There are many legitimate ways to get discount advertising, and many ways to get so-called “free” advertising.  This report isn’t about getting a press release into a magazine, or publicity, or anything like that.  This is a way to get the cost of your ADS 100% covered, so that your advertising costs you nothing.  If done right, you’ll even profit from it.  There is some work involved, but it’s easy, enjoyable work.

First, you need to have your own display ads ready to use.  These can be one column inch, two column inch, 3″ x 6″ or whatever size.  What you are going to do is to create your own ad sheet.  In other words, you will put your ads on a page, then sell the rest of the space to other advertisers who want to reach the same market as you.  Their payments will cover the cost of YOUR ads reaching that market.  Ideally, you will have some small ads on one side of the page, with other advertisers taking the rest of that side, then you can have either more ads or a full page flyer on the back side, with all costs covered, INCLUDING your mailing expenses.

Here’s a short course in creating an ad sheet.  First, create a heading on a piece of paper.  Don’t make it too big, because you’ll take up valuable ad space.  Try to keep it to one inch tall.  Leave room for your ad rates, which we’ll figure out later.  Next, divide the rest of the page the long way into three columns.  If you use a one inch heading, and leave a quarter-inch margin on the top and bottom, you’ll have three columns that are seven inches tall, or 21 column inches (3 columns x 7 inches).  If you figure your ad rates at $5 per inch, going to 1,000 opportunity seekers, you can get a maximum of $105 from a one-sided ad sheet.  If you use both sides, you can get a maximum of $225 (you get an extra inch of advertising per column on the back side, since you don’t need the heading).

How do you get other advertisers?  Buy inexpensive ads in the ad sheets you receive in the mail.  You can use the least expensive, one column inch ads.  Tell the name of your ad sheet, the circulation, the ad rates, and, of course, your name and address.  This is all you have to do.  If your rates are competitive with the other ad sheets, you’ll get the advertisers.  Don’t worry.  When you receive their ads and payments, just stick their ad to your ad sheet.  When it’s full, with their ads and yours, you’re ready to get it out.

Now, you might have thought about the costs to reach 1,000 people.  Printing them will be $20 – $30.  First class postage, which costs $.29 at this time, would be $290 alone.  How can you cover that, along with printing expenses, with only $225 or less?  There are a few different ways.  First, you can advertise a “big mail.”  Do this with one inch ad sheet ads.  Tell people they can receive a collection of your best offers free by sending postage.  Put together a selection of your advertising flyers, along with your ad sheet, and the envelope you will be sending them in.  Weigh them to get the number of ounces, and find out the required postage.  Put that amount in your ad (“send three first class stamps to:”).  You will get a lot of orders that way.

Another way is to use a circular mailing service.  These are usually run by people who have their own offers that they want to mail for a lower cost.  They will charge by the flyer, usually three to five cents, to include it in their mailing.  Thus, you can mail 1,000 of your flyers for $30 – $50.  This is actually a good service you can run yourself.

Finally, if you don’t want to deal with the mailing OR printing, you can use a print & mail dealer.  This dealer will print your circulars and mail them by the thousand in their own bulk mailings.  This is the least expensive way to go.  You can usually get 1,000 flyers printed and mailed for under $50.  That’s only ten ads you’d need to sell, at $5 per inch.  That’s pretty easy to do.  You can then fill up the empty spaces with your own ads, for extra exposure.  Any ads you sell over ten are shear profit!

This method of covering your advertising costs is being used by shrewd mail order dealers every day.  You can start one ad sheet, and then when it’s to the point where you’re mailing a few thousand monthly, start another going to a different market for added effectiveness.  The work is not hard, and it’s fun!

Your list of customers who have previously bought from you is your most important asset.  These are the customers who will provide you with return business, which is more profitable than the first sale.  But, are you getting the most from your customer list?  There are some secrets you should know, so you can squeeze the most benefits out of your mailing list.

