We think some people get way too caught up in thinking and sweating over the little, technical details. These are things that most marketers never even consider. Some newcomers put way too much emphasis on things like state taxes, and what permit do I need here. They spend way too much time worrying about those things, instead of spending the majority of their time worried about how to bring more money in.

FREE Advertising doesn’t happen by accident. Most of the people who get free write ups in the magazines and newspapers, or get their stories aired on the T.V. news didn’t just get lucky. These people set out to get as much of this free advertising as they can. They make a business out of getting these magazines, newspapers and T.V. stations to give them FREE Advertising. Some people even hire public relation firms who do nothing but get them this type of advertising for very little cost. You can do the same thing on your own.

Here’s the secret to getting free advertising: Come up with some kind of unique angle to dramatize your product, service, or company. Then prepare a publicity kit that illustrates this story. Send this kit to all of the newspapers, radio and T.V. stations, and magazines. If your kit is prepared right, a percentage of them will use your story to fill their constant demand to come up with something new for their readers or listeners. Here are the simple steps you can take:

1) Make a story around your product or service. How did you get started? Is there some way to dramatize the reasons why you are in this business? Human interest stories are BIG with editors and publishers. Is there some way your product, service, or company helps people or has the potential to help them? Is there some way you can make a story around this? Think hard. Be creative. Find a unique angle.

2) Prepare your publicity release with the same level of care and commitment as you would any other promotion. Many people try to get free advertising in a lazy sort of way. They prepare a cheap flier or self mailer and send it to the publications and stations. These get trashed in a minute. Remember this: You are always judged by the quality of materials you use to promote yourself, company, or products. You must do everything first-class if you want people to take you seriously.

3) Create a list of all the reasons the editor of the magazine, newspaper, or T.V. station should use your story. Turn your list into a sales letter. Give them the biggest reasons why it’s in their interest to use your story. Do your best to make a complete selling presentation.

4) Send them a well prepared package. Make it worth their time to look it over and take you seriously. Half-hearted efforts produce weak results.

5) Make it easy for them to use your story by writing it for them. Writing the story for the editors is a powerful secret used by the world’s most expensive public relation firms. This secret can work amazingly well. Here’s why:

It takes great deal of work to fill the pages and "air time" of each newspaper, magazine and T.V. station. Giving them the actual copy they can use (in whole or in part) makes it easy for them to use your story. They will appreciate this. You’ll be helping them and helping yourself in the process.

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free publicity are given away every year. Start becoming aware of this. Look for the articles and T.V. spots other people are getting for free. Then think about these five simple steps above. How can you use these steps to get this kind of free advertising? The answers you come up with could be worth a small fortune!

We recently saw a television show, featuring a local workout guru. She has a weekly workout show on TV.

She was running an auction on the local San Diego Auction where everyone could donate their services. They got to keep half the money, and half the money went to the Children’s Hospital. Bingo! A light bulb went off in our heads, and we said to each other, “Hey... you can sell services!”

What if you are a business consultant, a marketing consultant, or what if you know something about old patents? There are millions of people who are inventing things. You can go on the auction sites and tell these people: “I have expertise. I can tell you what to do, what not to do. I can give you a list of patent attorneys (if you were using the patent idea). I will help you make money with your patent. What I’m going to charge you is a minimum bid of $100 an hour.”

Of course, you can make the amount more or less. That was just an example. But, instead of just talking about products and services now, we can sell our personal advice. We can sell our expertise. Instead of auctioning a product, AUCTION OFF YOUR KNOWLEDGE!

This is a unique way you could bring in cash with Internet auctions! So, put on your thinking caps. What do you have knowledge on? Even if you own a pizza parlor, you know how to start one and run one. It doesn’t matter if you’re in St. Paul or St. Petersburg. There are people all over the country thinking about starting a pizza parlor. You’ll tell them what to do, what not to do, where to get the best equipment, and how best to get customers. People will pay for that type of advice. There are a thousand and one ways you can sell your advice.

All right, T. J., and I always like to end things with a bang. So I am going to tell you how to swing a club that will literally knock customers through your doors. That’s kind of a play on words, so bear with me here.

We recommend you form a club. We’re talking about memberships here - they’re how to swing a club that will literally knock customers through your doors! Yes, that’s a play on words - just bear with us ...

Add a special “members only” section to your web site. Let people who visit your web site for free know that there is a special “members only” web site. Make it very, very clear what they’re missing by not being a member.

This area can be password protected, which is very easy to set up. Most worthwhile Internet service providers that host web sites can set up an area that is password protected for you, where the consumer who visits selects their own password and goes in.

Or you could enter passwords into an area that lets them in, and then give them the password. If you’re running low tech and want to do it the simple way, you can just set up this area at a special different address that you only give out to people once they’ve earned the privilege of being members.

