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How To Make A Fortune With |
| Are you ready to make money - lots of it? Can you spare a little time and
just a few dollars? If you are prepared to fulfill your dreams and realize your goals,
mail order classified ads are your ticket to success. You have what it takes - right now. Classifieds are the best dollar-for-dollar return in advertising, and you can earn a high profit on your product investment. Classified ads are the easiest to write, the easiest to place, and cost the least. They require only a simple follow-up, and bring in hundreds of dollars of sales. People read classified ads for a purpose. They aren't interrupted - as in most advertising - and are specifically looking for products, services and information that appeal to them. As well-placed classified ads will bring hundreds - thousand - of replies month after month, year after year. You don't have to have a special background to make money with mail order classifieds. Any beginner can realize a steady second income or develop a stable, full-time business through classified ads. But you have to be persistent. You must WANT TO MAKE MONEY, and be willing to stick with it. If you do, you will find that being successful is easy - just follow the steps, one by one, climbing the ladder to the top. WHAT SHOULD I SELL? Take a look at the classified ads in the magazines and tabloids you read. They are filled with offers for services, products and information. And they sound good. The ads show enthusiasm about the materials being offered. > Transfer interrupted! There are many things you find of special interest constantly. Could you offer those for sale? Do you have a special trade or service that can be conducted by mail? Maybe you have a product to distribute, such as stamps or coins, a timesaving gadget, or a do-it-yourself kit. Or perhaps you can tap into wholesale or surplus goods that you can sell at a good profit. Bargains are always in demand. The most successful type of mail order product is INFORMATION. Specialized information in the form of ideas, money-savers of self-improvement can be easily produced on a low budget and readily SOLD AT A HUGE PROFIT. Information in the form of how to make or do something is a constant best-seller. People are always looking for simpler, or cheaper, or better ways to improve their crafts. What can you offer? THE 2-STEP APPROACH The proven method of selling mail order items of information is called the two-step approach. Basically, you place a short classified ad in the back of a magazine or tabloid. The ad does not mention price, but tells the reader to write for free details. Once you have an inquiry, you then send information concerning what you have to offer, and watch those orders pile in. Essentially, a mail order classified ad buys a name and potential business. It may just break even with the actual orders placed. The real money comes from subsequent sales. Profit begins at the second sale and gets bigger and bigger as the sales continue. WHY NOT CHARGE IN THE CLASSIFIED? You'll get far more responses from an ad for free information than you will for gods - at any price. And, since you want a POTENTIAL BUYER, you'll have more inquiries for materials you want to sell later. Charging a small fee to cover postage or the cost of the inquiry will never make you break even - people won't be bothered. And a small fee doesn't necessarily weed out non-buyers. If you find your classified is pulling people who aren't interested in your offer, you can change the advertisement to be more specific as to what you really have for sale. WHERE TO PLACE CLASSIFIEDS The best advice in placing classifieds is to follow the leader. Find where other goods in your category are being sold and do the same. The mail order business is not a place to be real different - especially as a beginner. Although your product must have an appeal different than the others. Stay with the pack and advertise in the same publications. Look for repeat business. You can review back issues of publications at your library or buy some copies of the publications you might advertise in. If a certain ad has appeared time after time, you can bet it's a winner. Write for the details of some of the offers similar to the one you have. You might even purchase a sample product or two so you can get a good feeling for what is being offered, how the ads run, and what kind of prices are successful. If you have a specific product or information that is appropriate to a specialized type of magazine, check out all the magazines of that topic. Which publication carries most of the ads? What is the circulation of the of the publication? A magazine with a higher circulation may cost more to place a classified, but bargain rate publication won't be the best investment if they don't bring the inquiries. Consider your dollar-for-dollar inquiry. How many people may read your advertisement for the cost it takes to place the ad? Many products have special seasons, and classified ads are no different. December generally returns varied responses because of the holiday season, and is not a good month to include in your testing. The summer months are generally slower for classified responses and mail order packages. The best time to try your ads are the fall, winter and spring months. WHAT IS TESTING? The most important element in mail order advertising is to test. Not only do you need to find out if your product will sell, but you have to find out what the best price is. You have to test the magazines. One may not draw as many responses as another. Or, after three months, it may not seem to pull at all. Then switch to another publication. You may try several publications at the same time with the same ad to be able to judge which has the best dollar-for-dollar response. Don't be too hasty in dropping a publication, however. Sometimes it takes the repeat insertions of three or four months to get the proper percentage of responses. People become more secure with a repeat ad, or they may pass it by the first or second time until they get around to writing for information. Other things you will be testing are the type of inquiry and the response package that contains a sales letter and brochure. You'll also need to test the frequency and number of times to continue mailings after you have a good customer list. Testing is the name of the game - and this is where you need perseverance. Don't get discouraged. GIVE IT A TRY. Because of the low cost of placing classifieds, it's worth it to keep it going. YOU CAN PROFIT. TYPES OF ADS There are three types of classified ads - qualified, partially qualified, and blind. The qualified ad is specific. It includes several details to inform the reader about what you are selling. The people who respond to highly qualified ads usually are specifically interested, and produce the best quality prospects with the highest percentage of sales. Since the ad may be a few words longer, it is the most expensive to place. The partially qualified