FREE Advertising doesn’t happen by accident. Most of the people who get free write ups in the magazines and newspapers, or get their stories aired on the T.V. news didn’t just get lucky. These people set out to get as much of this free advertising as they can. They make a business out of getting these magazines, newspapers and T.V. stations to give them FREE Advertising. Some people even hire public relation firms who do nothing but get them this type of advertising for very little cost. You can do the same thing on your own.

Here’s the secret to getting free advertising: Come up with some kind of unique angle to dramatize your product, service, or company. Then prepare a publicity kit that illustrates this story. Send this kit to all of the newspapers, radio and T.V. stations, and magazines. If your kit is prepared right, a percentage of them will use your story to fill their constant demand to come up with something new for their readers or listeners. Here are the simple steps you can take:

1) Make a story around your product or service.

How did you get started? Is there some way to dramatize the reasons why you are in this business? Human interest stories are BIG with editors and publishers. Is there some way your product, service, or company helps people or has the potential to help them? Is there some way you can make a story around this? Think hard. Be creative. Find a unique angle.

2) Prepare your publicity release with the same level of care and commitment as you would any other promotion.

Many people try to get free advertising in a lazy sort of way. They prepare a cheap flier or self mailer and send it to the publications and stations. These get trashed in a minute. Remember this: You are always judged by the quality of materials you use to promote yourself, company, or products. You must do everything first-class if you want people to take you seriously.

3) Create a list of all the reasons the editor of the magazine, newspaper, or T.V. station should use your story.

Turn your list into a sales letter. Give them the biggest reasons why it’s in their interest to use your story. Do your best to make a complete selling presentation.

4) Send them a well prepared package. Make it worth their time to look it over and take you seriously.

Half-hearted efforts produce weak results.

5) Make it easy for them to use your story by writing it for them.

Writing the story for the editors is a powerful secret used by the world’s most expensive public relation firms. This secret can work amazingly well. Here’s why: It takes great deal of work to fill the pages and “air time” of each newspaper, magazine and T.V. station. Giving them the actual copy they can use (in whole or in part) makes it easy for them to use your story. They will appreciate this. You’ll be helping them and helping yourself in the process.

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free publicity are given away every year. Start becoming aware of this. Look for the articles and T.V. spots other people are getting for free. Then think about these five simple steps above. How can you use these steps to get this kind of free advertising? The answers you come up with could be worth a small fortune!

Individual grant awards are $10,000 to $2,000,000. The program goal is to stimulate business growth, increase profits, and to ensure the success of each client.

For more information, write to Minority Business Development Agency, Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C. 20230, or contact a regional minority business development agency near you by referring to your telephone directory under “Government Agencies.”

Remember, there is a lot of money out there just waiting to be claimed. Smart people are taking advantage of it. This is just one of the ways you can get that money. If you are a minority, the government is more than willing to help you get started with your own business.

People are interested in financial security when they get older. They have worked hard all their life, and when they get on in years they want to be able to take it easy. They do not want charity, and they are not interested in living with their children. All they want is to be independent, healthy, and go where they want to go, and not have to worry about money. People feel that they should be able to enjoy peace, quiet, safety, and security when they grow older.

“Senior citizens” all need one thing - give it to them - and make mega dollars! That one thing is SECURITY. They want to know everything is going to be all right. Many businesses have been catching up with this fact as the elderly population has boomed over the last few decades. Real estate companies have created housing specifically for the elderly. Insurance companies have policies specifically for elderly people. The idea is out there, and it’s being put into successful practice by many diverse companies.

Another important factor that should be looked at when it comes to the elderly is the fact that over the last twenty years the number of elderly citizens in this nation has grown continuously. And, according to current polls, there is no end to this growth in sight for a while. That means that there is a large market out there that you can develop products and services for. The market is still growing. And, if your products and services are successful, you can possibly keep steadily making more profits!

