In this issue:

1) Tip of the Week

2) FEATURE ARTICLE: The Strange Story of the "Crackpot" Mail-Order Prophet by Joe Vitale

3) CLASSIFIEDS Traffic Builders Business Opportunities

4) FREE Resources Recommended Reading

5) POWERQUOTE

6) MOTIVATIONAL MESSAGE: Does Every Journey Begin With the First Step? by William N Hodges

If you'd like to read previously ran tips and features, go to http://netcheckspayroll.com/newsletter.html

Pro-motion

Answers for the "Pro in Motion"

by jl scott, ph.d., Director, IAPO

Q. As a newbie I am at the stage where I spend a great deal of time being confused and overwhelmed. My form of advertising at this point is mainly classifieds. My question is how do you choose ezines when you are at the testing stage of an ad? Thanks for your time. (Brett)

A. First, be prepared to stay overwhelmed for as long as you work online. Things move so fast that every time we think we've "got it" - everything changes.

Choosing the right vehicle for your ads may also seem overwhelming at first but you'll soon find what works for you. You will need to consider several things in making your choices. For instance, what are you selling and who is your target audience?

First, I suggest using the search engines to find the ezine directories and visit them. The directories are always divided into categories. Find the category which most closely fits your product or service.

Now, visit the web pages of the ezines listed in your chosen category. If the ezine offers free ads in return for your subscription, by all means use them. This will get you started.

For paid ads, look for the number of subscribers. Remember that subscriber numbers are not the same as "reader" numbers but you can only guess how many actually read the ezine. If the ezine has archives, read a few issues. If the issues are full of interesting and/or helpful information, the actual readership will be much higher.

Of course, compare prices if you are just starting out. Believe me when I tell you that high prices are NO guarantee of good response! When in the archives, be sure to note how many ads are being run in each issue - as well as how the ads are laid out. Are they all crammed together and unreadable? Or, has the publisher taken the time to make them attractive and inviting?

Finally, look for contact information for the publisher. If this ezine is taking money for ads, they need to be professional and reachable by some means other than email.

Finally, subscribe to the ezines you feel are most likely to fit your needs. Read them thoroughly for several issues. Contact the publisher and see what kind of response you receive. Ask questions!

This is a business! Be sure your ad publishers are presenting themselves as professionals and handling their ads in a business-like fashion. It's your money and you deserve excellent customer service as a paid advertiser.

Good luck!

* To submit questions to "Pro-motion" mailto:Questions@IAPOnline.org

jl scott, ph.d., Author Copyright © 2000, All Rights Reserved

The Strange Story of the "Crackpot" Mail-Order Prophet ( or ) Five Things You Can Learn about Advertising from Dr. Frank B. Robinson

by Joe Vitale

Are you having trouble selling your product or service? Are you feeling like the chaotic state of the world prevents you from succeeding? Are you wondering how you can increase your sales in the most cost effective ways? Are you feeling like your competition is breathing down your neck?

Many of my clients feel the same way. They want to succeed, to make a nice living in their business, but they feel overwhelmed, uncertain, and even despondent. They feel they have too much competition. They feel marketing doesn't work, or takes too much work. They feel people don't have enough money today to spend on what they are selling.

And that's why I think it's time to reveal the strange story of the long forgotten "crackpot" mail-order prophet.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s the average person didn't have enough money to feed themselves or their family, let alone enough extra cash to order books through the mail. Yet during those lean years one man made a fortune selling books and courses entirely by mail. His name was Frank B. Robinson. He founded "Psychiana," the world's eighth largest religion and the world's largest mail-order religion.

You may never have heard of him or his movement before today. But during the 1930s and 40s, Robinson's name traveled around the world. Millions of people read his books, studied his lessons, and practiced his methods. The press called his positive thinking, new thought religion a "media business" because Robinson advertised so heavily.

In 1928 Robinson wrote an ad for his new philosophy that began with the headline, "I TALKED WITH GOD." An advertising agency in Spokane, Washington said the ad would never work. But Frank believed in his message and trusted his hunches. He borrowed $2,500 from people he barely knew, spent most of it on printing his lessons, and invested $400 to place his ad in "Psychology Magazine."

That ad pulled 5,300 responses. Robinson ran it in numerous magazines and it always pulled a 3% to 21% response. Within a year he had a full-time job fulfilling requests for his books and lessons, soon shipping a million pieces of mail a year out of his office in Moscow, Idaho. The post office in that little town had to move into a bigger building to handle all the mail.

Robinson's ads appeared in 140 newspapers, 180 magazines, and on 60 radio stations, all at the same time. His postal bill in 1938 amounted to $16,000 and his printing bill hit $40,000. He received 60,000 pieces of mail a day, reached more than two million people, and sent his message to 67 countries---all within one year of running his first ad.

"Advertising is educating the public to who you are, where you are, and what service you have to offer," Robinson wrote. "The only man or organization who should not advertise is the one who has nothing to offer."

What can we learn from Frank B. Robinson?

1. He believed in his product. When you don't believe in what you are trying to sell, it shows. It'll show in your lack of commitment to your marketing, in poor advertising, in poor service, or in other ways. As I mention in my book, The Seven Lost Secrets of Success, sincerity is one of the "lost secrets" to success. Robinson had sincerity. While his movement made tons of money, Robinson accepted only $9,000 a year as his salary. Whether you call him a crackpot or a savior, he believed in his product. He knew he had something people wanted. In fact, Robinson sold his religious lessons with a money-back guarantee.

