The U.S. Post Office is drowning in red ink, posting multi-billion dollar losses every single quarter of the year.

Their solution?

Charge more, provide less.

I kid you not, this is the strategy being pursued by the Post Office in 2012.

They’re going to save an estimated $3 billion in expenses when they:

• Slow down first-class postal service.
• Eliminate next-day delivery for letters.

Oh, yeah… they’re going to raise the cost of a first-class stamp, too. So you get the privilege of paying more for slower delivery times.

Cutting Costs at the Post Office

The USPS’s cost-cutting plans also involve consolidating processing centers, closing 3,700 post office branches, and laying off approximately 100,000 employees. (You can verify these statistics here.)

The one thing I don’t see in the plans is a reduction in retiree benefits, and that just blows my mind.

This year the Post Office owes $5.5 BILLION in retiree health benefits alone. That does not include pension pay, which makes the figure much higher.

The first thing the Post Office should do (if they want to survive) is reduce or eliminate retiree benefits. Retirees add NOTHING to the business… and never will. They will continue to be a net drag for years, possibly decades.

The Big Myth People Have Believed for 70 Years

The big myth people have bought into ever since World War II is the idea that, once you retire, a company will take care of you until you die.

While this has worked for a few lucky people at the front end of the curve, it simply will not work for “the rest of us.”

The traditional retirement equation works something like this: Work 40 years, get paid for 60+.

But since when does this math add up?

Best-case scenario, for this equation to work, you’d have to be underpaid by at least 33% for 40 years.

Of course, retiree benefits are considered sacred. And in the Post Office’s case, they are actually required by law to pay retiree health benefits in advance…

In announcing the financial results Friday, officials also said that questions remain about the Postal Service’s ability to make a $5.5 billion payment to prefund retiree health benefits. That’s a congressional mandate postal officials have long argued is onerous.

Frederic V. Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, agreed. He said the announcement about the Postal Service’s finances comes as no surprise and underscores the need for changes.

“For the Postal Service to improve its financial situation, the government must let USPS manage its financial affairs in the most effective manner possible like any other business,” he said.

“Essential to that process would be for Congress to fix an onerous congressional mandate from 2006, which obligates the Postal Service to make annual payments of $5.5 billion to prefund future retiree health benefits.,” Mr. Rolando said. “No other institution in America, public or private, has to do this.”

Maybe the Post Office isn’t so crazy after all. They would change how retiree benefits are handled — if they could.

But they can’t.

This video explains it well:

Yet Another Case of Government Meddling

I have two observations:

Observation #1. The U.S. government has a clear conflict of interest. They are receiving $5.5 billion per year from the Post Office to prefund retiree benefits. That means the money does not need to be immediately spent on retiree benefits, so the Treasury probably spends it on other things. (This is how Social Security works. Money paid in today is not saved in a segregated account. It goes into a general fund where it is then spent on everything but Social Security.)

Observation #2. The Post Office is suffering financially because of government meddling. For the Post Office to be viable long-term, they must be allowed to operate as a private business without interference from the Congress or laws that prevent the Post Office from operating efficiently. As Rolando says so well, “The government must let USPS manage its financial affairs in the most effective manner possible like any other business.”

Of course, I’m highly skeptical the Congress will ever take its grubby hands out of the Post Office’s pockets.

Therefore, the USPS will most likely face bankruptcy in the near future. Then everybody who benefits from that system will be screwed, including the Postal employees and the retirees and the customers who send and receive mail.

In the end, nobody will win.

And Congress is doing their level best to make sure of it.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

• Internet Sales Taxes and Government Fairness
• Would You Market This Product?
• The Easiest Way to Grow a Business
• Why the Government Hates Small Business
• Big Government Targets Freelancers

Remember the “Kindle Marketing Experiment” post? Well, that post is now gone since the offer is over. But the results are in! And John Breese has generously shared what he’s learned in the following post.

