World s Greatest Copywriter Letter

Ihe left side of the report told
the origin and meaning of a person's family name and the right side had a drawing
of the earliest known coat-of-arms that was recorded with that name. MORE IHAN 7,000,000 REPLES! It was a fascinating little product and the sales letter I wrote about it
became the most widely mailed sales letter in history. Before it was all over,
more than 140 million of those letters had been mailed (all first class) and they
pulled in 7,300,000 cash-with-order customers. This letter was truly a classic. It pulled so well that we often received more than 20,000 checks in a single day
and it took as many as 30 full time employees just to make the bank deposit! But that was just the beginning. As soon as someone ordered a research
we sent them another letter along with a color photograph that showed them
a walnut wall plaque upon which their coat-of-arms had been hand-painted in full
This letter was modified somewnet over the years as we developed different
products and more efficient ways of doing business, but the basic sales message it
contained remained the same and together,
these two letters I have just described
generated more than $58,900,000.00 in sales:
I was hooked. You know, when you are just starting out and each of your first two sales
letters generates something like 29 million dollars apiece it does something to
your mina. It gives you a rush that is absolutely incomparable. You can't get it
from alcohol, drugs, sex or anything else whatsoever.

It is a unique high and it
makes your greed glands immediately fire up to full secretion! Anyway, after that euphoric experience with direct mail, I couldn't wait to
try my hand at space ads in newspapers and magazines. My first effort was for a
$3.00 book on how to get government benefits and the headline was:
HOW TO GET
WHAT IHE U.S. GOVERNMENT
OWES YOU! I loved that one. It was such a honey! It ran in hundreds of newspapers
all over the country and it sold 1-1/2 million books and generated revenues of
$4,500,000.00-
My next newspaper ad was for another $3.00 book that told the reader how to
maximize his or her social security benefits. I sold about two million copies of
(go to Page 3)
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this book and the gross sales created by this particular promotion were approximately $6,000,000.00. This ad also ran in newspapers all over the country and
you've probably seen it many times. The headline I used in the ad was also the
title of the book. It was:
HOM TO COLLECT
FROM SOCIAL SECURITY
AT ANY AGE! Let's see. If my arithmetic is correct, I've just told you about four
promotions that have brought in roughly $79,400,000.00 and I'm just getting
tarted! After the success of those first two books, I really got the hang of i
and starter selling books by mail with a vengeance.

lere are some of the head-
lines I used: HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITH YOUR CREDIT CARDS (for a book titled "How to
Tum Plastic into Gold"); HOW TO KEEP YOUR MONEY FROM BEING MURDERDI (for a book
titled "How to Rob a Bank Without a Gun"); THE WORLD WOULD BE A BETTER PLACE
WITHOUT FAT PEOPLE - HERE'S HOW YOU CAN HELP GET RID OF THEM (for a book on
reducing); HOW TO INCREASE THE FREQUENCY AND QUALITY OF YOUR ORGASMS (for a book
on high-tech sex); and so on. There were others but, truthfully, I don't remember them all. I don't
remember the sales figures either because, by that time,
I had stopped counting. Life was good back then. I had all the badges of success. A showplace
luxury cars,
a huge bank account,
recognition of my peers, a boat, a condo
in Florida and whatever else I wanted that money could buy. I also had an ego as big as the national debt. It was at this point in my career that I began to think of myself as
someone really special. I considered myself the best advertising man who had ever
lived (except for Claude Hopkins) and, naturally, I wrote an ad about myself so
the rest of the world would be sure to be aware of my wonderfulness.

in Advertising Age, Madison Avenue and The Reporter of Direct Marketing and it had
a modest headline that went like this:
HOW TO WRITE COPY THAT
WILL MAKE YOU RICH
- A challenge fran the best
advertising writer alive today -
This ad did not seek sales, it sought other advertising people who would
write ads for me and add to my ever-growing bank account. I received a lot of
Copywriters from more than 1,700 ad agencies responded to that ad and
many of then sent me mail order ads that I tested in various publications. None of those ads worked. Not to worry. My own ads were still working and pulling in money like
there was no tomorrow. In fact, sometimes, some of my ads or letters would pull
in as much as $60,000.00 in a single day. Take that one about the book on social
fot to worry. My own ads were still working and pulling in money lik
In fact, sometimes, some of my ads or letters would pul
senarine that is distributed in Sunday noses
One of the publications I ran was Parade which is a
The cost of that particular ad
was $33,214.00 and the sales generated were $228,492.00. air that's just one ad in one publication! (go to Page 4)
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But it wasn't enough. As I said earlier, I had a giant ego and it needed a
lot of care and feeding. All my life I had been poor and now that I was raking in
the money, I wanted everybody to know about it.

One of the dumb things I used to
lo back then was waltz into our little local bank with a duffle bag full of checks
and money orders and rather unceremoniously dumo them onto
ver seen twenty or thirty thousand checks and money orders
It makes a hell of
a impression on you and I milked it for all it was wortt
I wanted attention and I got it. It came in the form of two men wearing
ski masks and armed with U.S. Army.45 handguns. It was a Friday evening during
the first week of July, 1973. what happened is that I was unloading groceries
from the trunk of my car when I was approached by the aforementioned two men who
had been hiding in the woods adjacent to my property. One of them flashed his gun
at me (God, it was big!) and told me to be quiet while the other one went on into
the house to capture and tie up my wife. A Very Bad Scene! At first, these guys were very courteous. The one outside with me asked me
to remove my glasses and told me
to put them on top of the air conditioner. way, he explained,
I'd know where they were when ali this was over. After that,
marched me inside to the master bedroom where his partner had my wife blind-
gagged, and tied up on the bed. Then, these guys did the same thing to me
they added an extra touch. The extra touch was they stuffed me inside a canvas bag. It was a memorable experience.