WHY IS THERE SO MUCH JUNKY STUFF IN THE MAIL THESE DAYS?

I hear it all the time: “There is so much junky stuff in the mail. Most of the stuff is crooked, hard to read, copied 100 times and ugly. I wouldn’t order from them regardless of what they were selling.” I agree!

In fact — I have wondered what would possess people to actually send out some of this “junky” stuff. Don’t they realize it will cost them a great loss in potential sales? Don’t they care? Don’t they realize that they are actually LOSING money?

However, remember the old saying: “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer?” While a poor person of today can be a rich person of tomorrow — a person that stays poor their entire life does so because they have made themselves that way. They have never learned the proper way to conduct business in order for it to turn a profit for them. Some of them may have tried and tried — but for some reason, they continually made bad decisions to keep themselves poor.

Let me give you a common example of what I mean. Around the first of the month, go grocery shopping. This is the time that people shop who are on fixed incomes and draw food stamp benefits. (I consider this the poor side of America.)

Now — watch their buying habits very carefully. Very rarely will you see someone use manufacturers’ coupons to save money. Very rarely do you see them purchase a brand name product (unless its cigarettes or beer.) Most of the poor people ALWAYS purchase unbranded products. These are fine in some circumstances, but if a poor person buys a unbranded name of laundry detergent or dishwashing liquid — it will run out 3 or 4 times faster than name brands like Dawn, Ivory and Palmolive. Sure — the name brand costs more in the beginning, but the long term effects will save the poor person lots of money!

What does going to the grocery store and watching poor people have to do with junky mail? Plenty! Junky mail is created by people who will never be more than they are today — OR they are people who have been taught by bad teachers and are trying to do what they are told. The fact remains through — ANYBODY can look at other things that come in the mail and learn from them. EVERYONE gets mailings from large companies that are written by professionals to sell products. All the mail order dealer has got to do is READ them.

When a piece of mail arrives that appears professional and looks like it came from a company who had a lot of money — dissect it. Find a way that YOU can make your materials look like theirs for a price within your budget.

One problem that some dealers have who mail this “junky” stuff is that they don’t believe they can look good without investing a lot of money. It doesn’t take a lot of money to look good. Just like it doesn’t take a lot of money to take a bath every day! You can still be poor but accomplish the same goal.

Another downfall for “junky” mail pieces is that quick-copy machines have made it easy for anyone to make copies. Copy machines are at most grocery and drug stores, libraries and convenient marts across America. Some people buy a desktop copier for $300 or $400 and use it to make copies of their adsheets; while others order typesetting and make copies of their camera-ready ads so they’ll have more copies.

This is all fine and dandy if you are copying a first-generation master, but if you are running a program or commission circular dealership you can’t get by with making quick copies and expect the quality to hold up. Suppose you have a typesetter design you a 8.5″x11″ circular for your program. You will give new dealers a copy of the circular from your original master the typesetter designed.

The new dealer now has a second-generation copy. He or she signs up new dealers and makes a copy of your copy. Those dealers are now getting a third-generation copy, which is probably looking poor and worn-out by this time.

Now, the guy with the third-generation copy sends it to a tabloid publisher who prints and mails it in their publication. This particular printing is now in it’s fourth-generation. Can you imagine what it looks like now?

Don’t believe me? Try it on a copier yourself. Take a camera-ready master and make a copy. Take the copy and make another copy from it. Compare the difference between this second copy and the camera-ready master. You’ll see how the circular is deteriorating — regardless of how professional it was originally typeset! This is one reason mail order is looking “junky” and it’s up to everyone to put a stop to it!

And don’t make the decision to keep your business poor and non-productive! Instead, you could be the next Montgomery Ward!

ADVERTISING MISTAKES: HOW TO AVOID THEM

Advertising isn’t hard to do. You prepare an advertisement or write a classified ad to sell your product or generate interest to send people more information. But the way most people make mistakes is either by their inability to write effective ad copy or by sending it to be published in the wrong publication. Here are some pointers to follow:

Writing Effective Copy

Never try to sell anything costing more than $5 in a small display ad or a classified ad. First of all, you don’t have enough room to tell people everything they need to know to entice them to order.

Instead, you need to employ the “Two-Step” method of advertising. Request the reader to send you $1 or 4 first-class postage stamps for more information. When they respond, you will send them a brochure, flyer, order form and cover letter so they can place an order for the real product.

Now that pricing is out of the way lets talk about writing your ad copy. The best way to learn how is to read the ads other people have written. Don’t copy them word-for-word, but use them as a guideline to write your own ads. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be writing effective ad copy just as well as the pros.

Here’s an example of an ad you could use to sell automobile wax: Free information on the best wax available on the market. If you care about the lasting beauty of your vehicle, send $1 for complete details to (your name and address.)

