Internet and Mail Order Business Opportunities 5
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A lot of people say they’ve placed classified ads and never made a cent. What's the secret to making them work?
The secret to making money with classified ads is to plan on creating a line of products and to use classified advertisements as one relatively inexpensive way to find customers for that line. In effect, the advertising buys the customer and you make your money through multiple sales to that customer.
Don’t plan on selling anything expensive directly through print classified ads. Generally the best things to offer in classified ads are free literature or a very low-cost product. Products that are most likely to sell directly from a classified ad are those priced under $5. When you fill the order or request for information, you send the customer a catalog or sales literature describing other merchandise you have for sale.
Don't expect to be swamped with orders or inquiries from a single ad. Depending on the publication in which you advertise, you will be lucky to get one-tenth of 1 percent of the advertised circulation to respond. A good response from a classified ad in a carefully chosen publication may be as few as 40 to 50 inquiries. You should plan on using the income from your initial sales to pay for additional advertising, thus allowing you to build a customer list little by little.
Plan on advertising repeatedly and in multiple publications. Initially, you will want to test your ad and product in only one or two publications to see if you get any response. If you get enough inquiries to indicate an interest in what you are selling, then you will need to advertise regularly in several publications.
Expect to spend several years building the business. Even if you happen to have the money to take out big ads in a lot of publications all at once, it generally is not advisable to do so. Being new to mail order and new to business you could easily make any number of mistakes. Typical mail order mistakes involve the choice of products to sell, the price at which to sell them, the publications in which to advertise, the time of year to advertise, or even the wording in the ad. (One budding entrepreneur was selling an inexpensive item and forgot to include the price of the item in the classified ad!) Starting small means mistakes will be small.
Plan on increasing the size of your ads as you begin to know what sells and what doesn’t. Once you start to get some customers and income as a result of your classified ads, you will want to try using small display ads to attract more attention and bring in more customers. If budget is a consideration, test a small display ad for a short time before agreeing to run it for several months. You will want to be sure the increase in customers will be worth the extra expense.
Plan an doing direct mailings in addition to classified advertising. In addition to responding to advertisements, profitable mail order companies also send out mailings several times a year to people who have purchased from them or responded to ads in the past. These mailings remind customers about the company's products and announce new items that are available.
TIP: Remember that profits depend on satisfied customers and repeat sales. The best source of new business in mail order is always sales to old customers. It is therefore essential to treat the customer as though he or she were your best friend. That means shipping merchandise promptly and offering no-questions-asked refunds or replacement if a customer is dissatisfied or claims an item was damaged or lost in the mail.
TIP: If you run a classified advertisement on the Internet, you can link directly to a page with long copy (called a "landing page), and then sell directly from that landing page.
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