Oprah Winfrey's impact on your finances won't end with her show.
During its 25 years on the air, "The Oprah Winfrey Show" held enormous sway over how its audience chose to spend and save.
Most notably, the show regularly counseled viewers on their household finances. But the program also influenced decisions in more indirect ways.
When Winfrey featured a charity on her show, for example, viewers reached for their wallets. On the spending front, her stamp of approval could turn a little-known product into an instant craze. Her power over book sales is legendary.
"Nobody else has that kind of influence," says Susan Harrow, a media coach and author of a guide on how to land an appearance on the "Oprah" show. A mere mention could turn a small-business owner into a millionaire overnight, Harrow notes.
That impact won't stop today when the final episode airs. Winfrey will continue connecting with audiences through her 5-month-old cable channel, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network.
Here are four ways Winfrey and her show affected finances — and will continue to do so:
•Money matters: Regular viewers tuned in for guidance on the major issues they struggle with day to day, says Suze Orman, the financial guru whose fame can be traced to the show.
"They are watching 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' not to be entertained, but to be transformed," she says.
Orman's own success speaks to Oprah's influence on household finances. Before her first appearance on the show, Orman's book "The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom" sold about 300,000 copies. It sold an additional 3 million after the episode aired.
•Charitable giving: Helping others was a recurring theme on the "Oprah" show.
Winfrey's public charity, Oprah's Angel Network, evolved from a 1997 episode in which she called on viewers to use their lives to give back. The charity went on to raise in excess of $80 million. The "Oprah" show also helped launch numerous projects.
•Spending decisions: When Winfrey crows over a product, her audience takes note. That's obvious in the boost in sales businesses enjoy after receiving a favorable mention.
Spanx is one of the better-known examples. The body-slimming undergarments became a household name after they were featured in 2000. The company, which operated out of the owner's apartment at the time, sold more than 50,000 products in three months after the episode aired.
More recently, Winfrey last year counted a small pie shop in Cape Cod, Mass., as among her "favorite things." The Centerville Pie Company, which was founded in just 2009, now ships thousands of pies a month around the country.
•Book sales: Since the debut of Oprah's Book Club in 1996, Winfrey has become a reliable hitmaker in publishing.
Nielsen BookScan said last week that Winfrey's choice of Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth" in 2008 topped the list of biggest sellers among her book club selections in the past decade, with around 3.4 million copies.
The Associated Press
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