Advertising in the Right Publication

Even if you make and sell the best candy in the world, you probably couldn’t sell very much of it to people who are diabetics. The same goes for selling race car parts to women or dentures to teenagers.

Although this may sound a little silly and you think it is only common sense to know this — people will often overlook this fact when choosing the publication they will be advertising in. Instead, they will look for the lowest price for the amount of circulation they receive. Unfortunately, this does not work out.

Even though you need to look for good deals that make it easy on your pocketbook, you will be throwing money away if you don’t pre-qualify the publication you choose.

One way of pre-qualifying the publication is to send for a sample copy. Most publishers will send them to you free of charge for the asking. If you don’t know of any mail order publications, just write to Glenn Bridgeman, PO Box 10150, Terra Bella CA 93270 or William Lee, Rt 1, Box 10790, Madisonville TN 37354 and ask them to send you some. (Be sure to enclose $1 or 4 first-class postage stamps in with your request to offset postage costs.) If you tell them you are new to mail order and are interested in publications to advertise in, you certainly will find the $1 you spent is well worth the effort because both of these publishers are very reputable, honest and helpful.

Study the publication to see what other people are advertising and how they are advertising it. Contact some of the people who sell items similar to your own with the hope of networking with them. You would be surprised how much free publicity you can get just from corresponding, calling and networking with others.

Once you locate a publication you want to advertise in, give it a try for 3 months. If you don’t get any response or only a few orders, try another publication. There are millions of them and eventually you will hit the right target market that will be interested in what you have to sell.

Don’t Stop With One Publication

Just because you locate the target market of people who are interested in purchasing your product there is no reason you can’t advertise in more than one publication. In fact — if you don’t, your ad will become stale. If the same people continue to see your ad every month they will probably get tired of looking at it. Besides, if they wanted the product they would have ordered it by now. Don’t tire them out! Alternate different size ads and get rid of ones that don’t work well.

Leave your ad running as long as it brings in orders for you but also advertise in 5, 10, 20 or 50 other publications also to generate a steady stream of orders and to reach more people.

Key Your Ads

Many beginners in mail order never key their ads so they know what publication people saw their ads in. In fact, I personally never did this myself and ended up losing a lot of money. So please don’t make the same mistake I did.

Keying your ads means that you place a code of some sort in your address so that when people write and order something from you, you immediately will know where they saw your ad. Keep a record of every name and address of the publisher you send an advertisement to. Record the date you sent the ad and the date you received a checking copy, proving that your ad appeared. Also record the “code” you used so you can immediately identify where it came from.

An example of coding your ad would be: If your address is “123 Anytown St,” it could become “123 Anytown St, Suite A” for one publication and “Suite B” for another. The postman will still deliver your mail to “123 Anytown St.”

Of course, if you live in an apartment complex and there are apartment numbers you could turn “111 Johnson, Apt A” into “111 Johnson, Apt A-1″ for one publication and “Apt A-2″ for another.

Post office box addresses are also simple. You could easily turn “PO Box 585″ into “PO Box 585, Dept A-1″ for one publication and “Dept A-2″ for another.

People will sometimes even change their name on the ad for keying purposes. You might see the name “Harriet’s Recipe Book” instead of Harriet Ranger. Harriet might also use “Harriet’s Cookbook” or even “Harriet’s Solution to Stress” on her ads relating to these products. Use your own imagination and pretty soon, keying your ads will be a normal part of your life.

Be sure and keep track (on your Record Sheet) of how many responses you receive from each publication. After 3 months, look over your Record Sheet and get rid of the publications that didn’t do well. You’ll go broke if you spend $10 per month advertising a 2-inch ad if you only receive $1 back in orders. After while you’ll be able to see where it pays you to advertise your particular product and then you can send in larger ads to those publications. Never stop using this method and you’ll never stop getting orders in your mailbox.

It’s a win-win situation for everybody!

Tabloids vs. Adsheets

Another question about advertising that many people have is whether it’s better to advertise in tabloids or adsheets. Many people will sell you information on the best day to mail and the best time of the year to advertise. They think they have it down to a science and will convince you of their methods.

However, there are NO set rules that can be employed by everyone. That’s because there are a wide variety of ways to approach various products. If you sell travel services and read a report that told you not to advertise during the summer months, you’d go broke. The summer is the travel industry’s biggest money-making season!

Don’t get hung up on specific statistics made by people who claim to be expert researchers. There is no way to determine what is best for you than to try it yourself and see what works. You are the person in control of your business and you are where the buck stops. Take advantage of your authority and try every angle you can think of until you determine what’s best for your company’s product and/or service.

