Introduction

‘You … A Mailorder Master Making Mailorder Millions?’

Some of you will be cringing each time I write ‘mailorder.’

“That’s not how you spell it, why does he keep writing it that way?‘

I said the same thing when I studied an American called Jim Straw who had made his fortune in mailorder.

As a mailorder marketer with over 700,000 customers worldwide, he has sold over two hundred & fifty million dollars ($250,000,000) worth of products and services by mail.

He explains later why he writes it that way and I agree with him so you’ll just have to live with it!

I gave a graphic illustration in The Omniscience Principle of how two builders given the same tools can end up with vastly differing results.

The next couple of sections are dedicated to the art of mailorder. I have studied many of the world’s top masters; part of my success is a testimony to the formulas devised by them. I am going to share with you exactly how these people established great fortunes via the mail.

Why would I do that in the age of email and the Internet? Because mailorder is as relevant today as it’s always been. It’s still an extremely valuable way to get your marketing message out when done well.

You will learn EXACTLY how they did it … mailorder will become yet another weapon in your marketing armory.

Once you get to the end of this section the only difference between you and the Mailorder Masters will be that they used the formulas and got rich … You have the same formulas and ‘could’ get rich … if you use them!

I promise, you will have everything they ever had to make their fortunes. The same applies to all the information I give you.

One module has taught you all about licensing. Bill Gates became the world’s richest man partly by licensing his DOS system. Once you read that module, the only difference between you and Bill … the only difference, is a few billion dollars!

He didn’t inherit that money. He followed a formula; a formula that had been around for years and used by thousands of people before him, thousands of people. Some had done well; some had failed.

Bill took that same formula and worked it. He worked it like no other human being has done before.

The Wealthness Blog gives you the systems used by the top 5% of the population to accumulate 95% of the world’s wealth.

Choose just one, work it like no other human being has ever done before and in your lifetime, you could become one of the world’s high achievers.

The things I can’t give you are the missing ingredients you have to add to the formulae:

Passion, obsession, guile, grit, determination … I can’t make you a cockroach. All I can do is light the touch paper to that bomb in your head.

You … A Mailorder master Making Mailorder Millions?

It may surprise you to know that virtually everything published about online marketing has its roots firmly embedded in mailorder.

OK, things have got more technical, cheaper and easier with the net so people have gone for the ‘easy’ option!

Nothing wrong in that but in totally jumping aboard the Internet Express they’ve totally abandoned what remains one of the most lucrative areas of marketing ever developed.

Many Internet marketers have seen the Glory Days of Internet marketing and e-mail promotions slip into a dark and distant memory.

A couple of years ago, making cash was a simple case of banging out a few e-mails and watching the account fill – What with spam blockers, junk filters and arrogant ISPs filtering out legitimate marketing it’s now so much more difficult!

So, it may surprise you to know that many ‘Top Gurus’ are now going back to good old, reliable offline terra firma.

Obviously, they’re still running online campaigns and keeping up with all that’s new but they’ve decided that mailorder is a great addition to their marketing efforts … I never left it!

I started out in mailorder and added the Internet to my marketing arsenal.

I have studied many books and attended umpteen seminars by mailorder millionaires who, in turn, have studied many books and attended umpteen seminars by mailorder millionaires.

I would go as far as to say that I am pretty well versed in the art of mailorder and have formed my own theories based on the knowledge gleaned from experience and mentors.

I am going to share with you what I feel are the best elements of several different attitudes towards mailorder. I know what has worked for others and have applied those systems to my business … they work!

They work better than anything you will learn at college or by conventional means; awesome systems developed in the field.

I had a conventional education; I have a higher diploma in graphics and advertising. Most of what I learned at school was utter bullshit … if what the lecturers taught about ‘making it’ actually worked, then surely there’d be no lecturers … they’d all be out applying what they taught and be busy getting rich!

The paradigms outlined over the next couple of modules covering mailorder, copywriting and advertising have generated $Billions.

$BILLIONS!!!

You will have more information available to you than most of these people had when they made their fortunes in mailorder … FACT.

Believe BIG! The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Think little goals; expect little achievement. Think BIG goals and win BIG success. Whatever you focus on grows.

A More Scientific Approach!

Mailorder IS a business … just as Manufacturing, Wholesale, and Retail are businesses.

Think about it this way … If you decide to fabricate a product, you will be in the Manufacturing business – If you decide to sell products for further distribution, you will be in the Wholesale business – If you decide to sell products to the end-user (consumer), you will be in the Retail business.

