Back in the ‘70s, I got a surprise visit from some of the baddest badasses in the U.S. government: Agents from The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms (ATF).
No, I wasn’t printing sawbucks in the basement. But it seems I’d caught their attention nonetheless.
See, I had a client who was offering a premium entitled, How to Survive the Money Crash. And being the creative fellow I am, I decided that a whole-brain headline – a lead containing a dramatic visual that represented a money crash – would make my promotion impossible not to open.
To me, “crash” was the operative word. So I took a $100 bill and had an enlarged version of it silk screened it onto a piece of glass. I then grabbed my trusty 1911 Colt .45, took the glass into the back yard and fired a bullet clean through old Ben Franklin’s right eye.
Then, after photographing the shards of glass, I placed that photo on my carrier envelope along with the headline, “How to Survive the Money Crash.”
Good news: It worked like gangbusters. My prospects couldn’t resist the visceral power of the image combined with my head and deck copy.
Bad news: ATF saw it – and a few days after we dropped 100,000 copies into the mail, they came knocking on my door.
According to ATF, my envelope bordered on counterfeiting.
It didn’t matter that the C-note was shattered into a gazillion pieces. Didn’t matter that it was reproduced at only about half actual size. Didn’t even matter that it was printed in black on white 20 lb White Wove stock.
What did matter, according to the agents, was that it had something called, “Sufficient Similitude” to a real $100 bill. Seems any image you could pass off as real money … in a darkened bar … to a thoroughly inebriated patron … qualified as having this “similitude” thing.
I, of course, pointed out that, depending on the blood alcohol level of the aforementioned patron, any scrap of paper smaller than a billboard would meet those criteria. But my compelling argument rolled off the ATF guys like water off a duck.
They just shrugged -- and then cheerfully confiscated every image I’d made for silk screening … every shard of glass … every positive and negative image of that glass … the film used to burn the printing plates … the printing plates themselves … and the handful of left-over printed envelopes loitering down at the letter shop’s warehouse.
No big deal – it was a housefile mailing my client only planned to use once. And of course, being intelligent human beings, the ATF guys knew I was no counterfeiter, so nobody even mentioned “jail time.”
But it did get me to thinking … if this is how closely the U.S. government watches out for anything resembling a counterfeit bill …
… And if the consequences for real counterfeiting include decades-long dates in an 8X12 cell with an amorous and extremely lonely Bubba …
… Why in the bloody hell would anyone even entertain the thought of doing such a thing?
… Especially since turning ink and paper into green money the legal way is so amazingly profitable?
Printing Money the Legal Way for 35 Years
Over the last nine weeks, I’ve been spending my Wednesdays on the phone with a few hundred folks who have found the secret to turning pots of ink and stacks of paper into thousand-dollar bills.
We called it the “Confessions of The Info-Marketing Superstars” series – and each week, we spent an hour with a real-life expert: An entrepreneur who’s making a fortune selling newsletters, books, courses, seminars and other information products on the Internet, in direct mail and through print ads.
I delivered a ton of my own insights in the first session – and then each week for eight more weeks, I picked the fertile brains of other experts who have mastered the art of “Legal Counterfeiting” – turning drums of ink and reams of paper into green money.
We talked with top infopreneurs like Bob Bly … Michel Fortin … Dr. Martin Weiss of Weiss Research … Early to Rise president Mary Ellen Tribby … Bob Serling … Daniel Levis … Troy White and Sylvie Fortin.
See, the beauty of the information marketing business is that the price you can charge for an information product has nothing at all to do with the cost of producing your product.
The value of your product – and the price you can charge for it – are based entirely on the value of the information it contains! A report that costs you fifty cents to print and mail can easily be sold for $29 … $49 … $99.
Heck. Dr. Weiss just sold truckloads of a report on uranium investing for $499 – his printing and mailing costs? Zero dollars: He delivered the report online as a PDF!
Now I ask you: Can you name another business that lets you sell a product that cost you next to nothing – or even precisely nothing -- for five hundred smackers?
