Interview with Patric Chan By Cort McCadden Nov 30, 2005

Email this article  Printer friendly page

Today we have Patric Chan of Malaysia who is setting the world of Internet marketing on fire at the age of 25!

Cort: I know that you are one of the young “top guns” in Internet Marketing; however I would like to know what you did before your Net involvement. When was this? What got you interested in the Net?

Patric: Thank you for your interest. It’s a long story but I’m going to shorten it. I started online marketing back in March 2003. Before that, I was involved in marketing self-improvement seminars in the offline world.

And before that, I was working as an employee in the sales department for an electronic components distribution company.

In 2004, I closed my private limited company that was involved with the seminar business (I was 24 years old at that time) as it was taking a lot of my attention and energy. I realized that I was ‘IN’ the business because I needed to manage my staff, finance, marketing and etc.

In order to get ‘OUT’ of the business through the conventional ways, it would take a long period of time for me. That is why I started to explore the potential of starting online businesses.

My first online business was in the self-improvement niche and I’ve grown it since then. When I started it, I spent countless hours educating myself and thousands of US dollar buying Internet marketing courses. You can get success resources, tips and ideas at my webpage now, http://www.esuccessmastery.com

After some time, I was completely out of the seminar business because I was making more money online! Besides that, it’s less stressful compared to what I have to do to make an offline business profitable. That is how I started
www.automateinternetmarketing.com, to teach other people how to achieve online success without going through the hard-knocks I’ve experienced.

I then realized that, I only needed to spend a couple of hundred dollars and I would be able to earn the same amount of money as my offline business that costs me thousands of dollars each month to operate it.


Cort: Did you see the value of Email Marketing almost immediately after it appeared? What made you get involved with Email Marketing?

Patric: Not until I realized how these other ‘gurus’ were making money online! When I was a newbie, I kept on searching for the ‘magic pill’ how they made money. Finally, I realized that all of them have one similarity – They all have a mailing list.

After that, I followed the same system that they all used, which is to build an opt-in page. So, http://www.esuccessmastery.com was created. In the beginning, I found it really hard to make money but as my mailing list grew, I got my first sale. That was the first time I realized that I’d finally found the ‘magic pill’ of online success. Now, I’ve modified it and it has become one of my main online businesses.

In fact, most of all the other online businesses of mine use this same model to be successful – building a mailing list.

Cort: We all know that here in the States Congress is trying to get tough with Spammers. Do you think that they have gone far enough? If not, what should they do? Do you think that there will ever be an INTERNATIONAL Spam Law? If so, would you be in favor or opposed. Why?

Patric: Honestly, it’s really hard to regulate it. With all sort of new spam filters available, spammers will still find ways to continue their unethical spamming activities. And thus, by setting more restricted spam blockers, it’s the honest email marketers that will suffer the consequences.

I don’t think an International Spam Law will be available anytime soon. For obvious reason, do you know how long it takes for a whole world to agree on a law? Besides, some countries still do not see spam as a huge problem yet, especially in less developed countries.

But if there is, I’ll be in favor to it. The best way to stop spammers is to sentence them a huge penalty.

If you’re doing email marketing, you might want to consider using other methods to reach your subscribers like RSS delivery. This way, your message won’t be blocked.

Cort: What are your feelings about Plain vs. HTML Email Marketing? What about the Audio and Visual Email?

Patric: I’ll stick to Plain Email Marketing. The secret of making money from email marketing is to make it as personalized as possible. If you’re trying to appear like a big corporation in front of your subscriber’s eyes, don’t. You do not want to compete with big corporations; your chances are slim when they have millions of dollars to implement their email marketing strategies.

Besides, your subscriber would prefer to get an email from YOU, as a real person compared to a ‘robot’ that DOES NOT have any emotion.

Audio and Visual are great tools. But it’ll never replace the good, old text email. Just like, television will never replace radio communication.

If you want to use visual or audio, the best is to offer both -- The multimedia version and also, the text version. This way, you get the best of both worlds.

You can use multimedia to attract or ‘tease’ your subscribers and get them to read your text email.

Cort: What have been your biggest successes in your business and why? Failures? What would you do differently if you could do things over?

Patric: My biggest success? Hmmm… let me see. I considered my biggest success is when I understood how to create a ‘system’ to make money online by selling info-product. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to discover this, but once you understand the concept and strategies to make $1 dollar online, you’ll know how to make $10 or $100 or $1,000 online. The method is the SAME because all you need to do is to follow a system. Once you discover that ‘success’, making money online is like a clockwork.

Other than that, I was the first Malaysian to speak among other world-class speakers for the World Internet Summit Seminar.

Failure?

Building an online business without researching it before hand. I created an online business and built a mailing list in a niche market but somehow, I was not able to make money from that mailing list. Being confused, I pursued research on why I’m not making money in that niche. Later, I found out that the subscribers of this mailing list are people who are not potential buyers because most of them do not have their own credit card!

Lesson learned?

Never build a business without researching whether the subscribers of the mailing list are potential buyers or not.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you find out that “Harry Potter soft toys” are being searched a lot each month but somehow, it seems like you can’t sell any products related to that topic. The reason is probably that the visitors are children who do not own any credit cards! So, if they want to buy, they’ll need to ask their parents to pay for it. Because of that, you've got another obstacles to get sales.

You need to get visitors that can afford to buy your products.

Cort: What would be your advice to Internet newbies concerning Email Marketing?

Patric: Always treat your subscribers as your friends. Your mailing list is not your money making machine. The subscribers are real humans reading your email hoping and relying on you to help them solve a problem. Don’t worry about making money. You’ll earn the money when you’re able to offer value to your subscribers. Always think what you can do for them to solve their problem and then, make money by offering your solution to them.

You need to create a responsive mailing list and the best way to do that is to create a relationship with your subscribers by treating them as your friends.

Since we’re on the topic of list building, I’ll like to offer a copy of my “Interview With Russell Brunson - How To Build A Responsive Mailing Fast Like Lightning Speed!” To download it for free, go to www.automateinternetmarketing.com

###
Cort McCadden is the co-founder of a new AV/TV production company called Avmagination that will be specializing in producing HDDVD – High Definition DVD – for “edu-entertainment” info products like his soon to be released Barter Wealth.

You can reach him at cort@avmagination.com and visit the website at http://www.usprepared.com to be on his mailing list to receive his newly updated FREE Ebook Survival Manual for the Third Millennium.

In this ebook you will find preparation for hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, etc. Cort is a recognized authority on survival and has made appearances on Art Bell Coast to Coast.

Check out other articles on this topic:

• Click Here