Hey, by the way, I jogged the hill 4 times (non-stop) yesterday!
Well, anyway, I myself, have recently been thumbing through the "SRDS" book and an interesting idea has occurred to me. There is, as you shall see when you start using the book, a big section devoted to compiled lists. All compiled lists are, by the way, names and addresses of people or businesses or institutions or whatever that have something in common.
For example: brick layers, architects, chiropractors, churches, businesses who do a $500,000 gross every year, business who do $1,000,000 every year, YMCA's, police stations, veteran purchasing agents, etc., etc.
O.K., here's my idea: What if you took the following headline:
How You Can
Make Extra Money
And, then you customize it to something like: "How Architects Can Make Extra Money" or "How Churches Can Make Extra Money" or "How Chiropractors Can Make Extra Money" etc., etc.
Now, let's say that we hire somebody to write a little report for us. The first part of the report tells about certain little-known techniques for making and investing money that anybody can use. The second part of the book would contain money making techniques that would uniquely apply to a particular group of people such as architects or chiropractors. (By the way, chiropractors are greedy so they would be one of my first targets!)
Anyhow, let's say our report is finished and so, now, we write a letter incorporating the idea that I previously expressed in those sample headlines. Perhaps the letter would start out like this:
Dr. Charles L. Davidson
1016 Ocean Ave.
Santa Monica, CA 90402
Dear Dr. Davidson,
I am writing to you because I have discovered a great new way for doctors of chiropractic to make a great deal of extra money.
It's really incredible and I am surprised no one has thought of it before. Here's what it is all about: blah blah, blah.
The letter would, of course, go on to describe the report and ask him to buy a copy.
Now, let's supposed we sell the report for $20.00 and let us further suppose that when we mail our letters we find that we get a very modest 4% response.
Now for the numbers. I'm going to stop here a moment and check the "SRDS" and see how many bone snappers there are.
STOP 11:07 AM
START AGAIN
11:11 AM
That took 4 minutes. There are more than 33,000 chiropractors we can mail to. Now, let's figure it will cost us $400 per thousand (M) to mail out our letters. That's $400 per M x 33M or a total mail out cost of $13,200. Now at a 4% response we will get 1,320 orders. Multiply 1,320 orders times $20.00 per order and we will have total sales of $26,400. When we subtract our mailing cost of $13,200 from our sales revenue we have left $13,200. Now we must also subtract our cost of filling the orders. Since it shouldn't cost more than $4.00 apiece on the outside our total fulfillment cost will be $4.00 per order times 1,320 orders or $5,280.00. When we subtract this figure from the $13,200 we have left we will be left with a net profit of $9,920.00.
Not a fortune but not to be sneezed at either. Especially when you consider that what I have described is less than 30-days work.
But, if this idea actually works, we have something much more valuable
STOP 11:21
START AGAIN
11:23
than our $9,920.00 profit. Yes indeed, my boy. You see, if this idea works what we have is a "winning formula"!
You see, my son, what we can do is keep the first section of our report the same and then customize the last half of the report (it will probably be more like the last 1/3) for different groups. Then, of course, the first line of our letter will talk about a great new way for plumbers to make extra money. Or architects. Or brick layers. Or preachers. Or dentists. Etc., etc.
Mucho bucks!
What'dya think of that? Right here before your eyes your old man has, during his lunch hour, come up with a brand new money maker!
No wonder they call me "The Legend."
More later.
STOP 11:29
START AGAIN
12:12
Seriously, what I have just described seems to me like a good idea and, more importantly, it helps a little to illustrate, as I said earlier, how to think about mail order!
It also illustrates the important concept of customization. As a general rule, the more "custom tailored" your promotion is the more successful it will be.
For example, suppose you get a letter in the mail that says: "Dear Occupant, Here is news about a great new way to make money. Etc., etc., etc."
Mildly interesting. But now read this!
Dear Bond,
Here is a great new way for 16 year old kids to make money. Blah, blah, blah, etc., etc., etc.
Quite a difference, right? Just imagine that you were to receive such a letter on or right after June 26. It sure would get your attention much more than the first letter, wouldn't it?
And notice this: The second letter is not only customized (at is for 16 year olds) it is also personalized because it refers to you by name. The "Dear Bond" and the "16 year old kids" part of the letter really zeroes in on you, doesn't it?
Here's another example of customization. Suppose you were writing an ad about a book that tells how to buy real estate with no money down. Your headline might look something like this:
How To Buy Real Estate
With No Money Down
Now let's boogie. Try this on for size!
