A millionaire at 28 thru e-commerce

By Edson C. Tandoc Jr.
Philippine Daily Inquire
MANILA, Philippines—He could have set up the usual shop, sold stuff to people in the neighborhood, and still made a living.

But 30-year-old businessman Ian del Carmen decided to stay home and work in front of his computer. Today, he earns P500,000 every month.

The world is his market.

Del Carmen is the founder and CEO of Fireball Planet, a corporation based in Makati City which sells e-books, software, and music and instructional videos to the world via the Internet.

Everything for sale on his website is downloadable as PDF files, program files, MP3, MP4, etc. He doesn’t need a warehouse for his products nor the services of a mailman or UPS to deliver the products.

“I do not have a big office, but I have a huge empire in the virtual world,” he says.

Fireball Planet has over 50,000 regular customers from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Singapore, handled by a slim workforce of 18 employees.

Del Carmen pays for the resell rights of the software and other e-materials he buys. Fireball also develops its own software products which it also sells to customers with resell rights.

The corporation started in Del Carmen’s small house in the town of Pateros.

Dropout

Del Carmen never had any formal computer training or had taken a business course. He never even finished his undergraduate course in English. Instead, he fell in love with theater and worked for ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp., producing and writing for shows such as “Pinoy Big Brother.”

But after completing his first online purchase using his credit card two years ago—he bought an e-book—there was no turning back.

“It felt good after I made my first online purchase,” Del Carmen recalls. Soon he was visiting websites on e-commerce, studying how they work.

Self-study

At that time, he did not own a computer so he would stay in Internet cafés eight hours a day, surfing and learning about e-commerce. Finally, he decided to buy a second-hand computer.

“I had a positive addiction to the Internet, unlike others who were hooked on online gaming and chat, which are not the real benefits of the Internet,” Del Carmen says.

Finally, after weeks of self-study, he started an online business in his room. He bought a $27 e-book (on Internet marketing) which he resold to an American woman. He managed to recoup his small investment on that first sale.

“I was very happy! I sent her an e-mail to thank her and I showered her with bonuses, like free e-books I had bought,” Del Carmen says.

First million

Six months later, he earned his first million in just a week’s time after selling what is known as “membership wholesaler sites,” according to an article which appears on his website at http://iandelcarmen.com.

Del Carmen created membership sites which he sold wholesale and with resale rights from $197 to $397 per pack. He sold over 100 of these to his global clients, earning him over P1 million.

He was only 28 then.

“I remembered thinking I will not earn this much as an employee,” he says. So he quit his TV job and registered Fireball Planet as a corporation.

He realized he needed to expand his one-man operation. He got his cousin—pirated her, actually, from a software company—to work for him.

From just selling materials online, Fireball Planet started offering consultancy work, with Del Carmen sharing what he has learned about e-marketing to other online companies.

Del Carmen says his company grew by word of mouth as his network of customers gave positive reviews of his services.

A good marketing website not only develops a database of customers, but also draws response from visitors and keeps them glued to the site, he says.

Del Carmen comes from a broken family. His father left when he was young. His uncle financed his high school and college education in Bulacan.

He also had to work for his daily allowance. He designed and sold T-shirts when he was in high school. He had a stint with McDonald’s and worked for direct marketing companies like Sara Lee and Avon, selling shoes, clothes and accessories.

These experiences laid the groundwork for his marketing skills, but it was the online world where he finally found his niche.

“If you do business offline, you can only sell to neighboring houses. Online, my market share is worldwide. I get customers from countries I have never heard of,” he says.

Only 1 percent from RP

Filipino businessmen are not taking advantage of the Internet, Del Carmen says. Nor are Filipino consumers embracing the convenience of e-commerce.

Though his company operates from Makati City, only one percent of his customers are from the Philippines.

He observes that most company websites of Filipino businesses only provide brochure-like information and do not interact with visitors, defeating the essence of interactivity the Internet provides.

“The media are partly to blame,” he says. “Horror stories on Internet marketing, like credit card scams, are published more than success stories on e-commerce.”

