“Maybe, I’ll have to commit some new federal crime every couple of years in order to get my books done!”
– Gary Halbert
Last week the transmission went out on my car. I ended up getting stuck at my house for almost a full week. It was like being in jail. Until Saturday afternoon I didn’t leave my house. It sucked and made me incredibly depressed.
Not being able to go to the gym wrecked my mind worse than anything else I’ve ever experienced. I decided to take the entire year off of doing drugs and it’s been easier for me to handle. Not lifting made me feel fat and want to kill myself.
After sitting around and being depressed for a few days I decided to take action. I looked around and found a book about someone in a situation similar to mine.
The Boron Letters is an interesting collection of essays written by the infamous Gary C. Halbert. For the uninitiated, Halbert was basically the grandfather of selling shady products. He was an Internet marketing guru before the Internet.
Unsurprisingly these tactics landed Halbert is prison for fraud. While there he wrote the The Boron Letters. While Halbert’s normal writing was usually incredibly polished, these works are rough and raw. They reminded me of old Paladin Press books like the Poor Man’s Ray Gun. While it isn’t well written, and there are a lot of typos, the book is still interesting enough to be worth a read. This is one of those reads where a million dollars worth of information has been tucked away into a twenty-dollar paperback. Halbert’s notes from jail are a hundred times more interesting and informative than most of the business books that are currently on the market.
In fact, this book has already paid for itself. While reading it I got so motivated that I actually managed to close a deal earning me an extra $250 every single month. That’s an additional $3,000 this year.
What made The Boron Letters great was the fact that it doesn’t hold any punches. The whole book is filled with actual practical information. Halbert gives clear guidelines as to what you need to do in order to make money:
“When a person first looks at something you have written it should be something that looks inviting to read. Easy-to-read. When he looks at your page of copy he should be drawn to your copy like a convict is to a Penthouse Magazine.Your page of copy (be it letter or space ad) should be laid out in such a manner as to be an attractive “eye treat” for the reader.
This means wide margins, a certain amount of white space, double spacing between paragraphs, short words, short sentences, short paragraphs and an attractive, inviting layout.”
If you want a book that actually teaches you how to make money, check out The Boron Letters. It’s a meaty read that’s packed with all kinds of quality information.