Most read trade directories, special industry publications, back issues of magazines that are within their field of interest, technical journals, business-opportunity books and magazines, and any other available materials that will inspire a new product that spells profits. And, where do they find all of this resource material? By subscribing, or by going to their local public library. This is an idea that can make you RICH!

Go to your local library and hunt up old magazines. The magazines don’t even have to even be published anymore. Then, take a look at the advertisements. This is how you can easily find ideas that will sell like CRAZY!

Always look for ideas that you can use in your own business. Look for the ways others have used to make money and use them to bring you money. And always remember that really good marketing ideas are almost never time sensitive.

These three little words will continue to be important throughout all of your advertising ventures. It is an easy formula that works with not only radio, but also with print advertising, commercial, and other ad mediums. The name of this technique is the PAS solution.

The first thing that you need to do is start with the "P" which is the "problem." You need to introduce the problem and use one that is common to the kind of people that you trying to target.

After you have made the problem apparent, you continue on the "A" or "Agitate." You need to dramatize that problem and make it real to your readers.

You want to make them want your "solution," which is what you will offer with "S." Make them see that you have what they need to make the problem better.

Finally, you want to give them a "call to action" - give them a number to call, or an offer that will help them. Show them that it is easy for them to order, and tell them why it’s important that they order RIGHT NOW.

Once you have your PAS plan, write it out. Then reduce your message for full impact. If you learn how to use your complete beginning, middle, and end, and call your customers to action, you have learned how to make your radio commercial sell thousands of dollars worth of your product or service every day!

Direct-Response Marketing works best when you are selling to a niche market. The smaller and more narrow this niche is - the better. You can make a fortune selling to these smaller groups because the products and services they buy are more specialized:

1) These people buy specific products and services.

2) The bigger companies do not serve these smaller markets.

These two factors mean there is less competition. You can make a fortune by selling these smaller groups of people the specific types of products and services they want. The profits can be extremely high. Here are a few tips that can help you tap into this mega-goldmine:

(A) Think about the market first. Don’t worry about the products or services you want to sell.

(B) Find markets (groups of people with specific interests) that interest you. Become a customer of other companies who are serving these markets. Buy their products and services. Find out what this market buys the most.

(C) Then develop similar types of products and services for this market. Serve these people by giving them the types of products and services that offer them the biggest benefits.

A niche market can also be a group of people who responded to your initial front-end offer. These people have proven their interest in the type of item you’re selling. They have also taken the important step of doing business with you the first time. THEY ARE NOW PART OF YOUR NICHE MARKET. All you have to do is constantly stay in touch with them and re-sell them more of whatever they bought from you the first time (related products and services that are similar to the first item they purchased).

You have to constantly replenish your mailing list by adding new names and removing the names of those who are inactive, undeliverable, and don’t buy anymore. This is how maintaining your list can really increase your income!

This way you can keep adding new prospects to your list and not waste money on the prospects who don’t buy, have moved, have asked to be taken off the list, or are problem customers.

One of the top people in the direct mail business says that your customer base is a bucket with a couple of little holes in the bottom. As you’re constantly filling that bucket with new customers, there are always people leaking out of the bottom.

Remember, the more accurate your mailing list is, the more money it will make - so always keep it updated!

The potential to make $20,000 a year — or a lot more, depending on the size of your market — is an opportunity that is waiting for all of us in direct-response marketing to take advantage of. The secret to doing this is in brainstorming.

Sit down and think through all of the advantages and benefits of your product or service. Then, once you have your best ideas, find the best ways to present them. It has to be a simple, compelling idea that your prospects can instantly grasp. This is how a little brainstorming can make you $20,000 a week or more!

Right now our company is working on one marketing plan. Our personal goal for this marketing plan is to bring in $1,000,000 a month. Currently we are making our goal come true because we are going through the brainstorming necessary to come up with the best ideas. We are looking at all of the various elements of our product, and we’re putting a marketing plan together that incorporates many unique and simple functions to the benefit of our market.

Brainstorm things out. Through this you can come up with many advantages and benefits, you can find something that can work for you, and you can crack open the safe that produces your success!

It will be your job to introduce an unknown product to the mail-order company, a much more doubting reader. Your offer must provide solid reasons why the catalog house should consider selling your product to their customers.

