That contact with Mr. Bissell led to frequent contacts. Soon we entered the cold-weather season when my duties became heavy.
“I hear you are working hard,” Mr. Bissell said to me one day.
I replied, “I should work hard, for I have so many easy months.”
He insisted on the details, and he learned that I was leaving my office at two o’clock in the morning and appearing again at eight. Like all big men whom I have known, he was a tremendous worker. He had always done the average work of three men. So the hours that I kept gave him interest in me, and he urged me to join his office force.More on My Life In Advertising (Chapter 4: How I Got My Start In Advertising) Claude Hopkins
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Up to my graduation from high school my ambition was the ministry. I was an earnest Bible Student. The greatest game we had in our house was repeating Bible verses. We took turns, as in a spelling bee, going around the circle, until all dropped out save one, I was always that one. I had memorized more verses than anyone I met.
Often the minister dropped in, but he was no competitor of mine in a Bible competition. I knew several times as many verses. At the age of seven I was writing sermons and setting them in my father’s printing-office. Often in prayer-meetings I spoke a short sermon. Thus all came to regard me as a coming pulpit orator. I was made valedictorian of my class at school. My graduating essay was on ambition, and I still remember how I denounced it, how I pleaded for poverty and service.
More on My Life In Advertising (Chapter 3: My Start In Business) Claude Hopkins
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One of my favorite direct mail letters starts off:
“Dear Reader,
It was Scott Fitzgerald who observed, “The rich are different from us.”
It was Ernest Hemingway who then shot back, “Yes. They have more money.”
…so before you accept this invitation to move up higher financially, you may want to consider some of the pros and cons.”
The letter then has two columns listing the “disadvantages of being rich” and “the advantages of being rich.”
Ten disadvantages are cited in the left column, including, “You’ll start hearing from long lost cousins looking for loans.”
The right column is barren space, till you turn to the next page, where you see circled in red, “You’ll have tons more money.”
This and 209 other direct mail masterpieces await you when you crack open one of the most important direct marketing packages to be released this year.
It’s called “The Bill Jayme Collection.”
But don’t expect a deluge of emails announcing this landmark collection from the Internet marketing hucksters.
There won’t be any since there’s no kickback involved.
While on the subject, the term launch has almost become a pejorative.
You know what I’m talking about.
“Our servers have crashed due to the flood of orders but we’ll be re-opening tomorrow to offer the final 100 copies…so hurry.”
The email message is then regurgitated a dozen times before it fades away. Till the next “new thing.”
Internet marketing launches don’t add up to chump change compared to the dozens of magazines launched by team Jayme and Ratalahti. One of them, for American Health, brought in 250,000 paid subscriptions and allowed the publisher to exit with $29 million in 1990.
I’m almost tempted to invoke Guy Kawasaki’s testimonial for Brenda Ueland’s book, If You Want To Write: “If you buy this book and it doesn’t help you, I will give you your money back.”
The New York Times Magazine article, “Junk Mail’s Top Dogs,” on Jayme and Ratalahti.
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Father owned a newspaper in a prosperous lumbering city. The people had money to send, so advertisers flocked there. We smile now as we remember the ads. of those days, but we smile at the hoopskirts, too.
Most of the advertisements were paid for in trade. Our home became a warehouse of advertised merchandise. I remember that at one time we had six pianos and six sewing-machines in stock.More on My Life In Advertising (Chapter 2: Lessons In Advertising And Selling) Claude Hopkins
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This book is not written as a personal history, but as a business story. I have tried to avoid trivialities and to confine myself to matters of instructive interest. The chief object behind every episode is to offer helpful suggestions to those who will follow me. And to save them some of the midnight groping which I did.
One night in Los Angeles, I told this story to Ben Hampton, writer, publisher, and advertising man. He listened for hours without interruption, because he saw in this career so much of value to beginners. He never rested until he had my promise to set down the story for publication.More on My Life In Advertising (Chapter 1: Early Influences) Claude Hopkins
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This lead generation ad for how to get-rich-in-real-estate appeared in “Popular Mechanics” just a few weeks before Black Thursday and the eventual market crash of 1929.
That $100,000 in today’s dollars would be about $1.3 million, so that was quite a claim to make. Reminiscent of the real estate gurus of our not so distant past?
This is one of the first recognizable to the 21st Century marketer’s eyes, get-rich-in-real-estate ads and it was published by a company called American Business Builders.
This ad and their biz-op ads in general were in a word — phenomenal.
You get the feeling that a heavyweight copywriter, like Victor Schwab, had a hand in this but since so much of Schwab’s oeuvre has never been identified, we may never know.
