Mail Order Blunders And How To Avoid Them

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PART ONE

At the very start of this publication it is necessary to define
exactly what we mean by the term "mail order". What particular
field of mail order (there are three) we are referring to when we
go into detail about avoiding mistakes. Mail order in this country
can roughly be divided into three groups.

GROUP ONE:

The big specialist mail order companies, such as Kays, Littlewoods,
Burlingtons etc.....who operate through agents who sell from huge,
glossy, coloured catalogues and who offer a gigantic range of goods
at highly competitive prices. Because goods are sold on a credit
basis with easy weekly payments, this method of purchasing goods has
proved enormously popular, especially with families in the lower
income groups. Such companies owe much of their success to their
ethical standards. Goods are exchanged or refunds made with the
minimum of fuss or quibble. Service is prompt, efficient, and
quality equals that of the shops and stores. Public confidence in
this type of service has grown over the years and the trading
practices of these firms has set a standard for all who trade by mail.

GROUP TWO:

The many firms who sell solely by mail order or as an additional
retail outlet. If you start a t page one of Exchange & Mart and
read right through to the back page, there is nothing but mail order
advertisements. Literally thousands and thousands of firms selling
every conceivable item by mail. Press, radio and television
advertising contains a considerable proportion of mail order
advertisements. Some experts calculate that 30% of all retail
selling in this country is by mail order. Anything from garden
sheds and exotic pets to hi-fi and lingerie.

GROUP THREE:

This is the group which mainly concerns us in this publication.
This group consists of the home-based mail order dealers. These
are numerous and the vast majority are operating on a very small
scale, often part time and usually severely under-capitalised. It
is amongst this third category that real problems arise, resulting
in a very high failure rate. Few can afford to advertise extensively
in the national media and apart from the occasional small classified
advertisements, their promotional activity is usually confined to
small mail shots or advertisements in modest circulation mail order
publications. Often such people come into the mail order field with
no knowledge or experience and a total lack of professionalism.

These small scale mail order dealers are usually confined to certain
activities through a lack of working capital, so they are limited to
activities that do not require much outlay. Many join multi-level
marketing schemes as the outlay is usually œ25 or less. Others
sell information by mail, usually in the form of reports, manuals,
guides, money-making plans, etc. Most are based on the
"earn big money" or "make a fortune" formula. Promotion is usually
based on small scale direct mail campaigns, often amounting to no
more than a few hundred pieces of mail, or by advertisements in mail
order magazines and ad-sheets which seldom have a circulation of more
than one or two thousand. Thus the small scale mail order operator
is usually operating in a business world where everything is on a
small scale.

Now we must define exactly what we mean by 'failure' in mail order.
Most people who enter mail order in this third category do so on a
part time basis but entertain hopes of eventually leaving their
normal occupation and going into business full time. Few, very few,
ever achieve this objective. Those who don't can be classified a
failures. Of course, there are people who come into mail order with
less ambitious ideas. Such people set their sights a lot lower and
are content to merely supplement their normal income. They often
do achieve this objective and a clear profit of anything up to
thirty or forty pounds a week in not unknown. Such people cannot
be classed as failures.

But the majority of those approached in the R.I.S. survey were forced
to admit that their initial hopes were for something much better.
Perhaps they were influenced by the hyped-up, and often absurd, claims
made by mail order advertisers who are themselves operating on a very
modest small scale basis. What many beginners in mail order do not
realise is that those advertisers who claim to be able to give you
some fool proof plan to make a fortune, to turn you into a millionaire,
are themselves almost certainly struggling along on a shoestring budget.
They are very probably already in the category of mail order failures.

Most people get into mail order almost by accident. They have no real
expertise, no professional experience. Perhaps they started off by
replying to a mail order advertisement, the consequences of which
will almost certainly be that they are entered on a re-sold mailing
list, to be subsequently bombarded by unsolicited mail. Perhaps
the most hyped-up advertisements in mail order are those to recruit
people into multi-level marketing schemes or into money-making plans.

Now I want to mention the three letter word which symbolised those
factors which contribute most to failure in mail order. The three
letter word is GAP. G is for Gullibility, A is for Amateurism and
P is for Poor-image. Let us start with gullibility. If one thinks
of all the hyped-up, catch penny schemes which have come and gone
over the past five years, leaving hundreds of people in this field
of mail order much poorer if not wiser, then you can understand why
so many of them must be considered gullible, or to use that cruel
American term - suckers.

The R.I.S. survey, on which this publication is based, revealed that
93% of those approached admit to having been caught by some of the
daft catch penny schemes which have floated around the mail order
field over the past five years. These include the perennial Edward
L Green chain letter; the even more absurd Nelson Robards chain letter;
the disastrous Property Syndication Network; the even more disastrous
UK Fund Raising Club - disastrous, that is, to everyone except the
man who started it! Then there is the idiotic Money Network.
This promises £100,000 to anyone who will invest a mere ten pounds.
Then there was the doomed culture growing scheme on which scores
of victims lost money they could ill afford. I won't even try to
list all the MLM schemes which were short-lived and which totally
failed to live up to their promises. It is a sad fact that of the
164 MLM schemes launched in this country since 1985, only a handful
have stayed the course. The average life on most was less than
eighteen months.

So here we have one reason why people fail in mail order - they
are too gullible. They actually believe the nonsense which makes
up 90% of mail order advertising. So the first golden rule for
those who don't want to be mail order failures is to be extremely
cynical. Take all those claims with a large pinch of salt.
Be reluctant to part with your money. Let me give you a tip for
sorting out those who claim they are millionaires, or claim they
have already made huge incomes and who offer to let you join them
in the ranks of the immensely rich - at a price.

Just write them a letter. Say you are very interested in their
wonderful money making offer and will probably join, but you would
first like to visit them at their home so you can at first hand what
this wonderful lifestyle is like and to discuss how you can then
get a similar high standard of living. Ask for a definite date and
time for you to visit. Do this even if you have no real intention
of making such a journey.

Now I don't think you will be all that surprised that if you get a
reply it will almost certainly contain one of a variety of ingenious
excuses why it is not possible to offer you such an invitation.
They are just going away on holiday, or they have relatives visiting
them for a long stay. It just isn't convenient right now but perhaps
sometime in the future. Another excuse is, we have the decorators
in at the moment but I could meet you at a nearly hotel. Anything
to keep you from visiting their actual home. Of course, I am talking
about the type of advertisers who advertise in mail order magazines
and ad-sheets. It does not always apply to those who advertise in
national publications.

One gentleman who advertises with a regular display advertisement
in Exchange & Mart for people to join him in selling oil paintings
is very wealthy with a large house in the north of England and a
Rolls-Royce in his garage. But he has never objected to people
coming to visit him. Do not think he is an isolated case, there
are other highly successful people who never leave their home to
work and are wealthy. But they form only a very tiny minority, more
about them later. So, back to this matter of gullibility. You must
trust no offer until you have carefully checked it out. No matter
how well written the literature. No matter how attractive the offer
may be. No matter how impressive the company making the offer may
appear to be. You take nothing on trust.

You can get professional help at very little cost. Alas, it has only
recently become available to home-based mail order people, otherwise
many of the past cons and scams would not have claimed so many victims.

A well known professional researcher runs a subscriber information
service. You can just 'phone and get instant information on any offer
currently being made in mail order. So there is just no excuse in
future for being caught by some dubious proposition. A subscription
costs peanuts and could save you a lot of money. By an exclusive
arrangement with this source members of the 'Ethical Mail Order
Traders Association' (E.M.O.T.A.) receive a three year subscription
to this service (worth œ150) free. Further information on the service,
including the other numerous benefits of membership, can be obtained
from: The Secretary, E.M.O.T.A., 45 Loscoe Grange, Loscoe,
Derbys., DE7 7JY.

We have dealt with one of the main reasons for failure, gullibility,
a touching faith in the promises of 'make a fortune' schemes.
Now we go on to the second of the main reasons for failure. A is
for Amateurism. There is a total lack of professionalism in British
home-based mail order.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in direct mailing campaigns.
Almost all those I know who have used direct mailing in mail order
and those approached on the R.I.S. survey, admit to having felt some
disappointment at the results of their mail shots. All too often
the mailing list gets the blame. I would agree that most of the
mailing lists on offer in mail order are pretty appalling. They are
usually full of errors because the compilers have little or no
geographical knowledge and thus will often miss a mistake. They
will not instantly recognise a wrong post code. A professional
compiler knows them by heart. They will usually fail to notice
an incomplete address, simply because they don't know it is an
incomplete address. I know there are still a lot of people who do
not use post codes and for this reason one does have to be careful
to address fully if no post code is used. If, for instance, an address
is given as 51 Union Street, Newcastle. Then there is no way that
that letter would be delivered. Why? Because there are three towns
called Newcastle in the United Kingdom. Or if the address was, say,
16 Oak Avenue, Sutton. There are thirty three places called Sutton
in the UK. In the old days the Post Office would have sent such a
letter to and fro to each Sutton until it was finally delivered.
That was before Thatcher, and now the Post Office has to be
competitive and such letters go straight into the dead letter bin.

I previously said that most mailing lists offered by mail order
dealers are appalling. Apart from the fact that some are long in
the tooth and produce a high proportion of 'gone aways', they are
also inclined to contain a number of duplicates. That is, the same
name and address repeated more than once. Add the incomplete and
incorrect addresses and the chances are that only about 70% of a mail
shot will reach its destination. But even this percentage of wastage
will not account fully for a mail shot being a total slump. So what
else can be blamed?

