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A Bit About Our Success!
We are totally committed to being the absoloute
best we can be. Through innovation, adaption and cutting edge thinking
we blaze a trail across the web.
Internet Unlimited LLC is the holding company for
some of the Web's top ranked busiest sites as certified
by Alexa. We also joint venture with many of the net's heaviest
hitters.
We've nurtured close working relationships with highly capable
programmers and now enjoy a team who are quite literally, capable
of inplimenting any idea we come up with - no matter how bizzare!
We've deveolped highly ranked, busy resourses like FREEnetleads.com,
ResultsTracker.com, ToolbarTraffic.com, Netbookpublishers.com 241Leads.com
to name just a few.
We have a strong grounding in off-line publishing, advertising,
graphic design and marketing but being relativly new to the Internet
(Jan 2002) what do we know about marketing and traffic generation???
We have developed some of the Internet's busiest websites.
One of our greatest achievements to date was generating over
11 MILLION hits, 30,000 visitors a day to our FREEnetleads.com
site in the first 30 days…
And it didn't stop there. Traffic kept growing until we completely
fried the server (we learned some lessons from that!).
We now host on cast iron, dedicated servers that have double raid
(backed up and the back ups are backed up!), they are able to cope
under massive pressure.
We did the same for ResultsTracker.com earlier
this year (and the server held!)…
Let's Face Fact's...
You could be selling 'The World's Largest Diamond at a Staggering
90% DISCOUNT' but if no one comes to your site it'll just sit there
gathering dust!
TRAFFIC and customers to your home-page is the single, absolute
fundamental key to on-line success... without a steady flow of
eager, targeted customers you're simply another bad statistic!
There are currently more websites on the net, than people on Earth
- some of our sites feature in the top 5,000 busiest! But don't
take our word for it - check them out! Alexa
FREEnetleads.com is ranked 713 at trafficranking.com (correct
at time of print).
We're No1 referrers in the top Traffic Exchange programmes, they
love us!
BUT... we're by no means satisfied.
We continue to develop new and innovative systems to help all
on-line marketers and supply all the tools necessary to grow their
businesses. Unlike many 'gurus' who make huge sums from writing
and selling 'How to' books on Internet success, our philosophy
dates back to something we invented several years ago - The Omni-Science
Principle'.
It's all about learning intimatly the successful systems then
developing physical tools to enable other to duplicate that success.
To this end we're continuing to create some of the best sites,
services and commission structures on the net.
Our online success was recently noticed by the late Corey Rudle
(amongst others!) and he asked for an interview. So to give you
a candid insite into our Internet businesses and some background
into how we've become so successful, so quickly it's published
here - Read it then please join us on a road to personal prosperity
from an incredible medium, The Worldwide Web.
We will enjoy nothing more than watching YOU use the tools we
create to emulate our achievements:
Interview Questions for Kevin Mason (Marketing Manager)
Can you tell us about how you first got started on the Internet.
What was your first web site, and how did you grow/expand from
there?
Government Auctions
UK™ was the very first site we developed;
a very simple concept. It’s mealy a complete listing of every
auction house in the UK and people subscribe to search it. We include
a lot of up-to-date information about upcoming auctions across
the UK but also include reports on all aspects of making money
at auctions.
Terry Dean has recently collaborated with a couple of top marketers
and written a book on membership sites, he can't praise them
highly enough. They are one of the biggest things on the Net right
now and we plan to roll out our subscription template to other
businesses in the near future.
Government Auctions UK™ was set up at the end of 1999. Originally
it consisted of basically an e-book that was sold for under £10.
The book gave purchasers a starting point from where they could
enter the secretive world of Government Auctions.
It was pretty basic yet contained everything someone would need
to get started. A bit like passing your driving test, you get a
licence then the real challenge of learning to drive properly begins.
However, the book proved to be successful and we were getting
requests for more and more information. People wanted something
grander than just a starting point.
It was this demand that persuaded us to develop the site into
something much more comprehensive...
It was originally put up to see what would happen if you just
threw a web page on the net and left it. It was a real slow process
at first and took forever to take off. It had started to make reasonable
money so we decided to really get behind it.
Previously there was a successful off-line
publishing company that took up all our energy and resources
but this new phenomenon called the Internet couldn’t be
ignored.
We began to explore the possibilities and the more we understood
the concept the more exciting it got; we moved our whole operation
over in January 2002.
Off-line we had focused on business and personal development products,
which suit the net so the move simply meant turning them into digital
information. The main business was 'The Vangard Alliance' which
promotes an extremely popular business and personal development
plan called 'The Omni-Science Principle'.
