How to apply Western technologies in the Runet

Currently the question is more acute than ever: how to earn a living? A series of financial crises has made it increasingly clear to people that the traditional way of providing for a family — having a job — in most cases no longer works. So the natural question arises: what to do?

In the early to mid-1990s the West answered this question as follows: you should earn money using the Internet. This phenomenon over time came to be called individual electronic commerce. This direction is now developing rapidly. According to one internet millionaire from individual electronic commerce — Terry Dean — the number of millionaires over the past two decades has exceeded the number created in the previous several decades. Why? The answer is simple — people started doing individual electronic commerce and made fortunes.

So what is electronic commerce by Western standards?

Suppose you know how to repair refrigerators. You worked in this field for two or three decades, mastered the subtleties of the profession, know what needs to be replaced and where, and are aware of the myths circulating in this market. In other words, you are a professional in this area. But you were laid off or a layoff is imminent. What to do? In the West they do this — they record a training product on refrigerator repair, for example in video format. Then they write sales copy and create a themed website.

After that they drive traffic to their site, set up a subscription to a free mini-course where they introduce themselves to the audience and give some useful free information. And then sales of the course to the interested audience begin. The same technologies work in the Runet. But we have our own specifics. What are they?

Specific feature one. In the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet there is no such convenient payment instrument as the plastic card. In the West it is used everywhere, whereas in the Runet only a small percentage of buyers use this payment method. People are forced to use Sberbank, the post office, payment terminals, etc. This means you can no longer motivate a person to buy and be sure they will buy immediately, because a trip to the bank, for example, is itself a distracting factor, and the level of service often leaves much to be desired.

Specific feature two. In the West people trust advertising — they have been taught to do so for decades. Positive advertising copy, guarantees, and flashy headlines work there. In the Runet it all works differently. If it is a guarantee, you must present it so that a person does not think, “they promised me too much.” If it is a headline, it must be to the point. If there are testimonials in the advertising copy, they must show a concrete result plus all the contact details of the person who wrote the testimonial.

Specific feature three. Level of internet penetration. If in the West everyone has the Internet and it is fast, in the Runet this good is far from universal. And if it exists, in many regions the internet is via dial-up connection, or if not dial-up, it is very expensive. Therefore multimedia should be used very sparingly in your advertising materials. Although recently there has been a trend toward deeper adoption of Web 2.0 in the Runet.

Specific feature four. Many technical capabilities of the Western segment are not available. For example, there is only one autoresponder service for the entire Runet. What is that? An autoresponder is an e-mail auto-responder. A person sends a request to it and within a certain time receives the needed information. There are many more such services in the West.

Thus, despite the fact that Western experience of individual electronic commerce in the Runet is being described more and more fully, before directly applying it one must take into account the specifics of Runet commerce.

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Source: BizMost.Biz - electronic commerce - Western experience