Boron - Chapter 24

And, finally, I have a couple of "bankers" who are eager for
me to develop some promotions which they will finance and
then we will split any profits 50/50.

And you know what? I think an excellent way for you to learn
how to make money in this business is to watch over my
shoulder as I begin to create one profitable promotion after
another.

Here's how I'm going to start: First of all, I am going to
go through the SRDS book and make a note of all the lists
that look like hot markets. Then, I'm going to show Eric
this list of lists and ask for his comments. I'm sure he
will be able to add to my lists and maybe he will also be
able to tell me that some of the lists are really not so
hot.

In any case, after all that, I will have a page full of list
selections and I will write you a letter telling you what
lists I have selected. After that, I will put on my thinking
cap and develop some product ideas to try and sell to the
various lists. By the way, I would very much appreciate any
ideas that pop into your head after you see my list of
lists. Well, in any case, after all this, I will sleep on it
and then, pretty soon, I will codify (isn't that a neat
word) and isolate the projects I want to work on.

Then I'll talk to my bankers.

Here's the way it works with my bankers. If they see a
project they would like to be involved with, they will have
to come up with a development fee of $5,000.00. (Believe me,
that's peanuts to these guys.) This $5,000.00 will be used
to create a DM piece and to make a test mailing of that
piece to 2-5M names. We will also use some of the money for
product development.

O.K. after that, if the response is no good, the banker will
eat his $5,000.00 loss and we will go on to the next
project.

If, however, the results look good, we will then proceed to
a larger mailing of perhaps 50,000 pieces. And then, after
we get our results from the 50,000 pieces, if everything
still looks good, we will start rolling out and taking care
of business.