Earn money through mail

This is how people react when they are told that you can earn money through mail. For many, it is a puzzle. But not to those millions of people who earn lakhs of rupees through post. This process of earning through post is known as mail order business.

The best way to define mail order is distance selling. In this business, the customer and seller rarely meet face-to-face. All business transactions are carried out through the post. Therefore, you say that mail order business is just one of the ways of doing business.

Mail order has caught on like wildfire in India in the recent years. You can find MOB advertisements in the classified sections of various newspapers in India. They offer a variety of opportunities for people interested in MOB.

There are three reasons for the popularity of mail order business: low investment, risk free and vast scope.

You can start this form of business with as little as Rs 500/- or even less. You dont need a special business premises and the running costs are usually low. You need money for only the newspaper classified advertisement and the promotion leaflets.

Generally you get back the initial capital investment within days of publishing the advertisement. After that whatever you earn is a profit. An important feature of MOB is that this business is done on cash basis, i.e. cash with order (CWO) or cash on delivery (COD). In the CWO system, you can send goods by registered post, while in COD system; you can send goods by VPP (Value Payable Post). So, there is hardly any risk involved in this business.

Unlike the cold call method of doing business, where you will be knocking on the doors of a handful of homes in one area, in MOB you can cover a wide area by means of the newspaper advertisement. Instead of you going to the customer, the customer will come to you via the mail.

Origins of MOB

Mail order business first began in the United States of America during the 19th century. It then soon spread to Canada and Australia. In those days, human settlements were being set up in these three countries in places where there were inadequate shopping facilities. Retail traders from the cities saw a gold mine of an opportunity in mail order and established separate departments for this purpose. They began selling their products through post.

Today, there are thousands of mail order entrepreneurs in countries like USA, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, India who are successfully working from home and earning decent income.

There are several MOB organisations that even train newcomers in doing business through post. One such organisation is Everest International of Bangalore. It offers a course for beginners and puts them on a path of success.

Advantages of MOB

You as a seller can approach a prospective customer through post, i.e. by mailing circulars, price list of products, catalogues, booklets and samples. As and when a customer approaches you for a product or service, you can sell a product or extend service to the customer.

All the while you can maintain not only the mailing list, but also the records of all the sales done. These records will help you to keep track of product or service preferences of your customers. Plus, you can also repeat a sales pitch with the same customers on regular basis.

If sales are on instalment basis, you can also think of appointing some local agents to take orders, deliver goods and or collect dues from the customers.

How to start the mail order business

First of all, you should have a business plan, a name and an address. A business plan will play a key role in the success of your business. While making the plan you should look into the following aspects: information on various products and services, investment required, the process, raw material suppliers, costs, competitors and all pros and cons.

Initially, the secret of success in this business is to follow the leader. You need not waste your energies by starting from the scratch. If several people have succeeded in a specific business, you can straight away jump into the same business line. You dont need to again invest money and time in testing products, prices and location. First, study all the mail order classified advertisements published in the newspapers and magazines. Study them carefully and then respond to those offers that are for free. Check the literature; buy some of the products to see what is sold for the price asked for.

Then review the advertisements for a pattern. If you see advertisements being repeated then you will know that these advertisers have products that sell. When you find similar ads for similar products in various publications, then youve hit the gold mine. You begin with the same products and make money.

What sells

One of the most profitable products in the mail order business is specialised information. By selling pre-recorded cassettes or booklets you can keep the overheads down and profit margins high. There is a high demand for specialised information and producing it is surprisingly inexpensive.

When choosing what to sell, follow the set rules

Profit margins Dont sell anything that brings back no or low profits. Always calculate the costs of advertising, product manufacturing and mailing. Unless you make a decent profit on each order, dont sell it.

Weight Be always cautious about the weight of the material for post. Does it fit into a manila envelope Or do you have to place the material in padded mailers or small boxes Try your level bet to spend the minimum on postal charges.

Avoid novelties Major business houses deal with items like novelties and gadgets. You cannot compete with them. So try to avoid doing business in that segment. Secondly, if you find that the product that you wanted to sell through post can easily be purchased at a retail outlet, then avoid it. There has to be something special about your product. Only then it can be sold through mail.

Easy to advertise Find a product that is easy to advertise. New inventions should be avoided, as there are no takers for such products in this line of business.

As I said earlier, the key element of MOB is your ability to build repeat business. You can get repeat orders if you build a product line that is specialised, qualitatively superior and adds value to the money spent.

Evergreen product:

In todays information age, there is tremendous thirst for information. It is also a time-tested product and it will always make money.

Experts in the field of information say that marketable information can be in any form: print, electronic or digital. They also say that one can make the big money by selling information, books, e-books, or even newsletters that deal with topics like money, career, better life, new business ideas, and white papers on business trends.

Producing short reports on various topics is the best way to get a break into this field. For instance, you can produce a 4 to 6 page report on say . . . how to establish a home-based BPO centre. You can easily sell it for Rs 50 to Rs 100, depending on the quality of the content. Ensure that the content-rich informative report benefits your customer in one way or the other. Pick up those benefits and push them through your advertisements.

If you are able to sell 50 copies of one short report in a month, you would be making anywhere between Rs 2,500/- to Rs 5,000/-. Your expenses towards printing and postage could be around Rs 500/-. Your net profit would be between Rs 2,000/- and Rs 4,500/-. This is your money! You dont have to share it with anybody.

If you can make this kind of money with just one content-rich report, then imagine how much more money you can make by selling small reports on different topics.