To develop convincing reasons, you must research every fact that could possibly influence a buying decision. Offer an item with a more competitive price, a major price break, better quality, or extra benefits.

You have to think about every aspect of your product first. The simpler and easier you make it for the catalog house, the more inclined the catalog house is to accept and run your promotion. Why? Because you’ve already done all the work for them.

Nobody should put in as much work to sell your product as you do. This is the same thing we tell those who write press releases. We tell them to do it all for the editor and make it as easy as possible for them to run the piece in their publication.

The key here is to know everything about your product. Know why it’s a winner, and work on it as hard as you can. Then, you can write the best pieces about it. You can get it into the catalogs much easier if the catalog house doesn’t have to put much — if any — work into what you’ve already done! By doing this, many companies have made thousands of dollars in a matter of months. And knowing everything about your product could put giant sums of money in your pocket — within only a few months!

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.

Satisfied customers are customers that will be willing to buy from you repeatedly. Every time they buy from you, you make more profit. There is an initial investment in getting prospects to do business with you the first time. Every time you resell to that customer, you are paying off that initial investment.

There is a cost to acquiring customers. But, if you make those customers happy, you can sell to them again and again - and keep stacking the profits up as you gain more and more customers and make them repeat customers. And, as your back-end sales keep growing, you keep making more money.

Customer satisfaction does not come on its own accord. It has to be earned. Here are two things you need to make huge profits! To make huge profits you must offer

1. Services,
2. Benefits . . .

. . . that make customers want to come back. You have to sell them something that has real value that makes people feel good about their purchase.

List your satisfied customers, and do not be afraid to ask for their repeat business. They will consider it a compliment, especially if you offer them a discount or something free as a token of your appreciation.

Also, do not hesitate to ask for testimonials from established customers that you can use in ads, brochures, circulars, and sales letters. Using customer testimonials is a proven way that your customers can make you nineteen times more money! Ask for signed testimonials. Be sure to include a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Sales material that included testimonials from other happy, satisfied customers has been shown time and time again to produce up to nineteen times more money - instantly! Tests have been run where they pit sales material with testimonials against sales material without testimonials. And, when the results get back in, the testimonials always make more money - sometimes as high as nineteen times more - or higher.

Then you build a relationship with them to keep them coming back to your web site again and again.

You can’t make any money on the web, in our opinion, with one sale unless you’re selling houses or cars. But with most of the products and services that we sell, we want to sell that person other similar products and services.

We want a relationship with our customer. As the months and years go by, we want them to come back again, and again, and again and keep buying from us. That’s how you really get rich.

We often tell people wondering about the mail-order business that this is the easiest business in the world to be in once you get something working for you. Many times getting a promotion going right away is difficult.

Don’t give up! Study what’s doing well out there in the market. Find out what kinds of products are the most popular and what kinds of ads are the most successful. Use these concepts to your advantage to increase your chances of coming up with that great promotion . . . because once you have a great promotion in place, it’s simply a matter of waiting for the money to come in — and putting it in the bank!

Many people try it, don’t get it, and give up. What they don’t see is: once they have a promotion that’s working, all they have to do is sit and watch the money come in, take the money to the bank and spend it. Creating a successful mail-order promotion is how to sit back, put your feet up — AND MAKE THE EASIEST MONEY YOU’VE EVER MADE!

The most important thing to remember is that TV commercials are completely visual. Your commercial needs to be able to clearly and visually explain what you want to say. Remember PAS; demonstrate your problem and then demonstrate your solution. The better you are able to do this, the more money you can make. But, the focus has to be on the word VISUAL.

Do not confuse TV commercials with radio commercials when you write your copy. TV is a visual medium with audio enhancement. It is not a radio commercial with pictures. You should not try to be funny in TV commercials. You could make a million people laugh, and not sell a single thing. Asking people to spend their money is a serious thing.

If you are unable to fully understand your commercial with the sound off, you won’t be getting your message across to your consumers. You can test the effectiveness of your commercial by seeing if you understand the main point even when the sound is off. This is how to instantly know whether your TV commercial is any good before you run it!

You have to remember that people are busy, and they are constantly bombarded with different ideas. They don’t have the time to spend on your commercial. Because of this, it is very important to keep it simple so that they can easily see what advantage you have to offer them.

