The item I sold was Colloidal Silver, so it fell under the category of product. But the
MLM company that manufactured this product kept instructing me to build a downline and
sign up as many distributors as possible. Since everyone was given this same advice, I
decided to do something different and more exciting.
I learned from a colleague that the consumer market is the most overlooked market for
smaller homebased businesses. Big companies market to the consumer, but the little guy is
never told to do it. They are led to believe that it's too expensive, which is a lie. In
fact, running classified ads all over the country is less expensive per 1,000 than mail
order publications.
Now I knew from experience that if I even mentioned the word distributorship to a consumer
they will immediately envision door-to-door selling. This, of course, would turn them off.
Because of this I knew that marketing with this method would not get me anywhere.
So I used another angle. Why not just sell the product itself with no strings attached?
Don't most consumers buy products at the store because they want to use them? When you
purchased your living room sofa for instance, did you purchase it so you could re-sell
them and make money? Of course not. You bought it, brought it home and used it!
So I wrote 5 different classified ads selling Colloidal Silver for $30 a bottle. I told
about the benefits of Colloidal Silver and asked the reader to call my toll-free number to
learn more about its health benefits. My toll-free number was a recording that sold the
product (not the opportunity.)
I invested $850 to get my 5 different classified ads in newspapers across the country. My
cost per 1,000 circulation was 23¢ much lower than mail order and my ad appeared within 2
weeks.
From the $850 investment, I made only $300 of my money back but the idea worked! I
analyzed which of the 5 different ads pulled the most response (they were coded),
eliminated 3 that didn't and invested another $500 ($200 of my own money and $300 from the
first sales) the next week in classified advertising again. This time I made $750 in
sales.
The next month I narrowed down the papers that pulled the most orders, added on some more
and repeated the procedure. I made another $500 the first week in sales and $1,200 the
second week. After processing the paperwork to get these orders filled, I ended up with
100 customers who had purchased the Colloidal Silver and 2 who wanted to join the
distributorship in my downline.
Now granted 2 out of 100 is not a lot. But 2 people who REALLY want to work the program is
much better than 2,000 that don't want to work or don't even want to learn how to.
Besides, I had the potential of 100 REPEAT customers and the opportunity to sell them more
products. I made a great deal of money using this method and you can too!!
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