How to suceed in direct reponse marketing

I'm going into my 60th year April 24 so I'm writing this from an offline marketing view,classified ads, direct mail letters, newspapers and the experiences I've had.

Make sure you have a definitive market for the product you're selling.

That means not spending a dime on anything (products, ads, offers) until you have done your homework and personally verified that their is a large market wanting your product.

I know what your'e thinking, all of this has already been done for me, all I have to do is check the internet and all my answers and dreams are there.
The hyped up sales letters gives the research on the "next big thing, buy a franchise and your in business for yourself not buy yourself, and the 2 I like the best, virtually no competition, and all my friends agree with me."

Research the competition: I'd go to the local library where all the resources are free and you can use librarians who are some of the best research assistants you can find.

Look at "neighborhood" type and shopper newspapers in your local area. See if your competitors are advertising in these. If there no competitor ads it means these newspapers aren't producing for them or these are probably new ads. If you find the ads have been running a long time, weeks, months, years, it means their is an existing market for your product. If you find an ad that has run 3-5 times, don't interpet that as a money making ad as it could be newpapers discount ads for advertisers who run them just a few times.

Neighborhood papers usually lay around the house longer than dailies and are more cost effective for the marketer who is first starting his business.

Penny pincher and thrifty nickle type papers are oriented toward propects who are looking for something to buy and are "gold mines" for direct response ads.

If you find no ads in these local papers, I would go on to something else as you probably want find a market regionally or nationally either.

This is my experiences with direct reponse and what I have learned and taken away from different mentors with some of them paraphrased above.

Many of you have your on experiences and a different way of interpeting.

I'd like to here your comments and how you go about deciding on which markets you attack.

I'd really like to know about "google adword" and if you can reseach past ads and how long they've been up.

At any rate, I do my on research looking at the past, in other words going backward to see what the future might be.

Next step is writing the ad. How do determine if the ad will be sucessful. Thats another topic for discussion and one we can explore if there is any interest.