Manhattan
and create better ads than 75% of the chumps in their fancy offices
high above the city.
Another technique you can use to get the rate card price down is to
tell them you want the "pre-pay" discount, if they have one. You
can save an additional 3% this way.
Also, tell the advertiser you want the 12-time rate. Obviously, if the
ad works for you, you're going to run more and more magazine
ads, right? If the magazine does not allow you to make enough
sales to cover it's cost, you can call the publisher and renegotiate
your ad rate. If they are stuck and you can't get a better rate, you
don't have to run any more ads- even if you told them you were
going to run 11 more times.
When you add up and use all these techniques ... you should shave
50% off the one time rate card price,
Spreads Suck!
Spreads are two page ads, one on the left and one on the right.
They look good, and make you feel good because your ad is twice
as large, so it has to be twice as powerful..; but it's not. Let me
explain.
If your advertising copy runs over into another page ... put your
first page on the right hand ... then the second page on the back of
the first page. This way, you can attract a potential reader on two
separate page tums ... and if a reader wants to rip out your ad, all
he has to do is rip out the one page and he's got the front and back
of your ad in one rip! By doing your two page ad this way, instead
of a spread, you'd be looking at getting 200% more orders for 200%
more advertising cost ... this you can live with! NEVER, NEVER,
NEVER do a 2-page spread. They never worked for me.
Condensing.
When you are wrtting.your ad, you may run into a little problem
where there is too much text and not enough space. Instead of
buying another page and instead of eliminating potentially
powerful selling copy what I'd advise you to do is shrink the size
of the copy. If you have an interested reader, he'll read 8 point type
if he has to. So, if I had to choose between buying another entire
ad page ... and doubling the cost of my advertisement... or editing
potentially powerful and needed sales copy ... which wi11lose me.
the sale entirely ... or simply shrinking down the copy to fit it all ...
I'd choose the latter. Something funny is that a crammed-looking
ad appears like it has something important to say to the reader.
Controlled Circulation.
Earlier in this chapter we talked about paid circulation. Some
magazines, especially TRADE PUBLICATIONS are what is called
CONTROLLED CIRCULATION. This means that the readers have
not paid for their subscriptions, but they all had to qualify in some
way to receive the magazine. A trade magazine may go to 100,000
CPAs. In order to get this magazine you must be a CPA. If you are
a CPA and if you requested this magazine, you'll get it for free.
Chapter Six:
Creating Your Swipe File
Now, to the blind eye, you may think they are really just giving
away the free sample of their product ... but when you actually call
them and order their sample, they'll have a script the order taker
will read to you. It'll say something like this:
Now, had you not responded to your competitor's ad, you would
have never figured out the method behind their madness. An ad
that gives away a sample supply will almost always pull more
orders than if you just tried to sell the customer right off the page.
You have to keep an eye on what others are doing in your related
field.
Chapter Seven:
The Back End
The back end is where all the real huge profits come in.
I sold a product for $60. I got 40,000 new customers to buy it every
month. I paid $1.2 Million in advertising every month to get those
40,000 people. Had I left well enough along, I would have grossed
$2.4 Million on the $60 sales to 40,000 people. But I never leave
well enough alone.
Before I even decided to test the product I'm talking about, I made
sure it had a strong back end.
You can sell them while they are on the phone ordering the initial
product, you can include a back end offer in the product's
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shipment, you can go back and mail your customer list every 30-
days ... or every 14-days ... or even every week.
Do you know when you stop mailing? When you stop turning a
profit. Your customers will not get annoyed receiving so much
advertising from you. Remember, they did want your product...
why wouldn't they want additional products to make their initial
purchase better or more rewarding to them?
Then, three weeks later, I'd, send the same names another offer.
Again, it was a $200 product, out a different one from the first
offer. I'd get another 5% to buy. Here's another $10 in my pocket.
At this point, I turned every customer who bought a $20 book into
a $40 customer.
A few weeks later came back end offer #3. Another product for
$200. I again got 5%. Now we're up to $30 on the back end of a
$20 book purchase. We're now at $50.
Another few weeks came offer #4. This time it was a $1000
product. I got 1% ... but since the product was a $1000 product, I
added yet another $10 to my back end profits.
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And I kept this going and going. When 1 finally ran out of related
products, I'd remail the first, the second, the third, etc. offers.
So, when most people would wonder why I was thrilled to sell
$10,000 worth of books from a $10,000 ad ... I would chuckle. I
knew after a few months, that a $20 book buyer would make that
$10,000 ad bring me $40,000 in sales.
Your customer list is the most valuable asset you'll own. You can
remail it time and time again and it'll never wear out. I don't even
look to market products unless they have a great back end
potential.
Back end sales can come from reselling the identical product you
first sold them. If you were selling a pill or a cream ... this would be
resold to them.
Here's a great back end strategy for a skin care product that
reduces the appearance of wrinkles.
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The customer tries the sample and orders your product for $60 or
so.
Now you have your first back end set up- the automatic
shipments.
While your customers are enjoying the product, you send them a
sales letter for a complete moisturizing and cleansing kit. It has 4
or 5 different products in the kit, that if they were sold separately,
would cost $300 or so ... but you can offer them this "kit" for just
$139.95 plus $10 shipping and handling. If you've been paying
attention, the $10 you charge will cover the entire cost to
manufacture the 4 or 5 bottles and the entire cost to ship the
whole thing to them.
Since your customers love your initial wrinkle cream, they believe
your claims for the moisturizing and cleansing kit. You end up
with 5% buying this kit. Five 'percent response adds $7 to the
customer's lifetime value.
You do another "kit" for a different purpose next month ... and
another the next month ... and so on. If you find out your customer
keeps receiving the initial wrinkle cream for six months (or six
shipments), you should make six different "kits" to go along with
the six-month customer life.
Now remember, all this will fall on its face if you are selling your
customers junk. If a customer bought something from you and
they were not satisfied, they are not going to rebuy in a large
percentage as they would if they were at least satisfied with what
you sent them. While your product does not have to change their
lives ... it does have to at least satisfy them somewhat.
A video is sold for $9.95. If you order with a credit card, you'll
receive a bonus video for free. But in order to receive it, a credit
card is needed. No check orders get this 2nd video.
The purpose of this is to gain the credit card numbers, so you can
automatically resend them a new video every month and you don't
have to go through the "bill me" headaches. You simply bill their
credit card. Of course, you have to let your customer know you're
going to do this.
I know a guy who does this and makes $90 Million a year.
When the auto ship product is different every shipment- like the
videos, you can have a lower initial sales price ... but when the
product is the same every shipment- like a bottle of pills ... you
have to offer the lower price on the future shipments because there
will be no advantage to being in the club. If you're selling a bottle
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of pills for $20 to attract a lot of customers and then go to tell them
you'll automatically send a fresh supply every month for $60-
they'll tell you to buzz off and just reorder as they see fit for the
initial $20 fee. They wouldn't do this on the video club ... because
they'd just be ordering the same video every month instead of a
fresh one as the videos are different each shipment. Understand?
It took me a long time to understand that you can get rich very
quickly with a product that leads itself to back end sales ...
especially when the product is a consumable- and you can
automatically reship a fresh supply when the consumable is
finished.
Let's pretend I was marketing the sale of this book. I'd rent mailing
lists ... advertisements in magazine ... buy Internet search terms,
etc. But what about if I went to my buddy who has a newsletter
with thousands of readers.
And this technique works on the flip side as well. Say I sold 20,000
copies of my book through direct mail sales letters and magazine
ads and my buddy wants to get more subscribers for his
newsletter. I can go to him, or he can come to me and we can
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I would make money from a product that I don't own ... and he'll
make money from gaining new subscribers with a huge influx of
orders as I wrote the letter to my customers telling them what a
great newsletter my buddy puts out.
I don't know how many times I can attempt to drill this in your
head. The back end is where all the real profits are. If your product
or service does not have a huge back end potential ... forget it-
unless your upfront response is huge. It is so much easier to resell
an existing customer than it is to attract a new customer, it'll make
your head spin.
Back end products should always cost more to buy than the initial
product they've purchased- unless it is the same product they are
buying over and over again- like a bottle of pills.
Bottom line: Back end products are products you can go back and
sell to your customers after the initial sale. Back end products can
also be sold as up sells or "bumps" while the customer is on the
phone ordering ... but that's an entire chapter on its own we'll cover
later in this book.
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Chapter Eight:
Auto ship
The greatest examples of auto bill are utility companies. You sign
up, and they'll keep your power on and bill you ... 'TILL YOU
FORBID their services- usually when you move.
Back end sales are great. We talked all about them in a past
chapter. Your customers will rebuy things from you at a rate of 5%
to 25% or so- depending on the product and their satisfaction level.
But auto ship gets every customer to rebuy unless he or she calls
and tells you not to.
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Sure, from the customer's point of view ... they'll qualify for a lower
price ... and they'll automatically count on the product arriving in
their mailbox- even when they are far too busy to call you when
they're out of product ... but the real benefit is for you- the
marketer. You11make every $1 in advertising give you $6 worth of
sales ... where it would get you just $2 without the auto ship club.
Furthermore ... if you word the auto ship policy wrong, the
customer will see that you are just looking to get more forced sales
out of him and he'll tell you not to enroll him in the club.
"And if you're one of the first 200 people to order, you'll receive
FREE ENROLLMENT into our Forever Trim Club where you'll
qualify to receive a full $20 discount on all your future bottles of
(product name). And so you don't go a day without (product name)
in your system- destroying fat, you'll automatically receive a fresh
bottle every 30-days and your credit card will be billed the Club
Member Price of$39.95 plus $6.95 S/H- not the $59.95 fee non-
members have to pay. There are no minimum amounts of bottles to
buy and you can cancel at any time. The number to call is 1-800-
123-4567, and you can call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."
As you can see ... this paragraph almost makes it sound as if the
customer's will hinder his or her results if they do not have the
product in their system every day. It kind of implies a fear that if
they do not have the product ... they're losing what they gained.
They want to put the delivery logistics in your hands to make sure
they always have enough product on hand to keep their current
results and keep getting more.
Some direct marketers don't even reveal the auto ship club in their
sales letters or advertisements. What they do is have a script the
order taker reads to them when they place their orders. I had to do
this when we were running TV and radio spots. You only have 60-
seconds to sell the product itself ... not enough time to sell an auto-
delivery club. So, we didn't speak of it in the commercials ... but
AFTER we got the entire order ... only then did we read the script
word for word.
Did a lot of customers balk about their credit card being billed
automatically? Some did. And for the ones that did, I offered a
special 4-pack of the product they were buying for a great price.
The majority who didn't want the auto-delivery did take the special
4-pack. .. so at least I made more money than the $60 one bottle
sold for.
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79
It's funny, but I sold 40,000 fresh people a month. The initial bottle
sold for $60. But maybe 5%) of the callers actually got off the phone
with just a $60 sale.
One thing about this .auto ship concept is that it will only work on
customers who buy with a credit card. You cannot rebill a
checking account off a check that was mailed to you.
Now don't get me wrong ... I'm not talking about just rebilling a
customer's credit card without their knowledge. All my customers
were either told in the advertisement, the sales letter, or through a
script read to them on the phone. Even my website told them when
they were ordering.
How are you going to rebill all these credit cards every month? I'm
glad you asked. Later in this book, I'll tell you all about the
software you Il use to process credit card transactions. The
software provided by the banks will allow you to set up each
customer's account to rebill at any price in any interval ... rebill
every 23 days ... 45 days ... 30 days ... however you work your
promotion. I'd stick with every 30 days.
This auto ship concept worked so well for me that once I saw how
well it worked ... I stopped taking orders for my product with
checks or money orders! I didn't even give the customer an option
to pay this way in our ads. If a customer did want the product I
was selling and said he didn't have a credit card, only then would
we give them an address to send a check to ... but we still made
sure to tell them about the special4-pack offer.
What I liked about the auto ship club was that I didn't have to
drum up sales from scratch every month. What I mean is this. I
was selling 160,000 bottles of pills every month. Since my
customers stayed in the auto ship club for an average of 4
months ... I had 40,000 people canceling their shipments every
month. To remain at the 160,000 mark ... I didn't have to go out
and bust my ass getting 160,000 new sales ... I just had to bring in
the 40,000 that fell off to stay the same size.
so
NOTE:
While we haven't touched on money back guarantees yet ... I would
advise you this: If you're reshipping a product every 30 days ... I'd
make my guarantee for 30 days. This way, you don't get zapped
with a customer looking for two credits at a time ... one for his first
shipment and one for his second. Try to keep your guarantee
period 'till the length of the 2nd delivery.
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Chapter Nine:
Lifetime Customer Value (LeV)
Here's another example. Lets say it's costing you $120 to bring in a
customer. Lets say your initial sale is $60, which all $60 is eTO.
So, you're losing $60 on every sale that comes in. If you didn't have
a back end ... you'd be out of business pretty fast right? Oh , yes.
But you do have a back end ... because if you learned anything
from this book so far. .. you need to have additional products to
resell to your customer to really make this business payoff.
I look at it like this. If you have just one product you sell to your
customer. .. you do not own a business ... you own a "promotion". In
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First of all, to operate with these kinds of numbers, you either have
to remain small. .. or have some form of investment money to help
cover expenses until the database of customers really starts
growing.
So, a few weeks after you lose $60 on the initial sale ... you resend
your customers a fresh supply of whatever you were selling for
$40. Now, you're $20 in a hole instead of the $60. Next month,
they get another supply for $40. Now you're $20 in the plus. Next
month you send another and you're up $60 ... the next month
you're up to $100 ... the next month you're up to $140. That's five
shipments after the initial.
The Lev of this type of customer would be $260. If you didn't know
this, when you lost $60 on the initial sale, you may have deemed
this effort a failure ... but if you have enough cash to get you
through the lean months ... you can be on top.
Sometimes in order to get large ... you have to lose some money on
initial sales. Sure, you may be able to get some smaller mailing
lists and magazine advertisements to profit right off the bat... but
the amount of customers they bring in may be small. In order to
get thousands of customers every month ... you may have to mail to
lists and run advertisements that are not the most profitable right
off the bat.
Like I was saying before ... making upfront profits depends on your
productj service, selecting the right groups of people to advertise
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The more desired the product... the more you'll be able to profit up
front. Products that are less desirable will cost a little or a lot more
in advertising dollars to attract.
Chapter Ten:
The Two Step
The Two Step ... no, I'm not going to teach you a dance. It's another
way to find targeted customers for your products.
2. When you need a lot of space to tell your full story and sales
pitch and it would be unprofitable to run all those pages in a
magazine.
3. When you want to operate in silence ... under the radar of your
competitors and anyone else you want hide your offer from.
6. When you're just starting out and want to make success as easy
as you possibly can.
Let's go over what a 2-step is ... and then we can go over each of the
examples in great detail.
Now, under the headline, you may have a photo of the house and a
paragraph that will tease the reader. It will NOT spill the beans as
to how or where you were able to buy the home so cheap. You're
going to have to tease like your girlfriend in the 9th grade did.
After you tease them with the paragraph you'd then say
something like, "To claim your free report simply call this
recorded message and tell us where to send it. You can call 24
hours a day, 7 days a week. There is no obligation,"
Now, everyone likes free stuff ... and since they do not have to deal
with any salesperson hounding them when they call..; you'll get
thousands of people requesting this free report... which is
basically ...
Of course, the report won't be all sales pitch ... you will educate a
little on the Tax Deed process ... but the main thrust of the report
will be ... here's this fabulous opportunity you may not have known
about... here's proof it is really true ... I am an expert ... and I'm the
best person to teach you ... so here's how I can help you make a lot
of money.
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This sales letter jfree report can be a larger format piece ... because
you will not be mailing it to the masses. The people who responded
to your ad will self-qualify themselves as prime prospects.
Here's when and why you should use the 2-step approach:
2. When you need a lot of space to tell your full story and sales
pitch and it would be unprofitable to run all those pages in a
magazine. .
Some products- especially new ones sometimes need a lot of space
to tell your entire story. And if your product needs four or five
pages to "sell" itself... that mayor may not be profitable. A 2-step
ad can get you prime prospects and the sales letter/free report you
send them can easily be 12 ... 24 ... 48 pages or more!
3. When you want to operate in silence ... under the radar of your
competitors and anyone else you want hide your offer from.
Knock-offs are a part of this business. People will notice your full-
page ads running month after month after month. As soon as they
see this ... it will take about five or six issues (maybe less) and
you'll start to see copycats sneaking into the magazines you
advertise in. usually trashing your product... cutting your price ...
taking your conservative (and true) claims and doubling them, etc.
It's frustrating. But, if you have a simple 2-step ad ... unless
potential knock-offs are willing to call your 800#and request a free
report ... they will never know what you're up to. Knock-offs are
known to be lazy ... after all; they're too lazy to come up with their
own ideas.
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marketers prefer 2-step ads. Their entire sales pitch and offer and
product claims are not out there in the open for all to see.
I'm sure you're seeing all these TV commercials for The Inventor's
Help line ... and Inventec ... and others. The commercial usually has
people saying that they thought of ideas before some large
company and if they had a Patent, they'd be rich and so on. These
commercials are looking for people just like this ... people who have
an idea they want to protect.
Now, the last time I checked, there were no mailing lists for people
with good ideas (and bad ones) who are looking to get protection in
the form of a patent. Well, actually, the commercial says nothing
about a Patent..; but you know what I mean. Being there are no
mailing lists, they went to the largest general circulation media ...
TV and placed these 2-step ads.
The people who call these places probably do have some form of an
idea ... and everyone thinks they have the greatest idea ... so these
company's will feed off this and offer protection so big corporations
will not profit from their ideas first. Even if the inventor does not
wish to market and manufacture their idea ... they feel assured
they are protected with a Patent... hoping a large company will
contact them and look to buy their idea or give them a royalty fee.
Whatever. The would-be inventor gladly shells out $500 or more for
the protection of their idea. A great 2-step example.
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I'm sure you've seen the Tempurpedic Sleep System. It's a foam-
like mattress that is made out of some high-tech material invented
by NASA. Anyway, these mattresses are several thousands of
dollars ... as most quality mattresses are. What this company does
is run 2-step commercials and infomercials offering free
information and a sample of the mattress material. Basically, you'd
call the 800# and give them your name and address ... and
probably some other information, like what brand mattress do you
currently own ... when are you looking to purchase a new
mattress ... etc.
They'll then send you the information and the mattress sample ...
and they'll probably remail you sales literature every so many
weeks ... and maybe even call you on the phone. Only in the
information package they send you will there be a price sheet
saying these mattresses cost like $2000.
6. When you're just starting out and want to make success as easy
as you possibly can.
Success with 2-step ads is the easiest way to do direct marketing
right. The 2-step technique is advised for beginners by many direct
marketing pros- including myself. First of all, you're building a
mailing list of prime prospects. The prospects will respond to your
2-step ad should be 10-times as likely to buy your product than
people you'd mail to on a cold mailing list. After all ... they did come
forward and self-qualify themselves as prospects.
'--_/
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92
but you want to make sure it doesn't hinder response too much.
Also, if you can get the toll number to work ... you're saving a ton of
money on the phone bill you're going to have to pay every month.
I was flipping though.a men's magazine the other day and I saw an
ad that gave away a free "Sex Pill Guide" that listed all the top
herbal-Viagra-type pills on the market these days. The product
they were giving away said nothing about this company actually
selling any form of pill themselves. All it said was that they
published a guide and it was free for you to have and it was meant
to help guide you to the best product as they tested them all.
Anyway, I called and got myself the guide, as I wanted to see the
mechanics of this offer. Why would they advertise a free guide?