Notice the interesting coupon with the year the company was founded and its business capital.
Once again…nothing new under the sun.
Click the thumb to DL the PDF.
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Last week, I posted a 36 page PDF of Harvey Brody’s presentation on the tollbooth or toll position concept. Yes, it probably could have been condensed into half that number of pages and no, it was not a setup to sell you one of his products.
Here are eight tollbooths I came up with. The list could be expanded but it’s a decent starting place.
Review Site Tollbooths
Angie’s List (AngiesList.com) is a rating service for residential contractors, like painters, plumbers and repairmen, with annual memberships starting at $35. The beauty of this tollbooth is its content, like Amazon.com is user generated. But, unlike Amazon with its huge warehouses, inventories and distribution systems, there’s almost no overhead besides advertising and hosting. Angie’s list does somewhere around $30 million per year in revenue. RatedPeople.com, in the U.K is similar to Angie’s List. More on Creating Your Own Tollbooth And 8 Examples
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“This Man Must Lose 20 Pounds In 30 Days…
or he’s putting one of his most valuable, virtual assets on the auction block.”
Dear Reader,
I have until May 5th, 2009 to shed 20 pounds or this website gets auctioned off to the highest bidder on eBay.
Yes, I’ve been blogging for almost two years here about the topic near and dear to my heart — direct response advertising. And since this site ranks on the first page of Google for the term, marketing info, as well as a lot of other juicy terms, it’d be madness to relinquish it for a frivolous virtual wager.
Yet that’s what I’m doing…and there’s no turning back now. As a direct marketer, I’ve earned many loaves of bread based on the power of “instant improvement” advertising. So, now it’s time to show that I walk the talk as well.
I’ll be posting my stats daily as well as a few videos. Sorry, no gruesome shirtless photos…for now.
4-14-09
Plateaued at 219 for a few days. Am ramping it this week. Me doing morning push ups with some help from my little lads.
4-23-09
Been so busy with projects that I haven’t been able to blog about this accordingly.
215.6. It hasn’t been the breeze I thought it would be, but there’s no way in heck I’ll lose this site…so I’m confident I’ll shed 10 lbs in 12 days.
My strategy. 5 miles on the treadmill each day. Resistance training 4 times a week. No meals after 7:00. No simple carbs etc. I’ll have more to report soon.
05-03-09 3 pounds to go in 2 days. No time to talk. Off to the gym.
05-05-09 I came up short by almost 3 pounds. Back in the day, it would have been a breeze. Now, with three kids, a business and a 40+ metabolism, it takes more to pull off that kind of weight loss. Once I got below 210, I hit the resistance point.
3 measly pounds. Why didn’t I just do an all night run a la Dean Karnazes? To say I haven’t built up that kind of stamina yet is an understatement. And I’m not into diuretics, diet pills or intense sauna sessions, so I never entertained going there…though any could have resulted in an extra few pounds lost.
But the bottom line is I’ve reinstalled the exercise habit. I’m 17 pounds lighter and have more energy, endurance and strength than I’ve had in recent memory. Moreover, even though I came up short, I don’t feel any likelihood that the snap-back effect will happen.
So what happens now?
In my book, a marketer’s word is his bond, so since I impulsively declared I’d put this site up for auction, if I didn’t meet my stated goal, that’s what’ll happen. I’ll have more details, photos, etc to follow in the next week. Now…it’s back to work.
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You can only be a contrarian for so long.
I’ve resisted Twitter for a l-o-n-g time. But now that I’ve joined the insidious little service, I want followers…followers…give me followers!
The very word sparks delusions of Medieval courts and jesters.
Back to work.
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The following 36 page PDF is the transcript of a talk given by Harvey Brody before a group of fledgling entrepreneurs, three years ago.
It is reproduced with Mr. Brody’s permission and is Copyright © 2006, by Harvey Brody. All rights reserved.
Who is Harvey Brody and why should you download and read his report?
Harvey Brody, now in his 70’s, is an entrepreneur, patent developer and marketer who is an exponent of the Toll Position Concept.
It’s not a coincidence that many of the acknowledged legends of direct response marketing and information marketing attended his seminars in the 1970’s. People like Gary Halbert, Ben Suarez , Joe Karbo, Joe Sugarman, Jay Abraham, Dan Kennedy, Bud Weckesser and Jerry Buchanan.
What’s the toll position concept?
Here’s an excerpt from his talk that paints the picture:More on Harvey Brody’s: ‘Toll Postion Secrets’ Report
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