Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Is the Window Closing?
Internet marketing stands at the crossroads.

Do you remember when cable TV first came out? People hailed it as the great leveller that would enable anyone who was willing to invest a small amount of money in a video recorder to create programming that could launch them into fame and fortune as a TV producer.

Some people experimented with early cable, drew attention to their efforts with innovative ideas, and went on to carve a career for themselves in media. The playing field truly was level.

Eventually, though, the playing field in the cable world started to tilt. Viewers came to expect higher production values and rejected the "let's just wing it" hobbyists to the community access channels.

Want to start your own cable show today? You can still put something out cheaply on community access. Want to use your beginner level cable show to gain attention and leverage it into a media career? Fat chance of that happening!

Cable TV simply doesn't have a level playing field anymore. The stakes are higher and it takes more—in terms of investment and experience—to break in and compete.

I see the same tilting of the playing field happening on the Internet right now.

Sure, a lot of people still view the Internet as a place where you can jump in, with no knowledge of how to run a business, and still strike it rich. But the stakes are getting higher.

PWLOM (People With Lots Of Money) are buying up the sites that have encouraged the free exchange of ideas and are looking for ways to make money off what had been freely exchanged.

Visitors are expecting more and more technically advanced features, such as video and interactivity, out of the sites they visit.

The days of making money off of a no-effort, business-in-a-box website are dying. Does that mean, though, that it doesn't pay for ordinary people to stake a claim in the online marketplace?

Absolutely not! It simply means that anyone who wants to start a business online will need to approach it as a business and not as a hobby. It means more of a learning curve and more attention to business principles rather than simply winging it and hoping it works.

The rewards are still there, but the effort required is, more and more, becoming serious business.
Jeff

Labels: start business, successful business