By
Pat Flanagan
If
you're involved in any type of business where you sell products or
services,
you should know that you need to sell more than one product to be
successful. Of course, there have been exceptions, like
the Pet Rock, but
those
are few and far between. You see, if you
only sell one product, you
need
to find those prospective customers that want that one product. Add a
second
product, and you've opened the door to customers who want it, but
not
your first product. Add a third, and you
have more prospects, and so
on.
You
can present your products or services through separate ads or flyers,
but
it's really more efficient and professional to have a CATALOG. That
way,
your customer can see all you have to offer in one place, instead of
one
ad here, another there. Having a catalog
will increase the orders you
receive,
since your customers have more choices and you can show them
everything
in one mailing. There's just one
problem...
Catalogs
are expensive.
If
you're thinking of putting together even an eight page catalog, call
your
local printer and ask for a price. Get a
quote on 1,000, since you'll
want
to have enough. My best printer would charge
$150, which would be 15
cents
per catalog. Then, you have the mailing
cost, which would be 52
cents. You're now up to 67 cents per catalog. Add in the cost of getting
the
name to send the catalog to, and you could be over a dollar per
catalog. That means over $1,000 to print and send out
all your catalogs!
Worse
news to come... you won't get rich from
an eight page catalog. If
you
really intend on making it in your own business, you'd better offer at
least
20 related products or services (or a combination). That way, you
can
hit a specific group of people and have a good chance of getting a
decent
return. But if an eight page catalog
would cost over $1,000 to
print
and mail, think about a 20 page catalog!
Printing alone would be
$375
or more!
You
can reduce your printing and postage costs significantly by having your
catalog
printed on a web press on newsprint. The
only problem with that
is,
you need to print a higher quantity to make it worthwhile. Figure on
at
least 10,000.
There's
an easier, less expensive way to do this...
PUT
YOUR CATALOG ON A DISK!
A
5 1/4" 360K IBM-compatible disk will hold around a 70 page catalog, if
you
do it right! 70 PAGES!!! The higher storage disks will, of course,
hold
more! Your customer will receive your
disk catalog, put it into their
computer,
and will be able to view full descriptions of your products and
services
on their screen. They'll even be able to
print out an order form!
Right
away, let's look at costs. For a 360K 5
1/4" disk catalog, the disk
will
cost 10 cents (that's right, only 10 cents - I'll reveal the source
for
this low price later in this report).
Next comes postage - 52 cents.
You're
at 62 cents. Your cost for securing the
name to send your catalog
to
is the same as above.
You
might be thinking, great, this saves me a big NICKEL! BIG DEAL!
Well,
it
IS a big deal, and I'll tell you why.
One
cost that I didn't figure in is storage.
If you have a bunch of
catalogs
printed (especially if you had 10,000 or more newsprint catalogs),
you're
going to have to put them somewhere.
With a disk catalog, you can
copy
them as you need them. No need to have
1,000 made up in advance,
unless
you really want to!
Also,
keep in mind the storage capacity of the disk.
If you wanted a 68
page
printed catalog, whew, it would break you, unless you have pretty deep
pockets. A dime will get you one on disk.
Finally,
consider this... you have 10,000 of your
fantastic catalog
printed. You start mailing them. All of a sudden, you discover you have
to
change the price of one of your products.
Or, the source for a product
dries
up. Or, you want to add a new product or
service. TOO BAD! You're
stuck
with the catalogs the way they are. With
a disk catalog, NO PROBLEM!
You
make the change on your master copy, and all subsequent catalogs are
instantly
up-to-date.
See
the advantages? You can sell your
products just as well with a disk
catalog
as with a printed one. In fact, people
will keep your catalog
around
longer, due to it's uniqueness (disk catalogs are just starting to
be
used).
So,
how can you get your own high-powered order-pulling disk catalog?
Well,
two ways... you can make one yourself,
or you can have an expert put
one
together for you, saving you the time and effort. I'll explain how
it's
done, and then you can make the choice.