Frequently, people use their remote controls to mute commercials. Or they tape their favorite show and then fast forward through commercials. If your unique selling proposition and prime benefits are not communicated visually, you are wasting your time and money.

When properly designed, TV commercials can be very profitable. If it sounds too complicated, do not be discouraged. Just turn your idea over to a TV station and have them create a program for you. But, a word of caution! Do not let a salesperson, who is called a marketing consultant, sell you package spots that will not reach your targeted market. Ask about his/her background. Make certain he/she knows what you want. His/her commissions are not your concern. Getting your unique selling proposition into millions of homes is.

One option you might consider is to become an Internet estate broker!

Family members pass away, and, after the surviving family members have split up what they want, they have to find something to do with the rest of their loved one’s belongings. This usually leads to an estate auction. An auctioneer is called, and all of the remaining items no one in the family wants or has room for are auctioned off to the general public.

Most of these estate auctions are low-key affairs. People show up, typically more curious as to what the family member owned than really wanting to buy anything specific. Everything gets auctioned off, and items that might have high value might end up getting sold for much less than they are worth.

What’s left over after the sale is usually sold at a garage sale, which few people end up attending. “After all,” people think, “there was already an auction - if these things didn’t sell at the auction, then what makes them worth picking up at a garage sale?”

Most of the items at the garage sale will end up getting sold for a few bucks, if they’re lucky. If they’re not, pocket change might have to suffice.

As an Internet estate broker, though, you can change all of this . . . and bring yourself some profit to boot! As an Internet estate broker, you could quickly and easily help people liquidate their estate - and get huge sums of cash for your time! It’s easier than you think!

After reading your advertisement or coming to you through whatever method attracted them, your clients come to you and agree to pay you a certain commission or percentage based on the money made on the sale. Then, you take inventory of everything that’s going to be up for sale, and put them up for auction on eBay or another auction site!

Both you and your clients stand a great chance of this really paying off. First of all, instead of maybe a hundred people bidding on the articles (if you were lucky), you’d have tens of thousands of people surfing through eBay and seeing what you’ve got for auction! Since you’ve got so many people coming across your auction items, there’s a much higher chance that the bidding process will go further - meaning that the items will sell for more!

Thousands of collectors of many different things float through eBay every day - and if they collect the sorts of things that are on sale, they’re going to be willing to pay much more for it than most people!

All of this means that your clients could very well make a lot more money letting you auction that estate off over eBay - and you will win, because your commission will be even higher!

This sort of business would take almost nothing to start up, either - all you would need would be a computer, an internet connection, a way to take care of the usually very inexpensive entry fees auction websites charge, and some advertising!

For example, you could place some advertisements - small ads - in some small, local, weekly newspapers in order to establish yourself. The ad copy practically writes itself if you think about it . . . “Trying to sell an estate? Don’t auction it locally . . . We can sell it to the WORLD!”

How much more enticing can it get?

A well-thought-out advantage is different depending on the market you are catering to, but it is always something no one else is offering. Hopefully, it is exciting to the prospects who see your sales messages.

If you were to ask most businesspeople, "What are you giving your customers that no other company in your market is giving to them?" they will say something along the lines of, "We give them the best prices and the best service."

This is not distinct or specific enough to call a unique selling proposition. Almost every business out there thinks or says exactly the same thing. How can it be unique if all of these other businesses make the same claims?

When you are getting your offers out to your prospects, be it through direct mail or advertising, always remember to give them a distinct advantage. Using a distinct advantage is how to do one simple thing that will make all your advertising super powerful! It will set you apart from all of the other companies in your market. It will stand out, and it will garner you more attention . . . and, potentially, more sales.

One of the things that we want to tell you is that you need to pick up a book. We know that this is extra homework but, believe us, it’s homework that’s going to pay off in a big way.

You need to pick up a book called “Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion.” We know that it sounds dry and boring but it’s a fantastic book we feel all marketers should read!

Everybody who comes to us asking what some of the main books are they should read to really learn how to make lots of money marketing products is told to check this book out. It’s written by Robert Cialdini (?), and it’s a fantastic book. Read it once all the way through, then put it on your schedule to read it at least five more times!

