Billy Mays passed away last week at the age of 50.

He got his start as an Atlantic City boardwalk barker and parlayed his face-to-face sales experience into the consummate infomercial production.

In this short interview, Billy Mays and his Pitchmen co-star, Anthony Sullivan, describe the necessary components of a blockbuster product.

Here they are:

• A product that has mass market appeal
• A product that solves a common problem
• A product that’s demonstrable (the demonstration in the video is wicked, isn’t it?)
• A product that’s new and unique
• A product that has a patent
• A product that adheres to the kiss principle (keep it simple stupid)

Also of note in the interview is something I’ve observed to be true of many super successful direct marketers and businesspeople. They’re willing to take massive risk and lay it all on the line for their passion and belief in their product.

I was in the dentist’s office a few weeks ago and was startled by a Newsweek cover story about Oprah Winfrey entitled: “Crazy Talk: Oprah, Wacky Cures and You.”

When I flipped to the article, it was like being bombarded by a dozen magalog headlines at once.

“Live Your Best Life Ever! Wish Away Cancer! Get A Lunchtime Face-Lift! Eradicate Autism! Turn Back The Clock! Thin Your Thighs! Cure Menopause! Harness Positive Energy! Erase Wrinkles! Banish Obesity! Live Your Best Life Ever!”

I thought, “hey, did one of my copywriter friends help cook up this piece?”

As the article mentions, the real life Oprah is an unapproachable billionairess who flies on a private jet and hangs out with Hollywood film stars. She’s as opposite from her core viewer as possible.

But the TV Oprah is a down-to-earth everywoman — full of the same pedestrian shortcomings as the great, unwashed TV-land masses — and best exemplified by her life-long weight struggle.

Even Oprah’s tacit blessing of a product creates an avalanche of free trial offers for the latest berry or skin cream concoction, promoted via the now ubiquitous weight loss flog (fake blog) and loaded with as much manufactured proof as they can muster.

The article is fascinating reading for direct marketers because it really digs into the drivers for products and markets that seem to open up overnight after an airing on Oprah.

It’s here.

“How to Hook A Million Paying Customers: Ralph Ginzburg’s Long Lost Marketing System”

It isn’t just an advanced marketer’s and copywriter’s treasure map.

It’s FUN.

Like a frosted shaker full of very wicked martinis.

Here’s some of what’s inside…

• 10 Persuasion Patterns that built 6 successful publications
• A book title that was too good and landed Ralph in prison
• “How To Create Premiums More Desirable Than Your Main Product”
• The real difference between fascinations and bullets…explained at last
• “How To Write Results Based Testimonials That Attract Millions of Paid Subscribers”
• How To Use The ‘Interruption Technique’ to beacon to your prospects like a lighthouse in a sea of clutter
• Why lust and greed are the only two appeals that matter
• How to use the A.B.T. (Always Be Testing) philosophy like a pro
• Why there are only four kinds of testimonials that really make a difference and everything else is fluff

Yesterday, I sent an email broadcast to my Canadian customers and subscribers, wishing them a Happy Canada Day.

Took me 60 seconds to scribe two lines and send.

That simple email triggered a flood of replies, not simply out of bewilderment that an American remembered a Canadian holiday, but that I actually took the 60 seconds to send them a “personal” appearing message that was non-commercial in nature.

In fact, I’d say those 60 seconds were better invested than many messages consuming 30 minutes or more to create.

Moral: A.B.T. Always Be Testing.

And once again, Happy Canada Day, eh?

I am not Joe “social networker” nor have any pretension to be since I’m a perpetual late adopter/contrarian. In fact, I haven’t been on Facebook or Twitter meaningfully until the last month.

However, if I could go back in time to the early 1990’s and snare some of the prime virtual real estate like, wine.com, loans.com, etc. which eventually sold for multi-millions, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

Though that’s not gonna happen, there’s a lite version of this opportunity on Facebook that is wide open right now.More on Facebook Vanity URL’s…Wide Open (For Now)

The following article about Joe Karbo is excerpted from an interview entitled, “The Creators” from the now defunct publication, The Capitalist Reporter, circa 1975.

But was the mail order magnate who penned The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches, himself lazy?

Here’s some rare info about this direct marketing legend.

The wonder is that Joe Karbo works at all anymore. He is the millionaire author, publisher and mail-order advertising salesman of The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches, after all. With more than 400,000 copies of the paperback sold in this country alone at $10 each – versus 50 cents per copy production cost – Karbo can afford to take it easy. Foreign markets now have begun to open up in a big way.

Karbo, 50-year-old son of a Russian Jewish immigrant who worked as a tailor in Los Angeles, now spends about half the year in LA, where he maintains a posh suite of offices overlooking the Pacific to tend to his various ventures that make him $300,000 a year. The rest of the time, he and the family (wife and nine children, although not all the kids still live at home) are at a sumptuous retreat in Washington State, about 50 miles south of Olympia – an ideal place to be, well, lazy.

The trouble is, Karbo doesn’t like being lazy. “The idea of being lazy is appealing, but doing it, or rather not doing anything, is not my idea of a way to pass the time,” he says.More on The Lost Joe Karbo Interview…Was He Really Lazy?