Student Success Stories

I have had successes in two major areas during my coaching sessions. I have earned almost $8,000 on eBay and Craigslist, and learned a great deal about marketing on the internet with the first step of getting a website almost completed coming along well. This has been a tremendous confidence builder and has given me a great deal of incentive to continue the learning and the work. This is a new business area for me so I feel that I have made a great amount of progress.

My early goals included earning back the amount of the program before finishing coaching sessions and that was quite easily achieved. I also have a good and increasing understanding of internet marketing and sales.

In the next three months I will have my website rolling along with expected earnings of about $5,000 per month. This will be in addition to my sales on eBay and Craigslist as I have also been working on earning sales via resales of e-books, and items found on affiliate sites. This is a particularly exciting aspect and I look forward to also continuing to listen to recorded classes at Prosper. These are an excellent portion of the program and I highly recommend that students not miss out on their value and teaching. Longer term, I plan to have a retirement income that will significantly increase my existing pension.

I will travel, have extra capital for shopping and hosting friends that come to visit. These are expected to mean that I will retire earlier, perhaps in as little as 5 years vs. the previously planned 10 to 15!!

I will keep in touch with my mentors over the long term as their support and knowledge will continue to be very important in my business and life. Other valuable aspects of the personal mentoring are that these areas of new learning are very exciting and would not have come to be of so much value to me in this short period without the assistance and especially the responsibility and commitment to the program that comes with having invested in the mentoring.

The ability to earn a tremendous income without a great deal of time working is exciting and certainly would not have even been on my radar screen without this investment. While we all have to work to make this work, it is more than returned in the learning and in the additional income streams. I highly recommend this program and mentoring to anyone looking for very rapid changes in their life with high rates of return! Thanks to both my mentors, Nate and Dan.

Barbara F.
West Oakville, ON, Canada

Testimonial Disclosure

The last couple “end of year” months have been extremely action packed. First I wanted to say thank you for all your help and guidance you have provided this year for Pure Bamboo. I can honestly say we would not be where we are without your insightful advice. Thank you. I wanted to write you to share with you my year in review as I think you may find it interesting and I know it will be helpful for me. But before I begin I wanted to let you know I’ve decided not to pursue the reality game show project. While I think it is a viable and innovative idea and would be a great marketing avenue for Robert Allen, as you pointed out it’s the time and energy that it takes to put something like that together. Both of which I have little of. Thank you for your offer to fun it by him, perhaps it is a project best left for another time.

As of today first year sales totaled 130K! Not bad for a bamboo bathrobe company in its first year. In late October we received a call from Hyatt Hotels on Sunset from the head of housekeeping requesting information and samples of our robes. They reviewed our products and put in our largest order to date – 1625 robes – almost a 60K invoice. However, I did not have that many robes in stock and could only provide a little over 200 – which was still an $8000 – invoice – not bad. Our hope is that they still plan to purchase the entire amount from us – and coincidentally Hyatt Hotels Spa’s are called Pure Spa. Could be a good match for us – worldwide. If we could have secured all 1600 robes and monies from them our gross sales total for the year would have been closer to 180K!

Additional highlights include: working with Virgin Mobile and having the towels delivered to Richard Branson at an eco event in New Jersey, interest and hopefully a purchase by BP gas stations, Having the robes presented in two eco fashion shows, Landing the client of Glen Ivy – and a sale of 1000 robes and year contract for them to purchase the robes.

The ISPA convention we attended in Florida enabled us to gain access to high level corporate executives for the Ritz Carton, Four Seasons and Canyon Ranch among others. At present we are in talks with and all companies have samples of our products for review. We are hopeful and confident that at least some of these deals will come through. There are several other companies equally as large if not larger that are also interested in the robes, towels, and sheets all of which have product in front of their boards for review.

The Price of Bamboo is increasing as are the number of competitors on the market – if you go online now and type in Bamboo clothes or fabric – soooo many more internet companies are popping up – yet none to date with the business model of focusing just on Spa and resorts – actually it seems there are few companies that sell bathrobes and towels to Spas and resorts – the largest has only been around for 7 years or so and none of the main well known companies in this field are going green. At least not to my knowledge – ironically, idealistically this is both a blessing and a curse – good because of the marketing advantage that provides Pure Bamboo bad for the environment over all. One of the things I’m most proud of implementing is our Rebate and Recycle program in which our clients have an incentive to return our used bathrobes for a 5% of purchase price rebate toward the purchase of the same item – once the bathrobes have worn out – they return them to us and we’ll recycle them – no one else is doing this and companies are taking notice.