In his book, he specifically talks about the “contrast principle.” This is how it works and how it relates to sales letters and website sales copy. . .

Let’s say you’re offering a product in your copy. When you reach the end of your copy you state, “This product is fantastic. It costs $26.50.” Immediately, people are focusing on that price alone. All of a sudden, you have to convince them that it’s worth $26.50. That can be difficult.

However, what if you were to say the package would normally be sold at a full retail price of $80? Then, contrast the price that the prospect will be paying of $26.50 with that higher “retail” price. Even though the marketer has always planned to sell that product for $26.50, in the mid of the prospect they’ll be getting a discount because it SHOULD sell for a retail price of $80!

By using that one technique, you have beaten the problems of trying to get the prospects to believe the product’s worth $26.50 because you’ve put a retail value on it of $79. Now they’re getting an automatic discount, even though they’re buying it for $26.50 either way (whether or not you put that information in there or not).

This is a very powerful concept. It’s something that you can use with virtually any product. A lot of marketers use it. For example, if you were just coming up with a product and you were just going to sell it for $26.50, you could tell people in your letter (or more specifically, in your Website) that this is a brand new offer.

You want to test the price of $26.50 and later on down the road, you’re probably going to be selling it for $100 or $1,000. Or, you may create a distributorship for $5,000 or franchise for $10,000. But, if they get it right now, they get it for the amazing DISCOUNTED price of only $26.50. By using that contrast principle, it makes your sales job a lot easier. This is what a special book written by an Arizona professor can teach you about getting rich on the Internet!

Once you’ve collected the e-mail addresses of people who have visited your site, be it through using a guest book or whatever other tool you use, you will have a great list of names and e-mail addresses of prospects to e-mail offers to.

Here’s a great idea - if you follow up by e-mailing a “thank you” to anyone who does respond by filling out that form or by sending you an e-mail requesting information or telling you they visited your site in some other way, you’ll increase your chances of making a sale even more!

The two power-words that make people spend more money are . . . THANK YOU!

The mere fact that you followed up and identified that they visited your Site and thanked them for visiting your Web Site will make you literally stand out head and shoulders above the hundreds of other Sites that that same consumer might have visited in one evening.

People could visit 15 websites in an evening. It was discovered that the one website that would send an e-mail or a letter by regular mail thanking the customer for visiting their site saw subscription and traffic to their sites triple and quadruple as a result - - Because they were the only ones doing it! And we can tell you right now, we could go visit 25 Web Sites tonight and we won’t get an e-mail thanking me for visiting more than 1 or 2 of them.

This is such a powerful concept. It’s the same as any marketing. You have to do some-thing that separates you from everyone else in the eyes of your customer. What a simple idea!

Magazines tend to be more difficult to make per-inquiry deals with, but they do have what is known as "remnant space." Magazines are printed on large sheets of paper that may represent sixteen pages. Let’s say they only have fifteen pages filled with material and copy, and the sixteenth page is still unfinished.

The magazine publishers have to fill those blank spaces, and that’s where you can come in and try to get yourself a deal. You can split the profits on an ad and both win! This is how to make thousands of dollars helping the magazines and newspapers solve one of their biggest problems!

You’re getting the free publicity, you’re getting the profits . . . and if you’ve matched yourself up with a publication that represents the same market your product was designed to serve, you can potentially make thousands of dollars . . . or more!

You can revitalize your creative energies by easing the stress of pressing mental efforts. Here are a few suggestions to ease stress.

Stretch: Eliminate the tension in your muscles by giving them a nice long stretch. Gently and slowly stretch the muscles in your legs, arms, neck and back, etc., until you feel a tug. Then hold it for ten to 20 seconds and release. You either can do this just with the muscles that are tense, or throughout your body.

Walk: When tension is high, walk it off. Just get up and take your tension for a stroll.

A brisk ten- or 15-minute walk can reduce muscular and nervous tension.

Take a Mental Trip: By visualizing a stress-free scene that appeals to you, you can unwind the tension you feel. Just sit back and "see," as vividly as you can, the beautiful scenery of your next vacation, or a single flower. Use as many scenes as possible to experience your stress-reducing vision.

