Brad Fallon is the author of Creating Customers Out of Thin Air: Secrets of Online Marketing for Offline Businesses and the co-founder of Smart Marketing, Inc. and StomperNet, one of the world's leading subscription-based Internet marketing communities. StomperNet's launch netted over $12 million in the first 12 hours. Although he loves high-octant adventures, his favorite activity is helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses faster through the leverage of Internet marketing.
BRAD FALLON: I had just finished the book, Creating Customers Out of Thin Air, and had developed an expertise in SEO, and I said, "Why don't we sell some products online and build a little Yahoo! Store?" I think it was $50 a month and a 30-day free trial. It took about three or four months to get it on the first page of Google for the main keyword, 'wedding favors'. Now, of course, if you go to Google and type in 'wedding favors', you'll see it listed at number one.
It's usually in the number-one position and has been for years. This little Yahoo! Store that we started from our basement in the first month sold about $11,000; in the second month, about $30,000; in the third month, about $60,000. The third full month in business was over $80,000 in sales. I think it was the next month after that that we sold over $100,000 in sales a month.
The little store ended up doing over $1 million the first year. The second year we saw a need for other people who wanted to do what we did and put up their own $50 a month Yahoo! Stores and sell products. We started designing and manufacturing overseas wedding favors and started our own wholesale brand called Kate Aspen. We then became a drop-shipper for other eCommerce store owners, so they wouldn't have to buy any inventory until they had already sold it.
They wouldn't have to worry about the picking, the packing, the shipping and those kinds of things. We would send the products directly to their customers after they were sold off of other people's websites. We became a wholesaler and a drop-shipper. That grew even faster because people buy wedding favors only one time. That's pretty much it. You'll need another customer the next month.
With wholesale we had more customers we built, and regardless of how much we could sell on our own site, the rest of the world is going to be more put together. The wholesale grew even faster. The second year we did about $8 million in revenue. In the third year we did about $14 million, and I think about $18 million the year after that. We went from zero in our basement to $18 million in revenue just based on that one Yahoo! Store by understanding SEO and how to get websites up in Google.
Search Engine Optimization was what it was all about for us. We went from zero to $18 million in four years. Of course, in the meantime I had started StomperNet. We teach people all around the world how to do what we did, whether it's make money online with physical products, how to create and market information products, or how to do affiliate marketing.
TAMMY LAWMAN: Wow! That is amazing. That's all from a simple idea, and you're up to $18 million in four years?
BRAD FALLON: Yes, I think that company will do about $21 million this year. StomperNet in the last three years has done about $20 million in revenue. It's actually collected revenue itself. We've really enjoyed being one of the largest I know of teaching other people all around the world. We have customers in almost 300 countries who want to learn how to either make money online, or how to drive more customers or leads to their offline business.
For the most part, it's people who want to do Internet marketing and make money online, whether they're selling digital products like software, information products or physical products like wedding favors or gifts.
TAMMY LAWMAN: You said you did that a few years ago. Is SEO still a viable way for someone to put up a website and to bring an audience over to that website?
BRAD FALLON: Sure. In my mind, you have to separate the various business models. In a nutshell, there are only a few different ways that you can make money online. Again, you're either going to sell physical products or digital products, or have no products and just drive traffic to other people, whether it's running ads or doing pay-per-click with AdSense, or mostly doing affiliate marketing and getting paid a commission for other people's products.
Regardless of what you do, even if you have an offline business, you'll want more leads and customers. Or you may want to be a consultant and help other people who already have a business get more leads and customers. There are a few things that you need to learn, no matter what. We try to get people to focus on the core skills, particularly if they're brand new to Internet marketing, or maybe they've been around for awhile but they haven't made serious money online yet.
They need to focus on the business model. If you're thinking you want to sell digital products, what kinds? Do you want to sell information products? That's great. They have pretty high profit margins, and there are a lot of recurring continuity models where you can get paid month after month, whether it's for a membership site, a subscription newsletter, or whatever it is.
Whatever you want to sell and whatever niche you want to be in or whatever target market you want to be in for the physical or digital products, there will always be the same skills that you have to know. You have to learn something about SEO, and probably quite a bit. Fortunately, it's not hard these days. It was a lot harder back in the day when I had to do it, but now there are lots of great information products out there.
There are companies like StomperNet that will teach you everything you need to know from scratch. As a matter of fact, the best course that I know of that's ever been published or produced on how to do search engine optimization-I'm talking about the organic side and how to get websites up in the free Google listings-I think the best course that's ever been made is our Stomping the Search Engines course itself.
That was where the name 'StomperNet' came from. Back then we had a course that was a 10-CD-ROM, eight-hour recording and audio course on how to do SEOs called Stomping the Search Engines. That led to a couple boot camps and apprentice programs. When we started StomperNet it was a community of people interested in Internet marketing.