There are many things that older people wanted to do in their younger years, but they never seemed to have enough time or money. They used to talk about a trip across America, but the years went by, and they never did travel far from home. There were too many responsibilities, too little money, and never enough time. There must be a sure, safe way to become financially independent, so that a person can enjoy life after he/she retires. (Can you think of a solution that would solve this problem?)

People pick out what interests them by scanning the headlines. Therefore, a headline must reveal, not conceal, a person’s self-interest. Self-interest is how to make sure your prospects instantly spot your ad as they flip the pages of their favorite magazine.

People do not read magazines in order to read your ad. This is important to keep in mind because many times people who run ads in magazines that go out to their market pay very close attention to the ads that are in it. Most of these ads are written by their competitors, plus their ad is in there too.

But, at the same time, it is dangerous when you start assuming that other people are also paying close attention to the ads. Granted, your competitors probably are, but what about the prospects and potential customers that are reading that magazine? The market doesn’t care about your ads. They don’t subscribe for the ads.

Therefore, these prospects and customers will look at ads in a very passive way. They just skim. They know that you’re trying to sell them something, so they have their defenses up.

Therefore, you have to have a clear, compelling ad that grabs their attention with a massive catering to their self-interest. The ad should seem to jump off the page. If you are able to make ads do this to readers, you will make money.

One of the greatest things about direct response marketing is your ability to measure one idea against another in terms of how it was accepted by the market that you're targeting. Testing is how to easily tell if one idea is better than another idea!

Let’s say we're testing long sales letters. The first page is different and the theme has been changed throughout the second sales letter. We will mail a thousand of each letter out to different prospects and compare the results to determine which letter pulled more response.

We all have opinions about things, and we all come up with ideas that we fall in love with and we think are the greatest. But we don't count. The only person that counts is the person we're trying to sell to. Marketing isn’t about you. It’s about the people in the market you're trying to serve.

Testing is how to find the shortest - safest - least expensive - most profitable marketing method that can make you RICH! Remember, you should start out with small tests so you don't take any big risks. You're just testing a small, inexpensive amount to find out what will work so you can emphasize it, expand it, and have it bring you more money.

Make your business plan marketing oriented. Let it serve a specific type of customer in as many ways as possible, and you’ll never have to worry about making enough money. Your business plan can allow you to make as much money as you want - for as long as you want - by doing these three things:

1) Center your plan around all the ways you can attract new customers and make repeat sales to them.

2) Always look for more ways to serve your best customers first. Then, develop simple strategies to attract more of these types of people to your business.

3) Constantly develop new promotions that bring you new customers. Then re-sell to these people as many times as you can. Make this a continual, on-going activity.

There’s nothing complicated about these steps. Find several people or companies that are using these three steps and study the things they do. Then use their ideas and methods in your own unique kind of way.

Here are the 7 things we have mastered to earn the biggest profits:

1.) The marriage between our front-end and back-end offers.

Develop products and services that are closely related to the item you initially sold to your customer the first time. The closer this “marriage” is between your front-end and back-end offers, the more money you can earn.

2.) The relationship with our customers. The key to getting rich is to develop strong relationships with the people you sell to. The more people who buy from you repeatedly, the more profits you can make. Just get enough people to repeatedly buy a large enough amount of your products and services, and you can eventually get rich.

3.) The method of segmenting our list. Your best customers must be segmented from the rest. You can segment your list by the products they buy, the frequency of their purchases, or the actual dollar amount they spend. Go back to these smaller groups of customers and make them special offers.

4.) The power of our Unique Selling Position.

Your U.S.P. is the compelling advantage that you offer your prospects and customers. It’s the main reason why they should do more business with you. Take a solid look at your market to find the things that are most important to the people you’re selling to. Then make the most important thing your U.S.P.

5.) Irresistible offers.