Why then, if you decide to sell products or services by soliciting orders by mail, are you not in the Mailorder business?

As far back as my research has been able to reach, it has been stated emphatically, by writer after writer, that Mailorder is not a business.

Mailorder is only a way of doing business.

Granted, mailorder can be a way of doing business … for a Manufacturer, Wholesaler or Retailer – but – it can be, and is, a business unto itself. – It needs no other purpose than that of ‘selling products or services by soliciting orders through the mail.’

Have you noticed that I have chosen to use ‘mailorder’ as one word … instead of two separate words; or as a hyphenated compound word.

According to my handy-dandy dictionaries…four of them; one of them even being state of-the-art computerized…there are only two definitions containing both words; “mail” and “order.”

The first definition is, mail order … two words; not hyphenated … defined as, ‘An order for goods to be shipped through the mail.’

Since, if you decide to sell products and services by mail, you will not be involved in the business of ‘ordering goods’ by mail … you will be ‘selling,’ not ‘ordering’ … the use of ‘mail order’ as two words is illogical.

The other definition is, ‘mail-order house’ … with mail-order as a hyphenated compound word … defined as, ‘A business that is organized primarily to promote, receive, and fill requests for merchandise or services through the mail.’

Although more functionally correct, if I read the definition the way my old professor of the English language taught me, the business of a Mail-order House is ‘primarily to promote requests for merchandise or services through the mail, receive requests for merchandise or services through the mail, and fill requests for merchandise or services through the mail.’ – but – a ‘request’ isn’t a sale and ‘promoting, receiving and filling Requests’ isn’t selling.

Therefore, I have chosen to define ‘mailorder’ … one word; no hyphen … as, ‘The act of promoting the sale of products or services through the mail, and receiving and fulfilling mail orders.’

Unfortunately, the term mailorder… in all its forms whether two words or a hyphenated compound word … has come into some disrepute over the years – not because of the nature of the business but, rather, because of some of the shoddy products and services offered at super-inflated prices being sold, and the high-pressure, exaggerated-benefits sales approaches employed by some less-than-scrupulous promoters selling their wares, through the mail.

The same aspersions cast against ‘salesmen’ in general have been, and are, leveled at mailorder marketers – however – a lone salesman can only, physically, call-on a dozen or so people in any given day. A mailorder solicitation, on the other hand, can reach hundreds of thousands of households at the same time – That makes mailorder a much bigger, and far more visible, target … affecting more people in one day than a lone salesman could contact in a lifetime.

For that reason, all too many mailorder marketers have politically corrected their chosen profession to that of being direct response marketers … while the mailorder industry disdains itself by denying its true purpose and politically correcting its intent.

As for me, I am a Master Craftsman of the Mailorder Art … a Mailorder Marketer … proud of the fact that I can bring the products and services of the world into the homes and offices of people who would not otherwise, except for my efforts, have convenient access to those products or services.

You are, hereby, invited to join me in my chosen profession … become a Mailorder Marketing Master – satisfy the wants and needs of the public by taking products and services directly to them, in their homes and offices, by mail.

Jim Straw
Mailorder Master

So Let’s Go!

Before we do, you’ll see that much of what you’ll learn here about the traditional business of mailorder is still as cutting edge and relevant to your online business as anything you’ll ever read from those gurus.

Although I love paper and ink type products, just about anything can be sold via the mail. This section of System Ultra K will give you everything you need to do this, and sell well. If you have product already, when you’ve finished you will know how to double, triple or even quadruple your sales.

I will outline a more scientific approach to mailorder because it works with almost any product you can imagine. All you need to do is follow the rules established by those who have blazed the trial. Although this is about as close to foolproof as you can get, it’s not an absolute because, as I said, nothing in business is 100% guaranteed – anyone who tells you different is a fool or a liar, or both!

Why do I love paper and ink, information type products?

I touched on the reasons why in an earlier module but to recap: They are highly profitable and their value is unquantifiable.

If the information you are about to read has generated $billions and has the capability, in the right hands, to generate billions more … what is that information worth?

You certainly wouldn’t set your price based upon the cost of the paper and printing would you?

If you read this section, put the systems to work and begin to make thousands of dollars, pounds or euros a week are you going to contact me and say: “Ere Mr T, I’ve been thinking … you know that course thing of yours, I think you overcharged me a bit. I’ve written a course of my own and had some printing done and it was a fraction of what you charged me, I think you ought to give me some money back or I’ll be sending the boys round.”