You have to do a little work and add some real value to this “members only” section, so people will literally pay to get in it. For example, you could add the only place where people can literally leave email messages directly to you for online consulting, and you answer their questions - but you only do that for the members in the “members only” section.

You can offer wholesale specials on prices, cut to the bone prices on some of your products and services that are only available if you have access to this “members only” section.

You can set up a little chat group. Only the members of the “members only” section can chat among themselves in a special chat group. It is not available on the front end. You can add news and information that is only available there. You could even stage contests that you can only enter by them being registered and having access to the “members only” section.

What I would like to cover in this article is all of the people who do come up to us and say, “How in the world do you produce so many of these products?” I would like to specifically talk about some of the best informational products that we sell. Now, when I say best, I’m talking about the fastest.

I’ve got a list of five of the best and fastest products that we’ve produced here. Although the title of this program is “The Shortcut System For Creating A High Profit Book or Manual” you need to realize that there are all kinds of different informational products that you can sell. You can sell these products from anywhere from 10 to 30 times, or more, than your actual cost to produce. Then, the fact that the customers get excellent value is the third and most important thing because we’re talking about giving customers so much value they’ll want to come back.

On our list of five, the first thing is books and manuals. Russ taught us how to use ghostwriters, and we’ve had ghostwriters that have done dozens of different books for us. So, for these ghostwriters, all we do is give them the research materials or they go out and get their own research materials. They do all the work. We put our name on it. We sell it. We keep all the profits. You can do this, too.

Also, here’s something else. You can use the same chapters in some of your manuals and find new ways to use those same chapters in other manuals. It’s something for you to think about. Rewriting. You can rewrite the material a little bit, or if you have certain chapters that would apply for other publications, you can build a manual or book very easily by simply using past things that you’ve done in other manuals, as long as the customer gets good value. Remember, that’s the secret.

The only difference between a manual and a book is just the binding. So, if you put it in a three-ring binder, you’d call it a manual. If you have it perfect bound, you’d call it a book. So, don’t get hung up on the terms here.

The second product is home study courses. This is where you just package up a ton of stuff. You have videos. You have audio cassettes, maybe some reports, back issues of newsletters, tip sheets.

What you are really shooting for here is when the customer gets it, they open it up and it’s like Christmas time. There’s just a whole bunch of stuff that just jumps out at them.

The benefit of selling home study courses is you can turn $50 worth of hard cost, I’m talking now the printing and duplication costs, easily into $500 or $800 by selling it as a home study course. This just contains a lot of your different informational products that are just grouped together with some subject as the main theme. It’s got to be a hot subject. Now, you’re instantly getting ten to twenty times your cost just by packaging it all up like this.

The third thing is recorded seminars. So, you have a seminar for your customers, your prospects, or your clients, and then you simply sell the audio tapes, the video tapes, or the printed transcripts of that seminar in pieces or as a whole. This is something that has a tremendous value.

Some of our seminars have sold for $5,000. So, when we package those seminars up and sell the transcripts, it does have a high perceived value. That’s a great way that we can sell something for ten to thirty times what it cost us.

Number four is newsletters. We like newsletters because of the commitment that it takes to do a newsletter every month. It does force you to do something and continue to produce something.

Now, here’s the beautiful part. Oh, you’re getting paid to do that by the way because you have your subscribers to that newsletter. Then, you can sell back issues of those newsletters, all packaged up. You know, there’s all kinds of things you can do with those newsletters once they’re written. You make money two ways. That’s a very popular product for us.

Number five is multi-author products. Russ is the one who first taught us how to do this. One of our first products that we did with Russ was just a simple round table discussion, that’s all it was. We just sat around the table and we had microphones.

Basically what we did was interview Russ. We have put together so many products with other people, where the work that we’ve had to do is minimal. That’s what we do every week now. Every week we get together with a panel group that all have customers and client who want the same type of materials and the same type of information, and we spend a couple hours a week recording two 45 minute cassette tapes.

Every week! It adds up over a period of time. In four sessions, you are able to produce a 150-170 page manual. Plus, you have eight 45 minute cassette tapes. There’s a product that can and does easily sell for $150 to $195. So, these are just five of the fastest and best shortcut ones we’ve done.

Publishers on-line and off-line are starving for content. You must get that in your head. We’ve published newsletters for years, and we know that it’s true. We’re always looking for someone who will help us with the editorial content, because it is a big job every month. Some publications are weekly. They are looking for content, and what you want to do is get them to publish what you have. This is how you can get hundreds of magazines or newsletters to publish your news releases and articles!

We’ve discussed in many different manuals and cassettes what an outstanding and powerful reference tool the big Standard Rate and Data Service (SRDS) directories are, and now we can now bring those directories to get tremendous publicity for our articles and our news releases.

