Corey Rudl is an Internet marketing guru who gets over four million visitors and turns over 5.2 million dollars in sales online each year (yes, that is $5,200,000)… all from his one small office. In this article, he reveals some tips, tricks and techniques to get you started making money via the Internet.
Tip 1 – You must make your order and fulfilment process completely automatic
I have developed ways for clients to find out about me, read my material, order my product (either online, in “real-time” or through a 1800 number), get their credit card approved, have the product packed/shipped and have the money directly deposited in my bank account WITHOUT ever lifting a finger. Until recently, I didn’t have any staff to run my online businesses. But because of our phenomenal growth I just hired a full-time office manager and technical support staff to take care of daily operations so I can start new projects and travel more. Let me explain.
My orders are accepted and processed online on my secure server while the customer waits. Then my software charges the credit card (and deposits the money in my bank account). A copy of the order is then automatically emailed to my fulfilment company. They ship the order the next day, and I receive a copy of the order by email for my records. For phone orders, I have a company that accepts orders 24 hours a day on a 1800 number with live operators. They process, pack and ship my orders — I send them a few thousand items every couple of months so they can stock it. I get an email every night telling me what orders came in, what was shipped and how much money was deposited to my bank account. Again, I do nothing but get a report of what was sold… everything is done automatically. I can go away on a vacation for a week or two and everything runs as if I were there doing work myself. I can’t emphasise how important this is. I just look at my accounts at the end of the week to see what total sales I brought in during the week.
Why is this so important, you say?…
You want to concentrate all of your time marketing your product, not doing paperwork, processing and shipping orders… especially when you have a successful product! With my four successful businesses online, I would have a full-time job just processing orders if I had to do them every day… there would be no time to market my product and increase my sales!
Let me repeat what happens — the orders are placed by your customers, the money is deposited in your bank and the product is packaged and shipped without you touching anything. You don’t have to answer the phone or even log onto the net every day to check your orders. Everything is done automatically.
Tip 2 – The Marketplace
This is not a fad. This is not a trend. This is the beginning of the next business revolution that will affect the way you and your family live, work and play for the rest of your lives. Current projections say there will be over 250 million Internet users in less than four years, and one billion users in less than eight. As you may already know, there are new Internet connection products now available; almost every new computer sold comes with Internet access, and there are other new products that connect every home TV to the Internet.
If you think you will put a business online, turn your computer on and become an instant millionaire, YOU ARE WRONG. Can people selling online get-rich-quick packages who claim you will make millions prove it? Do they give you any hard evidence of their success? NO!
You sometimes see some really big sites receiving 10,000 visitors a day. Then you wonder why you are only getting 100? Remember these sites have million (yes, I said million) dollar advertising budgets, a large staff, etc… Until now it has been difficult for anyone who is self-employed or has a small operation to really make it big on the Internet. I have discovered ways to make sure you are successful. I sell four products online; one product has had over 160,000 visitors so far this year. Another has had over 30,000 visitors… but more impressive… my “Car Secrets Revealed” site gets a total of 60,000 visitors PER MONTH. And these are only to mention a few of my web-based products and businesses — there are more!
I get over 4,000,000 potential customers who visit my websites every year. A little hard to believe, isn’t it! You could never do that in retail!
Consider using the Internet like looking up a particular type of business in the Yellow Pages for a major metropolis. Now picture how thick that book would be if it included every business in the world! Can you see how easy it is to get lost in the crowd? It’s essential that you stand above the rest and people have interest in your product and company first. And I have proven that any “small guy” can do it. Just look at the number of visitors I get every year to my sites! All it requires is some innovative and intelligent Internet marketing techniques.
As much as some won’t like to admit it, a business lives or dies on its marketing; on getting the word out. If the business doesn’t have the budget, every marketing dollar must do the work of two (if not five, or even 10). You must use innovative and conventional techniques to market your product to be successful.
Tip 3 – Costs of promoting your business on the Internet
Running an Internet business (and Internet marketing) is fantastic if you do it right. Do you have any idea what kind of dollars it takes to advertise in a print magazine? For example… let’s look at the Canadian magazine Car and Driver.
It costs $34,152 for a one page ad in the magazine… PER MONTH! You have to sell a lot of product to make up that kind of advertising cost. And that’s not to mention that you have to get that ad to the magazine at least a month before the publication date, and you don’t even see your results until 30 days after the magazine is published. That’s two months without any income (and a $34,152 expenditure).
On the net you can test what works in a matter of days… and all for peanuts. Where else can you place an ad and have orders rolling in (or not) 24 hours later?
How much will you need to start your Internet marketing campaign? The truth is that you can start it for under $50, but this means you will be doing everything yourself, so this will be a very slow process. For under $300 you can be up and running with a fantastic site and online advertising campaign in two weeks (this includes email promotions, websites, co-op linking, newsgroups, BBSs, autoresponder campaigns, library and article campaigns, etc.). You can do it in a week, but that’s really pushing it. To get a truly incredible online marketing campaign started, there is no reason to spend thousands of dollars (like many people do). I can show you ways to have no inventory, no capital investment and almost no expense… with lots of cash flow. You can literally get thousands of leads and hundreds of sales within a few weeks! Quick, easy and ridiculously cheap.
In many cases you can take a product that failed in direct marketing, magazine advertising, newspaper advertising or even retail sales and make it a great success on the Internet. Take my Car Secrets Revealed book. We placed ads in Sport Compact Car, National Auto Traders, etc. and the book just broke even. Now on the net, it is the #1 best-selling car book with over 10,000 sold in less than 12 months and over $140,000 IN NET PROFIT (not ’gross sales’, but ’net profit’… money that you actually put in your pocket and take home). That is not to mention the tens of thousands of dollars made from backend products we sold buyers later.
There are 12 other similar books being sold online at half the price that I sell mine for, but they have sold less than a handful of them. Let me ask you, why do I sell thousands of books more than they do at DOUBLE their price?… Intelligent Internet Marketing is the key!
For every $100 you spend on your online marketing, I can show you how to get $1000 in net profit.
If the marketing effort fails the first time around, most small business owners without a big marketing budget cannot afford a second effort. For example, usually someone will say “Yeah, I tried the newsgroups and it did nothing for me.” Learn the proven ways of marketing online so you are guaranteed to make money the first time out.
I know all the insider marketing techniques: how to place ads so people will read your pitch and buy.
Collectively, between all my online businesses over 520,000 people (no, that is not a typo) visit my websites every month to buy my products — you can do it too! Anyone can duplicate my results if they use the right “clever” techniques! If you really look at the Internet profile, it is an almost “perfect” market. Most of the users are educated, can afford a computer (proving they have disposable income and money to buy what you’re selling). Almost all of them have credit cards (most pay for their Internet access this way) and because they are “netters”, most of them are impatient and impulsive buyers.
Tip 4 – Make it easy for customers to pay
If you don’t accept credit cards or don’t have merchant accounts, forget it!
You MUST be able to accept credit cards online if you plan to do business on the net. If you can’t, you will lose over 60% of your business. Customers on the net are impulsive and want everything NOW. If they have to get off the net to call you (most families only have one phone line in their house), or if they have to write a cheque, fill out an order form, address an envelope, put it in the mail, etc… you can forget about doing any kind of volume. You have to make it easy for them to order! Would you believe that currently 97.4% of the orders for my products are placed with credit cards? Credit cards will also give you a measure of credibility because yours will not seem like a basement operation.
