Michael Choi

For the last few days, i’ve been working hard on developing a site called Christmas List Express.

As i’ve been learning so much from Paul Allen about Internet Marketing, I thought “Do you know what? I should try some of the things I’ve learned from Paul and actually apply it in the real business world!” I wanted to do something that would 1) help me learn and apply the internet marketing strategies I’ve learned from Paul, 2) make me some money if possible.

After going through some ideas I had, I was driving to meet my friend Spencer Walker (a friend that’s also taking the Internet Marketing class from BYU). On the way, I thought of how fun it would be if we we were to create a site that helps people with their Christmas shopping. After talking to him a little more, we developed some ideas and put it together. Below is a screenshot of the site (as of today):

What we plan to do is to create a massive newsletter, have some businesses sponsor these newsletters, and with the money generated, donate $1 for each person that joins the newsletter. We hope to help the homeless and children whom want Christmas gifts but just don’t have the money to buy them. Our goal is to raise $10,000 this Christmas through this.

With Christmas List Express, you can:

1. have Christmas List Express do your Christmas shopping for you!
2. submit your christmas list and share it with your friends and families
3. see what other people want for their Christmas
4. join our Christmas newsletter (we’ll be donating $1 for each person that joins)

Our internet marketing strategies are as follows:

1. Google PPC - Do a Google Pay per click campaign on keyword such as ‘Christmas Shopping’, ‘Christmas Wish Lists’, etc. We will focus on getting those who are interested in having us do their Christmas shopping. They will be directed to a landing page where they can submit their information, which automatically sends an email to our sales email (sales@christmaslistexpress.com)
2. Top 10 Funny Lists - We will have the top 10 funny christmas lists submitted from real people. We developed the site so that people can forward the list to their friends and families
3. BYU Daily Universe - We will contact the BYU Daily Universe to see if they would be interested in writing a story for us
4. Carol and BYU Weeks - Our friend Carol offered to either write a story or take a short film coverage on our story
5. Blogging - I will ask some of my friends to blog about our site
6. Jay Leno or David Letterman - We want to submit our funny Christmas lists to them and see if they would be interested in using some of our lists during their talk shows.

There are five ways the site generates revenue:

1. Service Fee - If they want us to do their Christmas shopping, we charge them a service fee for our hours
2. Google Adsense - We put google adsense and when people click on the ad, we make money
3. Amazon Affiliate Program - We allow people to forward each other’s christmas lists and to see the list of items that people want for this year’s Christmas. We also put a direct link to Amazon to purchase these items. Each time the person clicks on the Amazon link and make a purchase, we make 5-7% commission
4. Newsletter - Once we get a lot of people subscribed to our newsletter, we’ll have look for businesses to sponsor our newsletter and put their ad.
5. Sponsors - We will allow businesses to sponsor the site and put a logo and a direct link to their business homepage

I don’t know exactly how Christmas List Express is going to turn out, but I am sure excited to learn from this experience. Learn how Christmas List Express got started.

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