$20,000.00 In 30 Days...

Fascinating post, OP. What exactly do you mean by local outlets? Like pubs, grocery stores and convenience stores? Other places? Gun shops?

That's awesome, thanks for sharing. Did you cater your booklets toward the audience you imagined at each outlet (i.e. healthy living for grocery store)? And what about order fulfillment - did you just guess at the number you'd need after the initial 10 and distribute them, or did you have the store owners take reservations?

Ok, the concept is nice, congratulations on your success but how repeatable is it and did you repeat it? I mean this requires a lot of physical work such as printing, distributing, making deals, tracking etc and it is not something that will work in all countries or all cities just like it did work for you. 5000 booklet sales in 30 days is awesome, but what was your net income and did you continue doing this after that month?

Also, can you please link to your post in copywriting section?

The subject of your book would be interesting to know. I can see this idea working if it was an a subject that appealed to your audience. There are two women ( Kim McCosker, Rachael Bermingham) in Australia who have written a whole series of cook book using only 4 ingredients. They wrote the first one just for fun but then it became super popular and they had to keep going.

I think the subject would be the most important thing here. I agree you can learn anything on the net so you could find a lot of material for your book.

Very interesting idea. Would like to see the answers to all the questions above. Thanks for sharing.

How does the payment work?

Do they sell the books and give you your cut after taking out their portion?

Do you have a pic of one of these books?

Couple answers.

1. I didn't pay anything out of pocket for printing costs, etc., because I sold advertising in the booklet to cover costs. Advertising was easy to sell because of the subject I picked. Printing costs are not that expensive anymore. There are loads of places now that will print, assemble, etc., everything for you.

The price of each booklet can be set by you. You don't have to sell them for $4.95. You could ask $7.95, etc.

2. It is repeatable. A friend did repeat the process and is still doing it.

It's not as difficult as some might think to get it into outlets. You're not selling the business owner anything upfront. They only pay you after the books are sold.

Use your imagination...the possibilities are limitless.

You will have to take some time to learn how to use the publishing software. If you don't sell advertising, you will have to use some upfront money. However, if you're just starting out you don't need to print thousands of books upfront...you can start out small then keep reinvesting your earnings.

If the booklet things seems too daunting for you...I've also seen the single laminated sheets being sold for $4.95. They cover subjects like first aid, recipes for mixed drinks, etc. Seen some being sold in a truck stop once when I was traveling. Didn't try the idea but it seemed like a good one.

This idea may not be for everyone. There are tons of books sold for Kindles, etc. Of course it's easier and quicker to sell this way. I know lots think everything revolves around the net, but you'd be surprised how many will buy a physical product as a spur of the moment idea, especially if the title grabs their attention.

I'm just offering another idea you can try if you're more inclined to offline marketing. You could even offer your book online and offline.

I can't even imagine what officemax or staples would charge to make these booklets, even if you're assembling them yourself and just having them print. It would be well over $5 each. Just 20 pages would probably cost $25 or more.

Printing online is still going to be in the $3 range at least, so selling advertising space would be the only way you could ever get this into the price point you're suggesting and that's not profit, just sales.

If someone was to start this from scratch, it would take days at best but weeks most likely to learn how to format a book. Then the time it would take to write it and find images, proofread, etc.

Then they'd have to sell advertising space, which to be honest I would find extremely difficult to do in this case.

Then they'd have to print them which would cost a fortune at low quantity and quite a bit at high quantity as well. Printing and shipping alone would take 7-10 days at least.

Then you'd have to find all these places to let you put the book for sale on consignment, which is not going to be easy.

And then you cross your fingers that people will buy. 5,000 copies in a month is completely unrealistic. that's almost 170 per day.


This is something that just looks good in theory.

In 30 days you cannot learn publishing software, write a 40 page book, sell advertising space to cover the cost of printing 5000 of them, find retailers to sell them for you, sell all of them, and make 20k. I sorry buddy I dont buy it.

I like the laminated sheet idea though.

I hate to say it but it seems so obvious when someone is telling a re hash story in the first person. This story doesnt ring of real experience to me for 10 different reasons. Either that or my sensor is just off.

This is why you dont see me having more usernames and talking about adsense in other subforums, selling WSO's on the subject... because real experience has conviction behind it, and you cant really fabricate that.

Dont hate me for saying it, but man....Dont make stuff up after 688 posts, you are pretty invested here...Stay solid.

John and Bob

I have to agree with you guys

I can read thru these guys posts and see that they are the real deal and not read about it in some book and regurgitate it

I can always smell Poop from afar.. but the funny thing is you will always get the inexperienced people liking his post or say

wow what a shrewd businessman lol

eddie

Eddie, I can read between the lines and so can you:

This may be true, but it wasnt done by the OP.