In some of our first conversations you mentioned having access to several suppliers for the bathrobes and towels in case one stopped producing. On this front I have been successful as well. I have been talking with two investors who are interested in working with and investing in Pure Bamboo. They have contacts in China and have now found 3 factories that can supply the robes and towels. One of the investors is from the Philippines and has a garment factory over there which could produce smaller runs for us. This also means we could become a private labeler for other companies seeking to make bamboo products. He has found three factories all of which can make the robes at a reduced cost. As for the quality of the product that is the next step to see what these factories can do. I’m asking for an investment of 150K from them. We’ll see how it plays out. I also have names and numbers of other contacts for bamboo fabric in China so if it does not work out with them I can pursue other means. I really see this as the next major step for being able to take the company to the next level – we have to reduce manufacturing costs so we can increase profits and market share. However, in order to do this and when additional large orders come through – it would be good to have investors to turn to for loans for the company as cash flow can or will be a significant problem in the year to come.

On another front we have made significant inroads with a “green” spa consulting company. They like us and want to work with us and have over 100 companies they are working with at present – They’ve already given us some leads and referrals over the last two months since our meeting. I’m not sure how compensation can or should work for them if at all. They are called Bluspasinc.com – Doug Chambers the head of Blu Spa’s is a straight shooter no nonsense type of guy that I really like. He formally was a corporate attorney and transferred that skill to consulting for hotels and resorts to help them go green. My goal is to work more closely with him in the year to come and possibly have him on our board of advisors. In addition to Blu Spa – there are a couple other Spa Consultants we are in talks with – each of these could be extremely lucrative.

I’ve still not been able to make any headway with Nordstrom’s or Fred Segal and this is frustrating cause I know we would be a good match for them. Furthermore I feel it is only a matter of time before these stores pick up a bamboo robe from someone else – at present finding bamboo towels is relatively easy but no one is really touting the robe. This is a much more “feel good” product than a bamboo towel and I find it to be a very easy sell. So fingers crossed for entrance into this market.

In brief I feel it has been a good year for Pure Bamboo – I feel the name and branding are strong and easy to remember the URL is also perfect and easy for people to find. I feel we have identified a strong market and I know we are the first company to be actively marketing to the hotel, resort and spa industry. First mover – major tactical advantage – my hope is that we can get well enough established so we can become a major force and player on the market.

Again thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you.

Bruce D.
Los Angeles, CA


SUCCESS UPDATE

...Our gross sales have surpassed $500K for this year alone and are still climbing.  My goal is to break $1M for the year in gross sales...

Bruce D.
Los Angeles, CA

Testimonial Disclosure

I thought I knew my way around the internet and I also thought I knew how to make a decent living from it.  However, I have been working with my coach for about a couple of months now and to say I have learned a lot is an understatement.

I have been particularly impressed with the tools and ideas that my coach has provided me in terms of SEO and JV's.  By utilizing the tools and advice he has provided, in conjunction with optimizing my website, I have been generating sales that have averaged over $3000 a week over the last number of weeks!

In hindsight, I did know quite a bit about marketing, but now after working with Prosper Coaching, I know a great deal more!

Paul P.
Lincoln, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom

Testimonial Disclosure

My background is primarily real estate and construction.  I started this business a few years ago with the idea of selling decorative concrete products to home owners, small to midsize commercial contractors, or property managers…who had smaller projects that contractors typically wouldn’t take on…clients who had no resources.  So, I formulated www.decorativeconcretekits.com to bring it under one roof.

The website just recently went live…I started about one year ago, had the right ideas, I hooked up with you guys last July…and I went about redesigning it.  I added some new vendors and in a pretty short period of time we are getting really great traffic.  We’re probably about 75 unique visitors a day right now after about two weeks.  We just had 120 yesterday.

SUCCESS UPDATE

I’ve been working the blog hard, less on articles but at least 2 ezine articles per week. Submitted to close to 200 directories, accepted by 20.  Gross sales since web site went up is $21,000 net about $8,000.00. Total sales 23 $900.00 per sale.

I’ve completed 50 blog posts. Each I work in a few keyword phrases. Traffic on my website is 120-175 per day for the past month. Most interest is from Texas, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts. Florida.

