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).
[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, 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 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.
1.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.
2.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.
3.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.