Tabloids are a fantastic advertising vehicle and adsheets are too. Sometimes people feel a small 1″ camera-ready ad gets lost in a tabloid filled with 100′s of them. This may be true in some circumstances and not true in others. Do you look at 1″ ads in tabloids? Of course you do. You scan the pages and your eye is always directed to one or two on the page that catches your eye. Ask yourself “why” they caught your eye. Was it because the ad was placed in a specific area on the page? Was it because of the headline or the word “free”?

There are a million different ways to market and sell your particular product or service. What might work for John may not work for Joe. You have to find your own way.

In addition, classifieds sometimes work well in tabloids and adsheets and sometimes they don’t, look in the back of the Globe or Enquirer. Don’t they have page after page of classified ads? If nobody was reading them and responding to them, the advertisers wouldn’t be submitting advertising to the Globe or Enquirer for them. So evidently, people DO read classified ads — even if there are 100′s of them. Test the waters and do what works the best for you.

ARE YOU A COPY CAT? IF SO — YOU’RE IN FOR A SHORT LIFE!!

Yes! That’s true! More and more, everyday, new dealers are entering mail order and copying the work of others. Some of them are not even aware they are doing anything wrong. Besides — they are trying to learn from others so why not copy them?

You have to make a distinction here between “copying” in order to improve upon someone else’s idea OR “copying” in order to make a lot of money for yourself. Let me give you an example –

A business associate of mine created a rotating-type adsheet. You know the kind. A person pays $10 to be placed in Position No. 1. All other ads are rotated to the right until they move off the sheet. If done properly — the person who paid $10 to be on the rotating adsheet should NEVER come off. However, people take this idea — try to copy it — and turn it into a scam. They intentionally take a good concept and make it into a rip-off where all the profit is made by the prime source. How unfortunate!

In fact — this is exactly HOW rotating adsheets got a bad name. Here’s how it REALLY is supposed to work (before the copycat did it):

Gail pays Max $10 to have her 2″ C/R ad placed in Position No. 1. She receives a camera-ready copy of the rotating adsheet back in the mail with her ad in Position No. 1 and 8 other 2″ ads from other dealers. Gail is responsible for printing and mailing copies of her particular rotating adsheet to generate advertising for 9 people (including herself.)

Gail mails Shawn a copy of her rotating adsheet. Shawn wants to take part in the promotion so he sends Max $10 with his 2″ ad and a copy of Gail’s rotating adsheet. Max places Shawn’s 2″ ad in Position No. 1 and moves Gail’s 2″ ad to Position No. 2. This way — Shawn is mailing copies of Gail’s ad along with his own.

Now Shawn mails a copy of his rotating adsheet to Gary. Gary wants to get involved so he sends Max $10 along with his 2″ C/R ad and a copy of the rotating adsheet Shawn mailed him. Max places Gary’s 2″ ad in Position No. 1, Shawn’s 2″ ad gets moved to Position No. 2 and Gail’s 2″ ad is now in Position No. 3.

Technically, Gail will NEVER reach Position No. 9 because the chance of this generation factually happening is 1 in a million. So essentially — Gail’s ad should NEVER go off the sheet.

Unfortunately though — some people have taken the concept of helping people like Gail and turned it into a money-hungry game for themselves. Instead of moving the ads in the proper positions, they might place Gary’s ad in Position No. 1 and Gail’s in Position No. 9 (instead of 3 where she actually belongs.) And then maybe Shawn won’t be on Gary’s rotating adsheet at all. The rip-off artist doesn’t realize that Gary might be personal friends with Shawn and they might compare adsheets. The scam artist is only interested in their gain and in not paying commissions due their hard-working people. Eventually NOBODY ends up making any money and the idea goes down the tubes!

What happens is that these unaware “copy cats” eventually mail their ad or booklet to the mail order dealer who originally designed the material; or, even worse — mail to someone who knows the dealer personally that has been conveniently “left off”. There’s no way around it.

And when your “copy cat” material is discovered you can be in for some BIG TROUBLE! When you commit perjury of prime source-designed materials your name will be mud within a matter of weeks. Your act will be reported in almost every tabloid and adsheet and you will be exposed through rip-off columns circulated to 1,000′s of people.

But not only that! A good mail order attorney can sue you and repossess any assets you may have. Most small businesses start out as sole-proprietorships (not incorporated.) Because of this, your personal assets can become the possession of the attorney filing suit.

The best way to avoid all this hassle is NOT to copy the materials of other people. Sure, you can look at the work of other designers and get an idea as to how you would like to present your materials; but, taking the actual copy, cutting out pieces of it and inserting your own info is downright criminal and uncalled for! The word “design” means to create from scratch!

Good mail order dealers work very hard and put in a lot of hours for a meager salary. When they have put all their efforts into designing a program or an advertisement it’s very demeaning to our industry as a whole if someone was selfish enough to “steal” and “forge” it only to destroy its original intent!!