Would Thomas Edison have been a good Internet marketer?

I don't know, it might have depended on what Tesla did first.

I live in Fort Myers, FL which was the winter home of Thomas Edison. His home is now a local museum and every year we have the Edison Pageant Of Light Parade which is the biggest in the area.

Every year there is always a bunch of people, including a pair of popular local radio djs, that bring up their thoughts that Edison stole stuff from everybody else, mostly Tesla.

But, back to your question, he probably would have been a good Internet Marketer. He seemed to have an eye for what would be popular. I'm sure he invented lots of things by accident that he knew wouldn't go anywhere so he stopped development.

Who knows, he might have been Tesla's #1 Affiliate Marketer.

I think it's likely he would have made a great Internet marketer. Edison was one of a kind. Unlike Tesla, he was a technical genius and a business whiz. Poor Nicoli was an ultra-genius with absolutely no head at all for business.

Edison was also very stubborn and often let ego get in his way. In the very early going Tesla proved alternating current was far more practical than direct current but Edison stayed with it anyway. It was years before he yielded to what everyone else saw as simple common sense.

He also spent more than a decade extracting iron from the earth with an electromagnetic process he'd invented. This process was only mildy effective but the Old Man kept at it long after he should have quit. It would be interesting to see what he might have invented during that time had he let go of the iron project he spent so much time on.

Edison is one of my heroes and I like to think he would be successful had he been born into any particular time in history, especially now.

When I think of Thomas Edison, I think "inventor".

I think if he lived in this day and age, he would have been an inventor.

And, he might have invented the World Wide Web -- if he was also a computer programmer.

Consider the guy who really invented the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee.

He invented the World Wide Web, but he is not a marketer and does not market goods or services online.


But consider this also...

Not only did Thomas Edison invent stuff, he sold the stuff he invented as a businessman, and he was a successful businessman.

I don't think Thomas Edison would have sat on his computer all day figuring out how to write HTML, but he would certainly have hired someone to build websites from which he could sell his products.

My favorite Thomas Edison story is the one where a friend observed, "You work so hard. You need a vacation."

Edison replied, "What do you do on a vacation?"

"Go somewhere you like to go, and do something you like to do."

Edison responded, "Great, I will go on vacation, starting tomorrow." The next day, he was at his shop--where he wanted to be, doing what he liked to do.

The point--with tenacity like that, and technical savvy; Edison would have torn up the IM world, just as he did the invention world at that time.

How many experiments did it take to make the light bulb? - something like 300

Like Disney (who convinced the 500th or so bank manager to invest in a theme park in the swamp) - Edison showed the sort of tenacity and true grit you need to succeed in IM

So yes he would have made a great marketer or anything else he would be putting his mind to

I give you the Edison Internet Chair: