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 $5,200,000
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 $640 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.carsecrets.com/
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).
[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
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 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 $5,200,000 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 5.2 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 techniques 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 "re-invent 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
4 million visitors to his websites yearly, does 5.2
million dollars in sales online each year (yes, that
is $5,200,000), 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.