Well, if you receive plenty of unsolicited mail, you will know that
if something new comes onto the mail order scene, such as a new MLM
scheme or a new money-making plan, you will know that you don't just
receive one piece of mail on that offer. I personally have received
up to half a dozen in one day for the same MLM scheme. People in MLM
or who promote new money-making schemes all seem to be very busy
spending time and money mailing the offer to people who have already
received it many times. It would seem that most of them are using
the same mailing list. The very first dealer to start mailing out
probably gets a few replies from all those who are interested, so
there is little or nothing left for all those who follow. Beginners
in mail order, and even some who are not beginners, will receive
details of some money-making scheme suitable for those prepared to
promote it through a direct mail shot. It could be something like
Money Network or the Easy Money Business Formula, which totally and
utterly fail to live up to their promises of riches, and which have
already been worked to death by other doomed-to-disappointment
dealers. This is the main reason why mail shots flop, much more
than faulty mailing lists. So many dealers are going over already
worn ground, wasting time and postage.

There is another reason why direct mail shots undertaken by amateurs
fail. I have previously mentioned an almost total lack of
professionalism amongst mail order dealers. This become glaringly
obvious when one looks at the way most of these mail shots are carried
out. Professionals would never dream of undertaking a direct mail
campaign without first undertaking a 'pilot' shot. This is a test
mailing of only one or two hundred pieces of mail. Then, one waits
to see the percentage return on the pilot shot. If it shows 2% or
more, then that is good y mail order standards. If less, then there
is something wrong with the offer and one needs to make a careful
examination to find out why there has been little or no response to
the offer. Only after this reasonable return, and when a further
pilot shows a reasonable return, should all the mail be sent out.

I have often been asked why it is that in the USA there are plenty
of people running home-based businesses and making good full time
incomes, sometimes very high incomes. Yet in this country the number
of people earning a full time income from home-based mail order is
comparatively tiny? One part of the answer is that the Americans are
inclined, like the Japanese, to be highly competitive and professional
in their approach to business, be it a large scale enterprise or a
one man home-based business, whereas we in Britain are inclined to
undertake a business enterprise in a slap-dash, amateurish way.
That is the British way. Mrs Thatcher has done something to try
and change this attitude, but she has an uphill task. This blundering
amateurism runs right through our society. Of course, it is great
for the few who do operate on a professional basis. Many of the
really spectacular successes in home-based mail order were made in
the pre-Thatcher era, in the sixties and seventies, when this
country was a world-wide joke, living on borrowed money and sinking
ever deeper into debt. It was a good time for those who followed
the American methods of money making because there was little or no
competition.

Let us make a comparison between the American and British mail order
dealer. The American entrant into home-based mail order is very
unlikely to just drift into it. America, like Japan, is a highly
competitive profit motivated society. The amateur does not survive
very long in business. No American would dream of starting a business
without some prior business experience, knowledge or tuition.
It should also be remembered that, unlike over here, Business Studies
are included in the curriculum of most American schools. If the
American starting a home-based mail order business had no previous
experience at all, then he would mot likely start attending a business
college, or take a correspondence course. As an alternative, he would
probably seek the assistance of a professional business consultant
who specialises in mail order. There are plenty of such consultants
in the USA. There are only a tiny handful of professional business
consultants in this country who specialise in mail order. But British
beginners in mail order would seldom even think of seeking expert
advice. The British attitude is - anyone can do it. They do not
think it requires any special skill or knowledge, which is probably
one of the main reasons why the vast majority will never get beyond
the peanut level of trading.

Yet professional help is readily available for all sorts of services.
I was reminded of our amateur approach only the other day, when one of
the usual unsolicited circulars came through my letterbox. It is an
impressive circular, beautifully printed on expensive paper, with a
nice logo and altogether an expensive three A4 pages.

It was offering a package deal of self-publishing. Full Reproduction
Rights, both on the three publications on offer and on the expensive
three-page sales literature. The total price for the deal was œ75.
Expensive but still an interesting proposition.......until one began
to examine the text a little more closely. Then one began to
experience that familiar sinking feeling one gets too often when
reading such literature. At least, you will get this feeling if
you are experienced in this field and know what to look for.

As with most of this type of literature there was a surprisingly high
number of spelling errors, punctuation was also very bad and it was
very obvious that the writer had little knowledge of the grammatical
rules that apply to written English. Apart from this it was obvious
that the text had, as usual, been written by an amateur. It lacked
that pulling power that can only be provided by a successful copywriter.
They are the people with the deft touch and the flair necessary to
induce people to take up an offer.

So anyone receiving this literature would, at first glance, be
impressed by the expensive, well printed material. But as they
began to read, that first impression would quickly disappear,
especially if it was being read by a person of reasonable education,
to be replaced by mild amusement and contempt. In the very first
paragraph of this circular there are several errors and the style
of English is clumsy and contrived.

The point I am making is this. Whoever compiled this literature and
sent it out has probably had a very low response and has, no doubt,
sent an angry letter to whoever supplied him with the mailing list.
They always blame the mailing list, often wrongly, when there is a
poor or nil response. No educated person is going to contemplate
sending off for that package when it is obviously written by an
uneducated person. The view will be taken that if the circulars are
that bad, one shudders to think what the publications of offer will
be like.

Alas, there will be some who will part with their money for this deal.
These are people whose own standard of education is on a level with
that of the person who wrote the literature. They will not even
notice the bad English and the errors. This observation is based on
one of the conclusions in the R.I.S. survey. They gave the following
estimate of standards of literacy amongst people engaged in
home-based mail order:

3% are illiterate
8% are semi-illiterate
49% are poorly educated
32% are reasonably educated
8% are well educated

So you can see that there are rich pickings or the dream peddlers who
prey on those in the home-based mail order circle. Those who are
looking for ways to become wealthy.

When mailing lists of people in the mail order circle are sold, they
are nearly always described as a list of 'Business Opportunity
Seekers', which it is as the two terms - home based mail order dealer
and business opportunity seeker - are inter-changeable and mean the
same thing. That is why some people get angry when they buy a list
of business opportunity seekers and find the same old familiar names
on most of them. But it could not be otherwise as the world of the
home-based mail order dealer is a relatively small one.

If any of what I have written so far has in any way given the
impression that I have a poor opinion of those involved in home-based
mail order in this country, that would be wrong. I know many of
those who are in mail order. In most cases it is not lack of effort
that is to blame. Some sacrifice a lot of spare time and deny
themselves small luxuries to support and maintain their business
enterprise. Such people truly deserve to be successful if hard
work is the criteria, but alas, sheer effort is never enough,
though it does help. An inexperienced swimmer can put in as much,
or more, physical effort as an experienced swimmer, and yet only
cover a fraction of the distance. While the novice thrashed about
and expends a great deal of energy to little purpose, the experienced
swimmer glides effortlessly through the water. That really sums up
the difference in this line of business between the amateur and the
professional.

Again, we have come back to professionalism. I gave an example of
a complete lack of it in that appalling literature for the publishing
package deal. But that was not an isolated instance of blundering
amateurism in mail order, most such literature is of a similar poor
standard. The cot of professional assistance of a very high standard
is probably lower than you might imagine. For instance, professional
proofing of an A4 circular with the guaranteed elimination of all
grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors, plus suggested revision
of any clumsy or unsuitable sentences or phrases. The cost of this?
One lousy fiver. Yes, just five pounds, it is as cheap as that.

Now if that disastrous publishing deal had had their three page
literature professionally proofed it would have cost them fifteen
pounds. They spent a lot of money on the printing of their good
quality literature, but made one small economy which proved disastrous.

Let me give another example. In a recent issue of his influential
and widely read newsletter, Ken Walker had a lot of fun poking
ridicule at another appalling circular. Ken has a sardonic sense
of humour as shown in a recent Mercury editorial when he ridiculed
the Klondike money-making scheme. Now he has turned his attention
to a circular which obviously caused him much amusement. It was
offering a package deal on how to run a C.V (curriculum vitae)
consultancy.

Now I am sure you will agree, writing C.V's or offering to show
people how to write C.V.s, indicated a good command of English and
you would expect the people making this offer to be very careful to
ensure the text was perfect. Or, that if they were not capable of
ensuring this themselves, they would employ professional help.

But no, the circular they put out was riddled with spelling errors,
punctuation was dreadful and the text was grammatically clumsy.
Hardly likely to inspire confidence in their ability to write good
C.V.s or teach other to do so. Another prime example of good old
British amateurism. Professional proofing of that disastrous circular
would have cost them just five pounds. If there was room in this
publication, I could give numerous other examples of the illiteracy
common to mail order literature. Suffice to say I strongly recommend
that you seek help in drafting and checking ALL your literature, be
it circular, brochure, manual, guide, report or whatever. At the
end of this book I will give the address of how to locate a
semi-retired professional writer who is almost certainly the best
freelance available and the only one I would personally recommend
to provide professional help.

Now to go on and discuss some of the other blunders most common in
mail order. Many people in mail order publish and sell all kinds of
how-to publications. I suggest you do not make the mistake of
offering a money back guarantee in your advertisements. Providing
you are ethical and honest you do not have to give such a guarantee
and if you do, you leave yourself wide open to the attentions of what
are known as 'refund rogues'. There are people who watch for any
advertisement offering a money back guarantee. They will buy your
publication, read it, perhaps photocopy it, and then send it back
for a refund.

