After six long months with The Bradford Group, working as an Internet Marketing Intern, the internship finally came to a close. Apparently, it’s company policy that internships can only go for as long as six months. Overall, it was a very rewarding experience and I can definitely say that I learned a lot in the realm of marketing products online. Most of the work I did was for Collectibles Today, which is one of the biggest e-commerce sites for collectibles online. Usually, when people asked me what I was doing over the summer and I told them I was doing Internet marketing for collectibles, they would scoff at me and think I was working as a Toys R’ Us cashier or something. Of course, before I knew any better, I probaly would have thought the same thing. However, this is far from the truth. Some of the collectibles that the company offers are life-like baby dolls, collector plates, jewelry, home decor, figurines, music boxes, and artwork. A lot of times when I was going through the products, I would think to myself and wonder how someone would spend $200 on a life-like baby doll that would personally creep the freak out me. But nevertheless, there are people out there who cherish such things. Unfortunately, I never got to use the 50% employee discount.
Anyway, some of the things I did included search engine optimization, bidding for keywords on Adwords for online advertising, working with datafeeds and affiliates, and putting products on different shopping portals like Froogle and Shopping.com. Another part of my duties included weekly sales and ROI reports where I basically made spreadsheets and analyzed them for key changes. Of course, this doesn’t sound so bad now, but when there are hundreds of sales and thousands of products it becomes quite a chore. At least now I can say that I’m an Excel wizard and I’m sure those spreadsheet skills will come in handy for future jobs.
Like I said, the internship was a good experience where I learned a lot about business, the corporate setting, the Internet, e-commerce, marketing, and useless collectibles that people waste their money on. The pay wasn’t spectacular but it did help to give me some extra spending cash while in college and to finance some of my own independent projects. If you’re interested in Internet marketing and e-commerce and live near Niles, IL, I suggest you apply for the internship. I believe they rotate interns every six months so you can get in whenever. The people are great, the food is good, the pay is decent, and the building and environment is wonderful with trees and streams everywhere. Well, it’s wonderful until you sit down in your secluded cubicle at least. Good luck!