It doesnt even seem like he read a whole book on the subject, more like a sales page or article.

I have no doubt this could work. not sure why you needed the convoluted bs story to
present it.

Lets see Ive got 30 days to win a "contest". Let me write a book, learn how to use publishing software, go around selling advertising, visit umpteen locations looking for distribution, wait another 7 days to get product, distribute the books, sell at least 250 copies per day 20 remaining days in "contest", then go back around and collect my money, all for $4 per book.

Maybe if these guys were your partner that could happen


You are flinging poo in the wrong subforum buddy.
Why not just say..Here is an idea...

By the way what did your buddies do trying to win said "contest"?

op's disclaimer: " I've been in marketing 30 years"

I like the plan though, it gave me an idea. But without 30 years marketing experience one might not put the words together as well as an experienced marketeer can for their booklet nor their display pitch.


How much was the printing and binding? it seems you left out the most important parts of the plan, the expenses. Well, except for the 98 cent display stand...

Hi there,

max5ty provides a lot of insight on this forum. He also tells many stories that are considered by most to be "tall tales". It's his modus operandi. He likes to agitate and re-agitate.

However, if you take his plan and actually put it into action - i.e. DO something, you might just make $2,000 in 30 days. You might make more, you might make less, but at least you'll be active and doing something to better your pocket.

All the best,

Sasha.

Hmmmm. I know from psychology classes that telling the truth a certain amount of time mixed in with lies makes things sound true but this isn't. I"m a professional marketer and I could ask you one question which I will do now.

Can you document the process? I don't want to say none of it isn't true but most of it feels fabricated. I've made $30,000 - $50,000 dollars in a few months so I know how much work it could take. I'm not trying to knock your idea but it's needs a better foundation of thought. What you proposed is very basic and what types of books would really fly off the shelves like that if they are not targeted to their market? and what position in the store or outlet?

I'm all about specifics and I'd like to believe you. So please just answer one question.

Can you document the process, it'll be best if you did it because if me and my team finds time we'll make that work but I can almost guarantee you that the book will cost more then 5 bucks and that production will cost more than that also. So it's of course a balancing act.

I will even help you on your journey if you'd like to.

If you did have success then Kudos to you my friend.

WOW...thought I'd check in to see how things were going...

My first thought was: "What the heck is everyone talking about on my thread?"

I'm not even going to address each comment.

Frankly, some were hilarious, others were disturbing, some where downright sad.

Never thought free advice would cause such a storm.

I'm not selling anything...never have sold anything on this forum, and never intend to.

I did exactly what I said I did. Actually, before all was done I sold around 8000 booklets. I was interviewed on the news...had a story in the paper about my project. There was a local grocery chain that gladly offered them for sale.

No, I won't tell you the subject because there are others doing this and I'm not going to flood the market. The post wasn't intended to give you a subject, it was intended to stir up some ideas.

2 people actually contacted me about my idea. I spent some time with them giving them detailed instructions on the subject, etc. I'm quite sure they'll do very well when they try it.

There are those who seem to be hung up on getting these into outlets.

I read one post where someone droned on about getting products into Walmart. LOL...I never said anything about selling through Walmart. I also said there were other options to sell your booklets. You could do ads that pointed them to a website, etc.

Did you know one way a business can get new customers is by offering a free report? Prospective customers call or visit a website and have a free report sent to them.

There are also those who seem to be hung up on selling advertising for their booklets. You don't have to sell advertising.

I wouldn't think twice about paying to have 10,000 booklets printed, drop another few thousand on advertising and sell them at $24.95 a pop.

I've spent WAY over $20,000.00 to place a single ad for a product. They haven't all worked out...I've had failures, and I've had successes. Fortunately in the end, through trial and error, my successes outweigh my failures.

You're really only limited by your imagination.

I've been in business for almost 30 years. I've had people tell me they thought I was full of it. But you know what? After our conversation (which I was very polite). They went and got in their crappy car and drove home to their crappy apartment. I'm quite sure even today they're sitting around waiting on a pile of money to fall out of the sky.

I'm not knocking anyone that drives a crappy car or lives in a crappy apartment, I've been there. Thankfully, when I was there, I was always looking for new ideas. I never stopped trying. I never gave up. I never limited my beliefs. I was willing to look into any possibility.

I would hope there are those who can use just a little bit of imagination and make something out of my tip.