Make your prospects and customers offers that are so good they’re hard to refuse. Find other companies who are doing this and study their offers. Then use these ideas in your sales material. The profits can be tremendously high when you find the perfect way to do this.

6.) Long copy that educates.

Your job is not just to sell to people. It’s also to educate them. You must educate your customers and prospects on why you, your company, and your products or services can help them. Use long sales letters when you are writing to your customers. This gives you room to let them know everything about the products and services you want them to buy.

7.) The lead-generating system.

You must have a way to get people to do business with you the first time. That’s the hardest part. Once they do business with you, it becomes easy. THIS IS WHY YOU NEED A LEAD-GENERATING SYSTEM. Here’s how to do it: Just offer your best prospects something they really want. Give them a great deal. Then send them additional sales material on the other things you sell. Use your lead-generating sales material constantly and you’ll always have plenty of new customers. Then, develop relationships with these people to make huge profits.

These are the most important strategies we’ve used to earn millions of dollars. You can use these seven powerful methods to completely maximize your profits, too.

Small ads can give you tremendous leverage. You can run more of them in more publications more often because smaller ads are cheaper to develop and run.

Your overall advertising could be extremely profitable by advertising in many publications with small ads instead of using the same money on a larger ad that you can only afford to run in a few publications.

Let’s say that you have a small ad placed in a hundred different publications every month. Now let’s say that each of these ads, after taxes and any other cut in the money, finally brings in ten dollars each month. That’s a thousand dollars a month you can keep - and that’s just from making ten dollars per publication!

A short, attention-grabbing classified ad, for example, is often the lowest, most cost-effective method of advertising. They allow you to get the very best “dollar-for-dollar” return for every penny you spend on advertising.

A classified ad is simply a good headline with a call for action. That’s it. Always remember, though, a headline is the number one benefit expressed in the most clear, dramatic, and compelling way.

Unique Selling Propositions (U.S.P.) are how to “kill” your competitors in the marketplace!

There isn’t anything unique that sets aside most companies. There’s nothing that separates them from every other company in their marketplace except for perhaps the company name.

Find out what your customers really want. Find out why your customers really buy. Find out what they aren’t getting right now. Make that your U.S.P. Make it known to your market. If the U.S.P. is beneficial enough to the customers and prospects, you can set yourself aside from all of the other businesses in your market and make more profits than ever before.

Developing a good U.S.P. is how to carve a very profitable niche out of your market. It’s how to attract customers away from your competition.

A U.S.P. that separates you from every other business is going to attract the attention of your market. It will attract prospects and customers away from the other, carbon-copy businesses out there because you will have more to offer than everyone else does.

You have to think of reasons people should do business with you. It’s not good enough to say, “We have the best products and services guaranteed!” Almost every business goes through this rhetoric, and it’s too commonplace. You have to come up with something bigger, rarer, and more to the benefit of the prospects and customers.

Give them something unique. The closer it is hinged onto things that really bother the prospects and customers the better!

Believability is a crucial thing. You are trying to make promises to the prospect or customer who is reading your copy. Those promises have to be compelling. The prospect or customer needs to visualize what you’re trying to tell them about your product or service. However, if the copy is not believable, you have failed. If they don’t believe you, THEY’RE NOT GOING TO BUY FROM YOU.

Believability is a factor you have to pay extremely close attention to. You can’t make outrageous promises or claims. If you do, most people will see right through them.

If you had something that said, “Earn up to a million dollars your first DAY!” the kind of people who would accept such an outrageous statement would not be the kind of people you want as your customer base. These are unstable people given to whims and fancy.

The trick is, you should have promises of perceived benefits that are compelling, giving your specific prospects and customers something they really do want. But they also have to be believable so that the person reading that advertisement can see themselves using and/or enjoying the benefits that your product has to offer. If people can really see themselves doing it, you can make a lot of money!

Many of the same people you want to do business with you are the same people that your competition wants. Yes, this does sound like common sense. But, from what we’ve seen other businesses do over the years, we don't think some businesspeople ever figure this out.

