Ready, set, 'Net! - Internet; Web sites for businesses - includes related articles on creating a Web site, Internet service providers and computer security

Entrepreneur, June, 1996 by Robert McGarvey

ABOUT two years ago, LaVerne Ferguson, co-owner with her husband, George, of Rail Pass Express in Columbus, Ohio, heard about the travel forum on America Online (AOL), the nation's largest online service with more than 5 million members. She and Rail Pass Express marketing director, Christian Martin, wondered if this could be a place to sell their company's products--BritRail and Eurail train passes. Very experimentally, they began posting information about train travel in Europe. Mindful of online service etiquette--which frowns on hard-core selling--they stressed information first; only in passing did they indicate that their company sold train passes.

"This way, we were building a reputation for our company as a place where travelers could get help," says Ferguson. But sales started coming in anyway: "In the first year we did this, we took in $60,000 in revenues from AOL users," says Martin. The total expresses? "About $400 [that year] in user fees to AOL."

The second year, Rail Pass Express stepped up its visibility. The company bought an online advertisement (cost: $750 per month), maintained a steady presence on

the travel forum's message board and opened their own Web site. The strategy paid off. "[Online] revenues have climbed to over $300,000," says Martin. "There is a lot of money to be made in the online world."

Should you go online? Listen up: "Small businesses have the most to gain by going online," says Charles Ray, an office administration professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.

"The Internet is levering the playing field for small businesses that compete against big companies," agrees Stephen Fickas, an associate professor of computer and information science at the University of Oregon in Eugene. "The wide-open opportunities available online today are like those found last century in the Wild West."

Adds Jill Ellsworth, systems operator for AOL's In Business forum and co-author of New Internet Business Book (John Wiley & Sons): "The key question is, Are your customers and potential customers online? If your target audience is online, you should be, too."

Just who is online used to be a question that defied answers, but hard numbers now are pouring out of the nation's polling organizations. For instance, O'Reilly and Associates, a Sebastopol, California, publisher of computer books and software, conducted a poll last fall that concluded that 3.7 percent of American adults (9.7 million people) have direct access to the Internet or an online service such as CompuServe, AOL and Prodigy. The survey also found those users have a median household in come between $50,000 and $75,000.

The poll's conclusions are clear: Online users are monied--and their numbers are rapidly increasing. "That's why more entrepreneurs are looking at [the Internet] as a way to grow their businesses," says Marcia Yudkin, author of Marketing Online (Plume/Penguin). Better still, there is an increasing number of ways to do business online--from starting a "store" on the World Wide Web to using e-mail to entice customers to shop. Adds Yudkin, "Some of these online tactics are very low-cost but still get you a lot of mileage."

* ON A SHOESTRING

"The cheapest way to get a foothold in the 'Net is to make your online presence known by using forums," advises Yudkin. From AOL's travel forum and Prodigy's pets forum to CompuServe's legal forum, online services offer hundreds of forums--essentially electronic bulletin boards--where users are welcome to ask questions, give advice or spout opinions. Many thousands of users visit these boards daily--meaning creative marketers can find a large audience.

Rail Pass Express stands as a prime example of a how-to, but Yudkin, too, has achieved success by going online. "I've sold many books, tapes and newsletter subscriptions by making myself known online," she says.

Yudkin's strategy is simple: She regularly visits Entrepreneur's small business forum on CompuServe, and when she spots a user question on a forum where she can apply her expertise in marketing and publicity, she'll post a helpful reply. Along the way, she'll mention books she's written--and, very often, users come back to her site ready to buy.

That urge to buy is further stoked by Yudkin through clever use of e-mail. In forum posts, she closely obeys the Internet culture's bias against overt selling, but she nonetheless often urges users to contact her directly to get her list of FAQs--"Frequently Asked Questions"--about small-business publicity. Users who send a message to her e-mail address automatically receive by return e-mail her FAQ list, which provides plenty of useful information--as well as plugs for her products.

"E-mail is a great tool for getting out information about what you do at little cost," Yudkin says. How little? Yudkin spends $25 per month to operate several automatic e-mail accounts.

You can also profitably use e-mail to directly contact customers and prospects, and most businesses would gain by doing so, says Steve Jones, a consultant and communications professor at the University of Tulsa in Tulsa, Oklahoma. "I am advising more and more businesses to ask for e-mail addresses from customers. Build a list, and use it to send out discount coupons, spec sheets, anything you otherwise would mail or fax," Jones says. "The cost is small, and delivery is instantaneous. The results of creatively using e-mail can be substantial."