It is actually very safe to use credit cards online, he says. His company uses PayPal, allowing payments and money transfers through the Internet, instead of checks and money orders.

Potential of e-commerce

Del Carmen has a vision: To help local companies harness the potential of e-commerce.

He is helping a friend, who owns a chain of upscale restaurants in the metropolis, improve the company website so it can have better interactivity with customers.

Politicians, too, can benefit from online marketing. Look at US President-elect Barack Obama, Del Carmen says, himself a member of social networking sites which Obama’s campaign had started.

He says Obama was able to communicate with new voters and get campaign contributions through the Internet.

“I hope that our businessmen will take advantage of the technology,” Del Carmen says. “This is a way for our local brands to compete with international brands.”

“Small and medium enterprises, even home-based businesses, can go global instead of competing for a smaller market here,” he says.

(If you’re in the Philippines, Fireball Planet can be accessed at http://fireballplanet.com/ph. If you’re in the United States, it can be accessed at http://fireballplanet.com/us.)

Reseller shows how to succeed online

WOMEN the world over have been keeping a fashionable secret for so long now. Well it’s not really so much a secret that only a few people know about it. The fact is, thousands of women have been quietly buying online a self-adhesive backless and strapless brassiere called NuBra.

It is made of silicone and with adhesive, sticks to skin well so it’s not a problem to wear clothes that are backless or are more revealing up front. Hollywood celebrities have been patronizing NuBra, and even Oprah Winfrey endorsed it.

While there are a few resellers of NuBra online, one reseller particularly stands out. Digital Web Group, Inc., which runs three e-commerce stores exclusively selling Nubra (www.nubra.net, www.nu-bra.com, and www.siliconeworks.com), sells the most and is topmost in search engines.

According to Fil-Am Diana Limjoco, one of GoNegosyo’s most inspiring entrepreneurs and one of the founders of Digital Web Group, “Revenue from the NuBra alone is about $500K annually. We do not advertise and sales come only from search engine placement and word of mouth. Also occasionally, a magazine, newspaper and TV show will feature the bra.”

The group started selling one style of NuBra in 2002. Now there are three styles being sold on their websites. “We use a professional e-commerce cart (www.searchfit.com), which allows one to use just one control panel for many stores), and accept all credits cards as well as PayPal, Google Checkout, checks and money order,” says Limjoco. Customers can view photos of the product online, click “Buy now,” and by putting in the country code and address, the cart will automatically estimate the shipping fees. They ship globally.

Online selling is highly competitive, so what is the secret to their success? Limjoco says, “Our placement ranks high in search engines and NuBra is a unique one of a kind patented product. Although many knock-offs have come and gone, no one has been able to duplicate the special self-healing adhesive. We have good customer support and it’s easy for people to buy from our store with most major credit cards, PayPal and Google Checkout. We answer e-mail from customers in a timely fashion. Also, we ship as soon as we get the order and if it’s a shipper cut off, we ship the next day.”

Limjoco offers eight tips for those seeking success in online sales:

1. Do your market research. “We did research before we sold NuBra and found only one other store selling online. Since we had no competition to speak of, we went for it,” says Limjoco.

2. Have your online store named as close as possible to what you are selling. Aside from NuBra, Digital Web Group also sells motorcycle speakers online at www.motorcyclespeakers.net.

3. Make sure your store is on the first page of Google or Yahoo search for the item you are selling.

4. Buy the .com and .net address of your store to keep competition from buying the name and competing with you.

5. Make it easy for customers to buy. Provide customer support. Answer e-mail queries within hours if possible. “We have made many sales by having an agent e-mail back within minutes!” adds Limjoco.

6. Get a good credit card processor, professional shopping cart, and PayPal, which now accepts payments from customers in the Philippines.

7. Put prices and cost of shipping next to the product. Limjoco tried buying at Multiply sites, but found that most sellers do not put prices and cost of shipping on their websites. “This means I have to write to someone to get the cost and shipping. As an avid online shopper myself, I will not usually bother to do this. I will just move on to someone else where I can pay online and shipping costs are estimated online as well,” says Limjoco.

8. Ship goods in a timely fashion once you get an order.