If you’re interested in Kindle Publishing, this will help you make smart decisions as you get started. Enjoy!

-Ryan

Before starting into this post, I’d like to take this time to thank Ryan for being such a great help with my recent experiment in marketing a Kindle book.

This experiment, however, was not only for my benefit. A short while ago, Ryan invited you and the other readers of his blog to take part in our little Kindle marketing experiment, and it resulted in some intriguing data.

So to thank you for your help, I offered to report all my findings from this experiment to give you a more informed perspective before jumping into the Kindle publishing arena.

Why Kindle Publishing Is Worth Considering

I can’t stress enough just how important it is to send as much information you have on your business as possible, no matter what your industry, to the Kindle store.

Even if you sell pistons, you should have a whitepaper in the Kindle store. In fact, when I typed the term “pistons” into the Kindle store I found four books devoted to the industry.

However, the focus of this experiment is moreover for those seeking to set-up additional streams of income.

So I’m going to pick up where we left off — in the event that you missed the initial Kindle marketing book experiment post (which Ryan has since deleted now that the special offer has expired), here’s the low-down:

For the past couple of months, I’ve had two ebooks covering the subject of publishing Kindle books taking up space on my desktop, and after hearing Kindle millionaire Amanda Hocking’s name enough times, I finally grew curious enough to find out what I could get from Kindle Publishing.

My goal was not to mimic Hocking and become the next Kindle millionaire (though I do have some lofty plans for that extra million once it arrives).

My mission was to gauge how easy it would be to create an additional revenue stream, no matter how big or how little that extra income would happen to be.

This goal was based on three criteria:

• Time investment: Though I’ve seen a few high-end Kindle books (up to $99), those examples are quite rare. The vast majority of Kindle books fall into the $1.99 to $3.99 range. This means that whatever you put out there cannot be allowed to chew up too much of your time — especially when aiming for scalability.

• Efficiency: Aside from creating the actual work (even for a low-ticket price, I prefer to keep the work I use as original as possible), you must also factor in cover design, comment solicitation, Amazon approval time, and Fiverr gig deadlines (some people will take a few days to complete a job).

• Cost: Once again, since your profit margins are likely to be low (just keeping a realistic perspective), you want to limit the initial cost as much as possible in the beginning.

Setting Things Into Motion

Let’s tackle the events of this venture by criteria…

Criteria #1 and #2: Time/Efficiency

For the time invested in the project, I took one of my existing in-house products and boiled it down to an adolescent’s comprehension and interest level (which was surprisingly more challenging than I thought it would be).

This took me a total of two days work.

While I plugged away on the revisions, I had someone on Fiverr designing a book cover, which was ready for me by the time the book was done.
Once the book was complete, I hired another worker on Fiverr to convert the book from MS Word to the standard Kindle format. It took him a day and a half to get that done (which is very good work rate for such a gig).

Once I received the files, I logged into the Kindle Publishing site and uploaded all the materials.

Amazon approved it quickly and the book was live for sale twelve hours after I had submitted it for review.

Total time investment and production efficiency: 4 days before going live for sale

Criteria #3: Cost

Now, for a look at the overall costs. My costs were quite minimal, but I could have done better. So let’s tackle them piece by piece:

     $10 – Converting a 70-page document into Kindle standard format. (This
     price will vary according to who you find on Fiverr.)
     $5 – Producing a book cover.
     $5 – Populating a Twitter page
     $5 – Populating a Facebook page
     $15 – Soliciting reviews of the Kindle book
     $10 – Domain name registry
     $7.50 – Giveaway to Twitter users

     Total costs incurred: $57.50

     Total profits to date: $12.75 (over two and a half weeks)

Things I Would Have Done Differently

Looking back on it I believe I had put too much stock in the customer value of Bieber’s fan base. The use of the Twitter and Facebook pages has proven largely arbitrary. So far as I’ve observed they’ve generated no more than two or three sales.