Of course you wouldn’t! You’d realise that the value lay in what was being taught. In fact, you’d probably feel that you should have been charged a lot more.

You see, there’s no real tangible value you can attach to information. The general rule is, that you charge what people are willing to pay, whilst giving value for money.

How much are people willing to pay?

Well, that depends on what you’re selling and how well you promote it. The only way you are going to ascertain the value of your product is by using a more scientific approach.

If you were selling computers for instance, there is an extremely small margin for error. We all know the price of a particular model and no matter how good your sales literature, you’re never going to convince anyone that your all-singing, all-dancing, super-megagigabyte, turbo-charged, super-pentium is worth any more than its intrinsic value … no way, no how!

A computer, is a computer, is a computer, and if you overprice it, your potential customers are going to spot that immediately and go elsewhere.

Now, when you’re dealing with ‘information’ that is unique and not available elsewhere, how do you value it?

If you are the only supplier, then what have your potential customers got to compare your information to? Add to the equation the fact that the information you are dealing in has the potential to make your customers very wealthy and the ability to make judgment on the cost goes out of the window.

If you were to ask the guy who charged $10,000 a day for his seminar how he justified such a hefty price tag then his answer would be purely one of economics: If you left one of those seminars, applied the techniques he taught and made several hundred, thousand dollars in your first year, would you still feel it was a high price to pay?

How would you justify charging a hefty price for a computer?

The more scientific approach means that you need to test, record and review everything you do. Set your price, record the take up, evaluate if it is sufficient, and that enough people have felt you are justified in setting that price.

This rule is the underpinning of everything you learn throughout The Wealthness Blog. If you do not test, record and review, your business will have no foundations and will come crashing down as surely and inevitably as any structure without footings.

Now, with the basic rule in place you really only need three things to succeed in mailorder. We are going to take a look at the basics and then go on to explore each area in finite detail.

1. A product.

2. A good mailing piece or advertising copy.

3. A mailing list.

I explained earlier that I was originally formally trained in advertising. I qualified as an Art Director.

In advertising, you generally work as a team consisting of a Copywriter and an Art Director. You work on ideas, bouncing them back and forth until something begins to gel. I would work on the visual elements and the Copywriter would add the words that drove home the message.

Good advertising teams make excellent money, but do they really know how to sell product or are they just adept at raising consumer awareness?

Are they experts?

I love this quote: ‘It has often been said that an expert is anyone more than 50 miles from home, but in reality ‘X’ is an unknown quantity and a spurt is a drip under pressure!’

I think that just about sums it up!

There are very few ‘advertising experts’ who have sold a single product of their own.

They are very adept at telling business people how to sell their products, they will make silk purses from pigs ears and will charge a premium for doing so, but as a rule, they haven’t got a clue … and that included me!

Oh yes, I could knock up a great looking ad but would it sell anything … not really!

It’s not until you get into the minds of great mailorder artists that you begin to understand why certain methodology works.

Let’s take a look at:

It’s All In The Product

On the whole, the mailorder business is a clean, well-run operation, but there is a clear element that seem determined to spoil it for others – The World of Scum.

Although the techniques you are going to learn apply to selling any product via the mail I am biased towards what I call paper and ink type merchandise for reasons I have explained (easy and cheap to produce, unquantifiable price etc). Unfortunately, it is this niche which seems to attract the largest rouge element. I don’t want to dwell too much on the negative side of this business, but as you will read, it is very easy to make mistakes following conventional thinking, mistakes we want to avoid.

One of the greatest misconceptions, and also the greatest damaging contributor to the mailorder business is the notion that a product must sell for at least 5-8 times its cost.

The result of this presumption is that some mailorder novices rush out and source low cost products and apply an artificially high mark up on the goods.

Is it any wonder then that their customers feel they have not had value for money when sent this overpriced dross? Even those who peddle information fail to source good, solid, reliable data. They find any old material, add to it the highest price tag they can get away with, throw in a dodgy guarantee for good measure and run rampant through our customer base.

The worst example of this I ever saw was an ad placed in a high profile publication reading:

How To Make Thousands Of Pounds In The Mail Order Business – Guaranteed.

Send just $10 to:

When trusting customers sent off their tenner they received a tatty old bit of paper and on it were a few badly typed words:

Put an advert in a high profile publication reading: ‘How to make thousands of pounds in the mail order business’ and charge £10 for it.

It’s dirty scum-bags like that who ruin the business for others who offer quality product.