Where are they making money?
So, I called a recorded message and left my name and address with
a fake middle initial, so I can track everything I receive from this
company in the future ... as I'm sure they're going to mail the hell
out of me.
This is a good idea ... not the most ethicaL. but it is good. I'm sure
it works for some products. The secret to success is acquiring
enough leads to justify the advertising cost.
The secret is to attract enough leads to get the cost per lead way
down ... but you don't want to get too vague in your ad, as you will
attract a lot of leads .._ but they will not be as qualified. And you
don't want to hype up things too much as when they receive your
literature, they'll be turned off.
2-Step Math.
Here's how to do the math on a 2-step promotion.
Lets do the math on a 2-step ad I just saw and responded to in •
Entrepreneur Magazine.
His product is selling for $500. He gets to keep all $500 as eTO as
it is an information product.
Lets say he gets 250 to buy. That's 5%. He's looking to gross
$125,000. That's 8.3-times his initial $15,000 gamble! Even if he
got just 90 people to buyout of the 5000 ... he still increased his
money by 300% and grossed $45,000!
What is the major task at hand for you to replicate an offer like
this? You have to attract prospects for $2 on average and you have
to sell 5% of them at $500. Selling the 5% is not the biggest
problem ... its getting the 5000 people to request the free
information, the free report and paying $5000 for the ad.
Hey, this chapter on 2-steps got me so excited ... I'm going to create
a hot 2-step otTer for a business opportunity course I'm working
on!
And remember, you can interchange and add other concepts and
techniques I've taught you on top of this 2-step approach ... like the
auto ship ... the back end ... etc.
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Chapter Eleven:
An Irresistible Offer
This book is not going to talk about actually "writing" any sales
copy until the deep chapters. Before we paint our masterpiece ... we
have to have a clear vision of it in our heads.
The better the offer. .. the more appealing your sales pitch will be.
Here are a few examples of offers I have used in the past with great
success:
for the second set of knives is actually the cost for them to
manufacture/buy the knives and the cost to ship them to you.
Feel free to give away a bonus and ask for the customer to pay a
shipping and handling fee. This fee covers the cost you have to pay
to buy or make the item ... and you can usually include the extra
bonus gift in the shipment the customer is going to get anyway for
no additional cost.
You can offer a free gift that the customer has to claim after he
gets the initial order. For example, if you buy a car wax kit and it
comes with a free bottle of tire dressing ... some companies will
include a coupon in the wax kit that the customer has to send in
to receive the tire dresaing. Not everyone will request the free
bottle, but you can still offer it to everyone. I really haven't done
this one for at least 10 years. With a product I was selling, I offered
a free gift that I requested the customer pay the 8/H on ... but
instead of including it in the initial order, I simply included a
coupon the customer would have to mail with the shipping and
handling fee. Maybe 70% of the customers requested the free
bonus.
Here's how it works: Let's use Carlton Sheets' Real Estate Course
we've all seen for the past 10+ years on TV as an excellent
example. Nowadays, he's not selling the course like he always was
for several hundreds of dollars off the bat ... he's offering a 3D-day
in-home trial for $9.95 plus a shipping and handling fee. The ad
says nothing about how much the product actually costs.
In order for this to work, you have to take orders only with credit
cards. A customer calls and orders the trial. He pays the $9.95
trial fee and the shipping and handling fee. Carlton will offer you a
rush shipping upgrade, which of course there is a profit for him
on. Then only after they got your credit card number .., only after
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they have your shipping address ... only a few seconds before you'd
say "goodbye"... you hit the caller with a script that goes something
like this, "OK-you qualify for Carlton's $9.95 30-day in-home trial.
Your credit card will be billed just $9.95 plus $x for shipping and
handling. Preview the course for an entire 30-days and if its not
everything you hoped it would be send it back to us within the 30-
day trial period and you'll owe nothing more. Otherwise, if you
decide to keep the course and make money with Real Estate, your
credit card will be billed in four easy monthly installments of
$59.95. Your shipment is going out today and you'll receive it in
about 10 days, so look for it. Thank you for calling!"
I seriously doubt 50°1<> will send back the course ... maybe you'll get
20% to send it back. .. but even if you get 20%... who cares? The
$9.95 fee is non-refundable ... as is the shipping charge. You lost
nothing. Resell the course to someone else.
Offer Installments.
Like the trial offer, this offer must be used only with credit card
customers. You cannot accept checks or money orders with this
type of offer. If you're selling a high-ticket item ... it may make
sense to offer your customer an installment plan. You see this all
over TV nowadays ... "JUST 5 PAYMENTSOF JUST $19.95!"
Breaking up the fee is a surefire way to get more sales. How many
homes would sell if there were no such thing as mortgages? Not too
many, right? The same with new cars? Without financing ... a
dealership will have a tough time selling a high-ticket car. It's no
different here. Ifyou're ..selling a $180 item maybe you can do 3
easy payments of $59.95 ... and better yet maybe you can do a
combo offer... $9.95 for a 30-day in-home trial plus S/H ... and
then you can do 3 payments of $59.95 instead of billing an entire
$180 on the trial offer.
Like I was saying before in a past chapter ... you can combine these
techniques sometimes and multiply their power.
Now, when you offer installments, there are a few risks. First of all,
you do not get all your money upfront. You have to wait for it.,;
sometimes as long as 4 or 5 months! Another thing is credit cards
may go bad ... or they may be declined for a month's billing and you
either have to double up on next month's billing or call them and
get a fresh credit card.
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C.O.D
Cash On Delivery. It is not used too much nowadays. I never used
it. There's really no reason to use it. There's an extra fee. Many
people reject the shipment and you lost the shipping costs and all
the lost time. But if you want to do this, make sure to send your
customer a postcard a few days before they are to receive the
package and tell them that you have included another special free
bonus in their order. This will help make the customer actually
take the C.O.D. when it arrives. Still I think Cash On Delivery is
more of a pain in the ass. If your customer does not have a credit
card ... or at least a debit card- which almost anyone can get..;
maybe you do not want them as a customer.
Bill Me Later.
This is a specialty for magazine publishers for one reason ... if they
had to actually get people to pay up first ... they'd get 50% of the
people they'd get to respond ... probably less. Billing later is risky.
You don't really know the people you are sending your products to.
Nightingale Connant makes their entire business from a "bill me
later" promotion. That's how they attract new customers in the
large quantities they do.
You have to have a billing system set up for you to mail out 'the
invoices. You can include an invoice in the shipment saying when
the money is due. If you're selling a subscription that you can stop
when they don't pay up ... it's better than if your product was a one
shot and they got it all in their possession. Think before you do
this offer. While I'm sure you'll get more orders, it all boils down to
this ... Track how many orders you get when you ask for the money
upfront. Then offer the "bill me later" option and track how many
orders you get... then track how many paid up in 30-days or
whenever the bill was due. If the profits were significantly larger
with the "bill me"... even after you subtract all the lost product
(your hard cost- not the selling price) and all the added time to bill
people- go for it.
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Example:
If you can get your "bill me later" offer to work like this ... it's worth
doing... but again ... you have to wait to get paid- you'd better have
a few bucks in the bank ahead of time.
"lost" ... but the bigger problem comes next month when this
person is calling you irate if they didn't call and cancel their auto
delivery in time and they have 5 billings on their credit card for
$40 or so each. The credit card companies may start to think
you're up to some kind of no good and give you heat. Make sure
you say in your ad, "LIMIT ONE BOTTLE PER CUSTOMER AND
PER HOUSEHOLD".
You won't have to worry about this too much if your monthly
product is a different product ... there's really no advantage
scamming additional copies of the same video.
They really wanted him to sell all the watches at the same time.
Joe offered to do a split test, where one ad would have just the one
black, men's watch and one ad would have all the colors and the
men's and women's sizes. When the sales results came in ... they
chose to run the ad with just the black, men's version of the Navy
Seals watch. Now, this was an extreme example ... the watches
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were all the same. But definitely, if you're selling a weight loss
pill... do not also offer an herbal-Viagra at the same time!
Chapter Twelve:
Guarantee Everything
you can keep the fee it cost you to ship the product... create the
product ... take the cal1... etc.
Conditional Guarantees.
This guarantee only permits the customer their money back if a
certain thing does or does not happen as your productj service
claimed. "If my sports picks are not at least 90% accurate for the
next 30 days ... 1'11refund every dime of the money you paid me!"
Now, unless you under-perform and unless your customer actually
calls and takes you up on that guarantee, you don't have to give
money back unconditionally.
the next 120 days or we'll give you DOUBLE your money back!
Simply take 3 photographs, newspaper in hand the very day you
start the program and take 3 more photographs, newspaper in
hand on the 120th day. If you cannot honestly say that you took
this product faithfully, as directed, worked out regularly ... and
didn't see an added 20 pounds of muscle, send the empty bottles
back. We'll send you DOUBLE what you paid."
Do you really think they're going to take three before photos, three
after photos ... a whopping four months later. .. and keep all the
empty bottles? A few will ... but not all. And these are not out of
this world conditions. All you're asking the guy to do is document
his success ... work out... use the product like directed ... and keep
3 or 4 empty bottles.
Here's a great example. I was selling some really high-end car care
products in 1995. I sold a pint size and a quart size kit. To stir-up
some larger quart size kit sales, I found a supplier of some really
high end looking Orbital Polishers. These things looked like they
cost $100 ... but I was buying them for under $10 in quantity. Now,
the shipping and handling for the all the waxes and the buffer was
$19.95 or something close to it. I covered the cost to ship the
entire kit, the cost to manufacture the waxes, and the cost to buy
the orbital polisher in this $19.95. I told my customers, if they
weren't blown away with the wax products, they could rerur n them
J07
in 30 or 60 days and they can keep the orbital polisher for their
time and faith in my products now. Customers who asked for their
money back actually felt like they were taking advantage of me ...
keeping the polisher that looked like it cost me $100 ... but all the
costs were covered in the shipping and handling fee 1 charged them
initially. They were not to get back when they requested a refund.
When I made such a powerful guarantee like this one, prospects
knew this polish had to be something special- otherwise I'd be one
crazy (and bankrupt) guy!
hurdles. One, they have to use the entire thing. That takes 30-
days. Maybe results will take this long to manifest ... Remember
what I told you about stretching the time frame out in the
beginning in this chapter. Two, they have to remember to hold onto
the container. Many people throw things away by accident. Of
course, if a customer calls you and says they threw the container
away, you're still going to give them a refund ... but you'd be
surprised how many will not call just to avoid the confrontation.
And three, they have to send the bottle back to you. That takes a
bag ... postage ... and people are lazy. Of course, if a customer calls
and wants their money back. .. and they do not want to send the
bottle back to you- by all means give the damn refund. But again,
you'd be surprised by how many people will not call.
But beware; you're going to lose some money here. Call Tags do
cost some money. The shipping charges to come back to you cost
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lIO
Chapter Thirteen:
Premiums
It's nice to get a free bonus or a free gift when you buy something.
I've taken products that only broke even and added a premium and
saw response greatly lifted.
Premiums must cost you little or nothing out of your profits. Now, I
do not mean premiums should be worthless- they must have some
form of worth in order for them to work.
I'm going to give you a few examples of free gift offers I've used in
the past and how they helped or didn't help.
Many times, you'll add a premium and you will not see response to
your sales letter or advertisement increase.
I once sold a car wax kit and gave away an orbital polisher. There
were two versions of the kit ... a pint and a quart size kit. I gave the
polisher with the quart size kit. I was able to get the polishers for
under $14 from a manufacturer. To offset the cost of the polisher, I
had to increase the shipping and handling charges ... and response
for the quart size kits went up. I recall mostly all of the purchases
were for the larger size kit. I benefited two different ways. I first of
all sold a more expensive version of the product ... and secondly I
was able to increase overall response. This is what I call win-win.
111
Once the customer got the package, they got a diary they had to fill
out as they used my product, and if they can complete the diary in
its entirety ... I'd send them a DVD Player for free! I was getting
these DVD Players for $40 or so. My monthly shipment of pills cost
the customer $40. I got my customers to use the product for an
average of four months. Thesurvey was a six-month study. If the
customer completed the diary I included with their order, they had
to be on the product for six 'entire months. Now, I got two extra
months worth of sales ... one of the month's revenues, 1 had to use
to buy the DVD Player- but I still got an entire extra $40 sale as
profit ... plus the diary from my customer- which I could use any
way I wished. The customer got a free DVD Player- for using a
product he enjoyed. This was also win-win for all parties involved.
I used this same offer for a CD-ROM club I had a few years back. I
was getting huge quantitiesof software for $1' each from companies
who needed to clear out the warehouse for the next version of the
software. For example, one of the products we had in the CD-ROM
club was a popular typing software. Version 4 was on store shelves
for $50 ... version 5 was coming out in a few months, so the
manufacturer was selling me the entire remaining version 4
software for $1 or so.
I sent the customer's two software titles a month for $20 ... and
these programs were worth $50 or so each, so it was a good deal
for them. To encourage customer to stay in the club for 6 months ...
I gave them a hot software title I was buying for $20. My customer
data showed me members were in my club for four months. If I
could get them to stay until month six ... I'd give them the $20
bonus program-, which was worth $40+ in stores. Initial response
112
from my mailers was increased because of the free software ... and I
got the customer to stay a little longer. I made more money on both
ends- increased members ... who would stay members longer.
Many companies will even let you keep the free premium even if
you ask for a refund. And why shouldn't they? The additional cost
to include the premium is usually made up in the shipping and
handling charge they make you pay. And shipping and handling is
usually not a refundable fee.
Magazines like Sports Illustrated are famous for giving away the
football clock ... or whatever with your "paid SUbscription". They
key word is "paid". To get a subscription, you just call the 800# on
the screen or mail in the order card. They'll send you an issue with
a bill for the subscription. When and only when you send them a
check or credit card number is when they'll send you the free
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Chapter Fourteen:
Testimonials and Endorsements
One of the main four reasons why people won't respond to your
sales letters and your magazine ads or your TV and radio spots ...
is they do not believe what you are saying. Testimonials, when
used correctly can take away some of their skepticism.
Testimonials must have a full name and a full city and state ... and
they must be more in depth than "it's great!"
I like a testimonial like this, "I started using XYZ three months ago.
When I first started using XYZ, my breasts were barely an A cup ...
but now, I am a full B and my breasts no longer disappear when I
put a shirt over them!"- Mary Brown, Houston, Texas.
them if you decide to use their story in your ad, you 11give them
$500 or whatever.
On the very bottom, ask for a signature allowing you to use their
story in future advertisements if you choose. Also, I'd put a second
box that they have to check off if they will allow you to use their
phone number and/ or email address. You cannot have prospects
contact them without their signed permission. Now, including a
phone number in the testimonial is extreme, and not a lot of people
do this ... It would be fine for you not to include a contact method
to the user.
I
Celebrity Endorsements.
I once ran commercials on Howard Stern's radio show every
morning. We had a sexy Penthouse Pet do the voice-over and
results were very good. After we ran the commercial for several
months, response dropped and it was no longer profitable to run.
We told the sales rep at the radio station we were looking to pull
the ads as they were not pulling for us any longer. Howard didn't
want to lose the business we were giving his network, so he did the
voice-over for our commercial for free. He endorsed the product
and said how he's hearing from users how well it works for them,
etc. I agreed to test his commercial for a few weeks and agreed not
to pull the ads until I got the results. We ran Howard's new spot,
and found it didn't add to the response at all. We did pull the ads
in the end ... but we did put the commercial on our website and the
link said, "Listen to what Howard Stem Says About Our Product!"
Chapter Fifteen;
Four Reasons Why People Don't Buy From
Your Sales Letters and Advertisements
If you're mailing Standard Mail- which I advise against ... the Post
Office may throw your letter in the trash. The Post Office is not
supposed to throwaway maiL. but time after time we all read
stories of some mailman who gets caught with ten tons of "Junk
Mail" buried in his backyard. His response when he got busted was
something to the effect that "people didn't want this kind of mail
anyway".
his job description at the Post Office was? MAKING SURE NOBODY
THREW ADVERTISING MAIL IN THE TRASH~
If you're sales letter screams JUNK MAIL, your prospect may throw
it away before ever giving it a chance to get opened. In later
chapters, I'm going to show you how to make your sales letters get
opened by your prospects. I'll tell you this right now; if you send
out a sales letter- or worse a FLIER ... even worse, with an
ADDRESS LABEL on it... it's not going to get a second of your
prospect's time. In the garbage it goes ... and you could have been
offering $1 Million FREE inside ... your prospect will never get to
that point because the letter you sent them looks like trash.
If you are running a magazine ad, your ad may not look appealing
to read, therefore your prospect keeps flipping pages- overlooking
your entire advertisement. I know it sounds like a broken record,
but I've included an entire chapter on crafting magazine ads later
in this book. If you've got a bad ad, laid out wrong ... and not eye-
appealing ... the reader will keep on flipping and flipping until
something does fmally get their attention. If your ad does not go
"against the grain" as far as what an "ad" is supposed to look like,
it won't get all the readers it should be getting.
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Its simple- You have must have a product that appeals to a large
group of your prospects and you have to make sure you are getting
it in front of the right prospects- and if you're running a magazine
ad, or a TV or radio sport ... you have to do this for the right price.
Pay too much for an ad, and you just made it that much harder to
cover your advertising cost. It is imperative you negotiate the
absolute best media cost when you run an advertisement. If all ads
were free, every product would be a hit.
There will always be someone who wants your product... the trick
is having enough in your prospect list or magazine readership to
buy and bring back more in sales than it cost to promote.
The same goes for other products. Sometimes they simply cost too
much. I remember when I was first getting started in direct
response; I wanted to go to a seminar that cost $5500. I didn't
have that kind of money ... nor did I have any kind of asset I could
"hock" to get the money. If there was a scale of 1 to lOon how bad
I wanted to go to this seminar ... I would have rated my desire a 10.
I really wanted to go ... badly.
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Now, there were two other options to purchase the seminar. First,
the seminar offered a payment plan. It was like $500 a month for
11 months. And the second option was a home study version of the
seminar. It was basically a tape recording of the seminar before the
one being offered. It cost just $2200 ... and they also offered
payment terms of $200 a month for a few months' time.
You're a smart person. You can figure ou t other ways to make your
product seem more affordable.
Here's what I believe. There are more people who would buy your
product had you made your pitch more believable than people who
would buy if your offer and/or claims were more powerful and
exaggerated. Give it a shot in your next sales letter or ad.
give a flaw. The admission of a flaw makes your claim seem more
believable. It works like this:
But there are paragraphs in this book- ideas in this book- whole
chapters in this book that I have never had the balls to put down
on paper before! And they will open doors to you- maybe as soon
as tomorrow- that otherwise might have taken a lifetime of waiting
for you to walk through."
"Our new wrinkle eraser is not a permanent fix. The results you
achieve with this product will only be temporary.
But even if the results last eight to ten hours, this product will
enable you to hide every fine line and wrinkle on your face. The
results this product provides, even if they are temporary, are
absolutely amazing!"
"But don't think for a second this product will work if you do not
participate in a healthy diet and exercise program. If you sit on the
couch and continue to eat large portions of the wrong food, this
product will do nothing for you.
But on the other hand, a recent clinical study did show this
product could burn 930 extra calories each and every day when
you eat and exercise properly. That's nearly half your caloric intake
for the day ... ZAPPEDl"
Do you see how the admission of the truth ... or a flaw right before
a claim is made makes the claim seem more believable? Here's how
I think of it. If you put a -2 fact right before a +4 claim ... that +4
claim will have the believability power of a +8 claim. Understand?
Good.
