Mail Dealer 763
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02-21-2025 - In earlier Mail Order days, I created a sales circular offering a free service to Mail Order Dealers. It was a service all dealers could use. I sent it to a dealer offering to "print & mail" the circular to 1,000. I should have known the price was too low. Out of the 1,000 distribution I was promised, I got one taker for the service I offered. That taker was the print and mail dealer. What happened? I'll let you decide.
02-21-2025 - Today's mail included another offer for "The Fortune Fifty Club." Programs with the same name come in waves, and that's all I'll say about that theory. I also received an offer for "Book of Easy Money." I never read the details of these offers.
02-21-2025 - From the U.S. Federal Trade Commission - FTC Secures Court Order Barring Gravity Defyer and its Owner from Making Unsupported Pain-Relief Claims to Market Company’s Footwear. Gravity Defyer Medical Technology Corporation (Gravity Defyer) and its owner Alexander Elnekaveh will have to stop making alleged deceptive pain-relief claims for Gravity Defyer footwear, under a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. The federal order also requires Elnekaveh to pay a $175,000 civil penalty for allegedly violating a prior Commission order barring him from deceptive advertising.
02-21-2025 - So many "mail order" publications have disappeared since I started in 1992. Some are Mail Order Messenger, We, the People, Ben Frank's Almanac, Motor City Madness, Gumball Express, Mail Order Network Newsletter, USAdvertiser, Biz-Ness Gazette, Classifieds Directory, and many more that I can't remember at the moment. Some ceased publication because of retirements, some were due to death, and some were due to lack of business. I had copies of all of these and more, but they, too, have become lost over time. I still have the last issue of the Classifieds Directory and a photo of my copy of the last issue of the Biz-Ness Gazette. Save those advertising publications - you'll want to look back on them in the near or far future!
02-21-2025 - According to a USPS news release, two new Presorted Standard stamps were released today at the San Diego Stamp Show. These stamps are intended for business use. The new stamps feature American imagery and depict both mountains and shorelines. I don't think many home-based Mail-Order Dealers use this type of stamp.
02-21-2025 - In the mid-1990s, I had a fax machine in use for my Mail Order operation. It didn't take long for people to think it was okay to use my fax paper to send me their advertising. Since the machine was within arm's reach of me on my desk, I took delight in hitting the STOP button at the first hint that an ad was coming through. I even called the FCC to get the statute that makes junk faxes illegal. I even got a "letter to the editor" about the subject published in Home Office Computing magazine. Those were the days.
02-21-2025 - From the U.S. Postal Service - On Thursday, March 27, 2025, at 11 a.m. PT, at the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens, a "first day of issue" event will be held for the new Betty White Forever Stamp. Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens, Allen Ludden Plaza, 5333 Zoo Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90027. You older folks might know that Betty was married to Allen Ludden. According to Wikipedia: "He hosted various incarnations of the game show Password between 1961 and 1980."
02-21-2025 - Don't be a content donor! What is a content donor? Someone who has confused Facebook with a blogging platform. Many people are content to donate their every waking thought to Facebook, and the Facebook honchos love them for it. Indeed, you are aware that Facebook makes money from every word you donate. What is the most essential element of the Internet? Content! Does Facebook create content? I don't think so. Instead, they've convinced over two billion people to donate their content! Most do it innocently by starting or joining pages for clubs, associations, or whatever. Facebook doesn't care - content is content. I'm one of the few who think people need to conduct their business on their website and use Facebook to funnel people to that website.
02-21-2025 - Good Morning! It's Friday if that means anything to you. I'm retired, so it means nothing to me. Here's an advertising tip: Get a free email address with a "vacation auto-reply" option. Gmail and others have this feature. Put that email address in your ad. Load it with a detailed description of your offers, and the system will send that text to anyone who emails you. What could be easier? While my Folgers Black Silk coffee is brewing, I'll enjoy the radio traffic from my local school bus operation and the nearby maximum security prison on my scanner radio. It's cheap entertainment.
02-20-2025 - The U.S. Postal Service posted a reminder that it is against postal regulations to mail metal mercury or items containing metal mercury. These items include thermometers, barometers, blood pressure monitors, and some switches and relays. A fine of from $250 to $100,000 is possible, plus the costs of any cleanup associated with each violation. I knew you wanted to know that.
When they say a man is a "born executive", they mean his father owns the business.
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02-20-2025 - I'm guessing that 99% of the "extra income" mail I receive is either a gifting or multi-level marketing program. Most are gifting programs. If these programs are working for you, by all means, continue. I have no interest in them. I get a lot of mail with a mailing label with the same ID# as the last 50 I received. I don't even open those. I also see the same names repeatedly and already know what they're promoting. These don't get opened, either. This abundance of programs makes 1% promoting an actual product or service more exciting. Okay, maybe it's more than 1%, but not by much.
