"Entrepreneur's Laboratory" - that's what the Internet
has become over the last 10 years. Yes, it's was 1993 when
Marc Andreasen launched the first ever point & click
Internet Browser (Mosaic, 1993) on an unsuspecting world,
and the Internet for everyone was born! No longer did you
need to learn weird programming languages to use a computer.
As long as you could wag a finger, and recognise little
pictures on a screen, you could get your computer to do
things for you, and start communicating with other people.

Since these early days, the Internet has become a
galaxy of information spanning every topic imaginable, a
replacement for the phone, audio system, VCR, and even TV in
some cases.

But for the entrepreneur, its most compelling, and
potentially life-changing role is as an almost
instantaneous, very low cost medium for direct mail
advertising.

No, I don't mean the TV corporate-style advertising aimed at
building brand image, and winning design awards. I mean the
kind of advertising which calls you to do something,
rather than just smile gently and ask "what was all that
about" as we often do with TV ads. The call might be to sign
up for more information, download an e-book, to phone a call
centre, or even bare your credit card and order goods or
services on line!

Setting up a magazine ad typically costs hundreds or even
thousands of $s, and takes weeks or months to get the
responses back. Imagine the contrast then, for the Internet
Entrepreneur who sets up a small ad for a few tens, or at
worst, a few hundred $s, and gets his first web site
visitors within minutes! This means that the performance of
the ad in that market can be measured, often in a matter of
a hours. So you know which campaigns will be profitable,
without risking a fortune to find out.

Does this seem like an opportunity for your business? Could
you add new on-line revenue streams to your existing
businesses? Or launch an entirely new business venture on-
line?

When you consider that much of the ordering, payment, and
fulfilment processes can be automated, and for many offers,
the sales processes too, then the commercial power of this
amazing technological medium becomes awesome!

Although tapping into this takes a range of skills from
computer literacy, through copy-writing, to Direct
Marketing, there are only 2 fundamental activities required:

1. Getting the right visitors to come to your web site
2. Persuading them to take the action you want

Simple? Yes, in principle. But in practice there are many
questions you need to answer on the way:
- who would be the "right visitors"?
- where can I find them?
- how can I get them to my website?
- are there enough of them?
- and once they get there, what should I be asking visitors
to do anyway?
- how many will do what I want them to?
- how can I improve on this?

The Direct MO Marketing website helps clinets accelerate
their business growth by implementing simple and effective
solutions to get the right kind of visitors to their
website. http://www.1dmom.com

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