How to Turn Big Mails Into Profit-Making Ventures

What is a Big Mail? If you are a total beginner to the mail order world, you will have no idea what the term means. Before I knew better, I used to think a Big Mail was just a big envelope containing some type of free samples. As I found out later, my interpretation was right. Unfortunately though, I paid for 100's of Big Mails and ended up instead with a bunch of junk.

In the 1950's and 1960's, small mail order businesses would keep all the junk mail that came in the door. They would then recycle it by offering it as a Big Mail to people who would send a required number of postage stamps to help with the mailing. Inside these Big Mails were publications, articles and free samples of newsletters and other small business stuff that was interesting to most people getting started.

Then, somewhere in the 1970's or so, someone got the bright idea to make money with Big Mails from both sides. First they would charge other small businesses a fee for mailing copies of their flyers in their Big Mails. These prices ranged around $12.00 for 1,000, 8½x11, pre-printed circulars. The other small business had to pay the cost of having the circulars printed as well as shipping them pre-printed to the Big Mail company to place in their mailings. They didn't save any money because a large majority of the Big Mail company's would receive the pre-printed circulars, throw them in the garbage and keep the money. There was no way to legitimately prove that the Big Mailer had actually mailed a particular circular in a group of 100's.

It didn't take long for lazy people to be attracted to the offer from the Big Mailer. They were people who didn't want to work on their marketing skills but would rather pay someone else to do the work for them. With greed playing against greed the whole concept of a Big Mail blew entirely out of proportion and today we have Junk Mail instead of Big Mail.

But you can start a trend and revert back to the old original concept of a Big Mail. Believe me if you do, you will stick out like a beam of light in a sea of darkness. You can actually develop some profit-making techniques too. Here's how . . .

Select a general theme for your Big Mails such as books, software, Internet, network marketing, publishing, printing, etc. Only allow each Big Mail to contain circulars, ads, flyers, samples and sales literature from a variety of companies that sell similar products.

A Big Mail should actually be like a mail order catalog you would get in your mail. Let's use Lillian Vernon as an example. Now Lillian handles a wide variety of different products but the general theme of the catalog is home-oriented, consumer-based products for the general public. You never see Lillian Vernon selling automobiles, computer systems or tickets to the next Bob Segar concert.

Then consider more targeted catalogs such as The Catalog of Catalogs which allow readers to choose free sample issues of various publications. This way, the creators of this concept can cover a wide range of different tastes from cooking to homebased business to children's magazines. But The Catalog of Catalogs still carries a general theme . . . and that is that all the products being offered are catalogs.

I hope I have helped to re-direct your line of thinking when offering Big Mails. Help put an end to the junk and making the USPS rich!!