Hold on, though, sports fans! You see, the total "Internet population" is just THAT; the total number of people, NOT the total number of HOUSEHOLDS. In other words, when you see a figure proclaiming the number of Internet users, that includes Mom, Dad, Johnny, and sister Susie – the whole darn family. It’s highly unlikely that you are going to get ALL individuals in a household to purchase your particular product or service. So a more practical figure would not be the total number of people with Internet access, but, rather, the total number of households on the Internet. And to arrive at that figure - dividing 300,000,000 by an average of four individuals per household - gives a relatively reasonable figure of around 75,000,000 households. But even THAT figure is way too high! Why? By way of explanation, first let me ask you this: Why did YOU purchase our "Secrets of the Big Dogs" ebook? In all probability the answer to that is that you want to develop a profitable home-based business. This market niche is often referred to as the "home-based business market" or the "business-opportunity seekers market." ...and the huge majority of households on the Internet could care LESS about making money on the web! Now I know that sounds like sacrilege. I’m sure you think that the only reason anyone would buy a computer is to go online and earn a million bucks. I hate to burst your bubble, but the harsh reality is that very, very few people actually have any interest whatsoever in starting a business of their own, on- OR off- line. Don’t believe me? Just go up and down the block in your neighborhood and ask every one of your friends who has a computer why they bought it. You’re not going to get a large percentage who look you in the eye and say...
An associate of mine who happens to own the largest lead generating company (for OFFline business opportunity seekers) in the United States manages to generate just 20 to 30 THOUSAND new leads each month. Of course, just because a new month starts, that doesn’t mean that the previous month's prospects are now no longer interested in starting a business. So let’s say that those people accumulate for a full year. That means that at any one time, there are only about 250 to 350 THOUSAND people who are seriously looking for a business of their own in the United States. Now let's triple that figure to take into account English speaking people in the rest of the world, and we come up with a figure of slightly over one million. Understand that a MILLION prospects at any one time are still a whole LOT of prospects for what you are selling! It's just that that number is a far, far cry from the figure of one BILLION prospects that one sees bandied about. Saying that the entire population of the web – all one billion men, women, and children - are "qualified" prospects is absolutely ludicrous.
BIG LIE # 4: "THE INTERNET IS THE ULTIMATE MARKETING MEDIUM!" The years 1999 and 2000 marked the high-water mark of what I call "Internet madness." Those were the years when virtually ANYTHING connected with the web was looked upon as a surefire road to wealth. I remember a friend of mine trying desperately to get me involved in an online venture (it was an online mall, by the way – remember them?). He honestly and sincerely believed that in five years brick-and-mortar shopping malls would be a thing of the past, and everyone would be buying everything online! Good thing my friend never talked to Sam Walton, huh!? It was a time when youngsters not old enough to go into a bar were dropping out of big name colleges to start their own Internet companies. They were asking for (and getting!) millions of dollars of venture capital from investors who assumed any scheme, no matter how scatter brained, so long as it had SOMETHING to do with the Internet, would make everyone concerned a fortune. Need I tell you that the stock market soared, riding the crest of this Internet madness? During this period of time I was still totally involved in OFF-line business activities, and there were times when, quite frankly, I felt like a dinosaur. I just could not understand what all the hubbub was about. The pinnacle of this absurdity, in my opinion, was Amazon.com. Ever hear of ‘em? Internet fever was at such a pitch that in one of their quarterly reports to the stockholders, when Amazon.com declared that it would lose LESS money than it had projected, it’s stock actually went UP! (You read right! Even though the company was going to lose MILLIONS, just because it was gong to lose FEWER millions than was thought, the price of it's stock STILL went up!) In December of 1999 I picked up a copy of Time magazine; whose picture was on the cover as Man of the Year? You guessed it! Jeff Bezos, the head honcho of Amazon.com. Here was a guy whose company up to that point had, not only NEVER shown a profit, but had LOST over three billion dollars since it’s inception, and HE WAS BEING APPLAUDED AS TIME MAGAZINE’S MAN OF THE YEAR! Insanity! By the Spring of 2001, there were even rumblings that Amazon.com was going to formally declare bankruptcy and the value of it’s stock plummeted an astounding 80%. By 2005, although Amazon.com had finally shown a few profitable quarters, they