The website I set up for the book isn’t pulling in much organic traffic, so I see it as a waste of time.

Given that this Bieber book is a one-off project and not one I’d seek to continue promoting over the long-haul, creating Twitter and Facebook accounts proved a waste of time and money.

However, if you’re promoting a book that centers around your main business or your brand as an author, I strongly recommend you use these promotional vehicles to perpetuate your brand. But for one-off auto-pilot projects, they’re not worth the time.

By skipping the domain name, plus the creation of Facebook and Twitter accounts, you’d subtract $20 from costs.

A second look at production costs would show that if you skip the solicitation of initial reviews for your book, and you already have a website related to the book (or don’t want one), you could get started for as little as $15 to $20 per book.

Other Recommendations

My initial plan out of the gate was to sell the book at 99 cents to pick up some velocity. If you were to look in on the book now, you’d find it priced at $3.99.

Turns out that I’m not alone — a few authors do this. But from all the seasoned Kindle publishers I’ve spoken with, sticking with the 99 cent price tag is not a great idea, as it fosters a low-perceived value.

On the durability front, it’s still a little early to determine just how things will play out in the long run for the Justin Bieber book. However, if the New Kids On The Block and The Backstreet Boys serve as any sort of a measuring stick, it isn’t the most evergreen product out there.

From what I’ve studied, the books that really make for great automated income streams include anything belonging to the evergreen topics such as health, wealth, education, relationships as well as popular hobbies (gardening, sewing).

So if you’re looking for long-term automated profits, stick to the popular subjects and try to keep away from PLR — though if you want to use one or three PLR articles as additional chapters, there’s nothing wrong with that, either.

Results So Far

So now let’s take a look at the profits of the Bieber book to date for a quick (but not necessarily accurate) view of what could be possible.

Looking at Kindle Publishing from a long-term perspective, if you can assemble a product within to two to four days each month, and keep the costs at or around $25 a month, your total investment would come out to about $300 a year.

If we take a look at the low-end of the revenue stream (like my $12.75 to date for the Bieber book over a two and a half week period) per book, your overall closing revenue for 12 books per month, would amount to somewhere in the vicinity of $1836.

I’ve seen all kinds of different revenues for Kindle publishers, so how about we go with a figure of $53 per month, per book (which quite a few authors achieve), your closing figures for a 12-month cycle would result in profits of $7632 on auto-pilot.

Of course, these are low-ball conservative numbers, but I think they help give you a realistic idea of where you’ll start and what you can set as a goal.

Wishing you luck,

John BreeseSimilar Posts:

• Some Interesting Numbers
• An Easy Way to Read More Ebooks
• All the Best Time Management Tips in One Place?
• A Tipping Point in Books
• How to Commit Social Media Suicide

Today, Netflix announced that DVDs and streaming videos will stay under one brand: Netflix.

There will be no Qwikster.

Customers spoke. Netflix listened.

Good for them.

Here’s the email they sent:

I think Netflix made the right decision.

Do you?

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. In case you missed it, here’s the first post I wrote covering this issue: How Netflix Could Have Made Bad News BetterSimilar Posts:

• How Netflix Could Have Made Bad News Better
• Preemptive Apology: How Netflix Earns My Respect, and My Business
• Has Netflix Gotten Bored of Its Own Advertising?
• Should a Direct Marketing Magazine Have Boring Headlines?
• Quantum Improvements

In July 2011, Netflix stepped into a hornet’s nest when they sent out a short matter-of-fact email announcing the equivalent of a 60% price increase with almost zero explanation.

Netflix Price Increase Email

In case it is difficult to read the image, here is the text from the email I received on July 12, 2011:

Dear Ryan,

We are separating unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited streaming into two separate plans to better reflect the costs of each. Now our members have a choice: a streaming only plan, a DVD only plan, or both.