Our folks and our members affectionately self-identify as 'stompers'. We created StomperNet. Now we have a new course out that's all video tutorials. It's not just me talking about how to do SEO, but our faculty. One of the things that we're really proud of at StomperNet is that we have more than 20 world-class subject-matter experts on every aspect and facet of Internet marketing: SEO, pay-per-click, email marketing, web copywriting, testing, tracking, conversion, blogging, and social media marketing.
We have one of the bestselling courses ever on how to do social media marketing called, Stomper SMART, which is an acronym for 'social marketing traffic strategies'. We teach every aspect, and we have faculty members. All of our faculty members who are world-class experts on SEO came together in one video tutorial video series called Stomping the Search Engines 2.
We give that away in our portal for all of our StomperNet members. In the past we've used it to promote the launch of our magazine. We publish a monthly periodical called The Net Effect. That's one of the most popular magazines or trade journals on how to do Internet marketing. It has all kinds of advanced articles every month. There's a specific action guide in the back every month. It's very popular. We do lots of different things in the space.
The best course out there on SEO is the one course called Stomping the Search Engines 2. If people go through that one course, regardless of their current level of skill or knowledge about how search engine optimization works, they would pretty much know everything they need to know to do what they need to do to get any websites listed at the top of Google. It's just a matter of doing the work it takes to do it. Not having the knowledge or knowing how to do it is no longer an excuse.
TAMMY LAWMAN: Yes. You said that they can take a look at some of those videos at your website, at www.StomperNet.com.
BRAD FALLON: StomperNet has been more of a closed community for about three years. I had a 50/50 partner when I started it. I bought him out last July. As of last July I changed the business model a little bit. For the first three years that we were in business it was an $800-a-month program, which is pretty expensive, especially for beginners who want to get started.
Paying $800 every month to learn things and general information was kind of spendy. Of course, the value for that was really high. People who have been involved have never criticized StomperNet for the quality of its instruction, materials, training, live events or conferences. Lots of things are included with that, but I thought that it was a little too high to have a broad mass appeal. Last September I lowered the price.
On September 9th, we did a re-launch on 09-09-09 and let in some new members. The main thing was to lower the price from $800 a month to $197 a month. It's everything our members used to get for $800: all of our conferences, the private members' forum that's very active, and about 30 paid moderators on our forum helping to answer people's questions, along with the faculty members and peers helping each other.
We've had all kinds of video training courses and thousands of video tutorials. You'll have the ability to get whatever you need whenever you need it on virtually any topic on Internet marketing, from beginner to the most advanced stuff out there.
TAMMY LAWMAN: You guys heard it. It's a great resource for lots of goodies and tools to check out later when you have some more time. Brad, you mentioned all the different tools for Internet marketing. What is the best way for our audience to tap into making money on the web right now?
BRAD FALLON: I guess different people would probably say different things. In my opinion, it's pretty clear-cut. The problem with most people who want to make money online-and I've seen people struggle for awhile trying to do it all the time. People are engaged. They're trying hard. They're not lazy. They're willing to apply themselves. They can follow directions. They often snap up all these courses that are sold.
There is an awful lot of get-rich-quick stuff that's sold like, "Buy this magic system and you can make money online." Most of those come down to marketing systems like, "Here's a way to drive traffic," "Here's a way to build a list," or "Here's a way to get more customers to convert on your landing page." The problem with most people who are starting out and trying to make money is that they don't have a business. They have nothing.
They just have themselves and an idea like, "I have a passion for horses. Maybe I'll sell horse products." You could do that, or, "Maybe I'll sell information products about horses." Whatever it is, you can make money doing anything, but you need to have a business. In my opinion-and by the way, this is the way I started-the fastest way to get money coming in every month on a consistent basis so that you can quit your job and focus on your own business fulltime instead of someone else's, or to have more money faster to put into your business, is very simple.
That is to find somebody who already has a business. They all have the same problem. Virtually, every single business has a desperate need for more customers. That's what they all want. If you know some of these things about Internet marketing, whether it's SEO, pay-per-click, affiliate marketing, email marketing, list building, landing page design, how to get more opt-ins, and how to use sequential autoresponders to follow up with prospects and convert them into buying customers, all of those skills can be applied to your business.
However, most people who are trying to make money don't have a business yet. I wouldn't say they're putting the cart before the horse, because they do need those skills. I'm saying that the fastest, easiest way hands down, in my opinion, to get money coming in, and significant amounts of money to allow you to quit your job and make more money than you were before working for yourself, or to have significant extra money every month that you could put back into your own business, is to find somebody who already has a business that needs more customers.