First,
you need to write your product/service descriptions. Use any word
processor
that can save documents as "ASCII" files. These are plain text
files
that can be written and read by most word processors, or directly
from
DOS (by typing "TYPE (ASCII filename)"). You'll want to apply all the
principles
of successful marketing copy writing in your descriptions.
Center
them around the benefits the customer will receive from your product
or
service. Don't list features, list how
the customer's life will be
better
because of the features. Don't worry
about length, you have plenty
of
room on your disk! Also, you aren't
constrained by how many words will
fit
on the page, because your catalog will be viewed on the screen, and
will
only be printed if the customer desires to do so. Save each of your
descriptions
as a separate ASCII file.
After
you have your descriptions typed and saved, you can assemble your
catalog
on disk. You will need some sort of
program to let your customers
choose
which product they want to read about, and to display and print it.
The
best programs I have found, which I use on my disk catalog (and on this
report
disk) are "MooMenu" (a menuing program) and "See" (a text
file
viewing
and printing program). These programs
are public domain (they are
free
to copy and use), and they work together extremely well. Another
option
is to use the program "Writer's Dream," a shareware program designed
for
producing books on disk. I'll use the
MooMenu and See programs for the
example
to follow.
First,
you need to make a menu of your products and services. This is the
"table
of contents" the reader uses. With
MooMenu, you construct your menu
with
your word processor. For each menu
selection, you start with a
letter,
then the name. For example,
"A. The Super Widget." Then, on the
next
line, you would type an execution command that would direct your text
viewer
program to display the appropriate text file.
For example, "SEE
WIDGET.TXT". This command will not appear on screen with
the menu. Do
this
for all your catalog items. You will
have plenty of room on your
screen,
so you should plan out an attractive heading that shows the name of
your
catalog, the issue or date information, and your business name and
address.
Now,
create your order form in the same fashion.
Type it on the screen in
your
word processor and save it as an ASCII file.
Don't forget to put your
name
and address, as well as any ordering and shipping information you'll
need
from your customer, on the form.
If
you have more products or services than will fit on a single screen, you
will
need to create a second sub-menu that will be called from your first
menu. For example, your second menu screen might be
called "MENU2.MOO".
You
would put a selection on your menu, such as "More Products & Services".
The
next menu command line you'd type would be "MOO MENU2.MOO". The MOO at
the
start of that command tells the MooMenu program that you want it to
display
a new menu. The second menu functions
like the first.
For
an example of a menu of this sort, look at my disk catalog, which is
included
on this report disk, as well as the report menu itself.
When
your menu is created, save it as instructed in your menuing program.
My
catalog disk contains a "batch file" (a group of commands) called
"GO.BAT"
that starts the program. Here is what
the batch file looks like:
ECHO
OFF
CLS
SET
MOO=%2
MOO1
1 %1
IF
ERRORLEVEL=3 MOO$%MOO%
CD\
The
first two lines keep commands from reading out on the screen, so it's
blank. The third, fourth, and fifth lines are used
by the MooMenu program,
and
have to be there. The last line puts the
reader back at the root
directory
after exiting.
The
customer inserts the disk, types "go" and presses return (like you
did,
with
this disk). The menu then appears. The reader can either press the
letter
corresponding to the item they wish to read, or they can move the
onscreen
cursor with the arrow keys to the item they are interested in. If
they
would like to print the description, they can press "p" while the
description
is loaded and it will print. To leave
the description and
return
to the menu, they would press the escape key.
It's fairly simple
and
requires little or no instructions to the reader.
Assembling
your catalog on disk doesn't require a bunch of glue, cutting,
pasting,
typesetting, printing, or any other of the hard-work jobs that
traditional
publishing requires. All you have to do
is copy your
description
files onto a disk, as well as your menu file(s), an dyour
menuing
and displaying/printing programs. I'm
able to fit the MooMenu and
See
programs on a 360K disk and still have room for around 70 pages of
text,
so you shouldn't run into any space limitations. Then, produce a
label
for the disk, either from a professional printer or a laser or dot
matrix
printer (I do mine on a laser printer and they come out
beautifully!). That's it!