So don't give any money back guarantees. Then you are not obliged
to make a refund PROVIDED and I do emphasise that work provided, your
advertisements contain accurate information and do not include any
misleading claims. So leave out those stupid claims about potential
earnings. Not only does it lay you open to legitimate demands for
refunds if the claims prove to be false, but it is also illegal and
the regulations on misleading advertisements have been tightened up.
So if you claim a person buying your how-to manual will be able to
earn œ250 a week in their spare time after reading it, you could
find yourself in deep trouble unless you could provide solid proof
in the form of people who had actually earned this amount. So don't
make silly claims. The Office of Fair Trading is beginning to crack
down on this.

Another mistake made by many in mail order is to believe the claims
made in the literature of desk top publisher who advertise how-to
manuals and get-rich-quick publications. The truth is that well over
95% of the authors of such publications are not really qualified to
write on their chosen subject. Very few manuals are written by
professional writers. To give some idea of the general standard of
these manuals one needs only look at the comments on this subject in
that marvellous yearly publication 'Recommended & Approved'. This
publication not only exposes all the current rackets, scams and cons
in mail order, but also helps to pinpoint those in mail order who are
honest and who are not.

'Recommended & Approved' is published by the M.O.D.S organisation and
they commissioned R.I.S. to make a detailed scrutiny of mail order
manuals of all kinds, and to list those they thought worthy of
recommendation. No attention was paid to format, or to whether
the publication had glossy covers, professional binding or as to
whether the pages were properly printed or just photocopied. None
of these things were considered important. The only criteria was
the contents, the actual text. Judgement was based on the author's
grasp of his subject and the value of the information given.

The astonishing outcome of this scrutiny was that of the 436
publications thus scrutinised, R.I.S. was only able to recommend
a mere twelve as representing true value for money. The rest were
described as 'over priced rubbish written by amateur, and usually
anonymous, authors who were not really qualified to write on their
chosen subjects'. I hasten to add that the publication you are now
reading had not been released at that time, and it is a great source
of pride to me that it has been added to the R & A approved list of
value for money publications.

Another mistake make by people in mail order brings us to letter P
in our symbolic GAP. P is for Poor-image. Mail order selling differs
from normal retail selling in that your customers are never likely to
see you. So the only way they can judge you and your business status
is by the image they form of you. For this they have to rely on the
quality and presentation of the literature you send them. Yet of
the 600 mail order dealers involved in the R.I.S. survey, less than
one third had properly printed letterheads. Less than one tenth
gave a telephone number on their letterheads. Thus is most cases
the image presented by the majority of mail order dealers is very
poor indeed.

Peter Head once wrote "It's not who and what you are that counts,
it's what people THINK you are that's important". It is worth
spending some time, effort and money on image building. Image, how
your potential customers perceive you, is vitally important.

Now I want to deal with one of the most common pitfalls which ensnare
the unwary mail order dealer. You will sometimes see advertisements
offering a print and mail service. You send a camera ready master
copy of your circular to the advertiser and he, or she, will print
(or more likely photocopy) an agreed number of copies and undertake
to mail them for you to suitable recipients. Charges are usually
in the range of œ60 to œ80 per 1,000 or œ120 to œ150 for 2,000. On
the face of it this looks like a good offer. Postage along on 2,000
at current second class postage rates would cost you œ340. The print
and mail offer is based on the fact that he will include other (non
conflicting) literature with yours. As he can probably get up to
nine circulars in the envelope for seventeen pence, he still makes
a good profit.

But here I come back to that familiar feeling of so many home-based
mail order dealers, a touching belief in the claims made in
advertisements. Just suppose you decide to send off your money
to have 2,000 circulars printed and mailed. Firstly you have no
way of checking to ensure that 2,000 circulars had in fact been
printed and mailed. For all you know 50 to 100 circulars had
actually been printed and mailed. In the case of certain dubious
operators in this field, I strongly suspect that is exactly what
happens. The shark knows he is unlikely to get a repeat order
from you once you have checked results, so he isn't all that
bothered. It's a one-off rip-off and perhaps he undertakes only
a token mailing or none at all.

Now I am not suggesting for a moment that all print and mail offers
are phoney or dubious. There will be some who fully intend to honour
that agreement and who will put out the full 2,000, no matter how
long it takes. Ah, there we have it, no matter how long it takes.
I have previously mentioned that most home-based mail order dealers
operate on a very tiny scale. Outgoing mailings averaging out over
a year will often be thirty or less pieces of mail a week. Just
think how long we are talking about for the average small dealer
to clear even a thousand circulars. So be very careful about taking
up such offers. There are honest people who offer this service,
but there are others who are not so honest. One company which I
have found to be particularly good value and which has built up a
well deserved reputation for offering a totally honest and reliable
print and mail service is Ken Walker, Flat 1, 26 Tay Road, Reading,
RG3 4DR. To obtain a free information pack, including his latest
price list, just send a stamp requesting further details of his
print and mail service.

PART TWO

No publication on the subject of mail order blunders would be
complete without mention of the thorny subject of multi-level
marketing. I mentioned earlier that we have seen 164 MLM schemes
launched among thick clouds of optimism, hype and hope, over a
short five year period. Most bit the dust in ignominious and
disastrous fashion. Mot did not last twelve months. As I write
this, I have jut heard from a reliable source that one of the
biggest and best known MLM schemes will fold within the next
twelve months. This does not mean that all MLM schemes collapse.
Herbalife, Unit-vite and Amway have lasted the course and are
still with us. But the fact does have to be faced that the vast
majority have a life expectancy only slightly better than that of
an over-enthusiastic kamikaze pilot. The main appeal of any MLM
scheme is that it is very cheap to join. Twenty five pounds is
usually enough to get you in as a participant. It is highly popular
with those who lack the capital for starting any other sort of
business. So if there is twenty five pounds burning a hole in
your pocket and you are inclined to participate in MLM schemes,
please take note of the following guide lines. Thus you stand a
better chance of avoiding the many mistakes one can make in
choosing an MLM scheme.

Remember, very few of the 164 MLM schemes active since 1985 are
still in existence. Most have a very short life. In fact less that
one in ten is worth any consideration. The best way to choose one of
those which stands a chance of showing you a modest return on your
investment is to strictly observe these guidelines.

Firstly, you will notice I said a 'modest' return on your investment,
because you should net expect anything more than that. The more hype,
the more fancy promises about possible earnings, the less that scheme
is worth considering. Happily, the regulations on running MLM
schemes have recently been tightened up. This should eliminate a
lot of those silly claims which in the past drew people into MLM
schemes which made absurd promises they couldn't keep.

Hopefully, we have seen the last of such daft claims as: 'Mrs Emily
Sludge of Wapping made over œ7,000 last month and expects to double
that amount next month.' Many MLM schemes used to make this type of
claim about the earnings of participants. Seldom, if ever, was it
true. Under the new regulations an MLM promoter who makes such claims
will not only have to prove these claims right to the hilt, but he
will also be required to provide firm evidence that AT LEAST 50%
of participants were also earning an amount as high as that of the
person named.

Insisting on 50% of participants' earnings being the same as the
case quoted in advertising should stop a trick being used by a number
of MLM schemes in the past and known in the business as the
'image scam'. This is how it works. The new MLM spends a lot of
time and effort in building up special down line for someone carefully
chosen. Someone trusted by the promoter. This star participant
will be given a specially chosen team with which to form a down
line. Tremendous efforts would go into ensuring that the chosen
participant had at least one bumper month with very high earnings.
Then that months earnings would be quoted on the literature as if
it was typical of possible earnings by participants. So a claim
that Emily Sludge earned œ7,000 last month might be true, but it
would not reflect the real potential earnings of genuine participants
who part with their twenty five pounds.

Another trick was to use what is known as the 'big cheque scam'.
Sometimes in the literature you would see a photograph of a big,
fat cheque, or even a photograph of someone being handed a big fat
cheque. But think about it. There is nothing to stop you or I
taking out a cheque book and writing cheque for ten thousand, a
hundred thousand, or even a million pounds. It does not mean a
thing. A cheque only has any significance when it's actually used
in a financial transaction.

Over three quarters of those approached in the survey were participants,
or had been participants, in one or more MLM schemes. Almost all
based their decision to join on the claims made in the literature
and nothing else. This revelation would shock any ordinary business
person, but within the home-based mail order circle it has always
been normal practice to accept the claims made in literature at face
value. No serious attempt is ever made to check out the validity of
the claims. No one ever thinks of probing beyond the literature and
finding out just who is behind the company making the offer. Though
some MLM companies are ethical, others are not above using a variety
of dubious methods to recruit new participants.

I don't know if you have ever attended an MLM seminar? If you have,
I have no doubt you found it quite an experience. If you have never
been to an MLM seminar........count yourself lucky. I have been to
several in the interest of getting an overall picture and I did not
get caught up in the general mood of hysteria and euphoria. If you
do go to an MLM seminar, by on you guard. There are two types. The
recruiting seminars aim to attract new participants, whereas the
other type is meant to recharge existing participants and perhaps
restore their flagging enthusiasm. People in mail order are prime
targets for MLM recruiters, in fact the overwhelming majority of
MLM participants and drawn from the ranks of the home-based mail
order circle.

