THE,BOOKLET,JOURNEY,Way,back,1 business, insurance THE BOOKLET JOURNEY

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Way back in 1991, when my organizing business was already 8 years old, Ispotted an offer for a free copy of a booklet called "117 Ideas For BetterBusiness Presentations" . Well, because I do business presentations, andbecause the price was right, I sent for it. My first reaction was, 'geez, Icould knock something like this out about organizing tips.' Then I threw itin a drawer. Six months later I was sitting in my office, bored, baffled and beaten downby the difficulty of selling my consulting services and workshops in a sloweconomy. I had no money. I mean no money! I remembered that little booklet. I had no idea how I was going to do it,but something hit me, and I knew I had to produce a booklet on organizingtips. I started dumping all those ideas I ever had about getting organized onto afile on my computer. These were all pearls that came out of my mouth when Iwas with clients or when I did a speaking engagement or a seminar. I coulddo one booklet on business organizing tips and another on householdorganizing tips. Two 16-page tips booklets, each fitting into a Number 10size envelope. The first one was '110 Ideas for Organizing Your BusinessLife' and the second one '111 Ideas for Organizing Your Household'. My first run was 250 copies. That was the most expensive per-unit run Imade, but I had to get samples to distribute to start making money. It tooka few months to pay the printer only $300. The only way I could think of selling the booklets was by sending a copy tomagazines and newspapers, asking them to use excerpts and put an invitationat the bottom for readers to send $3 plus a self-addressed stampedenvelope. I had no money to advertise. Then the orders started dribblingin, envelopes with $3 checks in them or 3 one-dollar bills. This was greatstuff. I remember the day the first one arrived. It was like manna fromheaven:$3! Of course, the fact that it took about 6 months from firststarting to write the booklet until the first $3 arrived somehow didn'tmatter at that moment. I cast seeds all over the place, hoping that some would sprout. I founddirectories of publications at the library and started building my list. Finally, February of 1992 'the big one' hit. A 12-page biweekly newsletterwith 1.6 million readers ran nine lines of copy ABOUT my booklet. Theydidn't even use excerpts!! That sold 5000 copies of my booklet. Idistinctly remember the day I went to my P.O. box and found a little yellowslip in my box. It said, 'see clerk'. There was a TUB of envelopes that had arrived that day, about 250 envelopesas I recall, all with $3 in them. In April, that same biweekly newsletter ran a similar nine lines about myhousehold booklet, starting all over again. This time I sold 3000 copies. Round about June, I stopped and assessed what had happened. Was I makingany money? By then, I had sold about 15,000 copies of the business and thehousehold organizing tips booklets one copy at a time for $3. When Ichecked my financial records, I realized I had tediously generated not aton of money. And some of the lessons I had learned along the way were expensive ones. Ididn't realize my bank was charging me $.12 for each item deposited until Igot my first bank statement with a service charge of $191. Some very wonderful things happened while selling those 15,000 copiesthough. * A public seminar company ordered a review copy to consider buildinganother product from my booklet. They did, and I recorded an audio programbased on the booklet. I can sell that tape to my clients as well and it ledto a 20-minute interview on a major airline's inflight audio programmingduring November and December one year. * I was sorting through the envelopes, ...$3, $3, ,$1000, $3,..... wait aminute. Well, a manufacturer's rep decided to send my booklets to hiscustomers that year instead of an imprinted calendar. * A company asked me to write a booklet that was more specific to theirproduct line. * I got paid speaking engagements from people who bought the booklet. * I found out that the list of people who bought my booklet was a saleableproduct. Things were starting to pick up. So, back to June and taking stock of whereI was. You know those advertising card decks in the mail? Well, that day inJune I was so bored, I opened one. Glancing through it, I said, 'jeez,here's a company that oughta see my booklet. And here's another one, andanother one.' I sent booklets to each. Less than a week later, a woman called. At first, it sounded like aprospecting call. Fortunately, I wasn't too abrupt with her. She wascalling to ask me the cost of 5000 customized copies of my booklet for anupcoming trade show. She wanted to know if I could match a certain price. I slightly underbid her price, she was thrilled and the sale was adone-deal. I thought, 'oh, this will be easy to sell large quantities now'.Wrong. It was another three-four months until the next large-quantity sale.But, the trade show they were attending was an organization I had contactedabout getting my booklet into their catalog. They rejected it because Iwasn't in their industry. So, my buyer had bought 5000 copies of mybooklet, with my company information in it, to distribute at that tradeshow. I loved it! One day, a guy I know from a major consumer mail- order catalog companysaid, 'Why don't you license us reprint rights to your booklet. We can buyprint cheaper than you, so if you charged us a few cents a unit, youwouldn't have to do production.'Well, 18 months later after lots of ziggingand zagging that sale happened: a non-exclusive agreement for them to print250,000 copies.We exchanged a ten-page contract for a five-digit check. They provided the booklet free with any purchase in one issue of theircatalog and made a 13% increase in sales in that issue.They were happy. Iwas happy. I looked for other licensing prospects (even though it took eighteen monthsfor this sale to happen, and the five-digit check was low five-digits, notenough to sustain me). Round about spring 1993, I designed a class on how to write and marketbooklets and wrote an 80-page manual. The class was small and mostly peopleI knew. They paid me money, and I had a chance to test-run the class. Sonow, I had another new product, an 80-page manual, a blueprint of how I hadthen sold more than 50,000 copies of my booklet without spending a penny onadvertising. I like teaching and now I had a new topic besides the organizing I had beenpresenting. I also like traveling. So I took the 3-hour class on the roadand had great fun doing it. I toured the country for about 2 years, 6-8 classes a year. Many peoplehave written interesting booklets on all kinds of topics. Some have hiredme to write a customized marketing plan for their booklet or to coach themby phone to develop their booklet business. Midway through that year (August 1994), I discovered Compuserve. My solepurpose for getting online was to market my business. The third day I wasonline, I saw a forum message from a guy from Italy who had a marketingcompany there. He told me his client base was small businesses andcompanies who served small businesses. I told him I had a booklet he mightfind useful. I sent it to him, he liked it and we struck a deal. Hetranslated, produced and marketed it, and paid me royalties on all sales.That January he wired several thousand dollars to my checking account fromItaly. He made the first sale of 105,000 copies to a magazine that bundleda copy of my booklet with one issue of their publication. That meant I have sold more than 500,000 copies of my booklet, in threelanguages, without spending a penny on advertising. One slow week, I posteda message on some Compuserve forums about the story of the Italian bookletas an example of an online success story. Even though blatant selling isnot allowed, creating mutually beneficial relationships is. I had receivedmoney from someone I had never spoken to and had only communicated withonline, by fax, earth mail and EFT. Folks who read those postings replied that they would be interested indoing the same thing with my booklet, but in French and in Japanese. Thisnever even dawned on me. I've also discovered licensing opportunities for my booklet content inother formats. * Two different companies who produce laminated guides (one hinged, theother spiral bound) licensed my content. They are also interested in othercontent so I expect to broker the content of booklet writers. * I created a company called Tips Products International. * I write tips booklets for clients based on their raw print materials.* I've been writing customized marketing plans for people's booklets for awhile now, which fits into the menu of services for this company. * I've developed two home study packages, How To Write and Market Bookletsfor Ca$h, and How to Promote Your Business With Booklets. Both courses arenow being distributed by resellers around the world. * I've been invited to speak nationally and internationally about how towrite and market booklets. I never could have written a business plan for how this has all unfolded. Clients of mine are now surpassing my own sales results, learning from allthat has gone on since the original organizing booklet was written in 1991. Article Tags: Organizing Tips, Tips Booklets