124
Here's a few more ways you can make your sales pitch more
believable to your prospects:
A STRONG GUARANTEE-
When you can offer them a money back guarantee, they feel you
believe in what you're selling and if you were selling crap, you'd go
broke pretty fast.
TAX RETURN-
If you're selling something on making money ... its best to prove
you're not full of shit. Include a tax return showing you made over
$2 Million last year. Also, if you're selling some form of a Tax
Reduction service, include a copy of a few tax returns showing the
best savings you had for your clients ... of course with their names
blacked out for privacy!
TESTIMONIALS-
People really do read testimonials.
125
CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENT-
Especially when the letter actually comes from the celebrity. People
think they know the celebrity they see on TV. If you get a letter
from Jennifer Anniston talking about a new product that she uses
to keep looking younger. .. you're going to read it ... believe it ... and
probably buy it.
FREE TRIAL-
Nothing beats a free trial. The customer can check out what you
are selling for free and only after it lives up to its claims will he
then decide if he's going to buy it or not. This is powerful!
NOTARIZED STATEMENT-
If you're willing to put your claims under oath ... it seems more
believable to your prospects.
A COPY OF A LICENSE-
If you're licensed to practice something, a copy of the license can
add credibility.
EMPATHY- Push "Me-Too Feelings". "Hey, I was just like you. I was
in my 50's and found it harder and harder to achieve an erection.
It made me feel..;"
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ENCLOSE A FAVORABLE MAGAZINE ARTICLE-
Reprint the entire thing and enclose :--
BETTER-THAN-RISK-FREE GUARANTEE-
This is where the customer will come out ahead ... even if he asks
for a refund. Usually free bonuses they get to keen for free.
AS SEEN IN ...
If your product has been advertised or written about in
Entrepreneur Magazine ... you can say, "as seen in Entrepreneur
Magazine"
A SAMPLE OF PRODUCT-
Obviously, if a customer can sample the product first... especially if
it is included with the sales letter. .. like a packet of a wrinkle
serum ... before she buys ... that is powerful! But you better make
129
sure you're product is good ... or you'1l get less results than if you
left well enough alone!
IN-HOME TRlAL-
This is a powerful technique that practically every infomercial
marketer is using nowadays. I explained how it works in an earlier
chapter. Remember?
ADMISSION OF FLAWS-
I was speaking of this earlier in this chapter. People will think if
you have the balls to tell the flaws ... you're not exaggerating or
lying about your positive claims.
FREE-STANDING PHOTO-
A replica of a real photo is used sometimes. The way to make fake
photos is to print them and trim them, then on the back, have a
rubber stamp made that says "Acme Photo Labs" or something like
it and stamp each and every fake photo.
130
WOW! That was one hell of a chapter! My fingers are on fire from
typing! Again, some of the techniques listed in this chapter, 111go
into greater detail later in this book.
NOTE: Since writing this book, I have discovered yet another reason
why someone may not respond to your offer. You can cover the 4
main reasons why they don't buy ... but they still may not respond
even if they want your product. They may not want it enough to
exchange the dollar amount you're asking (or it. Sure, they can have
all the money in the world ... but just because they have enough
money- it does not mean they'll pay whatever you ask. For
example ... I had several millions of dollars in the bank, and J
wanted this new Lamborghini. The only thing was that I did not
want to pay the $50,000 over sticker price the dealer was asking for
it because it was such a hot car.
Sure ... your prospect may want your new diet pill ... but if you were
asking $100 a bottle... some people may not want it BAD ENOUGH
to exchange their money for it. You could even price the damn thing
at $30 and there may still be people who will not want to exchange
the $30 in the bankfor these pills. THIS IS WHERE EXCELLENT
COPYWRITINGSKILLS COME IN. You have to do a goodjob of
convincina them the orice uou're askina is iust a fraction of what he
or she is to gain in RESULTS using yo;;'_r
product: Make sure to read
the next chapter.
131
Chapter Sixteen:
Hire a Copywriter or Do It Yourself?
If course, I didn't have a book like this one to guide me through the
ad creation process ... but you still mayor may not be ready to
actually "write" your own thing.
I guess only you can be the judge. If it were up to me, and if you
had a few thousand extra dollars to have even a low-grade
copywriter create your sales letter or ad, I would advise it.
But on the other hand, if you barely have enough money to put out
a 2,500 mail piece test ... or if you're simply a hands-on type of
person who wants to do the entire thing yourself ... you've got to
study the next five chapters that are all about crafting the sales
letter or magazine advertisement.
If you were to come to me and ask me to craft your sales material ...
if our schedules do not conflict... you're looking at $15,000 plus a
cut of the gross sales if the letter or ad gets rolled-out.
Too much money? To some, yes. To some, no. I'm not trying to
"sell" you into hiring me, so do not get the wrong idea here. But
this is what I think: A full-page ad in Maxim Magazine will cost you
$BO,OOO. Think of this ad as the lot you want to build your dream
home on- it's an oceanfront lot with lBO-degree views of the
Pacific. Are you going to ruin it by parking a trailer on it ... or do
you want to build yourself a mansion?
While the guys in the top 5% will charge the $10,000 and more ...
you can hire a guy for $500 to $1,000 that will create at least a
"good" sales pitch for you ... and at this moment in time ... you may
not even be able to create a "good" sales pitch. Do you know how to
find out if you're as good as one of the 80% who can create "good"
advertising? Read the next five chapters ... study them ... then write
your own mail piece or advertisement. Are you confident in it
enough to print it and attach 37 cents postage to it? If so, go for it.
If not, this chapter is for you.
But before you hire a copywriter. .. there are some experts in this
field who will give your sales letter or ad a "critique" for a small fee
or even free.
133
Or even better, get in touch with me- since you bought this book. ..
1'11critique your sales letter or advertisement for free as well.
Either way, you'll get a list of the things you're doing right and the
things you're doing wrong- so you can fix them before you spend
any money running or mailing anything. My latest contact
information can be found elsewhere in this book.
But even if you do not want to give "writing" a try- even with a free
professional critique .. : you're left with no choice but to shop for a
copywriter.
Writing great copy comes with experience. Even if you have a little
money to invest, a cheapo copywriter can at least produce "good"
copy ... otherwise, he'd be working at McDonalds.
After you read the next few chapters, even if you decide not to write
your first sales letter or ad, you can at the very least have enough
skill to "recognize" good, great, or horrible advertising copy.
If you've got the money and want the best copy ... call on me.
Maybe if you make me feel bad for you, and if I got some space I
need to fill... maybe we can work out some "discounted" deal.
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Chapter Seventeen:
The Mall piece
First of all..; it's best to start with a standard # 10 package that will
weight 10z. or under ... which will qualify you for 37 cents First
Class postage which is the standard cost to mail a letter at the
current time.
11"x17" Sales Letter: When this sheet is folded down, you'll have
enough space to fit a 4-page Jetter. This is enough copy to sell most
products ... and is a standard size I always use.
135
8.5" x 3.6" Order Card: This is the card the customer will fill out
and mail back to you. It is usually printed on a stiffer cardstock
paper. This sheet will have enough space on it to resell the offer,
capture the shipping information, contact information, credit card
number, etc. This card gets inserted by the customer into the 6
3/4 envelope listed below.
This mail piece will weigh less than one ounce and it will have
enough space to do. the entire selling process. Now, let's talk about
the mail piece you'll use when you do not want people to order by
check or money order.
11"x17" Sales Letter: This sales letter will do the same as the
11"x17" in the first template.
8.5"x5.5": This is where I'd usually list all of the questions and
answers prospects may have.
8.5"xl1": This piece should be a brief version of the sales letter ...
which goes over the top benefits of your product. It can look like a
]36
This mail piece also weighs in less than one ounce. This is a great
template when you do not want mail-in orders. Say you were
selling a pill that you wanted your customers to order with a credit
card for an auto ship program ... if you give customers no other
alternative to order. .. other than the 800#, that's what he'll do. If
you give him two options ... you're going to get a lot more check
orders ... and if you want to reb ill automatically, getting check
orders will kill your chances totally.
Folding:
If you have a choice, you want to "Z-Fold", instead of "letter
folding" your sales pieces that need to be folded. It will not alter
your chances of success at all... but it is easier for the reader to
open your sales material when it is folded in a "Z" technique than a
"letter fold".
Insertion Order:
The order in which your pieces are inserted into your envelope can
actually alter response! This is how I like to have my pieces
inserted in the envelope. All the fronts of the pieces should be
facing the REAR of the # 10 envelope. If you are looking at the back
of the # 10 envelope, this is the insertion pattern for Template
Letter # 1:
From the inside back of the # 10, you should see the 11"xI7" sales
letter facing the rear, behind that, the T'xIO" facing the rear, then
the order card- facing the rear, then the 6 3/4 envelope- facing the
rear. So if you were to stack these four inserts on top of each other
on a table, the 6 3/4 envelope would be on the bottom, front facing
up, and on top would be the 11"xI7" sales letter, facing up ... then
this stack would be inserted in the # 10 facing the rear of the
envelope, so if you were to look through the rear of the #10
envelope, you should read the headline on the 11 "x l ?" sales letter,
and the front of the # 10 envelope, where the prospect's name will
be ink-jetted on, should see the rear of the 6 3/4 envelope.
137
From the inside back of the # 10, you should see the 11"x 17" sales
letter facing the rear, behind that, the 8.S"xS.5"" facing the rear,
then the next 8.5"xS.5"- facing the rear, then the 8.5"xll"- facing
the rear. So if you were to stack these four inserts on top of each
other on a table, the 8.S"x 11" piece would be on the bottom, front
facing up, and on top would be the II"xI7" sales letter, facing up ...
then this stack would be inserted in the # 10 facing the rear of the
envelope, so if you were to look through the rear of the # 10
envelope, you should read the headline on the 11"x17" sales letter,
and the front of the # 10 envelope, where the prospect's name will
be ink-jetted on, should see the rear of the 8.S"xl1» piece.
Paper QUality:
Don't be fooled into thinking you need to use high-quality paper.
Just plain-old standard white 20 pound paper. Heavier paper ... or
glossy paper only adds to the cost to print and the cost to mail, as
it is heavier. Stick with standard stuff.
Graphics:
We're going to go into graphics and layouts in a later chapter. But,
I'll give you a preview of what you'll learn- KISS. This stands for
Keep It Simple Stupid!
138
Addressing:
When it comes to addressing your # 10 envelope with your
customer's address and name ... do not use a mailing label. The
trick here is not to make this look like junk mail. You're going to
want to print the addresses right onto your # 10 either through
your computer printer ... or you want a letter shop to ink-jet the
names on for you.
Postage:
The last thing you want to do is prin t a bulk mail permit box on
the upper right corner of your envelope. The second to last thing
you want to do is stamp the mail with a postage meter. What you
want to do is apply a real, live, First Class Stamp. The same ones
you use to mail your phone bill. You're NOT going to do "pre-
sorted" First Class Mail ... you're going to pay FULL PRICE for a
REGULAR First Class Postage Stamp! I'll go more into this in a
later chapter.
Before I write even one single word of copy, I have an idea of what
the mail piece is going to look like- meaning its components. Now
that you have an idea of the components, you can start gathering
ideas for headlines gathering questions and answers you think
prospects may have gathering testimonials ... etc.
It should not be fancy. It should not be cute. Here's the only two
ways it should look like:
It can look official. It can look like a letter coming from the IRS or a
Government Agency. It can look like it is a credit card bill. It can
look like a letter from an Attorney ... or a Doctor. .. or a Medical Lab.
or it can be vague, with only a return address in the "cornercard"
and no company name! No other words on the envelope other than
maybe "First Class Mail".
Here are a few great examples of official envelope ideas I've used in
the past with great success. I was selling dietary supplements. I
had the logo of the company in the corner card along with the
address. It said, PharmaCeutic Laboratories in logotype and under
the logo, it had the address: 4055 Industrial Blvd. Lyndhurst, New
Jersey, 07071. I printed this in Process Blue ink, so it looked
medical. In this sales letter, I had results of a clinical study on the
product I was selling, so on the envelope, in the lower left corner of
the envelope, I added the words: "First Class Mail- Important Test
Results Enclosed"
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140
I'm looking for the day when I do some sort of promotion with an
Attorney. Boy am I going to have fun with this one! I know an
Attorney that sells a course on buying Real Estate at Tax Deed
Sales. Wouldn't it be great if he sends out sales letters in his
Attorney envelope? I'm sure every person who gets one of them will
open it as soon as they get it!
My friend Gary Halbert says people sort their mail over a trashcan.
If it looks like junk mail. .. with advertising copy allover the
envelope screaming claims ... with a mailing label affixed instead of
a stamp ... sent to them bulk rate ... into the trash it goes. So, make
it look personal... or make it look official.
Later on in years- once you have a winning sales letter, you can
experiment with teaser copy on the envelopes ... but right now, let's
play everything on the safe side. Remember, the # 1 reason why
people will not buy from you, is they do not receive or they do not
notice your sales material. Personal and Official letters always get
delivered by the Post Office- with respect ... and opened by the
recipient!
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Chapter Eighteen:
Graphics ... Photos and Typography
Many people new to this business waste way too much money
when they are at the graphic artist, at the printer, or when running
a magazine advertisement.
Novices think the prettier a sales message looks ... the flashier the
graphics ... the more colorful.. , the glossier the paper ... the better
the response. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Regardless of that, 1 mailed the test mailer and it did well. When I
rolled-out the mailer in a larger quantity, of course I used the
correct paper. I even took away the 2nd color I used for the
headline, and made it all black ink. Did response suddenly go
down? NO. It was the exact same.
Think about it- when you are offered something you want, are you
going to care if the sales letter was on fancy paper? If anything, the
fanciness of the paper would take your attention away from the
sales message.
143
A few weeks later I was reading about headlines and I wrote a great
headline for this ad. I went back to the graphic artist and told her
to remove the fancy lettering on top ... knock the colors down to one
(black}... and she looked at me like I was crazy for "uglying" her
beautiful graphics.
The next month when the ad came out... we tripled the results it
got. An ad that broke-even was now bringing in three times its
cost ... and it was uglier ... less colorful... and cheaper to run as it
used one less color! I was happy and learned a very valuable
lesson. The secret is in the message and getting the message
noticed and read- not by looking pretty.
Now as for the actual graphics and the typography, I have a very
strict set of rules about the fonts you use, the sentence length, the
paragraph length, etc. I will go into deeper depth below.
144
Headline Fonts.
When creating headlines, I like to use Ariel..; Helvetica ... Franklin
Gothic ... Eras ... or Times New Roman for the font. Now there's a
difference in fonts- there's Sans Serif... and there's Serif. As you
can see, I wrote Sans Serif in Sans Serif type. This type is missing
the little extender on the ends of letters. There have been studies
that show Serif fonts have a better comprehension level. But for
headlines, where it's just a few simple words, fee free to use SANS
SERIF type. If it were up to me, I'd tell you to stick with Helvetica.
Subhead Fonts:
When creating sub-headline text, you can use the same font as the
headline ... just smaller. .. not as bold ... and maybe in italic type. If
you do not want to use the same font, feel free to use Times New
Roman. .
Paragraph Headers:
For paragraph headers, if you are using Times New Roman for the
body copy, you can use the same font ... just BOLD it. lfyou are
using Courier for the body copy, and you want to use it for the
paragraph headers, you'll want to underline it ... as bolding Courier
is not too pretty in my opinion. I sometimes use Helvetica in bold
for my paragraph headers ... regardless if I'm using Times New
Roman or Courier for my body copy.
Colors?
I don't know how many times I should say it... but I have never
had a color ad pull it's additional cost for color. I've never even had
a color ad where I got the color upgrade for free out pull the very
same ad in black and white. This is the same for sales letters in
the mail ... or in magazine ads. I think black and white is a great
advantage in magazines ... especially ones with a lot of color ads.
You want to get noticed!
Fancy Graphics?
Now, I do not want you to go and create ugly ads and sales
letters ... but they do not need a top-dollar graphic designer either.
I remember I went to a new graphic designer and had him create
an ad for me from scratch ... just to get a different look than the
ones I've been creating. Do you know what this guy did? First of
all, he used a scan of brushed aluminum and put that behind the
headline. Now the headline cannot be read as easily and it sure
doesn't stick out as well with the background image. Then as a
screen behind the body copy ... he ran TEXT! This ad looked like a
train wreck. He thought it was a piece of art. Do you think The
New York Times worries too much about making articles look like
works of art? Hell no- and either should you. The theory you
should have is that you just want to get your test read and noticed.
That's all. What gets an article read in The New York Times? A
good headline that sucks you into the body copy. Graphic
Designers always want to show-off their skills of making things
look pretty. That's fine. But tell them to use their skill on your
letterheads and business cards- not your advertising!
and add these words, but not as boldly as they would ... you may
get away with it.
Why would you want your ads to look like an article in the
magazine? Well, a magazine's readers trust the magazine they're
reading. That's why they buy it... subscribe to it... and read it.
They trust it. And trust and believability is one of, if not THE
biggest reason people do not buy your product.
It's been proven that 500% more people notice and read "editorial"
style advertisements than pretty, fancy, graphic-overdosed ads.
You're not here to be pretty ... you're here to get attention. Editorial
formats get more attention.
Photos:
Most of my direct mail never has photos. My magazine ads usually
have a photo of someone's face in the upper right hand corner with
a caption. A photo could be a great grabber in a magazine ... not so
much in direct mail sales letters.
Captions:
In magazine ads, the first thing people see is an image, then the
Caption under the photo ... sometimes even before they read the
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Paragraph Length:
111speak more about this in the next chapter. .. but you should
keep your sentences to no more than seven words ... and you
should keep you paragraphs no more than seven lines long.
Americans read at the 6th Grade level. You've got to keep the
sentences short .... seven words or less.
Coupons:
I want my magazine ads to look like articles ... I want my sales
letters to look like actual letters. If my offer does not require a
check or money order payment option and I'm just taking credit
cards, I never coupon. But for some promotions that do take
checks, I use an order card in direct mail ... and in magazine ads,
it's really your call for order coupons. If you're going for the
editorial look ... editorial copy does not have order forms.
148
Chapter Nineteen:
Copywrltlng
I've only made a few chapters in this book about writing copy. I've
done this for a reason. The last thing the World needed was
another book about copywriting! What the World needed was a
book that would teach you how to conceptualize, strategize, and
implement techniques you need to sell products and services
through direct response. I'll teach as best as I can about writing
copy in this chapter. .. but if you want to get a super education on
the fine art of writing copy... there are many books that can really
go into depth about the subject. I'll list a few of my favorites
towards the end of this book.
The level of your ability to convince people will tell you how rich
you are going to be ... not only in this business ... but every
business. The entire World goes round on people buying things ...
and people selling things. The people who can sell the best, make
the most sales ... and make the most money. And to sell, you have
to make people see things your way. They have to agree with you.
They have to feel you have their best interest at hand. I'm going to
teach you how to do this.
***
r------.--.-
149
Dear Friend,
Imagine What You May Look Like In Just A Few Months ...
....-,
Id~)~1)~
Benjamin Bergin for MedEx Laboratories
To Order Call: 1-800-123-4567
***
Let me ask you a question ... after reading this, even if you weren't
a bodybuilder ... did it stir you up a bit? This was a great example
of some killer copy. You should want all your sales letters to sound
this compelling.
There are a couple of things I want to cover that are "golden rules"
of writing copy.
You cannot write copy like this. The reader does not care about
you and your plant ... or what you feel..; "we" is as bad as saying
FUCK in your sales letters.