At a recruitment seminar, every psychological ploy in the book is used
to create the right, highly charged, atmosphere and engineer the slow
build up to wild enthusiasm and near hysteria. These techniques are
not new but they can be effective. They have been used at political
conventions and rallies. For evangelical crusades and religious
revival meetings. Japanese industry used some of these techniques
to constantly motivate their workers to incessant high productivity.

Modification of these techniques for use at MLM seminars seems to have
been far more successful in the USA than in this country. Americans
seem more receptive to mass suggestion techniques than the British.
Television evangelists who have turned fundamental religion into a
multi-million dollar industry in America would have a thin time over
here. Most major MLM companies have now dropped the seminar method
of recruiting. But some still use it and if you do go to one of
these events, prepare yourself for lots of hype, high pressure
salesmanship, and, to quote an immortal phrase, 'a certain economy
with the truth'.

The whole aim and purpose of an MLM recruiting seminar is to get
those attending to sign on the dotted line and part with their
twenty five pounds, and probably commit themselves to monthly
purchases of the product which may, or more possibly may not, be
easy to sell. So if you do attend one of these seminars do not
get caught up in the cleverly created atmosphere which could cloud
your better judgement. SIGN NOTHING while at the seminar. And
if Emily Sludge is there, describing the huge sum of money she makes
every month, keep in mind that she is almost certainly lying through
her teeth.

The home-based mail order dealer who is determined to join an MLM
scheme needs to be very cautious and highly selective. There are
three of four MLM schemes which seem to have done better than the
rest. Why have these schemes done better than the others? It would
seem that these particular MLM schemes which had a considerable
degree of success have urged their participants to operate on a
LOCAL basis, rather than trying to operate through the mail. These
few successful MLM companies know that their participants will get
far better results when operating in this way. The MLM companies
which have had the sense to realise this important fact include
two promoting perfumes and one promoting a range of slimming products.
I have actually talked to participants in these better schemes who
do make a good income.

But excluding these better schemes, the majority of the mail order
circle who, in the past, have been involved in multi-level marketing
schemes and parted with their twenty five pounds or so, maybe more
than once, and who should have learnt the hard way that they are
not going to become extremely wealthy through MLM, these very often
learn nothing from their past experiences.

These are the ones who press on, as one scheme folds or fails to
deliver, they take a fresh dose oh hype, part with another twenty
five pounds and indulge in yet another brief bout of frantic
enthusiasm. Peter Head coined a tern for these people who get
hooked on MLM in this way and described them as 'MLM junkies'.

Perhaps because most people in the mail order circle lack business
training or experience, they can be almost unbelievably naive. So
the promise that one is going to make a fortune for a mere outlay
of twenty five pounds in often believed and disastrous experiences
with past MLM schemes do not seem to deter people from having a
fresh fling and parting with yet more money.

My main criticism of MLM has always been that many companies in
this field go well over the top with absurd claims and nonsensical
hype. Only the other day I was talking to a man who usually has a
realistic down-to-earth attitude towards his operations within the
mail order circle. He published a very good magazine and obviously
has some talent in operating his small scale business. Yet he told
me that the man on the level above him in a particular MLM scheme
had made a huge sum of money last month and expected to make even
more in the coming month. The sum of money mentioned, if multiplied
by twelve, would give a yearly income higher than that enjoyed by
the chairman of I.C.I. and most business tycoons. If such incomes
were being earned it would be headline news, especially in the
financial press. Such claims about earnings are so totally absurd
that one would imagine that they could not be taken seriously.
Yet here was a man who obviously believed this nonsense.

One can generally form some opinion on an MLM scheme by the degree
of emphasis on recruiting. The better schemes are interested in
promoting the actual product. The less successful schemes place a
greater emphasis on recruiting further participants. What about the
vast majority of MLM schemes in this country which have disappointed
their participants? Many people have joined MLM schemes with high
hopes, who have believed the huge income hype and who thought they
were going to make very high incomes and yet were bitterly disappointed
as one company after another subsided into obscurity or totally
disappeared.

It would seem that as each new MLM scheme came into being it stirred
up a large section of the home-based mail order circle into a bout
of frenzied activity. The Post Office was the main beneficiary as
mail flew in all directions. Unfortunately, all too often, none of
the participants had anything to show for their efforts. The
carefully worked out sum in the literature, which shows as the
level multiplied the participants would join the ranks of the
extremely wealthy, well it didn't work. But as each company vanished
from the scene it was quickly replaced by another. The pattern
seems to be that in the first flush of enthusiasm created for the
launch, there is a first wave of enthusiasts who have become
participants but after that there is usually a gradual decline.

But remember I said this happens in most cases, not all. A few MLM
companies which were launched stayed afloat and kept going and, as
far as I know, are ticking along quite nicely. So how did they
survive when the majority failed? Amongst these few I actually
found participants who made money. How did these companies differ
from the majority? There are only three or four I know about and
they have certain things in common, I will list them.

Firstly, in their literature they concentrated as much, or more, on
the quality of their products and competitive pricing, as on the
money which could be earned by recruiting others into the scheme.

Secondly, they encouraged their participants to work on a local basis,
that is selling to the local community rather than trying to recruit
people or sell through the mail.

Thirdly, they provided a first class back-up service for their
participants. Gave prompt replies to incoming mail and gave
continual support and encouragement to active participants.

Fourthly, they strictly adhere to D.T.I. regulations and guidelines.

These three or four companies which stand head and shoulders above
the rest will, I think, still be around four or five years from now,
which in itself is unusual as most MLM ventures are short-lived.
These few successful MLM companies broke away in their recruitment
and selling from the usual small circle of MLM literature recipients
and reached the general public. Their products are good and they
are doing well. But.......I just happen to think they would have
done even better if they had not used the multi-level marketing method.

There are some intrepid souls in the home-based mail order who actually
launch their own MLM scheme. These are often very small scale and are
usually known as 'paper' MLMs, because the product on offer is
usually some sort of modest publication. It is amongst these MLM
minnows that the new regulations are most likely to be broken.
The penalties or doing this are severe and I would strongly urge
anyone running a small MLM scheme or anyone who contemplates starting
such a scheme, to make absolutely sure they are fully aware of the
new regulations. Participants and prospective participants in MLM
schemes should also carefully study the new regulations and ensure
that the MLM scheme they have joined, or are about to join, fully
complies with all legal requirements.

One interesting point about multi-level marketing. Both the American
and British governments continue to show a hostile attitude towards
it. This is reflected in the drafting of the new regulations.
Representations were made to the D.T.I. by a number of leading MLM
companies who objected to MLM being described as pyramid selling.
However, the Department of Trade & Industry replied to three
representations in their final report as follows, I quote:

"On the matter of title, the D.T.I. state that there was a considerable
body of opinion in favour of getting away from the term 'pyramid
selling' which many regard as outdated, in favour of 'multi-level
marketing' or 'network marketing'. But the D.T.I. have been advised
that such changes are unlikely to be accepted to the House of
Commons Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. And that since
the title of Part XI of the Fair Trading Act under which the
regulations would be made is 'Pyramid Selling and Similar Trading
Schemes', the term 'pyramid selling' gives the best indication what
the regulations are about."

So, the new regulations were named as - 'Pyramid Selling
Regulations 1989'. They came into force on 1st March 1990.

Reports from those who took part in our survey show that a very high
proportion of people in home-based mail order have participated in at
least one MLM scheme. Some have participated in several. Reactions
to their experiences were mixed, but would seem to confirm my opinion
that many of the blunders made by home-based mail order dealers have
been in the field o multi-level marketing.

As over two thirds of participants said they had not even made a
profit in MLM, one needs to examine why this was so. Almost none
of these losers attempted to operate on a local basis i.e. selling
the product to relatives, friends and neighbours in their own
immediate locality. Instead, these losers attempted to operate
through the mail, mailing out MLM literature to a mailing list of
other people in mail order i.e. mail order dealers/business opportunity
seekers. Almost all of those who lost money operated in this way.
Costs when working this way included the twenty five pounds joining
fee, cost of the mailing lists, plus postage. The very few who did
not lose money only made a tiny profit. None made anything like the
money they expected to make.

Those who had a degree of success to report were all people who
operated locally and who concentrated on selling instead of trying
to recruit other participants. They all seem to have joined a very
small group of MLM companies, no more than four, who have certain
things in common. These four concentrated on selling their products
rather than recruiting. They all had good products sold at
reasonable prices. They encouraged their participants to get out
and sell locally and they gave them a good back-up service.

Most of the good earners with these better-than-average MLM companies
were women. Hardly surprising as two of the companies sell perfume
and another sells special diets for slimmers. One of the more
successful 'genuine' earners was a participant in a small country
town. A single parent with a young child, she worked hard to build
up a round of regular customers and supplement the modest income
she received from maintenance. She earned over £4,000 during a ten
month period. This was the highest amount earned by an MLM participant
in the survey, but three others, all women, earned over œ3,000 during
the same period. All these figures were genuine earnings checked by
R.I.S., unlike some of the earnings claimed in the past in some MLM
literature.

It is necessary to point out that these were the highest earnings
within an MLM scheme and none of these women operated via mail order.
From the six hundred people involved in the survey the highest
earnings by anyone not working on a local basis and relying purely
on operating through the mail, the highest MLM earner showed a clear
profit of œ223 over a full year. This is a great deal less than
those leading mail order dealers earned over a year who did not
operate on an MLM basis. Four of them made a profit which could
be considered unusually high by home-based mail order standards.
But these four were operating on a full time basis and that is
very rare indeed in home-based mail order.