How To Buy L.A. Real Estate
With No Money Down
Much better, eh? As a matter of fact I did write an ad for such a book and I did customize the ad and it did work much better.
Know this: Ideas breed other ideas.
For example, it just occurred to me that in addition to offering chiropractors, plumbers and so on a customized way to make money, we could also offer them a customized way to buy real estate. And, in this case, perhaps the first line in our letter might be: "Dear Doctor X, Here's a unique way L.A. chiropractors can purchase California real estate with no money down. Etc., etc."
I LOVE YOU AND
Good Luck
Dad
STOP 12:31
UPDATE:
This technique is more powerful than ever because there is a trade off with great customization. Changing headlines for each paper cost extra money which is no longer the case.
Also, your goal with customization is to customize the letter until the extra cost is doesn’t make up for the additional profits.
Nowadays it is so cheap to segment and customize online promotions by interest, sex, age, location etc. and it’s cheap to customize headlines and subjectlines.
You can easily afford to set up a sales page with a headline like “Where To Hide Your Gold Coins At Home!” for traffic from gold buyers and then set up another page with a headline “Where To Hide Your Diamond Ring” for people who just bought rings.
Customization is so cheap and most the other guys fail to use a lot of it so this is an excellent way to lick the competition.
more free letters at halbertising.com
The Boron Letters
Chapter 10
Thursday, 9:12 a.m.
June 21, 1984
Dear Bond,
Well, here I sit for the second day in a row starting my letter to you without knowing exactly what I am going to write about.
B. tells me there seems to be some confusion over my gambling deal with (name deleted) in Las Vegas. This has me upset. I am trying to get (name deleted) on the telephone and clear up this matter. Unfortunately, though, it is clouding my mind at the moment.
Yesterday, as you will recall, I just started writing and, lo and behold, something excellent came out. You know Bond, that fact contains a lesson in itself.
And the lesson is that when you get stuck or emotionally jammed up one of the ways to get yourself unclogged and flowing again is just to keep moving. Run. Walk. Jog. Write. Do the dishes. Or what
ever. But don't sit around waiting for a flash from Heaven.
It doesn't work that way. Not often anyway. The key is movement!
Let's see now. Hopefully I've got you doing road work, strengthening your muscles, fasting one day a week and eating well plus interfacing (isn't that a dandy buzzword?) with hot mail order publications and the "SRDS" list book.
What's next? I know. Let's start teaching you how to actually create an ad or a good direct mail promotion. Here's how to get started. The first thing I'd like you to do is get a hold of two books. One is "Scientific Advertising" by Claude Hopkins and the other is "The Robert Collier Letter Book" by Robert Collier. Ask B. and Eric for help with getting these books. Read both of these books. Read "The Robert Collier Letter Book" two times and read "Scientific Advertising" three times. The first time you read these books do so at your own pace. Don't take notes. Just read for enjoyment. However, after the first reading, I want you to take notes as you read the books the second and third times.
O.K., the next thing you need to do is get yourself a copy of my book that has "2001 Headlines" and read it. Then get Ben Suarez's book "SuperBiz" and read the headlines in his book. Keep going.
Make yourself a collection (a "swipe file") of good ads and good DM pieces and read them and take notes. (Eric and B. can help.)
Alright, now, after all this you should be ready to start the process. Let's concentrate on DM. Here's how to create a DM promotion from scratch:
Step 1 - Keep going through the "SRDS" book and looking at lists until you find one that you want to try to work.
Step 2 - Let's pretend you have chosen a list of people who have bought a book on how to make money in real estate. Now what you need to do is get three or four hot books in investing in real estate and read them and take notes.
Step 3 - OK now, you should get as many DM pieces and space ads on real estate investing you can find. Read these and take notes.
Step 4 - By now ideas will be churning around in your mind because you have fed your brain a lot of good stuff to work with. What you do at this point is go back and review your notes from "The Robert Collier Letter Book" and "Scientific Advertising" and read those headlines again.
Now, by now, I can almost guarantee that a central selling idea will have emerged from your cunning little mind.
Now, I don't know what that idea will be but let's say you have figured out how to personalize and customize your real estate investment offer as I discussed yesterday. And now, let's say your idea is to promise your potential customer that you are going to tell him how to buy real estate in his area with no money down. Then, your letter might start something like this:
Dear Mr. X,
Did you know that there is now a way to buy L.A. real estate without making any down payment whatsoever? Etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.