In recent days I’m seeing 20% of traffic on site for more than 5 minutes up from about 12%. I’m also seeing a change from about 65% leaving in first 30 seconds down to 55% recently.  Everyone who buys a kit is thrilled with the results. I don’t understand why I’m not selling 1 per day.  So currently I’m averaging $2,000 per week in sales, I need to get to $8,000 per week to start making any money. After expenses that will get me to about $3,000 per week in profit, which will enable me to pay myself a salary and have some operating capital in the bank.

SUCCESS UPDATE

I’ve picked up some new business.  1 company with 2 businesses actually hired me to handle their online marketing.  Paying me $2,000.00 each for starters.  Looks like I should be close to $7,000.00 per month very soon and climbing.

And to think people roll their eyes when I tell them I have a site about concrete.  Check out my latest post.  Just opened up a whole new world of decorative plasters (many have Portland cement in them) for use on walls and ceilings.
 
Ed W.
Wilton, CT
www.metrocrete.com

SUCCESS UPDATE

Prosper provided an amazing education. I didn’t realize how great it was until recently. I think everyone expects to get instant results from online education. Even if you went to Harvard it would take years to realize the benefits. I have been working hard for 3 years and never gave up on what I learned at Prosper. I have what I believe is the basis of a multi million dollar business. Whether I reach that level has a lot to do with luck, tremendous hard work, and desire.

There have been many dark moments along the path. I almost quit at least 5 times. This month I will make close to $20,000.00 net income. I foresee making that amount every month. I also see how I could make $200,000.00 per month. Prosper will give you the education. It’s up to you to make it work.

Testimonial Disclosure

Case study for our first month with Prosper As of today which has been our first month we have made $360.00. We made our first 10 sales with in 2 weeks on Ebay and have used the tools given to us to find product for future sales and research our product before adding it to Ebay. Our sales of product is a total of 16 items. We sent out a watch that was not working because we did not test it when we received it. We immediately asked for the product to be returned for a full refund. When we received the watch we sent a refund through Paypal. This kept our customer happy and also our feedback. What we have learned to this point is to make sure the product is in working order before sending it out. Not everything you buy from the reliable sources will work when you receive them so you really need to check them out. We are proud to have a 100% positive feedback and want to give our customer the best possible product for their money. When we do not have any product coming in right away we find things at home that can be put up for sale. This helps to get rid of clutter also. Paypal is the best form or payment for us both for the customer and for our shipping process at this point. This process of learning with Prosper has been very good in leading us to ways to improve not only our business but our needs at home. It is hard work at the start but once you have all the information in place it runs more smoothly. Thank you, Barbara and Steven C.

UPDATE:
Case study for our fifth month with Prosper As of today which has been our fifth month we have made $5,427.00 in net sales Month to month we have grown to where we are at approximately at $2,000 per month. We reached our goal of Power seller and actually made a total of 74 sales on EBay and have used the tools given to us to find product for future sales and research our product before adding it to EBay. Keeping our customers happy and with very positive feedback have helped us to achieve the power seller ranking. We have learned to keep searching for more products because but found our niche with the customers and, they are looking for more. Still have many of our orders are items from home and the cleaning house is still a work in progress. It is true that they things you think would not sell really do! Many are my doll collection I have had for years. We have learned so far that detailed descriptions are better. Your feedback can go down quickly if you do not let the buyer know what they are buying up front. EBay seems to be our best selling area at this point. We are continually learning from the mistakes we have made but are working our way us as you can see. Thanks Prosper~ Thank you,

Barbara and Steven C.
Duluth, GA

Testimonial Disclosure

Just wanted to let you know where I am with my eBay goal of 50 sales. YTD I have 32 sales! The total gross sales amount is not much as many of the items I sold are little things. The total gross sales is $597.20 I have about 35 products I am currently trying to get listed on eBay when I am not working on the website.
UPDATE:
I have been selling ALOT on eBay. So far I have sold 32 items in the last 31 days for a total of $357.10. I have 28 items currently listed on eBay with more to soon be added. My total eBay score is currently 67 with 43 (100% positive) of this score as a seller. I have 24 recently shipped items for which I am waiting feedback.
UPDATE:
Just wanted to let you know that my eBay store is continuing to do fantastic. So far this month (through today) I have sold 85 items totalling $1566.15. I also have sold $220.79 locally. My total feedback score is up to 140 with 129 of this as a seller. My feedback has been fantastic with many comments on how fast the shipping is and that they will be back! My suppliers have been very fast with getting orders shipped out! I have been selling several of my top stethoscopes as well. The master cardiology stethoscopes sell for $189.99 each and I am selling at least 2 per week. I have started my adword campaigns for my website and have continued to add products there as well. Thanks again for all your help!
UPDATE:
Last 31 days: $10,713.43 Last 14 days: $8,534.48 Last 7 days: $4,859.02 What a month!

