2005 - 09-15-05

Third, the person needs to be savvy. He or
she needs to know the things you must avoid doing to incur
the wrath of alphabet agencies, an unnecessarily high refund
rate, and the toxic venom of people in general towards
financially successful people.

Fourth, the person must have
one or more extremely solid merchant accounts to process credit card orders. It's been my experience most people who have an existing merchant account have no
idea whatsoever how fast it is likely to
disappear once they become involved in a direct marketing
endeavor.

Fifth, the person must have a lot of money. If you really want to go balls-to-the-wall
as far as making money is concerned, you must hook up with
somebody who is financially solid enough to exploit your
marketing endeavors with the speed of light... and... do so without financial fear.

Sixth, the last characteristic I'm going to
talk about is, the person has to be likable. And, by
"likable" I mean compatible with you. What does it matter
how much money you make if you have to interact every day
with some anal uptight shitweasel you can barely tolerate?

There's more, but that's all I can think of
off the cuff right now. And, believe me, those
characteristics are enough to eliminate 99.999% of all
people you might want to team up with.

Okay, now let's get down to business: Over
the last few years (since I first began putting my
newsletters online) my readership has expanded in an almost
scary fashion. I'm not sure of the exact number but, I think
my newsletters are now read by English speaking people in
approximately 90 countries besides the United States. I
think it's fair to say almost every copywriter and
everybody else of significance in the direct marketing world
is reading my newsletters with insanely rapt attention. They
not only read them, they print all of them out. They bind
them in books. They send me thousands of
emails of praise. And, many of them, it seems, are hesitant
to make a marketing decision without first finding out...