Over six years ago I wrote TWO reports. I am still selling those reports for Ј1 a time and have since written many more reports which I am also making a good profit on. 'One Page Reports' are so good because they are so easy to produce and are easily sold at well over TEN TIMES the cost of producing them. They are also a good introduction to selling large and more expensive items. Another attraction that they have is that they can be packaged together and sold as a 'package deal' thus giving a choice of a single sale or many sales together.

It is difficult to make advertising pay when you spend even as little as Ј2 on an advert if you then only receive one reply. It isn't until you realise the FULL potential of the one reply that you realise just how profits are made in mail order. Say, for example, we sell one report for just three postage stamps to pay for the product, further sales brochures to include with the report and what remains goes towards further advertising. We mail the product and, hopefully, the customer is pleased with what he or she receives. They look at the brochure and , if it is good, order more items. However, THIS time they may spend Ј5, Ј10 or even much more.

Now, we only need ONE reply in five at Ј10 a time to cover the cost of advertising FIVE times. Then the second order can go on to produce a third, fourth and even more orders. Each one of those orders is profit. So you can see that although it doesn't at first seem as if you are making money from advertising, it can really lead to quite big money on a fairly regular basis. Bigger orders can come from reports also. A batch of 30 reports with Reproduction Rights for just Ј10 sounds very good. You can list out the reports and sell them in batches of four for Ј1.50 or all 30 for Ј10. This will give you some small sales and also some bigger ones. If you do the photo copying yourself, or can get it done for 5p a sheet, it will only cost a maximum of 20p for four reports. Your profit is Ј1.30 on one set of four or Ј8.50 on all 30. To save postage, you can copy them double sided onto A4 size 100gsm paper which is slightly thicker.

If you have the facilities, you can sell them even cheaper and STILL make as much profit. Just reduce them to A5, put four on a double sided A4 sheet and sell all 30 for about Ј7. You'll get more sales and approximately Ј6.50 profit on each sale. If you make up a brochure to sell them, be sure to list ALL the names of the reports. It looks quite impressive. Having the brochure properly typeset and printed is very well worth considering as it really is your 'silent salesman'.
Of course you don't have to write your own reports as there are already many on sale with Reproduction Rights. However, if you do write your own, you can keep the copyright yourself and, like me, sell it for years.