2. He advertised relentlessly. If you don't tell people that you exist, they won't know it. The reason you aren't aware of Robinson or his movement today is because he's dead. (He died in 1948). No one is advertising his message. Without consistent and persistent advertising to educate the public, the world won't know of your business.

3. He tracked his results. Robinson believed in the spiritual world, but he also knew he lived on the earth plane where numbers matter. He tracked responses from his ads to know what worked and what didn't. For example, astrology magazines brought him an 18% response to his ads while national weekly papers brought 3%. Knowing that, Robinson could invest more money in larger ads in the better pulling magazines. Find out where your business comes from and focus more advertising in that area.

4. He continued to create products. Robinson knew once people tasted his goods, they would want more. He wrote 28 books during his short lifetime. These, along with his correspondence courses, gave him a deep product line. Your current satisfied customers will always be your goldmine. Create more for them to buy.

5. He remained optimistic. Despite the harsh reality of the Great Depression years, and despite competition from religious institutions that had been around for centuries, Robinson flourished. He didn't believe anyone or anything could stop him. When you have that strong of an inner conviction, nothing CAN stop you. If you think you have competition with a similar business in the same town, consider what it must have been like for Robinson to have such empires as the Catholic Church, the US government, and famous ministers and politicians trying to close him down!

Whatever you may think of Robinson or "Psychiana," you have to admit he knew how to advertise his business.

"After all, it's the results in human lives that count," he wrote in his 1941 book, The Strange Autobiography of Frank B. Robinson. "Talk is cheap."

What are you going to do now to increase your business? Remember, talk is cheap!

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"We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world."

-Helen Keller

Questions to Ponder

How patient and brave am I?

What positives come from the challenges I face?

Copyright the Discian Group from the Powerquotes ezine. See http://discian.com/powerquote.htm for more information.

Does Every Journey Begin With the First Step?

Copyright 2000 William N Hodges, used by permission. <Bill@BillHodges.com>

Does every journey begin with the first step? I think it does, but the first step in most journeys is not a physical action, but a mental action. When Neil Armstrong set foot upon the moon and uttered the now famous words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," that physical step was the culmination of thousand of mental steps that had truly started the journey. Whether our goal is to lose 20 pounds or walk on the moon, there are some steps that, if we follow them, will get us there with the least amount of wasted effort.

Neil Armstrong stood on the moon because John Kennedy set a national objective. That objective was to put a man on the moon. Until we set an objective, there is no hope we will ever begin the journey, because until then we have no direction.

The next step is to write our goal down. Committing it to paper is a good way to clarify it in our minds. We can then review it on a regular basis to see how we are progressing. Kennedy not only wrote it down, but he broadcast it to the world over radio and television. Once it was broadcast to the world, our national prestige was at risk should we fail, and others began to take up his dream. Thousands upon thousands of people in all fields worked tirelessly to bring the dream to a reality.

This belief in the dream was important to its ultimate success. Henry Ford once said, "If you believe you can or believe you can't, you are probably right." Kennedy's belief was so great that he made the implausible seem reasonable. If we are to be successful, we have to do the same thing. Whatever our goal, we must believe in it for others to believe in it and help us. Believing something is possible is only part of the mental task.

The other part is to be able to visualize the end result. I think Kennedy, as he spoke the words declaring America's commitment to space, could see the astronaut planting the flag of the United States of America on the moon, although he never lived to see it. It took that kind of vision to convince the American people of the soundness of the goal, and to get Congress to commit the billions of dollars necessary to achieve it.

An old Vaudeville routine had two cavemen standing on a stage. One caveman turned to the other and noting the size of a dinosaur, asked the question, "How does one eat a dinosaur?" The answer to the question is very simple, "One bite at a time." That routine probably wouldn't get too many laughs today, but the logic is sound. How does one tackle any major problem? The answer is, "One piece at a time." The space program had and still does have many short-term and long-term goals. Target dates have been established for accomplishment of those goals. Most of the objectives we have in life can be broken down, as they should be, into short-term and long-term goals. We should establish target dates for completion of those goals. It is only by reviewing our progress against our objectives that we can know whether we are still headed in the right direction.

There will be obstacles to overcome. I am sure that there were many instances where we could have quit the man-on-the-moon program. But each obstacle was treated as a new challenge-not as a place to stop, but rather as a stepping stone to the next plateau.

Whatever your dream, do not allow obstacles to shake your faith in your ultimate success. Stick with it and the moon can be yours.

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Bill Hodges is nationally recognized speaker, trainer, and columnist. If you enjoyed this article, you will enjoy his book Within Your Reach which contains 60 such articles on positive thinking available either in print or a three cassette audio tape. If ordering from your local bookstore, reference ISBN#0-9622717-0-5, or you may order directly by sending your check for $4.95 USCurrency plus ($1.30 USA $3.00 Other)for the printed book or $20.00 plus ($3.00 USA $6.00 other) for shipping to Hodges Seminars International, PO Box 89033, Tampa, FL 33689-0400.

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