The right way to write copy is from the reader's viewpoint. You're
going to want to say "You" a lot ... and for every 5 times you say
---------------------------------------------------------
157
"you", it's all right to say "1". Here's an example from the sales
letter I've reprinted for you earlier:
Do you see how the entire thing was focused on the reader of the
letter? Nowhere does it say "we", or "us" ... it's all about the reader.
Urgency.
When you get to the "close" of your letter. .. you're going to want to
get them to order right now. If you allow them to put the letter
down and think about it later. .. or even order later ... there's a
chance they'll forget to ever order! You want to compel them to
order on the spot ... as if they are lucky they received your sales
J58
159
I use all different kinds of opening sentences ... but this version is
proven to work ... and at this point in your writing career. .. you
want to play it on the safe, proven, reliable side ... right?
Captions.
If you are using a photograph ... you absolutely must use a caption
under the image. In a magazine ad, the first thing a reader sees is
the image ... the second thing he does is read the caption ...
sometimes even before he sees or reads the damn headline!
ALWAYSUSE A CAPTION UNDER A PHOTO IF YOU ARE USING A
PHOTO!
The -r.s.'
The PS is the second .most read thing in a sales letter. The first
thing they read is the headline, then they go right for the PS. It
would be wise to restate the entire offer in a nutshell for the PS of
any sales letter. Pretend the PS is being read all by itself- without
the sales letter. .. you want to get the entire offer across to your
reader.
difference was the headline. The next chapter is going to teach you
all about headlines and how to write them. Eugene Schwartz's
book, "Breakthrough Advertising" spent an entire 50% of the book-
the entire first half of the book on teaching how to find and write
the headline! It's that important!
3. The Proposition.
This is where you're going to go into how the product can help the
reader, and why he or she should use it.
This is where you're going to talk about price and what he is going
to get for his money ... what does the purchase come with ... and
free bonuses ... etc.
5. The Guarantee.
This is where you are going to remove all of the risks your prospect
is scared of. Anything that may leave him thinking there's a chance
he Il lose his money if this does not turn out to be what you said it
was going to be. You got to get rid of this feeling. You got to assure
him in a powerful way, he is not at any financial risk for going with
his gut and ordering this thing through the mail- from a total
stranger- without even seeing it!
This is where you tell him how to order. What numbers to call ...
where to send a check or money order. And maybe even a little
push. Here's a version of one I "copied" from a Joe Karbo ad, I love
it to this day ...
J 61
1. Command Attention.
The body copy will show the prospect why your product exists.
Why people are buying it. What it is going to do for the person who
uses it.
There are tons of weight loss aids. But the one you are selling has
been clinically proven to burn as many as 930 calories in a given
day's time. That's nearly half a woman's 2000 caloric intake for a
day's time. This study result has to back up your claims ...
otherwise the claim will go in one ear and out the other as all
direct response product claims automatically get discounted 50%
from your reader- and that's at a minimum.
You're going to have to tell your prospect why he should grasp the
advantage your product delivers. You already got his attention. You
already told him what your product could do for its users. You
then proved it was true. Now you have to persuade him to grasp
J62
this advantage. You can entice him with a great price ... a great
guarantee ... BOTH. The sky is the limit.
Now you have to close the thing up and get them to reach for their
wallet and call you right now. If you have a poor closing ... he may
put the letter down and go on with his life. You have to close
correctly. Here are 4 steps 1 use to ask for the cash:
Pile it on. All the bonuses you can include. Make it such an
awesome offering; he_'dbe a total jerk not to grasp it.
People are scared they're going to lose their money. Scammers are
allover the place. You're not the first sales letter or advertisement
he's read in his life. He's seen it alL. and read it all before. He's
been ripped off in the past. He knows your sales copy is probably
full of hyperbole. Put him in a position where he "thinks" he'd
really fuck you up if he wanted his money back.
You see this on infomercials all the time ... "Order within the next
14 minutes and you'll receive John's Quick Start video- where
you'lllearn step-by-step ... yada ... yada ... yada ... a $30 value- yours
absolutely free!" Of course, the order takers are not sitting there
with a stopwatch ... counting the minutes ... or counting until the
250th order comes in ... but it is a technique that works ... as long
2.~ you make sure it's believable. Obviously, if you're writing this in
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163
Do you know what's even funnier than having the wrong headline?
Having NO HEADLINE. Most advertisers use either a poor
headline ... or no headline at all. This is why they fail. This is why
they say, "Advertising Don't Work".
Now, you don't always have to re-invent the wheel when it comes
to creating headlines. Once you get better at direct response
writing, you may want to explore creating more original
headlines ... but like I keep saying throughout this book- let's keep
it safe. We're going to mold our new headlines off old headlines
that have been proven to work. .. time and time again over the past
decades- selling millions of products and services.
Jay was doing consultation work for a financing company for gold
and silver. This company was offering 2/3rds bank financing on
gold and silver as long as they got to hold the actual gold or silver.
Now, their ads were breaking even at this point. The ad was
brining in enough sales to cover running the ads ... paying the
commissions to the salespeople ... and basically keeping the lights
on. This company called upon Jay and within a few minutes he
changed the headline to this:
"If Gold Is Selling For $300 An Ounce, Send Us Just $100 and
We'll Buy You All The Gold You Want"
Jay's new headlines were saying the same things ... it was just
making it more clear and telling the reader how the 2j3rds
financing benefited him.
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J66
The point of this chapter right now is not to talk about testing
headlines against each other. .. but how to create the best headline
for your ad or sales letter off the bat.
This was just a quick, off the cuff exarnple. .. but for you to insert
your own product is not too hard to do- even for a beginner.
Here's this list of my favorite headlines you can adapt to fit your
own products or services:
38. HOW TO TAKE OUT STAINS ... USE (product name) AND
FOLLOW THESE EASY DIRECTIONS
39. TODAY ... ADD $10,000 TO YOUR ESTATE -- FOR THE PRICE
OF A NEW HAT
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169
61. WHY (brand name) BULBS GIVE MORE LIGHT THIS YEAR
67. HOW ANY AUTO REPAIR JOB CAN BE "DUCK SOUP" FOR
YOU
79. "YOU KILL THAT STORE -- OR I'LL RUN YOU OUT OF THE
STATE!
97. NOW! OWN FLORIDA LAND THE EASY WAY ... $10 DOWN AND
$10 A MONTH
Quotation Marks.
When you add quotation marks arourid a headline it increases
its pulling power. So when you get the opportunity use the quote
marks.
"They All Laughed When I Said I Created a Pill That Burned 930
Calories a Day ... But Now They're All Asking Me For Samples!"
Johnson Box.
A Johnson Box is a box placed around a headline to make it stand
out more. Give it a try in your sales letters and see how it looks. I
wouldn't use one in magazine ads.
175
Proven Starters.
"HOW TO" headlines:
Questions In Headlines.
I really do not like to ask questions ... unless they are 99% sure
going to get me the answer I want.
Grabbers.
Grabbers are a specialty of my friend and direct response guru,
Gary Halbert. Instead of a headline ... hell stick a dollar bill to the
top of a sales letter. The letter will open like this ...
"Dear Friend,
Band-Aids ...
Photos ...
"Dear Friend,
Why did I attach a little packet to the top of this letter? The answer
is simple. Enclosed in that packet is $3 worth of our most
advanced 2-Minute Fine Line and Wrinkle Filler.
If you've been noticing a few fines lines and wrinkles ... and want to
keep them a secret- I believe this product can help you in less than
2 minutes time.
Here's what you should do right now. Remove the packet from this
letter. Tear it open and apply a small drop of the clear serum to
your index finger. Go to the nearest mirror and apply a small
amount of the serum to the right side of your face where you want
to hide a wrinkle or fine line. DO NOT APPLY TO THE LEFT SIDE!
Leave the mirror.
Now, remain still and give this amazing formula 60 seconds to dry.
Then go back to the mirror... Amazing isn't it? Wrinkles and fine
lines are gone!"
Now you'd go on to your sales copy and sell a ton of this stuff.
how are you going to attach thousands of these things when you
are rolling-out? If you're using $1 bills... you almost tripled your
mailing costs ... are you sure it's worth it? You got to test different
ideas as you go.
The big printers you're going to worry about only after you have a
winner in the mail. The larger print houses usually cannot do
smaller jobs at a good price- nor do they want to. They're all about
large multi-hundred-thousand piece print runs.
The smaller guys could never handle the larger jobs ... even if they
say they can ... but they are needed when you have to print small
test jobs 0[2,000-10,000 sales letters.
Since I usually use the same format for my mailers, I do not have
to go and get it re-quoted every time I do a new letter. But if I do
something different for a particular mailer ... I always get it quoted
out from three or four different printers. You'd be amazed how
different their prices are ... sometimes 50% cheaper than their
competitors!
To get bids, simply prepare a simple one-page sheet and put across
the top of it, "Quote Needed A.S.A.P" and fax it to each printer.
Within a few days, I'll start getting phone calls with the prices.
One thing I like to do is tell the printer how much I'm looking to
spend on a particular print job on the fax. Of course, it's a price
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I'm looking to pay ... minus a few bucks- just in case I'm a little
high and can squeeze a few bucks out of them.
When you are looking for printers, do not go through your graphic
designer. If you're using a graphic artist, he'll try to get you to get
your printing done through him. All he's doing is bidding out your
job and tacking on unnecessary money. Do it yourself... but if you
want to ... you can let him quote the job if he asks. Who knows?
Maybe he can get a lower or at least an equal price and it's easier
to keep everything under one roof.
But if you contract your own printing ... make sure the designer
doesn't try to hit you for some bulls hit pre-press charge or some
kind of massive "collect for output" and "disc burning" charges.
People will try to get money out of you in some of the craziest ways
when they feel you don't know what you're talking about. And
you'll soon learn not too many people even know what they're
talking about!
One color= 1
Two colors= 2
Three colors= 3
Four colors= 4
Bleed: This is when the ink goes right over the edge of the paper.
Most of my pieces do not have bleeds.
Lift Note: This is a little folded note that sometimes gets included
in a sales package. It basically says something like "Read This Only
If You're Skeptical" on the outside and then the reader would lift it
open and read the inside ... which would be additional text, usually
going over the guarantee or another free bonus on top of the stuff
you offered in the main sales letter. I usually do not use lift notes.
Here's some things that add to the price of printing that you do not
really need ...
When you are looking for a printer, here is the quote you need to
send to them for each of the packages I spoke about in an earlier
chapter:
Dear (name),
Please quote this job and get back to me no later than (insert date
here). When you are finished with the quote, or if you have any
questions ... my number to call is (000) 000-0000. If you have the
quote and you get my voice mail, please leave the breakdown on
my voice mail.,; or fax the entire thing to me at (000) 000-0000.
Thank You,
(your name)
***************
Now here's the bid sheet you'll use for the "phone-in" only mail
package, that will not permit the mail-in check orders as described
in an earlier chapter.
(Your Name)
(Your Address)
(Your Phone Number)
Dear (name),
Please quote this job and get back to me no later than (insert date
here). When you are finished with the quote, or if you have any
questions ... my number to call is (000) 000-0000. If you have the
quote and you get my voice mail, please leave the breakdown on
my voice mail..; or fax the entire thing to me at (000) 000-0000.
Thank You,
(your name)
***************
Maybe your sales letter will need to have one or more of the
8.5x5.5 sheets printed on both sides ... or mavbe the 8.5xll will be
printed on both sides ... as I have stated above, it's just for one-
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Another thing your printer may be concerned with is how they are
to receive the graphics. Most printers prefer it on a CD-ROM in a
program called Quark Xpress. That's the industry standard. Check
with the graphic designer as to what format he'll be providing the
artwork on. Make sure the printer as well as the designer have the
same formats for easy transferring.
Letter shops ... or mail houses are very important to large mailers-,
which you will hopefully be very soon.
Sure, you can do all this work yourself... but when you're mailing
100,000 pieces each and every week. .. you're probably not going to
be able to handle it. And for the price a letter shop charges ... it's
worth it.
Letter shops usually charge one cent or less for each time they
have to "touch" your sales material. For example, if they have to
stuff four pieces in your envelope, that's four cents ... then apply
the address of your prospect... that's another penny. One more
penny to seal the thing. If you're going to have them apply the
postage ... that's another penny.
Here's what I like to do. I like to get a quote from several elders hips
making them think they are going to do everything for me- even
drop the letters at the Post Office after they've applied the postage
I'll provide them with. I'll make sure to have them breakdown each
and every fee... the insertion ... the addressing ... the postage
application ... etc.
If you let them think they're doing the entire job, they'll sometimes
quote the job low, just to get the job ... and then they'll "steal" a
little of my postage on every job. That's where they'll make the
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185
difference of the money they had to lose to get the job in the first
place.
And that's a huge scam letter shops do. It's just too tempting to
steal some of the postage.
And if you 1et the letter shop know ahead of time that they are not
going to be applying postage, your quote will be much higher
because they know they can't steal any of it.
So I let them think they're going to get the entire job. After 1 get the
quote, only then do I tell them I'm going to be applying the postage
and dropping off at the post office. If they do not want to honor the
quoted price ... find another letter shop because this one is a bunch
of scurnbags.
You may be thinking how can the letter shop rip you off if they
have to show you a postage receipt directly from the Post Office?
Trust me ... to dummy a postage receipt is easy ... and they have
numerous ways of doing it.
two or three different types of envelopes ... he's not going to know if
there's any funny business going on.
I can tell you numerous horror stories about acts like this
happening.
But, when I noticed this little letter shop's owner had a nice, shiny,
new Mercedes Benz ... I got thinking there was something going on.
Ever since then, I'll have the letter shops do all the work, except
the postage application.
I do this not only for the stolen postage ... but also for the simple
fact that I can drop all the pieces myself in the same day. It is
important to drop all the letters the same day ... I'll tell you why in
a later chapter ... but they all have to drop in the same day.
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Many letter shops are lazy and take their time dropping your
letters at the Post Office in small quantities over a few days' time ...
even when they tell you they are all sent.
They'll drop 12,000 one day ... 15,000 the next day ... and so on. It's
easier for them to do it this way ... and they do not understand why
you want to drop all in one day. But trust me, you have to drop in
one single day.
I think on top of the lazy factor, letter shops do not want to drop in
one single day, because your response will be staggered allover the
place and you will not be able to gauge the "flow" of orders a few
days later.
One time I dropped 200,000 letters and I had the letter shop drop
off the letters to me. I was looking at the envelope and noticed all
the pieces were inserted upside down and backwards. It was too
late to reprint the entire thing ... nor would they eat the cost to redo
it ... all they would do is credit me the few thousand dollars they
charged to do the inserting.
Had I not inspected the pieces, I would have never known of this
error.
Let me tell you about a horror 1 had with a letter shop in 1997. I
was doing a 500,000 letter mailing. 1 was doing 250,000 one
week. .. and 250,000 the next week. Mailing one went out, and
initial response was great- just as the test told me. Then came
week two and the next drop was getting no orders. What the hell
was going on?
Then, some of the people who were ordering were asking why we
sent them two sales letters a few weeks apart. I let the first few
calls go- thinking there were a few duplicate names on the mailing
list we got from the broker. Then we started getting more and more
calls. By this point, I knew something was horribly wrong.
The first thing we did was look at the disk of names the list broker
sent us. They were fine. No duplicates at all.
What happened was the letter shop fucked up big time. The guy
they had addressing the envelopes, who probably couldn't speak
English ... did the first 250,000 envelopes week one ... and then on
week two, instead of remembering where he left off (at 250,000)
and starting at 250,001. .. he addresses the same 250,000 names
again!
Do you want to know the funniest thing? The damn letter shop
thought they-were going to get paid the $40,000 we owed them for
the stuffing the 500,000 pieces at 8 cents each!
If you know me by now, I surely didn't pay them a cent. I ate the
loss, and never used them again. What really sucked was the sales
rep I used at this letter shop was a friend of mine. We went out to
dinner. .. to the movies ... and to the bars a few times. It was a
shame they didn't want to make good for their error. .. but they
knew they couldn't... it would take literally millions of letters they
would have to stuff for me for free to make the loss back to me.
This letter shop error would bury most businessmen ... I pray
nothing like this ever happens to you. 1 guess a good rule, is to
make sure you're using a professional letter shop ... and not the
guy in his garage with an inserting machine.
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This is what I've leamed. If I'm getting $1.20 in sales back from a
mailer that cost me 60 cents to mail out with a First Class stamp ...
I'd get back just $1. 00 in sales ifI Pre-Sort my postage and save a
dime ... paying 50 cents.
You get what you put into this. If you're going to double your
money you're still going to double it when you Pre-Sort your
postage but you're going to get less orders.
Let me tell you a funny story about a Pre-Sorted mailer I once did.
What Pre-Sorted postage is is when the letter shop puts the zip
codes in order by carrier route for the Post Office. The letter shop
will do a little of the Post Office's work and in return the Post Office
will give you a few cents off the postage.
First off all, letter shops will not do this for free ... they'll charge a
few cents to Pre-Sort. You may save 7 cents or so ... but you're
191
paying the letter shop 2 cents to do it ... and you're not going to get
as many orders as you would if you were mailing First Class with a
First Class stamp.
I actually had a letter shop who had enough balls to offer me the
first level of Pre-Sort postage pricing ... only to Pre-Sort it deeper
with other mailers ... and where they were charging me 27 cents
postage, they were actually paying something like 22 cents! Oh
sure, you can have a nickel for every letter I want to mail. I don't
think so.
If you can put 60 cents into something and make $1.20 ... would
you rather put 50 cents into it instead to recoup $1.00? I sure
wouldn't.
This is the same as getting good results from your sales letter and
thinking you can save money by cramming the entire offer on a
post card and mailing it instead of the costly sales letter. It's not
going to happen. If you're doubling-over on 60 cents mailing the
letter ... you may double over the 40 cents it'll cost to mail the post
card- if you're lucky. Don't do it.
If you got a sales letter to pull good response ... don't think of
cheapening the cost to mail-it- either in postage costs ... or in the
actual letter's size. What you should test is this. If a # 10 sales
package is getting you $1.20 in orders for every 60 cents it costs to
maiL. you should try turning the sales letter into a 9"x12"
package ... adding a few extra sales pieces as your letter can now
192
weigh more. See if you can get a $1.00 sales letter to get you back
$2.00 in orders. You should always try to go up the ladder ...
spending more and not going down the ladder.ithinking you could
save money.
Now don't get confused. I do not mean increase the sales letter's
paper quality or color or graphics ... I mean keep the postage
always at the best it can be- a straight First-Class stamp. I also
mean, if you are getting a 200°/0 financial return on a standard # 10
package ... up it to a 9"xI2" package and see if you can retain the
200% return on your investment. Do not try to go down to a post
card in an effort to save money. That's a prescription for disaster.
I remember in a past chapter- the one about mail pieces ... I told
you to keep your initial test package to a standard # 10 size
envelope and I told you to keep it at or under one ounce. This is
absolutely true. Once and only once this # 10, one ounce package
pulls great numbers ... like doubling its cost to me ... then and only
then should you experiment with testing upping the package to a
9"xI2" package and seeing if your profit percentage remains the
same as it did for the # 10 package.
But until this happens, keep the package in a # 10 envelope ... and
keep it at or under one ounce. Period.
Why should all of your mailers have a real, live First Class stamp
on them? You need the respect of the Post Office for one. When'
Postal workers see bulk, or Standard Rate mail, they know its junk
mail and they treat it as that. They feel they do not need to rush it
out as fast as First Class mail. You do not need this unnecessary
headache.
First off all, the Postal worker on the loading docks is not your
friend. He usually hates his job ... hates his life ... and surely hates
you when he see all the "crap" you're bringing him to sort and
mail. .