I have a friend that made $40,000,000.00 in less than 2 years. I could do a post and tell you exactly how he did it, but then there'd be those whining about how they don't have $300,000.00 to have an infomercial made. Or they don't have 10s' of thousands of dollars to do a direct mail campaign. Or they'd whine about spending so much money on a product that wasn't a "sure" thing.

Real success means taking chances.

You can start small and work your way up. If all you can afford is 50 booklets, do 50 booklets. Sell those and continue to work your way up. There are things in life that take effort.

There are very few cases of overnight success. If you think you're going to go to sleep tonight and wake up in the morning with a couple Bentleys in the garage of your million dollar home, you're dreaming. Trust me when I tell you, you'll have a lot of failures before you get to that point.

You may have some days you don't eat. There may be times when they shut your electric off...you may have to live in your car for a while.

How bad do you want it?

Hopefully my post will stir up something in your imagination.

I've read about ideas...thought about them and ended up with loads of additional ideas. Some took a different path, but they started with one idea.

Someone read an idea on here about over sized postcards and was asking me what I thought. I didn't think the idea was bad. The idea started my mind spinning about better ways to do it. I tweaked the idea, gave them a great idea using some of the latest technology and they're making some serious bank. After reading some of the comments, I'm quite sure if I were to offer the suggestion there would be those complaining about the learning curve to implement the new idea.

Keep your mind open...always be learning.

Finally...

IF everything I tell you is a total pile of crap...what are you out? How much have you spent? How much have I asked you to spend?

The tip I gave you is, and has been used with great success.

Someone once wrote a post saying they had came up with a new plan for success. I responded by saying a plan was only the first step. Most plans aren't a straight road from point a to point b. There's hills, valleys, swamps, alligators, zombies, machine gun fire, heat seeking missles coming your way (to name a few). Most, once the first rain drop lands on their nose, run back home and plop down in their recliner and start trying to formulate a much easier plan...negative people should be the least of your worries.

This tip was to be used as a framework. Work with it...modify it to your needs.

Guess I've always been the type that looks at an idea and thinks...well, if I tweak this and change that, and maybe use this hook...then advertise it this way it'll work. I hope I never get to the point of using a negative approach as my' first thought.

If you're not into writing...this tip may not be for you. There are those who love to write, I'm one of them.

Have no idea what max50 did or didn't do...but I know a thing or two about booklets. Here is a link to an old promotion...

Quick and easy money.

OK, except for the 10,000 dollar cookie, these are a few of my booklets...all of which were created from a single sheet of paper. Almost all are advertising vehicles given away for free. As for counter displays, I still have scores of momma and poppa stores displaying my lottery lucky hotsheets, because they get them for free and sell them for 2 bux each, most average 100 per month.

I don't even attempt to get anything into chains or franchises because of the meeting factor...screw meetings, had enough of those to last a lifetime.

Some of these stores have had the ohiolottomodel hotsheet on display for over a decade...so, I don't know how max did his...but I used to do it the hard way...the Jimmy Krug way, the Paulette Ensign way...both have made tons of moolah with booklets.

As for these booklets, I use one piece of paper, weight and stock vary...I use a template, sure, you can have it if you want it...

I scan pics in, do very little copy and because I know how to market, I don't find max's figures all that out of bounds.

I also create HOTSHEETS and have written a report on it. YOU can write, print and start selling within 8 hours. Don't need a print shop, my very good HP does all the work... and it is on demand.

YOU could easily do a THE BEST of _____ Special OFFERS in under a week.

ONE piece of paper. Booklet. Used for advertising several businesses or a coupon book for one, like a dry cleaner.

Some of you just want to over complicate everything you do....why?

Booklets are alive and well, thank you very much.

gjabiz

PS
This promotion in the link is dead...but the HOTSHEETS report can be found at sowpub.com although I no longer own it, nor do I support it.

Interesting! Love this discussion! Always insightful to see what ideas are out there...

Impressive, nice share you have here for us. Really a helpful one.

Such really a nice ideas you all have shared here.

One VERY interesting thing in this thread are all the reasons why the ideas Max5ty presented won't work.

My inclination is to say that telemarketing and cold calling won't work either.

Of course the people who actually take action and implement come to different conclusions.

There are a number of people over in the copywriting forum that I tend to pay attention to ... max5ty and gjabiz are two of them.

Marvin

I've heard about this method.

See no reason to bash the OP
as he is not trying to sell anything
and the post is more constructive
than some WSOs.

Ideas are to be run with and tweaked
as needed for the individual.

Dan

Thanks for sharing. I have seen small books like you are referring to in stores before.

Nowadays you can do this on the internet in less amount of time

A good product launch can net you around 5-10k and backend sales / webinars for 10k or more. Otherwise, great read and thank you for the insights