Q: How old are you?
A: Just 2 years older than dirt. -- When I was in the
Army, SGT Dirt and I had the same birthday - but - I was 2 years
older.
Q: Where are you from?
A: Born in Oklahoma. Reared on poor dirt farms
in Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas.
Q: How many years have you been marketing?
A: Over 50 years.
Q: How many weeks a year would you say you spend working
now?
A: Just 52 ... there aren't any more.
Q: Please list 3 of your greatest marketing success's.
Detail as much about them as possible.
From how did you get involved into it,
how did you market for that product and through what you learned through the process.
A: I haven't had any "great" marketing success
... like so many of the one-time wonders. I have just developed
a stable of products and kept selling them. No homeruns
... just single & double baggers that have continued to produce
income.
Q: Please list 3 of your greatest marketing blunders.
Detail as much about them as possible.
A: I can count my successes on my fingers & toes
- but - I couldn't count my blunders using all the hairs
on my chest. -- Without blunders, mistakes and failures
there can be no success. You only learn from your mistakes
... success doesn't teach you anything. Show me a
person who is afraid to fail and I will show you a person
who will never succeeed.
Q: List your greatest marketing achievements (this need
not be detailed but it should be in list
format for it will be used toassert you as an authority in marketing).
A: My career has progressed through direct selling, service
contracting, wholesale merchandising, entertainment (I was a
professional Trumpet player, vocalist & Radio Announcer),
freight forwarding, import/export, retail merchandising, warehousing,
real estate, electronics manufacturing, finder's fees, closeout
merchandising, financial brokerage, business consulting, steel
fabrication, gold & coal mining, offshore banking, mailorder,
writing, and publishing.
Over the past 30 years, I have written
well over 300 books, booklets, manuals, reports, courses and
articles about doing business -- all based on my own personal,
hands-on experience. My writings are "specific" methods,
techniques and approaches to doing business that anyone can use
to start or expand their business.
As a mailorder marketer, I have sold over
two-hundred & fifty-million dollars ($250,000,000) worth
of products and services by mail. Everything from Beauty Supplies
to Heavy Equipment ... Burglar Alarms to Sleeping Bags ... Fishing
Lures to Women's Wigs ... Automobiles to Wheelchairs ... Investment
Opportunities to Seafood ... Consulting Services to "How
To" Courses ... all by mailorder. --
Today, I am making a new ... bigger ... fortune on the Internet.
Q: What did you do before you became a marketer?
A: I had to learn how to read and write. Started
selling as soon as I was big enough to walk into town on
my own.
Q: How did you first get invloved in marketing
A; When I was about 9 years old, I started selling Cloverleaf
Salve door to door in our small midwestern town of 1,000 population.
Sold "Grit" newspaper, Christmas Cards, Magazine subscriptions.
Q: How did you make your first dollar in marketing?
A: Knocking on doors, selling just about anything I
could find offered in the back of Comic Books.
Q: What was your first experience with a computer?
A: As a kid, I was an electronics nut. My
first computer experience was a system using tubes and
patch panels. What you now do on a wristwatch, used
to take enough equipment to fill the building we occupy now.
Q: When did you first start working online, and how
did you get involved in selling within
the online community?
A: You can read the story at: Oct99.html
Q: What was the first product you marketed online? How
did you become affiliated/interested in that product? Did you
make an profit marketing that initial product? What did you learn
from that initial marketing experience?
What would you say was your first break through product?
Any shocking marketing stories, something unusual ever happen while marketing?
A: Created my website in September, 1999, when
more and more of my paper & ink readers began asking
where they could buy my stuff online. -- At first it was little
more than a catalog of my products. -- The site had coverd
all of its costs and generated a profit by January,
2000.
All I did, at first, was add my URL to all of my
out-going direct mail pieces. -- Still my best source of new
customers.
Mid-year 2003, I discovered the profits to be made as an affiliate
marketer. -- Until then, I had only sold my
products to my customers. -- Within 3 months after I started
affiliate marketing, I was knocking down a few extra thousand
dollars each week. -- Then, once I knew exactly how it was done
... how anyone could do it ... I wrote my latest
report, "How You Really Can ... Make Your
Internet Fortune as an Affiliate Marketer!"
Q: Go through your average day from waking up in the
morning to going in bed at night (be as
thorough as possible).
A: I usually awaken about 4:30 each morning
... do a little exercise ... then, catch the news.
About 7:30 I awaken my wife; DeLores. We get to the
office by 9:00.
Finish up all emails ... fill all the orders ...
by about 10:30 a.m. -- Spend the rest of the day searching
for good stuff to tell my readers about ... methods to
use to increase my advertising ... doing the customary paper
work involved in any business ... reading review copies of books
sent to me for my consideration.
I leave the office about 2:00 p.m. -- Do any chores
that need to be done. -- Get home between 5:00 & 6:00.
Then, I read until about midnight.
Get up the next day and do it all again.
Q: Do you have a system that you believe is responisble
for your success, a certain making money
strategy or model? If so please describe.
A: I use the PBOC method. -- I Put my Butt On
a Chair until all of my responsibilities and obligations
for the day have been done.
Q: When you sit down at the computer what exactly do
you do?
A: I turn it on. Then, I get my emails... fill
the orders ... and answer every email (deleting the crap
as I go).
Q: What in your opinion has been most responsible for your
success?
A: I love what I do and do what I love doing.
Q: How many different products have you sold online?
