{"id":1922,"date":"2011-02-14T21:22:47","date_gmt":"2011-02-14T21:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulgoodchild.net\/blog\/?p=1922"},"modified":"2012-04-28T14:48:46","modified_gmt":"2012-04-28T13:48:46","slug":"next-big-bubble-internet-affiliate-marketing-location-indepedent-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulgoodchild.me\/blog\/next-big-bubble-internet-affiliate-marketing-location-indepedent-living\/","title":{"rendered":"The Next Big Bubble – Internet and Affiliate Marketing, and Location Indepedent Living?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s 2011 and depending on who you ask, the Western world is either just having a quiet period or is mired in a recession and headed for a depression.\u00a0 They’ll tell you it’s a global depression to make you feel better, but I don’t believe it is.\u00a0 Go to Asia and check out the difference!<\/p>\n

But what caused all this?<\/p>\n

Greed<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Our financial systems rewarded risk to the point where our banks condoned gambling with the pensions and savings of clients and citizens in favour of making a quick buck – ‘money really does grow on trees’ was the guiding principle.<\/p>\n

How does that differ from other market bubbles that have popped in the past?<\/p>\n

It doesn’t.<\/p>\n

From tulip bulbs<\/a> to dot-coms<\/a> to real estate<\/a>, the principle is the same.\u00a0 It’s a huge fan-fare of hype and promise that leads to huge expectations.\u00a0 Eventually word gets out and soon everyone is talking about it.\u00a0 Then comes the market saturation, followed by a crash when sound reason finally replaces the fantasy.<\/p>\n

I’ve spent the last few months giving serious time over to creating an online IT service<\/a> that would form the foundation of a location-independent business – one that I can perform from anywhere in the world.\u00a0 The service is as good, if not better than paying a local service, I just don’t have to wear a tie to the office.<\/p>\n

I’ve read a million and one blogs here, there and everywhere, subscribed to countless mailing lists, downloaded e-books and generally learned a whole heck of a lot.\u00a0 But I’m hitting an invisible brick wall of sorts, and I’m not sure if it’s:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. my naivety and ignorance of the capacity to make money online, or<\/li>\n
  2. that there’s a huge skew in opinion <\/strong>regarding the capacity of online entrepreneurship and I’m helping to inflate a bubble that’s gonna burst my brain open when it pops.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Don’t get me wrong.\u00a0 I have no doubt that you can earn a living from solely online entrepreneurship.\u00a0 No doubt in my mind whatsoever!<\/p>\n

    My issue comes from the seriously copious amounts of resources and materials, blogs and websites, e-books and video courses, that deal specifically for this market.\u00a0 Not the quality of the material per-se.\u00a0 It just feels like (while I can’t quite justify it yet and probably wont be able to fully articulate it in this article) another giant bubble in the making.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    The Internet Marketing Pyramid(?) Scheme<\/h2>\n

    I could look back on this article in a couple of years (weeks?) time and cringe – how could I get it so wrong?!<\/p>\n

    Well I’m not here to predict, and I care not a bit if my feeling is wrong.\u00a0 But something isn’t right and I can’t quite put my finger on it.<\/p>\n

    Let’s have a look at an illustration of affiliate marketing…<\/p>\n

    Take Mr. E-book Evan, he makes a product – let’s say it’s an e-book called “How to grow apples in 3 easy steps”.\u00a0 It’s a fantastic guide and he sells it online.\u00a0 Super – he provides a service, adds value, and gets money for it.<\/p>\n

    To improve sales, he decides to create an affiliate marketing program.\u00a0 And what’s that you ask?\u00a0 It means that if Mr. Marketing Michael comes along and signs up to be an affiliate partner, does a bit of marketing of the product and leads directly to a sale of Evan’s product, he gets a cut.\u00a0 They agree beforehand to share the profits so Evan makes money by reaching customers he wouldn’t otherwise have found, and Michael earns money for his efforts.<\/p>\n

    Brilliant.\u00a0 2 people making money online.<\/p>\n

    Mr. Marketing Michael is a smart little cookie and realises that with his influence (copious mailing lists and\/or websites) he not only can sell Mr. E-book Evan’s book, but he can sell also lots of other affiliate items too.\u00a0 That means more money for Michael because of the diversity of his marketed products.\u00a0 He doesn’t actually create anything himself, he just helps sell the products other people are making.<\/p>\n

    Fair enough.<\/p>\n

    But Marketing Michael has become so successful, he decides to create his own product and writes an e-book entitled “How to become successful\/rich with affiliate marketing”<\/p>\n

    He sells this, and not only that, he creates an affiliate marketing program too so other people can market and help sell his book to get a piece of the action.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    So now you have affiliate marketeers marketing products on affiliate marketing.<\/p>\n

    The more people that jump on the affiliate marketing bandwagon, the more experienced affiliate marketeers there are.\u00a0 The hype builds!\u00a0 Affiliate marketing becomes a huge money making sector.<\/p>\n

    And naturally another huge sector grows out of the demand for learning materials on how to become affiliate marketeers.<\/p>\n

    Imagine this scenario on a global scale.\u00a0 Thousands and thousands of people out there running affiliate marketing campaigns, collecting email address, building tailored websites, refining the process over and over, all the while hawking products about how to become an affiliate marketeer so that you can hawk products.<\/p>\n

    My head spins when I think this through and all I can picture is a hug snake eating its own tail.<\/p>\n

    Surely this market has its limits?\u00a0 I think it does: saturation is where there are excessive marketeers compared with actual<\/em> high-value products and services<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

    Another slant on a similar principle is Location Independent Living “market”.<\/p>\n

    Selling the Location Independent Lifestyle<\/h2>\n

    This whole conversation of creating a location independent lifestyle is massive right now, and growing.\u00a0 And for good reason.<\/p>\n

    Possibly one of the most inspiring books in this market is Tim Ferriss<\/a>‘: “The four hour work week”.<\/p>\n

    It was one of the first, if not the first, mainstream publications giving proper air to the smart living lifestyle.\u00a0 It’s not about how much money you make, but how much time you allow yourself to follow the dreams and aspirations you have.\u00a0 No more deferred life-plans<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    I read it shortly after it was published in 2006 and it took a couple of years before I could break out of my 9~5 drudgery.\u00a0 I had already mentally subscribed to the principles it espoused and was actively creating a much better lifestyle for myself long before I quit my job in 2009.\u00a0 But the act of making the shift was still a huge undertaking for me.<\/p>\n

    I could write, if I had the time, heaps about my lifestyle changes over the past 2 years.\u00a0 And perhaps I will.\u00a0 (Or perhaps I should?)<\/p>\n

    Now, it’s difficult to read anything online anymore (or perhaps it’s because of my particular focus) without coming across another person who has made a break for freedom, in terms of the location independent lifestyle.\u00a0 And for a price, you can find out how they did it.<\/p>\n

    Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m ALL FOR IT!<\/p>\n

    But… and here is where this opinion piece get opinionated, it seems a little like ‘building castles in the air’.<\/p>\n

    It’s not making false promises, but just… everyone is making big promises.\u00a0 Practically everyone who’s “living it” has an ebook about how you can do it too, an e-book about how you can get all minimalist on your ass, an e-book with 7 good tips about how I<\/strong> made it and you can too, an e-book about location independent travel, etc.<\/p>\n

    But many of them don’t tell you, or least they haven’t told me, anything really new or radical.\u00a0 Some definitely have good content, but I got the biggest kick in the ass from “The Four Hour Work Week”.<\/p>\n

    It’s tapping in to a psyche that is growing rapidly from a combination of factors:<\/p>\n