 Cutthroat Internet Marketing Product CreationPublished Date: 2004-10-20 08:33:30 WorkOnInternet.com
Create an ebook or other information product on some new idea (or an old idea expressed differently), and expect to see other experts on that topic mysteriously appearing within a week. In other words, if you create and market a product online, there are other online marketers who will see that your concept seems to be working better than theirs, and they will probably copy it. This can be very IRRITATING to someone who spends months.... perhaps even years, developing something only to have it quickly reverse engineered. This is actually not a problem unique to the online world. In the offline world, before a business introduces a product it protects itself with patents, copyrights, trademarks, and similar forms of legal protection. They take enforceable, legal steps to protect their brand and their invention. Most people introducing products in the Internet marketing arena don't do this, perhaps because it can be an expensive proposition. They are often in business on the Internet rather than offline BECAUSE starting a business offline has so many barriers to entry.. such as high start-up costs. Both online and offline, when someone creates a new product that's in-demand, they can literally charge whatever the market's willing to pay. If they face no competition, this price is higher than it would otherwise be. Without some form of legal barrier, others notice that a given business is earning a higher than "normal" ROI (often referred to as monopoly profits), and this attract competitors. Competitors enter a market, charge less, and drive the price down which ultimately benefits the consumer. This quickly erodes profits for the original product creator. Governments and other entities often grant legal protection (copyrights, patents, trademarks, etc.) to protect businesses from competition. For example, they often do this when there's a huge research and development cost involved in bringing a product to market, and companies need to be incentivized to go ahead with creating the product. Without some type of protection to ensure that a drug manufacturer could recoup their huge R&D costs, most large drug manufacturers probably wouldn't proceed with developing many much-needed drugs. As soon as they 've recouped some of their costs, regulatory agencies generally allow other to produce cheaper (generic) forms of the same product. Taking this discussion back to the Internet marketing arena, how does someone creating software, an ebook, or some new service-product, protect their creation? How do they keep some copycat from reverse engineering their software? How do they keep some "low-life" from going to Elance.com and asking some programmer to create an EXACT duplicate of their just-released software? There are differing forms of legal protection available to online product creators. To determine which is best for your product you need to consult a lawyer who specializes in this topic. There are international agreements that protect your online creation across many different countries... Again, you need to discuss this with an attorney who specializes in this topic. Companies like Google and Ebay aggressively protect their brands and their patented technologies. They have "deep pockets" and can more readily do this. The budding netrepreneur often has to seek less conventional methods of protecting their profits... for at least a short time. Over time, most forms of legal protection against those who would copy or reverse engineer a product expires. One line of thinking is that lots of competition stimulates innovation and continuous product improvement. This implies that the way to out maneuver would-be competitors is by producing a better product, positioning it for a different segment of the market, or begin focusing on the next product upgrade as soon as a product is introduced. In actuality, large corporations such as Sony, and automotive manufacturers, thrive because they deliberately stay several product releases ahead of their competitors. Before they even release a product, the next several generations are already on the drawing board... or maybe even in production! The bottom line is that many people in Internet marketing (as in many other niches) are hoping to create and market a product or service that's going to make them rich and famous. It's much easier for them to copy a proven concept...something that there's proven demand for, than it is to create something new. It's safer to produce something for which there is a proven market than it is to develop something for which the demand hasn't been validated. If you're going to create your own Internet marketing product or service, realize that it's a cutthroat business, just like many offline businesses. This doesn't make it any more palatable for someone who sees their product being copied the day after it's release, but perhaps thinking about the fact beforehand better prepares you for it :-) --------------------------------------------- Willie Crawford is a corporate president, published author, seminar speaker and host, tele-seminar speaker and host, retired military officer, karate black belt, network marketing trainer, and lifetime student of marketing. He shows people how to actually generate substantial income on-line using very simple systems. An example of such a system can be studied and DUPLICATED at: => http://ProfitMagician.com =========================================
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