HOW TO SELL REPORTS LIKE THE ONE YOU’RE READING NOW

Okay. You just purchased a set of reports with reprint rights. First of all, determine the “age” of these reports. This information will be your key in selling them profitably. How do you find out how old they are? Normally you can judge them by their appearance. Compare it to another package you recently purchased. Do yours appear to be printed crooked, hard to read and contain worthless information? Chances are — they are old and everybody, their sister and mother has seen them who have been in business longer than 6 months. You won’t be able to sell them to most people.

On the other hand, reports that are new and updated for will sell well to almost anyone looking for a new business opportunity. Be sure and stress this fact in your advertising so people don’t get them mixed up with the old stuff.

Make Up Your Sales Circular

If you can’t afford to send $35 to a mail order typesetter at the moment to create you a dynamic advertising circular, simply type a list of the reports you are selling (by title) on a sheet of 8.5″x11″ white typing paper. Each listing should look something like this:

How to Make Money (2pgs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . $1
How to Win At the Lottery (4pgs) . . . . . . . . . $2
How to Sell These Reports (1pg)  . . . . . . . . . 50c

At the bottom of your list, ask the customers to order by saying something like: “Circle the title(s) of the reports you would like to purchase above and enclose with proper payment to: Your name and address.” You also could offer them a special bonus of 5 reports for $4 or 10 reports for $7. (Remember, they only cost you a few pennies to copy.)

Now, place classified ads in mail order publications under the heading of “money-making opportunities” that advertise the fact you have reports to sell. Your ad could be worded something similar to this: “Brand new Victoria’s Reports you can sell to make big money. Reprint rights included. Send $1 to: Your name and address.”

When people respond to your ad they will send you $1 (or you could ask for a LSASE [large, self-addressed stamped envelope] instead).

Place a copy of your typed list of report titles with a note or letter in the envelope and mail back to the person. Your note or letter should read something like: “Thanks for answering our ad. Enclosed is a list of the reports we sell which are making money for us. We hope you find several titles that interest you and we look forward to receiving your order. Please let us know if you are looking for a title not listed and we’ll try and locate it for you. Thanks for your business.”

Including a cover letter or note like this will increase your chances of getting an order from this person by 100%. Why? Because by the time someone orders more information from a classified ad they saw until the time they receive the information from you — they normally forget “what” they ordered. Naturally, they will have answered many different ads and won’t remember the ad they saw with your name on it by the time your package arrives. When you remind them of why they originally answered your ad in the first place, they will identify with the incident and re-generate the enthusiasm they originally felt. Then — they’ll probably order one or more reports.

Every person that orders from you should be placed in the database program of your computer or on a 3×5 card (if you are using the old method of record keeping.) Be sure to record the person’s name, complete address, telephone number (if possible), the date they ordered, what titles they ordered and the amount of money they sent you.

Be sure to indicate in your records if this person just inquired from one of your ads or if they really ordered a specific report title. If they ordered a specific report — you can determine the type of subjects this person is interested in and sell them other products and services in the future in their field of interest.

Regardless of whether you make a sale or not, just generating the original inquiry is worth its weight in gold. Keep accurate records of the names and addresses and when you have 100 or more, you can sell your mailing list and generate another income. This is one reason advertising pays you. Never stop advertising so that you never stop generating new inquiries to your offers.

SELF-PUBLISHING: A GENIUS MONEY-MAKING IDEA

Some “crazed nut” started a rumor that publishing a book costs lots of money. What this “nut” didn’t tell you is that self-published booklets do NOT!  In fact, it’s one of the easiest ways to make money in the world and doesn’t require any talent! It’s true — let me show you step-by-step how it’s done:

1. Choose a subject to write about. Select something you enjoy or want to know more about yourself. As just an example, we’ll use “Household Hints” (something I personally know nothing about.)
2. Now, to collect the information to put in my book about “household hints” I would go visit my mother, talk to my aunts and cousins, call friends on the phone, and in general — ask everybody I came into contact with to give me their favorite “household hint.” After a few months I’d have a lot of stuff.
3. At this point I would start categorizing all this information. I’d put all the stuff about “kitchen tips” in a separate file from “home remedies.” Each separate file would be a new chapter in my book.
4. Then I’d begin typing out my book on a computer or typewriter. (You also could utilize the services of a publisher such as Graphico, PO Box 488, Bluff City TN 37618 or Muchmore Marketing, PO Box 50027, Reno NV 89513.) If I was typing it myself though, I would simply number each tip as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 . . . with a title at the top of the page as to what type of “household hint” this particular page referred to. (i.e., kitchen tips, cleaning hints, home remedies, words of wisdom, etc.)
5. Okay. Now the book is ready to print. You’ve read everything and there are no misspelled words or obvious grammar mistakes. You are ready to see the final result of your labors. How much will it cost? Let’s assume that my “household hints” book is going to measure 5″ wide by 8″ tall (like a sheet of 8 1/2×11″ paper folded in half.) There are 2 pages on each side or 4 pages front and back. These are the best size for mail order unless you write a 100-page novel.
6. Now, the only thing left to do to make my book a success is to sell them and make some money back. One idea would be to call all the people who gave me the information for the book. I’d put a price tag of $5 on the cover and offer it to my aunts, cousins, friends and co-workers at a discount of $3 or $2. Everyone whose name or contribution is in a published book will want a copy for a keepsake — at least.