Most business’s customer lists consist of this information:  Name, Address, City, State, Zip.  That’s it.  Unfortunately, this mailing list is almost worthless.  You need to have more information in your files than just that.  I have 32 information fields in my customer database!  You should be able to set these up in your computer’s database, or, if you don’t use a computer (you REALLY should), all this information should fit on a large sizse index card in a card file.  Here are the fields I have in my customer database:

The first 10 fields (reading across) should be self-explanatory.  Almost any address possible can be put into my database without having to leave out information or abbreviate.  The next three are for phone numbers.  You MUST have your customer’s phone numbers, when possible, to be able to follow up quickly and efficiently.  Making one phone call can be the difference between a big sale or NO sale.

The InqDate field is where I record the date the customer first inquired about my products and services, and the date I sent the information, since it’s always the same day (there’s no excuse not to follow up your inquiries on the same day you receive them).  This information, coupled with the ReferSource field, tells me when my ads are hitting, and how quickly people are responding to them.  If I see that inquiries are coming in slowly, or long after the ad is out, I know that I need more action incentives in my next ad.  The ReferSource field is where I enter the “key” from my ad.  I use a letter code after my street address to indicate which publication and issue the inquiry comes from.  I also code my mailings, for the same reason.

I enter a date into the two FollowUp fields to indicate when I want to send follow up literature to customers who don’t order on the first try.  I usually put a date two weeks from the InqDate in FollowUp1, and one two weeks later than that in FollowUp2.  Then, every day, I run a search on these two fields to pull up any records that have today’s date as a follow up date.  I can then print labels and put them on the envelopes and literature I have ready for follow ups.

I use the next three fields (SubDate, SubAmount, RenewDate) for the newsletter I publish.  These would have the date I receive their subscription, the amount they paid (I sometimes run special prices), and the date I want to send subscription renewal information (usually 10 1/2 months from the SubDate).  I can then print labels in the same manner as I do for the FollowUp fields.

Next comes the Purchase fields.  I have three sets of purchase fields, one for each purchase the customer makes.  In the Purch1 field, I enter a code for the product they have purchased.  The other two fields get the date and amount of the purchase.  The second and third sets of fields get the same information for the customer’s second and third purchases.  The best customers to mail offers to are the ones that have purchased within the last 90 days, so I don’t have to worry about many customers making more than three purchases during that time period (though I hope they will!).  If someone does make a fourth purchase, I move the second and third sets of data up to the first and second lines, and enter the new purchase information in the third data set.

These fields are extremely important.  I can instantly pull up a list of customers that have purchased within the past 90 days, or 60 days, or 30 days, or even 15 days.  When you rent out your house mailing list, like I do, this information is vital.  The rental amount you can charge increases as the amount of time since the customer’s purchase decreases.

The next field in my database is TotAmount, which contains a formula to calculate the total dollar amount that the customer has purchased from me to date.

The Comments field is used to store any miscellaneous information about the customer that I think is important to know.

I use the final field, Cust#, for a specially coded customer number that I assign each customer.  I use this code to identify the recipient of any commissions I may pay to customers who have brought business my way.

That’s a lot of information, and you may be wondering why I would need all of that.  Well, I’ve already told you how I use the purchase data fields for identifying the “age” of the customers.  I can also use the TotAmount field to compile a list of customers who have bought more than a certain amount from me.  Together, these field searches can be used to produce a customized mailing list of, for example, customers who have bought more than $50 in the past 30 days.  These would be the most responsive people to mail to, and would render the highest rental rate of my customer list.

I can also use certain mailing list fields to identify people who should be dropped from my list.  For example, I can search for customers with FollowUp2 dates that are four weeks past today’s date, and TotAmounts of zero.  These customers could be erased from my list.  Or, I could leave them on file, and put a word or two in the Comments field reminding me not to mail anything else to them, in case they inquire again.  This saves me the cost of mailing something to someone who probably won’t respond.  They might, but chances are they won’t.

