Note: You may find references to "info-by-mail"
businesses in this report. This is because this report
is an excerpt from a book on "info-by-mail" businesses.
Nevertheless, much of this report is relevant to other
homebased mail order or telephone order types of
business.
** What Information Sells Best **
Publishers sell information on just about every
conceivable subject. Just look in the back of any
national magazine and you will probably find companies
offering valuable information on numerous topics. The
key is to provide information that satisfies peoples
basic human needs and wants. Specifically,
publications should help people either gain things they
want and need or avoid things they don't want or need.
If you can provide a publication that presents this
type of information in a unique or new way, you will be
able to separate your publication from many that are
already out there. Some of the proven publication
subjects relate to:
* Things People Want *
Great friendships or relationships
Great physical and mental health
Become financially independent
Successful marriage or career
Entertainment and happiness
Appear young and desirable
Feeling of personal security
Become popular or famous
Become more educated
Appealing body or style
Save money and time
Strong religious faith
Desirable reputation
Earn more money
* Things People Avoid *
Going bankrupt and paying taxes
Becoming overweight and aging
Physical and mental pain
Getting laid off or fired
Losing a possession
Getting a divorce
Being rejected
Going to jail
The most profitable publications are by far how-to
types of books, booklets, reports, and manuals. These
types of publications provide information based on
people's natural wants, desires and needs. Some
examples of successful how-to type of publications
include:
How to get $50,000 in credit with your credit cards.
How to earn a fortune in no-money-down real estate.
How to make money on a product you can get free.
How to earn a fortune from government auctions.
How to get free advertising for your business.
How to earn a fortune with your own computer.
How to write a resume no one will throw away.
How to lose 10 pounds in less than 30 days.
How to easily start your own business.
How to quit smoking within 30 days.
How to become a movie star.
How to win the lottery.
Compiling and publishing business and consumer
directories has recently become a popular choice of
info-by-mail marketers. The most popular directories
include names, addresses, phone numbers, and fax
numbers of companies who sell sought after products and
services. Some popular directories are listed below:
Import and export trade directories
Travel related directories
Manufacturers directories
Government product and service directories
Whether you offer how-to type of publications or
directories, all should provide a solution to one of
the things people either want to gain or avoid. When
choosing a topic to market, be extra careful when
promoting information on subjects that promise medical
"cures" or "breakthroughs". This type of information
requires significant medical and scientific evidence to
substantiate your claims. If legitimate evidence is
not provided you can be put out of business immediately
by various federal agencies. In general, most
information can be divided into two different
categories. These include specialized knowledge and
self-improvement information on topics such as finance
and health.
** Specialized Knowledge **
The first category of information is specialized
knowledge of a particular subject. This is quickly
becoming the fastest selling category of information
sold through the mail today. This knowledge may be
obtained through personal experience or detailed
research of a certain subject.
* Experience Or Research *
An example of information gained through personal
experience is a guide to golfing in the United States
or your own state. This is information that a well
traveled and experienced golfer can easily write about.
The key here is to write about something that you have
personal experience with. It may be a hobby, job,
sport, vacation, recipe, or whatever you are
knowledgeable about. The easiest personal experience
to write about is the knowledge you have learned from
your job. This information can then be offered to
others with jobs like yours. This may be information
on how to make more money, get a promotion, or other
secret hints or tips.
"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject
ourselves, or know where we can find information upon
it."
- Samuel Johnson
If you want to provide information about a
particular field you have little or no personal
experience in, you will need to do some research. This
can be done best at your local library. Look for
information in magazine and newspaper articles and
books on your chosen subject. Read as much information
as you can until it begins to sound repetitive. This
is a good indication that you have read all that there
is to know about that subject. Take excellent notes
and organize them accordingly.
* Self-Improvement Information *
The second type of information that can be
successfully sold through the mail concerns the subject
of self-improvement. People, no matter where they live
or what they do, want to improve something in their
life. It is just part of our human nature.
Popular late night infomercial promoter, Tony
Robbins, has provided self-improvement related
information to the tune of over 120 million dollars.
His popular "Personal Power" program contains valuable
information designed to improve customers wealth and
health. You too can help people improve their lives by
providing timely and valuable information on these same
subjects in the form of books, reports, and manuals.
Most publishers have found the subjects of
financial wealth and physical and emotional health to
be the most sought after topics in the mail order
industry. Everyone has an interest in excellent health
and wants to learn how to increase his/her financial
wealth. The market for good information in this area
grows by the day. Practically any national publication
with classified advertisements in the back will have
offers selling information on these subjects. This
type of information is best provided by those who have
professional experience in the medical or financial
fields. However, if you do enough research, you will
be able to write your own informative publication.
This will require extensive research, best done at a
library that has current reference material on business
and medical related topics.
"People seldom improve when they have no other model
but themselves to copy after."
- Oliver Goldsmith
One of the best groups of people to aim your
marketing efforts towards are people looking to make
more money through a business opportunity. It has been
estimated that 50,000 new people each week respond to
some kind of business opportunity advertisement. If
you have a unique money making idea that you can put
into writing, the market is waiting to mail you their
checks. Although the "business opportunity" market is
somewhat saturated with generic money making programs,
you can grab a large chunk of the market if you come up
with a unique and unusual way for people to earn more
money.
The universal desire to learn how to make more
money exists because of peoples dependence on money to
pay for those things they need and want. Although
people may only need a limited amount of things,
peoples wants are often endless. Thus, even if one is
lucky enough to earn enough money to pay for all those
things they need, they will almost always continue to
spend more money for those things they want.
Unfortunately, most people have trouble paying for the
most basic things they need to exist in today’s
society. Things like housing, food, gas, electricity,
health and auto insurance, educational expenses, taxes,
not to mention the cost of raising a couple children.