The way to do it is to find the categories in these directories that make sense for what we are trying to sell, then take all those names and addresses and send them our news releases and articles. It is a way to get thousands, and thousands, and thousands of dollars worth of free publicity for our products, our services, and our books. If you’ll do this, you will be a amazed at how many publications will use your news releases, use your articles - and the money you can make is tremendous.

People are naturally procrastinators. You must get them over that hurdle and persuade them to order your product. These seven things can easily be done to help in that process. They are:

1. Have an introductory offer.
Let your prospects know that you are making a limited introductory offer that will not be repeated.

2. Make a limited time offer.
Set a specific date - ten days, 30 days, etc. - after which your product will go back to its original price.

3. Let them know your product is in limited supply.
If you only have a certain number of your product, be honest with your customers. Tell them that they must act now or they may be to late!

4. Offer a bonus for fast reply.
If the prospect responds by a certain date, they get a free bonus.

5. Let them know about your planned future price increase.
Use this only if you are really contemplating a price increase. Let your customers know that you are planning on increasing the price, but they can save money if they order now!

6. Use command copy.
All throughout your copy, use words like "order now," "don’t delay," "call now," etc. These will subtly remind your customers to not procrastinate.

7. Use involvement devices.
Get the customer involved in the order process. You might say something like "check the box for rush delivery. We will send your order to you by fast priority mail!" This will get them excited about receiving your product quickly. You may also try "retain this stub for your records." Anything you can do to get the customer involved is good!

These seven things will help your customer order without procrastinating. Try using some or all of them in your next sales promotion!

There are many different ways to make money with this idea. We’re going to give you three, briefly, that we believe are some of the most important.

First, you can sell your own products. Maybe this could allow you to get your feet wet. Maybe you’ve got a collection of something - say you’ve got thousands of sports autographs that you have collected over the years. We actually had a good friend we haven’t spoken with in a few years who, since the time he was very young, had just written away.

He was sending away all the time for sports autographs from various sports figures. It didn’t really matter much to him who they were. He just wanted to collect autographs. He had huge notebooks full of these autographs that he had collected over the years. It had probably about 15 years since he had started collecting these autographs. He had books and books full of them. Some of them were on sports cards, some of them were on 3 x 5" index cards.

The point we are trying to make is if you have a collection of something that you’re interested in, you could start by selling off a few of your own products to get some experience and get a feel for how it can work for you.

Maybe you’ve decided to get out of that market altogether, or just turn your product and your inventory over. You can just get rid of yours and use those profits to buy new products. An example of autographs: you could buy new autographs or get new autographs to sell as well. That is the first idea, to sell your own products that you have to get your feet wet.

The second idea is to buy low and sell high. Depending on what market you’re in and which niche you choose, you can actually find products in that market area that people are selling for less than you know they could sell for on the Internet auctions, or wherever you end up selling them.

You could search out these products and buy them low. Maybe you have to buy an inventory, although we don’t recommend doing that, but you can buy them for less than you can sell them for. Turn around and make a huge profit when you sell them!

However you do it, the key is to make sure you always buy low. Buy as low as possible and then sell for as big a profit as possible to make money that way.

Now, the third idea - and this is one that we really recommend because it requires little cash outlay. Become a broker for these products and actually go out and search for other people that have the same hobby or that maybe collect the same product that you’re talking about selling. Then, actually broker it for them, and convince them that you can turn it around for a profit.

With this technique, you either just get the lowest price they’re willing to sell it for, or you actually tell them what you’re doing with it and offer to take a commission on the sale of the product. Maybe 20%, 30%, or maybe only 10% depending on the product.

This way you actually become a broker for them. You don’t have to put any cash up front. You tell them that you can sell it for them. Maybe you work with one exclusive vendor or person that has these products that you can sell and you help them sell all of their products on the Internet.

You can work with dozens of people and help all of them sell their products and just take a percentage of the profit on each one as it sells. It doesn’t require you to spend any money up front.

In the end, just find a hobby that you’re interested in - something you do - and, if it’s something you love, then the money will follow.

One of the things that we do in one of our businesses is critique ads, sales letters, and we also critique website copy. We just cannot fathom the number of websites we visit and critique that don’t have compelling headlines! They don’t have any sizzling, hot, enticing copy that gets you involved in the website. There is no irresistible offer.

The first thing those people are going to see when they load up your website is your headline. If the website’s headline doesn’t grab their attention - if it doesn’t excite them or make them curious and pull them into that webpage’s copy - then you might as well kiss most of those visitors goodbye without a sale!

You need to take a look at your website and make sure that you do have some enticing, powerful copy and compelling headlines. With websites you should use short copy, but we’ve found through our website that long form copy does work better. You need to tell your whole story and give compelling reasons to buy your product.