Your current $9.99 a month membership for unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs will be split into 2 distinct plans:

     Plan 1: Unlimited Streaming (no DVDs) for $7.99 a month
     Plan 2: Unlimited DVDs, 1 out at-a-time (no streaming) for $7.99 a month

Your price for getting both of these plans will be $15.98 a month ($7.99 + $7.99). You don’t need to do anything to continue your memberships for both unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs.

These prices will start for charges on or after September 1, 2011.

You can easily change or cancel your unlimited streaming plan, unlimited DVD plan, or both, by going to the Plan Change page in Your Account.

We realize you have many choices for home entertainment, and we thank you for your business. As always, if you have questions, please feel free to call us at 1-888-357-1516.

–The Netflix Team

“Okay, But WHY?”

Even the most inexperienced direct marketer knows that you must always give a reason why, especially when you’re raising prices and especially when you’re raising prices in a consumer market.

And yet Netflix overlooked this critical detail.

As you can imagine, the backlash has been vociferous.

Tens of thousands of angry Netflix subscribers published their reactions on their blogs and Facebook pages. More than 12,000 people left comments on the Netflix blog alone.

Obviously, the price increase was not well-received. In the two months following the price increase, Netflix lost a million subscribers.

After 69 days of hemorrhaging customers, Netflix finally issued a public apology on September 19, 2011. But it wasn’t much of an apology. Rather, it was another major announcement posing as an apology.

Major Announcement Disguised as an Apology

“I messed up. I owe you an explanation,” began CEO Reed Hastings’ email.

Yet the apology came across as a cover for more bad news.

Netflix would be separating its DVD and streaming services into two completely different business entities. The streaming business would retain the Netflix name; the “new” DVD business would be called Qwikster.

Worse still…

Hastings’s apology for not communicating with users about the price changes has made his customers even more upset, since he isn’t apologizing for changing prices but simply for not telling users about it more clearly. That set off a lot of backlash from consumers who felt it was a disingenuous apology.

Netflix customers are now complaining that splitting the streaming and DVD businesses into separate entities will make it more inconvenient for them because…

Now You Have to Manage Two Queues Instead of One

Instead of one centralized queue for all movies you want to watch, Netflix customers will now have two separate subscriptions, billed by two separate companies, with two separate movie queues on two separate web sites. Movie ratings and reviews posted to one site won’t be posted to the other.

In other words, the creation of Qwikster alongside of Netflix creates a lot of extra work for customers who would like to continue receiving DVDs by mail plus the ability to stream movies through the Internet.

Even though the announcement is only hours old as I write this, the Netflix blog has already received more than 13,000 comments — more comments than the previous price increase announcement received in two months.

It’s no surprise, really.

First, Netflix effectively increased their prices by 60%. Then they added insult to injury by creating more work for their customers by forcing them to manage two separate movie queues on two separate web sites.

More expensive and less convenient.

Not exactly a good recipe for winning over your customers.

How Netflix Could Have Done It Better

Now, I don’t run a publicly traded company, so I realize it’s a bit presumptuous for me to give Netflix business advice. Nonetheless, I feel they could have handled the present situation much better than they have.

Here are three specific ways Netflix could have done it better:

1. Provide customers specific reasons for the price increase.
2. Keep both DVDs-by-mail and streaming video under the Netflix brand.
3. Continue offering customers a discount for subscribing to both services.

Let’s look at each of these in greater depth.

1. Provide Specific Reasons for the Price Increase

A 60% price increase is not insignificant even for a service that originally cost only $9.99 a month.

If ever there was a time to hire a professional copywriter, it was in a situation such as the current one. If I had been in charge, I would’ve written something like this…

Dear Bob,

First, thank you for being a Netflix subscriber. We’re in business to serve you in the best way we possibly can, and we thank you for your business.

Secondly, we have a very important announcement. We’ve been doing everything in our power to avoid a price increase these last few years. And yet we now find ourselves pressured into increasing our subscription fees.

With that in mind, the cost for unlimited DVDs by mail will now be $7.99 a month. And the cost for unlimited video streaming will also be $7.99 a month.