Take a breather: When a person is tired or uptight, breathing becomes rapid and shallow. You can decrease tension by deliberately breathing more slowly and deeply. Take six seconds to inhale, then seven seconds to exhale. Repeat this for five minutes, or longer if necessary.

Practice "progressive relaxation": PR is a way to de-stress yourself anywhere. First, sit down, lean back, and close your eyes. Then, clench your right hand, tensing the muscles in your wrist and forearm, and hold for five seconds, concentrating on the tension building in your hand. Then release, letting the tension drain away. Pay close attention to the feeling of relaxation. Repeat this sequence of tension and release with your left hand, then your upper arms, shoulders, neck, back, face, legs, feet, and toes.

Discuss your Situation: Open the pressure valve. If you are "really" stressed out, open your mouth and let out the pressure. Talking is one way to do this. Sometimes the quickest way to ease writer’s tension is to discuss it calmly with someone else. It is a great way to depressurize yourself. And, do not forget to laugh. Laughing at a stressful situation can restore calm and give you a more productive perspective.

Learning the secrets of writing great advertising copy can make you HUGE amounts of money. There have been times when we have earned as much as $1,000 and more for every hour we spent writing our ads and sales letters. The same thing could potentially happen to you, too. Here are ten copywriting secrets the best copywriters use:

1. They do everything possible to know every aspect of their products and services. They look for uniqueness, special features, and benefits they can offer to the prospect or customer.
2. They learn everything they can about the market their sales material is targeted to reach.
3. They know the right words, phrases, or approaches that will make their offer more effective.
4. They learn everything they can about the competition. They find out how their products compare in value and quality. And they know what type of promotional techniques can be useful to outsell the competition.

5. They know how to gather testimonials to increase the response of their ads and sales letters.
6. They collect and study ads that have offered similar products. They do this to get creative ideas that help them with their ads. They seek out ads that have been running continually. These ads help them avoid duplicating unsuccessful efforts of others.
7. They focus on the ultimate goal of each ad or sales letter. To whom is it written? What is the end result they are after?
8. They know how to create irresistible offers that make people want to buy.
9. They know the importance of testing as many different elements as possible, and they do this.
10. They know how to close. They know how to create strong sales presentations, and how to make the sale.

Classified ads can make you a F-O-R-T-U-N-E! If your ad runs in 100 different publications and you make ten dollars from each ad a month, that’s $1,000 a month!

And it can potentially grow even bigger . . . How much would you make if you ran your ad in 500 publications? A thousand publications? 1,000 publications times $10 per ad equals $10,000! Potentially, classified ads present you with a huge opportunity to make big money.

The secret is, you have to be able to locate the good publications that will continue to pull a nice net profit for you. Then test new publications all the time.

Remember, just because you have a publication already that’s been making money for you doesn’t mean it will keep doing so indefinitely. Always test new ads, always test new publications, and always keep running and re-running your ads in the publications that have shown the initial profits.

When you see ads that run over and over again, you have come across an ad that is making the person or company money. Why else would it still be running after a long period of time? By paying attention to this, you can learn more about the market you’re in. You can learn what’s hot and what’s not.

This is not limited to products, either. It can also point out the phrases and copy styles that are pulling more orders. There is more to successful advertisements than just offering a good product.

A successful ad has gone through numerous tests — not only to perfect the offer, but also to perfect the very wording and phrasing of the ad, so that the ad is as exciting, appealing, and desire-inspiring as possible. And you can use the same techniques in your own advertisements, as long as you don’t copy word-for-word or plagiarize. Simply make the ideas work in your ad!

By finding out which ads are running repeatedly over and over, you can easily find out who is making money — and who isn’t. This hot information can be vital to your success! By learning what is making these ads so successful, you can incorporate that in your own ad copy somehow!

Here’s one thing that is going to erase people’s fear of failure. Most really excellent brand new ideas that nobody ever thought of before were accidents. The person made a mistake and did something different or “wrong” and found out that it really worked well.

We’ve heard that the guy that invented the adhesive for Post-It notes had a problem when he created an adhesive that wouldn’t totally dry, and they didn’t know what to do with it – it was a failure. We should have a failure like Post-It notes!