Here’s another trick that works really well when you do have compelling copy . . . once you get the person to your website and they’re involved already through the copy on your website, (a point in your copy where it’s really, really compelling) make them click a button to go to a next page, but in order for them to get to the next page they’ve got to fill in their e-mail address and name.

That way you capture their e-mail address and name. Then you can e-mail them future announcements or future advertisements about the particular product or service they were reading about on your website. It’s a good way to capture names and to market to them in the future at no cost.

Testing and finding out which headlines work the best is how to make your ads pull up to 50 times more response!

The headline is the road sign that draws the reader into your ad, like a road sign will draw people into a little restaurant or gift shop along the interstate.

By focusing on the headlines that work the best and expanding them out to more people, you increase your money-making potential.

Some companies have even ended up with 50 times or more response simply by expanding out. The same could happen for you, too!

By testing to find the right headline, you can easily reach the people who really want your product or service!

Once you have the headline that pulls the most response, you know that it will, most likely, attract the people you want as customers.

A market is a group of people who have something in common. A “virgin market” is a market of people who have specific needs that aren’t being filling as well as they could be.

1. There is either an absence of competition serving this market....
2. Or strong needs in this marketplace that aren’t being filled properly.

Here’s how to cash-in on these virgin markets: Find people or companies that are making money in spite of themselves. This list could include:

A) Companies that are making BIG profits but giving lousy service, or...

B) Selling worthless products and services,

C) Companies that are making money in a market full of other companies who are all doing business the same way as everyone else.

These are virgin markets. You can enter these markets with fresh, new, and creative ideas for products and services that nobody else is offering.

In this article I am going to reveal how you can become an Internet ninja using an age old stealth marketing trick virtually guaranteed to make you a fortune!

You’ve probably heard of ninjas before, but here’s some information on them for you. A ninja was a 14th century Japanese mercenary. They dressed all in black, and at that time people believed ninjas were able to become invisible. They were able to sneak into a place, carry out their task, and vanish when they were finished. They were the ultimate stealth fighters of the 14th century!

You’re probably wondering how in the heck this can help you, now. This content secret uses the same tricks the ninjas used! They were able to accomplish amazing things without being discovered. They were so good, people tried to explain away their skill by saying they were able to become invisible. The content secret I am about to reveal is also incredibly effective, but your presence won’t be seen! You will become invisible like an Internet ninja!

There are three simple steps to this content trick. First, you create an electronic book, also known as an e-book. An electronic book or e-book is simply a book that can be distributed easily over the Internet. You can do this the hard way or the easy way. The hard way to do this is to do a lot of research on a hot topic, then sit down at your computer and pound out a 100-200 page book. This could take you a few months to a year.

There are a lot of easy ways to do this too, though. You could buy reprint rights to an existing paper and ink product, and turn it into an e-book using specialized software such as Adobe Acrobat.

You could record a few audio tapes and have them transcribed to create an e-book. You could buy the rights to dozens of reports, compile them into one product, and presto! You’ve got your e-book!

Your e-book should give valuable information about a topic that ties directly into your web site’s theme. For example, if you sell personalized pet collars, you may want to create an e-book titled “101 Secrets Your Pets Wish You Knew.” If you sell money making opportunities, a hot e-book may be “138 Of The Hottest Internet Opportunities,” or, “Seven Fast Easy Ways To Make $100,000 A Year On The Internet.”

You should also make sure that your web site address is mentioned numerous times throughout the e-book. In fact, you may even want to include it at the bottom of every single page. Whatever you do, though, make sure your web site address is easy for the reader of the e-book to find. Scatter it throughout the entire product - front, back, and all in between. You may even want to make the reader a special offer to induce them to visit your site, and to find out more, or look over your product.

Now that you’ve done that, it’s on to step #2. Inside your e-book, before the copyright information and the Table of Contents, you want to include a page that gives the reader of the e-book the ability to pass on unlimited copies. On this page you want the reader to understand that they can post it on their web site, give it away to their e-zine subscribers, print it and sell the paper and ink version, or they can e-mail it to friends, family, and business acquaintances. The e-book can now be used as content on their site, or in any way they want to use it, because it is free content. Once you’ve done that, it is time for the most important step.

Step #3 - you are now going to offer your e-book as free content to web site owners ... and believe me, web site owners will eat this up! They’re now able to give away hot, valuable content - your e-book, absolutely free! They realize that, the more they publicize it, the more visitors it will pull to their site. Now you’ve now become the Internet ninja!

You see, you offer free content to web site owners - your e-book - and these web site owners offer it to their visitors. Inside each e-book you’ve given all readers the ability to pass it on and post it at their sites.

