I just heard from a very excited client the other day.

He called to tell me the newspaper ad I wrote for his supplement is pulling a 3.0 MER (media efficiency ratio.)

If you’ve never run newspaper ads, I guess I should explain that MER is your return on ad spend.

That means on a $5,000 test you get back $15,000 in sales.

Or a $50,000 ad spend brings back $150,000.

Or, like another client of mine, a $100,000 ad spend brings back $300,000.

In a matter of 5 days or less.

Here’s what’s even MORE exciting.

This client ran his ad the middle of December. When response is suppressed due to the holiday season.

And he STILL got a 3.0 MER.

That means now that the holidays are over, his MER will probably go even higher.

And THAT means even though he just launched, he’ll probably have a business grossing 7-figures a month… in the next 11 months or less.

If he listens to me.

Ya know what that means for ole’ Doberman Dan?

My already ridiculous copywriting fees just went WAYYYYY up.

In fact, other than the handful of clients I’m working with at this very moment… unless you cross my palm with at LEAST $100,000 (preferably in gold coins)… you can’t hire me.

And even then the answer will probably be no. Unless you’re also willing to give me an equity deal.

Ain’t I an arrogant bastard?

Well then, let me balance out all this self-aggrandizing.

This success is after 21 years of writing direct response copy. And… until fairly recently… having 8 out of every 10 things I tried fail.

So cut a dude some slack and let me enjoy this, OK?

Nowadays my batting average is better.

But even when it wasn’t, I just kept getting up to bat.

No matter how many times I struck out.

Heck, 9 years before discovering direct response marketing in 1995, I failed at every business I started.

Nine straight years of serial entrepreneurial failure.

About 3 failed businesses a year. For 9 years.

27 failed businesses.

I was left broke, in debt and humiliated.

But I’m such a dumb ass I kept getting back up to bat.

I just didn’t have enough sense to quit. (Any intelligent person would have quit after those initial 3 business failures that first year.)

But not dumb ass me.

I just kept stepping up to the plate.

Stupid enough and naïve enough to think that if I kept swingin’ at ‘em, I’d eventually get a hit.

And right after I found direct response marketing and started a mail order business, that’s what happened.

I got a hit.

And it got me free of a job that was killing me. (Literally.)

And the next time up to bat I got a home run.

One that COULD have bought me my own private island if I hadn’t screwed it up. (But that’s a story for another time.)

So THAT’S the secret to my recent 3.0 MER newspaper ad.

Thirty years of getting up to bat, time after time. In spite of the ENORMOUS amount of strikeouts in the process.

All the best,
Doberman Dan

P.S. Man… I shoulda just bragged about my kick ass ad and left it at that.

Telling the truth about my success kinda takes away all my magic, doesn’t it?

Maybe I should just do like all the “gurus.” Brag about my successes without ever mentioning my failures.

It would make me look like a marketing genius, wouldn’t it?

But how would it make YOU feel?

And how would it help YOU?

This is the kind of brutal honesty I share with my knights in the Marketing Camelot.

If you want to learn the REAL secrets to success in online marketing I invite you to click here to join me in the Marketing Camelot.

Pax vobiscum.