The most profitable mail order products are simple 3-to-5 page informational reports such as this one. Once you've got your act together, these 3-page reports can be produced for $10 per hundred or less, and sold for at least $200 per hundred.

Generally speaking, everybody either in or wanting to get into mail order, feels that they have the final answer to what the general public will beat a path to their door to buy. The problem is that once they've invested a good deal of hard-earned cash and countless hours, their programs don't sell quite as well as they had hoped they would. Thus it is that these people begin to feel that they've left something out or perhaps not doing "some little thing" that they should be doing.

At this point in their lives, they'll spend a couple of dollars for anything that pretends to fill them in on the secrets that they haven't yet discovered. The bottom line in building a fortune through mail order is not necessarily in working your plan, but in "filling in" the people who either have tried and failed, or else are wanting to get into mail order but are not yet quite sure of themselves.

The numbers of people fitting into the category are literally millions! The idea is to take a complete inventory of these reports - the titles of each report "promising" an answer to their specific problems - and sell it - your complete inventory of titles - a thousand times over each year. Assuming that you have an inventory of 100 titles - reports that sell for $2 each - and you sell 1,000 copies of each report per year for 10 years, you would have made a million dollars.

Nobody like to get taken, and nobody likes to pay anymore than the absolutely has to for what he wants - yet, it you get right down to the real nitty-gritty of life, everyone wants "in on the secrets" of getting rich. Thus, by allowing these people wanting to get rich - the majority of the people on the face of the earth - in on a program or a method of operation that could make them very rich, for just a couple of dollars or so, you will have a steady stream of people beating a path to your door with money in hand!

The ideal approach is to write these reports yourself. However, not everyone is blessed with the talent of stringing words together coherently - but that's no big deal when you consider the number of people out there, clamoring for "how to get rich" information.

In fact, the best way to learn - and to get started - is to get your name on as many mailing lists as possible, and then to "check out" the various people offering reports of this kind. Always look for the prime source, and when you find the one you want, ask about their dropship and reproduction rights prices.

If you "hook up" with the prime source, you'll generally be allowed to advertise and promote their list of reports - at your cost - and then on all orders you receive, you're generally allowed to deduct 50% for yourself, and required only to send the remaining 50% with the order form in to the prime source. The thing is, this allows you to get into the mail order sales field without having to spend a lot of money for set-up and inventory. Many of the biggest advertisers in mail order operate from their kitchen tables, spare bedrooms or one room offices with all of their orders being fulfilled by someone else.

Often-times a prime source will sell you the reproduction rights to his reports at a special price because you buy a specific number of reports and/or spend a specific amount of money. Provided you're buying the reproduction rights to "new" reports, and the titles of these reports really appeal to the get-rich market, this is the best way to go. With these thoughts in mind, it's always best to send for a few sample copies in order to see for yourself the quality, and value of the reports you'll be selling.

Once you've got the reproduction rights to a set of reports, you can rewrite them - change the addresses and make up or have made up, your own advertising circulars to sell them as you wish. If you have a printing press, or a quick print shop, you can make millions with these reports almost overnight! If you don't have a printing press or a photocopy machine, your best bet is to set up a working agreement with a quick printer or copy shop - they print or photocopy your reports either at a great reduction from their retail charges or you give them a percentage of the profits. In other words, you might get a quick printer to print up a supple of 100 of these reports for you, with the agreement that you would allow him 25 cents from each report you sell. Quite naturally, you let him hang onto your inventory - coming to him for replenishment as you need it. You might even work a deal where you would use his address as your business address, and that way he'd know for sure just how many had been sold, and which ones he needs to print more copies of. There are hundreds of angles and ideas to launch such a mail order product and business such as this - the important thing is to keep your costs as low as possible - and you do this by allowing other people to make money as you make money.

Renting and/or selling mailing lists can make you just as rich as selling "get-rich" reports, but compiling mailing lists, and keeping them up-to-date, requires a lot more time and work. Basically, you make out a 3-by-5 index card on every name you come across. File these cards in shoe boxes according to zip code, and type out an envelope for each name as you file it.

Eventually, you will want to input these names into some sort of a database.

Then at the end of each month, you send out all these envelopes with your primary offer, always supplemented with a listing of the "get-rich-quick" reports you have for sale. Those that send in an order, mark the date, the amount and what was purchased on their card... Those that don't order, don't do anything to - just leave them in your file... Those that come back marked refused, out-of-business, or moved - mark an "X" across their card in your file.

When you've acquired a thousand or more of these names and address simply start advertising and sending out direct mail sales letters, offering to rent or sell these names. Generally speaking, you can rent your names - they'd have to be typed up onto mailing list masters from your cards - for $25 per thousand and, providing your list pulls a minimum number of reruns, you can quickly build a mailing list rental business into a sizeable income.

Copyright 2004 by DeAnna Spencer

DeAnna is the publisher of the ezine, Prospecting and Presents.