So what conclusions can we reach regarding multi-level marketing
based on the survey?

1. The survey clearly shows that MLM is not something suitable
for operating through mail order.

2. The only people who have done well as MLM participants are
those who concentrated on selling the product in their own locality.

3. Only a handful of MLM companies have proved profitable for
the majority of their participants.

4. The top earners in home-based mail order did not make their
money through multi-level marketing.

5. So called 'paper' MLMs proved extremely disappointing.
So did a number of schemes to promote water filtration systems, perhaps
due to adverse publicity on television and in the national press.

6. Home-based mail order dealers who sought to recruit people
into MLM schemes by direct mail shots were invariably disappointed
by the poor response.

7. None of the handful of high earners in mail order were involved
in MLM.

Now to move on and deal with a number of other areas in home-based
mail order which produced a high casualty rate and considerable
financial loss. It will show that we keep coming back to the
gullibility factor which, alas, is so prominent in Blunderland i.e.
home-based mail order. The racket which has claimed most victims
and made most money for the shysters, without doubt, was the
'envelope addressing' scam. Our survey shows that a considerable
proportion, one hundred and eighty eight out of the six hundred
taking part, have been caught by this nasty scam.

I have to be highly critical of the publishers of some mail order
magazines and ad-sheets who have allowed advertisements for this
racket to appear in their publications. This is one of the reasons
why I would like to see a much more responsible attitude by some
publishers. The recent establishment of an organisation called
'The Mail Order Publishers' Association' (M.O.P.A.) should go some
way to curbing the worst of these racketeering advertisements.
Publishers who are genuinely concerned about the dubious standards
of mail order advertisements are getting together to devise a code
of advertising practice in mail order advertising and hope to possibly
eliminate the worst offenders.

The 'envelope addressing' scam is particularly nasty in that it
often preys on those who can least afford it and on those who are
especially gullible. The latter would explain why so many of those
in Blunderland have been caught by it. Amazingly, in spite of
prison sentences of up to four and a half years, and swingeing fines
of up to nine thousand pounds, there are still some people promoting
this scheme, in particular one arch rogue in the Isle of Man who
seems to enjoy some magical immunity from prosecution.

Advertisements for this racket have not only appeared in mail order
magazines and ad-sheets, but also in direct mail literature, local
newspapers and (a favourite method) on postcard advertisements in
shop windows. The advertisement usually reads something like -
'Earn œœœs per week. Work from home. œ10 per 100 addressing
envelopes.' The wording can vary but it is always along these
lines. Almost always the advertisement requires you to send a
stamped addressed envelope to receive details.

The reply you receive will usually be on a single sheet of paper with
an offer than APPEARS to be a straightforward job writing addresses
on blank envelopes and being paid thirty pence for each, sometimes
only twenty five pence per envelope offered. But you are asked to
pay a registration fee. This can vary between ten pounds and twenty
five pounds, but fifteen pounds is the norm. So you send off your
fifteen pounds and eventually you receive a very unpleasant surprise
in the form of the starter pack for commencing work. From this it
turns out that the envelopes for which you receive thirty pence each
are not blank envelopes for you to address. They are stamped addressed
envelopes sent to you after you have put out advertisements just like
the one you responded to. So the whole racket operates on a chain
system. You get caught by responding to that advertisement and the
only way you can recoup your fifteen pounds is by catching other
people with the same advertisement. Then they in their turn will
have to do the same. In practice, most people just bin the starter
pack and accept the loss of their fifteen pounds. A few will try to
recover their fifteen pounds as most of these offers give a money
back guarantee in their literature. In the survey, not one person
had been successful in obtaining a refund.

What is so nasty about this scam is that the advertisement does appear,
at first glance, to be an offer of paid homework. People desperate to
supplement their income - pensioners, one parent families, the disabled
and other under-privileged groups - are likely to become victims.
As this racket has also been widely advertised in Blunderland (the
mail order circle) it has found many victims amongst home-based mail
order dealers. The envelope addressing racket is only one of numerous
scams which have circulated within the field of home-based mail order.
But now we are beginning to see some of the more persistent promoters
of this scam attempting to get around the regulations. They do this
by dressing up the scam to look more like a genuine homework offer,
by including the selling of some 'product' such as a manual or
holiday guide, or whatever. I can assure such promoters that this
will not protect them from prosecution.

Perhaps the racket which has enjoyed the widest success in mail
order is the chain letter, which comes in a variety of forms. Here
the survey revealed that a staggering 82% had been caught by one or
more chain letter schemes. A few years ago it was the 'Nelson Robards
of Boston' chain letter that was all the rage. This has, to a
large extent, been replaced by the 'Edward L. Green' chain letter
which, alas, is persistent and will probably be catching out the
great-grandchildren of present day victims. Both these chain
letters were around in the early 1960s and both are imports from
America.

The origins of both, and many other scams, are fully exposed in the
best selling publication 'Recommended & Approved'. The Edward L. Green
made famous by the chain letter never existed. It was the brainchild
of a small scale mail order dealer named Minter. Those testimonials
were also all his own work. He never made very much money himself
from the scam and those who took it up and promoted it on both sides
of the Atlantic also did not make much money out of it.

As for those who fell or the phoney literature, well the survey
revealed that no less that three hundred and seventy admitted having
tried the Edward L. Green chain letter at one time or another.
All had been taken in by the clap-trap literature, but only three
would admit to having actually promoted it (a figure I view with
some suspicion). However, all three hundred and seventy did admit
that they have not made money from it. In theory it should work,
so why has it been such a flop?

Let us assume that the literature is correct when it claims that the
number of people responding by the time you reach the fourth stage,
who are then in the first stage, will be ten thousand. What the
literature does not say is that on the basis of its own calculations,
by the time people who at this point were on the fourth stage have
moved up to the first stage, the number of people responding will
number one and a half thousand billion. On the basis of Edward's
own calculations that is an accurate figure.

Needless to say, that does not happen. This chain letter is now so
well known and discredited that the response is very low - one
promoter put it at 0.005%. Another had two replies to his first
thousand mailing and none at all to his second thousand. That is
the problem, the chain always has too many broken links.

Another daft import from the States is the idiotic 'Money Network'
scam, and that also seems to have caught a lot of our gallant six
hundred. It saddened me to find out from the survey how many people
amongst the six hundred have been taken in by this shabby scam.
It seems almost unbelievable to me that scheme which says you
will make one hundred thousand pounds for a mere outlay of ten
pounds will be seriously considered by anyone, especially as the
name of the promoter is never given, only the name of a fictitious
lawyer named Brown and the address of the sucker, sorry I mean
agent, who has already parted with his ten pounds and is desperately
hoping that you will send him your ten pounds.

How anyone in their right mind can believe that garbage text in
Money Network is difficult t understand. But then I have been
told that there are New Yorkers who hang around the Brooklyn Bridge,
waiting for some gullible tourist to come along to whom they can
sell the bridge. It is an incredible fact which would be confirmed
by the New York Police, that the Brooklyn Bridge has been sold,
complete with an official looking Deed of Ownership, not once, but
literally scores of times.

That great showman, Barnum, is quoted as saying "There is one born
every minute". Money Network helps to prove he was right. This
scam is confined almost entirely to operating within the home-based
mail order circle. This also applies to many other scams which
circulate within that circle. I hate to beat a word to death, but
that word gullible keeps springing to mind. On the other hand,
gullible people are usually nice people. They have certain ethical
standards of their own and, alas, expect others to keep to a similar
level of honesty. Rogues, crooks and nasty people generally are
seldom gullible. It would be a bleak, cold world if it was full of
wary, over-suspicious, hard-eyed people.

That having been said, there is an obvious need for a service to
provide protection for people in home-based mail order, or if you
like, the Business Opportunity Seeker. You must remember that the
opportunity seeker, those looking for a genuine opportunity, are
targets for every shyster - and there are plenty - who prey on the
unwary.

I can assure you that the necessary service already exists,
providing instant information, not only on every scam and racket
in mail order, including new ones as soon as they come out, but
also the good and genuine deals of offer, rare as these may be.
There is just no excuse now for anyone to get caught by some scam,
or to invest time and money in a business proposition which proves
to be a total waste of time. Now all you have to do is pick up a
telephone.

The service is as near as your own telephone. The telephone at the
other end is manned by an expert with over fifty years business
experience. He keeps an eagle eye on everything that goes on in
mail order. A highly successful business consultant and writer,
he is now semi-retired and as he has always had a keen interest in
the field of small businesses which can be started from homes, he
has made a detailed study of home based mail-order. The service
costs very little and could save you a lot of money which you might
waster on no-hope propositions. If you are interested send a stamp
or S.A.E. to: Information Advice Line, Mail Order Traders
International Federation, 45 Loscoe Grange, Loscoe, Derbyshire,
DE7 7JY and they will send you further details.

Now I want to tell you a fairy story. Unlike other fairy stories,
this one is true because it is based on a composite picture of the
experiences most common to those who took part in the survey. But
like many fairy stories it has a sad beginning and a happy ending.
Right, are you sitting comfortably? Then let us begin.

