Mail Order How-To's
By DeAnna Spencer

Listing names of Big Mail Requestors, and sending out packages of Big Mail is an easy way to get your start in the business of selling by mail.There are a number of mail order operators pulling in an easy, extra thousand dollars a month, by what you'd hardly call work - doing nothing more than receiving money for advertising a list of people's names interested in receiving Big Mails, and sending out envelopes stuffed to overflowing with Big Mail.

Regardless of where you live - you age - teenager or senior citizen - man or woman - there is no reason you can't do the same - pull in extra thousand dollars a month, with the same idea.

Getting started is not as easy as turning on a water tap, but then your initial investment will amount to practically nothing - and the requirements upon your time should not amount to more than a few hours a week

First, let's define the market - Who wants Big Mails, and why they want it...  Big Mails are wanted or should be wanted, by just about every person in business, especially those involved in selling a product via the mails, in order to keep himself abreast of who's doing what, how they're doing it, the new offers being made and the newcomers to the business.  The reasoning is because of the time and postage saved by automatically receiving all of this information, as opposed to writing and mailing letters to each individual offer you see that arouses your interest, not to mention the time saved in searching through all the different publications to discover these things.  Some people - the dreamers and the lonely - like to receive Big Mails simply for the sake of having mail delivered to them every day.  There's no sure way of determining which of your Big Mail Requestors these people are - so you just forget about it, and send your Big Mails to everybody on your list.  Besides, the actual number of people in this category are fewer than you might suspect. 

Now, let's define what's inside a Big Mail Package you or your buyers - Big Mail Requestors - will be receiving in the mail...  Generally, you'll find at least one, but usually several publications:  ad sheets, tabloid mail order newspapers, and an occasional newsletter.  The rest is almost always a collection of various product advertising circulars.  At least two of these circulars will be from the person sending the package to you in the first place.

Many, if not most of the beginners in this business, first get their name listed as a Big Mail Requestor, on as many Big Mails Wanted lists as possible.  They even save the mail they receive, and once a week, every other week, or once a month, they stuff their accumulated Big Mail into individual envelopes and send it to the names on their lists of people who have paid to be listed as Big Mail Requestors. Don't forget - All Big Mail suppliers always include at least a couple of two-sided circulars of their own.  These are usually Commission

Circulars - product advertising circulars, sometimes provided by a prime source or distributor with a blank space on the reply coupon for the dealer doing mailing to rubber stamp his business name and address.  More often than not, the distributor furnished the dealer with "camera ready" copies of circulars to use. 

The dealer takes these C/R's to a quick print shop, and has several thousand copies made up with his business name and address imprinted on each     circular.

Every time you send out a package of Big Mail, always include two advertising circulars of your own - circulars that may interest the recipient and cause him or her to send to you for the product or service offered. These can be commission - dropship - products, or products that you have devised, produced and are selling.

 Incidentally, the best way to go with commission circulars is to ask for or get a camera-ready copy of the original, and have a large quantity of them printed locally with your name in place of the supplier.  This will save you hours of very boring work entailed in rubber-stamping your name on several thousand circulars.  If for whatever reason it's too expensive to get your circulars printed locally, then check around for a printer who does business by mail, and will make your circulars for you with your name and address on the ordering coupon.  Also, it will almost always pay for you to have the printer fold your circulars for you before he ships them to you - he can do it all in about an hour, while it could take you a couple of days to a week or longer to fold 5,000 circulars yourself.

 You can include as many product circulars in your package of Big Mail as you want, but  It's been proven time and time again that three very good - outstanding - circulars, all related to the same idea, bring back more responses than an envelope overflowing with circulars.  What I'm saying is that a circular inviting the recipient to send for Book #317, "How to Make Money Writing & Selling Simple Information," plus a circular on Book #365, "$50,000 a Year from Mail Order Ads," will pull far more inquiries than 10 or 12 different circulars inviting the recipient to send for a mixture of related items. The reason is quite simple - After about 3 circulars, you begin to overwhelm the recipient with opportunities.  In reality, he'd like all of the books you are offering, but he only wants to spend so much and therefore, he's faced with a decision of which ones to send for - and more often than not, he ends up not sending for any of them.

 Including a mini-catalog listing of your offerings if quite different, and generally acceptable to most people receiving big mail packages, or product advertising in the mail.  Generally, this is regarded as not so much loose paper and something they can hang onto for awhile and maybe order from, much the same as they order from a JC Penny catalog.

  When you've got your name listed on a number of lists as a Big Mail Requestor, and after you've got a steady supply of this kind of mail coming to you, start placing ads of your own in some of the larger circulation ad sheets and other mail order publications as a Big Mail Supplier.  For ideas on ads to use, glance through any mail order publication and come up with one you think will bring the most replies in.

 Now you're on your way with the basic plan and "know-how" for a fast start as a Big Mail Supplier. In order to expand your big mail operations into a real money-making business, compile a list of magazines, newsletters, mail order tabloids and ad sheets.  Then draft a letter to these publishers, advising them that you can supply them with several hundred prospective subscribers each month.

 Explain that your prospects come from responses to national advertising, which you run at no cost to them, the publishers:  Go on to explain that your national advertising offers Free Trial Subscriptions to the nation's leading money-making publications, and that you feel your list will be incomplete without his publication...

 Sweeten the pot further by detailing how you'll be sending the names and addresses of these fresh prospects on peel 'n stick labels - that these mailing lists will belong to him on receipt - and that you encourage him to copy them for follow up mailings...

 You charge each of these publishers $100 a year for this service, and even when you have 100-150 signed, keep looking for and attempting to sign more publishers.

 Don't ever stop soliciting publishers, and go after the biggest as well as the very smallest of them With a number of accounts signed and paid, you place an ad such as the following, in several national publications:

  FILL YOUR MAILBOX WITH OPPORTUNITY!
  World's leading Money-Making publications!
  Free trial subscriptions!  $2 for processing to: 
  (Your name & address).

When the responses to your ads come in, type the names and addresses onto "master" sheets or put them into your computer systems as respondents to your advertising.  Sometime around the 15th of each month, copy your masters onto the number of customer sheets of labels you need, and send them out.  You bank the money from your advertising respondents.

One hundred publishers times $100 each means $10,000 per year...  A minimum of 200 respondents to your advertising each month means another $4,800 per year  And then, by contracting with a reputable list broker to handle the rental of the

"HOT" names you accumulate each month, you should be able to double or triple these figures...  And $30,000 income your first year in the Big Mail business is nothing to "cry about" at all!!!

 Meanwhile you've got all these new prospects, to whom you can send your own sales materials  You can also expand your services and become a subscription agency, a publications distributor, or even a mail order publications Advertising Agency...

 You could compile, publish and sell directories of newsletters, tabloids and ad sheets...  Directories of Mail Order Associations...  Mailing lists of people wanting Big Mails...  or mailing lists of people wanting Commission Circulars.

Copyright 2004 by DeAnna Spencer
.

Are you content with your advertising budget?
Schedule a coaching session with Frugal Solutions Expert, DeAnna Spencer.
She will design an affordable online advertising plan for you.
Contact her by sending an email to deanna.spencer(at)gmail.com
Visit this small business resource for more information.
Dead Link Sep 25

click for top

Privacy Policy and Legal