Our main reasons for moving to the Net were the ease of product
delivery and cost effectiveness. Marketing offline is far more
expensive - it costs approximately $775 to mail out 1000 flyers,
yet we can hit our entire e-mail database at the touch
of a button for nothing these days.
Government Auctions UK™ was the first site in our portfolio
and we’ve learned a lot from it. It paid bills,
which meant we could concentrate fully on developing the rest of
the businesses.
Initial expectations were high for Vangard
but it was hard to get the ball rolling at first. We thought
it would be a lot easier than it is to sell online - we thought
we would just build a website and people would come… they
didn't!
Seth Godin (online marketing guru ex Yahoo!) sums it up best with
his quote, 'it took ten years to become an overnight success'.
Our operation is beginning to snowball now
with the development of a wide reaching portfolio of sites, but
we did not hit our initial sales targets for the first year;
the people simply didn’t
come.
Much of the following year was devoted to
lead generation and building traffic, as we believe these to
be the fundamental keys to on-line success; as with mail order
you’ll
get nowhere without growing a customer database.
In June 2002, we launched a new site; FreeNetLeads.com and
things began to pick up.
The new site took off like a steam train and within the first
week melted the server - we upgraded and took 11 million hits in
the first month!
Freenetleads now boasts almost 100,000 operators and this figure
is growing steadily each month.
It's a very simple concept which enables anyone to build their
own databases and we now have some key operators duplicating our
success in building opt-in databases by offering our FREEnetleads
programme.
Freenetleads has taken care of building good
approachable lists; in fact FNL is up to 10x more responsive
than anything else we’ve
tested. Our next project is to continue our growth by developing
a new traffic site – we have a great concept, which we are
now in the process of patenting, ToolbarTraffic
During this time Government Auctions UK™ has made its way
to the top of the search engines and been slowly expanding due
to the strategic use of other great business building techniques
(newsletters, pop-ups, contra deals, linking…)
We now have all the elements in place to hit targets
more easily.
We have two final projects to complete before we have
all the elements required for a well-balanced, rounded Internet
Marketing business.
This plan also involves building websites that appeal outside
of our chosen field. One of the most important rules in the business
and personal development field is to never pre-judge; an entrepreneur
can come from any walk of life!
We are coming up with ideas that have mass appeal and are fun
to use. Good examples of which is Drivers'
Revenge and FREEMoneyLoophole
Drivers’ Revenge is an absolute scream.
It's free to use and allows you to put the details of idiot drivers
and what they did to upset you on the Worldwide Web!
Talk about getting your own back!!!
The plan is to then follow up with a newsletter carrying sponsored
ads for our main businesses and the site will carry links to our
other sites fulfilling a number of functions (link popularity for
one).
Do you own any other web sites?
Here are some of the main sites we now have
running, as you can see we’ve been busy. Remember, we came
on the web 12 months ago without the slightest idea of how the
web worked or even how to get a site on a server!
Our latest site is NETbookpublishers, a breakthrough
concept utilizing our click and sell™ technology – this
site allows anyone to be set up in seconds selling e-products
and we also pay out residual commissions http://www.netbookpublishers.com/title/imc
Other sites in our portfolio are rich and varied. Please feel
free to take a look:
What compelled you to take the plunge and start your own Internet
business?
The biggest factor was the freedom it offered
and the opportunity to make a lot of money without the fear of
being crushed by overheads – nothing
can compare with the advantages of doing business on the net
providing you have the right products and strategy.
Can you give us a feel for the size of your sites?
Government Auctions UK™ currently (2003)
has @ 4,000 paying subscribers and should yield @ $200,000 (profits
are @ 90%-95%) this year at current growth, but is expected to
grow exponentially as this year develops, along with associated
sites such as Hot
Property Investor and Government
Auctions USA.
Overall we have a couple of support staff and a whole host of
freelance programmers we can call on at any time.
We are extremely reluctant to take on staff
and as a result probably do far too much ourselves. This will
be sorted this year but we are keen to outsource most of the
work we can’t handle.
We would rather have software written to take care of as much work
as possible than take on staff and their associated problems.
We try to do as many contra deals as possible,
which gives the people who do work for us a vested interest in
our success. There is always a deal to be had and if we can’t find one we’ll
invent one!
Even this interview is ‘a good for both of us’ deal.
The Internet Marketing Center gets something out of it, so do we;
you can find win, win situations everywhere. We have done deals
with Mike G (banners go MLM), Traffic Swarm, No More Hits, Ken
Arthur (Affiliate Showcase), Jim Edwards… and that’s
just January 03.
