Several years ago, I gave a speech to about 300 businesswomen, “How to Manage Your Time for Success”. After the talk, I handed out a simple handout of tips and exercises.
Afterward, two women came up to me and asked if they could “use” my handout packet. They were the Circulation Managers for Working Woman magazine, (readership of about one million). They wanted to use the booklet as a “premium” – a free gift for new subscribers.
I was delighted but said that since this was my copyrighted material I couldn’t allow them to reproduce the booklets; instead, I would sell them the booklets they wanted. After some negotiating, they ordered 100,000 copies of a 12-page booklet, which I wrote, designed and had printed.
The profit margins weren’t very big, but now I had a unique product. Part of our agreement was that they would have the exclusive use of the booklet for the life of the promotion and only in the “women’s success magazine” category. I began thinking about other publishers who might want to use this as a premium to boost their circulation. I had one success story to help me sell the concept.
Subsequently, I sold the idea (and several thousand copies of the booklet) to McGraw-Hill Magazines, Inc. Magazine, AdWeek and a few other business magazines. These orders were not as large as the first one, but I was learning a lot about how magazine circulation worked.
But the bigger idea came when I thought of Time Magazine. I found the right person to approach. After many meetings with him and his team, they ordered 350,000 of a full color 3-booklet set, which I designed and wrote.
It took a full semi truck to deliver these to Time’s fulfillment center in Tampa. After several weeks, I got a call from Time. The booklets were so successful, they wanted to purchase another 100,000 sets.
This was not an easy “slam-dunk” process, nor did it reap me a fortune. To sell this amount of print to one of the largest publishers in the world, I had to accept a very small profit margin.
I had to hire a production manager to supervise the printing, borrow money to pay the printer in advance, and lots of micro-management of the process. For the second round, though, I ordered an extra 20,000 sets for myself, and over the years I have nearly sold all of them.
It was a win-win-win: I got to express my ideas to a huge audience, Time got a winning offer to get new subscribers, and I established my credentials as a “premium” creator. This launched a lucrative division of my company, creating and producing premium products for most of the major magazine publishers in the industry.
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