If I could only give you one piece of advise it would be this:

Do the very best you can do in anything and everything you can do … ALWAYS!

Source the best products you can find – people will buy from you and as your reputation grows, so will your sales. Customers will pay large sums of money if your products are worth it.

A mailorder product does not have to be marked up at 5-8 times its cost. The secret is in the profit not the 5-1 rule. Why is it that to be successful in the mailorder world your profit must be 500% – who started that notion?

What makes this business any different from any other? Most of the world’s biggest retailers work on much smaller margins, why should mailorder be any different?

Select your best product, and based on a scientific evaluation of the competition, decide what you ‘think’ people will pay for it. Excluding VAT (taxes), if applicable, subtract the cost from the sale price and you have your profit per item.

From this you can calculate how many sales you need to cover your overheads, mailing, paper, printing etc and … hey presto, the rest is clear profit!

When you know how many sales/orders you need to cover costs, you can work out if a mailorder project is viable. If it appears as though there is potential then test, record and review!

If it makes a profit, then roll out the mailings.

Mailorder ‘superstars’ constantly profess to making a killing from marketing and that it’s the most profitable business ever devised. It can be, sure, but major big hits are positively the exception, not the rule.

In fact, most of the so-called mailorder superstars have never had a runaway product in their lives.

I know I certainly haven’t – I’ve had good runs but have yet to hit the BIG UN!

Every once in a blue moon, a product will break all the rules and fly away. If anyone tells you they regularly make massive, quick money in mailorder then frankly, they are talking through their arse!

99.9% of successful Mailorder Masters do not get rich with one single big hit. Never, no way, no how!

Mailorder Masters make a steady profit month in, month out. Some may never strike that golden seam, but they do get rich … slowly, surely, absolutely … using all the techniques you are learning.

One of my past business disasters was when I bought a bar in Shrewsbury. ‘The Upsidedown Flying Crocodile Bar’ had everything: Position, character, regular passing clientele, owners with energy and flair!

We pitched our theme at the younger generation by offering bottled beer, a 10,000-watt sound system, and a live DJ. The bar was right on the intersection of two main pub-crawl, routes and every weekend you could not move in the place. The kids would queue right along the road to get in.

Two doors down was an old man’s drinking pub, never busy, but with a regular gathering of undesirables. Those old has-beens would drink steadily from the moment the doors opened until they fell out at night, day in day out.

If you were to ask anyone in the town about ‘the lads who had the bar,’ they’d say we were the town’s richest wide boys … well the truth couldn’t have been more different!

Yes, we were busy; we would take large amounts of cash over the weekend, but there was the problem – we only took cash for six hours in a week. Thursday to Saturday; 9.00 o’clock till 11.00. Six lousy hours!

Whilst we were creaming it in during that time the neighboring pub was pretty deserted, except for a few hardened drinkers steadily putting it away. But they’d be there the next day, and the day after, and the day after that…

Although on the surface, it appeared we had shares in a brewery, we could never come close to matching the barrelage sold by the grotty hole down the road – and they had smaller overheads!

That’s what happens in mailorder, the masters have a range of products that make a profit and keep banging away day in day out … sounds just like that new-fangled, t’Internet thing, eh?

Find the best products you can, ensure they make a profit, however small (to a point where the effort of selling that product outweighs the work involved), and keep banging away.

Getting The Advertising Right

This is the most overemphasized element in mailorder … not overrated: overemphasized.

Granted, dynamite copy will sell products, but therein lays the problem.

I could sell tulips to the Dutch if I put my mind to it. I have, over the years, discovered that I’m a much better Copywriter than Art Director, and I have a talent for helping customers to make the right choice!

Now, when the old Dutchman takes delivery of his much-anticipated bunch of flowers, only to discover they’re the limp, anemic, bottom-of-the-garden, greenhouse variety, how do you think he’s going to feel?

I would have made those tulips sound so good that the Dutch fellah would have written out a cheque on the spot … yet how dismayed he would be when they arrived?

One of the first marketing pieces I wrote was a flop. In fact, many of the marketing pieces I have written have flopped! But the first was a gem; it was full of anger and frustration.

I had received so much crap over time from people who were breaking every rule I am about to teach you. They had driven me mad with their idle banter and false promises. I had become so indignant at constantly being let down that I vented my rage on my first unsuspecting mailorder ‘potential’ clients. I had vowed never to disappoint people like others had me.

I felt the whole world should know about all those bastards who had ripped me off … not the wisest of moves I’ve ever made, as you’ll read!!!

