Information is a time-tested product that will continue to make money particularly now that we have so many options and the society we live in is constantly hungry for information.
It may be hard to believe, but not everyone in the world is connected to the net. There's still an enormous market of non-techies out there that still want information on every subject under the sun, and these individuals are being neglected more and more... It's a great new market waiting to be re-discovered.
Information about how to better our lives, particularly reports and other varieties of materials that show us ways to improve our livelihood, our careers and our way of life, lead the list. These are the best items you can sell by mail.
BUT THINK ABOUT THIS: Marketable information need not always be in printed form. The electronic media, such as audio, video, and CDs are taking over from what was once the exclusive domain of (paper and ink) printed materials. And as an added bonus, in this electronic age, it's cheaper to mail electronic fomats than paper ones.
Of course, you can still sell pre-written materials or very easily create your own. You can write an informational report in an hour that will create income for the rest of your life! The thing you need to know is... what is the best type of information to sell?
You'll make the most money by selling MONEY-MAKING information. Books that tell you how to start different businesses, short reports on business topics like increasing advertising effectiveness or new business ideas and manuals, are all very viable, and often, high selling ideas for informational products.
The best way to break into this field is by reading the mail order publications you get in the mail. Pay attention to what others are selling, and order some of the things that look good. Read through them, and look not only at the content but at how it was produced, and how long you think it would take YOU to produce something like it. Find things you could improve upon. The best sellers, and easiest to produce, will be short reports.
You can produce a 4 to 6 page report and sell it easily for $5-$10, depending on the topic. Just be sure your content is packed with information your customer can benefit from, and push those benefits in your advertising.
Also, when you find a good product, contact the seller and negotiate terms for you to sell the product.
Try to make a DROP-SHIP arrangement. Drop-shipping means your customer will order from you, you take your profit from the payment (usually 50%), then you send the rest of the payment and a shipping label to the source of the product. They stock the product and will ship it directly to your customer. This saves you from having to buy large quantities of the product and stock it yourself.
You'll make the most money, though, from informational products you produce yourself. There's no one to share the profits with - you handle it all. If you're selling short 4-6 page reports for, say, $4-$6 each, your cost will be maybe 50 cents for copying the reports and whatever your current postage rates are (if you don't have the customer include postage). If you're providing the information digitally, on a CD or DVD then your costs are even less. You can buy bulk CDs and DVDs for next to nothing online.
Don't just send your customer their order alone in the envelope... Include flyers for other offers, too. A customer who's ordered from you once is more likely to order from you AGAIN; and repeat customers are where you make the MOST money.
An additional revenue stream can be developed by renting your mailing list to other mail order businesses or list brokers.
This is a little controversial. Especially these days with all the suspicion and concern over identity theft, cyber-theft of every sort, and just plain old privacy issues. I leave this up to you.
To get started in the mail order business doesn't really require much in the way of equipment or start-up capital. You'll need a computer and printer, of course, some average to high quality paper, or blank CDs DVDs or audio storage devices -depending on the product/s you're offering- envelopes and stamps.
You can begin advertising locally, to keep the costs down...local newspapers, bulletin boards, anywhere you can put up an ad or a flyer.
Above all, to be a success in this business, be sure to have a GOOD product. A flaky report that contains questionable information, or little usable information at all, will get nothing but unsatisfied customers.
No one will want to send you money. And the ones who do will want their money back. Take the extra time when writing your reports or manuals. It's worth it. If you're not 100% confident of your information, go to your local library and check your facts. Click over to your nearest search engine and make some queries. You may just find extra info you can include in your report. Cover all your bases in your reports, and your customers will come back time and time again!
Another option for obtaining your products is via the internet. Find good quality information products, or any product you fancy, and sell it offline... this is sort of opposite to what everyone else is doing.
Everyone else is scambling to get their product/s online, so you have less competion for taking stuff offline.
Good Luck with Mailing Orders :-)
Until Tomorrow,
Terry
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Quick Tip - Reviewing Your Performance
So you've made it through your first year. When you quit your job, you probably thought you'd escaped performance reviews for good, but I've got some bad news for you. It's actually a really good idea to review your performance at your own company, to take a look back and see what you did wrong and what you did right.
Did You Make a Profit or a Loss?
The first, and most important, question to answer is this: what does your balance sheet look like? You need to honestly add up all the numbers -- don't be tempted to add on money that you think you're a few days from getting, or take away bad purchases that proved useful in your personal life, for example. Hopefully you kept electronic records, so this shouldn't be too much trouble.