02-20-2025 - From the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics - Economics Daily - There were 7.6 million job openings in the United States in December 2024, a number not much different than the number of unemployed people, resulting in a ratio of 0.9 unemployed persons per job opening. North Dakota and South Dakota each had 0.4 and Vermont and Virginia each had 0.5 unemployed persons per job opening. There were 1.3 unemployed persons per job opening in Michigan and Nevada, and 1.7 in California. Wyoming (which had 0.7 unemployed persons per job opening) had 15,000 job openings in December 2024. Vermont had 16,000. Texas (with 1.1 unemployed persons per job opening) had 604,000 job openings, while job openings in California numbered 632,000.
02-20-2025 - One of the lingering problems in Mail-Order selling is the old two-step advertising method. You post a small display or classified ad giving a brief idea of what you're promoting, and you ask the reader to write for details. There's an easy way around that. Put the complete information on a website like this and ask for the order!
02-20-2025 - Some people, young people, don't know what a self-addressed, stamped envelope is. They have never heard of it or the purpose of its existence. I've even learned that some young people don't know how to address an envelope. Speaking of the S.A.S.E., I once attempted to return some information to a dealer using his S.A.S.E., and it was returned to me as "Undeliverable as Addressed." That's pretty lousy handwriting!
02-20-2025 - I thought about this type of program in my "disk publishing" days of the mid-1990s. It will work just as well, if not better, on PDF (ebook) files. It involves getting a handful of advertising publishers together that agree to place the advertising of all group members on their PDF publications. So, when one member sells an ad, they send it to the other web publishers, who put it on their PDF publications at no charge. This plan requires that members agree to the type of advertising they will accept, pricing, and how long ads will stay posted. Members can advertise something like "Buy ad space on my ebook, and your ad will be sent to (insert number here) other ebook publishers for the same term." PDF documents can hold much information and still keep the file size small. Adjust this idea to work for you.
02-20-2025 - Good Morning! At 5:00 AM, it is 7 degrees outside. I feel sorry for Mail Carriers in this kind of weather. Six months from now, it'll be 110 degrees! That's Typical North Texas weather. My usual Mail Carrier talks on the phone as he walks by my home office window. My neighbor has to bring me my mail only two or three times a year. I don't complain. I'm not sure how happy my neighbor is about the situation. Two or three times might be an acceptable error rate. I had planned to order some "heat in the can" hot chocolate for my Mail Carrier, but I never got around it. I can't find it locally. My coffee is ready.
02-19-2025 - It was called Network Gold. At least, I think it was. It was a disk-based program (3.5-inch computer disk) that, looking back on it, was nothing more than a gifting program. But, it emerged before I had ever heard of gifting programs. I saw the program advertised - around the year 1995 - and sent for the disk. It cost $5 or less. Once you start the program, you can enter your name and address. The program contained the names and addresses of four participants. You send $5 to each participant, and they send you their code numbers. As you received the codes, you plugged them into the program. When you have entered the last code, your program is unlocked, you become one of the four participants, and you can then make copies of the program for distribution. Hopefully, You will start receiving $5 orders for your code number from more and more people as your copy receives wider distribution. I have to tell you that waiting for those codes was exciting. It was like waiting for the whole combination of a safe full of cash or something else of value! I'm calling it a gifting program because nothing else of value was exchanged. It was my first and last venture of that type.
02-19-2025 - I have a CD-ROM containing well over 7,000 reprint reports. These reports contain so much valuable information that it's hard to put a price on them. Well, someone did, and it's $10. That's what I paid for the CD-ROM. Dividing $10 by 7,000 yields $.0014285 per report. Yes, that's way less than a penny. Reprint reports were a big thing before personal computers with floppy disks hit the market. It's great to be able to buy 7,000 reports for $10. It's not so great to try to write for this market. I suspect that the authors of many of the reports had no idea CD technology was coming! All is not lost. Write something new, and make it known that it's new and not on any of those CD-ROMs!
A business genius is a person who knows the difference between being let in on a deal and being taken in on one.
02-19-2025 - Look through the "extra income" publications. What do you not see? I don't see a lot of Mail Dealer websites. I see many ads promoting affiliate sites, but I don't go directly to those sites. When I see a dealer with their website in the ad, I make it a point to look. I want to see who they are, what they're talking about. etc. I don't get that from some affiliate link. If you're going to stand out, get a website. You can send people to your affiliate sites from there. Here's another problem - some dealers have posted a Facebook link, and I, not having a Facebook account, can't see more than a page or two before I'm locked out. Are these folks only selling to other Facebook folks?
02-19-2025 - I received the postcard stamps I ordered and a handful of money-making programs in the mail today. Among them were The Fortune Fifty Club, Magic Money Number, an offer for discounted stamps and leads, an invitation to a "private exclusive community," a low-cost printing offer, a new program called the America 100 Club, and something about getting paid to write simple sentences.