Vicki H.
Clinton, IN

Testimonial Disclosure

I have started a very successful internet business under the guidance of the team at Prosper.  I sold my first item within a day of making my website available to the public.  This was accomplished simply by following the advice of my mentor: “This week, your assignment is get listings in as many relevant directories as possible”.  To-date, (which is exactly 1 month as of the day I am writing this), I have sold over $1,500.00 worth of product on-line at a profit margin of about 40%.

Though these numbers are not huge, the education I received from my mentor has provided me with the knowledge base which will allow me to continue expanding my site and increase my income steadily.  I now know that my internet income is limited only by the time I put into working on my website, negotiating appropriate products to sell, and the creativity of my own ideas in discovering other venues in which to market my products.

Over the next 3 months, I intend to complete my web page marketing my custom dance shoes to brides and bridal parties.  I plan to purchase an advertisement in a prestigious group of on-line bridal magazines which will direct the customers to this specific page on my site.  I have already discussed the web page styling with one of the editors, and am working hard to complete the page targeting the lucrative wedding industry.

I also have negotiated a contract to sell several brands of top-of-the-line dance shoes through the only dealer n the US that I know of who can keep a specific line of very desirable high-end ballroom dance shoes in stock.  The distributor accomplished this through working with German dance shoe design genius for over 30 years.  Knowing first-hand of the frustration of professional and semi-professional ballroom dancers in getting these shoes, I invested much time in negotiating an agreement with this distributor to drop ship shoes for me.

It is important to note that this distributor has NEVER drop-shipped for anyone before, but by careful negotiations we have worked out what I believe will be a win-win agreement.  During the next few months, I plan to add at least 2 of the several top-end brands to my site, and based on response to those listings, I may add more top end shoes.

The personal mentoring I received through this program kept me on a straight path to success.  My weekly assignments were well thought out and very specific.  Through this one-on-one mentoring I learned that I have to stay on top of the internet trends, particularly following the way Google ranks websites.  The personal mentoring I received through this program could never be replaced by a classroom type curriculum.  Each internet business has its own set of obstacles to overcome, and a general approach would never have allowed me to be successful.  I know that my personal mentor had no knowledge of or interest in the ballroom dance community that I now market my products to before working with me.  However, his broad experience in internet marketing allowed him to quickly understand the niche, and from that understanding he discovered how to help me in overcoming obstacles.

All of the mentors, technical support people, and designers were absolutely great.  I can not criticize any of them in their delivery of the required tools and information. In fact, if I compare the investment vs. income payoff of this program as compared to that of obtaining a degree from a university, I think the investment in Prosper would win out in many people’s bottom line. This comes from someone with a B.S. degree in Engineering, an M.S. degree in Engineering and a MBA.

Through my experience with Prosper, I believe I have finally found a way in which the investment of my time and energy will pay me back in proportion to that investment.  My full time job as an engineer working on thermal control of space borne satellites for NASA provides me with technical challenges, but does not come close to providing me with the sense that what I put into my work will pay me back proportionally.  This sort of satisfaction and gratification are exactly what I was looking for...

As constructive criticism/compliment I think that a bit more time with the website design people would have been helpful (at least to me) in learning a bit more about HTML, etc.  I regularly have problems with that, but I am learning.  The Tech Support Staff generally can help me out of problems I encounter, but I think that if I had been given more 1:1 time with the web design folks, the tech support staff would be less pressured.  I also feel that the Vermotion website outline should be more versatile as you are trying to satisfy many different sorts of internet businesses with one single web design.  In many cases, the “Default” for me was not at all optimal for my product line.  Of course, I aware that this is easier said than done…

…Finally, I would like to express special thanks to my mentor, Andrew Melchoir, who remained patient with me throughout the process.  I am very demanding of myself, and am quite demanding on others.  He lived up to my very high expectations.

SUCCESS UPDATE

This Week: $2,260.87,  this Month: $2,009.87, this Year: $88,579.98.  Timing was good too with Dancing With The Stars and all of the movies coming out. My margin varies but averages around 42.5%. Nice to have a little extra income stream...my oldest daughter is a freshman at McGill in Montreal, and my younger daughter is a junior in High School.