I do not recommend that anything negative should go into a mailing, there’s no need and if a potential customer is not thinking in a pessimistic way, why encourage them?

I want to reproduce what I wrote and share with you the animosity instilled in me by ‘mailorder wannabes’ messing up our business, and how it makes people feel when ad copy is better than the product … and yes, this really was the heading I used:

Sick of Bullshit?

Are you sick of people who say they can, when they can’t?

Are you sick of people who offer you the earth, then come up with a handful of mud?

Good morning.

Quick introduction … my name is Money King.

You may or may not be aware that you are currently residing on someone’s mailing list.

So am I!

I know because I bought your name and address and like me, you will be receiving offers every week from some SMART ARSE sitting at a desk thinking of a new way to rip you off.

Every day I get some promotion or other telling me that I am about to become a millionaire in my sleep using words like these:

‘YOU ARE ABOUT TO MAKE A MILLION AND THE BEST PART IS, THAT YOU HAVE TO DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO EARN IT!!!’

CRAP!

I am sick to the back teeth of people trying to take me for a ride … Are you?

I consider myself to be quite worldly-wise, yet I have been taken in on more than one occasion.

A good copywriter will sell coals to Newcastle. (They used to mine lots of coal in Newcastle!)

I have experienced that sickening feeling at the pit of my stomach when, after waiting for days with eager anticipation, the package finally hits the doormat. I had been getting up especially early to catch the postman because, I knew that in a few weeks I was going to have all the money I have ever dreamed of…

THUMP.

It arrives, drops from the letterbox; you tear open the envelope – a $million opportunity?

Not a chance!

You have just forked out your hard earned dosh for a few scraps of hastily photocopied paper containing about as much information as a Peter and Jane kiddies’s book.

That’s OK. You send it back and ask for your refund under that ‘No Quibble Guarantee’, only to find that it’s absolutely, definitely, positively a ‘Full Quibble, Not A Chance Mate, Guarantee.’

Most of the mailings I receive go something like this:

‘Dear Fellow Entrepreneur, mug, soft touch, I used to be destitute, living in the gutter, drinking meths.

Life had dealt me some cruel blows and I was in a rut with no possible hope of a future. I had given up, there was nothing left to live for. I decided to end it all. I was about to throw myself off the Severn Bridge when, suddenly, it happened.

An idea came floating into my head, a vision, a way to make enough money to live like a King, and what’s more; I realised it could be done overnight.

Immediately, I took control of my situation and put my idea to work. Within 48 hours I became the most successful man on the planet and now have everything I could ever desire: Cars, a private Leer Jet, a mansion, wild women, and a months holiday every week.

I am now a big-league player. I will never have to work again.

Send me a hundred dollars and I’ll tell you my secret.’

Well something like that!!!

I used to fall for it. I now ask myself: “If he has such a wonderful idea; an idea so brilliant it is making him megabucks, how can he afford to waste so much of his precious, fun packed time, writing to me?”

It’s manure. That’s why and 99% of what you get through your letterbox is the same.

The sad thing is, that the 1% of real, sincere opportunities never get a look in. You become so disillusioned that you throw all mailings in the bin without a second thought.

The genuine, solid business plans which would give you a reasonable standard of living; they don’t even get glanced at.

It’s the same old story – the majority of us suffer because a small percentage of losers take the piss!

OK, what makes you so different Mr, Sat On His High Horse, Preacher Man? I hear you ask!!!’…

Off I went, babbling on about how disenchanted I was with everything I had bought from mailorder pretenders. You see now though, what I mean when ad copy is overemphasized. Don’t get me wrong, you need good copy, but it’s only ONE ingredient in the great mailorder soup.

If the product does not live up to the hype then the customer is going to be (a). Cheesed off and (b). Never going to buy from you or anybody else via the mail again.

Many excellent ad writers have gone broke because they had no depth of understanding of the mailorder business. Many people can write a killer headline and body copy. Then why is it that so few go on to make considerable incomes from mailorder and enjoy any longevity?

It’s because there is a lot more to success in mailorder than finding any old product, hyping it up and waiting for the orders to flood in. Yet, that is how so many mailorder ‘experts’ portray this business and yes, they may make some money, the same as any scamster can have a couple of hits. But there is no real substance to what they are doing. They fade away and move on to vandalize some other virgin territory of rich pickings.(Sounds like the Net doesn’t it?)

There was an infamous British soap, El Dorado th