You can save $3 a month by bundling the services. The cost for both unlimited DVDs and streaming will be $12.99 a month.

We realize this is a significant price increase. Why so much? And why now? Here’s what’s been happening behind the scenes…

As you may know, the Post Office is not doing well these days. They’re losing billions every year and may soon go bankrupt. Because of this, they’ve been increasing the cost of postage. We now pay X% more to send a DVD through the mail than we did just X years ago.

After reviewing our books, we realized we have no choice but to increase the price of our plans to cover the costs of increased postage.

At the same time, we’re facing pressure from cable companies, movie studios, and other content providers. Many of our original licensing contracts have expired or will expire in the next 12 months. We are re-negotiating these contracts so that we can continue to provide you with the widest selection of streaming content possible.

Here’s the problem. Since we signed our original licensing agreements, we’ve grown a lot. Cable companies and movie studios are not willing to renew our contracts under the original terms. They want more money.

For example, we were recently negotiating with Starz. We offered them $300 million to continue licensing their content. This is ten times as much as we paid them X years ago. They still said no.

Liberty Media, a company that owns a major cable network, is trying to strong-arm us into raising prices much higher than the $7.99/mo. subscription fee we’ve settled on. It is a clear case of greed on the part of cable networks and movie studios, and we’re doing our best to keep costs as low as possible.

Clearly, streaming is the future of the movie and TV business. At the same time, the cost of licensing those movies and TV shows is going up. This is why we’ve found ourselves in the uncomfortable position of raising the price of our streaming plans at the same time we are raising the price of our DVD plans.

It is not ideal, and it’s not something we wanted to do. But circumstances have forced it upon us.

Please know this: The change in prices is going to allow us to bring you the best selection of streaming content we’ve offered to date. You won’t see our streaming movie library double overnight, but you should see hundreds of new titles starting in September and October of this year.

Again, we appreciate your business and your loyalty and will continue to fight to keep costs as low as possible while offering the biggest selection we can.

Sincerely,

Your friends at Netflix

I believe a detailed approach like the one I’ve written above could have minimized the backlash and possibly generated some good will at the same time.

2. Keep Both Services Under the Netflix Brand

Clearly, keeping both the streaming and DVD-by-mail services under the Netflix brand makes it much easier for subscribers to manage their movie queues.

It also makes Netflix a stronger brand.

While some people are predicting the end of the DVD by mail business, I predict it will stick around a lot longer than people think. That’s because I think it will take many years before any company will have the ability to stream a movie with the same resolution as a Blu-Ray disc.

I recently upgraded my Netflix plan for this very reason. I wanted to be able to get Blu-Ray discs.

Frankly, I’d rather see a good movie on Blu-Ray. Better picture, better sound. I only use Netflix streaming when I’m less concerned about sound and picture quality. So I use it primarily for TV shows (like The Office) and cartoons for my kids.

3. Continue Offering a Discount for Bundled Service

Now that Netflix is introducing Qwikster, it will be difficult for them to offer any kind of discount for subscribing to both services. But it seems like common sense to reward people who are spending more money with you.

Not only that, offering a discount for bundling both services together would have softened the impact of the price increase and given back some control to Netflix customers. I don’t think the backlash would have been quite as severe if they had continued to offer this “volume discount.”

So, What Do YOU Think?

How do you feel about Netflix right now?

Do you think they’ve handled the price increase and apology well? Or do you think they could’ve done it better?

What would you have done if you had been in their shoes?

Please leave a comment below.

-Ryan M. Healy

Selected Sources:

• The Qwikster and the Dead
• Netflix splits DVD and streaming service
• Why Netflix is splitting itself in two
• What Netflix did right, and what it did wrong
• Did Starz Turn Down $300 Million a Year From Netflix to Make the Cable Guys Happy?

