Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet
"A special Interview with Famous Internet Entrepreneur Corey Rudl."
Marty Foley, publisher of ProfitInfo
Email Newsletter, interviews Internet marketing guru Corey Rudl. For many
savvy online entrepreneurs, Corey needs no introduction.
[Marty]: Corey, as one who has been extremely
successful as an online marketer, please tell us how you got started using
the Internet as a marketing tool.
[Corey]: I started marketing online in the fall
of 1994. It was quite a fluke. In my course, I explain that we published
my book, "Car Secrets Revealed", and started selling it offline. The results
were pathetic. We thought we had a winning formula and it was barely breaking
even. I spent about $20,000 offline trying to promote it... and it flopped.
I took the advice of a friend that was setting up an automotive site on the
net and he helped me get a very simple web page online. I saw a few sales
trickle in and then took more interest in it, promoting the book online in
my spare time.
[Marty]: What are some of the online ventures
you are involved in?
[Corey]: I own four different businesses that
now generate over $2,600,000 in online sales every year. I have interests
in many other online projects, as I have done work for clients for a portion
of the profits I generate. I also have a clientele base that hires me for
online business advice at $320 per hour.
[Marty]: Your book "Car Secrets Revealed" has
done very well for you online. Can you give some details on it?
[Corey]: Car Secrets Revealed was my first success
on the net. Within 9 months of truly starting to promote it heavily, it became
the #1 best selling car book online (using the unique promotional techniques
I teach). It generated over $140,000 in net profit in those months. To this
day (almost 3 years later), it is still the #1 best selling car book on the
Internet.
The site is at http://www.igs.net/carsecrets/ if you want to check it out.
Everything I put on the page and everything I say is there for a reason...
We have tried many different web page designs and concepts, and this one
works the best (I explain why in my Internet Marketing course at:
http://www.marketingtips.com.
I can't explain it here, as it would fill up about 20 pages to cover just
the details on that topic alone). I give more marketing tips at my website.
[Marty]: You were recently on the Maury Povich
TV show in connection with your businesses. Can you recap for those of us
that missed it?
[Corey]: There is not much to say. Basically,
because of my exposure on the Internet and having the #1 best selling car
book online, they found me through the net and invited me to appear on the
show as their "car expert" to explain a few tips and secrets to their viewing
audience on car buying and the shams and scams with car repairs. It was a
good interview, but what a long flight back... 10 hours on a plane. Whew!
[Marty]: How long did it take your first online
venture to start making a profit?
[Corey]: The first month the sales trickled
in, so I technically made a profit within 30 days... but nothing to live
off of. Since I was one of the first group of commercial businesses online...
there was a lot of "trying everything", so it took me almost 18 months before
I started to see a full-time income. I spent literally 12-14 hours a day,
7 days a week trying different techniques, copy, and ideas online. Now that
I know most every trick and marketing tip there is, I can literally take almost any
business online and make it turn a very healthy profit in a few months.
As more and more people got online, many of the standard marketing techniques
were getting overused and becoming ineffective... so I developed "twists"
to most of them to ensure they still made a profit when everyone was using
the "regular" approaches to online marketing. The results: the techniques
I use to market online are very unique.
[Marty]: How did you learn about what it takes
to succeed?
[Corey]: At first a lot of trial and error.
I took a lot of the concepts and ideas I got from the very expensive seminars
I used to attend and material I bought (I was a Jay Abraham, Gary Halbert,
Mike Enlow and Ted Nicholas fan, and most of their seminars were $7000 and
up.) I took those ideas - and with a little ingenuity and creativity - adapted
them to the net (while in the midst of developing my own winning formulas
for online success). I came up with formulas that work like wildfire
online.
[Marty]: I recognize the names of those other
well-known direct marketers that you have learned from. It's apparent that
your formulas work. Which avenues are paying off the best for you?
[Corey]: I have never had an online business
that *has not* made a very healthy profit. As I mentioned, my four online
businesses combined now generate over $2,600,000 in sales online per year!
And the beauty of it is that I started it myself as a one-man operation.
