The Future of IM

First of all, I don't think there is much danger of the big companies taking over... the great thing about IM is the low cost and low barrier to entry. Really, the big boys don't have much of an advantage over you or me... infact, in many ways they have a disadvantage. I sell a lot of stuff to my list because they know me and like me... I have built that rapport. It is much more difficult for a big company to do this.

In terms of the market being flooded with a million competitors... it's already there... but i think so few people do it well that if you do, you should be alright. There is already a tonne of competition out there... but it really doesn't worry me, because I know there are only a few people that do it right... and those ones, although competition, often end up your best partners and making you lots of money (and of course you making them lots)... I love IM

I wouldn't worry about conducting commerce on the net.

- Most of your competitors won't know what they're doing:

- So many lucrative niches:

- So many ways to reach them:

- So many fast converting products & services:

- Better and better tools & resources will be available:

- It's only going to get better for the savvy:

- Research, testing and action will declare the winners now as they will do in the future:

TL

Your talking about saturation of every market??? Impossible, the Pareto principle (80/20 RULE) will preclude it anyway.

Hell everone already has a tim opener at home right and yet they still sell millions of tin openers every year...

If you build a niche business and you do it right it would be difficult for someone else to compete with you in that niche, but you can and always will be able to build a bigger, better product offering more value for a better price, and your competitors can too?

But will they do the work? Thank god the majority are lazy, harsh, but true. Initially people may look to IM as the easy road to riches, but they will soon realise that it aint so. Personally I know part time I'M ers who work harder at their part time business than they do on therr RL jobs!!

As for the big companies, i think a few are starting to emerge already. That said they are big clumsy and if they think throwing millions into it will guarantee there success they will just lose millions! Like artsub said the relationship marketing model is about real people buying people, that will not change

Mark

There's still a large portion of the global populace that's not on the internet at all, let alone with any sort of regularity.

Long term, I see the major challenges being...
1) maintaining relevance with your audience / niche based on ever-increasing competition
2) staying on top of emerging trends [plays of #1]
3) having something unique enough to have people pay for it [plays off #1 & #2].

As more people get into internet marketing, there's going to be more competition, sure, but the audience will grow proportionally. So will general content and accessibility of that content. Staying at the front of that is going to require significant dynamicism on the part of IMers. [Thankfully, the platform is dynamic by nature, so it's not like you're re-engineering a manufacturing plant or highway infrastructure.]

If you look at the Open Source Software movement, you see a trend where people in the know no longer pay for a large range of software that companies like Microsoft, Sun, or IBM develop for profit. But those companies are still pumping out paid products and people are still buying. As people in the know are able to obtain the information the require more easily, a lot of online-only IM is going to become less lucrative.

[That's why you see people making big cash in IM selling RL events, because it's something info online can't recreate yet - the visceral experience.]

If net neutrality is maintained, a time will arise when profitability of selling information sees a significant drop off due to ever reducing costs of information and information access. That time is a good way off though.

Fear not the thousands of new IMers who come to IM everyday, cause:

That's right.

I am trying to teach IM to some 25 folks (age 16-33) and boy, they can be slow as a turtle.

I don't think anyone should be afraid. Things will change, new stuff will come about, new ways to market and smart IMers (like those on this forum) will come up with innovative ways to market. That's the beauty of the web...it's ever evolving.

I think consumers are becoming more savvy... and I think it's becoming harder to "break in" to markets.

But marketing is still the same... deliver a quality product that people want at a good price and get that offer in front of a lot of people.

I think having a USP is more important these days than ever... but apart from that, it's business as usual.

-Dan

Wow lots of great respons, that a lot! Most of it actually made sense and made me more motivated to keep going. I do pretty well today but I do work more than most people who have RL jobs do. I work with this because i love it and not because its easy money because its not.

The danger in the future as bgmacow pointed out could be political. As of now we are used to a "free internet" where you do what you want but that can change very fast. However you can't plan for everything and just as you can get fired on a regular job your online empire might crumble but until then I will give it my best.

Thanks again for some really good input!

"Cream rises to the top"... there is profit in every industry. Does anyone really care if someone else rises?

And it doesn't matter if there are a billion trillion webpages... the big corporate players will determine who gets indexed and who does not.