By planting your e-book on just one site, it may be read by a hundred people! They each pass it on to another thousand people, each of whom pass it on to 10,000 people. Soon you could have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of visitors to your web site every single month! Believe me, your e-book can spread like wildfire, and it can live for years and years. In all honesty, it can be passed on indefinitely!

I recently discussed this with a gentleman who had created an e-book about 101 of the hottest Internet businesses to start today. He told me that this is a book he created a year or two ago, and he has actually stopped promoting it on his site. He says that he gets over 50% of the traffic to his site from people who tell him they’ve come from that e-book. That e-book is still traveling around out there, even though he has no control over it at all, and it is still generating traffic for him!

Using this secret content system, your influence becomes invisible! It is the ultimate in stealth marketing on the Internet, and it can pull in tons of traffic to your web site at virtually no cost to you!

Give it a try! See how it works, and become an Internet ninja!

When we send out an e-mail newsletter (the e-zine) we like to create some goodwill immediately because we know that there are a few e-zines out there, a few of these newsletters, and we want to get them to sign up with ours.

Happy customers = huge profits for you! Treat your visitors better than 80% to 90% of all other websites on the Internet and make enormous cash profits!

So, first of all when they sign up with us and get our newsletter, we give them a free ad on our website. So that gives them an opportunity immediately not only to get our newsletter free, but also get something of value free. And of course that could be a report or something else.

Examine your product or service for all the sales benefits. These benefits are made up of all the things your prospect or customer can get by using your product or service. Sit down and do this special homework:

1) Write a list of as many of these main benefits as you can discover.

2) See if you can come up with a list of 100 different benefits. Many of these can be smaller benefits that are related to the main ones.

3) Then, write small paragraphs on each one of these. These paragraphs can be very simple. Just let the prospect know how the benefit you are writing about can help them get something they want.

4) Itemize these paragraphs by listing them in the order of their importance. (Make the biggest benefit # - and the next one #2, etc.)

5) Then string these paragraphs together with the most powerful benefits on top. Re-write everything carefully so the paragraphs flow together in a logical way that sounds good.

This is the simple plan we’ve used to develop sales material that has generated millions of dollars in sales and profits. Do this simple "homework" whenever you are developing a new sales promotion.

One very easy way to get started is to have an Internet garage sale. Everyone’s had a garage sale, or been to a garage sale, so it isn’t something intimidating. It’s not something you think, “Oh, I could never have a garage sale, oh my gosh! It’s complicated! Goodness me, a garage sale! What would I do? How would I do it?” It’s easy. A garage sale is like falling off a log. Now, to have an Internet garage sale is actually easier and cheaper than running one in your own garage, and running an ad in the paper.

It is very inexpensive to go to sites like eBay and show your items for sale there. It’s cheaper than running an ad in your local paper, actually, and you don’t have all these folks coming to your house.

You can be sitting around in your bathrobe and slippers with your feet propped up while your items are selling.

In this article I am going to tell you how to get the world’s greatest writers to produce your content free, and how to make money giving that content away. Everyone on the Internet is looking for quality content they can use on their web sites. Here is a twist that gives you high quality content to offer other web sites - and it’s not really going to cost you anything. In fact, it is going to make you money!

First of all, you need to decide on one or two topics (subject areas) that really interest you. It should be something that you enjoy reading about. Let’s look at small business home office operations as an example. If small business home office operations are really interesting and fascinating for you, then go out and make a list of the best selling books in that subject area right now that are in the book stores or just coming out. Get copies of those books! While you’re at it, make arrangements to become a book seller. If you don’t know how to do that, you can contact the American Book Sellers Association. They have some nice handbooks and literature that tells you exactly how to do this.

Why make arrangements to become a bookseller? You want to do is be able to buy the books that are selling well at wholesale prices! Now, I am going to show you how you’re going to sell those books very effectively.

So now let’s assume you have these basic books. You find them interesting. Now you need to sit down and read them. That’s why I said you need a subject area that interests you!

You read the books, then you extract the key ideas from each of those books. You are going to look for 20 - 30 ideas in each of those publications that are standouts. It could be a surprising piece of information, or a piece of information that is really thought provoking. It could be a piece of information that could save someone a lot of money, or something that was very interesting and witty.

You are going to write these out in short paragraphs of two to four sentences and put them in little attractive blocks so they can easily be inserted on a web site. Then you are going to take each one of these and create a headline that is appropriate for what the paragraph is about, such as how to reduce your printing costs 15%. End your paragraph, and below that put the signature that says the name, the author, and the book it was taken from. So far, so good, but how are you going to make your money?

You are going to contact web sites that would be interested in this particular market, which would be web sites that are focused on home businesses and small business operators. Then you’re going to offer them one of these blocks of type every single week at absolutely no charge. Most of them will jump for it!