I now have had to hire five employees to take care of the paper work and
customer service... but have you ever heard of a retail business that has
2.6 million dollars in sales with only a few employees? No! They have at
least 15-20 employees. That is the beauty of the net: you can automate everything
so your overhead is incredibly low.
[Marty]: What specific types of online tools
are you using successfully?
[Corey]: That is a very difficult question to
answer, because there is no one tool that is responsible for making me a
fortune online.
My marketing tips show you how to generate multiple small streams of income,
and then automate those streams of income so you can move to the next. Let
me explain...
I would teach you a marketing technique that will make you $1000 a month
in net profit. You then automate that so it generates that $1000 whether
you are there or not. You then move on to the next marketing technique, and
it makes you $1500 a month. And once that is in place (which takes you about
2-3 weeks), you automated it and move on the next week, and so on.
The concept here is that you are making small streams of income from many
different directions (all of which are automated)... but if you add up those
streams of income you are looking at $10,000 to $15,000 a month in net profit,
which is over $100,000 a year. The best part is that if one technique fails
because something on the net changes, you don't have to worry; you still
have other streams of income that are making you money every month.
[Marty]: Do you do all of your business online,
or do your online marketing efforts supplement your off-line business
efforts?
[Corey]: 100% online. I am a specialist at online sales and marketing. I have become one of the most respected online marketers on the Internet... and for good reason: I can prove my successes. If someone
asks me to help them with their magazine advertising, I simply tell them
that there are better people than me out there for offline marketing and
they should see them instead. I do what I do best... and that is online
marketing, so I concentrate *all* my efforts on that!
[Marty]: What mistakes have you made?
[Corey]: There are so many, I would fill up
your entire newsletter listing them. Let me just say that I have wasted hundreds
of thousands of dollars trying techniques that did not work (but from everyone
I learned something very important). But that is the "price of education"
as I say.
[Marty]: What major mistakes do you see other
Internet entrepreneurs make?
[Corey]: There are a lot of them and I discuss
them in great detail in the course, but I will briefly mention a few
here.
-
Having an ineffective web site that
does not turn visitors into sales. This is a very tricky thing to do (that
most people do not understand), and I devote a lot of time in my course in
how to make a web site profitable.
-
Putting all your eggs in one basket.
Trying one technique and thinking it will make you a fortune. You need to
diversify your marketing efforts into different promotions to see which ones
pull the most net profit, and then concentrate on those.
-
Having a poor "sales process" in the
marketing campaign. That is the manner in which you interest the client into
coming to your site, then lead him into a good rapport with yourself, and
then - and only then - asking for the order. Most people break the link at
some point and lose the sale. That is why most sites only see one sale out
of every 200-400 visitors (and some even worse).
[Marty]:
Are there any other tips or suggestions you would like to give others that
want to profit from the Internet?
[Corey]: Research, research, research.... Read/study
everything you can on online marketing and learn about it before you jump
in. For example, I hear stories every day about people that "heard" bulk
emailing was very profitable. They may spend $1000 on the different software,
only to find out they were doing it very ineffectively (for example,
indiscriminately spamming, rather than ethically using bulk opt-in email)
and don't make a single cent.
Then there are other stories of online success with MLM... people spend months
using the wrong techniques and end up not making a penny. The list just goes
on and on.
Make sure you understand what you are getting into with any business online
so that your first attempt will be your success!
[Marty]: I agree, Corey. Too many are trying
to "reinvent the wheel" instead of learning how others before them have achieved
success. I like how Benjamin Franklin put it, when he said: "An investment
in knowledge always pays the best interest." Thanks for letting me interview
you, Corey.
Corey Rudl gets over 2 million
visitors to his websites yearly, does 2.6 million dollars in sales online
each year (yes, that is $2,600,000), and personally makes hundreds of thousands
of dollars from his online businesses... all from his one small office. So
listen to what he has to say as he knows what he is talking about when it
comes to starting and promoting a business on the internet. Visit his site
at Internet Marketing
Center where he reveals all his unconventional tips, tricks and techniques
with examples so you can learn the most efficient and fastest ways to make
money on the internet.
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