send an advertisement

Once you locate a publication you want to advertise in, give it a try for 
3 months. If you don't get any response or only a few orders, try another 
publication. There are millions of them and eventually you will hit the right 
target market that will be interested in what you have to sell.

Don't Stop With One Publication. Just because you locate the target market 
of people who are interested in purchasing your product there is no reason 
you can't advertise in more than one publication. In fact _ if you don't, 
your ad will become stale. If the same people continue to see your ad every 
month they will probably get tired of looking at it. Besides, if they wanted 
the product they would have ordered it by now. Don't tire them out! Alternate 
different size ads and get rid of ones that don't work well.

Leave your ad running as long as it brings in orders for you but also 
advertise in 5, 10, 20 or 50 other publications also to generate a steady 
stream of orders and to reach more people.

Key Your Ads. Many beginners in mail order never key their ads so they 
know what publication people saw their ads in. In fact, I personally never 
did this myself and ended up losing a lot of money. So please don't make the 
same mistake I did. Keying your ads means that you place a code of some sort 
in your address so that when people write and order something from you, you 
immediately will know where they saw your ad. Keep a record of every name 
and address of the publisher you send an advertisement to. Record the date 
you sent the ad and the date you received a checking copy, proving that your 
ad appeared. Also record the "code" you used so you can immediately identify 
where it came from.

If your address is "123 Anytown St," it could become "123 Anytown St, 
Suite A" for one publication and "Suite B" for another. The postman will 
still deliver your mail to "123 Anytown St." Of course, if you live in an 
apartment complex and there are apartment numbers you could turn "111 Johnson
Apt A" into "111 Johnson, Apt A-1" for one publication and "Apt A-2" for 
another. Post office box addresses are also simple. Turn "PO Box 585" into 
"PO Box 585, Dept A-1" for one publication and "Dept A-2" for another.


People will sometimes even change their name on the ad for keying purposes. 
You might see the name "Harriet's Recipe Book" instead of Harriet Ranger. 
Harriet might also use "Harriet's Cookbook" or even "Harriet's Solution to 
Stress" on her ads relating to these products. Use your own imagination and 
pretty soon, keying your ads will be a normal part of your life.
Be sure and keep track (on your Record Sheet) of how many responses you 
receive from each publication. After 3 months, look over your Record Sheet 
and get rid of the publications that didn't do well. You'll go broke if you 
spend $10 per month advertising a 2-inch ad if you only receive $1 back in 
orders. After awhile you'll be able to see where it pays you to advertise 
your particular product and then you can send in larger ads to those 
publications. Never stop using this method and you'll never stop getting 
orders in your mailbox. It's a win-win situation for everybody!

Tabloids -vs- Adsheets. Another question about advertising that many people 
have is whether its better to advertise in tabloids or adsheets. Many people 
will sell you information on the best day to mail and the best time of the 
year to advertise. They think they have it down to a science and will 
convince you of their methods.
However, there is NO set rules that can be employed by everyone. That's 
because there are a wide variety of ways to approach various products. If 
you sell travel services and read a report that told you not to advertise during the summer months, you'd go broke. The summer is the travel industry's 
biggest money-making season!

Don't get hung up on specific statistics made by people who claim to be 
expert researchers. There is no way to determine what is best for you than 
to try it yourself and see what works. You are the person in control of your 
business and you are where the buck stops. Take advantage of your authority 
and try every angle you can think of until you determine what's best for your 
company's product and/or service.

Tabloids are a fantastic advertising vehicle and adsheets are too. Sometimes 
people feel a small 1" camera-ready ad gets lost in a tabloid filled with 
100's of them. This may be true in some circumstances and not true in others. 
Do you look at 1" ads in tabloids? Of course you do. You scan the pages and 
your eye is always directed to one or two on the page that catches your eye. 
Ask yourself "why" they caught your eye. Was it because the ad was placed in 
a specific area on the page? Was it because of the headline or the word 
"free"?

Classifieds work well in tabloids and adsheets and sometimes they don't, 
Look in the back of the Globe or Enquirer. Don't they have page after page 
of classified ads? If nobody was reading them and responding to them, the 
advertisers wouldn't be submitting advertising to the Globe or Enquirer for 
them. So evidently, people DO read classified ads _ even if there are 100's 
of them. Test the waters and do what works the best for you.