Membership to our various sites is currently at @175,000 overall
but they have only really been going 12 months.
How long did it take for you to start making a profit online?
The sites have been pretty much making a profit from day one, albeit
a tiny one in the beginning!
That’s the beauty of an Internet business, which many don’t
seem to grasp - although you may not make the ‘millions in
months’ everyone promises from the net, you can make a small,
on-going profit to supplement income. It costs virtually nothing
to keep a site up, but if you just keep chipping away and learning
eventually it’ll work. (Although our bigger sites now have
heavier overheads, mainly due to the traffic and server costs)
Compare that with an offline business where
you just don’t
have the comfort to relax and learn – if you’re not
turning over hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds a month you
can’t pay the overheads and you sink.
How much time and money did it take for you to initially get the
first site up and running?
About £100. All you need is a web page
and a good idea!
Did you design the site yourself, or did you hire a web designer
to do it for you? Can you tell us a bit about this experience?
Having precisely zero web building skills
we had to hire a web designer and that was fine. In fact we had
to use them for most of our work in the early days, we now subscontract
all work out to freelance designers across the world. The secret
is contra deals; you can’t beat them!
Who is your target market? Where can your visitors be found online?
Target market is basically anyone who wants to make money from
the Net.
How much traffic are you seeing to your sites (unique visitors
vs. repeat visitors)? And where is your traffic predominantly coming
from?
Heck!
That’s a really difficult question because of the spread
of our portfolio; it’s in the tens of millions a month and
comes from a variety of sources – the biggest traffic producers
are search engines and our affiliates.
What are you doing to collect the opt-in e-mail addresses of potential
customers?
We run a free newsletters, pop ups, pop unders…(replaced
by drop ins)
This is a tried, tested and successful technique used across our
entire portfolio.
How often do you make a point of following up with your leads
and previous customers? What sorts of offers do you typically follow-up
with?
We follow up intensely on all our businesses and our auto-responder
software takes care of that for our members and us.
In order of importance, could you please tell us about the top
5 marketing strategies that you use on a regular basis. What percentage
of time does each take? And what kind of return does each produce?
A) Without a doubt answers A) and B) combined are the number one
marketing strategies from which all others build.
A) Is to grow an opt-in database. FREEnetleads has
been the cornerstone of our overall success and that of many FREEnetleads
members. Comprehensive details of how to grow a responsive opt-in
list using our system can be found at the site
Government Auctions UK™ has used the
free newsletter to build its list which is a technique we use
across the board along with other offers. Nothing has come close
to FREEnetleads though!
B) Traffic! - A list will give you a basis
from where to begin your marketing but it has limitations. You
only get a ‘one
off’ hit and each time you advertise a product or service
to it, response diminishes, its natural. Traffic will give you
a flow of customers and this is where Government Auctions UK™ is
so successful.
We have actually built in traffic generation programmes
into our businesses so members automatically get a kickstart
to their business from them. Go to Toolbartraffic
C) Next we follow up courteously but relentlessly. We have found
that follow up can increase sign ups by up to 50%. All our programmes
have follow ups built in for our members
D) Great products!!! – We have set
ourselves the target of only supplying the very best products
we can find or produce, and services we can achieve. I feel customer
satisfaction is as important a strategy as any of the others.
Offer the very best and people WILL hear about you and track
you down.
E) We than use a multitude of techniques, which combine off-line,
as well as on-line strategies. Many marketers ignore the massive
off-line customer pool but because of our publishing background
we understand and utilize it intimately. All our techniques are
shared with our members.
How much emphasis do you place on search
engine placement & optimization?
A massive amount – Search engine placement cannot be underestimated
and as we said earlier is the cornerstone of Government Auctions
UK™ success. This site was recently valued at $3.5 million
and that is solely due to the highly targeted, responsive traffic
from search engines.
Have you ever bought online
advertising (i.e. banner ads, e-zine ads, pay-per-click search
engine campaigns, etc…)? If so,
what kind and were the results successful?
We have used all the above with varying degrees
of success – frankly
there are many cowboys out there and will rip you off at any chance
and we’ve found it a minefield.
We know about the advertising business and
if we struggle, what chance have others got? You can’t
ignore the use of any of these medium but we have found better
lines of attack that work for us.
Here is a summary of our experiences:
Banners have had their day. Click throughs are running so low
as to not be worth concentrating on.
E-zine ads work, and work well sometimes,
but you need to understand the advertising business. You need
a strong ad and the right e-zine. We provide advertising material
for all our sites so members don’t
have to worry about it.
