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Ideas/Section-8
If you're involved in
any type of business where you sell products or
services, you should know that you need to sell more than one product
to
be successful. Of course, there have been exceptions, like the Pet
Rock,
but those are few and far between. You see, if you only sell one
product,
you need to find those prospective customers that want that one
product.
Add a second product, and you've opened the door to customers who
want it,
but not your first product. Add a third, and you have more prospects,
and
so on.
You can present your products or services
through separate ads or flyers,
but it's really more efficient and professional to have a CATALOG.
That way, your customer can see all you have to offer in one place,
instead
of one ad here, another there.
Having a catalog will increase the orders
you receive, since your customers
have more choices and you can show them everything in one mailing.
If you're thinking of putting together
even an eight page catalog, call your
local printer and ask for a price. Get a quote on 1,000, since you'll
want
to have enough. My best printer would charge $150, which would be
15 cents
per catalog. Then, you have the mailing cost, which would be 52
cents.
You're now up to 67 cents per catalog. Add in the cost of getting
the name
to send the catalog to, and you could be over a dollar per catalog.
That
means over $1,000 to print and send out all your catalogs!
Worse news to come... you won't get rich
from an eight page catalog. If you
really intend on making it in your own business, you'd better offer
at least
20 related products or services (or a combination). That way, you
can hit a
specific group of people and have a good chance of getting a decent
return.
But if an eight page catalog would cost over $1,000 to print and
mail, think
about a 20 page catalog! Printing alone would be $375 or more!
You can reduce your printing and postage
costs significantly by having your
catalog printed on a web press on newsprint. The only problem with
that is,
you need to print a higher quantity to make it worthwhile. Figure
on at
least 10,000. There's an easier, less expensive way to do this...
PUT YOUR CATALOG ON A DISK or CD-ROM.
A 5 1/4" 360K IBM-compatible disk
will hold around a 70 page catalog, if you
do it right! 70 PAGES!!! The higher storage disks will, of course,
hold
more! Your customer will receive your disk catalog, put it into
their
computer, and will be able to view full descriptions of your products
and
services on their screen. They'll even be able to print out an order
form!
Right away, let's look at costs. For a
360K 5 1/4" disk catalog, the disk
will cost 10 cents. Look at Computer Shopper for disk sources that
run
clearance sale on low-density disk. Although with today's computers
a 360K
5 1/4" disk may seem like a dinosaur, at 10 cents, the bargain
may still
serve its purpose.
One cost that was not figured in is storage.
If you have a lot of catalogs printed (especially if you had 10,000
or more newsprint catalogs), you're
going to have to put them somewhere. With a disk catalog, you can
copy them
as you need them. No need to have 1,000 made up in advance, unless
you
really want to!
Also, keep in mind the storage capacity
of the disk. If you wanted a 68 page
printed catalog, whew, it would break you, unless you have pretty
deep
pockets. A dime will get you one on disk.
Finally, consider this... you have 10,000
of your fantastic catalog printed.
You start mailing them. All of a sudden, you discover you have to
change the
price of one of your products. Or, the source for a product dries
up.
Or, you want to add a new product or service. TOO BAD! You're stuck
with
the catalogs the way they are. With a disk catalog, NO PROBLEM!
You make
the change on your master copy, and all subsequent catalogs are
instantly
up-to-date.
See the advantages? You can sell your products
just as well with a disk
catalog as with a printed one. In fact, people will keep your catalog
around longer, due to it's uniqueness (disk catalogs are just starting
to be used).
So, how can you get your own high-powered order-pulling disk catalog?
Well, two ways... you can make one yourself, or you can have an
expert
put one together for you, saving you the time and effort. I'll explain
how it's done, and then you can make the choice.
First, you need to write your product/service
descriptions. Use any word
processor that can save documents as "ASCII" files. These
are plain text
files that can be written and read by most word processors, or directly
from
DOS (by typing "TYPE (ASCII filename)"). You'll want to
apply all the
principles of successful marketing copy writing in your descriptions.