When you drop it off at the main hub, make sure a Postal worker
sees what you're dropping off, so it doesn't sit out on the dock.
I tell you many times in this book, your biggest priority is getting
you're mailer's envelope respected and delivered by the Post Office.
You do not earn any respect with teaser copy printed all over the
front of the envelope. You do not get any respect with mailing
labels instead of typed or hand-written addresses.
I did a 40,000 piece test a few months ago where J seeded the drop
with four dummy names ... three friends ... and my own home
address. Wouldn't you know ... the three seeds got their letters and
I never received my letter in the mail! My own seed!
You absolutely have to keep a few seeds in the mailings. I'd say at
least one seed letter for every 10,000 you mail..; and if you're
testing a few thousand ... like 5,000- and it is a test, stick five or so
seeds in there. Tests are important. The last thing you want to
have is a winning sales letter- but you'11 never discover it because
your letters were never mailed.
A few years after I joked about this with him, guess what his job
duty now is at the Post Office? To make sure nobody throws the
damn mail in the garbage!
Another thing I cannot figure out to this day ... after ten years in
this business ... is how I get better response mailing from certain
states and worse from others.
moved the company to Arizona, and when I mailed the same letter,
just in Arizona this time ... I got just 1.2% response.
I lost .4% just mailing it from a different state. And it wasn't just
one time ... it was every time I mailed this letter. I had to hire a
letter shop in Nevada and have friends see the drops at the Post
Office for me. Response went back to 1.6% in no time.
I mailed out of California with great results ... Upstate New York
with great results ... but mailing from Arizona always pulled less
results. I can't figure it out.
Also, the Post Office can change their mind at any time. Once I was
mailing my IRS-Style envelope successfully 2 million times. I was
sending out 400,000 pieces every few weeks and they never gave
me a problem ... then all of a sudden, I was dropping off 250,000
pieces and the jerk on the loading dock gave me a problem.
The 250;000 letters had to sit on the loading dock 'urrtil we came to
some form of a resolution. I finally got them to understand this
was $150,000 worth of mailers they were messing around with and
I did in fact mail it over 2 million times before- without problems.
Why now?
I probably got some guy on the dock who had a fight with his 300-
pound, bald wife that morning and he wanted to give a hassle to
everyone and anyone who gave him a reason to.
If you have an envelope in question ... make sure to see the Post
Master and get him to approve it. You never know what may
happen.
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I tested these prices- $149.95 ... $169.95 and $179.95. The lowest
price pulled 30 orders. The middle price pulled 30 orders as well.
The high price pulled just 15 orders. Had I not tested the different
prices ... and went with the $179.95 price ... 1 would have left a lot
of money on the table I could have harvested had I just not been so
greedy.
Now, the higher price may pull more orders sometimes. This is a
win-win foryou! More orders and at a higher price. How could you
go wrong there? You can't.
Other times, when you test price, you may pull 30 orders at $10
and 10 orders at $30.
Sometimes, the lower you can sell something for, the more orders
you get. Sometimes, it's the middle price like I experienced with the
software program I price tested.
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Seriously, if you got an offer to work for you ... wouldn't it be great
if you can double your orders by simply taking $10 less ... or $10
more? You bet it would. And that's why after you get a mailer to at
least break even in sales response ... you have to do a two or three
way price test.
are handled and compiled are different. Maybe the buyer of each of
the companies is different. Who knows? The answer to 9 out of 10
questions in the direct mail business is "TEST".
But, on the other hand, if you have a killer headline, one modeled
after the 125 or so I've listed for you in the headlines chapter. .. you
can triple ... quadruple ... or increase your orders even more. You'd
simply mail one group of letters with the one headline and one
group of equal quantity with the other. What you experience may
amaze you.
There are several main rules you have to abide by when testing-
1. You can use a different phone number and have the prospects
for each different variation call a unique phone number.
3. You can code coupons customers have to mail in. If I'm doing a
price test ... I sometimes leave the main sales letter alone and
simply insert coupons for different amounts of money off. The sales
letter will say to include this coupon to receive $X off their
purchase. For phone orders, you can put a bogus code number on
your coupon and ask the caller for the coupon code. If it's
CJ2081. .. than can mean it's a coupon for the $20 off promotion.
5. You can have the caller ask for a certain Promotion Number.
You can say something in the letter like, "Just call 1-800-000-000
and tell the operator you're calling for Promotion #23 and he'l1...".
Even if the customer does not mention the promotion number. ..
you can ask him for it. Just make it easy for him to find ... like
where the letter was signed by the author of it.
I've gotten to the point where the only things I can test with radical
differences in results are prices and mailing lists. I don't know
what it is. I can do two totally different sales letters ... or two totally
different headlines ... or two totally different offers ... I always seem
to pull the same amount of orders +/ - a few orders. 1 guess this
means I have gotten so good at crafting copy and sales letters, I
suck out all the people who would buy my product. The only way I
can entice more people to buy is by using a better mailing list or a
different price.
There are many factors, which will affect the response of your sales
letters or advertisements. Some whisper. .. and some scream. 1:-.
this chapter, you '11 learn what these response factors are ... and if
they're worth testing or not.
Screams
I would classify a scream as something that will make a huge
difference in the response of your sales letters or advertisements.
These screams-which are listed in no particular order of
importance ... are the first things you should test to increase the
pulling power of your sales letter or advertisements.
Copy:
The copy in your sales letter will make a huge difference in the
pulling power of your promotions. My friend Gary Halbert makes
all his seminar attendees perform this exercise before they get
going. He makes his attendees write two different letters to their
Mothers. One starts off saying how great she is, and how she has
been so good to them ... and the second letter says how she is a
wrinkled old bitch, and how she makes them miserable ... and that
she should drop dead!
Now, the attendee gets nervous when Gary makes them actually
address and apply postage to these two letters. He makes them
actually send them out ... but to their own homes (not their
Mother's)... and they are to serve as reminders as to how powerful
copy can be and how a letter that costs the same to mail and the
same to produce, can have such a radically different effect on its
reader.
The sales copy in your ads and sales letters can have wildly
different effects on its readers. One approach can make you
millions and one approach can make you go out of business. It is
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the copywriter's job to find the right approach and get the selling
job done.
Mailing Lists:
If I had to say what the strongest, most powerful part of your direct
mail success is, I would say it was the mailing list or lists you are
going to mail to. I've had offers that made me over $8 Million in a
month's time flop on many, many mailing lists. Seriously, I could
be rolling-in 600% returns from certain direct mail lists ... then I'd
go to test another list- even a list that appears to be identical-
absolutely flop. Sometimes not even getting more than three orders
on a 5,000 piece test!
I'll say it now... I'll say it later ... I'll say it one hundred times; the
mailing list is the most powerful variable to your success in this
business.
Prices:
Aside from mailing lists, once an offer shows some form of life...
meaning it brings in at least close to break even... the next most
important thing to do is test pricing. I remember a few years back,
I was waiting for a new software program to market and when it
first came out... my price was a little high, so I had to offer the
product at $199.95. My results we not too great- I simply broke
even.
I then put this offer on the shelf and forgot about it for six months
or so. A few months later, I re-tested the offer with three different
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prices. I was a little too high on the initial offer price ... so I came
down a bit. I ended up turning this promotion into a $2,000,000 a
year paycheck. 1 would have never discovered this had I not priced
tested. This $2 Million bought me a new Bentley ... a second home
in the Desert ... and a shiny, new $100,000 Rolex. Good thing I
price tested.
Headlines:
Headlines are pretty powerful as well. I'd say they are the third
most important factor to your direct marketing success. I'm sure
many direct marketers would disagree with me and say the
headline is more important than prices and mailing lists ... but I
haven't had this proven to me. That's what this book is all about-
not what I learned in other marketing books ... it's about what I
learned doing this business myself for over 10 years.
If you're running magazine ads, the headline test is a must ... but
not so much so for a direct mail sales letter. Now this does not
mean use a weak headline in your sales letters. Always shoot for
the best possible.
Offers:
What you're offering can also make a huge difference with
response. Many direct mail pros would say, if you want to increase
your response ... increase your offer! It's true. I always like to offer
as much as I can without upping the shipping fees too much.
Remember, I like the shipping and handling fees I charge my
customer to cover the entire cost of the package and the postage.
How much can you get the shipping up to before the customer
starts to balk? I had 4 bottles of pills and it was $15. Some people
complained, but it isriot really as steep as Carlton Sheet's Real
Estate course.
They have a $9.95 30-day trial offer plus shipping and handling.
They conceal the shipping and handling fee until the prospect calls
and orders. Do you know how much this guy is charging to deliver
13 CDs... 4 or 5 VHS cassettes and a few booklets and plastic CD
case?
Premiums:
This goes back to the offer. This is not rocket science. The better
the offer ... the better the gifts ... the more compelling the reason to
order ... the better your results will be. I had promotions that broke
even when I tested them, only to pull thousands in profits once I
added a killer premium.
I did this with a car stereo membership club- the customer got a
free car alarm when he joined the club.
Postage:
Now, your offer will riot profit or fail based on the type of postage
you use ... whether it be Pre-Sorted ... or straight First-Class ... or
even Standard Rate. But your results will be greatly different. I find
the better the quality of postage ... the better the quality of the
delivery. The better the delivery, the better the results. In my
experience, if you think you're going to get a deal with the Post
Office ... you're going to pay for it on another end.
Product:
The product is king. If you have a great product mailed to the right
people ... even if it has bad copy ... you will pull in orders. This is
why the opportunity for knockoff-artists is so lucrative. They do
not have to know how to create the best ads ... hell; they can copy
and borrow a lot from yours. It's the product that makes them -
survive. If they didn't have a hot product to steal from someone ..
they'd be out of business. I genuinely believe ... no matter how well
you know how to create advertising ... if you have a bad product...
your results will be bad. I snicker when I hear a lot of direct mail
pros saying that the product really doesn't even matter. They like
to sell some story that their copywriting will make anything sell. I
don't believe this to be true. 1 do believe you need a product that
has some use to its users ... and the amount of users has to be
large.
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Back End:
This is huge. If I didn't add my auto ship paragraph to the end of
one of my sales letters ... it would have cost me over $5 Million a
month. Can it be true that a paragraph that costs absolutely
nothing to add can be worth $5 Million a month? The answer is
ABSOLUTELYl
Guarantees:
Your prospects want to be assured they are not going to be at any
financial risk buying your product or service. You have to take
away any risk of loss they may have in their minds. Some
guarantees will add or take from your response. Sometimes you
may find that a conditional, double-the-money-back guarantee will .
out pull a traditional guarantee. Test this stuff out when the time
is right.
But their size killed the sales for us. Sure, this company has
created elaborate scripts the order takers can read from, but when
a customer is ordering a complex product, he does not want
important answers to be read off a screen! If he was ordering a
pasta maker. .. maybe he'd be fine ... but for an ingestible product...
or even any complicated product for that matter, he may need an
experienced order taker to assist him.
When my calls were at West, I'd look at the sheer volume of calls
my advertisements would bring in ... but the ratio of sales they
actually were able to capture from all these calls was shit.
I'm serious. I was running TV spots and West was answering the
calls for me. I was getting 250 to 500 calls per 60-second spot.
How many orders did they get from these callers? Maybe three or
four! I pulled my account as soon as possible and brought the calls
in house. Response went up immediately.
Whispers
I would classify a whisper as something not really worth too much
of your time when it comes to testing variables. I'd advise you to
test some whispers only after you got a successful ad or sales letter
and you have tested all the factors that scream.
Paper Color:
Don't waste time thinking your sales letter can pull more orders if
you use a fancy, colorful paper you've had your eye on. Fancy
paper ... glossy paper. .. color printing and the like will have
absolutely no effect on your sales letter's response. Your prospects
do not care if an offer was or was not on a good quality paper. Do
you ever remember yourself saying, "I was going to order this
product, but since they printed their sales letter on regular paper. ..
I'm not going to go for it." or "1was not really interested in their
product ... but since they printed it on such a nice paper stock. ..
and since it was such a nice color ... I'm compelled to buy right
now!" This does not happen- Period.
The "control" package is the best package you have. As you test
variables, and find better ways to do things that add to more
money for you, update the "control" package with the new price ...
or the new offer ... or the new guarantee.
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One of the first questions I'm always asked by people first getting
started in this business is, What's it gonna cost to start up?"- I've
got the answers for you right here.
Once you get your corporation formed, you 11 have the paperwork
needed to get an EIN# and resale license (if you need one). The
corporation company will have all the info you need to obtain these
two items. You need the EIN number to open a bank account.
Graphic Design
Under $200
If you are handy with Quark Xpress ... you may be able to layout
your own sales letters or ad. If not, go see a graphic artist- but
make sure you keep them in your control. Nothing fancy. Give him
a few examples of what other winning sales letters and ads look
like.
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List Rental
$550-$650 per list in test quantities
Mailing lists have to be rented in minimum quantities of 5,000
names- even if you are going to mail just 1,000 to 2,000 letters.
Most people can get this thing started for $2,000 to mail 2,000
letters to $3,500 to mail 4,000 letters. You can get away with just
printing the sales letter, stuffing it yourself and mailing it yourself.
You can answer your own calls. A mailing list or two needs to be
rented. The sales letter can be "dry tested".
Step-By-Step
From An Idea To A Test Mailing
product been out on the market? Does this product lead itself to
back end sales and maybe even automatic deliveries?
STEP EIG HT- LAY OUT SALES LETTER: Bring a copy of a winning
sales letter layout to your graphic designer. Do not allow him to get
all fancy on you and do not be afraid to tell him what you want.
Sometimes these people think they are the "designer" so they can
do what they want. They sure can- but with their own money and
with their own projects.
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STEP NINE- PRINT SALES LETTER: Shop around for the lowest
price you can get for printing your sales letters. There are many
variables from printer to printer and their prices reflect this. We're
trying to get the lowest price.
STEP TEN- OBTAIN MAILING LIST: Order the mailing list last. The
last thing you need is a list getting stale sitting on your computer's
hard drive waiting for the damn printer to get you the test sales
letters.
When you are mailing thousands of sales letters every week, you
do not have the ability to wait the entire month to see if the last
week's mailers are doing well and keeping their response
percentage. You need to use this 7-day trick. Drop 100,000 sales
letters, by day 7 as long as you broke even, drop the next
100,000 ... then wait another 7 days ... you should have double the
2JR
amount you had on the 7th day ... if so, drop the third 100,000 and
so on.
Let me tell you a funny little story. A few years back, I was doing a
large-scale promotion that was beginning to lose its pulling power
at the cash register. I was getting less and less response. This
happens at the end of a product's life cycle.
I had tons of employees and didn't want to lay anyone off, so I had
to figure ways to get more money out of the advertisements and
sales letters I spent money on.
This was four up sells. Did some customers get annoyed? Yes. Did
a lot buy? Oh yes ... More than enough in added sales to put up
with the occasional guy we annoyed.
You want to use the same order taker for this test.
And after you sold him a few additional things, you can then say,
"OK, you will receive your order in about 10-14 working days. Do
you want to upgrade to express shipping for $5 extra to receive
everything in 5 days or less?"
You can make the rush delivery charge anything you want.
Regardless of what the delivery costs from the shipping company ...
you still have to pull his name out of the regular line up of orders
and give it special treatment. This means you have every right to
charge whatever you wish to do this.
And it's amazing how much the sales percentage will vary
depending on the person answering the phone. Our night order-
taking service couldn't up sell for their lives. Maybe 10%.
My fiance and Mother (who both worked for me) could up sell 90%
and 96% of their orders respectively. They liked me the most, so
they did the best.
Also, if you are not going to give the order-takers a little prize for
selling people ... you're going to feel it in lost sales. Give them
something. I gave my order takers $2.50 for each up sell they could
sell. If they got a customer to take a 2-year at the reduced price ...
they'd get $2.50. If they got the customer to buy the CD-ROM. for
$50 ... they got $2.50. If they got the customer to buy the
encyclopedia CD for $40 ... they got $2.50. If they got the customer
to enroll in the second discount buying club for $39.95 ... the order
taker got another $2.50. In the end, if they could sell everything ...
they got $10 in commissions. If they were only able to sell two
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things ... they got $5. This was in addition to their hourly pay of
$10 or $11... and they could sell $20 worth of up sells (8 up sells)
in an hour easily. Order-takers off the street were making $1200
and more a week in pay.
I even had the phones ring in a row. Line one ... and if line one was
busy ... line two ... and so on. I put the # 1 up seller in position one ...
the second in position number two. This way, 1 was able to extract
the maximum out of all our callers by using the best performing
reps first. If you couldn't up sell ... you got the last phone on the
list. And they didn't care ... they took a lot less calls. They got paid
to sit there and do nothing!
I'd limit the up sells to three or four at a time. More will annoy the
callers. But trust me ... none will tell you to forget their entire
order. That's a fear most marketers have.
I giggle when I hear novice marketers say something like this, "This
magazine has 2 million readers, .. I think I can get 4% of the
readers to buy from seeing my ad!" or ... "When I mail my sales
letter, I think 1 can get 20% of the people to buy off my sales
letter!" ... If it were only that easy.
You can still make a fortune if you bring back just what you spent
as long as you have a huge back end.
You can make millions of dollars when you double your initial
advertising cost as long as you have a strong back end. I did.
I had a pill that I was selling for $60. I needed 1% in orders from
my sales letters to break even. I got 2%. So, I was profiting 60
cents from each letter I mailed. This is good. But the real profits
came in when the automatic shipments kicked in a few months
later. I got an average of 4 bottles. sold to each customer. This
brought my gross eTO to $180. Remember, it cost me just $30 in
advertising costs to attract a new customer. That's six-times cost! I
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was able to do this to 40,000 new customers a month ... 1 got rich
real quick.
If I bought my ads right ... I was able to maintain this 6-times cost
ratio even on my print ads. Which I did.
To mail 2,000 letters, it'll cost $1,200 ($600 per thousand). As long
as your product has a $30 or higher CTO, you're going to make a
profit.
Good initial response rates should be l x- ·i.f you have a killer back
end ...
Response of 2x cost can make you rich if you have a strong back
end.
When all is said and done with back end sales ... you're looking to
achieve 3x to 6x cost. I made $100 Million with 6x cost.
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If you mail a sales letter and it breaks even, you should be happy.
Now resell the shit out of these customers with other offers! Mail
these customer every freakin' week if you can. Mail and mail and
mail until the list is no longer bringing more back in sales than it
costs to mail.
Here's how I gauge if I'm going to be successful within a few days ...
where others wait for weeks:
I only mail First Class, as you should. When I mail First Class, I
wait for two or three days to get my first order, then I count how
many days it takes me to break even and make back the money I
just spent mailing the sales letters. Let's say, it cost me $1,200 to
mail 2,000 letters. My product sells for $60 plus S/H. I need 20
sales to recoup the initial mailing cost. If I can get these 20 orders
by the 7th day of response, I'll do 2x cost by the 30th day of
response. This has proven itself to me many, many times and is
what I go by to see within 7 days what takes others 30 days to
figure out.
As for magazines ... if I can break even within one week of it being
on the racks ... I'll do 2x over by the time the next issue comes out.
Magazines are printed way in advance, so you don't get enough
time to evaluate your first issue ... as a second one comes out when
you just get your 30 day results. If you break even within the first
week of seeing the book on the news racks ... youlI double over by
the time the next issue comes out.
House File.
Your house file or house list is the list of customers you sold your
products to. This is the most powerful mailing list you will ever
possess. No other group of names will be more responsive than the
list you compile.
If you want to be smart in the direct response business ... you have
to build a customer me. This is a gold mine for additional sales.