How are you going to make your money? At the bottom of that tip or paragraph is a link, and it says, “For more - click here.” They are reading along the paragraph, they see something that is really interesting and fascinating, they get to the end and it tells them what book it’s from, and it says, “For more - click here.”

Most people are going to assume it means they can get more information on the subject. When they click, though, it is going to take them to your web site - and not just a front page web site. It is going to take them to a page you set up at your web site which is actually a page about that book. You’re going to use an illustration that you either scan from the cover yourself, or “steal” from Amazon.com, which you put on your site.

If you’d like to have an overview on your web page describing the book, it’s very, very easy to find the information ... just look at the book’s jacket! If the book is hardcover and comes with the paper cover - known as a “dust cover” - the inside flaps will have information on what the book is about, quotes from reviewers, and author information.

Your next task is to create your order form so they can order the book directly from you. You don’t have to stock the books. You can stock the books if you want to, but instead you could probably make arrangements with booksellers and distributors to do the drop shipping for you.

Essentially, you set up a selling machine where all the content you’ve created is essentially a banner ad on other sites - hundreds of them that are bringing sales to you. These banner ads take the prospects directly to the page where they make the order, and you have a page for each book that you’re promoting. This is a true selling machine!

The first question that may come to your mind is, “How in the world am I going to compete with Amazon.com?” The answer lies in the fact that you can’t lose money as fast as they can.

Perhaps you can’t offer your books as inexpensively as Amazon.com. You should remember, though, that in many cases people don’t buy because of the price. People buy because of convenience! This fact has been demonstrated over and over on the web.

You give your prospects information. They click on the link, come right to your page, see the information about the book they want, and then all they have to do is order it right then and there! They’re not going to leave your page to go looking for a site they can get the book from cheaper. They’re going to buy it right there!

Since books and informational products have such a high perceived value, your profit margins will be tremendous. By keeping costs down you can create something that you paid very little to produce and sell it for a great profit.

This is why selling books by mail can be extremely profitable for you! You can write and sell books from your own home. While you are accomplishing this very satisfying occupation, the competition will be asleep.

Many people have already done it. But the market is so broad, and the public’s need is so great, that you, too, can be a fantastic success! People are always interested in reading more about a subject. Your books will be different, as well as up to date.

There are nine simple questions to answer before you can make any real money. These questions are fundamental in building a successful business! These nine questions are:

1) What Are You Going To Sell?
This is a most basic question. You must decide what business you are in before you can go any further. You must decide what you will be selling. What product will you sell? Has it been tested? If it has, was it successfully tested? What price was it offered at? These are questions you will need to answer as part of the overall goal of deciding what to sell.

2) Have You Researched The Potential?
Is there a large segment of the market that will want your product? What is the size of your overall market? What is the potential dollar amount for profits? What will be the best media outlet for advertising? What is the future market? Will it be the same, smaller, or will it grow? Can you easily introduce new products or services in the future?

3) Can You Serve The Market Better?
If your product or service is offered to the public already, can you offer it at a better price or better quality? Can you give better customer service? If you can offer a better price, can you still turn a large enough profit?

4) Will You Be Able To Break Through The Barriers?
What other businesses are targeting the same market? Are they large, well-financed companies that have already saturated the market? Will they counter your prices by lowering their prices? Are your supply sources able to keep up the demand you will encounter? Have you arranged for enough financing to carry you through your first year(s) until you show substantial profits?

5) What Is Your Overall Marketing Strategy?
Will you specialize in one area, or will you diversify and offer a variety of products and services? Will your product(s) be marketed to a general audience or will you only target a select market segment? Is there a limited supply of your product, or can you get as many as you want whenever you want? You don’t want your supply to run dry right at peak sales times!

6) Will You Be A Tactician?
What tactics will you employ to accomplish your goals? What special offers will you make? How do you plan to keep an eye on your competition? Do you know what media you will use to test the marketability of your products and services? Do you know when your competition advertises and how they do it? Do you know what your competition is doing wrong that you can use to your advantage?

7) Will You Be Delegating Authority?
Who will be responsible for writing your ads, sales letters, etc.? Who will be in charge of ordering inventory, shipping the product, taking orders, etc.? Who will keep track of all your bookkeeping? Will you do all this yourself, or will you hire outside help?

8) How Will You Stay On Top Of Things?
Which offers are pulling the best response? What are your net profits on each offer? Which media is pulling the most sales? Are you prepared to sort and analyze these patterns of buying? Does your market analysis determine that there is a need to create additional products and services for your customers?

9) Does Your Plan Include A Budget?
How much money will it take to maintain and support your marketing goals? Have you limited your growth by not allowing enough capital for new marketing tests? How many mailings can you afford to do on a weekly or monthly basis? How much will you need to pay for mailing lists, etc.? What percentage return do you need just to break even and cover your costs?

