This is my 6th post and I haven’t mentioned ‘Making Money on the Internet’ yet, so as this is my blog’s title I had better start. Actually I want to talk about Direct Mail…’what’s that got to do with the internet’? I can hear you ask. Well quite a lot because the Internet makes Direct Mail much cheaper to operate. Many people miss out on the opportunities provided by direct mail because it is traditionally high cost. You need an address list, envelopes, postage and full colour sales material with a pre-paid reply envelope for orders.

Not any more!  ‘Two Step’ promotion is the cheap method. Step One – you post a letter to your prospect with a one page sales letter directing them to your website. Step Two your website does the selling for you with full colour photos and even videos. The website also takes enquiries and orders. – Easy. 

If you contact your postal service you will also find that there are discounts on offer for bulk mail. In England the Royal Mail offer postage discounts of around 30% with their Mailsort 3 service, providing you post at least 4,000 items at one time……4,000 items still sounds expensive, and it is, so you need to test your offer with smaller amounts first. Once you know the response gives you a profit, you simply roll it out – send the same mailshot to more people and multiply your profit accordingly.

After building up my holiday business I used to spend £70,000 per year on direct mail, however it brought in gross profits of between £220,000 and £300,000, which left a lovely fat net profit. Something to think about then, but make sure you test, test and test again before spending big amounts.

John McNally