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All over the the world, men and women are eagerly seeking confidential introductions to other people. For friendship, companionship, special interest, and even marriage. You can help these people meet others, perhaps ease some loneliness, and possibly make some added income with a Correspondence Club. The first step is to find out what other correspondence clubs are doing. Your purpose will be to design your own format, and look for ways to improve upon what they are doing. So, check out the tabloids on sale at your supermarket and write a letter to as many of the advertising correspondence clubs as you can afford. Simply state you're thinking of joining a correspondence club, but you don't want to get "ripped off," so you would appreciate a sample copy of their latest club bulletin/newsletter and a listing of everything the club endeavors to do for its members. It isn't an absolute necessity, but it wouldn't hurt to include an SASE with your letter of inquiry. You can make the same inquiry online, looking for e-mail or majordomo groups--no stamp required. Most of the established clubs will respond quickly, because at the very least it means to them is another address they can use or maybe even sell. Don't use business letterhead paper or a business name. Just inquire as an ordinary interested person. Once you have your game plan organized (what you will offer your members, the fees you'll charge, and the related services or items you want to offer as sources of added income), prepare your own bulletin and can send it off in reply to all of your inquiries, with an invitation to pay for a membership in your club.
Do not begin advertising until you have your first club bulletin/newsletter prepared, along with your membership application. Then, just as soon as you receive each inquiry, you can send out your answer. The the faster your service, the more credibility you'll impart to your prospects. Also, always watch what the older, more established correspondence clubs are doing. You'll want to duplicate their methods, but with more flair and better service for your members. Your next move will be to begin advertising. Start small, and go slowly, so you can handle the ever-increasing number of members while still maintaining firm control over the time required to keep up with this. Your first advertisements should be in the "nickel or classifieds" newspapers in your area. An advertisement such as the following, inserted once a week for a month, shouldn't cost you more than $25 while filling your mailbox...
(Most people just use a tag-line such as Judy, Box 123, Anywhere USA). At the same time this ad is running for men to inquire about the available girls, run an ad such as the following in about five or six of the national mail order ad sheets...
Or, if you have a special interest:
Certainly you should vary the ads. Study the ads other clubs are running, and adapt what and how they're doing it to your own needs. Another important "rung up the ladder" you're going to get from these samples is a list of names and addresses of both men and women seeking correspondence. Some do include names and addresses with their bulletins, and some don't. Either way, they all sell names to each other so you can send a sprinkling of those names and addresses with your own, until you become well established and with a mailing list of your own. After about three months in business, you should be pretty well established, with a positive balance in your ledger. If you want to make a business out of this, you can increase the advertising and raise the rate for new members (don't raise the price for "charter members"--ask them for testimonials, instead). Then you can begin running advertising of your own in the "check-out counter" tabloids, and several of the monthly subscription magazines such as True Story, True Confessions, Modern Romances, etc. One way of getting started with a built-in supply of names is by contacting Metrapala - Box #4091, Sunnyside Station, Long Island City, New York 11104. They have several sources of good names of people wanting introductions to members of the opposite sex, and will gladly supply you with price lists for 25 to 500 names of lonely people in every state in the union, plus from most countries around the world. Another important organization that can be of tremendous help to you is Destiny Syndicate - P.O. Box 5637, Reno, Nevada 89513... Headed by R.J. Williams who directs the office of the World Federation of Correspondence Clubs, they can set you up with a quarterly newspaper that has built in membership forms, and advertising possibilities as well. In fact, with a Destiny Syndicate affiliation, you need do nothing more than a little bit of advertising, and then mail out club news bulletins every three months or whenever you enlist a new member. It would be well worth your effort to investigate. |
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