The bottom line is this: You want to gage how well you are doing in
this business by a times-cost ratio. If you're pulling 2x cost...
you're doing well. Anything more than that ... and consider yourself
King!
227
Chapter Thirty:
Refund Rates
No matter how great your product or service is ... you have to offer
your customers a money-back guarantee ... and no matter how
good your product or service is ... people will take you up on your
guarantee.
Don't take it personal. You know the saying, "You can please all of
the people sometimes ... or some of the people all the time ... but
never all of the people all of the time." I think that's how it goes.
But anyway ...
You11always have people ... some correct ... and some insane ... who
felt your corporation and your product have wronged them. I'm
sure there will be people who bought this book that will absolutely
love it- probably 95%. And there's going to be 5%)who think I'm
wasting trees. You cannot take it personal.
Here's my rule of thumb: If you're getting less than 10% to ask for
their money back ... you're not selling hard enough. If you're
getting more than 10%, you're overselling your product. Try to
keep it around 7% and you'1l be fine.
You'll get five times more credit card buyers to ask for a refund
than people who ordered with a check or money order. I've noticed
this for the past few years. I guess the credit card buyers see their
credit card bill later and feel the money "gone" a few weeks after
the check orders. The check orders feel the money gone the instant
they mail their order to you. Also, credit card buyers know they
have certain levels of protection with Visa or Master Card or
whatever they used.
When you do get a refund request, make sure you resolve all
legitimate refund requests within 30 days ... or as soon as you can.
I was running a $100 Million company with a half of a million
customers ... and I was just 5 to 7 days behind on consumer
credits. You should have no problem offering credits the same day
they are requested. But do make sure the credits are legitimate.
If you're finding that you have a lot of refund requests but you
want to continue to sell the product as you are because response is
so good ... or the people who are returning the product are losers ...
here's some stuff you can do:
In the last paragraph, I said, "If the customer is a loser" ... yes,
customers can be losers. When the founder of Entrepreneur
Magazine was first getting started in the publishing business ... he
sold these "kits" on how to open certain types of businesses. They
still have these kits in the back pages of Entrepreneur Magazine.
229
That's why get-rich ads selling books or courses should hide the
"money-making-technique" in the ad. The secret has to be in the
course or book. You'll sell more by concealing the actual "task" as
it's sure to turn some people off, as opportunity seekers hate to do
"work".
The people who were killing this company earlier with the high
refund requests were lazy and they didn't even want to read the
information in the kit. The info in the kit was of quality and could
help someone looking to get in that particular business. If they
wanted their money back, they had to prove the publisher was
selling junk- which they couldn't. And those that could ... were so
little, he'd gratefully give them 200% their money back.
There are tons of hurdles you can put refund requesters through ...
you can tell them to call and ask for a RA# (return authorization
number) before sending back any product. Some companies will
230
Your customer service reps can have some kind of retention script
they can use to try to get your customer to keep the product. I
know dietary supplements sometimes do not go to work on the
body within the 30 day guarantee period ... so, I used to have my
reps offer to extend the guarantee for another 30 days to go to 60
days and a minimum of 50% of the people who would have asked
for a refund would agree. Their results would come in the next few
weeks and they were-glad they gave the pills more time to work for
them.
231
1. Make sure your ad' or sales letter had a correct phone number
and address for customers to respond to.
3. Make sure the mailing list broker sent you the right list and
didn't send you another one in error.
8. Maybe your product is just a poor idea that nobody wants. Don't
take this too personaL You cannot find winners and you cannot
create breakthrough products unless you gamble a little. I try
brand-new products all the time that either fail miserably ... or
become huge national successes. If I played it safe all the time ... I'd
be a lot poorer.
Now this does not mean market anything you can think of. You're
just starting out. Let's try to stick with winning types of products.
And always remember; fix only one thing at a time. You cannot try
to test a different price with a different mailing list. One at a time!
Otherwise the test is useless.
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Ifl'm taking 1,500 orders a day ... for one, I've got to hire an
employee, which costs money. Two, I have to have the phone lines
and pay for the 800#. Three, with each caller there is a chance of
human error and a loss of a sale.
When orders are being taken over my website, I do not have to hire
an employee to take the order. I can take orders all day long ... all
night long ... in any weather. I do not have to worry about phone
lines being busy ... and I don't have to worry about employees
saying the wrong stuff to the prospects and losing the order.
But of course, you cannot have just a website to place orders. And
you cannot handle all of the orders yourself if you get large
enough.
And as for the website itself ... it's nothing more than a sales letter
on a screen. Graphics that take forever to load ... forget them.
Special Flash Players or other software that is required to see the
site ... get rid of them. People are not going to go and download
software to view your site.
I usually breakdown the site to five pages or so. This helps in the
search engines as well. The pages are as follows:
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2. More Info page- this is the page the home page will go to when
the viewer clicks on it. It will have the entire body copy of my sales
letter.
5. Order page- this is a page that asks for all the information
needed to place an order. This can all be inputted into a shopping
cart for processing.
These five pages and what they are to have on them is all you need
to know about websites. The fonts ... the headlines ... the paragraph
lengths ... the sentence lengths ... everything I taught you about
writing copy is the same on the screen of a computer.
Spam ... forget about it. It got us sued three times from people we
sent it to!
Paid search ... do it. It works best for the trademarked name of your
product ... or of your competitors. If you're selling a product that
has a huge competitor. .. free ride off his trademark. Try to buy
search terms that have your competitor's product name in them.
Everyone that clicks on his trade name ... you can get your
product's name in front of him or her as well. Free advertising!
XYZwas their product name and Product Name was our product's
name. This trick allowed the knock-offs to piggyback on my $1.2
Million I spent a month in print, radio and TV advertising. When
people forgot my domain name ... or wanted to do a little research
on my product ... they were bombarded with people saying their
product was better and cheaper than mine. Some customers were
fooled ... but many were brand loyal and wanted the real thing.
I hated these knock-offs when they free rode like this ... but If I was
the small guy ... like you are going to be ... free ride your ass off
buddy!
I never really had any success with affiliate programs. There are
thousands of people that say these programs work. .. and I'm sure
what their vision of "works" is different than mine. Mine is making
$10,000,000 a year ... theirs is making $600 a week. Do affiliate
programs work? I'm sure they make several hundred bucks for
their owners ... but are they going to make you $5 Million next
year? I don't think so.
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Websites are also great for keeping in touch with customers and
prospects. If you can find a way to capture an email address and a
name ... you can send offers to these people, as many times as you
wish and you pay nothing.
Web marketers are doing this with newsletters. You go to their site
and subscribe to a newsletter. You write a few pages of text and
send it to them every week. .. or month ... or whenever. You can also
send them offers for other products as you see fit.
This program cost me $10. I sent out the emails offering a great
deal on a new software program I was selling. I recall getting phone
calls to place orders within 30 minutes of emailing. 1 don't even
know if you can do this anymore. But the point is, websites are
great as tools for direct response- they are not the be-all, end-all as
many wished they would become.
The reason for this is simple ... if your customer has a dial-up
connection ... your body copy will load before your headline. This is
BAD. Make your headline HTML... just like the body copy.
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I usually don't carry cash, so I asked her where was an ATM. She
pointed to a Wal-Mart across the parking lost. I got in my car and
went over to the crowded Wal-Mart. I got so disgusted; I just drove
away- leaving the cookies behind.
This is fine. I'd just let my customer know when you're getting off
the phone with him that he will see a charge on his credit card
billed as "whatever". This will eliminate any confusion.
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I've used both types of merchant accounts in the past. The ones
directly from the bank are great... but they take longer to get. .. and
they are a little harder to get. You have to show them some good
paperwork. .. tax returns ... and other stuff.
The third party guys don't really care for all of that. Guys like
Multicards will hold your money for three weeks where regular
banks deposit daily into your bank.
Discount Rate:
This is the fee the credit card company will charge for you to
process your orders. I wouldn't pay anything over 3% if you were
dealing with a traditional bank. Fees for the third party providers
can be 5.9% ... all the way up to 15%. Don't pay anything more
than 6%. On many businesses, the owners are lucky to make 10%
of gross sales ... and they got to bust their Asses for it! Why would
anyone give this much to some guy who is doing nothing but
processing your credit card order?
Reserve:
This is a fee the merchant mayor may not want to collect. This is
an insurance policy the bank will hold in case your company goes
belly-up. This fee is refundable 180 days after you terminate your
account with that bank. This reserve can be collected as a "rolling"
reserve, which is usually 5% or worse, 10%. This means the bank
will collect an additional 5% of your gross sales and put them in a
non-interest bearing account in case they are ever financially
harmed by your company.
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Charge backs:
A charge back is when a customer contests the charge you put on
his or her credit card. This usually happens when a customer does
not recognize the charge or what he ordered ... sometimes the
customer was not happy with the product and it is easier for them
to call the 800# on their credit card statement than it is to dig-up
your phone number. Maybe you placed a charge on your
customer's credit card without their permission and they are
pissed off. Maybe the customer knows you sent him your product
without requiring him to sign for it at the door. All he has to do is
say to the credit card company that he never received the product.
The merchant account will ask for you to provide them with proof
the customer got the order. .. and you don't have anything ... so you
have to give them back their money. A very few people will do this,
so it may not be worth getting signatures for every package you
deliver. To obtain signatures, it may cost an extra $3 or $5 per
order. If you got one person out of 100 ripping you off... it's
cheaper than adding $3 to $5 on top of every order to get
signatures.
You can fight a lot of charge back requests with the credit card
company. Before they actually suck the money out of your
account, they usually give you the opportunity to speak your end
of the story. This is called a "retrieval". 111talk about them next.
Retrievals:
This is when a customer contests a charge on his credit card and
before the credit card company charges back the purchase, they
sometimes give you the opportunity to fight the charge back.
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I advise you to contest each one, as if you let them go, sometimes
the bank will take this as some form of guilt. And you'd be
surprised, you can win many of them.
If you got a signature at the door from your customer. .. make sure
you show this to the bank. As soon as they see you got a signature,
they'll usually rule in your favor. But like I was saying before, it
may not be financially smart to get a signature from every
customer. And you also run the risk of the customer not signing
for the order and it comes back to you and you have to credit the
purchase.
TMF.
This is the black list. You're dead if you're on this list. TMF stands
for Terminated Merchant File. You're supposed to get listed on this
list when you commit some kind of fraud or if a bank gets beat. By
fraud, I mean you went crazy with your customer's credit card
numbers and took-off never to be heard from again. But this is not
always the case, if your charge back percentages exceed 1% for
more than three months ... the bank can and will terminate your
merchant account and you may even get placed on the TMF.
If you're a business owner and get placed on the TMF ... you have
to have a partner or silent partner in order to get merchant
accounts ever again. So be careful and make sure you do not
exceed 1% in charge backs.
Limits.
Sometimes, especially on new accounts, the bank will put a cap or
a limit on how much you can charge. This is usually fine when you
are just starting up. I remember many times when we had an $8
Million limit and we were bumping it every month! We had to put
more money in reserve to get the limit increased.
I'm sure this will probably be the first chapter to get outdated in
this book. So this information is current at the time of writing,
which is June 2004.
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First of all, there are large caller centers like West in Omaha,
Nebraska ...and then there are smaller ones you can find in your
local phone book. Let's talk about large call centers first.
I figured if this call center can handle these company's order calls,
they could sure handle ours- an herbal supplement I was doing
some consulting work for. I was wrong.
This large company had over 10,000 people answering the phone.
With all order takers, they get better the more familiar they get
with the product. When there are 10,000 people answering the
phones ... in order for a rep to get their second call for your
product, you'd have to sell 10,000 people! The reps at these large
companies will never get familiar with your product. So if it's a
high-tech product or a supplement, where customers may have a
lot of questions, a large call center may not be the best fit for you.
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Another thing that bothers me about call centers is that they are
horrible on their up sell percentages. If you can up sell 40% of your
customers when you're using your own employees ... chances are
you'll get just 5% from a call center. The reps just don't care. And
they sound too obvious they are reading a script. Again- because
they cannot get familiar with your products.
Another thing that annoys me about large call centers is that you
cannot "see" the people answering your calls. I want to see with my
own eyes what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong.
You cannot do this with a large call center where the client is not
allowed in the call rooms.
Now there are some pros about using a call center. They have reps
ready to answer your calls 24 hours a day 7 days a week. You
don't have to worry about who cannot find a baby sitter. .. who is
sick. .. whose Mother just died. That's the call center's problem.
Another thing that is good is that if the phone lines are not busy,
you don't have to pay an hourly wage. If you were to take calls in-
house, you'll have to pay for your employees even if they are sitting
doing nothing.
Also, if you are running TV spots, it's pretty costly for you to get
100 phone lines in your building. That's how many people call in at
once when a TV spot hits the air. When you are using a large call
center, they have thousands of lines. They can take 1,000 calls for
your product at the same time.
You could never take 1,000 calls at once. And even if you did, what
happens for the next half hour until the next commercial comes
on? Nothing- your people just sit and get paid for doing nothing.
Large call centers like WEST actually pay for the toll-charges
through the 800# they'll give you. All you have to pay them is 80
cents or so a minute. For some it will work out cheaper than hiring-
your own employees ... for some it1l cost a few dollars more.
Something WEST did for us was credit us $2 for every order call
that came in. Remember, they were charging us around 80 cents a
minute. And if we would allow them to "Ditch" our callers with 3-
issue trial magazine subscriptions, they'd pay us $2 per pitch
regardless if they sold the customer or not. This worked out OK
and offset some of the costs.
They are a little smaller, so their reps can and will get used to what
your product does and what the up sell script is going to read like.
They'll get more of the callers to buy and they'll get a higher
percentage of callers to up sell to something else. Again- because
they are going to get more familiar with your offer.
Then there's a flip side to the smaller call centers. They usually are
understaffed. The owners want to maximize their profit margins
and if they run lean, they'll do better. What they don't realize is
that a call may now sit on hold until the order rep gets off the
phone with his last order. A lot of people will just hang up ... even if
it an 800# they are calling.
Large call centers are great if you are running ads, letters, or
commercials that are capturing caller's addresses to send them
information ... like a free report or info package. They kind of suck
when it comes time to sell something. And they really suck when
the product you are selling is complicated and may lead to many
questions being asked by the caller.
Like I was saying before, if you are just having customers ask for
an info kit or a free report, a large call center should work just fine.
This is what I used to do. I used to have a small call center answer
my calls over night and on the weekends. During regular business
hours, we'd answer our calls in-house. Once our company grew,
we took our calls all day and all night ... we'd open at Sam and
close at 1am.
I
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In these days, there's "do not call" lists where consumers add their
names and numbers to national lists and if a marketer calls these
people, he can be in some serious problems.
The only way you may be able to get telemarketing to work for you
is if you have an offer and you want to call your customer list and
offer it to them. That's fine. Trying to get cold prospects that are
not your customers to buy though the phone has never worked for
me- ever.
What I then did the next morning was have my best up seller call
each and every new customer from the previous night and say they
were calling to "verify" their information. My up seller would go
over their name, the spelling, their address, their phone number,
their credit card information, etc. The customer was impressed to
think we were taking the time to call him and verify all his
information. And right before our up seller was going to hang up ...
they'd say, "let me tell you about a few of our specials we have
going on right now..." and they'd go right into the scripts.
Guess what. Callers that could not have been sold anything if I let
the answering service do it the night before, were now buying like
crazed animals when we'd simply "verify" their information.
Other than these two ways ... I've never had any form of
telemarketing actually produce profitable results for me. I'm sure
there's millions of businesses making telemarketing work ...
otherwise the Feds wouldn't make "do not call" lists. I never was
able to figure it out.
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What I've been noticing now is that companies are using a wide-
screen format commercial, where they have black space on the top
of the commercial and black space on the bottom.
Thinking of the company was the last thing on my mind ... I was
wondering if this was the end of the world- as most of America was
thinking. But wouldn't you know ... when the Howard Stern Show
aired that night ... and my commercial was run two times ... I
actually broke even. lwas thinking, "Are these people crazy?
They're worrying about buying my damn supplement when we
suffered the attacks this moming?!"
With TV spots this is true ... and not so much as true with
infomercials, Infomercials bring in a lot of their response the first
time they are ran. The short form 60-second spots need to run a
few times for the watcher to get his pen handy and actually get the
phone number down.
Producing the spot or infomercial is where some big bills come in.
I've shot 60-second spots for $14,000 and I've shot 60-second
----
.
spots for $114,000. The differences in response were no different .
The commercial looked great ... but did it pull more orders for me
than the cheap $14,000 spot did? Nope.
get business cards made until I was making $50 Million and felt
stupid when people were asking me for a card.
1nfomercials are a different story and way beyond the scope of this
book and surely this chapter. There are many formats for
infomerciaJs ... there's talk show format, which is the cheapest to
produce and may cost $25,000 ... then there's the high-dollar
productions that can cost as much as $200,000!
If you place radio spots ... do not get upset with the results from the
first three or four days. Radio spots do take a few days to get up to
full speed. They need repetition to start generating the orders.
I remember when I first started a radio campaign and the first few
days the results we less than impressive. 1 had to go on a trip to
New York and a day or two after I left, I got a call from one of our
managers saying the radio spots were generating orders like crazy.
I'm talking 400 orders in a single day from a single radio show!
Now, when it comes time for radio spots ... I like to advertise on talk
shows and not so much music stations. If I'm having great success
on certain talk show stations, then I can try some music stations ...
but the last time I tried the music stations, I did not do so well.
You want to advertise during drive times ... this is when most of the
listeners are in their cars. That's when people really listen to the
radio ... not so much at work or at home.
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Usually the radio station will do the voice-over commercial for you.
They already have the personalities with great radio voices and
they have the full-blown studio to record the thing in. But if you're
looking to run commercials on different stations, the one station is
not going to give you a copy of the spot to run on a competitor's
station.
I did very little radio advertising in my heyday ... and while I was
successfuL. I'm not a know-it-all as I am with direct mail and
print. So, if you're looking to place advertisements on the radio ... It
may be wise for you to go and seek further education on this topic
in other books or consultants.
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Before I attempt to tell you what the "suck out" is, I want to
illustrate two different stories for you.
Both stories deal with running magazine advertisements ... but they
can just as easily be TV ads or radio ads.
The first time I ran the ad ... it did great. .. the second time ... it did
well.,; the third time I ran the ad ... it did okay ... the fourth time, it
broke even. Any ad placed after that lost money.
other words, my ads would go great for a few months ... but once 1
sucked out all the hot buyers ... if the magazine didn't replenish
their readership with fresh names fast enough- my ads would soon
be worthless.
Gary Halbert says the same thing. He makes ads that were so
powerful; they'd only work once or twice. Sure, they worked great
once or twice ... but they pulled every potential customer out of the
readership in one or two insertions. This is not a bad problem.
And then you have guys like me who, once their one page ad pulls
like mad ... I then go to 3 or even 4 page ads and suck out every
single freaking prospect interested in my product.
Of course, if you say you wouldn't mind making the steady orders
for years placing small ads instead of larger ads that suck out too
fast... you may get knocked-off by a larger competitor and he11
place larger one page ads and steal all your profits ... or even run
you out of business.
Obviously if you asked me what you should do- run the smaller
ads that may last longer or run the larger ads that may burn-out
quicker ... I'm going to tell you to run the larger ads.
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First, you can you run your main ad for a few months and once it
starts to decline, you can run an alternative ad that sells its
customers from a different point of view to attract different
customers. When you are creating this new ad with a new slant,
make sure you do not borrow much from your first ad.
