Ian del Carmen is the President and CEO of Fireball Group of Companies. He started doing business online in April 2006 and after less than a year established a name for himself and an established empire in the Internet marketing industry.
Del Carmen is one of the most sought after Internet marketing consultants in the world right now, having a regular client base of 70,000+ businesses worldwide from Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Australia to as far as Canada, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Perhaps nobody would have imagined that 30-year old Ian del Carmen would become the CEO of a successful Internet marketing company in the Philippines.
After all, before he started his Internet marketing company, Fireball LLC at www.FireballOnline.com, the college undergraduate barely knew a thing about computers.
Ian recalls with a chuckle at his naiveté when he was in high school; he was so puzzled at how computers printed paper.
“I actually thought paper had to be stuck to the computer screen,” he laughs.
But he’s come a long way since then. Through sheer determination and studying the ins and outs of Internet marketing on his own, Ian built his company from a one-man business he first operated out of his own bedroom to one that now has more than 70,000 clients worldwide.
His success today comes from the resolve to overcome a lot of rough patches in his life.
Brought up by a single mother after his parents’ early separation, Ian went to public school during his elementary days. When he was in high school, he was able to transfer to a private institution after his uncle paid for his school fees.
At the age of 15, Ian worked at McDonald’s to augment the family income. But after two months, he quit. “I realized as early as then that I couldn’t work for a boss.”
In second year college, he decided to sell T-shirts which he designed himself. His small endeavor became so successful that he was supposed to consign them to a department store in Bulacan. The deal however didn’t push through because he realized he didn’t have much experience yet in conducting business.
Dropping out from college, Ian then became a TV scriptwriter, first for Channel 4, and then for ABS-CBN, writing and producing shows such as the reality show “Pinoy Big Brother.”
It was during this time that his interest in Internet marketing was sparked.
At that time, Ian used the net primarily for checking emails, but then he saw the opportunity to sell and resell licenses of digital products.
“I saw that there was an opportunity in what is known as “resell rights and private label business model” where you can get generic products online and re-label with my own brand. I also started to learn how to develop websites…”
The irony was, Ian didn’t even have a computer and was just renting a PC. But this didn’t deter him. After a while, he bought a second-hand computer, but he didn’t have any Internet connection, so he had to go to a café and download all the research information which he would then study at home.
He then began his first foray into Internet marketing, distributing e-books compiled together in CDs as concessions to the bookstore, “Mag.net” After dismal sales, his attempt at selling digital books flopped.
“I realized that the local market was not yet ready for such a thing,” he says.
Just like most successful entrepreneurs, Ian saw the opportunity for success in a moment of failure – he then had the idea to copy the American model for selling e-books, which were simply digital downloads and did not require any form of storage or inventory.
After studying various US models, Ian then decided to sell various forms of digital products to the overseas market. He remembers the exact moment he made his first sale.
“I sold a package of e-books for US$ 27 to an American client online. I was so happy, I sent her many other e-books for free.”
It was then that Ian decided to leave his TV writing job and go full-time into Internet marketing, working out of his bedroom at home. His decision came after realizing that he could make money on his own time, without a boss.
Ian then expanded his product range and was selling other digital downloads, such as software, online marketing tutorials, video and MP3 downloads, as well as subscription wholesaler to the global market.
After a few months, he was earning around US$1,000-2,000 a month, not bad considering he had very little capital outlay.
He then made his first investment, which aptly enough was a PC, a Ferrari laptop which costs more than a hundred thousand pesos.
Early last year, he fulfilled his dream to become a millionaire at the age of 28 and earned the equivalent of one million pesos in just a week’s time after selling what is known as “membership wholesaler sites.” They are basically membership sites he created which he then sold wholesale with resale rights from US$ 197 to US$ 397 per pack. He managed to sell over a hundred of them to his global clients, earning him a cool million bucks.
In May 2007, he realized that his growing business was getting too big for one man to handle alone so he set up his company “Fireball Planet Corporation” with a few stockholders and some full-time as well as part-time staff.
“I realized back then that I may be one of the pioneers of the Internet marketing industry in the Philippines. It struck me that you could earn dollars not just by leaving the country, but also by selling digital products on the net.”
He says today a big challenge for him is the weak dollar, which affects his profit margin. He has started to offer his clients the option to pay in Euros.
Another hindrance he says is the image of the country.
“Most people think that the Philippines is a place where a lot of scams take place online, so I had to overcome that by building good relationships with my clients.”
Looking forward, he plans to expand his services and will be capitalizing on another global trend: outsourcing. He will be offering virtual staff based in the Philippines to work for other Internet marketers worldwide.
And he is now spreading out FireballOnline.com into the region, establishing franchises in Singapore, China, Hong Kong, and USA as well as potentially in the growing markets of Australia, United Kingdom, India and Indonesia.