SUCCESS UPDATE

Business is booming. This is the slow season and I have pulled in over 16K year-to-date.  I ended last year with Gross of 105K at about a 42% profit margin. Handy for these college years for my daughters.
 
Melissa S.
Honeoye Falls, NY
www.bestballroomshoes.com

Testimonial Disclosure

After signing up with Prosper I am learning how to save money. I used to go out and buy whatever I 'wanted' and would put it on my credit card with the idea that my husband's company will pay it off anyway. We have been 'living off' his company for the past five years and, because of the economy, he hasn't worked much in those five years. The money in the company is coming to an end and without a doubt one of us is going to have to go back to work.

I don't want a nine-to-five job anymore, I am retired and I have four small Grandchildren (all within the last three years). I want something that will bring in money and let me be relatively work-free at the same time.

Then I found out about Prosper. I immediately decided this was for me. I can make money at home and I now have the time to visit my family. And, I can still give to the charities that I believe in my heart are important in this world. How perfect is that?

Of course, I have say that Prosper has the best approach to e-commerce and I could never have learned all this without my coach. He has guided me along the way and without him I would not be where I am today. I have been with Prosper since August and I have sold many items including books, CDs, DVDs, tables, a bike stand, a portable high chair, four trucks and so far I have made over $75,000.

Thank you Prosper and Ryan!

Marilyn S.
Sherwood Park, AB, Canada

Testimonial Disclosure

Everything is going really well and super busy. I've been having pretty good success with posting links on Adwords, especially in the past week and a half as I experimented with super targeted keywords and ad phrases. For the past 6 days now my Clickbank commissions have been between $180.00 and $220.00 on a daily and consistent basis. This has been all from 1 campaign and 2 text ads for the most part and with a commission earning of $29.00. Also, most importantly, my CPC has dropped, and keeps dropping, no more google slaps either, my CTR is way up some keywords some in double digits and my average position on page 1 for any of my main keywords is up also between 2 and 5. My conversions have been pretty amazing, for example; Today I earned so far $116.00 as of 12 noon, and my cost total is $37.00 , so I'm pretty excited to see if I make more this afternoon. Clickbank is awesome and I got my first cheque from them a couple weeks ago for 1145.00. That's total profit after ppc costs, a few refunds and taxes of course. That amount was based on 4 campaigns, 2 were successful, the third was a dud and fourth was about break even. Also, my costs for clicks was 757.00. Most of that cost was the first week and a half until i learned to optimize my keywords and test the ads. So I think I did pretty good with that considering the enormous learning curve with adwords. Now I'm going to scale those two campaigns to milk them as much as possible and I have a couple more products I'm researching now. I should mention too that for these campaigns I did a lot of article submission marketing for each product and I found a couple of really effective and cheap places to advertise links. They seem to be working and they're the same places I noticed where a lot of the more known online marketers have their ads.

As for my photoshop blog, I haven't really touched it lately only because I've started something similar with some people I work with that's taking off pretty fast. 3 guys I work with came to me with this idea they had. They ride motorbikes and they actually came up with a really great niche with these bikes called supermoto's. So I looked at it and proposed a joint venture project with them. I built a simple landing page, added the wordpress blog to it and a forums discussion page. Now they do all the content writing and managing the forum and I just instruct them on the social networking part of it like you showed me and how to get traffic. It's a little bit tougher to find blogs on this niche because the sport is relatively new in North America but I've got them promoting with facebook, myspace, and I think youtube as well. One of them this week actually is working out a deal with a parts distributor in the U.S. so that seems to be a real positive thing. Here's the link to check it out: http://www.supermoto-canada.com I've been pushing them to stick to the editorial calendar i gave them so they can keep everything updated weekly on the blog.

Project #3 Another friend from work started his own business locally so I worked out a deal with him where I build his website and maintain it and I get to use the landing page and link page space for some cyber real estate keeping 100% profits on whatever revenue I make on the ads I put up. I'll update you when I get going on that and let you know in a couple of weeks how or if that's working.

Anyways, so far so good. I've been using every technique from the online lessons at prospering and also the strategies you showed me and I'm a million miles farther ahead today than I was a year ago. Thanks for emailing me, I will be sure to contact you when I need help.

Darren H.
Burlington, ON

Testimonial Disclosure