ALICE IN BLUNDERLAND

Once upon a time there was a girl named Alice. Well, she wasn't a
girl really as she had already passed her fortieth birthday.
It would be wrong to say that Alice lived entirely alone as she
shared her neat little flat with a beautiful pussy cat named Wally.
Alice had a steady job as a get-lost clerk at the local D.H.S.S. office.
It wasn't a very demanding job as all she had to do was say "Get Lost"
to each unfortunate applicant who came to her desk. The hours were
fairly short but the salary wasn't very good. So Alice often thought
about ways and means to supplement her income. She had no extravagant
tastes and over the years she had saved up several hundred pounds.

One day Alice was sitting in her flat, deep in thought and cat muck.
Suddenly there was a blinding flash o light and a beautiful fairy
appeared before her. The fairy spoke in a silvery, tinkling voice.
"My name is Fairy Foulup and I come from Blunderland. You may have
one wish and it will be granted." Alice did not hesitate. "I want
to be rich," she said, "not just ordinary rich, but filthy rich with
oodles and oodles of lovely money." Fairy Foulup smiled and waved
her wand as she chanted the magic words:

Money-making plans for all go-getters,
MLM schemes and great chain letters,
Manuals and guides by the score,
Never again will you be poor.

And lo, a veritable snowstorm of paper began to float down from
the ceiling. Fairy Foulup vanished but Alice didn't even notice.
She was too busy sorting through all the exciting offers which
now lay strewn all over the floor. As she read through the circulars
tears came to her eyes because she began to realise that there must
be an awful of really kind people out there who were desperately
anxious to make her rich.

Alice soon became convinced she was going to become very rich.
The first thing she did was to 'phone the D.H.S.S. to tell them
she was quitting her job as a get-lost clerk. Then she reached
for her cheque book and engaged in a bout of frenzied activity.
Alice wrote out cheque after cheque. She wrote lots of cheques
for twenty five pounds each and wrote to join every MLM scheme she
could find. The circular from 'Money Network' made Alice so excited
by the thought of receiving one hundred thousand pounds for a mere
ten pounds that her hand shook as she made out the cheque.

Alice bought mailing lists and spent a lot of money on postage.
Her nest egg of savings was melting fast. At the end of the week
she was getting really worried as the promised money just wasn't
coming in. At the end of the month Alice was beginning to experience
that horrible sinking feeling that comes to so many who plunge
into mail order. She also began to understand why Fairy Foulup
was so named.

Alice decided to go to the D.H.S.S. office to try to get her old job
back. She walked up to the manager's desk but before she could speak,
the manager looked up and uttered the words "get lost". Alice went
home and started again, only this time she was determined to do
everything properly. She bought a publication called 'Mail Order
Blunders and How to Avoid Them'. On reading this she began to
understand why it was necessary to have professional help and advice.
So she sought professional help and from then on began to do things
properly. She no longer lost money on no-hope business propositions.
She no longer got caught by the scams, cons and rackets. She actually
began to show a clear profit and ever increasing prosperity. So
Alice and her pussy cat lived happily ever after.

PART THREE

The final section of this publication is perhaps the most important
of all. It is list of all the golden rules to follow in mail
order. All these do's and don'ts are based on the experiences of
those involved in the survey. Not one of these experiences is an
isolated example. This proves something I touched upon earlier,
that the same mistakes are made over and over again.

The purpose of this publication is to stop those mistakes being made.
So it is good news for those trying to make a go of things in
home-based mail order and bad news for the shysters who prey on them.
Read these golden rules, not once but several times, and so commit
them to memory. If you follow them in your business activities you
should avoid all the worst blunders.

So let us start with the most frequent blunder made by beginners.
When you read an advertisement in a mail order magazine or ad-sheet,
or receive a circular through the post, never, never accept what it
says at face value. Nine out of ten such advertisements cannot be
trusted. Why do the shysters do so well in the field of home-based
mail order? One reason is that few publishers of mail order magazines
attempt to give proper protection to their readers. Greed gets the
better part of them, so it is a paid advertisement they will accept
it, even if they suspect (or even know) it is dubious.

Fortunately, not all magazine publishers are unethical. Home
Business Quarterly, The Profiteer and Home Income News are three
magazines which try very hard to keep to a high ethical standard.
They cannot guarantee to spot every scam as some shysters are very
cunning, but they will weed out most of them. They will also
jointly blacklist the worst crooks and expose their activities.

But it must be stressed that these ethical magazine publishers who
scrutinise every advertisement they receive and reject the dubious
advertisement, even though it might mean a loss of revenue, form a
very small minority. Most magazine publishers are not so ethical.
They think it clears them of all responsibility if they carry a
paragraph with advertising details. It usually reads something
like this:

"The publishers are not responsible for the dealings of any advertisers.
All advertisements are accepted by us in good faith and must be
legal, decent and honest. No adult or similar adverts will be
accepted and we reserve the right to reject advertisements of a
suspect nature."

This sort of notice in a mail order magazine is just a let-out and
means nothing. One recent issue of a mail order magazine carried
this type of notice and in the very same issue carried an advert
for the 'Money Network' racket. The wording of the advert was so
blatant that I will quote it:

"STOP! LOOK NO FURTHER! Financial freedom can be yours with Money
Network. What can you do with œ100,000? This is not a dream.
Membership œ10 or 9 x 4 S.A.E.....Membership Limited."

Home Business Quarterly, The Profiteer and Home Income News would
boot out that advertisement without a second glance. But alas, if
it was a paid advertisement most other mail order publishers would
accpet it without scruples. So do not expect protection from the
majority of mail order magazine publishers against con advertisements.
Con advertisements are usually those placed by part time dealers
(the vast majority), making absurd claims about earnings which are
always far more than that advertiser is ever likely to make.

Having said that nine out of ten advertisements are of the type to
be voided, it is necessary to add that such dubious advertisement
need to be divided into two distinct and separate groups. The first
group includes all advertisements which have been inserted with the
deliberate intention of conning those who respond. These are
advertisements which are cunningly worded traps to catch victims in
some scam.

The other group consist of advertisers who are not intentional crooks.
Naive?......Yes. Crooks?......No. They are even more numerous than
the first group and cause just as much damage. Often they unwittingly
act as agents for some scam, totally unaware that what they are doing
is wrong. Such people will promote things like chain letters, or
'Money Network'. Often this will have their name and address on the
bottom of some scam circular as the agent. They are often horrified
and contrite when told they are helping to promote a scam, but that
does not make them any less a danger to beginners in home-based mail
order.

So if the majority of mail order advertisements are suspect, how do
you know which to avoid? The first ones you eliminate from any
consideration are those which make absurd claims about how much
you can make. I don't mean the really daft and obvious ones, like
'Money Network' with its one hundred thousand pounds, or the
'Easy Money Business Formula' with its six hundred pounds a week,
but the less obvious ones. These often seem to offer a proposition
which is plausible and attractive.

Advertising mail order magazines is largely uncontrolled and
advertisers can get away with the most outrageous claims and
statements. Please remember that 90% of those advertisers making
such absurd promised about the money you will make are very probably
no better off financially than you are. The vast majority are part
time operators and they will never be anything else. So now you
can see why I say the first golden rule in home-based mail order
is that you take all these claims with a large pinch of salt.

Before finishing with this subject of intentional and unintentional
conning by mail order advertisers, I would like to give some
examples of 'con' advertisements. All these are actual advertisements
I have taken from current issues of mail order magazines and ad-sheets.
All of them would be flatly rejected by truly ethical publishers who
are concerned to protect their readers. Most would be rejected on
the grounds that the claims made were totally false and make promised
which could never be kept. The ethical publisher would ask such
advertisers to prove the claims they make. The publisher of Profiteer
did in the case of twenty two would-be advertisers. Not one dared
to reply.

In each advertisement I give I will add my own brief comment.
As I have no doubt that this publication will be read by many
people active in home-based mail order, it is possible that some
people will recognise their own advertisement among the examples
I give so..........

A CHALLENGE: I invite anyone who sees their own advertisement here
to come forward and dispute my opinion. Most of the examples I give
were responded to by people taking part in the survey, so I know just
what resulted from those responses. Take up my challenge and we
will get a top class, professional business consultant to thoroughly
investigate both you and your claims. Any takers?

So here we go with the sort of fantasy advertisements that are common
in the dream world of home-based mail order.

"Insert a postcard advertisement in your local shop window. And
just wait by your letterbox as the money comes pouring in S.A.E.
for details."
COMMENT: Just another dodge to get you to take part in the old
envelope addressing racket.

"Enjoy the benefits of herbal health nutrition yourself and turn an
outlay of 66p per day into a regular five figure monthly income.
No selling necessary. Recruit two people - retire in two to three
years. An S.A.E. secures full details.
COMMENT: A five figure income monthly? "Good grief" I hear you say,
that's a minimum of ten thousand pounds per month, one hundred and
twenty thousand pounds a year. So this advertiser must already be
on the super-wealthy level. Is he already n the verge of luxury
retirement? If he can offer one hundred and twenty thousand pounds
a year to others he must be fantastically rich......Surprise, surprise.
He is still just a small time mail order dealer operating part time
and pedalling a well known MLM scheme.

I must mention the heading on a full page advertisement for an MLM
scheme. It reads "Losers Hesitate - Winners Act Now."
COMMENT: Wrong. Exactly the opposite is true. Losers plunge headlong
into new schemes without properly checking them out. Winners are more
cautious and will probably use professional help to carefully check
out the proposition before parting with any money. Apart from the
daft headline, this particular scheme is more restrained than most
in its advertising text.