Despite being prevalent in everyday life, Ian says the Internet is still in a very young stage and there are still many more opportunities out there in the virtual world. If there’s one tip he can give other Filipinos, it’s to cash in on the prospects available in the web, and not just waste their time chatting on the net or updating their latest Friendster and Facebook accounts.
“People go to the net to surf for whatever information they may need or look for certain talent or skills that they can use. If you can offer that, why not sell it online?”
Good advise from a man who struck gold in the virtual landscape.
by Sam Tongson
Channel News Asia
More About Ian del Carmen
Ian del Carmen is the founder and CEO of Fireball Group of Companies (www.FireballOnline.com). An Internationally-acclaimed Internet marketing professional, he has been featured as a resource speaker in a number of Internet marketing seminars and events worldwide. He is the best-selling author of a number of books like “Crack the Secret Code,” “Rags to Dot Com Riches,” “iPad Riches,” “48 Hour Profit Plan,” and more.
A College undergraduate, he started doing business online from his own bedroom in 2006 and in less than a year, he proved that anyone can be a self-made Internet millionaire using the power of the Internet as featured on the front page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. In 2008, he bested thousands of Internet marketing professionals from across the globe being the first and only Filipino winning the top place in the “Biggest Internet Marketing Challenge” aside from always being in the top place in affiliate marketing competitions making him one of the very few power affiliates in the world. He is awarded the Certificate as a Certified eMarketing Consultant (CeMC) by the Internet Marketing Standards Board which he considers as his College diploma he earned not from school but from actual business experience.
His online coaching program at www.FireballInternetMarketing.com has been a training ground for thousands of brand new Internet entrepreneurs who are now creating their own success stories. He is currently serving as an Internet marketing and New Media consultant to many companies here in the Philippines and abroad while running his own businesses using his laptop with Internet connection from the comfort of his own home he built from his Internet businesses.
Ian del Carmen and Mobile Marketing
Ian del Carmen, founder and CEO of Fireball Group of Companies (www.FireballOnline.com), started mobile marketing in 1994 through then pagers or beepers being one of the marketing professionals of Isla Communications Inc. Straight from high school. He was doing beeper marketing promoting direct selling products like Avon and Jockey. Eversince he first owned a cellular phone, he became very fascinated with mobile technology.
“It was a Motorola TeleTac in 1995 and I felt I had the power as soon as I recharged it’s bulky battery,” says del Carmen laughingly. “Then I owned a Nokia 5110 when SMS started. It was then called “cellpage” and mobile marketing was perfect then as sending text messages was free with your cellphone subscription. Until telcos started charging on a per message basis.”
Being a born marketer, he has been using his cellphone in doing business with his clients as a salesman of various products and services offline until he discovered Internet marketing in 2006 and created his first-ever membership site called MobileEbooks.net where members get ebooks read on mobile devices every month.
“I upgraded to a Sony Ericsson P910 that time and I thought– hey! I can read ebooks through a cellphone. And I was like, gee! I found one good niche…” del Carmen said smiling. “Then I launched MobileAudioBooks.net when I discovered I can sell audio books in WMA or MP3 formats to mobile users. I grabbed some public domain texts and fed them to a text-to-mp3 software and I got my own new products to sell.”
Even before Apple releases the iPhone, del Carmen has been active in mobile marketing as a mobile content provider. He then released the courses on iPhone-Secrets-Exposed.com and iPadRiches.com in 2009 and 2010 respectively.
Together with his iPad-related course which he created based on some insider information from some people from Apple, and he launched a few days even before the iPad is released in the US, he also opened up his own app store at OohStore.com. He also acquired the web app called Appatap.com that houses a number of web apps for various mobile types. Fireball Mobile also opened the SMS search engine called Lukn4 initially in the United States.
In the third quarter of 2010, just in time when mobile marketing is starting to be hyped up in the Internet world and so-called mobile marketing gurus started to come out online, del Carmen’s company through it’s Fireball Mobile division joined forces with the Oklahoma Media Group to launch TextOpt.com, a text marketing service that allows anyone to build lists of mobile users and send SMS broadcasts through a short code number powered by SendToDOTCOM.com with no per message fees and no telco fees.
He also started working with Ben Deleon, the mobile advertising king who authored the first-ever mobile marketing book on Amazon in 1993 titled “Marketing on the Go” in creating the home-study course called “Mobile Marketing Truth.” Deleon and del Carmen are both from the texting capital of the world, the Philippines.
As one of the founders of Trustworthy.mobi, a trusted organization for mobile sites, del Carmen sold some of his niche text marketing products related to cars and condo sales, golf-related promotions, and hotel and restaurant advertising to new owners.
To continue providing mobile content to the world, del Carmen launched MobilePLR.com, a B2B membership site that provides products with private label rights every month. Sold out in just a few days, MobilePLR.com is currently not accepting new members.
Fireball Mobile is set to launch a brand new app called TheInternetMarketer.mobi during the grand launch of the Internet Marketing Main Event.