Scotch Guard, which of the carpet cleaners use, and gets put on furniture by many people to protect it, is another good example of something that was invented by accident. A chemist from DuPont actually dropped some chemicals on the carpet while he was performing an experiment, and then they noticed about a month later that the spot where it was dropped was still absolutely clean while the rest of the carpet was dirty

The first determination you must make in deciding to use a particular list is whether the prospects on a list have purchased something similar to what you have to offer. At the very least, they must have shown an interest in an item that falls within the same general category.

This the one way you can tell whether a mailing list will work or not BEFORE you mail to it! People who have already purchased a book on homeworker business opportunities would be ideal prospects if you are selling a "How to make money at home" book.

Choose the lists of prospects that you know have bought products and services like the ones you are offering. The right mailing list managers and brokers can get that information for you.

Here’s an example for you: Let’s say through research and dealing with list brokers and managers, you can find a million names - a million different people - on fifty lists. You know that you can potentially make a lot of money simply because you know exactly where your prospects are.

Let’s say that all of these prospects have bought products or services similar to your offer. Now, you simply go to those people and show them you have a product or service too that they would be interested in.

This is how you can make giant piles of money! With a million different qualified prospects that have bought products or services related to your offer, you have the potential to bring in a huge amount of money!

WIIFM can increase your web site sales instantly. No, it’s not a radio station. What it stands for is ... What’s In It For Me?

Every one of your customers out there on the Internet that is a potential buyer wants to know, “What’s in it for me?” And what you need to do is incorporate that statement in every ad, every sales letter, that you have on your web site, and the banner ads you do.

Every one of your customers is wondering that same question. Whenever you write an ad or a sales letter, you need to be thinking about asking and answering the question, “What’s in it for me?”

Think from your customer’s perspective. What can they get, what are they looking for, what benefits to do they want to receive from your offer?

A lot of time when you are studying successful sales letters, or when you’re studying unsuccessful sales letters and sales copy and classified advertising or, really, any kind of advertising, you can instantly spot the writer who was not thinking about what’s in it for me from their customer’s standpoint.

You see ads and sales letters that are written that don’t produce strong benefits, that don’t have strong benefits for their customer, and you have to have that in all of your sales material.

Always remember whenever you are studying or writing any kind of sales letter, whenever you are creating a banner ad that your customers are going to see that you put out on other web sites, or even if you are advertising off-line, in all of your advertising always remember that one simple concept - WIIFM – What’s In It For Me?

Remember, that’s what your customers are thinking. That’s what they’re wondering every time they receive a sales letter from you, every time they go to your web site, every time they click on a banner ad ... every time they’re on they are going to be thinking that, and you need to present them with benefits that answer that question, and then show them exactly what your offer can do for them.

Collectively across the country, there are hundreds of other people out there that are faced with the same situation. They try to sell something that is very expensive - it might be a house, real estate, a nice automobile, or a boat.

Let’s say they’re running ads in different publications like the Rob Report - that’s a good example, although there are plenty of other magazines and newspapers out there that sell expensive things too.

You go back through the old issues and you contact these people. You just ask them, “Have you sold your merchandise?” Many times, you’re going to find that the answer is no. They didn’t sell it, because those magazine ads are so expensive. If they would have had thousands and thousands of dollars to invest in those magazine ads, they would have sold it. Now they’re ready to sell it for an even lower price.

Now you can get in there and earn tremendous profits by selling those items! This is a way for you to find those items and get them with no out of pocket cash - now you’re just brokering.

You’ll earn a nice commission by selling them on the Internet Auctions and even developing a web site with a whole bunch of these different expensive products. This is how to instantly and easily find people who are desperate to let you help them sell their expensive items. And when these high-dollar items sell - you could get rich off the huge commission!

One of the biggest mistakes many newcomers in mail-order and direct-marketing make is not having a crystal clear idea of who their customer is. They’re under the false belief that almost anyone out there could be their customer.

Don’t allow yourself to fall into this train of thought. All direct-response and mail-order companies cater to a very specific type of person. Those marketers who have had the most success in the business know exactly who they’re trying to attract. They’re not trying to get everyone’s attention, just the attention of the best possible prospects.

Sometimes prospects have common denominators simply because of what they’ve bought in the past. For example, our products and services are designed and marketed specifically for the opportunity market.

