Todays Direct Mail and Copywriting Geniuses

This is the ninth article on the history of advertising and marketing

And we begin with a living legend - Ted Nicholas.

Ted has probably made more money in Direct Mail than anyone else. He is a self-made millionaire and says: "The Secret to becoming a millionaire is simply using the right words."

Ted has opened, operated and sold 21 profitable businesses. He has published, and been responsible for publishing, hundreds of books and publications and for generating over $4 billion worth of business.

Of his own works: Magic Words That Bring You Riches and The Golden Mailbox are well-known.

Here's an extract from "The Golden Mailbox"

Work Your Niche

A niche is a specific, specialized market that nobody else has got. Now that you know the kind of people worth targeting, you need to narrow your market down to a particular niche. Don't make the mistake of trying to sell to everybody; you can't, because not everybody will want to buy no matter how great your product. Think how huge the Coca-Cola market is and yet even they don't sell to everybody â€" by a long way. You're looking for a market that is either untapped (virgin) or not fully exploited. This will be your niche and can be in anything from gardening and sports equipment to books and software, so long as people want to buy it.

Properly worked, your niche could be the equivalent of a seam of gold in a gold mine. Now if you had this seam of gleaming gold, would you pick away at it only for long enough to extract a few flakes of gold before deciding that you'd had enough and search for another gold mine? No! Great wealth is staring you in the face! You'd get every last scrap of gold that you possibly could from that seam before you even thought about looking elsewhere. Yet that is what people often do with their niche (seam of gold), they work it toa shallow depth before they give up and try and find another niche to make money on. They then stand amazed when a competitor comes along and makes a fortune from their abandoned gold mine.

The trick is to find your niche â€" work it to its full depth and to concentrate your efforts only on this one rich seam. Don't dilute your efforts by dabbling in other niches; you will be throwing money away.

Your key to a fortune is to find a good niche market, and work it to death! To help you discover and define your niche, see the section on Unique Selling Propositions later on in this lesson.

Jay Abraham is the founder and CEO of Abraham Group based in California. He has spent the last quarter century helping people increase sales, and increase profits. He has advised more than 10,000 clients worldwide in just about any industry and business category.

He is recognized as America's #1 marketing wizard.

He has been mentioned in Forbes Magazine, USA Today, New York Times, Entrepreneur magazine, Washington Post, and many, many others.

Jay has written many books and courses. You can view these at his site on: http://www.abraham.com

Dan Kennedy is known as a "millionaire-maker". Entrepreneur Magazine noted that he has "at least 101 money-making ideas for any business owner."

He is reputed to be earning as much as $250,000 in a single month as an advisor to those direct marketing, advertising, copywriting, video production, and generally advising on improving profits.

His clients range from individual entrepreneurs to large corporations. He has helped turn round husband-and-wife teams with mountains of debt to having a business with 200,000 plus per month turnover. And one of his more notable success stories involves the Guthy-Renker Corporation which is famous for its celebrity infomercials. Guthy-Renker now enjoys a $200 million a year turnover and a lot of that is directly due to Dan Kennedy.

Kennedy is probably responsible for many of the full-page ads you will undoubtedly see in magazines such as USA Today, Airlines mags, countless trade magazines, and The Wall Street journal.

His consultancy services cost around $6,000 for one day and nearly $1,000 per hour. He earns a very nice income from royalties alone.

Dan Kennedy has a busy schedule of seminar speaking, consulting, writing, and producing infomercials all of which do not come cheap, but what is cheap when everyone benefits from his wisdom.

You can find his website here:

http://www.dankennedy.com

Gary Halbert

Gary Halbert is today recognised as one of the best copywriters - ever.

Back in the 1960s he was stony broke. But he had an idea. He was convinced that selling family coat-of-arms by direct mail would be a big hit. It was a gamble. But….

With one single sales letter he gathered 7,300,000 customers and his turnover reached a phenomenal $45 million in just the first year.

This sort of success made him a legend in the industry and he went on to grow Halberts, a mail order company. At one point he had to employ 40 people just to bank the checks that were coming in at a rate of 20,000 per day. Phew!

What made it so successful was that he personalized every single letter and mailed it to many millions of households in America.

Gary Halbert's personal style was flamboyant to say the least. He placed a full-page ad in a Californian weekly for dating, it read:

"Are you more than just a pretty face?"

Generous, Creative Businessman Wants to Find a Hot, Sexy Woman With a Good Sense of Humor

And what happened next?

Halbert was featured on radio, TV, was asked to star in a movie, a TV Series, a book, to write for magazines, and the ad was even used in France to teach English to students.His copywriting skills led him to write many letters on all subjects from sex manuals to stock trading to skin care.

He was responsible for raising $1 million for the Red Cross Disaster Fund in 1992

Gary is famous for this phrase: "If you were to open a hamburger stand and could choose one key to maximise your success, what would it be?"

Most people would answer that they want the best location or the lowest price. But Halbert maintained that the key to success is to place the hamburger stand next to a "starving crowd." Or, sell something that people really want.

Gary still turns out direct mail but gives most of his profits to charity.

Gary used to charge $197 per year to subscribe to his newsletter, but you can get it for free, right here:

http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com

John Carlton

John Carlton is one of the world's highest paid copywriters.

It is highly likely that you will have come across some of his work in magazines such as Penthouse, Men's Journal, Men's Health, Muscle and Fitness and many others.

He has been responsible for selling millions of dollars worth of product on just about every conceivable product.

He has been a friend of Gary Halbert's for many years and worked with both Jay Abraham and Dan Kennedy. All other top writers seek the wisdom of John Carlton. His copywriting is used by many as a guide to improve their own works.

You can get free access to John's newsletters' back issues at:

http://www.marketingrebelrant.com