ad offers a special benefit, such as money or self-improvement. The readers have some idea of what you are offering, but don't know the specifics. Blind ads offer only the few details, are inexpensive to run because they are short, and bring in the largest response. However, blind ads product the lowest percentage of actual orders because they are often answered just out of curiosity. The best place to start is - you guessed - the middle. A partially qualified ad is a good test ad. It doesn't need to be specific about your product, so it brings in inquiries that can be used over and over for related items. You can rewrite it with more details or trim it down later. What's the best guideline? PROFIT. If you compare the actual orders received from the number of inquiries for each of your ads, you have the rate of conversion. Aim for the ads which pull best for you. KEYING THE ADDRESS How do you determine what inquiry response cam e form which ad? You code the company name or street address so you can determine what ad pulled the response. This is called keying the address, and it's one of the most important tips in mail order classified advertising. The simple key is a two-part letter and number code. The letter stands for the name of the publication, and the number represents the month the ad appeared. You can make up any code as long as you keep track of what publication it appeared in. You can add the key to the address by hyphenating the street address to include the code. Or you can key the company name by adding specific initials. The surest way to key is to add the code to the address in the form of department, division, or suite number. Be careful it doesn't conflict with any other addresses nearby. WRITING CLASSIFIEDS Writing your own copy for a classified ad is easy. There are so few words you need to use that you don't have to worry about being a writer or a professional in advertising. You are your own expert in selling your product. The selection of words is the most important aspect of classified ad copy. You need to choose precisely, by don't skimp on words to save the cost in the ad. The best way to prepare copy is to first write about your product or service at length. Go ahead - list all the benefits. Scrutinize the features and write them down. What sticks out? What is so great about your product? What can it do for the reader who will take the time to write for more information? How can your product help? Will it show how to earn money, does it offer self-improvement, can it help accomplish something appealing and significant? Choose a heading that points out the most significant aspect or feature of your product. Follow up with a few words or details, and finish with a request to write for more information. The best word in a classified is "free," but you must follow up with something free. SAVE MONEY PLACING ADS Most classified ads are billed a certain charge per word, so you want to keep your words important and precise. Once you have written your ad, take a closer look at it. Can you eliminate extra words without changing the meaning? You might be able to delete conjunction such as "and," articles like "the," "a," and "an," or prepositions like "for," "with," or "from." Perhaps you can contract your company name into initials or use just one word. Each part of your address counts as one word: the number; the street name; the street aspect (boulevard, avenue); the key (if separate); the city; and the state. Many publishers let you include the zip code free of charge. Use figures rather than words for numbers, but don't use contractions or abbreviate. You have to pay for each word in full, so spell them out completely. That way you'll get no confusion when people place orders. RESPONDING TO INQUIRIES Once you start getting responses from the classified ads, you should send out your sales literature immediately, definitely within one week. The goal is to convert the inquiry into a sale and convert the sale into PURE PROFIT. Your sales literature can be a one-page pitch for your product. It doesn't have to be an expensive color catalog. As you get going, you may prepare a sales package and a series of follow-up offers. You can't tell from the type of inquiry whether the person is a buyer or not. Postcards or letters are potential profit makers for you. What's important is to MAKE A SALE. Type the person's name and address on a label and make at least three carbon copies of these labels to use for subsequent mailings. Your second sales packet should be mailed a month after the inquiry was received, and another month after that. Follow-up sales are where you are going to MAKE YOUR FORTUNE. Your classified draws the inquiries, the first order establishes a good customer, and the rest of the orders are pure gold. Testing is the only way to find which plan works best for you in getting orders. You'll need to find out which sales packet works best, and how often to make mailings. THE RESPONSE PACKAGE A typical mail order package - called a conversion - consists of a personal letter, a brochure, an order form, and a return envelope. How elaborate you wan to make your conversion depends on how successful your product seems to be selling and how much money you want to invest. Always start small. A simple one-page offer can work as well as a fancy catalog. After you've built up a few good selling product, you might print up a single page brochure or catalog. Even at that, you don't have to go to color unless your product warrants it. You don't need an advertising agency to put together your sales packet, but you can use one if you want. Be sure to investigate the type of agency and what it can do for you. You should have an agency with a proven background in mail advertising, and you must take a good look at what has already been produced. Talk with clients and see if the agency pulled through for them. Why don't you need an ad agency? Because you can produce all the sales literature you need. You are the best sales person for your product because YOU KNOW IT. If you have done the proper research, you have already found out what the competition is, how much their products cost, and what sales appeals they are sending out. As in placing and writing classified ads, do what the competition is doing. Although you shouldn't - and can't, legally - take directly from them, you certainly can copy the format and general ideas they project. If somebody has been selling something successfully for years, do the same thing. Adapt your product to fit. Of course, you can't convert a sales pitch for surplus goods to an appeal for a self-improvement book, but take notice of WHAT SELLS PRODUCTS. This is only about half of this report... We wanted to give you an idea of what your getting. Like we said, HIGH QUALITY! You can sell just one of these reports and pay for the entire disk!! Think about the possibilities!!! Copyright ©1999 by Web Referral Services - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED |
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