Streetwise Publications Ltd and Streewise Marketing offer a vast library of specialist information products.

Formed in 1989 by John Harrison and Mike Harrison, the companies have grown over the last 16+ years and can now boast over half a million customers.

Although both firms officially started around 1989, the partners who formed the firms had tried their hand at direct mail before that.

In 1983 John Harrison graduated from university and, not being in any particular rush to get a job, spent his time playing golf. Realising that this wouldn't make him much money, he decided to try to publish a book he had written with Mike about student life called HELP (Higher Education for Lazy People).

After several rejection letters from major publishing houses, John and Mike shelved the idea. It wasn't until around 18 months later that John happened upon the idea of selling his book via direct mail. This brainwave came after he read Joe Karbo's "The Lazy Man's Way to Riches".

The duo set about their plan by getting 5,000 books published. They then looked for a magazine with a large student readership and placed a small but expensive advert and waited for the cheques to pour in.

Unfortunately, the ad pulled only 47 orders. Worse still, they had spent their entire advertising budget on one campaign and had to give up.

It was then that they went and got "real jobs".

Several years later they started Streetwise with just £500 and zero borrowed money. This business was a huge success and is currently able to turnover over £6 million per year.

Between 2000 and 2005 the firm sold over £25 million worth of information products.

Current offerings from Streetwise include:

• Newsletters: Oliver Goehler writes about eBay and Iain Maitland edits a newsletter about creating Passive Income streams. They also offer a property investment newsletter
• Home study courses: They offer courses about Internet marketing, stock market trading, will-writing, mail order, property investing and much more....
• Books: John Harrison has written 2 books which are offered to customers. One explains how he became a millionaire, the other is a collection of his humourous newsletters
• Tipster services: Streetwise offers racing tips and arbitrage betting services

It is fair to say that this company has been a massive success for its founders.

John Harrison is happy to call himself a "greed driven egomaniac". Perhaps this is just as well as he has written a best-selling book called "How to Stop Working and Earn a Million Pounds Instead".

He has amassed a fortune by selling specialist products and his books aim to show the ordinary person how to do the same.

Information about some of the products promoted by Streetwise can be found on this site via the links to the left.

Update March 2010:

The frequency of mailings from Streetwise is now starting to increase again after a noticeable lull in 2009 (recession related?).

Update October 2010:

New opportunity from Streetwise: The Complete Computer Cashpoint from James Walker and Streetwise Publications