Internet Marketing Tools Level The Playing Field – Now What Do We DO??

I was reading a post the other day on the Worrier Forum (I know how it’s spelt)  :-)

And the guy who was posting obviously had alot of anger to get off his chest. The whole theme of the post was ‘it’s not bloody fair’.

He was talking about how internet marketing isn’t fair.

He wasn’t happy about the fact that some people find it easier to make money than others, especially when they have access to virtual assisitants, ghostwriters and other such outsourcers. He didn’t seem to realise that not many of us are born with an Indian SEO expert welded to our arses, nor do they arrive in Christmas crackers (although I was once at a party where a naked woman arrived in a rolled up carpet) ….

But the main thrust of his rant was that the whole IM scene simply isn’t a level playing field.

And he’s 100% right, it’s not.

But neither is life, and it would be very worrying if it was. Some people have natural or manmade advantages over others. I’m lucky enough to live in a rich country where various factors make it easy for me to hire outsourcers to grow my business and make a healthy income.

So to level the playing field should I be removed to a shanty town in Brazil or should most of my income be given to people in my own country who are not as well off?

I don’t think so. Likewise I shouldn’t be promoted to a Duke and given half of Buckinghamshire as a birthday present. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice, but it wouldn’t be right.

I’m not going into politics but the long and the short of it is that life just isn’t fair – you can’t simply break an athletes foot so that someone like me can run the 200 metres just as fast – and nor can you make everything in internet marketing fair.

Some people are better writers, some are naturally gifted techies and some are just moaning planks.

You have to do the best with what you have.

The excuses are starting to run out though, because as services such as Aweber, Paypal, Wordpress and Google analytics become available for low fees to everyone, the playing field IS being un-naturally levelled.

Which means that more and more people are competing at the same level.

But some people will ALWAYS succeed while others won’t. It’s a natural human state of affairs.

Inequality is what we do best. It’s what we’ve always done best (from slavery right through to horrendous treatments of indiginous populations), and it’s what we will ALWAYS do best.

But if the actual TOOLS of internet marketing – of online businesses – are become freely available to all, how come some people will always rise to the top of the heap?

Most people have some sort of product to promote, whether their own or as an affiliate. Most people who are serious about their business have some sort of sales funnel and understand at least the basics of upsells, list building and traffic driving. So why (again) do some people make better use of these tools?

Well time is maybe one factor – if you’re working full time, with a family and only a few hours a week to dedicate to your IM business you might struggle. Then again many people have taken on those odds and won.

My guess is that the people who are doing well today on this flatter than flat playing field are those who realise that there are some things that can NEVER be equal.

I’m talking about ideas.

The biggest fattest Aweber account in the world is never going to generate an idea that makes people smile, or becomes viral, or is just plain old interesting. Ideas are what seperate us from each other. Thoughts, dreams, quirks and oddities are what makes people interesting, and more importantly from a business point of view, are what makes people different.

And a lot of the time, different sells.

But still too many of the emails I receive and the blog posts and forum posts I read are from people who are scared of their own uniqueness. IM is full of people trying to be each other, yet look around at the major success stories and you see individuals (and in some cases absolute nutters)  :-)

So one of the first things I try to do with my coaching students is to get them to accept and love their weird and wonderful ideas.

Actually CREATING these ideas is usually very easy for most people – we all have built in Dalis and Sartres and Carnegies but we’re a bit scared of letting other people see them.

So the next time you have an idea that makes you smile, DO IT.  In internet marketing it’s really bloody hard to bankrupt yourself unless your wife is also your sister, or you call your cousin ‘dad’. Hosting is cheap, domain names are ridiculously cheap and best of all ideas are free.

Will you wake up in the middle of the night thinking ‘Oh crap – where did that idea come from??’

Yes you will. But it just might make you rich too….