Sex, creed, race, employment, age . . . none of these are really important in the opportunity market. We serve them all. The common denominator is what these people buy and have bought, not any of the things above.

Developing a strong knowledge of your market is a process. The more you do it, the more experience you have. The more you immerse yourself in it and commit yourself to it, the more you’ll learn.

And the more you learn, the better you will be at giving the customers and prospects what they want. And you’ll attract more of these people.

In this article I want to cover how you can do a million dollar product in one day... or maybe much, much more! Now, in the early 90's, Russ was traveling twice a year to consult with us here in Kansas. He says he’ll never forget the first time we picked him up in our old, dilapidated car and took him to the old, dilapidated farmhouse we lived in.

Actually, Russ loved the farmhouse because we only paid $100 or $150 a month. Still, though, we wanted to get the heck out of there. He could tell from talking to us. He loved it because it was such a relic from the past... creaky stairs going up to the guest bedroom, this big old tub that you could use in the tiny bathroom... he loved the house.

Better things were soon to come to the us, though. We now live in an 8,000 square foot mansion.

Anyhow, after consulting with Russ, I came up with an idea. I said, “Instead of you coming to Kansas and helping us with our marketing on an individual basis, let’s create a product. Let’s do a cassette tape. We’ll take one day and ask you a lot of questions. You’ll give us the answers, and we’ll also put our input into it.”

It turned out to be a super idea! We created a product called “The $2,500 Weekend,” which, incidentally, was what we were paying Russ to partake in the venture. He’d fly in on Friday night and fly out Sunday afternoon. In between those two days - mostly on Saturday - we’d work all day on marketing.

So, right at our dining room table we created “The $2,500 Weekend” tape in one day and a few hours. We took breaks and everything. We had a lot of fun with it.

This product has sold well over a million dollars. It might even be approaching two million dollars now. Recently we updated the product and changed the name from “The $2,500 Weekend” to “The Millionaire Matrix.” It continued to sell. I just shipped ten of them to a distributor yesterday. It’s selling even as you read this. It was a tremendous success. Both products sold for $195. They racked up millions of dollars in sales.

The lesson you can learn from this is: you can go to someone (you don’t have to fly to Kansas, California, or anywhere else), or you can do it just the way we’re doing it on tape now. We’ve got people who record with us who are from New Mexico, California, and Kansas. We all get connected together on a conference call. That’s how we do our current cassette tape products.

You can do it through a conference call center, or with some cheap recording equipment that you can get from Radio Shack. The conference center might be a little bit better as far as the quality, but not much. There’s some really good recording equipment at Radio Shack.

So, what do you do? You get in touch with some people who are considered to be experts in their field. If you do this, you’ll be an expert. You get in touch with them and tell them that you want to create a product by asking them all kinds of questions on what they do.

They could be antique dealers. They could be great marketers. They could be people who are involved in cooking. They could be working in the health field putting out health information.

Whatever the expertise that they have, and whatever the discipline that you want to self-publish information on, you get in touch with these people. It could be travel, it could be marketing - it doesn’t matter what it is.

Tell them that, instead of paying them (although you could) for this expertise, you will give them the rights to sell it. Many of these so-called experts will really be happy to take that deal, especially if you massage their egos. Tell them how great they are. Tell them that you came to them because you think that they’re the foremost experts.

Then they say, “well, maybe I do have time for that,” and we convert many of those people who write us and say they’re not interested. We convert many of those people into sales with just a few lines directed at their objection, because if someone takes the effort to send us an e-mail to tell us that they’re not going to buy, what we think they’re really telling us is, “I really want to be sold. This is something I want. 1) I visited the site. 2) I read the material. 3) I’ve read your follow-ups. So tell me how I can buy.”

Now in the case of cost, we don’t reduce it. But we can say, “Hey! Did you know you could spread this out over two payments?” Generally, that is enough to just push them over the edge.

A majority of people are simply afraid to make a decision to order your product. They may really want and need it, but something inside of them tells them to put it off! You must find a way to overcome these fears and get their orders. These four things will help you do just that:

1. Provide Testimonials
Testimonials can be very important. People will almost always believe the words of other customers before they will believe anything you say! It’s a proven fact! Testimonials are proof that other people agree with what you are telling them! Good testimonials will help your prospect decide that what you are saying is really true!

