SOWPub Small Business Forums - Hotsheet or Report?

Aloha Woody,

I agree with Pete, a hotsheet is sufficient for what you describe.

I wrote the following email to my list today. I am including it, because it goes to the heart of your question.

And "YES" the title is made to get people to open it. My list expects the provocative from me. ;)

Aloha,

Jason

A Golf Ball -- And A 50' Garden Hose...

Do you golf?

I don't.

One year, a chick I was "dating on a nightly basis" bought me a month's worth of lessons as a gift for my birthday. She was rich and owned a tour agency in Hawaii. A tour agency that catered solely to affluent golfers from Asia. I tried it out (talking about the golf, not the chick) -- and found that I hated it.

She did teach me a valuable lesson though:

Golfers are a gold mine.

They are rabid. They are insatiable. They are affluent. They are repeat buyers. In fact, you could say they are the PERFECT target market.

One of my favorite copywriters: John Carlton has made a nice living catering specifically to this niche. So has one other marketing genius, that you probably have never heard of...

His name is Gordon Jay Alexander and he worked under marketing genius Ben Saurez who's "Golfing Division" was a multi-million dollar a year part of the company, SCI. Gordon is a well know golf pro in Northeast Ohio.

I met Gordon last year, and we have become good friends. He was a Navy submariner (not EVERYONE can make it in the Marine Corps) and stationed in Hawaii -- so with that common bond, he began sharing some marketing secrets he has learned over the decades.

I want to share one of them with you, that makes a hell of a lot of sense. Something that I have been doing for a couple years -- but never really formalized into a strategy until meeting Gordon...

Over the past couple weeks I have been pumping out hotsheets.

What is a hotsheet?

It is nothing more than a 8"x11" (A4 for you Brits) sheet of paper, with 2-3 columns of densly-packed, "meaty" text covering a specific topic in depth.

It functions as a lead product to pull people into your marketing funnel.

The idea is that you can create a hotsheet in under an hour, and roll it out immediately to test a niche -- and build a list of customers. You can charge ($2-10) for your hotsheet.

If there is overwhelming interest in the information, you can beef it up, and roll out a more in-depth product (as a backend) -- which consists of a hotsheet and a cassette tape or CD -- and of course increase the price to $10-30.

If that works, you can expand the hotsheet and audio product again into a booklet or folio -- and increase the price even higher!

Get the idea?

You keep beefing up the product -- increasing the price --and rolling it out as a backend.

What I have found, is that a hotsheet does three KEY things:

1. It allows you, to quickly test a target market to see if it is HOT.

2. Builds a list of CUSTOMERS (NOT prospects!)

3. Re-coups your ad costs -- in effect allowing "free" advertising, testing and list building.

Do you see the power in hotsheets?

I strongly suggest that you get your hands on every product that Gordon puts out. I do, because it is all genius stuff.

I will try and get a link for you in the next couple of days to Gordon's new website. As Gordon often says, I want you to see how easy it is to:

"Make some dang money!"

Aloha and Semper fi,

Jason Cain
http://www.GoldBlogger.com

PS: In the next few days, I will be rolling out the newest version of my Guerilla Info-Product Creation Course. A course designed to exploit hotsheets and physical products. Be looking for a future email.

PSS. If you want to know more about HOTSHEETS, here is the place to find out about them:
http://makemoneyalert.com/hotsheet/hotsp.htm