They can use the Internet marketing skills and Internet marketing knowledge that you have to bring more customers to a business that already has the overhead, the infrastructure, the products or services to sell, and bookkeeping and accounting set up. They already have a business. They have money going in and money going out every month. They have cash flow.
Whether they're making a lot of money every month or losing some money every month, they still have money coming in and money going out for payroll, expenses and inventory. Your $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 or more per month to bring them more customers is just a tiny drop in the bucket for them because they already have a business that has real overhead and real operations.
For you, there's just you. You have very little overhead working from home, and that $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, or $5,000 a month just for one customer is not a drop in the bucket. That's a big deal. For example, somebody could get four customers to give them a couple grand a month. That's like nothing. It's easy to get people to pay over $10,000 a month to do aggressive search engine optimization for them. That's just one thing.
You could do that yourself with a couple of outsourced people overseas for just a few hundred dollars a month. Your overhead is very small or zero. You could actually do it yourself, although we don't normally recommend that because your time is more valuable than the actual work that has to be done for SEO. If you can get people to give you $2,000, $3,000 or $4,000 a month, even three customers at $3,000 a month is $9,000 a month coming in.
That's a $100,000-a-year income, month after month. We like to show people how to set most of these customers up on continuity. That's what I always did, so that they just pay every month and they keep paying every month; not because they're locked into a contract, but because they're desperate for more customers. You can do that for them. With just three clients you can be making $8,000, $9,000 or $10,000 a month.
TAMMY LAWMAN: Yes, it doesn't take a lot to get started.
BRAD FALLON: You don't even have to know that much about SEO. You could know a little bit about SEO and a little bit about pay-per-click and a little bit about social media marketing. Most people want to go out and do Twitter and Facebook. You could do that and you could get some followers, but how are you going to make money with that? You have to have a product.
A business already has a business, and now they can do social media. I know somebody in Atlanta who is going to be one of the speakers at our next chance to teach people how to be Internet marketing consultants and build a large income quickly. She went to one weekend seminar on social media marketing that a friend of mine did. She came back to Atlanta, Georgia where she lives.
In just 60 days, in two months, she went out and got 120 clients to give her $200 a month. That's a different model. I like people to give you $1,000, $2,000 or $3,000, a month and just get three or four customers or clients. Her model is different. She charged $175 a month, but she got 120 clients in 60 days. She does ongoing things for them, mostly maintaining their Twitter and Facebook.
The average business owner or any local business that's doing $1 million, $2 million, $3 million, $5 million, $10 million or $15 million a year, is not going to ever cancel that $175 bill. She built a $20,000 a month recurring income billed on credit cards coming in month in and month out. She built up a $20,000 a year income in 60 days.
TAMMY LAWMAN: Wow. That's great.
BRAD FALLON: That's my answer to the question, "What's the best and fastest way to make money?" The other thing you have to keep in mind is that however you want to make money online, you have to develop these skills. You have to learn how to do split-testing, and hopefully multi-variable testing. You have to learn how to write better headlines and landing pages, and know what parts of a landing page are the most important and what to test and how to test.
You have to know how to get the websites launched in the first place, how to handle all the shopping cart stuff, how to do recurring billing and bill for continuity, how to do membership sites, how to do all the SEO stuff and link building, how to get people to write articles and distribute content all over the Internet with links back to your site, and how to run effective AdWords campaigns, not to mention the other pay-per-click search engines.
You have to do all this. The bottom line is that you could either bang your head against a wall trying to figure it out by reading a bunch of free tutorials and guessing at what's important, or you can buy information products, courses, and seminars from people who have already done it and could teach you very quickly and efficiently. The point is you have to pay for all of this with either your time or your money, or both.
My point is, why pay for it yourself? Get some other local business that needs all of that. It's just a no-brainer for them. Get them to pay for it. I think that to pretty much everyone it makes sense until you're making so much money for your business that you don't even want the distraction of four or five clients. In the meantime, you could learn, get your own business up to speed, and make significant money much faster by leveraging all the information that's out there and by going to seminars and courses.
You'll be able to have the time to do it because you won't have to go to another job 40 hours a week or more. You'll have plenty of money coming in just from your own business with just three or four clients. All of your training is free. You'll have your time back so you can focus on your own business. You won't have to pay for any of your own training.
TAMMY LAWMAN: For someone who's just starting out, what's the first step that you would tell them to take to get started as an Internet marketing consultant?
Want even more tips and tricks? This article was just a small portion of an hour-long interview. And this interview was just ONE of 24 top interviews conducted by Ric Thompson for Internet Marketing TNT. If you'd like to get your hands on ALL 24 interviews, simply click here and check out Internet Marketing - Very Important Profit Systems.
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