Subscribe To This Site

About Us

How Did We Get to This Point?

Jeffrey Rupe, Professional Headshot My name is Jeffrey Rupe and I am a free man! I say this because professionally I make my own decisions, choose my own direction, hold myself accountable, and answer to no employer.

But I wasn't always like this.

I grew up in a lower-middle class family with a mix of middle class and lower class values. I was taught that getting a good education and a good job were the keys to success and I worked hard to eventually earn a B.A. in English Education (education's a nice, secure industry) and a Masters in Information Systems (tech jobs pay a lot, right?).

Like many, I learned some valuable lessons from the savings & loan debacle of the mid-90's, the Dot.com bust of the early 2000's, and more recently, the "Great Recession."

First, I learned that there's no such thing as a secure job anymore. Second, I learned that a job that pays a lot of money one year can pay almost nothing the next year. Finally, and most importantly, I learned that when no one is willing to hire you for a job, you'd better go and make one for yourself!

Why Marketing? And Why Online?

Part of the reason I chose marketing is that my own interests naturally lend themselves to this discipline. I love to write and math and numbers are like a second language to me. But it would take more than that to set me on this road.

When I was working on my Masters degree in the College of Business at the University of Phoenix, many of my professors seemed fascinated by the direction our economy appeared to be moving. Amazon's e-book sales were growing rapidly and looked like they'd soon overtake sales of paper-and-ink books. (E-book sales exceeded printed book sales on Amazon in May, 2011. If you included free e-books, the benchmark was met about a year earlier.)

The talk in class among professors and students was that the economy was shifting from a service economy to an information economy. This meant that earning power would be moving from the internet service providers like Comcast to content providers such as Google, Amazon, CNN.com, and others. There were many excited discussions about what this would mean for business, marketing, technology, and everyone from CEO's to consumers. Any time there is a major economic shift like this, opportunities arise and fortunes are made.

The lessons I took away were that in this new economy, knowledge is the new currency and anyone can make money. So if people are now willing to pay for knowledge, and everyone has knowledge, how do you get people to pay for your knowledge? This question bounced around in my head for about a month while I finished a programming class.

When it came time to start my next class, the answer hit me. Marketing! I read a case study about VHS and Beta format video tapes in the early 80's. Beta tapes were a superior product, but the manufacturers of VHS had better marketing. In the end, the better product lost because VHS was "good enough" and it was marketed better to consumers.

Information is the same way. For every piece of knowledge in my head, there's at least a million other people with the same knowledge. Instead of spending my time and money on more schooling to improve my knowledge, I choose to invest that time and money into marketing and I make money instead of spending it.

So, What Now?

One of the best things that I took away from the University of Phoenix was a new way of thinking. I was no longer bound by the employee mentality that I grew up with. Before I even graduated, I started a Children's Theater Company with my wife and it quickly grew into a self-sustaining side business with meager profits.

To me, this confirmed my business know-how and gave me some first-hand experience in marketing. The biggest lesson here was the power of the internet. Our ROI for online marketing efforts was about 135 times that of any of our offline marketing efforts! The internet is truly the new modern marketplace!

I began to help out some of our friends who are also business owners. When their online marketing ROI's were just as high, I had my proof of concept and Online-Marketing-Answers.com was born.

I took some time to research the tools that I would use for building the site and stumbled upon SiteBuildIt.com. SBI! has all the tools needed to build a well marketed site of any kind AND they have tutorials that teach everything I had already learned! Talk about an affirmation! It's a perfect partnership that was just meant to be.

Disclaimer

As I just mentioned, there is a business relationship between myself and SBI! Yes, I get a small commission if you sign up for their services, but that isn't important because I would definitely recommend them anyway.

I also want to be sure that I am not giving anyone the impression that education is no longer important. While it is certainly possible to start an e-business without a college education, taking college level courses in areas such as business, communications, sales, marketing, and technology will give you an edge that many others do not have. If you are thinking about and planning your educational future, I encourage you to check out the University of Phoenix's online programs. They provide quality education for people with a busy lifestyle.

Return to Online Marketing Answers from About Us

New! Comments

Have your say about what you just read! Leave me a comment in the box below.

SBI!