"MLM MILLIONS. Join the top MLM kings in the UK. I and six others
led the way to untold wealth. We will show you how to join the winners
in MLM. S.A.E. for details."
COMMENT: Several of the people in our survey had sent off for details
of this one. It turned out to be a special discount offer to join
five different MLM schemes. A lady who took part in the survey actually
lives two streets away from the advertiser. She told us he is the
local milkman. What I would like to know is this, why is an MLM king
who has led the way to untold wealth running around on cold winter
mornings delivering milk?

"HOMEWORK FOR PROFIT. Work in the comfort of your own home at hours
to suit yourself. Earn up to œ250 per week. Everything you need
provided. Starter kit and easy to understand instructions $10.00.
COMMENT: A large number of people involved in our survey admitted
to having been caught by so-called homework schemes. This particular
one was the usual con. The 'starter pack' merely consisted of several
circulars. You were required to photocopy them at your own expenses,
buy a mailing list at your own expense and mail out copies of the
circulars at your own expense. You were promised a commission on
all resultant orders. But as the orders would not come to you, it
is a matter of trusting the firm to tell you of any orders they
receive as a result of your mailings. None of the people in our
survey had bothered to send out the circulars, they said only
over-priced junk was being offered, and none were able to obtain
a refund of their ten pounds. Steer clear of dubious homework
schemes. The magazine Homeworker's Post does a good job in exposing
dodgy homework schemes.

The foregoing gives some idea of the general standard of mail order
advertising, but not all mail order advertisements are of this nature.
There are genuine advertisements and there are mail order dealers who
are honest and give value for money. The problem is to sort out the
minority of genuine advertisements from the dubious majority. One
guideline is to ignore all advertisements which make specific claims
about the amount of money you will make. I have yet to find any such
claim which is accurate in the forecast of potential earnings and
most are given to wild exaggeration.

Another type of advertisement to be ignored is the 'mystery
advertisement', so called because they never tell you what exactly
is being offered. Most mystery advertisements are in the form of
circulars which come as unsolicited mail. The mystery advert will
tell you all about what a marvellous offer this is. It will go into
great detail about the amounts of money which can be made and it
will often quote success stories about other people who have taken
up the offer. But they don't ever say exactly what the offer is.
They usually excuse this by saying the information they offer is so
valuable that it has to be kept secret.

They will reveal this secret (usually in the form of some manual)
which will make you enormously wealthy, only when you send the money.
So you part with money for a grossly overpriced and tatty manual,
only to find it to be the usual disappointing rubbish. One of these
mystery manuals contains a lot of stuff about what people have earned
in the past doing this particular thing. But all it boiled down to
is the suggestion that you go around with a ladder clearing the guttering
on people's houses. Hardly worth œ17.50 is it? So avoid all
mystery advertisements.

Now we come to another common blunder made by beginners in mail
order. During the initial stages of starting up their business, they
are inclined to spend too much money. Even later on, many are not
careful about business expenses and are inclined to spend more than
can be justified by the return. Turnover means nothing. I know a
business which has a turnover in excess of œ30,000, yet the nett profit
is comparatively tiny. The whole purpose of going into business, full
time or part time, is to make a profit. Ask the average home-based
mail order dealer what his nett profit was on the previous year and
he is likely to go a deep shade of red and mumble something to the
effect that the business has not really picked up yet.

What is the point of having fifty pounds coming in during a week
I your outgoing expenses nearly match that amount? Some shame faced
dealers have told me that experience has to be paid for. Nonsense,
not any more is that the case. I will give you precise and detailed
instructions on how to avoid painful (and costly) experiences in
mail order. But to get back to this matter of profit and loss.
From now on you must make Ebenezer Scrooge look like a spendthrift.

Newcomers to mail order often buy items that are not really necessary.
Such items should not be considered until profits justify such a
purchase, and even then may not be essential. Such things as
computers, fax, telephone answering machines etc. One of the
surprises of the survey was the large number of people in home-based
mail order who possessed one or more of these items. It would seem
that some beginners are more concerned with fulfilling their own
image as a person in business.

One man had converted a whole room in his modest sized house into
an office, complete with desk, filing cabinet, typewriter, etc.,
before he had made a single penny in profit. This must have caused
some inconvenience to the rest of his fairly large family and it was
not necessary. He must have spent a lot of money which did nothing
except fill the debit side of the ledger and give him a feeling of
self-importance.

Let us take telephone answering machines. I just cannot see why
such a machine is a priority item for a part time, home-based mail
order dealer. As I said earlier, few of these people ever give a
'phone number on their letterheads. Yet the survey showed that over
fifty had telephone answering machines. Why? A status symbol?
A hope that it will be justified in the future? A telephone answering
machine has distinct disadvantages. If people ring and leave a
message, they also usually leave a request that you 'phone them
back. Now if someone 'phones you that is fine, they are paying
for the call. But if you have to 'phone back, then you are paying
and that is not good. As someone who spends a lot of time preaching
to people that they must keep down their overheads, I'm very much
against over use of the telephone, never mind the further cost of
having to reply to messages left on an answering machine.

I was surprised when the survey revealed that many people in mail
order had fairly high telephone bills. Bills of over two hundred
pounds were not uncommon. Now I know that some people in mail order
love blathering away on the 'phone for hours at a time. I know
because I have often been on the receiving end. Often these calls
could have been over in three minutes with everything important
duly said. But no, they drone on about the weather, gossip about
others in mail order, plans for the future, etc. Don't think I am
anti-social, I like these chats and the people who 'phone me are
seldom boring. But as the minutes tick by, I can't help thinking
of the charges mounting up.

Look upon your telephone as being there primarily to receive calls,
not to make them. Never make a call unless it is absolutely necessary.
Very few 'phone calls cost 17p or less, but that is all a letter
costs. Have a little card stuck on the front you your 'phone and
on it the words 'Stop! Won't a letter do instead? Try and train
yourself to use the 'phone as little as possible. If you do have to
make a call, especially if it is a long distance call, stick a clock
or a watch where you can see it as you lift the receiver. It will
help you make you aware of how much you are spending on that call.

A lot of people in mail order would seem to have desktop computers
or word processors. In some cases I can understand the reason for
having them, those involved in self-publishing for instance. But we
found many cases of mail order dealers who did not need a computer or
word processor, an ordinary typewriter would have been sufficient.
Again it seems that in some cases the computer was an unnecessary
status symbol.

Word processors can serve a useful purpose for some in mail order,
but computers, while useful for some of the larger MLM companies,
serve little purpose in the home of the average home-based mail order
dealer. I think it is significant that the handful of people who
earn a huge income working from home do not use computers. One of
these, a prolific writer and business consultant, has a low opinion
of computers and would not have one as a gift. He records everything
onto audio tape ready for hi secretary to type. Being extremely
elderly, he belongs to generation that has a rather contemptuous
attitude towards computers.

Another of the very few fat cats has an old manual typewriter and
no fancy office aids of any kind. Yet another of them, who has a
very high turnover, has a good manual system (Kalamazoo I believe)
and he won't consider using computers. Who are these fat cats?
The people who make astonishingly high incomes from working at home?
Some of them are incredibly wealthy, but again I would stress they
are very few in number. This is a publication about how to avoid
mail order mistakes, so there is no room here to give details about
the fat cats. But if you are interested, there are two publications
that are being prepared. By the time you read this they may both
be available.

One is a sequel to this publication which I will write on a totally
different theme. Whereas this publication deals with the negative
side of mail order i.e. mistakes and blunders, the sequel deals
with the positive side and shows in detail how to be a success in
mail order. It draws heavily on the experiences of those who have
ben very successful in mail order. It looks closely at the real
successes in mail order and analyses exactly how thee successes
were achieved. Learn just how the fat cats did it and use their
tecniques to mase a success of your own business. It will be
published by the same published who produced this book.

The other of the two publications will certainly interest you if
you want to really know about the fat cats in mail order. It's
called 'Who's Who In Mail Order'. It's all there in detail for
the very first time. The people who have made fortunes and yet
operate entirely from home. The people who operated through the
mail with truly amazing success. It's all there. Everything about
the fat cats. Names, where and how they live, what they do to make
their money, background and much more. Now is your chance to find
out who the phonies are in mail order. Those who claim to be big
time and are nothing of the sort. Because if they are not in this
publication, then they are not in the 'big boys' league. Deeply
and intensively researched it will almost certainly be a best seller.
Details of both books are given at the end of this book.

But to get back to the subject of keeping down your overheads and
enlarging the margin of your profits. One area in which we found
people made unnecessary losses was that of direct mailing.
I mentioned earlier that one should never undertake a mailshot
without first running a 'pilot' shot. But there is something I
would like to add to that. Some people do observe that rule but
start off buying a mailing list of (usually) a thousand names and
addresses. They use one hundred for their pilot shot and if that
flops they are stuck with the remaining nine hundred. Perhaps
the mailing list is no good and it is boubtful if they will get
a refund on the nine hundred names still unused. So here is
another fule. If you go to a new source for a mailing list, one
you have never used before, NEVER buy more than two hundred names
and addresses the first time. I gave reasons earlier why mailing
lists which circulate in the mail order circle are often very poor.
Don't take chances with a new source. Take the smallest quantity
they will sell you, a hundred for preference, and certainly not
more than two hundred. If the small list is any good at all, then
stick with that mailing list broker as good ones are rare.