had STILL never shown a full year of profitability! And, during the "dotcom crash of 2001," Amazon.com was certainly not alone. The stock of Priceline.com, the "name your own price for airline tickets" people, fell from over $104.00 to less than $11.00 per share. At $178.00 a share, the stock of Internet Capital Group was flying high, but by the end of the year it was trading at a paltry $3.15. By the Summer of 2001, the NASDAQ stood at less than 50% of it’s value of the previous year, and for the first time in their histories, even the solid hi-tech giants like Cisco and Dell were actually laying people off! On a more personal note, a very close friend of mine invested $42,000 in a portfolio of "can't miss" Internet stocks of the time. In less than four months the value of his portfolio had more than TRIPLED! Think he was happy? But by the Spring of 2001, the total value of his portfolio had nose-dived to a value of less than $8,000! Think he was STILL happy? But my favorite Wall Street story about these days of Internet insanity has to do with a startup company by the name of WebSense. As you know, of course, when a company takes it’s stock public it must issue a prospectus outlining it’s goals, objectives, finances, etc. The WebSense prospectus contained the following disclaimer: "We have a history of losses, and, because we expect our operating expenses to increase in the future, we may NEVER become profitable." Think that scared potential investors? Not at all! The stock, issued at $18.00 per share, CLOSED IT’S FIRST DAY OF TRADING AT $47.75 A SHARE!!! By the end of the year it’s stock was down to less than $15.00. Yes, the business world has come back to it’s senses. Sanity has again returned to Wall Street, and investors are actually investing in stocks that make money, rather than just because they have "dotcom" in their name. Does all this mean that the "days of wine and roses" are over for the Internet and the computer industry? Not by a long shot. The best is yet to come! The temporary downturn that we experienced in 2001 was merely a correction that was in the opinion of most analysts, LONG overdue. It was necessary to bring people back to their senses and to once again use LOGIC in their business decisions. Now why am I telling you all this? What does the stock market have to do with your life or mine as a netpreneur? Simply this. Although sanity, a long time coming, is finally returning to Wall Street and the rest of the business world, there is just as much hype and over-inflation of potential as ever before floating around on the Internet. You need to be aware that the Internet is NOT magic. Just because you do business, or want to do business on the Internet, doesn’t mean that you are guaranteed of success. If you get NOTHING else out of this book but this one bit of advice, remember this:
BIG LIE # 5: "BECAUSE OF IT’S LOW COST, THE INTERNET ‘LEVELS THE PLAYING FIELD’ AND PERMITS EVERYONE TO HAVE A SHOT AT MAKING BIG MONEY!" It is MUCH less expensive to run an Internet business than a comparable offline business. This is, without doubt, the biggest "plus" of doing business on the Internet. To repeat what I said earlier, in 1998, my last full year of doing business OFF the Internet, these were just a few of my ongoing expenses:
Pretty typical for any business in the offline world. But, now, doing business exclusively on the net, I work from my study, so I have no office rent to pay – what I used to have to pay employees to do, I can now perform myself in one tenth the time using various software applications – my printing costs, of course, are zero, and my postage costs are a thing of the past – my only business-related phone expense is my Internet connection. But is this necessarily a GOOD thing? Folks, I hate to tell you this, but business is NOT about "democracy," or "leveling the playing field," or giving everyone an "equal chance at success." REAL business is about dog-eat-dog. It’s about the law of the jungle – only the strong survive. To survive and thrive in the offline business world, it’s necessary to have a whole lot of positive attributes. You need to be committed, hard working, intelligent, and last but certainly not least you need CAPITAL. Money makes the world go ‘round, my friends, and this is especially true in the traditional, OFF-line business world. Oh, sure, you can start a small, part-time business in your home offline for maybe a few hundred dollars, or a few thousand dollars if you need a more traditional office type operation. But on the Internet, you can start a business for virtually NOTHING! And I repeat, "IS THIS A GOOD THING!?" So many well-meaning, hard-working people enter the world of Internet marketing expecting that they are going to be dealing with fellow "comrades in arms" – folks who, like themselves, are possessed with drive, desire, and determination. And this is not the case by a long shot! I’m going to make a statement now and I DON’T want you to think that I’m cruel, or unfeeling. But neither do I want you to be mislead into believing that EVERYONE you encounter on the Internet is, like yourself, an intelligent, hard-driving individual determined to make a better life for his or her family…..
