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InterNet Profit Report. Subject: March Internet Profit Report E-Mail Version Your guide to who is making money on the Internet - so you can model success. March 1996 Issue Single Issue Price $32.00 U.S. Copyright © 1996 by Stephen R. Kelly, Inc. What's in this issue: Rifle Shot Marketing.......................First Interview Lawyer's Cyberspace Profit............Second Interview 30 Days to Big Bucks Botanicals....Third Interview 350 Registrations in One Hour.....Fourth Interview 30 DAYS TO BIG BUCKS BOTANICALS John Shelley recently took a bold step for someone in his industry. He decided that his garden center would market world wide via the Internet. Sounds kind of crazy doesn't it? But then John's Garden Center is somewhat unique. For that matter, John himself is unique for a nurseryman. Twenty five years ago, John Shelley graduated from Drake University with a Bachelor of Arts in Marketing/Advertising. So he went to New York City and started his career as a Madison Avenue advertising man. By the time he was 39 he was very successful but completely burned out. So he tore up all of his credit cards and decided to head west. When he got as far west as Pennsylvania he dropped stakes and started John Shelley's Garden Center and Nursery, Incorporated. His specialty garden center is located at 13579 Winterstown Road in Felton, Pennsylvania. The doors were opened on March 15, 1991. At John's nursery you can buy anything from annuals to some of the most rare and unusual nursery stock on the planet. In fact he specializes in rare and unusual species. He even has 11 varieties of orchid. But after a few years John wanted more. He wanted to be able to bring rare plants to the entire planet. His solution? A web site which he started on January 26, 1996. If you ever get the chance to talk to John you quickly realize the he is the kind of nurseryman who doesn't let any grass grow under his feet (no pun intended). I thought I had my web site up fairly quickly. John started writing his site on January 10th and 16 days later it was up and running! So what made John think that he could create a profitable web site? He decided that his web could be profitable because he could not find any specialty garden supply sites on the world wide web. "I decided that I wanted to be on the cutting edge", John told me in our interview. John's market is very vertical. He has conceded much of the low price garden items to K-Mart and Wal-Mart. He specializes in arcane specimens and rare items that you can't get anywhere else. How arcane? Ever heard of an Alpine Trough Garden? Neither have I. These self contained gardens were the rage in the 18th century because they contain miniature conifers that grow in the Alps and the Himalayas. How is that for a very rare item? John's web site has only been up for about 30 days and yet he has already generated a $7,000 profit from the three landscape jobs that he got from the Internet. John's company generally does landscaping work in the states surrounding Pennsylvania in a 400 mile radius, but he has the capacity to do work as far away as California. His company's annual gross revenue is about $800,000. John is very careful about tracking which marketing channels (including his web site) bring him his business. Every person that comes into his nursery or places a phone order has to fill out their registration form. On it the customer is asked how they found out about the Garden Center. John is the only staff person that runs the web site. It's that simple. John also allows people to buy several ways - one of the key components of profit generating web sites. People can buy from the web site by E-Mail, regular phone number, local 800 telephone number, by regular mail, or they can fax in an order. He is planning to have an entry grid for taking orders directly from the Internet in the next month. John likes to roam the Internet and collect animations for use on his web page. These animations make his site interesting without being a slow loader. He has agreed to put up a page of his animations for others to come and borrow for their web page. Now, if you have been faithfully reading your Internet Profit Reports, you know that graphics are generally the death knell for profit. But this site will likely be an exception because pictures of the product will be important. John is planning to have some fast loading graphics on in the next 60 days. John also has an advertising page on his web site where you can see a collection of his advertisements. Many of his advertisements are considered controversial because they advertise unique features rather than price. Actually to me that doesn't sound controversial, it just sounds like good marketing. John edits his site using Hot Dog on his Pentium based computer. The web site currently gets about 200 visits a day and has won over 13 different awards. All this in 30 days. How did John's site get all those awards. Do you really want to know? Well, he just visited the sites of organizations that give out awards to web sites.... and then he invited them to visit his web site in an enticing way. That's it! That's how John got thirteen different awards for his web site. Sometimes the answers are so simple. John's Internet Service Provider is Cyberia Communications Inc. of York, Pennsylvania. Their telephone number is (717) 848-1439. Adam Viener did the HTML work with the forms capability. The cost was $500 and John pays $150 per month for the space on the server. He has 5 Megs of space. If you would like to contact John or see his site go to: http://www.gdnctr.com Phone: (717) 246-1414 According to John, the toughest part of the start up of John's web site was waiting for the hits to come. When nothing happened initially, John did what all smart marketers do - he got on the web to publicize it. For three days he just surfed the web dropping people E-Mail messages, registering on search engines, and submitting his site for awards. He did this to literally thousands of web sites. Then the traffic to his site shot up. This one strategy alone is what boosted John's web site traffic the most. John says that as a result of this he has at least 100 links pointing toward his web site. Remember, all this took just 30 days. John started building his E-Mail database from the very first day. John promotes his web site by talking it up at garden shows and by mentioning it on all of his advertising. John, as you may have gathered by now, comes from a traditional marketing background. Much of his expertise was honed at Olgilvy and Mather, Grey Advertising, and J. Walter Thompson. But the best experience he ever had was at a company called Trout and Ries. There he learned Positioning and Marketing Warfare. Jack Trout and Al Ries based much of their marketing strategies on the combat strategies of the 17th century Prussian General, Carl Von Clausewitz. Based on the Positioning and Marketing Warfare strategies of two marketing mavericks and a 17th century Prussian General, John opened a two million dollar garden center overnight and became a major player in his area. John attributes his web site profits to date mostly to the fact that his web site is easy to navigate. He also provides information that people can't get anywhere else. John's parting counsel to other would-be web site profit makers? "Find something that you are really good at and tell the world about it. Be vertical and be specific. Your market will be smaller but they will be buyers. Be upscale and have hard to find items." Copyright © 1996 by Stephen R. Kelly, Inc. Stephen Kelly, Editor | E-Mail: srkelly@centuryinter.net Internet Profit Report | web site: http://www.freeprofit.com 3767 Crystal Drive | Voice: 616-882-9335 Beulah, Michigan 49617 | Fax: 616-882-5357 Your guide to whose web sites are making a profit - So you too can model success. Back to The Reviews Page ©1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 John Shelley's Garden Center & Nursery, Inc. All rights reserved. Last updated 9/25/98. visitors since 1/26/96. 13579 Winterstown Road, Felton, PA 17322-8522 (717) 246-1414  1-800-828-3405 (Pa-Md)  fax: (717) 246-2170