Similar Posts:

• Netflix Kills Qwikster
• Preemptive Apology: How Netflix Earns My Respect, and My Business
• 31 Ways to Grow a Business
• Basics of Business Growth
• Form(at) Determines Value

Boiler room scams are on the rise, so I feel it’s important for you to know how this type of scam works.

• Step 1: You buy an inexpensive product or accept a “Free plus Shipping” offer from an infomercial or similar marketing medium.

• Step 2: Get a call from a boiler room where you are pitched an expensive coaching or mentoring program.

Now comes a decision point. Do you buy what was offered in Step 2 or not? If you don’t, there is no Step 3. But if you do…

• Step 3: Lose a whack of money. Could be $2,000. Could be $30,000 or more.

This kind of stuff happens every day in America and in the U.K.

Right now, boiler room scams are on the rise in the U.K. The most insidious scam involves persuading retirees and middle-aged investors to buy non-existent shares that are supposedly going to significantly increase in value in the near future.

Most boiler room scams in the U.S. involve capturing a person’s credit card information and then making unauthorized charges. Usually, there is a mysterious monthly charge that is less than $100. These charges can go undetected for months. Once noticed, it is difficult if not impossible to get the charges stopped without canceling the card.

Other boiler room scams use high-pressure sales tactics to get authorization, and then charge the card one time for a large four-figure or five-figure amount.

The victims of these scams almost never get refunds. A rare few are able to get chargebacks, but are forced to waste inordinate amounts of time and energy in order to do so. The majority never go to the trouble and just take the loss.

In Britain’s latest rash of scams, the marks are asked to wire money to a bank, usually off-shore, in order to buy the non-existent shares being pitched. Of course, once money has been wired to another bank, there is no way to get the money back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.

The Telegraph reports:

DH, a Telegraph reader lost £400,000 to such a scam. He was conned by a company that appeared to be genuine – it had an FSA authorisation number and an HSBC bank account, albeit offshore. He has little hope of recovering a penny. [...] The average amount of money lost is £20,000, but the biggest individual loss to date recorded by the police is £1.2m.

The situation in the U.K. has gotten so bad that banks are now issuing letters to their customers warning them of boiler room fraudsters.

Are You on a “Sucker List”?

Boiler rooms usually work off compiled lists of people with similar demographic and psychographic traits. These lists are affectionately called “sucker lists.”

An easy way to get on a sucker list is to do what I described in Step 1 above: Buy an inexpensive product or accept a “Free plus Shipping” offer from an infomercial or similar marketing medium.

Of course, buying an inexpensive product from an infomercial is no guarantee you’ll be put on a sucker list. But it helps if that product is about a business opportunity or has something to do with making money.

This is because boiler rooms prey on vulnerable people who are desperate to make money. Greed is a common factor among those who get taken.

My Personal Experience with Boiler Rooms

I can say from personal experience that I’ve never had a good experience with a boiler room. I’ve spoken with a few, and even paid for some way-over-priced programs back in my early 20s when I was what they call a “hyper responder.”

In every case, the offer being pitched was a course, method, or opportunity for making money.

• The first time, I paid $5,000 for H. Roger Neale’s Fast Flip Real Estate Home Study Course. It was, in my opinion, nowhere near worth that much. I didn’t agree with the methods he taught, so I never used them. A complete waste of money.

• The second time, I bought into an MLM opportunity. It was an investment of about $2,000 or so. Again, I realized too late that I disagreed with the marketing tactics being employed. Fortunately, I was able to ship everything back for a partial refund. I think I lost a few hundred dollars on this deal.

• The third time, I made the biggest financial mistake of my life: I paid $30,000 for five vending machines. Although a boiler room was involved in the initial steps of the marketing funnel, the sale was commenced in a one-on-one meeting after a live presentation.

I began to wise up after this third episode.

So when I sat down to discuss buying the Denver, Colorado, territory for the Glazer-Kennedy Inner Circle business franchises that were first offered at the 2006 GKIC SuperConference in Chicago, I decided against the opportunity. (I have never regretted that decision.)