Finally, if I get a customer who has returned too many orders, or has defrauded me in some way, I can put that information in the Comments field.  Then, if they order again, when their file comes up, I will see their history, and can use extra caution with them.

As you can see, if you use foresight when initially setting up your customer list, you will have a valuable tool that you can use to increase your order potential, increase your income through specialized list rental, and decrease our mailing costs by eliminating “deadwood” from your list.  This is one of the most important methods you can use to increase your chances of success.

Now you’ve read about the 10 best mail order businesses.  Have you noticed how some of them fit together?  Well, in all actuality, ALL 10 fit together.  You can have a profitable, part-time or full-time mail order business by running as many of these mini-businesses together as you can.

Take another look through the reports and see how producing and selling information, print brokering, circular mailing, producing ad sheets, co-publishing other ad sheets, big mails, mailing list rental, typesetting, rubber stamps and clip art all fit together with each other.  You can advertise your services in flyers that get mailed with other circulars and ad sheets in your big mails, which are ordered by customers whose names and addresses get added to your rental mailing list, which is ordered by other dealers who find out about your other services.  Customers who aren’t in the mail order business can still gain useful information from your products, use your print brokering services to get the best prices on their other printing needs, and can purchase return address rubber stamps from you.  It all goes together in a cycle that will make money for you.  All you need to do is be persistent (VERY persistent) and remember the following tips.

*  ADVERTISE!  People can’t and won’t order from you if they don’t know who you are and what you sell.  Get those ads out there!  You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on full page ads.  Put those one-inch ads in the ad sheets you get in the mail.  They’re cheap, and they WORK.

*  REINVEST!  Don’t expect to build a full-time business by putting a few ads in ad sheets, then never advertising again.  If you want to succeed, you MUST put at least 50% of your profits back into advertising.  Expand the amount of advertising you do until you saturate the market.  That’s the way to be a success.  Start your business part-time, and keep your full-time job, so you don’t NEED to dip into your profits for spending money.  If you pour your profits into advertising at the beginning, it will take less time for your part-time business to become self-supporting and full-time.

*  STAY ALERT!  Read and save all the mail-order related mail you get.  Your files will prove to be a valuable source of information and ideas for future products, ads and services.

*  WORK WITH OTHER MAIL-ORDER DEALERS!  You will find that the competition in this business can also be your friend.  When co-publishing and mailing other dealers’ circulars, you will be helping them.  They will help you in return.  Be honest, trustworthy, and deliver on all your promises, and the other dealers you work with will do the same.

*  DON’T GIVE UP!  If you think you can get rich overnight in mail order, you need to rethink things.  Sure, some people have gotten lucky, but the majority of mail order businesses start slow and build slowly.  You can’t give up after the first month.  Be like the little engine that could, and keep pushing along.  It will take time, but the time you take will be worth it.

*  BE SKEPTICAL!  If you see an offer in the mail that is far too good to be true, it probably IS too good to be true.  Don’t fall for the get rich quick junk, and don’t try to sell the stuff, either.  Your customers won’t be very loyal after you burn them.

*  REMEMBER, THE CUSTOMER IS KING!  Customer service is of the utmost importance in mail order.  Give a good guarantee on your products.  If they are good and deliver on your advertised promises, you won’t have to worry about many customer returns.  If a customer has a complaint, make sure you answer them quickly and kindly.  Sometimes, the best return customers are the ones who have had problems that you’ve corrected.  They see that you have their interests in mind, and respect you for that.

*  STUFF THAT ENVELOPE FULL!  Return business is the key to making money in mail order.  That first order covers your costs; the return business is profit.  Always give your customers a lot of products and services to choose from.

If you follow these rules and use the information provided in this report set, you should find yourself on the way to an exciting part-time or full-time mail order business that you can operate out of your own home!