As Amazing As My One-line Internet Address is, so is My Amazement of AOL's Rise, Decline and Fall

By: Ramon Ross
Submitted: 2007-01-17 13:21:35
Print this article | Tell a friend | For publisher | Social Bookmarking
Rating:
 

In 1993, Internet access was made up of three biggies. The text-heavy CompuServe, owned by the tax accounting people H&R Block and about a million members. Prodigy, a cartoon oriented joint venture of CBS, Sears and IBM with about one million members also. The last and least (at that time) was America Online (AOL), with its elegant Graphical User Interface (GUI), chat rooms and exclusive community building technology that went public the year prior with just under 250,000 members. Steve Case, the founder was doing about $40 million a year in revenue. However, the one advantage AOL had over the other Internet Service Providers (ISP) was its name. Their name America Online says what the service is; Prodigy and CompuServe could be almost anything.

Jan Brandt took AOL to 2 million members by using her experience as a direct marketing wizard who had a solid grounding in continuity marketing. She did it by working long (hundred-hour weeks) and hard to mount between 2,000 and 3,000 marketing test a year. This strategy worked so well that it enabled AOL to acquire the vast Time Warner empire as well as its early rival, CompuServe, all in just 7 years. Because AOL itself was unique, and Brandt was thoroughly grounded in the old rules of direct marketing, AOL’s membership rose to 22 million. And this was amid the dot-com crash. AOL‘s revenue came from automatically hitting 22 million credit cards for membership dues a month, or $525 million a month which is $6.3 billion a year.

Wall Street started noticing that AOL was beginning to cool down; it wasn’t signing up new members with the same momentum. With 47% of the Internet market, AOL had creamed the stock market; all the obvious people had bought in; new members were costing more and more to acquire and the growth was incremental. To me at the time, it was obvious, AOL became complacent and forgot the reason it was a big success. AOL had a huge, loyal, captive audience of 22 million people. Any marketer, even with half of his brain tied behind his back, could figure out how to delight the membership by making wonderful exclusive offers and set back and rake in the money. Happy members would tell non-members about these great offers and the buzz would generate more members that wanted in on the action.

With the downturn of AOL and resignation of AOL chairman Steve Case comes a new age of superior ISPs, offering not only amenities like multiple POP email accounts, instant messaging and accelerated optimized web-surfing, but also a chance for subscribers to make significant commissions as distributors.

With over 10,000,000 hits per month and more than 200 people in the sign-up area each hour, it is the ISP that is also a genius Direct Marketing business opportunity, offering the chance for active distributors to earn incomes with an innovative brand new pay system called the “SuperLine®”. This ISP / business opportunity entered the game with 90 million pre-qualified customers just in the US alone and a product that is in high demand worldwide. In order for a business opportunity to succeed, it must sell a product that is in demand and offers longevity demand to create an ongoing stream of income. It’s safe to say that the Internet is not going anywhere, and people are always searching for the best deal on their ISP. Switchisp.com®’s low prices and quality service make this company one that will be here for the long haul. It is now an international business opportunity for all people on the entire planet, including the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the European Union. Check it out at: http://www.switch-isp.blogspot.com nothing to lose and every thing to gain.

Article source: Expert Articles

Most Recent Articles in Internet Marketing category

  • How To Avoid Internet Marketing Mistakes? - By: Amar Dhaliwal
    Have you ever wondered how can you possibly figure out how to market your Internet business when you're bombarded with so much conflicting information? Lots of "how to" advice applies to many online businesses. But avoiding common marketing mistakes will work for EVERY business.
  • Earning Money Online: Do It The Smart Way - By: Dennis Boesen
    Millions of people all over the globe are earning money online from their homes. If they can do it then why not you! Yes, you can also earn money online by being a little serious about this part time profession.
  • 6 Vital Components about Internet Marketing - By: Manish Gaur
    Set up a Web Site , It will make or break your success in terms of the number of copies your e-book sells, and the revenue and profit you ultimately receive from sales of your e-book.
  • What Is Right Thing In Internet Marketing Strategy? - By: Jagmohan Gusain
    The beauty of the internet is it constantly evolve and open for change. You will quickly find out that there is not one right internet marketing strategy to have success. If this were the case, wouldn't everyone be applying strategy to business?
  • How to Choose the Best SEO Consultant or Marketing Consultant - By: Joel McLaughlin
    Choosing the best SEO consultant or marketing consultant to help your website succeed may seem like a daunting task, but so long as you know what to look for; selecting an SEO consultant or marketing consultant can be relatively easy. Hiring an SEO consultant can help you to not only make sure that you'll have a perfectly-optimized website to help drive traffic to you, but you will also learn the proper way to optimize your site so that you can apply what you learn to any changes or new websites that you make down the line. Likewise, a marketing consultant can help you to create the right website content to best promote your business or products.
  • How Do YOU Go About Finding An Internet Marketing Expert? - By: Brett Symonds
    It never ceases to amaze me how many otherwise intelligent people set-up a website, without any type of plan or clue about how to promote it, how to write a sales letter, how to write an ad--nothing! Fact is, nowadays, anyone can have a website. But once you get one, then what? How are you going to make money with it?
  • Marketing Firms Keep Increasing Their Search Engine Marketing Departments - By: Joel McLaughlin
    Search engine marketing is a tool that helps you remove the material that isn't getting noticed and tap into the inner beauty of your site that is attractive and memorable. Essentially this process works to remove everything but the core beauty of your business dream.
  • Internet And Online Marketing Secrets - By: Ajay Sharma
    There are a plethora of things you can do online and of all the things you can do online, there is one that you should definitely know how to do. MARKET YOUR OWN BUSINESS ONLINE! Now with the incredible power of the Online World to reach millions of people, online marketing is definitely an amazing tool that every business should utilize. The simple fact that advertising is can be very low cost and sometimes even practically free. The ability to get the results of thousands of dollars in free publicity is practically unheard of in the business world today. Only recently have more and more people figured out how to utilize the ever exploding online world to market their business ventures. There is probably isn't a business in existence that wouldn't benefit from free publicity! The fact that properly utilizing free and low cost advertising raises net profits to unbelievable levels! For more details visit to www.freeearningtips.com .Using any or all of the major online services can help you market your business efforts.
  • Internet Marketing - Powerful and Effective Marketing Tool - By: Japinder Singh
    Today, in the new age of technology, the internet is a powerful and effective marketing tool for many companies as its presence directly affects the success of a business. Many business owners believe that having a website of its own enhances more business growth. Popularity of internet marketing is growing for the fact that it is convenient, less time consuming and ensures larger growth.
  • Use Ebooks To Build Your Mailing List - By: Anu G Khurana
    How to make money from affiliate ebooks without selling them; How to use ebooks and ebay to build your mailing list and how to use ebooks to drive more visitors to your site?