Are you still with me? My “household hints” book is a total of 24 pages. That means it will take both sides of 6 sheets of 8 1/2×11″ paper to print each one of my books. That includes the cover and everything.

Based on standard mail order prices, you could have 250 of these books printed for $109 or about 44c each. 1,000 would run even less — $200 or about 20c each. That’s cheap! Even if I sell each one for just $3, I’ll make a great profit! (A good mail order booklet printer we recommend is Kem’s Graphics, 549 Friendship Rd, Seneca SC 29678.)

Another method of saving money with printing of booklets is to have the mail order printer print them at the same price you would pay for 8 1/2×11″, 2-sided printing (around $25 per 1,000) without having them collated, folded and stapled. This way, your cost would only be a total of $150 per 1,000 or 15c per booklet.

This method is great if you want to do some of the work yourself. Your only expense would be a saddle stitcher from an office supply store. This is a long-armed stapler and the cost is around $45. Of course you would not want to make this investment if you were only going to be publishing one book per year — but if you plan to go into heavy production, it would be worth your while. I personally don’t care to do this myself because I’m saving tons of money. I’ll get paid in the long run for my time.

So you see; it’s not that hard to create your own money-maker. There’s no hidden secret to it. You don’t have to pay $29.95 for the same information. We’re GIVING it to you free of charge.

Every single human being has a book inside of them! Everybody knows something that other people don’t and everybody has interests that other people don’t have the time to learn about. There is a subject that interests you that would interest others. Guaranteed!

So, get busy. Pick a subject, gather the information and type it up! You’ll be a hero before you know it. Neighbors will begin to label you as a notorious writer. You’ll be able to hold your head high, and you’ll be able to start putting “, Writer” at the end of your name on your business letters. Won’t that be something?

COMPUTER SOFTWARE REVIEWS

Learn to Type

If you are trying to learn how to type, you’ll love the software program –
Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. It’s available for $34.95 from Global Software
(1-800-8-GLOBAL).

This program is well worth the money because it actually making typing fun.
I tried this out on my friend Laurie, who had never sat down at a computer in her life. She was labeled as the “typical” hunt-and-peck typist. However, she even loved this program.

Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing is menu driven and the more you use it the more it adapts to your particular strengths and weaknesses. (Aren’t computers smarter than ever now?) It also entertains you while you learn by providing 2D and 3D graphics, lifelike keyboard and “guide hands” to show you the perfect technique for added convenience. We especially liked the Racing Game, where the faster you type the faster your race car travels.

Help For Dot-Matrix Printer Owners (as if they still exist)

Emulaser, exclusively available from TigerSoftware (1-800-888-4437) for $69.95 is worth every penny! It’s the best thing I’ve seen — especially if you own a dot matrix printer.

Emulaser enables you to print Postscript smooth, typeset-quality type, Postscript graphics, halftones — even spectacular color images. Emulaser gives you the power to also scale type for optimum quality from 1 to 1000 points!

A friend used this on his 9-pin printer and it almost matched the same print-out from my Hewlett Packard LaserJet. When used on my LaserJet — the output was close to LinoTronic (the best available). You’ll love Emulaser — especially if you are on a tight budget and cannot afford to upgrade your printer at the present.

Emulaser also comes with 24 professionally designed borders and over 70 premium fonts including a host of symbols and graphic images!

(The only problem you may encounter is if you have one of the older IBM-compatible computers, such as an XT or 8086. Emulser may not properly print within the designated margins due to the restrictions of this older machine. It’s probably safe to assume you need a minimum 286-based system with 1 megabyte of RAM for Emulaser to run properly. 520K and 640K RAM systems just won’t cut it. Sorry.)

Thumbs Down on This One

CardsNOW is a software program for designing business cards. It’s available from Global Software (1-800-8-GLOBAL) for $39.95.

First of all, business cards are normally printed with a raised print. Anything less makes you look unprofessional and amateurish. In addition, people will normally use a color ink for their logo or company name. Both of these options are NOT available with this program, which degrades the quality look of your business cards considerably.

So why spend $39.95 for a program and $10.95 for 25 sheets of perforated business card paper, when you can send a camera-ready master to any mail order printer and have 1,000 professional business cards printed in RAISED lettering as well as 2-color for around $30? How long does 1,000 business cards last you? That’s about a 6-month supply for us, which would not warrant the extra money to spend on this software program.

A Low-Cost Graphics Library

Lotus SmartPics, exclusively available from TPC Connection (800) 800-5555 for $75. No — you don’t need Lotus software to take advantage of this magnificent package of graphics. This is an excellent way for any desktop publisher to add to their collection! Over 2,000 high-quality and professional graphics to enhance all your documents, flyers, memos, reports, bulletins, presentations and other business communications. And they’re flexible too. Choose a vector format to size, rotate and edit images or choose bitmap for editing in paint programs.

And as an ADDED BONUS, when you order Lotus SmartPics you get FREE Bitstream L’il Bits Winter Holiday Font Pack. These fonts are also a designer’s dream. You get unique ones like SnowCap, the ornate Cloister Black, the elegant Shelly, Allegro, or the ghostly FreeForm 721. Now all you have to add are turkeys, snowflakes, bells, sleds and candy canes to name a few.

Grab this package today!