Why You’ll Give Thousands of Dollars
to Somebody You Don’t Know

Because of these experiences (and a handful of others where I said “no”), I began to catch on to how they were getting me (and many others) to part with large sums of money.

And while there are multiple persuasion tactics being used (authority, social proof, and urgency chief among them), the single biggest persuasion tactic is the use of consistency.

Humans want to be consistent — and congruent — in their behavior. Marketers know this. So the sales scripts they use rely on building small commitments in the beginning so that it’s difficult for you to say “no” in the end.

If you agree in the beginning, you can’t say “no” later without contradicting yourself and making yourself look bad.

So pride gets the best of most people and they plunk down a bunch of cash for an opportunity or coaching service that is not going to improve their life in any way.

Fraud: An Inside Look

If you have a few minutes, I highly recommend you watch this video. It covers many of the tactics boiler rooms use to manipulate their marks.

Take note of how the manipulation occurs. Jim Vitale, the former boiler room sales person in the video above, explains how it works:

• Authority – Authority is established right up front. “Hey, how are you Jim, the first thing I want to do is to grab a pen, I want you to write my name down. (Now I have control. I’m already telling you what to do).” If a person asks too many questions, the authority is reinforced later through the use of what Jim calls a “slap take-away.”

• Social Proof – Jim says that after setting an appointment to talk with a prospect, he’ll give the person references. This is the use of social proof. If other people have had success, then you are more likely conclude that you can, too. Unfortunately, many so-called “references” are being paid by the company. In other words, they are fraudulent.

• Urgency – The phrase “ground floor opportunity” has urgency built into it. If you don’t get in fast, you might get in too late. Urgency is also built into the take-away. It’s common to mention a limited number of areas or territories, and that other people are “waiting in line” for the opportunity to get one. This is urgency created by scarcity.

It’s not that authority or social proof or urgency are inherently bad. But they can be used to manipulate people into making irrational and harmful decisions. This is why they are tools of the trade in every boiler room’s toolbox.

How to Protect Yourself
from Boiler Room Scams

If you find yourself tempted to buy into an expensive business opportunity or coaching program, please protect yourself by keeping these tips in mind…

• Tip #1: Always do your research before making an investment. Search Bing for negative/positive reviews and see what you can dig up.

• Tip #2: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Don’t let yourself be manipulated by promises of easy wealth.

• Tip #3: If you must use a credit card to pay for the opportunity, then do not proceed. Say no and hang up.

• Tip #4: If you must take out a second mortgage to pay for the opportunity, then do not proceed. Say no and hang up.

• Tip #5: If the sales person asks for your credit card limit or how much credit you have available to use, then do not proceed. Say no and hang up.

• Tip #6: Do the math! Figure out how much you could realistically make in the next 3 months. Then cut that number in half. Then halve it again. Does your investment still make sense?

• Tip #7: Plan for the worst case scenario. If you none of the income claims are true, and you never make a penny, will you be able to recoup part of your investment? Can you resell whatever it is you’re buying? If so, what is the going rate on eBay right now?

• Tip #8: Talk to trusted friends and family members about the opportunity or coaching program you’re considering. Get their honest feedback — and take it seriously. The people who love you most are interested in protecting you from making a bad decision.

• Tip #9: Last but not least, never make a decision the same day or even the same week. Give yourself at least two weeks to consider any big investment. After you’ve “cooled off,” you’ll be more rational about the decision.

These tips, combined with the information above, should provide you with a good defense if you ever find yourself on the receiving end of a boiler room scam phone call.

Oh, and one last thing…

Do you have a story or experience about getting scammed by a boiler room? Please share by leaving a comment below.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

• 7 Traits Scam Artists Have in Common
• Workers of Iniquity in the Internet Marketing Cesspool
• A $300 Infomercial Marketing Lesson for Free!
• Creating a Common Enemy
• More Thoughts on Writing with Authority

There’s a great article in the March 2011 issue of Inc. Magazine.

