Thursday, [12:31] AM

FROM: Deep in the jungle in an undisclosed location in South America

Dear Friend,

I only brought two books with me to read during my travels over the next few weeks.

One of them is Direct Marketing Quantified by Gary Hennerburg.

Best $195 I ever spent.

Well, except for that time at The Del Rey Bar & Hotel in Costa Rica… but I don’t talk about those days any more.

Anyhoo, this Hennerberg guy makes most of us look like pikers. He knows direct marketing like nobody’s business.

If I would have known this stuff when I was first starting… well, I probably wouldn’t be writing this now. I’d OWN my own island paradise… and I’d be lying on the beach all day drinking Coronas and lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills.

If you want to make serious money in direct response, knowing and using the stuff in Hennerberg’s book is crucial.

As I’ve been reading this book, I’ve been reminded of a whole bunch of stupid mistakes I made as a rookie. One in particular probably cost me that private island paradise I SHOULD own right now.

Back in the mid 90’s I wrote a supplement ad that was kicking total booty in the muscle-head market. I was getting an ROI of 3 to 5 times ad costs in every magazine I ran it in.

I was such a wet behind the ears rookie back then I thought getting 3 to 5 times ROI on ad cost was a GOOD thing. Little did I know how much future money I was cheating myself out of. (More about THAT in a minute.)

Since I was so successful with this ad in the muscle-head market, I decided to try my hand in a bigger market. I wrote 1/4 page and 1/2 page newspaper ads positioning this supplement as an anti-aging/fat loss product.

I bought remnant space in about six newspapers and ran a test. When it was all said and done, two of the newspapers went a little negative (they didn’t sell enough to make back 100% of my my ad costs) and four broke even.

Compared to the 3 to 5 times ROI I was getting on every insertion in all the bodybuilding mags, I thought my anti-aging newspaper ads sucked. After all… I didn’t make any money.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Now (too late, unfortunately) I know I had a tiger by the tail. I had created…

A money machine that could have
made me a multi-millionaire!

And I was too stupid to realize it.

What was my mistake?

Not understanding the front end is NOT where you make your money. The BIG money in this business is in…

The back end!

I had created newspaper ads that could have been rolled out to hundreds of newspapers…

…with a combined circulation of TENS of MILLIONS…

…that could have brought in hundreds of thousands… or MILLIONS of customers…

At ZERO cost!

Then I could have sold them an endless string of health/anti-aging products ad infinitum… month after month… making myself filthy stinkin’ honkin’ rich in the process.

Damn! Just thinking it about it makes me want to go lick one of those South American frogs.

Oh well… at least I’ve learned my lesson. And from what I’ve observed, that makes me a very rare dude amongst most marketers.

Seriously. Almost NOBODY understands how to properly work their back end. Even many of the big players are letting a small fortune slip through their fingers month after month.

But the WORST offenders are the “kitchen table” entrepreneurs. Most of ’em have no clue about the back end. All they ever do is chase after more and more new customers… letting them come in through their revolving front door… and watching them go out almost as quickly as they came in.

Sad really.

That’s why the October and November issues of The Doberman Dan Letter are all about how to make a lot of money by properly working your back end.

AND… how to keep your customers for as long as possible with my uber-effective “stick” secrets.

If you have any kind of continuity or auto-ship programs, you’ll probably DOUBLE your retention with these little gems. They helped me take a floundering supplement auto-ship program from a pathetic 1 month (or less) average stick rate… to 3.5 to 4 months.

And that made a HUGE difference in my bottom line.

You see, doubling stick rates doesn’t just double your net…

It causes EXPONENTIAL
increases in profits!

Don’t make the same rookie mistake as me.

Get rid of your “revolving door” business and figure out how to work your back end properly and KEEP those new customers.

You’ll be a lot happier (and richer) for it.

All the best,