When you send a mailing to your customers or prospective customers you are counting on making considerably more money in new business than you spend on mailing, right? It is obvious that if you were not going to profit from mailing, you wouldn’t send it out.

A little less obvious is that it costs almost same amount of money to send out a very attractive mailing piece with brilliant copy which is more likely to produce a great response rate as it does to send out a boring, poorly designed piece guaranteed only to land rapidly in trash. Why?

The major part of your expenditure is in mailing list and postage. The printing costs are about same for a perfect card as for a mediocre one. All right. So a good design and excellent copy is going to cost a little bit more. But only a little. You send out a postcard mailing to get a response (preferably lots of responses).

Whether you want to admit it or not, soap operas may hold key to your home business success. This article includes a few home and small business principles I learned while watching SoapNet.

Be really, really good looking. I don’t know if you’ve had this experience, but every time I turn on SoapNet I feel overweight, ugly, and hopelessly average. There is no way I could ever compete with collection of beauties, male and female, that soap operas have assembled. But before you go out and buy a Bow Flex and dye your hair blonde, remember that I’m talking about your home business in this article. Just because you are running your business out of your home on a low budget does not mean it has to look like you are running your business out of your home on a low budget. Invest a little bit of money into getting a professional logo and stationary. If you own a website and cannot afford a professional web designer, take courses at your local college. Presenting your business professionally can open up doors you may believe are closed to you.

Give them something to talk about. If soap operas do nothing else well, they create scandals that have people talking for days. It is a TV show for crying out loud! Can you imagine what kind of publicity you could bring to your business if you gave people something to talk about way soaps do? I’m not suggesting doing anything illegal or scandalous. But make sure your business does something that people would be willing to talk about. What do you differently than your competitors? How can you turn that idiosyncrasy into positive publicity? What good causes are related to your area of business? Is there some kind of event you could sponsor that would make evening news and benefit a worthy cause at same time? People like SoapNet because it is a lot more exciting than there own lives. Give people something exciting to talk about, and I guarantee they will.

Be good guy. In days of silent films, audience used to cheer when hero first appeared on screen, and they would boo and hiss each time villain showed up. Earn your clients’ and customers’ applause by being good guy. We have all had dealings with people we don’t trust or who were extremely difficult to work with. Ask yourself, Are you shifty-eyed gravedigger American housewives everywhere hate to see on television? Or are you honest, wholesome doctor moms would love to have their daughters marry? Conducting your business in a way that earns peoples’ trust will go a long way in creating word-of-mouth referrals and sincere praise for your company. Remember, like so many SoapNet actors and actresses, your business can get type-cast very easily. Make sure you are cast as a hero and you can’t go wrong.