Answering and then re-answering these nine questions will help you take the mystery out of making a ton of money! A good marketer will constantly re-evaluate and ask himself these nine questions!

We know of one man has used the Internet to go from almost broke to a net worth of more than three and a half billion dollars! And, most of that was done in a single year!

We’re talking about the phenomenal auction web site called E-Bay and its founder, Pierre Omidyar. He was the founder, and actually president, of the company for a number of years.

He conceived E-Bay originally as a result of a conversation between himself and his wife. And the interesting story goes that she was an avid Pez dispenser collector. She just commented to him how great it would be if she would be able to collect Pez dispensers and interact with other collectors over the Internet.

This is what’s really intriguing - how the Internet made possible the growth from a comment, from a single spark of an idea, to a multi-billion dollar business in just a couple of short years. It’s actually worth more than 3.5 billion dollars in one year!

Anyway, her comment got him thinking about it, and he expanded on that idea, of course. He saw this spark and he said “Man, I could not only serve her needs, but if she’s got this need, other people have this need.” And that’s the “how” in this whole story. He realized that if she needed this, other people needed it, too.

And the wonderful thing about the Internet is you don’t have to have a huge audience of people that need what you offer. For example, if you were accidently thinking small and you stuck with Pez dispensers, you could still find enough Pez dispenser collectors through the huge numbers of people that are on the Internet, to probably make a go of it and have a nice little business for yourself.

But it got bigger. He decided to make it available to collectibles of all kinds, and to people who wanted to trade everything from used computers and new computers right out of the box, to beanie babies, and beyond. The business just took off.

He launched it Labor Day in September of 1995, so it’s been around a few years now, going on a little over four years. It started out that humble way, and today it is traded on the stock exchange - You can go buy public stock in E-Bay! It’s a public company.

His holdings make him worth five billion dollars today. E-Bay is the leading person-to-person trading site on the Internet. A recent release from the company says they now provide over 2,000,000 new auctions at 250,000 new items every day. And the thing is just growing exponentially. They’ve got more than 1600 categories: collectibles, antiques, music, poetry, there is even pottery, photography, electronics, and jewelry. It is just amazing. It’s turned into a phenomenon and people are now actually launching their own businesses, as we’ve seen, utilizing this business.

So, again, the real lesson that everybody needs to learn from this and, of course, you always want to study success to be a success.

The biggest thing to learn from this example is the amazing way this whole thing developed from a spark of an idea. Someone in this family, his wife, expressing an interest, a need, and taking from that the realization that what you need, other people need. And if other people need it and you can fill that need, you’ve got yourself a business!

The PERFECT mail-order product that can make you financially independent for life must be something unique that people can’t get anywhere else. It must be compelling enough to make people want to send you their money through the mail. It must be compelling enough to get people captivated with the product and make them feel that they can buy it sight unseen.

The ideal products for mail order are those that cannot ordinarily be purchased in retail stores, they must serve an actual or perceived purpose, they must offer self-interest benefits, and they must be affordable by the average buyer.

Presentation is the key. You have to show your prospects that your product can give them a really important benefit that they honestly want. It has to capture their interest and compel them to buy it. You have to keep looking, keep coming up with new ideas, keep expanding and improving the ideas that have worked.

Some products and services will bring in money in direct response marketing, and others won’t. Direct mail is a more expensive medium, and it is the most expensive advertising you can utilize.

Because of the higher costs of direct mail, there are a lot of campaigns that would work in a medium like space advertising but not in direct mail.

Therefore, the product has to be “special.” You have to look for the things that are “hot,” the things that are popular. This is why some products will always make you more money in direct mail than others!

In this article, I am going to cover a fast, simple, and fun way to explode your profits, make your customers as happy as clams, and laugh all the way to the bank.

Before I give you this secret, I am going to tell you where it came from. Lawrence Payback Wrote a book called, “How To Fatten Your Wallet In No Time Flat!” and he calls this secret “TPS.” It is a very powerful secret. TPS stands for, “Tell a Passionate Story.”

People are bombarded by the same old offers again and again, and as more people get onto the Internet and start sending out e-zines and e-mail, the same old offers just keep hitting them over, and over, and over again. It is the same boring old stuff!

People want something that energizes them, entertains them, gets them to purchase, and tells a passionate story. If you can do this in your e-mail marketing, you’re going to set yourself apart from the rest of the profit pack.

I want to give you a very brief, very vibrant example of someone using this. There was a gentleman that had a web site. He is a great marketer and he always tells a passionate story. Instead of just telling people that he was going to give them a discount, he would tell them why he was going to give them a discount.

He had flooding in his office once. so he was having to liquidate some of his assets. Any time something happened to him, he would make a special offer, tie the story in, and tell it in such a way that people got caught up in it and wanted to purchase.