Now, run this new slant ad and it should bring in new customers
that are turned on by different claims and different desires. Run
this ad one month; run your first ad the next month, and so on. Or
you can run your first ad until it pulls no more then run the
second ad until it pulls no more and then go back to the first ad. If
the response is restored, great. If it's not ... you have to create a
third ad with another slant.
If you can get away with this and keep recharging your product
with new ads, you're in a great position.
If your ad is a break even when you run it every 30-days ... what
would it do if you ran it every 60 days? Your ads will always have
"1ag"- which is sales that come in after the ad is stopped. If you
were getting 1,500 orders a month from your ad when it was
fresh ... and after three insertions, it was pulling just 500 ... and
you needed that 500 orders to break even ... and if you're not
making a killing on the back end ... maybe you can pull the ad and
run it every other month. Now, you'll get 500 orders when this
issue is still out ... and once the next issue comes out- without you
in it ... you may get 250 or 300 orders.
I'd rather have the first situation work for me, when I just recreate
the ad with a new slant ... instead of the advertisement running
every other month.
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There are other ways to boost the sales of an old or worn ad ... look
in the past chapter that talks about improving your response by
improving your offer. Maybe you can do a new ad with a
premium ... or a gift ... or adding some up sells ... or increasing your
back end.
What a marketer does when his ads no longer pull as well as they
did shows his true character. You have to be innovative. You must
get the response back to where it was. In this business, you're
either growing or dying.
1i
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The thing I'd tell you to do is first find some family members that
can help you out. I'm sure you're nervous to actually hire a
stranger and be someone's "boss" so quickly. And another thing is
you probably don't want to go and rent office space just yet. It'll be
kind of uncomfortable-for strangers to come and work from your
kitchen with you.
Our first employee was a lady named Joyce and we hired her from
a temp. agency. I remember getting my first employee ... boy was it
strange ... especially since she was in her mid-40s and I was a 21-
year-old high-school drop out!
As I got better at writing direct mail sales letters and magazine ads,
we hired Leah ... our second employee ... then Marcia ... our third
employee. I had two of these three ladies working for me until
1999, when I was doing several millions in revenue and had 25
employees.
259
1. Keep It Professional.
I don't mean you have to be a robot. But try to keep the wall there
between employee and employer. Do not go to happy hour with
them. Do not ask them to go to the movies with you. They cannot
be your friends outside of the office.
Another time, one of the married women in the office was asking
me what bar I hung out at on the weekends. Remember, I was in
my early 20's! I told her, and she said, "Oh! My friends and me are
going there tonight! Maybe we'll see you!" I thought nothing of it.
What she was really doing was stalking me. I saw her at the club
that night ... I didn't see any of her friends. I had a couple of drinks
in me and was fairly loose. A few moments later, she came and sat
at my table ... and was talking in my ear because the music was so
loud. Would you believe this girl started kissing me? I pulled back-
even though she wasn't bad looking ... and the next day around the
office ... I heard the rumor. .. "She and Vince were at a club making
out! And she says he's a good kisser!" Talk about embarrassing.
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The people working for you may become seriously jealous. Jealous
employees are cancer, and they affect the entire work force. Look-
the people working for you, unless you are commissioning them in
some way, are stuck at the job they are in. They are there to either
answer your orders or take your customer service calls or ship
your orders. The key word they see is YOURS. They think
everything is yours. They think if you get 300 orders a day at
$100 ... all the $30,000 is yours to keep and you're at home in
some mansion lighting up cigars with some of those hundreds.
Trust me- they are not happy for you. They are happy they have a
job to pay their bills. And if you ever fire them, all they'll remember
is how rich you are and how they can destroy you.
I've had one employee quit and his friend still worked for me. His
friend was working overtime one night and made a copy of our
entire database of customers. They stole 500,000 customers and
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And if you keep cancer working for you- they'll cause you huge
problems the longer you wait. What they do is wait and wait for
you to slip up and once they have something on you ... you're dead.
I remember I had a woman who was begging for additional hours
to work, as she needed money. Our company did not offer overtime
because I'd have to pay them time and a half. She went on to say
that she would forfeit any rights to time and a half and she just
wanted straight pay. I was not involved in this decision. We ended
up giving her the extra hours at her flat pay. A few months went by
and this lady turned into cancer. She must have been on drugs.
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Her performance was slipping. And when she was fired eventually.
she was vindictive and went to the Labor Board and complained
she was working past 40 hours and never got overtime pay. All
those hours we gave her out of the kindness of our hearts, we had
to go back and pay her the half time. It was like $2,000.
Fourteen people should be able to ship 14,000 orders ... and they
couldn't even get out 7,000 ... and were realistically shipping just
5,000 or less! What was going on?
They felt why were they going to work hard or work fast when this
guy is getting everyone's lunch and doing personal favors?
Remember, this was the shipping room ... not the laboratory ... to
the employees in this department; this was a big deal to them.
What made it worse was this favored kid would go and show-off to
his co-workers. When my partner made him pick up a prescription
from the drugstore, he gave him his debit card to pay. Well, this
kid went to all his co-workers and showed them the credit card
and told them that my partner actually gave him a credit card and
he can buy anything he wishes. Of course, these workers saw the
name on the credit card and became jealous.
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Performance just suffered ... and suffered ... and suffered. We were
getting further and further behind on shipping. I wanted to fire this
kid but he was my partner's friend. It was just a wreck. Don't favor
anyone- even your girlfriend if she works for you.
6. Check References:
We had to hire people so fast; we didn't get to check their
references all the time. You've got to do this. Most of the references
on what turned out to be bad employees were bogus. And a simple
phone call or two to the references would have helped us before we
hired this employee. I even wanted to give my new hires drug
tests ... but so many people were on drugs, we'd have no
employees.
Also, if you hire Paul who refers three or four of his friends to come
and apply, if they tell you they are friends of Paul, you should not
hire them. When Paul is with his friends, he thinks he's rolling
deep and is more prone to becoming a bad employee. When you
fire Paul, .. you lose the three friends as well and nobody is there to
answer your orders! And even if his three friends stick around,
their performance will be shit because every day they'll be hearing
it from Paul, saying I got you that job ... it's a shit job ... fuck them ...
264
you should quit. Even if he doesn't quit, he'll think it is a bad thing
to come to work for you. You don't need this.
Say if you hired Paul's Mother and she messed something up. It's
going to be weird bringing it to her attention, and what's worse, if
she's a disaster, and you fire her, Paul's feelings will be hurt.
One time I had an employee AI. He was an all right guy. He said
his brother-in-law needed a job badly and we hired him. This was
way back in 1998 before I had my "rules". Al turned into a bad
seed and was looking to attempt to take-over the company by
stealing its clients along with another employee. We fired him
immediately as we did his friend. Now, Eddy, AI's brother-in-law
still worked for us because he was a good worker and he did need
the money- he had a little girl to take care of. But his sister, AI's
wife was giving him shit ... and Al was giving him shit ... and I saw it
in Eddy's eyes ... it was killing him. He didn't want to quit. He
needed the money. But his family forced him to quit. It was a
mess.
hour because at Spm, they don't have to think about work until
tomorrow.
Always make sure your order takers are reading their scripts
properly and monitor every thing they do.
If you treat them badly. If you treat them unfairly. If you make
them jealous of you ... they'll look for any way to bring down your
business ... with either hate websites slamming your company ...
complaints to government agencies ... or even worse.
Chapter Forty'
The Only 3 Ways To Grow Your Business
I'm not gonna take credit for this chapter. My Mentor Jay Abraham
broke it down so beautifully- There's just three and only three
ways to grow any business. We're going to go over the three
methods and dig deeper into different tactics in each of the three
methods.
That's it! Go ahead; think of another one as hard as you can ...
you're not going to discover another method.
Here's some ways you can get more new customers in the door to
buy your product or service:
1. Referral Systems:
You can put into play referral systems where your existing
customers can refer new customers to you for a bonus. Let's say if
you send a letter in your orders ... or if you send a letter to all your
existing customers and tell them for every customer they can refer
to you, you'll send them $30 or so. All they have to do is have their
friend call this special 800# to order. When the guy calls to place
an order, you ask him who referred him to you. You take note and
send the guy the $30 or whatever you promised him.
2. Acquire Customers at
Break-Even and Profit On The Back-End:
I was selling a pill a few years back that made money on some lists
and broke-even on some larger lists. Sure, I could make some good
money mailing the smaller lists and actually make a decent profit
on the front end ... but the sheer volume I needed was if I used the
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lists that broke-even. These lists were much larger ... but I was not
able to make a profit on the initial sale. But since I knew
customers would buy a certain amount of times on the back-end, I
was able to acquire these new customers at break-even and bank
on the fact they'll buy a lot of product from me on the back-end.
Jay Abraham tells a story about a company that was selling "fluid
transmission" goods- like PVC. The company would have sales
people calling on others to make sales. The initial sale had a profit
of $250 or so and they gave the sales people 10% of that. The
company owners knew that these new customers would buy a lot
more over the course of the year and they would be worth about
$1,000 more in profit over the next year. What Jay advised this
owner to do is instead of commissioning just 10% to his
salespeople ... he should give them 100% of the profit on the first
purchase. The company owner would really fire-up the sales staff
and the owner would make 3 or 4 times the profit on the back end
sales because he'd have 3 or 4 times as many new customers!
4. Host Relationships:
I talked about this is in a past chapter. A Host-Parasite
Relationship is where you can have other businesses solicit their
customers on your behalf and split the proceeds. Let's say you
owned a film company and you knew of a guy who owned a camera
company. What you can set up is a deal where he solicits his
customers and tells them all about how great your film company
is. And since his customers need film, as they are all camera
customers ... it's a shoe-in and response should be great. Now, you
would normally pay postage and printing in circumstances like
this, and you'd probably split the profits 50/50. Nothing is set in
stone ... you can alter this offer any way you and your host wish.
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Sure, you may be able to rent his customer list ... but the response
will be many, many times more powerful when the sales letter is
coming from the camera guy to his customers endorsing you.
There's a big difference than you mailing them yourself.
like other cattle. The end result is flawless hides that do not have
markings in them from when the cattle bump against the barbed
wire.
1. Up sells:
We just talked about up sells and bumps a few chapters ago, so
this should all still be fresh on your mind. I was able to jump the
average unit of sale from $70 to over $100 just by adding some up
sells and commissioning my salespeople to sell, sell, sell! Going
from $ 70 to $100 on an initial average unit of sale is an over 40%
increase in average unit of sale. Later, I'm going to show you how
to explode your business, just getting a 20% increase on each of
the three growth methods.
lucky to get a 50/50 ... and maybe you'll end up paying the entire
postage and printing. If this is the case, don't cut them in on the
profits ... See what they want to sell their product to you on a
wholesale basis for. You'll know what it needs to be. If it's lower to
get the product at wholesale than it is to split profits ... go the most
profitable route. This is a powerful marketing concept and win-win
for the other business ... but you'd be surprised how many
businesses will not be interested in doing this with you!
You can also offer a free bonus with a certain purchase frequency.
Remember I was saying about the free DVD players when a
customer stayed on my product for six months? I was making $40
each and every month they took my herbal supplement ... I was
getting four months on average. I could buy DVD players for $40 ...
and I would give one to the customer once they took the product
for 6 months. Now, the 6th month's revenue paid for the DVD
player in full., , and I got the fifth month's revenue, when I wouldn't
have gotten it as I had a 4 month customer life. When you're
selling 40,000 people a month, that extra 40,000 people buying at
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$40 for the fifth month is $1.6 Million in free cash every month.
The sixth month's revenue of $1.6 Million went right to buying the
DVD player. And I d idrr't j u.st-serid the DVD player automatically to
the customer. They had to remember they were on the product for
6 months and they had to call and request it. A good 30% never
took us up on the DVD player because that was not the reason
they were taking our product. Had they requested it, it was theirs.
If they didn't, we profited even more.
Now if you can get a 20% increase on the first method ... a 20%
increase on your second method ... and a 20% increase on the third
method ... you're going to blow the door off your business.
If you do not know what you are doing ... you can end up pissing off
an Attorney General ... the Federal Trade Commission ... the Postal
Inspectors ... or any of the other numerous Government "alphabet"
agencies. Here's how to avoid the most common business mistakes
that get direct marketers in trouble:
Rule One:
Ship Products Within ,30 Days Or Sooner!
From the very day you charge the customer's credit card, or from
the very day their personal check clears the bank ... you have 30-
days to get them their order. Most customers will caIl and bicker
within two weeks if they have yet to receive their order. So if the
product is going to take the full 30-days to get to your customer,
make sure to tell them when they are on the phone placing an
order.
Now, you can ship products later than 30 days as long as you let
the customer know. That's why you see some commercials saying,
"allow 3 to 6 weeks for delivery" ... and sometimes even longer! If
you cannot deliver the product within 30 days, make sure you tell
the customer when they order. I like to ship my orders within 4 or
5 days max. Sometimes things are out of your control, like when
you have a spike in orders and run out of pills or whatever, and
the manufacturer says they're going to need 4 weeks to fill your
purchase order.
This oost card is to be used for what we call "back orders". It1J
read something like trus-
"I'm sorry, but it's going to take a little longer than I anticipate to
ship your order of (product name). It seems we've had a massive
sales spike, and we sold out faster than we thought. Our supplier
is telling us the earliest he can have more product to us is (date).
So, to make up for this delay, once we ship your order on (date),
I'm going to include a free bonus worth (price). Here's what it is:
(paragraph about free bonus). Of course, if you simply cannot wait
until (date) to get your order, you can call us at (phone) and we'll
issue a credit immediately. Again, I'm sorry for the delay. I
understand you're anxious to get (product name)."
Sounds good? You canuse those words if you ever need to.
Rule Two:
Give All Legitimate Credits Within 15 Days!
Trust me- if you're being too strict with credits and most of your
customers place their order with credit cards, you're only asking
for charge backs from the credit card company. And remember, if
you jump over 1% in charge backs, there's a good chance you can
lose the merchant account and where are you going to then
process your orders?
Rule Three:
Don't Lie To Your Prospects!
If you hype your product in your ad- that's fine. If you use
hyperbole ... that's fine. If you lie ... you're screwed.
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Sure, you may be able to get away with it for a little while ... but
once an alphabet agency is sticking their nose all in your
business ... it's nothing but a headache.
I got a new rule for myself. Unless I can get an expert such as a
Doctor to say my product can do what I said it can ... and unless
this Doctor can be a total stranger ... and would be able to go on a
stand in a courtroom and tell the prosecution what I say is true ...
I'll refrain from saying it.
And if you want to make some crazy claims, make sure you get the
back-up proof ahead of time. If you're saying this cream reduces
cellulite by 36% ... you'd better find some scientific data to prove
this ... and keep copies of it in a safe place other than your home or
office.
Rule Four:
Sell Products You Know Will Work As Claimed!
Joe said fine but wanted to actually try the product to see how
good it works. The popular infomercial marketer didn't want Joe to
test the product and he told Joe about a story that I found funny:
It was about this father and son. The father had all these cans of
tuna and they were trying to sell the tuna- the only thing was the
tuna was expired. They bought the tuna from someone else, and
now they were trying to "unload" it on someone else. The kid said
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to his father, why don't we just eat the tuna?. and the father told
the son, that an't eatin' tuna ... that's sellin' tuna.
Joe declined to sell the product ... but the story is funny. Carlton
Sheet's Real Estate program is sellin' tuna ... not eatin' tuna. If it
were eatin' tuna ... he would not be selling the information ... he'd
be using it to buy real estate. Most product I see on the market are
what I call "sellin' tuna". Try to sell only what you feel at least
works somewhat. Remember, your opinion of the product is your
opinion. What matter is can you get in trouble for selling what
you're selling? And do more than 10% of your customers ask for
their money back. If you can honestly answer NO to those two
questions, you should be fine.
Also, if there are any "skeletons" in your closet ... make sure no
employee, vendor, or customer ever knows of them ... because if
there comes a time when you piss them off... or even if you don't...
they can and will use this "skeleton" against you- and in some
cases ... it can ruin you.
278
In this chapter, I'm going to tell you some of the top blunders that
we've had over the past 10 years ... some which cost me MILLIONS
of dollars. You1l make the same mistakes if you're not careful, so
read this chapter and make sure you do not mess-up like I did.
We printed and mailed the letters and were wondering why four
days after we dropped, we had just a few orders. It wasn't until one
of the order takers came to me and said a lot of people were saying
the 800# on the letter was wrong, so they had to call the 800#
directory to get our correct number!
When she came to me and said that, I knew that was what's
wrong. I called the 800# in the sales letter and it went to some
carpet cleaner's answering machine.
One of the guys who worked for me got the carpet cleaner's 800# to
forward to our lines. We were getting orders. What did he do? Did
he cut some kind of a deal with these carpet cleaners?
Turns out he called the phone company and simply forwarded the
800# to our number. This was wrong, and I'm not even sure if that
was what he did ... but it got the orders coming back to my phones
and while results were not as great as they should have been ... at
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least we made a little money and were able to come back and play
another day. We fixed the 800# and my partner and I used to joke
about this every time he was to give me a new phone number to
add to a sales letter or advertisement.
The carpet cleaner ended up finding out we took his 800# and was
kind of pissed off. We made him feel better when we gave him
$5,000 for the 30-day usage of his number plus pay his phone bill-
which we did. We also gave him a bunch of software to donate to
the church he was a member of. Turns out the carpet cleaning
business was out of business ... so we were lucky. Had it have been
a thriving business, he would have told us to screw-off.
Can this really happen? Yes. I even once had a competitor cut into
the phone junction box in front of our building complex and pull
our phone wires out of the connector! It took the phone company
hours to figure out what was going on! We lost a ton of calls!
Website Down:
I really didn't understand too much about web hosting back then ...
and I wanted a single server to handle my website alone ... so I had
my programmer put just my site on it's own server with it's own Tl
line. So here we are paying $1,000 to host a simple 5-page site ...
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and we had so much down time, this guy lost me easily $200,000
in sales. Bottom line- only deal with professionals. If some one
sucks, either a vendor or a customer. .. take the lesson and get rid
of them.
When you get large, you're not going to simply have a few phone
lines in an office. You're going to have a major phone system. Ours
cost over $100,000 ... closer to $150,000. Now, I remember a few
times when this big black box went on the fritz and no servicemen
were available to come immediately. I'd have 50 order takers and
30 customer service reps looking at me with nothing to do ...
knowing every secon~ that went by I was losing money.
The first night they had the phones forwarded to them, I got 1/2
the orders I usually get. They were telling us that's all that called
and I just remember thinking to myself, "Don't these assholes
know how many orders I get? The next night I called and some
"ignant" woman hung up on me after ringing the phone 8 or 9
times ... then when I went to call back, it was off the hook for at
least an hour. I never saw anything like it. We immediately took
our calls away from these jokers and they actually wanted to get
paid for their time!
I remember I once tested a golf club and left all the calls at the call
center. I was wondering why we didn't get any orders a week later.
I called the num ber listed on my letter and nobody answered the
phone! I called the call center and nobody in my office alerted them
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to look for calls on this number I used in the sales letter. My office
screwed this up.
You have to nip blunders in the bud. If you don't catch them fast
enough ... they can run you out of business. If your phone lines are
down... the customers are not going to call you back. If you're
lucky, you'll get 40%. The same with the website. If it's down ...
you're losing orders forever. Do not deal with unprofessional call
centers or website hosting companies. The first sign of shit with
them ... get rid of them.
Many direct marketers do not come up with their own ideas ... they
steal other's winning ideas.
One direct marketing pro told me once you see an infomercial run
two weekends in a row ... it's a sign that it's a profitable show and
other direct marketers will soon steal the idea.