2. Examples.
An example makes what you are saying real to the customer. For example, let’s say that you are writing a sales letter, and you include an example that tells people to picture themselves making their first million and picking out their new home by the beach.... This helps people vision themselves getting the full benefit that comes with buying your product!

3. Case History.
This is very similar to a testimonial except that you are telling the story. You may tell about a man named “Jerry” who used your money-making program to bring in $1.25 million in less than 18 months! This allows people to visualize themselves making that much money, and it again helps them understand what other people are doing with your product.

4. “Leader” copy.
Leader copy tells the prospect that they are a leader and one of the chosen few who will have the courage to respond to your offer. This can be used if you are selling a business opportunity. You can say something like “Everyone talks about making money, but you are one of the few who actually does something about it! Congratulations!”

These four things will help bring you more sales. Your customers need to see these things in your sales material. If they do, they will be more likely to send you their money!

The hottest type of merchandise that sells like crazy is anything that’s tied in heavily to the market you are selling to.

1. Choose a niche market carefully, one that is unique, and one that you have an interest in.
2. Get a feel for the types of products and services this market is crazy about.
3. Test different types of products/services that you see working for others. Continue testing new offers/promotions to your best customers.
4. You will, after awhile, gain a tremendous knowledge of what your customers really want. You’ll produce products and services that they buy like crazy.
5. Take your “winners” (the products and services that sell the best to your customers) and use them to attract new customers.

You need to give them a good name. For example, “Frequent Flyers” was a great idea. It identified the customer, but what it really meant was “frequent customers.” You want to call your club your “Preferred Customer Club,” your “Inner Circle,” your “Players Club,” your “President’s Club.” Give it a name that has some appeal and some stature that says to your customer, “I value you and I value your business.” It doesn’t have to be too elaborate.

One of the chief advantages of a club is that you build that second sale. We all know that the big expense is getting the customer the first time. It’s getting the customer to make that first sale. You have that cost of acquisition. The cost of getting that customer to make the first purchase. But then, after they’re on your list, after they’ve made a purchase from you, the profit is in subsequent. Then you don’t have all the cost of acquisition.

It is a good idea to make your ad look newsy. Why? Because people read the paper to get the news. If you can make your ad look like an editorial, you have achieved something very viable.

Keep in mind that people read advertising in a very passive way. They know that you are asking them for their money, and they aren’t going to give it to just anyone. But if you can make your advertisement appear to be an article, chances are good that they will take the time to read through it.

It is important to make it look like any other article in the publication that you are using. Test it out, and always remember that people feel more comfortable about giving their money to something that looks professional.

A newspaper story is not looked at as an advertisement - it’s looked at as journalism. This can be a big help in gaining credibility. The more credibility you have, the higher the profit potential.

One idea that works well is to take out a “newspaper spreadsheet.” The newspaper publishers will run a full page ad so that they can use a whole newspaper tear sheet.

Remember, there is a lot of space newspaper publishers have to fill with something before the paper is done - why not try to get your ad in there? This helps to give it some credibility, and people tend to take it more seriously. As an added bonus, some newspapers will even typeset your ad for free if you accept a full page.

Who Would Have So Many Documents Ready For You To Use Immediately...?

The government has a ton of material that is in the public domain. Your tax dollars paid for it. You go to the consumer affairs division of the Consumer Department of Information in Pueblo, Colorado, and you can see their advertisements running in magazines all the time. They’ll say, “Send for the Consumer Information catalog.”

The catalog is filled with books, reports, booklets, etc. and we took several copies of a document with a title along the lines of, “How To Teach Your Child To Read.” Another one was “How To Teach Your Child Math.” There was one on “How To Use The Library.” There was one on “How To Increase Spelling Proficiency and Win Spelling Tests.”

We put those all together at one time when we were selling a little package comprised of a coloring book that taught phonics to preschoolers. We threw all that material in with it and reprinted it. We said, “Reprinted from the government publication.” We gave them credit.

People loved it. They got more than they thought they would get. It wasn’t just about reading. They got other subjects, too, that really made that a better package.

They also have a website you can visit, and if you search for it you’ll find it. Those are things you can do with public domain stuff. You can have it done by the end of the day. That’s a fast way to have a product without having to write it.