One time he was actually going to take a break. He was going to take a vacation from his Internet business, and he was going to go to the Bahamas and take a short cruise. He was just going to take the time off. Then he realized this was a great way to market more products.

When he got to the airport, he typed up a little e-mail and he had it sent out to his whole list of customers saying, “This is my special offer from the airport.” Then he explained where he was sitting and the people walking around. He just had this great idea as he was sitting there waiting for his plane, to give them a special offer since he was going to be gone and they probably wouldn’t be hearing from him much.

He made a special offer. Tied in with that passionate story, people thought it was funny. They thought it was great that he was writing to them from the airport, so a lot of people responded. It worked so well that on the plane he wrote another e-mail, thousands and thousands of feet above the Earth. He sent it out after he got to his destination, which was the Bahamas. Then he took his little lap top out on the beach and created another sales message. Then when they finally got on their cruise he created another sales message from the boat.

Every single time he would write a new e-mail marketing message he would describe where he was, why he decided to give them a special discount, what the motivation was for doing it, and tell about some of the fun things that were happening to them. It would really get people pumped up and excited!

I got all these e-mails and I was excited about it, too! In fact, it got me to purchase, and I had never purchased from this guy before. When he got back, I actually had a chance to call him and talk to him. He said, “It was the best vacation ever because he really got to take a lot of the time off.” It only took him a few moments to write up these e-mail sales messages, but he made more money in that two week vacation than he usually made in two full months with his web site because he told a passionate story.

It really is a very powerful way to get people involved in your marketing methods. If people are getting 20, 30, 50 e-zines a month and they’re getting all these e-mail marketing messages, you have to do something to make yourself stand apart so you’ll have their attention. The best way that I know to do that is to also tell a passionate story.

Give people a reason to buy. Tell them why. Give them a reason why you are giving them a discount. If you tell a passionate story, you’re going to be ahead of a lot of people in the game who are just doing the same old thing, boring their customers to death, and losing money while they’re doing it.

You should always know your product inside and out. This is why you can write better ad copy in certain situations — than SOME COPYWRITERS WHO MAKE UP TO $100,000.00 FOR WRITING AN AD!!

Mail order is a form of marketing, and if you really want to make the most money possible, you should learn how to do all of these things yourself. Almost everyone in direct response marketing uses outside copywriters, but it is much better for you to do it yourself and get that direct involvement with your copy and your offers.

Who knows more about the product that you develop than you? Answer: NO ONE! You are the most qualified expert as to what your product or service can do for your customers and/or clients. Therefore, you are the best person to write the ad copy!

As you develop your news-release copy, always read it from a potential customer’s perspective. Being able to present the biggest and best benefits to the readers is the secret to making the people who read your news release want to buy your product or service.

The copy that you present to the editors has to explain all of the benefits of your product or service. It should cater to the wants and needs of the end user, the person who will actually purchase the product.

If you can cater to that end user’s wants, needs, and desires in a way that excites them and gets them to picture themselves enjoying the benefits of your product or service, you have then discovered how to make sure that the people who read your news release buy your product or service!

Some editors and writers for publications seem to have negativity towards capitalism and capitalistic people. They are not in business to help people build their own businesses; they have other things that they consider much more important than helping you. It is the readers they concern themselves with. Therefore, you should concern yourself with their readers.

You not only want your story read, you also want it remembered so vividly that you will receive inquiries as a result. Just telling people who you are will not pay the rent!

You want action from your publicity, you want to “stir up the soup” and get things hot and moving. If your No. 1 priority is to be famous, plaster your name on billboards. If you want to be rich - then there is one thing that you must do - and keep on doing...you have to make a strong case for your product or service.

You have to think of it almost as if it wasn’t necessarily a product or service. Look at it as if you are a trial lawyer trying to convince a jury and a judge to believe you. You need more than enough evidence of why your product or service is good.

We feel that this is one of the best things we can teach people. One of the smartest marketing people in the world taught it to us, and now we are trying to teach it to you. Everybody’s out there making a case for their products and services right now.

The world is full of companies that are trying to prove how great they are. The world is full of companies trying to show how great the benefits of doing business with them are. You have to do more than the other people that are out there if you want to get rich. You have to go to great lengths.

This is, in fact, a lot easier than some people allow themselves to believe. We commonly tell people that when they are thinking up ways to write their ads, they should try to come up with at least one hundred specific benefits that their product or service can potentially give the customers.

Somewhere in that list there will be some great benefits, and some of the benefits in that list won’t be very good. But they have a list of one hundred benefits, and that is more than enough benefits to build a good ad around.

You have to make a strong case for your product or service because no one is going to buy it if there aren’t strong compelling reasons to buy it. And to increase your chances of having the strongest case possible, you have to have as many great things to tell them about the product as you can.