Palms & Company Document

Marketing Your Products in Russia on the Internet

by

Dr. Pyotr Johannevich van de Waal-Palms

When your corporation advertises its presence with home pages on the WWW, You believe those pages can be read WITHOUT COST by potential customers world-wide. That isn't the case in Russia. Those who connect to the internet in Russia must pay $0.12 per kilobyte for incoming and outgoing traffic and that includes the cost of viewing your WWW pages with those great pictures which consume 150kb and $18.00 of a Russian reader's money at a crack. For a country like Russia, with an average monthly wage of $30 per month, that is simply unaffordable.

So scratch your exposure to this growing market unless you consider this solution. Place a "mirror" site of your home pages on a Russian webserver. The rates for in-country access to your web pages on a Russian webserver are far lower than those for international traffic. If you monitor the number of "hits" on your web pages you'll notice an immediate difference in your Russian business.

All it takes is downloading the actual urls on the Russian webserver so that your information can be accessed without having to reach out to your U.S. based webserver. Remember when you pursue the inquiries generated, that Russians have to pay $0.12 per kb for your incoming message. Keep it brief and request permission to send longer files and quote the kb. Your courtesy will appreciated. Remember the Russian internet system subjects Russian users to incoming "collect" calls without the opportunity to refuse the call. Sending an unsolicited copy of the encyclopedia could be tantamount to bankrupting the recipient in Russia.

Russian imports will top $50 billion dollars in 1997. U.S. Government policy is fostering business. Economic assistance programs are providing buying power to Russia and Overseas Private Investment Corporation and The Export-Import Bank are providing foreign credit risk insurance to exporters. Russia is becoming an important market and warrants consideration in your export marketing strategy.

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