It’s crucial that you understand this principle and how to use this information to your advantage if you are going to attempt to pull business away from your competition.

You are trying to pull business away from your competition. The U.S.P. is a marketing tool you use to set yourself apart in a more favorable light from your competitors. Find the weak spots of your competition, fill that weak spot, and you will be able to pull business away from your competitors.

When we first got into the mail-order business we started with one $300 ad. At the time we had a little carpet-cleaning business. Until the mail-order profits really started coming in, we were working both of the businesses at the same time.

We started out with our mail-order business part-time, but the profits grew and grew to the point where we retired from the carpet-cleaning business altogether and made our mail-order business our full-time occupation.

This is, in fact, a very smart way to start a mail-order business. It is not wise to take big risks like quitting your job and throwing your life savings away on an early promotion. If you do it part-time, though, you can have money to fall back on until you find that promotion that really works for you. This is the SMART WAY to make money starting with zero!

Did you know that there are fourteen things you can give people and they can help to make you thousands and thousands of dollars?

Here they are:

1) Give Them Better Quality.
2) Give Them A Way To Save Time.
3) Give Them A Way To Save Money.
4) Give Them Convenience.
5) Give Them A Way To Make Money.
6) Give Them State-Of-The-Art Products & Services.
7) Give Them A Way To Make Life Less Difficult.
8) Give Them A Way To Enhance Their Looks (real or perceived).
9) Give Them Items That Have Multiple Uses.

10) Give Them Items That Are Durable And Long-Lasting.
11) Give Them Items That Will Solve A Problem They Have.
12) Give Them Items That Are More Effective.
13) Give Them Items That Make Life More Enjoyable.
14) Give Them Items That Offer Multiple Benefits.

You should find a way that your product can fill as many of these needs as possible. The more needs your product fills, the more likely you are to make a sale! Go back over this list again. Find the things that make your product stand out above the competition. Point these things out to your customers, and they will want to buy from you!

Don’t sell books. Sell results. Sell benefits. Sell solutions. Dramatize. Make them want the end results... This is the millionaires secret to selling thousands of books. Here are a few other tips, tricks, and strategies:

(1) Tell a story about the successes that you or someone else has had with the benefits in your book.

(2) Sell these books to the hottest market, to the people who place the biggest value on the benefits you offer.

(3) Create a STRONG MARRIAGE between your sales message, market, and media.

Don’t try to be everything for everyone. Focus on that one person you are trying to reach... Then find as many ways as possible to give that person something they really want. These three strategies can help you sell thousands of books or other informational products every year just like they have for us.

Once you know how to use testing to its optimum ability, you will continue to improve. You will get something to work and make you money. Then you should focus it. Look for ways to make it better and better. You will find ways to make products that are already successful even more successful.

This is why some people never have to worry about making huge amounts of money. They are always testing and finding out what’s working the best, so they can focus on those things and make the most money possible with them.

You should also test new things. When you have something else that is really working well for you and is bringing in money, you should start testing some new things to have another winner ready to bring you more money.

Many people in business wait till business gets bad to bring out new things. They “fall asleep at the wheel.” When business gets bad they become keenly aware like an animal trapped in a corner. Their awareness is at an all-time high . . . and this awareness causes them to create a great new product. Sometimes this happens, but sometimes . . .

When you have something working, test some new ideas and find some new things that will make you money. If you don’t and you find business going bad, you could end up in a corner with no way out except to lose.

The answer is: lists you get from reliable list sources. They will help you make the biggest amount of money from the very first day you start!

There are many mailing lists on the market, but there are only a few reputable list brokers. Reputable list brokers can give you specific data on different mailing lists, and that’s exactly what you need to know so you can decide whether or not the list will be a winner for you.

You need to know exactly where the names came from, whose customers they were, what they bought before, how much money they spent, and how recent the list is.

