After you read this article you will clearly understand what is surely the most important secret to building your fortune in mail order. So please take 10 minutes to avoid further loss of your time and money.

First, let's address the most frequent mistake that mail order beginners make: failing to learn how the mathematics of mail order work. I'll make it very simple. consider all the expenses involved in selling your product: typesetting and printing your advertisement; buying (renting) the mailing list; and finally, postage. This to name only the three main expenses.

Now, if you honestly think you're going to get rich by selling a $10 or $20 product to a few names, you are in the wrong path. You certainly could get rich selling a single product. It has happened countless times. But most probably you won't. Or let's put it this way: your success would take several years. Anyway, that is not the way mail order works.

The only way you can and will accelerate your growth and soon make huge amounts of money is if you sell a RELATED LINE OF PRODUCTS. Do not hesitate one moment: the people who are making it really big in mail order are the ones that understand and apply this concept. The principle that lies behind this is that finding a customer is very expensive.

You sold something for $10 or $20 and then what? Do you forget about your new customer? No!! The true way to make money is, once you made the sale, to supply that customer with additional related products.

There is no reason why you shouldn't do this. Sure, it's extra work. It would be easier to make a sale, take the money and run. But that's just too good to be true. Many folks still think that there are ways to make money the easy way, with no work at all, making a million in one week and then spending the rest of their lives in the Caribbean.

Once you get a customer, it is so easy to get extra earnings from further sales that it's foolish not to offer him more products. You'd be letting go of the real bulk of your profit.

I stress the fact that they must be related products. Here's why: If someone buys a book from you on "secret inexpensive advertising methods", it wouldn't be wise to then send him/her an advertisement on "computer software". That person is now more likely to be interested in buying a report on "the biggest mistakes to avoid" or he might be now looking for renting a name list to mail out his recently published booklet. Get the picture? This is the idea (which you might have heard of before) of a "Product Line". You don't need to offer expensive items and expensive sales brochures to follow this procedure successfully. Prepare an informative set of circulars of reports, or books, on a certain general subject like, for example, the ever popular "making money in mail order", which is a safe subject to get into (most people are interested in making money from their homes).

Mail order is a hot business, not only for big companies but also for the little guy who starts from his kitchen table. But the only way the small mail order operator can find his way to big earnings is to specialize in a certain area. Your sales literature should offer products from a certain category, and mailed to a specifically targeted group of people. Therefore, you are minimizing expenses and increasing the probabilities of making more sales per piece mailed.

Think about this: If you mail 1000 envelopes to a list of names you just rented, it costs you exactly the same money, if you send out a circular offering a book than if you send along 4-5 circulars offering related reports, or books, etc. OK, you spent some extra bucks on printing those other circulars, but you spent the same money on postage and on the names lists. But if your potential customer is not interested in that single item you offered, you just threw away all that money. However, if you mailed out 4, 5 or 10 different offers you have a much better chance of pulling one... or more orders.

In conclusion: the odds of making money are against you. They will be in your favor only when you have more than one product to offer, or better yet, 4, 5 or more. Specialize in one particular field. Target to that specific market through specialized publications or mailing lists. Conduct a decent business in order to keep people satisfied and having to buy more products from you. If you put all this small extra effort you will be highly rewarded with a profitable share of this huge mail order market.

Copyright 2004 by DeAnna Spencer

DeAnna is the publisher of the ezine, Prospecting and Presents.
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