If you sell an information product that is basically paper and ink, and are giving out free chapters or free issues (if it's a newsletter) in order to get people to buy, then please read this article very carefully.

Listen to this:

If you're like me, and on a lot of different mailing lists getting a lot of direct mail offers for books and subscriptions, then you have probably been sent free "samples."

By free samples I mean, they sent you a free issue of their publication or a free chapter of their book.

I see this at least once per week and it's extremely rare when I see it happen from the same company twice. Because it usually doesn't work.

There are exceptions, obviously. But in general, free samples like this work against you. They cheapen the value of what you're offering and people don't think of it as something they should pay for.

On the other hand, the savvy direct mailers (and this also applies online, in case you sell via the Internet) do things a little bit differently.

They "sample" -- but not in the same way.

You see, what they do is something called "demonstration." Which means exactly what it says: They demonstrate what they're selling right in the ad.

Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about from a real ad I just got in the mail the other day.

It's a magalogue selling the world-famous newsletter "Health And Healing", and on page four of the ad, they demonstrate the knowledge of the author(s) and show you a real "secret" you can actually use if you ever happen to have gangrene (not a pleasant condition to have).

And by showing you this special cure (as well as other cures peppered throughout the rest of the ad), they tell you exactly the kind of information you can expect if you buy their newsletter. It's shows they're real and they know what they're talking about.

This is a classic magalogue "secret" that's been used for years, and yet so few copywriters use it.

And you know what?

If you test using an ad with good demonstration like this, versus just giving away a free sample, nine times out of ten the demonstration ad will blow the free sample campaign away.

Ben Settle is an expert copywriter and direct marketer. If you liked this article then check out Ben's website at http://bensettle.com -- and get your hands on over 500 pages of advertising ideas, strategies and tactics just like this one -- as well as rare swipe file ads and hot marketing information not easily found anywhere else.