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Into the Time Tunnel of the Information Marketing Business
By Robert Skrob | December 12, 2011
For 6 years, select information marketers have been “by-invitation-only” subscribers to Dan Kennedy’s Information Marketing Special Reports and Info-Marketing Letters. Now, for a limited time, Dan has opened his vault to make these available to you.
If you’d like to find out more about the archives, visit www.DKArchive.com. Here is an excerpt from Special Report #8 of the archives. I’m sure you’ll find it valuable and enlightening.
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I believe I have helped more people make more money in the information business than anyone else on this planet.
I began getting my chops in 1971, while still in high school. I was creating products and selling other people’s products, running full page ads, running classified ads, etc., in 1973, 1974, 1975. Over the years, I’ve used every media, sold at every price point, literally invented—and I do mean invented—ways of making money in this field. Countless people making millions in this field quite literally are in it directly as a result of my suggestion, influence and guidance, including Bill Glazer, Joe Polish, Rory Fatt, Marty Grunder, Bill Hammond and hundreds more. In 2004, I was paid over $1 million for my advice, assistance and copywriting by info-marketers alone.
From the beginning, I paid close attention to and studied a handful of extraordinary information marketers from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. And continued to study them as I found them. My foundation, my most reliable fundamental strategies are theirs. In this Special Report, I’ll introduce you to and give you some insight into these innovative entrepreneurs and the lessons I learned from them.
To put them in context, remember, most of them worked without the Internet, without email, without FAX, some before credit cards were accepted in this field—without most of the tools you rely on and take for granted today. They succeeded when it was necessary to convince a customer to fill out a form and mail it. Their media options were more limited. List rental world, far less sophisticated.
When I started, I found no one like me—someone actually teaching you how to do this business, step by step, laying out business models that worked. I found no collection of resources and support comparable to these Reports, the Info-Marketing Letter, the materials on this subject I’ve recorded and produced, and the annual Glazer/Kennedy Info-Marketers’ Summit. I had to figure it all out, only by observing what these guys were doing, then suffering through a lot of costly trial-and-error.
However, all that should not be taken by you as a “pass” to ignore history, not bother studying ‘founding fathers,’ not reaching back for a complete understanding of the field you’re involved in. For one thing, there are “forgotten secrets” to be found; progress, especially when fueled by technology, tends to leave behind vital fundamentals, and those few who possess them have an advantage. Second, you get a richer, fuller, more sophisticated understanding of your business by understanding and learning from its past. So, I hope this Report is not only interesting and instructive in and of itself, but that it stimulates you to be more of a student of the field’s history on your own.
JERRY BUCHANAN
You are undoubted familiar with “the little yellow book” that I wrote, with Jeff Paul, to sell the “JPDK”/$4,000.00 A Day In Your Underwear course, as well as the ads that ran offering that book, sometimes for sale, other times free.
But you may not be familiar with “the writers’ utopia formula” book from which I bought the first home study course of info-publishing, and the ad that sold it, that I answered in late 1975 or 1976. That ad and that little book-that-sold was written by Jerry Buchanan. Regrettably, I cannot locate my copy of the ad itself or the original little book (and if anyone reading this has it, I’d appreciate receiving a copy). However, late in Jerry’s life, I bought a large collection of his materials and the exclusive rights to re-publish them.
Jerry started out as an info-marketer, although the more commonly used term was ‘self-publisher,’ in the late 1960’s, advertising and selling a report about ridding your backyard garden of gophers. This was long before anybody knew anything about back-end, let alone continuity, and there was money to be made just by advertising and selling modestly priced books. There was no ‘rocket science’ about what he did; he identified a subject people reachable through niche publications were interested in (because he was one of them and it interested him), wrote a book, wrote some simple ads, sold books. It’s worth noting the formula is just as reliable and important today, although the opportunities are much greater, more media available.
Jerry’s success with that book motivated him to write, publish and advertise others, and soon, people were seeking him out, asking for advice on how to sell their books. Many had, of course, made the common mistake of doing everything backwards, so they had garages full of books not built to a market. This led to Jerry writing a book about how to do what he had done, and the aforementioned ad, which ran in both writers’ publications and opportunity publications for years. He realized these customers had more back-end value than the gardeners, and he developed courses, conducted seminars and developed “Towers Club USA,” an “inner circle,” and a newsletter for them. At one time, his newsletter had more than 200,000 subscribers, and was the foundation for a very good business.
Jerry’s students who praised him included some names you might know: John Cummata (Debt-Free), Gary Halbert, Ted Nicholas, E. Joseph Cossman, Jerry Baker (America’s Master Gardner). And me. After discovering him, I forked over $949.00 for all his back issues—when ‘$949.00’ was a bigger number than it is today.
My study of Jerry’s work was the first thing that led me into the newsletter business. I had a newsletter for speakers called ‘Marketing Your Services,’ which I published for several years, with nearly 1,000 subscribers … I had a couple predecessor marketing/business newsletters before getting to ‘The No B.S. Marketing Letter’ that exists today. It was Jerry who first convinced me that a newsletter was the ideal information product/business.
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If you enjoyed this excerpt, you may want to review the entire Dan Kennedy archive. It is available for a limited time at www.DKArchive.com. Every one of the 72 issues is packed with advanced, specialized, experience-tested insights into what it takes to succeed within the info-marketing business. Visit www.DKArchive.com to reserve your copy.
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