A: Oh, I don't know. Fifteen of my
own products and ... since I started as an affiliate marketer
... maybe a dozen more.
Q: Have you worked in more then one market, if so which?
A: Online I have only sold business related information
products and services. Over the years, I have been
active in hundreds of different markets.
Q: What marketing methods have you used in the past
and which ones have worked best for you?
A: If you are asking about Internet marketing
methods, I have tried them all with varying success.
Direct email has proven to be the best ... as I fully
explain in "How You Really Can ... Make
Your Internet Fortune as an Affiliate Marketer!" --
Q: How long did it take for you to become successful?
A: I have always been successful ... even my failures
have been successful. -- Why? -- Because "success"
... like "poverty" ... is a state of mind.
Q: Where do you see internet marketing going in the
next 5 years? Do you for see any types of marketing that will
cease to work in the next year or two?
A: It can only get better and better. It is the
greatest advertising medium ever created.
Q: If someone where to take everything in the business
world away from you that you have built
up until this day what would be the one
thing you would hang on to?
A: As long as I have the knowledge of my past experience,
I have everything I need.
Q: What in your opinion has been the one characteristic
of your personality that has beend responsible
for your success?
A: A desire to bring "value" into my
customers' lives.
Q: If you had a chance to do it all over again is there
anything you would have done differently?
A: Yes ... I would NEVER have any products of my own.
I would only sell other people's products and services. -- I
would sell just as much but without the ongoing hassles.
Q: What are you currently working on?
A: Trying to teach people how they really can make money
on the Internet. -- They've been fed so much crap, it is
a big job just trying to get them to unlearn the garbage
they have already learned.
That's why I wrote "How You Really Can ... Make
Your Internet Fortune as an Affiliate Marketer!" --
Q: What are your plans for the future, is there any
marketing adventure you have yet to conquer?
A: I will keep doing what I'm doing until it isn't fun
anymore.
Q: If a person were to learn just one thing from your
experiences what do you believe that should
be?
A: If you are going to be in business ... be
in business. Quit pretending. Quit trying to get
rich overnight (it never happens). Learn the solid
fundamentals of doing business then apply them to whatever business
you are doing.
If you aren't going to learn to do
business. Go get a job and quit cluttering up the
business arena.
Q: Name 3 childhood leisure activites you used to participate
in?
A: Logic puzzles, chess, bridge.
Q: Name 3 leisure activaties you participate in now?
A: Reading, reading and reading ... anything about anything
... no fiction.
Q: Do you have any pets?
A: Just two black cats. They're twins. Their
momma brought them to my office the day they were born ... she
left'em ... I took'em home.
Q: If you could make yourself into any toy/super hero
what would it be?
A: Who, me? There ain't one good enough.
Q: What do you usually eat for breakfast?
A: Just coffee.
Q: Do you do anything unusual in your day?
A: Nothing unusual ... just do what I do.
Q: Boxers or Briefs?
A: Depends upon what I am wearing.
Q: Did you have any idols or role models growing up
as a kid?
A: Don Amechi & Clayton Moore (voice), Fred
Astaire (poise), Vincent Price & David Niven (class), John
Wayne (manhood), Louis Armstrong (trumpet).
Q: Pepsi or Coke?
A: Neither ... I prefer coffee.
Q: Advertising is a key area that many of us need help
with ... what are the main factors to consider in any form of
promotion? As always, there are only three ... Product,
Offer & Audience.
A: Rather than restate what I have already said, you'll
find out everything you need to know about developing your promotions
in past issues of my "Business Lyceum e-Letter" ...
such as:
Jun01.html
-- tells you why most marketers miss the mark by 50%.
Jan01.html
-- gives you methods you can use to capture your audience ...
just as they did in 1913.
Oct00.html
-- tells you how anything that works is right.
Feb00.html
-- tells how Unique Selling Propositions can be created.
Nov99.html
-- tells what to do it you don't have any testimonials.
Q: What famous books on copywriting would you recommend?
A: Anything written by Melvin Powers or E. Joseph Cossman
... all of their works are written from hands-on, personal experience;
not research.
Q: We hear all the time that changing headlines can
increase profits. At what stage do you decide that it is
not the headline that is wrong but the sales letter?
A: You don't.
In the marketing game, the professional marketer is constantly
testing. -- Sometimes, what works today won't work tomorrow -
and - what worked well yesterday may, of a sudden, work well
again today.
Here's how it's done ...
First, you write a sales piece and test it. -- If it produces
orders, keep it as a "control" ... because you know
from your testing that it produces orders.
If your sales piece does NOT produce orders, you change only
one thing in it and test it again.
The big mistake most beginners make is by testing too many
things at once. -- You'll never know which change made the difference
if you have more than one change in your sales piece.
If you sales piece did work, you still need to be testing
against it ... as your "control" ... to enhance it's
pulling power.
Then again, when a new tested piece produces great gobs of
orders, then quits, it will be time to go back to an older tested
piece that used to sell. -- You never know in this business,
until you test, Test, TEST; then test some more.
Hey ... sometimes you can lose a bundle of money testing and
retesting your headline; your offer; your price; your audience
- BUT - the results can make you rich, Rich, RICH ... when you
find the right combination.
Most beginners just give up too soon.
If you KNOW your product or service is something needed or
wanted in the marketplace, it is worth whatever it costs to find
a headline, offer, price and an audience that works.
Copyright - 2005, J.F. (Jim) Straw. All rights reserved.