Pay-per click works for us but again you need a strong understanding
of how they work. Terry (Marketing) took time out to get to grips
with them and as a result they work for us, but you can easily
lose money with them!!!
We are currently looking at, and testing
guaranteed sign ups but not looking as good as promised (what’s
new there then!) Postscript – They’re rubbish, don’t
go near them!
Do you promote your sites offline as well?
Yes, as mentioned previously the off-line customer pool is massive
and should not be ignored. The net should be viewed as another
weapon in your marketing armory.
We provide hundreds of ways to tap into this
market; sites like Drivers’ Revenge are designed to appeal
off-line. Look at the Drivers’ Revenge
parking ticket and you’ll see
what I mean – people should do our promoting for us.
What have you done to automate your sites?
Everything humanly possible!
Could you please tell us
about four online tools or web sites that you’ve found
to be powerful resources for marketing your business or locating
e-business strategies and information? What are they and how
have they benefited you?
We have made great use of the latest conferencing
technology with Vangard and use the virtual training rooms with
great effect. You can talk live to dozens of people at a time
and make presentations – and
it’s all free. Knocks the socks off Teleconferencing! This
technology has incredible potential and can be seen in full effect
at our Vangard site
We use Alexa a
lot for comparing other people’s
traffic against ours!
The single greatest resource for locating e-business strategies
and information for me has been Google. I find people fail to use
it to full potential. But even better is Copernic
that helps search many engines at a time.
We use Google’s site submission page
to get indexed
Could you tell us about the
top 5 software products that you’re
using to automate your sites? What are they, and how much time
have they saved you?
Software is a fundamental part of our business and the time savings
from it are incalculable.
Our e-mail and autoresponder software is
invaluable. We simply couldn’t run our business without it. The great part is that
it runs our member’s businesses too. You’d need to contact me
for more details of what we use as we’ve had a
lot of customization done.
We are about to begin using desktop icons
We use a range of software, which can be found and resold at NetBookPublishers
How many hours per week do you spending running your business
versus growing it?
@ 70% growing
What unique challenges exist for companies in your market?
I would say that our market has to be the most hotly contested
on the Net. The competition is intense. You have to be constantly
on your guard and be searching for anything to give you the edge.
What are some of the challenges you have personally experienced
building and growing your sites?
The biggest challenge has been the technical issues across the
portfolio. What can seem the simplest concept ends up becoming
a major programming challenge.
Government Auctions UK™ is currently under fire from a company
called, ironically enough, Imaginative Technologies! They’ve
copied the concept to the letter and manipulated their search engine
listings to be almost indistinguishable from ours – then
undercut us!!!
They have even registered an almost identical
name. Problem is they’ve not copied the look and sales copy of the site so
we’re having trouble claiming copyright. We have written
to Nominet as this is a blatant attack on our business but this
is the kind of thing that will happen as you become successful.
What would you consider to be your major achievements?
The greatest achievement overall is getting
to a stage where the Net provided a sustainable, passive income – we
now enjoy helping others emulate that goal
What do you think has helped to make your sites so successful?
Without a doubt THE ONLY THING that has made
any of our businesses work is ‘determination’. We
never gave up without the right result.
What is the biggest mistake you have made
since launching your first site?
Believing the hype!!!
We really did think it would be easier than it is and think that
is the mistake most people make.
Could you tell us about a “light bulb” moment that
you’ve had?
A moment when you’ve thought to yourself, “If
only I’d known that earlier…”
We have them every day!
Here are a few:
Understanding the importance of search engine traffic, understanding
optimization, understanding pop unders and pop ups, understanding
what HTML is, understanding what a hyperlink is, understanding
how to get a site on a server, down to how to protect your servers
from international hackers and criminals!
What major mistakes do you see other Internet entrepreneurs making?
Believing the hype!!!
It goes downhill from there.
Most give up before they have even got started – It could
take several years to get a site working – SO WHAT! there’s
no better way to become independent.
Where do you see your sites one year from now?
We would like to see Government Auctions
UK™ sold. Our other
goal is to achieve 1 Million members and subscribers across our
portfolio.
What advice do you have for beginners who are interested in selling
over the Web?
Don’t believe the hype and commit to what you set out to
do… and complete it!!!
If you don’t finish what you embark upon then what was the
point of starting it in the first place’ and what a waste
of time to achieve nothing.
There are fundamental strategies to making it on the Web and there
are absolutely no shortcuts, despite what they all say.
Work hard, learn, test what you’ve learned, move on and
NEVER GIVE UP – You have to make it eventually even by sheer
coincidence!
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