What Makes A Mail Order Catalog Successful?

Does the job sound prestigious to you? If so _ you have never been a

Publisher; especially a mail order Publisher. Overhead expenses for printing

and mailing are financially draining and every month you are held to

stringent deadlines. You also must know what you're doing to generate enough

paid advertising to meet expenses for every single issue. Sometimes, you

have to take a big loss and end up spending your own money just to get the

issue out. Yes - there is a bad side to being a Publisher!

But if you are just starting out and you want to become a Publisher, you

should start small and get your "feet wet." One easy and excellent way to

start your publishing career is to start your own short and simple 3x6" or

5x8" unclassified ad column.

Choose a publication that you wish to run your small unclassified ad column

in. Try and start with a minimum 20,000 circulation. Select some well-known

publishers who advertise in adsheets and tabloids and print their ads

instead. Make sure they get a copy of your unclassified ad column with a

note explaining that you ran their ad free of charge so they could give your

publication a try. Most of these advertisers will send you a paid order back

because they will appreciate your generosity.

However, they will also tell others about you and generate free word-of-mouth

advertising. Word soon gets out about people who try to help others and your

business booms! Publishing any type of publication that is dominated by your

own ads certainly shows that you are a new publication without any

advertisers. This is bad publicity _ especially since this is your first

issue and you're trying buying something is satisfied and makes a repeat

purchase. In fact, newcomers are eager to learn and will buy anything to get

started learning. By taking advantage of them only means that you will make

one sale in that person's lifetime. But if the product is good and worthwhile

they will order from you again and again. Many newcomers today will be big

businesses tomorrow. And I'm sure if a newcomer found a honest company that

really helped them break into the mail order field they would continue to do

business with them when they really did make millions of dollars. See what I

mean? The back-end sales for a lifetime would be worth the investment.

I'm not saying that you can take a piece of "junk mail" claiming to make the

person $1 million in 30 days or less and turn it into a valuable and

worthwhile product. Since this is a downright lie, there is no way to market

this honestly. However _ you can study the piece of "junk mail" to determine

what words and phrases were used and how the ad is written so you can

understand how to present a REAL product that people will be eager to buy.

Then, pass the word and tell every new person you come into contact with

about these pie-in-the-sky-schemes. You might even want to try writing to

some of the people listed on the chain letters. Explain how all this "junk

mail" only appeals to their emotional needs and how the company who

originally wrote these materials are USING them to only get their money.

If everyone passed along this information _ it wouldn't take very many years

before we could put a stop to all this nonsense.