Money making newsletter

Apart from writing and selling small reports, there are a number of ways of selling information. For instance, you can achieve financial success by publishing a newsletter, whose pages are filled with quality content focussing on a specific topic.

A newsletter is one publication that contains information, which can be sold on a regular basis for rising income.

You may be wondering as to why would anybody be interested in subscribing to a newsletter in todays Internet age, where everything is freely available on the World Wide Web. You have assumed wrongly. Yes, free information is available on the Internet, but it is all scattered.

Type in some key words into a search engine and see what happens. You are confronted with millions of pages of information both relevant and unimportant. By the time you lay your hands on 10 per cent of relevant information, youll realise that youre lost in the maze of the Internet. But most importantly, youll be wasting much of your valuable time searching for something that is equal to a needle in a haystack.

So many people and or organisations either outsource such activities or simply subscribe to newsletters that fulfil their needs.

And to become successful with a newsletter, you need to specialise. Always look for new information on a subject that has not been covered by any one.

However, everything will not be hunky dory when you take the first steps and launch a newsletter. Youll face trillions of frustrations. You should have perseverance. Remember one fact in life: there are plenty of people out in the wide world who either have little time or do not know how to write properly, but still they are consistently bringing out newsletters and making incredible profits.

You are better than them. Then why hesitate. Just launch a moneymaking newsletter today!

But before you embark on your newsletter journey, understand that promoting your product, finding buyers and converting them into regular subscribers, will be the most difficult task for you.

Therefore, to be successful, you should make detailed planning and persist with your project with patience. Then success will be yours.

Distance education

Two years back, I was in Visakhapatnam. I met Sukeshini at a friends birthday party. Her husband was working as a sales representative in a small pharmaceutical company. During our conversation, she said that she wanted to work and earn additional income to meet the ever-growing expenses of her family.

Then go out and work. Whats stopping you from doing so I asked.

Oh! However much I want to, I cant go out and work in an office. I have some responsibilities at home. My mother-in-law is bed-ridden. I need to be with her. But I am keen to do something staying at home. However, I dont know what to do Sukeshini said. As she was talking to me, she was also proudly looking at the stain glass paintings in my friends house.

You seem to be having a liking for those stain glass paintings I asked her.

Yes. In fact, these are my paintings. Lata (my friends wife) wanted something unique in her house. She knew I learnt this art. When she requested me, I readily did it for her as my gift, said Sukeshini, with stars in her eyes.

Well, Sukeshini, you seem to have solved your money-making problem, I said.

I then unravelled a business plan for Sukeshini. You can earn money by teaching others the art of stain glass painting by two methods. One, you can offer classes at home and also teach many others by offering a distance education course. Conduct one-time contact classes for distance mode students and give them certificates at the end of the course. You can collect a reasonable fee amount either upfront or on instalment basis. For either mode of teaching, you need to prepare study material. This way, you can be at home with your mother-in-law and also earn money side by side, I explained.

For a moment she was thoughtful. Then she said she would give it a shot after discussing with her family.

Sukeshini recently called me and said that in just 18 months she could establish and popularise her distance education course. She has students from all over the country. Initially, it was difficult for her to get students. However, after four months of experimentation with advertisements, Sukeshini established herself and today she is earning Rs 7,000 to Rs 10,000 profit per month.

Like Sukeshini you too can select a subject that can financially benefit millions of people across the world. There are numerous subjects that can be offered as a short-term course through the distance education mode.

So if you have a yen for teaching people in the distance mode and earn money by sitting at home, then dont wait for a good day.

Beware of pitfalls in MOB:

A mail order business from home can be very profitable. However, there are some pitfalls that you should be wary of. Below I am listing out a few tips that you should consider before embarking on a MOB journey.

People generally take up mail order business after hearing about hearing success stories of people who got rich. It is true that you can make money by selling products or services through mail order. It is also the perfect way for a new person with a small investment to start a business. However, before investing money in this business, consider the following information

1. Mail order is one of the ways of advertising and selling a product or service. In this business, your catalogue or flyer is your store and the printed word is your salesman. Interestingly, you go directly to the customer's home or business. This is opposite to retail business where you woo customers to your store and try to sell them the products.

2. Specialise! As I already said, whatever you are selling should be unique. It should not be easily available in the open market. And your potential customers should be easy to identify and reach.

3. Always have follow-up products that are similar to the products you are selling to your customers. It is very rare that a MOB entrepreneur makes pots of money on a single product. And remember that in mail order profits come only when you make your customers happy with their first purchase. You get repeat orders only when the customer is satisfied with your products. So you need to build a lasting relationship with the customer by selling quality products/services.

4. Persistence is the word for success. If you want to be in business for long time, then be persistent. Slowly but surely, over a period of time, you should build a base of satisfied customers. When that base grows, so do your profits.

5. You should have in-depth knowledge of your product or service. Unless you know what your product is, you cannot be a success. For instance, if you are selling home made food items and you dont know how the items are prepared, how can you convince your customers that your products are made of quality ingredients So, knowing your products is important.

6. Specialised knowledge must. People have wrong notions about mail order business. They think that you just have to insert an advertisement in the newspaper and wait for the cash to come rolling in. If it were that easy, everyone would be in mail order. To be successful in this business, first read the right books and manuals. This means, people should first invest on their education in this field. Only then will they be able to avoid strategic flaws in their business plans.

Finally, if you associate yourself with MOB experts you can gain from their experience. If you have this burning entrepreneurial desire and are willing to work hard, and have a product to sell you can build a decent business and probably become rich.