One look at government statistics reveals just how
desperate many people are to solve their financial
problems.
Over 500,000 people file for bankruptcy each year in
America.
Only 15% of Americans have a net worth of more than
$250.
The average savings of a retired couple is less than
$10,000
Over 2,000,000 people have lost their homes to
foreclosure.
The average American is more than $10,000 in debt.
Less than 1% of Americans are millionaires.
Those people who attempt to fix their financial
problems usually attack the problem by trying to earn
more money. These are people who cannot stop spending
money on unnecessary wants. In order to continue this
way of spending they will try to figure out a way to
earn more money than they are already earning. This
presents an obvious opportunity to those publishers who
have a money making idea that the average person can
implement in their spare time.
There is a relatively smaller number of people who
try to attack their financial problems from a
different angle. These people are willing to cut back
on unnecessary expenses in order to save money. This
saved money is either used to pay for the things that
people really need to exist or it is invested. In
order to save more money, people must have the
discipline and knowledge to cut back on unnecessary
expenses. This presents an obvious opportunity to
those publishers who have a money saving idea that the
average person can implement in their spare time.
Whether you help people earn or save more money,
there is no doubt that the market for financial related
information is one that has a large and growing market.
During the 1980’s many people had the attitude of "buy
now, pay later". This has left many individuals and
families in a desperate financial situation.
Furthermore, global competition has caused many major
companies to downsize their workforce. This has
resulted in many unemployed individuals in search of
new ways to earn a living. By providing information on
how to earn more money through a business of their own
or how to save more of the money that they are already
making, you can help these people get their lives back
in gear and make a profit in the process.
One particularly popular health related topic is
how to lose weight and stay physically and mentally
fit. With health costs going through the roof with no
end in sight, many health minded individuals are in
search of easy ways to become healthier. By becoming
healthier, expensive office visits and operations may
be able to be avoided. Many medical experts have
proven that simple exercises and proper diets can
significantly increase your chances of a healthy
lifestyle. By providing accurate and timely
information on how the health minded individual can
improve their lives, you can earn a healthy profit.
If you want to find out what the U.S. Government
thinks are the most popular topics, you can order a
free catalog of informative booklets from the Consumer
Information Center or CIC. Their catalog contains over
200 short booklets that are either free or inexpensive.
The booklets are written by government experts from
various agencies. Since most of the information is in
the public domain, you may be able to resell parts or
all of the contents of government booklets. Call or
write the agency that created the booklet you are
interested in reselling and ask them what's their
current policy on copying and reselling their booklets.
To receive a current copy of the CIC catalog, send your
name and complete mailing address to:
Consumer Information Center
Department Source
Pueblo, CO 81009
For an even greater selection of books written by
the U.S. Government, visit your nearest U.S. Government
Bookstore. Located throughout the country, these
bookstores have many inexpensive books in stock. The
bookstores are also able to order over 21,000 tiles.
These books are excellent for generating ideas for your
own books. For a free catalog and to find out the
location of the closest bookstore call or write:
Superintendent of Documents
P.O. Box 371954
Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7954
202-783-3238
When trying to come up with an idea for a
publication, try to first identify a need in the
marketplace. Rather than writing a publication and
then going out to try and find a market for it, go out
and analyze the market and find out what people want.
Talk to friends, family, business associates, students,
and teenagers and ask them what bothers, concerns,
irritates, or otherwise disturbs them. After finding
out what peoples problems are, consider if you can
solve their problems with a publication that provides
helpful answers. Before long, you will have a list
full of topics that you know customers are looking for.
"It is impossible for ideas to compete in the
marketplace if no forum for their presentation is
provided or available."
- Thomas Mann
This concept of finding out what your market wants
and then going to create your product was refined by
Japanese automobile manufacturers in the seventies and
early eighties. After extensive market research, most
Japanese automobile manufactures realized that American
drivers wanted small fuel efficient automobiles. So
they went and created the desired product and soon
gained a foothold in the American automobile
marketplace. The inability of American automobile
manufacturers to find out what people wanted cost them
a great loss of market share to their Japanese
counterparts. Publishing is no different. Find out
what many people demand and then provide the supply at
a reasonable cost.
Keep in mind that the information you want to sell
does not have to be in demand by millions of people.
What is important is that you market your publication
properly to the few people that will be interested in
it. These few people, however, must represent a
economically viable group of people. You are obviously
not going to make a fortune selling a publication, no
matter what the selling price, that will only interest
a few hundred people. Any publication that helps
people satisfy one of the needs and wants mentioned
earlier has potential customers in the 1,000,000+
category. These are the type of numbers that can
produce a publishing fortune for yourself.
Whether you write about a specialized topic or
improving one's health or wealth, you can obtain the
needed information from personal experiences or
researched information. Just about any piece of
valuable information, properly marketed, can be sold
successfully. If you have trouble getting ideas, it
can help to read other how-to publications. Once you
have thought of some publication ideas, write them on a
piece of paper. After writing 10 or more ideas, begin
to consider whether the ideas will be marketable. Once
you have decided what kind of information to sell, you
will need to collect and organize the information.
Your next step will be to get the information into some
type of readable and marketable form.
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Copyright 1995 Kelly Publishing, All rights reserved.
This file may be copied & freely distributed in its
entirety through this and other online services.
This file contains an excerpt from Kelly Publishing's
electronic manual entitled "How To Earn A Fortune
Selling Information By Mail". If you would like to
find out how you can download the rest of our
electronic manual through this online service, send
us an e-mail requesting, "Location Of Manual".
Kelly Publishing's e-mail address:
American Online: INFOBYMAIL
CompuServe: 75027,3001
Internet: infobymail@aol.com
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