But I really cannot hate them for what they've done. My fiancee
Suzanne gets so mad when she sees one of the knock-off's TV
commercial on TV. I tell her this:
It takes her about a second to say she'd do it. I then say, well how
can we be mad at someone who'd do the same thing we'd do?
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Maybe I'm fooling myself with this bullshit. .. but it does sure work
to calm me down. It's a form of a compliment right? Well, lets not
push it.
2R4
EXCLUSIVES:
This is a tactic I've used for years and it's worked like a charm. I
pissed off all my knock-offs with this tactic ... and I loved every
second of it. What I do once I know I have a winner in direct mail
and want to expand into magazines is get exclusives.
The magazine may have no problem with this because they are not
being flooded with marketers wanting to place ads for the same
products you're selling at the time. But the key words are "at the
time". Once you get going and the knock-offs come out of the
woodwork. .. they'll be hounding every magazine you advertise in.
You've already done the research and proved that magazine works.
So, if you've got a hit and want to expand to magazine ads, get
exclusives right after you negotiate price. If the magazine wants
you to pay $21,000 and you want to pay $20,000 ... the dealmaker
for them could be the exclusive.
That's a 20% premium ... but since I was getting the pages for
$20jM or $20 CPM ... 1 budged ... but made them throw-in full
color. .. which I used sparingly just to mimic their layout.
Did competitors hate it? You betcha! Did I keep them out? Yup.
Sure, they could have copied my product very easily ... but if they
couldn't solicit large volumes of customers like I could ... they stood
no chance.
Month after month, they all fell out. Within three months, they
were no longer advertising in FHM. But this would have not been
the case if these marketers were good at creating advertisements.
Lucky for me, they weren't. The publisher should have taken the
exclusive.
you a better deal!". The deal is no better you can be sure of that ...
but they will call your competitors and try to egg-them-on to run
ads. Keep in mind, they're a business.
I hope I was able to alter your life at least in a small way. Hopefully
you become a multi-millionaire! I sure gave you all the tools I used
to get there 48-times_ over!
This book may take a few times to read for everything to absorb
into your brain. 111tell you one thing ... it's easier for this
information to be understood if you have an idea for a product in
mind while you are reading it.
Trust me. People have copied what I've done and made themselves
$200 Million empires ... and they were not taught like you were in
this book.
Your mind has two parts. The conscious and the sub-conscious.
Ask yourself to create an idea of your "dream" life. No matter how
crazy some of the things sound, write them down in bullet-form. I
don't care if you'd wish you'd own a Rolls Royce and a $20 Million
Estate ... and you're famous and you're going out with a beautiful
celebrity ... whatever you dream- write it down. Pretend you still
have the wild imagination of a child. That imagination we used to
have was God's greatest gift to us and our teachers, our parents,
our friends all told us to "kill" it. How stupid they were!
289
Now vou have this list of 20 things or so you wish you'd have in
you; life. Now, write them down in present tense as if you already
have them. So, it won't be, "1 want a Rolls Royce Phantom" ... it'll be
"I own a Rolls Royce Phantom. It's black with a red leather
interior."
Now make a list of the good things in life you want and write them
in present tense. This is called your list of affirmations.
Now, write down your perfect life... , which would include many, if
not all of the things you've listed, you already "had".
On the top of this page, write the date in which you want the goal
to materialize. Don't set it too close ... but don't set it 10 years away
either. Maybe six months away ... maybe a year away like this
book's title, "The 12-Month Millionaire".
Now, everyday ... sometimes twice a day ... sometimes three times a
day, rewrite the perfect life over and over again. The more
"impressions" you make on your sub-conscious mind, the quicker
these results will materialize for you.
This is the "secret" of the rich and famous. This is the "secret"
they've used to build their fortunes. Now you can use it yourself.
I wanted a black Rolls Royce. Black with a black Everflex roof and
a cream interior- under 20,000 miles and it had to be a 1991 or
newer.
1wanted a business that was clean and long lasting that grossed
over $20,000 a week in gross sales.
She ended up moving out west with us a few years later and her
health is good.
When I wrote this, I lived with my Uncle. A few years later, I had a
$4 Million Home and a $2 Million Home at the same time and I had
full time maids that kept the place clean and picked up my child
from school and even babysitted on the weekends if we needed her.
I could go on ... I listed a few more things that all came true. And
while they may not seem like big deals to me right now, they were
written in 1994 ... and in 1994 I didn't have too much. This stuff
was HUGE for me to be thinking about back then. But they all
came true.
This stuff sounds freaky ... and it is. But this is the way we were
wired as humans. This is how we get ahead in life. When we have a
success, we do some of the stuff these guys teach ... it's just we
291
didn't know we were doing it. Once you know how to do it at will ...
the World is yours!
Once you plant the stuff you want into your mind ... the mind
makes your body change its vibrations. And everything you want in
life is attracted to you through the law of vibration.
You've got the best book on direct response ... the best book that
can teach you how people make millions of dollars- fast ... now
you've got to go out and get one, two, or all three of these self-help
books I've listed in this book.
Let's get going! You've got to be a millionaire within the next year ...
or else I'm a fraud. Get cracking! Good luck, my friend.
THE BEGINNING
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Now, the "product" I'm selling is just a means to an end. It's the
"bait" on my hook, so to speak.
I really do not care what I'm sel1ing as long as it makes the fish
bite ... and bite well. .
I feel the same way about products. You shouldn't care so much
about what they are, as long as they pull in the orders.
And that's what this entire business revolves around ... you having
strong enough bait to pull more revenue in orders than what it cost
you to mail the sales letters in the first place.
You also have to make sure you're fishing in the right pool of
water. If you're looking for a certain type of fish, and they are not
known to be in the stream you're fishing in ... get the hell out of it!
You could be the greatest copywriter in the world, and that is not
going to guarantee you'1l make millions every time you mail a new
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293
letter for a new product. If that were true, I sure as hell wouldn't
waste my time writing this book, I'd be writing sales letters!
The right product will come to you. You just have to keep your eyes
and ears open. Listen to everyone. By listening to other people ...
you'd be amazed what you pick up. Read everything. All types of
magazines ... all types of books ... newspapers, etc.
Try to find a huge wave and ride the damn thing. If you're seeing
that low-carb stuff is in, make some sort of product that
piggybacks off the demand for low carb stuff... a low carb diet
newsletter ... a carb-blocker diet pill.,; etc.
Look for these waves and ride them. Look at the iPod from Apple.
Do you see how much money these after market accessories
manufacturers are making?
You want the best bait. In order to find it ... find a huge need or
desire or pain and make it all better for your prospect. You can
find and create hot products by riding the waves.
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Well, I knew you wouldn't let me finish off this book without
explaining what the hell I was talking about.
I'm sure a lot of people reading this book said, "Why the hell would
this nut start his book with a paragraph like that?" The answer is
simple.
Look- I wouldn't want to learn anything from a guy who has lived
the pampered life. I want to learn from the guy who has seen the
top of the mountain ... as well as the basement of the jail. That's
the guy who has the "right" information for me.
You see ... I was pretty darned successful. I had over $10 Million in
my checking account alone. 1 had mansions allover the place.
Dream cars. Everything.
295
Anyway, here I'm worried only about running the business and
keeping the numbers right. I'm not focused on being a "target".
So, the limo driver ended up getting fired or quitting- I don't know.
He was so pissed at my partner for whatever reason, and instead of
just letting it go, he went to the local Police Department and said
my partner fondled his son!
Yes.
What this guy then did, was go to the Attorney General of the state
I was operating my business in. He went in and told the
prosecutors a story about how my partner and I were in the mob
and how we were paying off the mob ... and how we laughed at the
customers who bought our products, because they were bogus ...
and how we never gave customers credits, etc.
Nice guy.
I thought the saying was a "woman" scorned ... not a limo driver. So
anyway ...
Instead of the State doing a little research into this guy, his false
"fondling" story and maybe even giving us an opportunity to
respond to these allegations ... they created Forfeiture for Seizure
Warrant and got a Judge to actually "help" them polish it!
So, one day my partner and I was at the bank and the Manager of
the branch (who wanted to work for us) comes over and asks, "Why
are all your accounts frozen?" We looked at him like he was crazy,
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Turns out, the State with their "witness" are suing us for fraud and
money laundering and a list of other horrible things. That was fine.
But what they did was forfeiture. A forfeiture is when the State
comes in and takes all your assets- your cars- your homes- your
bank accounts- even the engagement ring off my Fiance's finger!
Now, how the hell can you fight a case with no resources? In a
way, I wish I were doing something wrong when they seized
everything. If I were doing something wrong, I would have stashed
millions of dollars and had Passports ready to flee. But I had just
$2000 in my pocket and a Rolex on my arm.
On top of taking all your money and assets, they also stack
Criminal charges sky-high. But they never file them ... they just
threaten you with them.
Why did they do this? They wanted the $48 Million my partner and
I had.
Not only that, but who's going to pay for all those experts you have
to hire? They do not work for free.
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The State knows if YOLl cannot afford to fight the case, and if they
stack the threat of Criminal charges deep enough, you'll probably
just forfeit all your assets to them and go away. A windfall.
You see, when they seize all your assets, the only way they can
actually "keep" them is to have you sign them over (usually in
some sort of a plea bargain deal) ... or if you get convicted at trial.
And then of course, your ass is going to jail as well.
1 always had the belief you can make money, and you cannot make
time. But I was not ready to give up just yet.
But maybe 1 should have ... because the State started looping in
other people into the criminal charges. My Fiance, who was
nothing more than a girl who handled payroll and Human
Resources. The State was looking for me to buckle. They could
charge whomever they wanted, and the charges mayor may not
stick. .. but the punishment is in the process.
All the pressure took its tali a year into this. My partner and I
struck a plea deal where we'd forfeit $47 Million in cash and assets
and plead guilty to money laundering and fraud schemes. In
return, we'd put this behind us, and keep family members out of
the hot seat we were in. The State just wanted the money.
Turns out the investigators told him when they first met him that
they would give him as much as 10% of what they seize from us.
That would have been like $4.8 Million. Hell, T know people who'll
make up shit about people they like for the chance at $4.8
Million ... let along some guy who hates us!
The reason why he came forward? The State never paid h im l And
he was pissed and wanted to get back at them the same way he
wanted to get back at us.
But it was too late. We erite red the plea already and the .Judge
wouldn't let us out of the piea!
I'm not going to reveal the state J was in ... but 1 will ten you that it
is a "good old boy" state and it is very corrupt.
The $48 Million the State seized was s'uppo sed to go to all the
victims we created with our products. While 1 was in the joint, I
was reading a newspaper article about us. The State claimed they
received just over 5000 requests for refunds from our customers.
Hell, even the building our business was in ... it was supposed to be
liquidated for the "victims". Well, The US Customs Office is in it.
They just decided, "Hey, we like this building ... lets take it."
Don't have seizable assets. If you have nothing for them to take,
they do not care about putting you in jail. All they are after is the
money.
And your Lawyer will make back office trades with your money!
Theyll make deals with the State where theyl1 make sure you give
the State all your seized assets in exchange for the State going
light on one of their "Violent" criminal clients. Believe me ... It's
true.
299
One of our Attorneys has a friend, who had a son. This son got into
an argument with someone and while the guy was walking away.
the kid shot the guy in the back!
Now, two bad t h irigs here: One- the guy was walking away ... and
two, the gunshot was above the waste! The guy was almost dead ...
but pulled through.
Somehow, our Attorney got this kid got off with just six years of
probation! And I went to jail! Go figure.
4. i would have had Passports for all my family involved. It's easier
for you to negotiate when you are not under US law.
8. Try to lease at least one of your cars and make sure you have
enough money hidden away to pay the entire time of the lease. For
example, a $] 000 a month lease for rhree years- Have $36,000
buried. And don't forget about insurancei The Government cannot
seize "leased" assets. Maybe do the sa-me for your home.
i mention the guy who created Girls Gone Wild a few times in this
book. He recently ran into a problem in Florida. Agents seized his
Ferrari and his private jet. But they had to return the jet as it was
leased! In the long run, he beat the case and all charges were
dropped. But the jet did come back to him immediately.
There are probably only a handful of direct marketers that can tell
you as much as I can. I've seen it all. The good ... the bad ... the
ugly. When you make your millions, make sure to protect them.
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E·piingUA'
'IV "'_
This is a great and classic book that really taught me about testing
advertising. I think this book is a must-read!
Joe is the man. His book was one of the first books I've read on
direct response. The first half of the book teaches about Dyna-
Psych. The first few chapters of this book changed my life for the
better and a more powerful and profound level than just learning
how to do mail ord er , It taught me how 1 can rely on myself to get
anything in life I need or want. Once you're finished with my book
you should go and read Joe's as soon as you can!
1 looked for this book for over eight years! it was fir st published
in
1966 and then again in 1984. And finally again in 2004. When it
was first published in 1966, the author claims it sold only a few
thousand copies! The new publisher of it said he brought this book
hack to the rnar ket because he found an older copy selling for $900
on the Internet! Was this book worth the eight years it took me to
finally find it? Yes. Eugene taught me many things. One of them is
that if I put a potential drawback or negative claims before a
positive claim, it Blakes the positive claim four to ten times as
powerful as the claim presented by itself. And where most
marketers add hype to their ads and sales letters when they do not
work ... and get no better results ... when the real reason why the ad
failed is that the prospect didn't believe the claims. Hyping the
claims in the second attempt does not make it better. Maybe going
in the opposite direction will produce better results ... water down
some claims ... or add some negative facts about the product to
make the good stuff seem more believable. This book was written
r
302
This is the classic book which David Ogilvy said that nobody
should have anything to do with advertising until he has read this
book 7 times. I believe it. Hopkins was one of the first guys to
teach about advertising techniques being scientific- meaning they
can be based on scientific principles. This is an old book. .. but it is
a must read.
I like David Ogilvy. 1 was upset when right after he died a few years
ago, I saw his most recent book on the "deep-discount" table in
Barnes and Noble. You can learn a lot about his two layout
formulas- which I have borrowed many times.
2239 Test Secrets For Direct Marketing Success- Denny Hatch and
Don Jackson
if 1 had just one book to advise you buy regarding direct marketing
success ... I'd say for you to buy this one. It's really not a "book" ...
but more a listing of many) many expert's opinions regarding
different aspects of direct marketing success. Want info on
envelopes? Flip to the envelope chapter and read what a few dozen
professionals have to say. It lists all their opinions. Seriously-
Denny Hatch and Don Jackson put together one hell of a book
here. I've had a copy sitting on my coffee table since 1999 and I
refer to it almost weekly. You've got to get this book now!
I envy people who do not know about Hili's teachings and are
about to learn it for the first time. Hill changed my life. I was able
to figure out how people are successful. This is a classic book. A
must read!
Money Making Secrets Of Jay Abraham and Other Marketing
Wizards- Jay Abraham
1 first got this large 400-page book in 1995. 1 still have it within five
feet of me right as I'm typing this. Jay Abraham was probably one
of, if not THE biggest consultants who inspired me the most. I
remember first learning some of the stuff in this book and j was
floored. It'11 set you b ack <3 few hundred ... I thin k like $400 .. _ hut if
you have it ten years later and can still refer to it, it's a good
investment.
I looked for this book for years. I finally got a copy from TWI Press
when they re-issued it. A great book that really explains how to
write copy and how to make copy seem "real". Your copywritirig
ability will be greatly improved after you read this rather large
book. A gold mirie!
This classic teaches you how to get what you want by giving others
what they want. Not really about mail order, or direct response
selling ... but it is a must read for anyone looking to "sell" either in
person or through print media.
if the seminar tapes cost too much, you can get his book that
inspired the seminar. The book will run under $20 and it's a
powerhouse!
This is a free site of my pal and mentor Gary Halbert. He's the self-
proclaimed "Best Copywriter In The World" who's made hundreds
of millions for the people he's worked with over the years. This site
is basically copies of his famous newsletter dating back to 1986.
It's free and it's a must read. You're going to want to get on his list
so you can get alerte~ every time he posts a fresh newsletter.
People ask me <:lJlthf_: time" how much it wo uld cost for rnr: to CUITIe
and work for their company and help them sec their way to
.~n~t.ssiveStlc:cess,
the thing and got this far. .. you know I am one of (if not) "The" best
direct marketer s o u t rigrlt n ow.
I've kind of realized something a few years ago. I really do not care
for "running" a business. The day-to-day shit is not for me. What I
do love to do 1'5 think up riew profit strategies". create killer copy ...
and maximize profits.
business.
What I did was come up wit h '.1 m.unber. This number was the
amount of clients or projects I can handle if I were a consultant for
hire, I'd nul myself H "Hired. Gun". The number I carrie up with \vB.S
200.
So that m ean s I can handle 200 different clients at a time and still
be able to answer every phone call. .. every email... and every letter
with mind-boggling, p rofit-eh att ering answers,
\VhRt J rh en did wes divide S 1,000,000 hy that 200. I came IIp with
$5,000. That would be the fee I would need to be paid by 200
clients to make ITl.Y erie mil1i8I1 do llar s in arirrual pa:,".
Even R novice dircct ma rket ing expert would chnrgf' $500 TO $1000
an hour to te1l you stuff you may already know ... or even worse ...
that may be abaol'utcly INCORRECT!
You get to pester me- pro b ably the best direct marketer in the
county right now- with all of your questions. 1 can help you guide
-your
- - business
- -
ariu firw_nces. to the etratosrihere!
-. .._
The best parr about this is you're going to get rvlE in \'OUR corner
for under $14 a day. FOURTEEN FUCKING DOLLARS!
1 don't mean to cuss right there ... but that is how much of a
opportunity this is for you. You can have me as your personal
marketing slave ... as long as I'm not currently working with 200
clients already. If I am, you'll be placed on a waiting list.
Hold your horses ... there are f01J, terms you have to ag-ree to:
1, Payment is d ue in full upfront-
The fee I'm asking for is so small considering what you are to gain
and also I do not want to deal with wan nabe s. 1 do not want your
mortgage money ... or the money your family needs to use for
dinner tonight. I ill going to need real players who can afford all the
money upfront.
4. You can only qualify for a slot if y ou+re one of the first 200
astute business owners to grasp this opportunity-
I feel 200 people is just enough to keep me busy and at the same
time- make me the million bucks J need to keep "interested".
200 is the limit! If I took in more than 200 clients, I may be biting
off more than I can chew ... and I don't want to do that.
MrVincr':nt\.Jame!".((~iVahon.com
WhRt I ,)}il1 de; ie, r hr.n r1')l ynl1 where to send The ('heck fo r $5000
and who to make it out to. Maybe I'1i ask a few questions about
~iC'UT bu sin ess arid yOUI' goals.
If I'rn under 200 and. h ave the room ... and as long as YOLtr check
clears the bank ... 111 send you out the secret business card with all
the cr itical contact inform atiori to reach me
Another thing thnt you may like.,. is that for all 200 clients who
join this "club" ... you can receive 50%) off any copywriting work you
m av decide to hire me for in the future.
Also- my 200 clients will receive email updates for FREE ACCESS
whenever I'm doing a Tele-aerninar with other experts I feel you can
learn something from,
Like I was saying before- after reading this book, unless vou're
brain dead ... you can see that I am well worth the $13.70 a day I
ask,
Thanks!
Vincent .Jarries
Author, Direct Marketer, Consultant, Copywriter
So there vou have it
To some ... this book is nothing more than 9'2..625 word s ... 408.210
characters ... 2,473 paragraphs ... or 5,564 sentences. To some, this
will be a life-changing experience.
Good Luck.
Vincent James
March 29th, 2005
8:59 PM
Las Vegas, Nevada