Remember this: a good list broker is like a good stock broker. They make their money by helping you make your money. They’re not out to sell you a list and then disappear. They want to build a good relationship with you because they’ll want you to keep coming back over and over again. That’s how they can keep making their own money.

A list broker helps you find the names and addresses of prospects you will mail your offer to. The more names they can find for you to profit from, the more you will go back to them and rent their lists. They make their money through helping you make money by providing you with lists of good, qualified prospects.

List brokers get a minimum of 20% commission every time they get out there and find mailing lists for you to rent. If they happen to manage those lists, they tend to get up to 30% to 40%. They are making their money by helping you make money. The more money you make, the more money they make.

A list broker’s responsibilities include:

1. Acting as a clearing house for data: A list broker is a one-stop shopping source that can provide you with all the information you require regarding which list will most likely work for you.
2. Locating new lists: A professional list broker makes a living by providing lists, and is continually seeking out new lists that will be suitable for his/her clientele.

3. Encouraging list owners to rent their lists is a constant effort that must be pursued daily just to stay in business.
4. List performance data: A list broker keeps accurate records on the past performance of all lists his/her clients have used. Therefore, they have a working knowledge of what will pull in any given situation. A broker will carefully screen all information provided by the owner of a list. Additionally, he/she may even verify the information if a list owner is new and has not yet established a trustworthy business relationship.

The broker must have knowledge of the makeup of a list to determine what constitutes a representative cross section of the list. Any error in determining a cross section would invalidate the desired test results, and possibly eliminate a group of names that might have been responsive to a particular offer.

Learning the secrets of writing great advertising copy can make you HUGE amounts of money. There have been times when we have earned as much as $1,000 and more for every hour we spent writing our ads and sales letters. The same thing could potentially happen to you, too. Here are ten copywriting secrets the best copywriters use:

1. They do everything possible to know every aspect of their products and services. They look for uniqueness, special features, and benefits they can offer to the prospect or customer.
2. They learn everything they can about the market their sales material is targeted to reach.
3. They know the right words, phrases, or approaches that will make their offer more effective.
4. They learn everything they can about the competition. They find out how their products compare in value and quality. And they know what type of promotional techniques can be useful to outsell the competition.
5. They know how to gather testimonials to increase the response of their ads and sales letters.

6. They collect and study ads that have offered similar products. They do this to get creative ideas that help them with their ads. They seek out ads that have been running continually. These ads help them avoid duplicating unsuccessful efforts of others.
7. They focus on the ultimate goal of each ad or sales letter. To whom is it written? What is the end result they are after?
8. They know how to create irresistible offers that make people want to buy.
9. They know the importance of testing as many different elements as possible, and they do this.
10. They know how to close. They know how to create strong sales presentations, and how to make the sale.

Great advertising copywriters are made - not born. You can learn these ten things and possibly earn a fortune in the process. Listen closely: Advertising copywriters charge up to $15,000 or more just to write a simple Direct-Mail package. They get paid these huge fees because of all the money their sales material can generate. But remember this: You’ll always make more money writing your own advertising copy then you could ever earn by freelancing for others. Learn these skills for yourself, to sell your own products or services. These skills can help you make money for the rest of your life.

If you are involved in a joint venture, you could have your partner send out cassette tapes that you put together describing your business, your concepts, your products, and whatever else you desire to tell them.

Essentially, you are having them send their customers free publicity items that will get those prospects interested in you and, hopefully, wanting to buy from you. This is how to make $1,000,000 giving your product away for FREE!

Give them a sample, a teaser, something they can use that is very limited. Let them know that you have more, though, and that they can get it from you. As a result of this, you can potentially increase your profits beyond your own customer base and bring in money from your partner=s customer base. Many businesses have found this profitable, and some have made even millions of dollars. You have the same potential, as well!

Never worry so much about the cost of acquiring customers, because cust