Without the risk of having the ATF throw you into the hoosgow for counterfeiting?
Wait … it gets better:
What’s Better Than a 100% Profit Margin?
When you become an infopreneur, your product isn’t the only thing that costs you nothing: Thanks to the Internet, your marketing doesn’t have to cost you a penny, either!
Just make sure your sales page is search-engine friendly … swing a few ad swap, affiliate and joint venture deals with other online entrepreneurs … salt the relevant blogs and forums with links to your sales site … fire off a few volleys of online press releases … and Voila! -- the money starts rolling in.
So your product costs you nothing to manufacture or deliver …
Your marketing costs you nothing ...
… You’re pretty much left with a 100% profit margin!
And all you need to get going is the ability to 1) Produce an information product people will pay for, and 2) Create sales copy that compels prospects to buy it.
It doesn’t have to be eternal to be immortal (or profitable)
Course, most of the folks I interviewed for Confessions of the Info-Marketing Superstars sell pretty hefty products. Their books, reports, newsletters, audio and video series and other information products deliver reams of content.
And so, naturally, before they could create that content, they had to become experts of sorts on the subject at hand.
Should the challenge of becoming an expert stop you? Absolutely not: The Internet makes becoming an expert on just about anything a breeze.
Spend an hour studying the mating habits of the snail darter – or anything else, for that matter -- and you’re instantly among the top 1% of the world’s experts on the subject.
Or, if you’re even lazier than that, you could just interview the world’s top expert and sell the interview for a small fortune. Or better yet, interview a dozen or more of the world’s top experts and sell the transcripts and MP3s for a large fortune.
Still too much work for you?
Consider this …
Infopreneuring minus the “info”
Remember Crazy Dazies? Those flower stickers everyone stuck all over their notebooks, refrigerators and Volkswagen vans in the ‘70s?
The guy who invented them had an office in Palos Verdes, California – right next to mine.
He wasn’t a shrewd entrepreneur … just a graphic artist with an idea: Let folks “customize” their stuff with stickers that made a statement.
When I met this guy (Senior moment: I can’t remember his name!) he had sold approximately 22.4 bazillion stickers for a net profit of more than 18 gazillion – and he was still going strong.
His genius was that he was kind of like an info-preneur – slapping ink on paper to create products -- but he didn’t sell any information at all. An info-preneur minus the info. A “preneur,” if you like.
You know those obnoxious little smiley face stickers that demand you have a nice day? More ink on paper – and some preneur is still making a fortune on those.
Or the bumper stickers that proclaim “I heart my dog?” Ditto.
Point is …
There’s no excuse for someone with your skills
to ever want for money!
Time to stretch a little.
Maybe you got into this direct response thing to promote a particular product.
Maybe you got into it because you like the idea of being a freelance copywriter.
The fact is, once you learned what you now know about identifying consumers’ desires … about persuasion … and (hopefully) about the nuts and bolts of direct response marketing … you have a huge advantage over the vast majority of your fellow entrepreneurs.
You are uniquely equipped to make an easy six figures a year – or even millions -- by conceiving and promoting your own products.
I did it once with a little 32-page book entitled “They’re Out to Steal Your Children!” The book simply contained the most outrageous lyrics from the day’s pop music. We sold tens of thousands of dollars-worth of them by placing ads in conservative tabloids back in the day.
Bottom line: There’s simply no excuse for anyone with your skill set to be struggling. The money you need to earn is already in other people’s pockets. They’re dying to give it to you – IF you offer them something that will bring value to their lives.
Using your skills to create and promote products that cost little or nothing to produce and little or nothing to sell is a great way to go from zero to six figures a year in no time flat.
So think … what could you create and market in a couple of hours a day? What market niches will you go after? What’s the first step you’d have to take to make it happen?
Hope this helps …
Clayton Makepeace, www.makepeacetotalpackage.com/
Work-at-home is where the CEO is
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