Want a computer, but your rent’s two months behind? No problem! Just go down to one of the many "We don’t care how broke you are, we’ll rent anything to anybody" places and rent yourself a spiffy new computer! Want a website but can’t afford a conventional web hosting company? No problem! There are countless sites on the Net that allow you to design and put up a website for FREE! Want to promote your product to hundreds of thousands of prospects but don’t have two nickels in your pocket to advertise? No problem! There are (supposedly!) thousands of places on the Internet where you can advertise for FREE! Again, I’m not trying to put down people who fall for this sort of thing. In fact I think it’s a tragedy that such folks, who could make far more profitable use of their time, are lured by outrageous dreams of easy money to the Internet. I think you’ll agree with me that McDonald’s has a great concept. What do you think would happen, though, if the McDonald’s Home Office GAVE away their franchises to anyone, regardless of their qualifications? Let's pretend that they would give you a franchise, put up your building, and give you all the supplies you need – all for nothing. How many of these franchises would succeed? Not very many. Let's face facts – not everybody is born with the many qualities it takes to be a successful business person. Ah, but it’s different on the Internet. Let me ask you this: Have you ever received a sales flyer from J. C. Penney in your home’s mailbox? Of course you have - along with flyers from Sears, K-Mart, Pizza Hut, and Burger King. We all have. This is the sort of mail that is commonly referred to as junk mail. Does junk mail work? Of COURSE it does, or huge corporations would not spend billions a year in ink, paper, and postage sending it out. But, now…let’s say that ink was free, paper was free, and there was no such thing as postage. What do you think would happen? Yeah, that’s right. We would all be swamped with tons of junk mail, and you’d have to replace your mailbox with a dump truck. But here’s the point – with that kind of massive amount of sales fliers coming to you everyday, nobody would read any of it, and it wouldn’t work for ANYBODY! As we shall see in a later chapter, this is one of the things has killed many forms of promotion that used to work so very well on the Internet. The "playing field" has been "leveled" to the point where a fourteen year old kid operating out of his bedroom can have as big a "web presence" as a Fortune 500 company. What this does, in effect, is make it more difficult for folks like us – sincere, hard-working, honest folks - who plan on making a career of Internet marketing. What does all this have to do with successful Internet marketing? Simply this. You need to be prepared for the fact that not EVERYONE you’ll run into on the Internet is as dedicated, trustworthy, competent, and financially prepared as YOU are to "do what it takes" to achieve real financial success. Knowing this will save you a whole LOT of frustration later on! "OK, Stan. I gotcha. The Internet is NOT a guaranteed, sure-fire, overnight road to wealth, success, and glory. So just what IS the future for Internet marketing? Are you saying that it's too late to make money on the Internet?" In a nutshell? THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET COULDN'T BE BETTER!!! Although we've tried to be just a little negative in our discussion up to this point in order to get you to view the Internet in realistic terms, the flip side of that coin is that we have barely scratched the surface of the potential of the Internet! Since there are roughly 1,000,000,000 people worldwide with Internet access, that means that 5/6 of the world population has yet to experience the online world! Would YOU like to have invested in television technology when only one person in six had a TV!?
Despite the "dotcom shake-out" of 2000-2001 (and maybe even BECAUSE of it!), e-commerce on the Internet DURING THAT SAME PERIOD OF TIME ACTUALLY TRIPLED! From 2000 to 2002, ecommerce in the United States alone skyrocketed from 48.6 billion dollars per year to 129.8 billion dollars per year! And in the most recent five year period, e-commerce sales in the United States alone have increased an astounding 400%! Now, that's an amazing upsurge, certainly, but listen to THIS... Even with that huge increase, e-commerce sales still account for only 2% of the total retail sales in the United States! How's THAT for an industry with incredible potential!? In 1800 the United States was just 10% the size that it is now. Ninety percent of the country was an unexplored resource just WAITING to be tapped! But geez, folks, look where we are now. Think about it!
Think about these statements...
I make a very, VERY good living on the Net, friends, and I love it! And, following the principals in this book, you can too! Wanna make a lotta money in your bathrobe and bunny slippers? We'll show you how! But first, you need to be REALISTIC about Internet marketing. Only by being realistic will you be ready for… …THE SECRETS OF THE BIG DOGS!
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