Once you know how you did, you need to look at how to do better. If you made a loss (as almost everyone does in their first year), what can you do about it? Where did the money go? If you made a profit then, well, congratulations! But you still need to think about how much of your profit to re-invest in the business, and how you can increase your profits next year. Remember that money makes money: once you're making a profit, wise investment can make it grow exponentially.
How Many Customers Did You Get?
Now, take a look at your customer database. What's the total number of people who dealt with you this year? How many is that per day, and how much did each one spend? Once you have this information, you can work out how much customers were paying you overall weekly, daily or even hourly. If it seems like a lot more than you saw, you need to ask yourself if you spent too much of their money on expenses. If it seems like hardly anything, then you're in trouble. Sorry to be blunt, but either you need to consider raising your prices, or you're just not doing enough marketing or working hard enough.
How Many Came Back?
Of course, a more important metric than the total number of customers you had last year is how many of them came back more than once. Work out what percentage of your business that was repeat business -- note that this means you count someone twice if they bought from you three times overall, three times if they bought from you four, and so on.
An easy way to do this is to simply take your number that says how many times a customer has dealt with you, subtract one from all of them, and then add it up. Once you know the raw amount of repeat business, you need to divide it by your total number of customers and then multiply by 100. This gives you a percentage. If your repeat business is lower than 20% or so of your total business, this is cause for concern. Are you doing enough to stay in touch with your existing customers?
What Did Customer Complaints Say?
I hope you kept hold of every customer complaint you got, even if you fixed it at the time. You need to take a good look over what you did right, what you did wrong and what you messed up. I know you dealt with things as they came up, but looking back over everything can help you to see the big picture. It's all too easy to miss quite simple patterns when you're in the thick of it day-to-day, and looking at the complaints can reveal a trend that you weren't expecting.
What Have You Learned?
It can be useful to write yourself out a list of lessons at the end of the year, even if it's things like 'quarter-page magazine ads are just as effective as half-page ones' or 'make lunch later in the day so you eat it faster'. Your accumulated knowledge is valuable: you've paid for it in cash and in sweat, so make sure you don't forget it. See if you can come up with a list of positive things to do next year to make your business even better!
Best of Luck In All Your Business Endeavours,
Terry
Did You Make a Profit or a Loss?
The first, and most important, question to answer is this: what does your balance sheet look like? You need to honestly add up all the numbers -- don't be tempted to add on money that you think you're a few days from getting, or take away bad purchases that proved useful in your personal life, for example. Hopefully you kept electronic records, so this shouldn't be too much trouble.
Once you know how you did, you need to look at how to do better. If you made a loss (as almost everyone does in their first year), what can you do about it? Where did the money go? If you made a profit then, well, congratulations! But you still need to think about how much of your profit to re-invest in the business, and how you can increase your profits next year. Remember that money makes money: once you're making a profit, wise investment can make it grow exponentially.
How Many Customers Did You Get?
Now, take a look at your customer database. What's the total number of people who dealt with you this year? How many is that per day, and how much did each one spend? Once you have this information, you can work out how much customers were paying you overall weekly, daily or even hourly. If it seems like a lot more than you saw, you need to ask yourself if you spent too much of their money on expenses. If it seems like hardly anything, then you're in trouble. Sorry to be blunt, but either you need to consider raising your prices, or you're just not doing enough marketing or working hard enough.
How Many Came Back?
Of course, a more important metric than the total number of customers you had last year is how many of them came back more than once. Work out what percentage of your business that was repeat business -- note that this means you count someone twice if they bought from you three times overall, three times if they bought from you four, and so on.
An easy way to do this is to simply take your number that says how many times a customer has dealt with you, subtract one from all of them, and then add it up. Once you know the raw amount of repeat business, you need to divide it by your total number of customers and then multiply by 100. This gives you a percentage. If your repeat business is lower than 20% or so of your total business, this is cause for concern. Are you doing enough to stay in touch with your existing customers?
What Did Customer Complaints Say?
I hope you kept hold of every customer complaint you got, even if you fixed it at the time. You need to take a good look over what you did right, what you did wrong and what you messed up. I know you dealt with things as they came up, but looking back over everything can help you to see the big picture. It's all too easy to miss quite simple patterns when you're in the thick of it day-to-day, and looking at the complaints can reveal a trend that you weren't expecting.
What Have You Learned?
It can be useful to write yourself out a list of lessons at the end of the year, even if it's things like 'quarter-page magazine ads are just as effective as half-page ones' or 'make lunch later in the day so you eat it faster'. Your accumulated knowledge is valuable: you've paid for it in cash and in sweat, so make sure you don't forget it. See if you can come up with a list of positive things to do next year to make your business even better!
Best of Luck In All Your Business Endeavours,
Terry
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)