Center them around the benefits the customer will receive from your
product
or service. Don't list features, list how the customer's life will
be
better because of the features. Don't worry about length, you have
plenty
of room on your disk! Also, you aren't constrained by how many words
will
fit on the page, because your catalog will be viewed on the screen,
and will
only be printed if the customer desires to do so. Save each of your
descriptions as a separate ASCII file.
After you have your descriptions typed
and saved, you can assemble your
catalog on disk. You will need some sort of program to let your
customers
choose which product they want to read about, and to display and
print it.
The best programs I have found, which I use on my disk catalog (and
on this
report disk) are "MooMenu" (a menuing program) and "See"
(a text file viewing
and printing program). These programs are public domain (they are
free to
copy and use), and they work together extremely well. Another option
is to
use the program "Writer's Dream," a shareware program
designed for producing
books on disk. I'll use the MooMenu and See programs for the example
to
follow.
First, you need to make a menu of your
products and services. This is the
"table of contents" the reader uses. With MooMenu, you
construct your menu
with your word processor. For each menu selection, you start with
a letter,
then the name. For example, "A. The Super Widget." Then,
on the next line, you would type an execution command that would
direct your text viewer program to display the appropriate text
file. For example, "SEE WIDGET.TXT". This command will
not appear on screen with the menu. Do this for all your catalog
items. You will have plenty of room on your screen, so you should
plan out an attractive heading that shows the name of your catalog,
the issue or date information, and your business name and address
.
Now, create your order form in the same
fashion. Type it on the screen in
your word processor and save it as an ASCII file. Don't forget to
put your
name and address, as well as any ordering and shipping information
you'll
need from your customer, on the form.
If you have more products or services than
will fit on a single screen, you
will need to create a second sub-menu that will be called from your
first
menu. For example, your second menu screen might be called "MENU2.MOO".
You would put a selection on your menu, such as "More Products
& Services".
The next menu command line you'd type would be "MOO MENU2.MOO".
The MOO at the start of that command tells the MooMenu program that
you
want it to display a new menu. The second menu functions like the
first.
The customer inserts the disk, types "go"
and presses return (like you did,
with this disk). The menu then appears. The reader can either press
the
letter corresponding to the item they wish to read, or they can
move the
onscreen cursor with the arrow keys to the item they are interested
in.
If they would like to print the description, they can press "p"
while the
description is loaded and it will print. To leave the description
and return
to the menu, they would press the escape key. It's fairly simple
and
requires little or no instructions to the reader.
Assembling your catalog on disk doesn't
require a bunch of glue, cutting,
pasting, typesetting, printing, or any other of the hard-work jobs
that
traditional publishing requires. All you have to do is copy your
description
files onto a disk, as well as your menu file(s), I'm able to fit
the MooMenu and See programs on a 360K disk and still have room
for around 70 pages of text, so you shouldn't run into any space
limitations. Then, produce a label for the disk, either
from a professional printer or a laser or dot matrix printer (I
do mine on a
laser printer and they come out beautifully!). That's it!
You've now reached the production/distribution
stage. Copy your disks,
label them, and send them out! Here are some money-saving ideas
that will
help your cash flow:
+ Try with all your might to keep your
shipping weight under one ounce.
It's easy to do that with a 5 1/4" disk, as the disk, sleeve,
a cardboard
stiffener (a 5" x 5" square of stiff cardboard that protects
the disk) and
a lightweight envelope weigh just a hair under one ounce, in general.
Shop around for the right envelope. I use 6" x 9" white
24# catalog
envelopes. 3 1/2" disks will automatically cost 52 cents to
mail, due
to their weight.
+ Don't use disk mailers. They're heavy
and expensive. You can send your
disk in a regular envelope if you use a cardboard stiffener. Mark
on the
outside of the envelope in the largest print possible, "HAND
CANCEL ONLY
- DISK ENCLOSED - DO NOT BEND!" I feed my envelopes through
my laser
printer, which prints my return address and the hand cancelling
phrase
in large white on black letters along the bottom of the envelope.
I've
only had one damaged disk the whole time I've been doing this! See,
it's
cheaper in the long run to send another out, than to spend five
times as
much on the mailer itself, and at least twice the postage, on every
single
disk mailed.
