Learn how to make money online! |13 July 2020

Mr Bonté with his partner and business partner Eleonore Schaffenberg, also a business guru and face behind the Dizzy Entrepreneur

No, Seychelles NATION is not running a scam. It’s just Claude Bonté’s internet marketing classes.

“Anyone can make money online” sounds almost too good to be true or just another work-from-home scam, but is a statement which resonates all through our conversation with founder of networking group ‘Eden Island VIP’ Claude Bonté, himself an internet marketing success story.

Mr Bonté, or Claude Bonté de Beau Vallon as he is affectionately known from his Financial Fridays radio segment, is one of the leading faces behind the first of its kind business seminar extravaganza held in Seychelles in November 2019, The Dizzy Entrepreneur, is now offering his expertise through a training course on generating sales and mastering the craft of internet marketing.

As the co-founder of Seynews, the first news website aimed at the Seychellois diaspora in 1999, Mr Bonté has extensive experience in social networking and internet marketing, although in those days, there were no tried and tested internet-based business models.

“It started off with me writing an e-book ‘Kissing Frogs’ about 10 or 15 years ago because there was a website called Ecademy and it was a cute and cosy little network. So, I joined up and would blog and comment and, then I attended a seminar in which there was a guy who was homeless, talked about how the internet saved his life. He talked about how to make money on the internet, provided a business model and talked about by building rapport and give potential clients stuff for free before offering them something for sale, and he made it sound really simple”.

At the time, Mr Bonté had already established five or six networking groups, mostly in five-star hotels in London, with VIP members. Not only did he successfully earn a living through the networks he established, but he also mastered networking, gaining him recognition as an authority. One to grab every opportunity, Mr Bonté used his network to build up rapport and eventually made his first sale before going on to sell many more copies of the ebook.

“I would give them some of my secrets for free online, and I would ask that they give me their names and email address and I proposed that they could write testimonials about the ebook if they liked it. I would send them emails to build up a relationship and build up the excitement for the launch of the book and I was surprised by some of the testimonials, genuine, heartfelt testimonials. It took me around 20 days to figure out the process and back then, it was a lot of calls to America and seeking advice and guidance from other internet marketers. So eventually, I managed to get it up and running and I remember on a Friday night, locking up the shed from which I worked and having faith that it would work. I woke up the next day and was on the way to the gym, and went over to the shed, and the computer said, ‘you’ve got funds, £47 in my account for a 30-page .pdf document and I almost had a tear in my eye, and I thought I’ve made my first sale!”.

If there’s one thing he’s learned over the years he says, is that there are many different strategies on the internet and not just one.

“With the COVID-19 pandemic, people are being laid off work, businesses are suffering, people having to make staff redundant, meanwhile I have several businesses and they are all doing relatively well. I love technology anyway so I would go on Zoom (video and audio conferencing platform) and schedule a few calls each week and started interviewing people, mainly with the purpose of finding out whether they’d been through a recession before, and I had some amazing insights about that. And I had the idea, and started to question how many people in Seychelles know how to really use the internet to make some money? How many business people really know how to use this tool to accelerate their business, how many have understood that they not only have a market in Seychelles, but they also have a market all over the world?”

The first introductory session was held on Saturday June 27, at his office at Olivier Maradan Street, and saw six attendees, some of whom signed up for further paid sessions. Mr Bonté hosts two sessions per week with different groups, each progressing through the sessions at different paces.

Interested persons can attend introductory sessions before opting for further sessions with more focus on internet tools. Participants can expect after each class to have homework to complete. Interested persons can access the online platform and the introductory video on www.missingpiece.today or by getting into contact with Mr Bonté through his Facebook platform, or the Financial Fridays Facebook group where they can catch some good interviews and content on entrepreneurship and developing their marketing skills.

“Can I really make money online if I have nothing to sell? Is one of the questions I am most asked. It is more about your intellectual property. There is something specific that you can offer that people will pay for. People behave online, in such a funny way as compared to how they behave offline. Rapport building is extremely important online so it is no different to offline sales”.

A quick wrap-up of the basics as per Mr Bonté, anyone who is determined, regardless of whether they have any business baggage, can either sell a product, a service, or intellectual property online and one of the easiest ways to get started, if you do not have a product to sell, is to become an affiliate marketer with www.clickbank.com, a leading global retailer with its own affiliate marketplace.

Otherwise, he advised to make a product, which can be a document, a series of videos, and other original content as these too can be monetised online. Online platforms offer the added benefit of reaching wide audiences which can drive business through the door, either through organic posts or through tools such as Facebook Ads, from which some users generate “hundreds of thousands monthly, although the science and the art of Facebook Ads is not something that can be learned within a week”.

Another secret to his success he says is his ability to build relationships, although the complete blueprint to success he says is to wake up early, be consistent, work hard, be kind and go the extra mile. Give people more than what they expect. And, work to learn and not to earn.

To add to the excitement of it all, as proposed by one of the participants, a reality TV show is in the works, with the concept of showcasing Mr Bonté himself as a mentor, but to also follow the participants on their skill-building and confidence-boosting journey towards becoming successful internet marketers.

On a concluding note, the second Dizzy Entrepreneur looks set to take place in November should everything go as planned.

Laura Pillay