The survey also revealed that several people had burnt their fingers
in publishing a mail order magazine. The inexperienced dealer can
come unstuck when venturing into this field. Beginners in mail order
are advised to leave this activity alone, at least until some
experience of home-based mail order has been gained. It may come
as a surprise to you when I tell you that of the twenty two mail
order magazines which were in existence in 1985, not one survives
today. In fact, the oldest established mail order magazine in the
UK is Mercury which started in 1986.

So you see, mail order magazines do not usually have a long life,
at least not in recent times. The British mail order magazine
which lasted the longest was also the very first. Postal Times
was started in 1918 and laster until 1966. It ran for nearly fifty
years and only ceased on the death of its publisher, Fred Easton.
No other mail order magazine in this country has ever come anywhere
near that record. The average life of a mail order magazine is less
than two years. Why is this so? I will explain and perhaps it
might make those who contemplate starting a magazine think twice,
once I have explained the snags.

Most mail order magazines fail because they all into a Catch 22
situation. The economics of magazine publishing are such that no
mail order magazine can survive for a long period without advertising
revenue. Trying to recover sosts through the cover price, or
co-publishing, or subscriptions always fails. It is because mail
order magazines have a poor survival rate and because many fold after
a very short period of time that people are extremely reluctant to
take out a years subscription. Whereas co-publishing deals were
offered by almost all mail order magazines a few years ago, it is
now confined to a couply today.

The lack of enthusiasm for co-publishing can perhaps be explained
by the fact that the few co-publishing deals on offer today are far
less generous than those offered in the past. The close links and
interchange which existed between British and American mail order
magazines twenty or thirty years ago seems to have largely disappeared.
If any mail order magazine publisher with a circulation above one
thousand is being completely honest, he (or she) will admit only a
small percentage of copies are actually paid for. Most of these
magazines are given away free of charge.

So the mail order magazine publisher has only two real sources of
revenue. One is that the magazine can act as a vehicle to promote
his own goods and services, and indeed many such publications do
carry a high proportion of the publisher's own advertisements.
The other, and most important, source of revenue is from paid
advertising. In some of these mgazines, very often an advertisement
is not paid for in cash and is there on some exchange deal or
'favour for favour' basis. So what genuine revenue from paid
advertising does trickle in is vital. In many cases the paid
advertising does not cover all the costs, so the publisher has to
subsidise the magazine out of his own pocket. In such cases the
publisher, sooner or later (usually sooner) will decide to cease
publication. This explains why so many of these magazines have a
very short life.

The Catch 22 situation for mail order magazine publishers is this.
Anyone who pays to have their advertisement in one of these magazines
expects to get a return on his investment, i.e. he expects to get
a response to his advertisement. He will want to know what this
response is and will key his advertisement (or at least, he should do).
If he gets a poor response to his advertisement he will not pay for
further advertisements and, just as damaging, he will probably inform
his friends in mail order about the disappointing response.

To ensure that advertisers get a good response the publisher has to
hae a good circulation. Good by mail order standards that is. What
is a good circulation by mail order standards? Here I must mention
an important point. Outside home-based mail order, in the real world
of magazine and newspaper publishing, it is possible to check on the
true circulation figure. Most such publications are checked by A.B.C.
(Audit Bureau of Circulation), so we know whatever figure a publication
gives as its true circulation is accurate.

This does not apply in the field of home-based mail order, where no
such checks are made. So the publisher of a mail order magazine or
ad-sheet can proclaim a circulation figure which can be as high as
his imagination wants it to be. That is why, in the past, we hae had
some daft claims about circulation figures. Downright lies by some
magazine publishers. This is done in the hope of attracting more
one-off paid advertisers. One-of because the advertisers are unlikely
to advertise again. But these lies have another harmful effect in
that they encourage others in the mail order circle (those who believe
the figures) to think 'there's gold in them thar hills', i.e. big
profits in magazine publishing. So we get another mail order blunder
in that people go into publishing their own mail order magazine,
almost always with very disappointing results.

Our survey revealed three people who are currently publishing mail
order magazines and ten publishing ad-sheets. A further forty six
had published a mail order magazine or ad-sheet in the past. All
foty six gave the same reason why they had dropped out of publishing.
They had not found it to be profitable. But let us come back to this
matter of true circulation figures for this type of publication. I
have seen totally absurd circulation figures given by some mail
order magazines. One proclaimed in its advertising that its
circulation was over sixty thousand. I am now going to show you exactly
why such claims are sheer fantasy and just could not be true.

It is estimated that three out of every five people in one-based mail
order are members of M.O.D.S. (Mail Order Dealers' Syndicate).
Having recently inspected their full membership list I have no reason
to doubt this. In 1987 M.O.D.S. decided to try and find out exactly
how many people were involved in home-based mail order in the UK.
As a base to start this project they have their own membership figure.
They then started to search for people who were not memebers of the
M.O.D.S. They carefully checked mailing lists. They scrutinised
every mail order magazine and ad-sheet for names and addresses of
non-members. They obtained lists of buyers and enquirers from manual
and guide publishers and searched these for non-members. Finally they
came up with a total of people operating in mail order who were not
members and added this to this own membership figure.

The final total figure of people in home-based mail order in the UK,
including non-active people who bought items but did not actively
participate, was just over six thousand. Allowing for the fact that
there might be some names they had missed, though they doubted this,
the very highest estimate would be less than seven thousand. M.O.D.S.
did make the point that although there is a fairly high casualty rate,
i.e. people dropping out of home-based mail order, this is compensated
by beginners who are coming into mail order. The entire six thousand
or so form what is known as the 'mail order circle'.

As the circulation of mail order magazines and ad-sheets is confined
almost entirely to the mail order circle, you can see why some ot these
claims about circulation are so absurd. True circulation is usually
between five hundred and one thousand, though sometimes a published
will push up to two thousand copies, at least temporarily, in an effort
to give advertisers a better response. So if you get around twenty
replies to a single advertisement in a mail order magazine, then that
publisher is trying hard and is probably up in the two thousand range.
Stick with him (or her) as twenty replies, especially if these are
firm orders, is very good indeed by mail order standards.

The figures I have given also help to explain why paper MLMs, i.e.
those who recruit and sell via the mail, almost always fail to take
off and usually fold after a short time. Using their own multiplication
tables (matrix tables) which they are fond of using in their advertising,
it can clearly be seen that they will quickly reach saturation point
long before reacing the final levels in their tables. Like mail order
magazines, paper MLMs are confined almost exclusively to the mail
order circle.

The people generally defined as 'Business Opportunity Seekers' for
the purpose of selling mailing lists under this heading are not
business opportunity seekers in any sense that the public would
recognise. They are not people with a few thousands to invest in
some franchise deal. Nor are they people prepared to put a good
sized sum of money into an existing business, or buy a partnership
in an existing business - they are none of these. So our definition
of a 'Business Opportunity Seeker' is usually a comparatively poor
person without capital.

Such people are looking for ways of making money without capital.
Thus they often enter what Dudley Perkins described as "the poor
man's gateway to business activity", multi-level marketing, because
the entry fee is usually a mere twenty-five pounds. Note that Perkins
said business activity, not business prosperity. Such people form
likely prospects for manuals and guides and are often steady
buyers of such material.

Now that key price of advice I promised to ensure you cut down on the
type of blunders which will keep you poor. Firstly, anyone in mail
order should have a copy of a publication called 'Recommended & Approved'
, published by M.O.D.S. and a total exposure of all that is good
(and bad) in mail order. Details at the back of this publication.
Secondly, obtain professional help for your enterprise. The few fat
cats in mail order are either professionals themselves or had
professional help in all their business activities. There are
professional proof readers, copywriters, ghost writers,marketing
experts, etc. There are professional business consultants who will
select a business most suitable to you and who will hold your hand
through the first year or two. All these have charges far less than
people usually expect.

If you genuinely seek professional help (no time wasters please)
write to The Secretary, E.M.O.T.A., 45 Loscoe Grange, Loscoe,
Derbyshire, DE7 7JY and mark your letter, not the envelope, with
the heading 'Professional Help'. They have a confidential list of
the very best freelance professionals in vaious fields of business
who could help you enormously. One of these professionals took a
friend of mine as a client. This friend had been dabbling in
home-based mail order for some years without any real success.
This consultant studied her background and capabilities. Then
he plucked her right out of the mail order circle and set her going
in business she ran from home, with incredible success.

Remember, if you want to do well in home-based mail order, believe
nothing you read in advertisements unless that advertiser is already
known to you. One certain way to ensure you never again make any
kind of mistake in the future is to try and join E.M.O.T.A. (the
Ethical Mail Order Trader's Association). I say try because there
is no guarantee you would be accepted.

They would carefully check to ensure you had never appeared on any
mail order blacklist, and to ensure that your trading methods have
never given grounds for justified complaints. However, assuming you
are acceptable as a member, then the advantages of joining are
incredible. The list of benefits for members have to be seen to be
believed. Just one of the many benefits is that you have a whole
army of top business professionals to advise and support you.

If you want to know more about E.M.O.T.A. (and you would be daft if
you didn't) then write to The Secretary, E.M.O.T.A., 45 Loscoe
Grange, Loscoe, Derbyshire, DE7 7JY requesting details of membership.

I won't end up by wishing good luck to readers of this publication.
Luck does not come into it. A cautious, slightly cynical approach to
business is what you need.