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Old June 15, 2018, 02:00 PM
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GordonJ GordonJ is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: West Palm Beach, FL
Posts: 3,471
Default I'd rather siesta, but, some more on mail order.

When I went to New Mexico and stayed with THE BOZ (Bud Riggs) on his 200 acre desert ranch, replete with rattlesnakes, black widow spiders, rabid dogs and coyotes, mean barn owls, screeching hawks and creatures from the desert...it was a very educational time.

Boz and I became fast friends. After our soiree into selling the HEADLIGHT CLEANING MANUAL (still my best opening day ever, 103 x 97 bux), and he pulled the plug on the project, we did other things.

I'll keep this focused, if I can on mail order.

In the little two bedroom guest house where I slept (barely, and even then with the lights ON) one of the bedrooms was filled to the top with boxes, I think from SMC., although it could have been Mellinger's or Mail Order Associates, all pretty much the same thing. I think it was SMC, those guys with the Tom Bosley of Happy Days ads and infomercials.

Anyhow, he said there was about 12 to 15 thousand dollars of merch, his cost.

In his garage/work area/office he had by my best guess a collection of at leastg $100,000.00 of courses, books and info products. Some of you might remember we offered some for sale. Boz had every Real Estate Course ever made, he bought them all.

All this is just a little background.

So one day we made our rounds, Car Wash for some headling cleaning, brunch at Chinese buffet, then the post office, where he kept two boxes and then to a USPS store (hybrid) where he kept TWO other mail boxes and where he rec'd packages.

We get back to the ranch and I help him haul in the mail and put the headlight cleaning kits away, he always had a habit of refilling everything when he got home, charging the batteries on the drills, and being ready to grab and run the next day.

He gives me a couple of boxes, and when I open them, dozens of USPS priority mail falls out, and as I open them up, twenties, fifties and hundred dollar bills come pouring out. What the HEY?!

Oh no, my knee jerk reaction, who deals what in CASH? Well he did. But this money came from a "few" of his mail order operations.

The boxes came from different locations, the envelopes sent to a re shipping house, and then mailed to him at his location. It was then I discovered why he pulled the plug on our little headlight cleaning manual, just wasn't worth his time to deal with people.

Too much people contact. There was a reason, after all, the guy lived in the desert. He owned several rental properties, mostly mobile homes (trailers he called them) and sold them mostly on land contract basis.

Income was not his real concern, and with all this CASH pouring in, it almost made me want to grab a shovel and start digging, but having gotten to know the man, I probably would have hit one of the booby traps.

Mail order GIFTING has been around forever. As has mlm, or those "downline" projects, and the selling of recipes (guilty) and other pieces of paper for a couple of bux, while it cost a stamp and a mimeograph (yikes, am I really that ancient?,,,oh yea)

See, there was and IS a very active mail order community outside of what most of us consider to be Direct Marketing, or Remote Direct Marketing done by the likes of Joe Karbo, Ben Suarez and Joe Sugarman. There was a time when the backs and fronts of magazines like POPULAR SCIENCE/MECHANICS were filled with hundreds of little classified ads.

And the Biz-Op Make Money areas were jammed packed with offers, send a stamp, or stamped envelope to get the offer. There were thousands of these over the years.

Well, all that was history. OR so most of us think. A little more than a year ago, I posted about some tests, and as I mentioned one of our members has taken up the task to fully develop and TEST modern mail order circulars.

His results have been surprising.

I won't say millions, or even hundreds of thousands, but it seems like there is a universe of many thousands of people who still participate in those gifting plans, selling HOTSHEETS galore, getting names on lists, and offering deals.

It isn't the market it was at one time, but it is full of BUYERS. People who spend money, send money (even CASH) through the mail in the hopes of finding a business op or receiving their payout after rising up on the list of a mlm company. It is AMAZING, although, not really.

More later, to be continued.

Gordon

Last edited by GordonJ : June 15, 2018 at 02:12 PM.
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