It’s called “What I learned from selling shoes, computers, tennis rackets, weaponry, radar detectors, books, conferences, and software OR How I Got Good at Making Money” by Jason Fried, the founder of 37signals and creator of Basecamp.

Long title, I know. But it’s a really good article.

I recommend you get the magazine and read the entire article. It’s packed with a whole bunch of real-life marketing and business lessons. Here’s one lesson that stood out to me:

Understanding what people really want to know — and how that differs from what you want to tell them — is a fundamental tenet of sales. And you can’t get good at making money unless you get good at selling. (p. 57)

Building a successful business is a lot easier when you know how to sell. Do what you can to learn how to sell… and… the sales will follow.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

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Yesterday’s post about copywriter burn-out really struck a chord with a lot of my readers.

Even though it was a U.S. holiday, there were lots of passionate and encouraging responses. (Thank you!)

One thing Jefferson said in the comments stuck out to me. After managing product launches for clients, he concludes: “Instead of doing launches for other clients, I’m going to do them for my best client of all: Me, Myself and I.”

The reason this stuck out to me is because of something else I had highlighted in a book more than two years ago. The book is not well-known. It’s called Anybody Can Be in Advertising… It Beats Working for a Living by Stan Cotton.

It’s a pretty good book. Stan outlines 12 steps to starting your own advertising business, then includes a bunch of space ads he wrote along with his analysis of why each one worked.

But the part I want to share with you here is actually… on the acknowledgment page… before the book even begins! Stan writes:

For over thirty years, I have searched world wide for the perfect client. At long last, I have found him. T’is I. Therefore, this book is dedicated to me.

No matter if you’re Claude Hopkins or Stan Cotton, it seems every working copywriter comes to the same conclusion: Writing copy for clients is good, but writing copy for yourself is better.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

• Does the World Really Need Another Copywriting Book?
• Even Heroes Need Extra Eyeballs
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Here’s more proof that you should never build a business on top of fickle social media.

• Twitter Suspends UberMedia, Creator of TweetDeck

Twitter holds all the cards in this “negotiation.”

If you build a business on top of Twitter (or any other social media company), you’re in an extremely vulnerable position.

With a snap of their fingers, they can make your business completely obsolete, worthless.

Why take the risk?

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

• How to Commit Social Media Suicide
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Have you ever wondered how all those boiler rooms in Utah get away with so much fraudulent behavior without any apparent repercussions?

Answer: Mark Shurtleff, Utah’s Attorney General

Some of the largest call centers in Utah have given Mark sizable campaign contributions (i.e., “protection fees”) over the years.

For their contributions, they get carte blanche to defraud consumers out of millions of dollars.

To learn more about Mark Shurtleff and how he’s turned Utah into a safe haven for white collar crime, I encourage you to read this:

Mark Shurtleff: Attorney General of MLM (warning: strong language)

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

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This week, J.C. Penney was blasted for buying links to increase their search engine rankings.

The NY Times said buying links is a black hat SEO technique.

I thought that was a little strange. Paid links are hardly black hat. As Fred Black pointed out in his article about the J.C. Penney link buying scandal:

The article refers to link buying as “Black Hat”. That’s a joke. If anything, it’s little off-white or gray: nowhere, I repeat, nowhere near black. People that actually know and use black hat techniques would laugh at the whole article.

For proof of the “whiteness” of link buying, look no further than the services set up for buying links on other people’s domains. Text-link-ads.com comes to mind.

I feel bad for J.C. Penney getting so much heat from buying links. Some people seem genuinely upset that a company would dare to do such a thing.

It’s my humble opinion that ranking in the search engines is a game. The rules of the game are not always clear; they are not always applied consistently; they sometimes vary by market; and they most definitely vary from search engine to search engine.

Should we really be so surprised when a company decides to play the game to win and buys links in the process?

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

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