Of course, that first sentence will be customized for every customer depending where he lives. Note: In this example I am assuming we are using computer letters. So, anyway, the letters would say
"to buy L.A. real estate"
Or
"to buy Detroit real estate"
Or
"to buy Key West real estate"
Etc., etc. Now, pay attention. Let's examine a way to "double customize" this offer. Let's say we have found a list of people in a specific occupation who like to invest such as cardiologists for example. Now, let's start our letter like this:
Dear Dr. X,
Did you know that there is now a way for a cardiologist to buy L.A. real estate without making any down payment whatsoever?
Etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.
Bullseye! O.K. Now we've got the list picked out, we've got an idea for a product and we've got our central selling idea and we are now ready for:
Step 5 - What you do at this point is create your product and here is how you do it. First you go back to those books on real estate investing and you extract in outline form all the good ideas in these books. Then you pick out the best of the ideas and overlay them with the ideas you will have by now come up with yourself. Next you arrange these ideas in some logical form and you start writing. Please remember, what we are creating here is a report NOT a book. I figure it should be something like 100 typewritten pages.
Now, please remember this: If you do this properly you will have created something of considerable value. After all, what you will have done (hopefully) is taken a few good books on real estate investing and stripped away the garbage and created a tight informative roadmap to real estate riches. Hey, how about that? Didn't I tell you that if you just keep flowing that something of value will emerge? Just look what has just slipped out of my mind! Did you catch it?
The Amazing L.A. Roadmap
To Real Estate Riches!
Not bad, eh? Now, we've got the title for our report!
More tomorrow.
STOP 10:12 AM
I LOVE YOU AND
GOOD LUCK!
Dad
UPDATE:
With ebooks and the explosion in self-publishing it is much harder to stand out and this is where just a little work pays off big.
You see, the market is saturated with information products merely rephrasing what most of the industry leaders say but…
A little originality is goes a long way in promoting your info products and is very easy to come by.
In fact, it’s nearly impossible to go through any learning curve and not wish you had known something right from the start or discovered a slightly better way of doing something.
These original ideas become your unique solution or hook!
For example, I play around with a website just to use as a learning tool for myself and my daughter.
One day I pretended I was my own client looking to raise my click through rate.
I decided to toss in a picture, give the photo a tittle and make both the title and the pic a link.
This was back when most everyone said this would kill the click through rate but I didn’t care because this is a testing ground.
Thank god I didn’t listen because the CTR went up 400% and I have been adding compelling pics to my emails ever since.
Just messing with the email system, I learned a lot of valuable things I think people should learn first.
I could write a valuable report titled “Email marketing: What To Learn First and Who To learn It From.”
Now once your solution is unique, you spread the word quickly and publicly so you get credit for being an early adopter and…….
Until you are ripped off……you will enjoy a serious leg up on the competition.
You won’t have to struggle for an answer to how your course is different from the others.
To peruse markets, I’d also suggest Clickbank, Amazon, The New York Times Non-Fiction Best Sellers list BUT ONLY PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT STAYS ON TOP WITHOUT BEING FREE!
There are a lot of $1 best sellers and people who climbed the ranks for a day or two by switching the book to free and then turning it back to charging.
These places will let you know what info markets are hot and sometimes you can see cross-over ideas others don’t because they are married to one subject.
I’d also like to add that it is easier than ever to make money working with subjects you love because it is so much easier to target a lot of customers into very odd or strange things.
Look at it this way, if your true passion in life was only shared with 1% of the people you run into.
The USA alone has an estimated 315,000,000 people and 1% would leave you 3.15 million potential customers.
And, let’s suppose you are into something really whack and only 1 in 1,000 people would buy your product.
No, let’s pretend you are so vile and deviant only 1 in 10,000 people feel the same desire.
That’s still a potential pool of 31,500 people with the same crazy thinking you have and that’s just in the USA.
In fact, I bet it will be hard to find competition is in such a highly-targeted
and bizarre subject which means it will be even easier for you to dominate that market and finding those customers is easier than ever so work with a subject you love.
more free letters at halbertising.com
The Boron Letters
Chapter 11
Friday, 9:07 AM
June 22, 1984
Dear Bond,
As I left you yesterday, we had just came up with a working title for our real estate investment report. I believe it was "The Amazing L.A. Roadmap To Real Estate Riches!"
The Boron Letters Page 6