You've
now reached the production/distribution stage.
Copy your disks,
label
them, and send them out! Here are some
money-saving ideas that will
help
your cash flow:
+ Try with all your might to keep your shipping
weight under one ounce.
It's easy to do that with a 5 1/4"
disk, as the disk, sleeve, a
cardboard stiffener (a 5" x 5"
square of stiff cardboard that protects
the disk) and a lightweight envelope weigh
just a hair under one ounce,
in general.
Shop around for the right envelope.
I use 6" x 9" white
24# catalog envelopes. 3 1/2" disks will automatically cost 52
cents to
mail, due to their weight.
+ Don't use disk mailers. They're heavy and expensive. You can send your
disk in a regular envelope if you use a
cardboard stiffener. Mark on
the outside of the envelope in the largest
print possible, "HAND CANCEL
ONLY - DISK ENCLOSED - DO NOT
BEND!" I feed my envelopes through
my
laser printer, which prints my return
address and the hand canceling
phrase in large white on black letters along
the bottom of the envelope.
I've only had one damaged disk the whole
time I've been doing this!
See, it's cheaper in the long run to send
another out, than to spend
five times as much on the mailer itself, and
at least twice the postage,
on every single disk mailed.
+ If you have room left on the disk, consider
adding an informational
report or reports that would be of value to
your consumer. This will
increase the likelihood that the customer
will keep your catalog for a
longer period of time.
(By
the way, here's that source for inexpensive disks I promised... CRAZY
BOB'S
(yes, that's actually their name!), 50 New Salem St., Wakefield, MA
01880 (800) 776-5865. I order my disks through them, and they're
great!
At
the time this report was written, you could get 100 5 1/4" 360K disks
for
only $13 (13 cents each); 1,000 disks
gets a price break to $99, or
only
9.9 cents per disk! They have all
storage sizes of floppy disks, and
they
also carry used disks, which they guarantee fully, and are much
cheaper
than new disks! Call them today for
their catalog and current
pricing!)
THINK
YOU CAN DO THIS?
If
not, don't feel bad. Unless you're
comfortable going beyond just using
a
program on your computer to actually construct one, you may not want to
spend
hours upon hours trying to do this by yourself.
If that's the case,
I'm
here to help!
By
now, you've probably seen MY disk catalog, contained on this disk. (If
you
haven't looked at it, please exit this report and take a look now...
you
can pick up where you left off after that).
Would you like your
products
and services featured in a catalog like this?
I bet you would.
At
the risk of sounding like I'm tooting my own horn, I know what I'm
doing,
and I can put together a successful disk catalog for you. Here's
what
you need to do:
Send
me a description of what you'd like your catalog to be like. Let me
know
how many products and services you'd want in it. Let me know if you
have
the selling copy already written, or if you need me to write it. If
your
selling copy is already written, is it on disk or paper (I'm an
expensive
typist!)? Finally, let me know if you'd
like a plain order form
with
your name and address at the top and lines for the customer to write
their
order on, or if you'd like a checklist type order form, which can
help
bring in more sales.
When
I receive your information, I'll evaluate it, and will send a detailed
quote. It won't be cheap, but it won't break your
budget, either. Then,
you
just need to let me know when you're ready to start!
**********************************************************************
*
*
*
IMPORTANT NOTE: Putting together a disk
catalog DOES take a good *
*
amount of time, even for a seasoned veteran like myself. For that *
*
reason, I have to limit the number of catalog jobs I take on at *
*
one time. It's first come, first served
here. If I can't get to *
*
your catalog right away, I'll let you know when I'll be able to *
*
produce your catalog, if at all. *
*
*
**********************************************************************
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