Many if not most site owners would love to become as big, profitable, and well known as Google, Amazon, eBay, and other giants of e-business. This article examines how these great companies became great, and suggests how you can follow in their footsteps.
The Prequel
Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientists who ever lived, said "All I have seen is because I stood on the shoulders of Giants before me." Modeling successful e-businesses and their practices is equivalent to standing on the shoulders of giants. It is not a guarantee of success in itself, but it beats re-inventing the wheel every time you want to build and market online. With the successes of companies such as eBay, Priceline, Monster, Amazon, and finally Google, it is clear that they are the best e-businesses in the world.
Salesmen study the tactics of great salesmen, read their books, listen their tapes, and practice. Great generals study military history and philosophy, examine the tactics of soldiers from ancient Greece through the present day, and apply them to modern warfare. But in the world of website marketing, it seems this modeling process is ignored. The Internet is a whole new media, but the same practices that are used in the past are supposed to be applied to this media.
Instead we have a rash of self-styled instant gurus who promise you instant results. They tell you that such and such Internet product or marketing strategy will be the next big thing online, and that you should part with large sums ranging from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars to become an "instant" Internet success. Or at worst, an "overnight" success. If there is one thing every truly successful person, online or offline will tell you (and most of the time, they are too busy being successful to try and get a few hundred dollars out of you with a sales copy written in red, and a few dozen testimonials), it is there are no "instant" fixes, and "overnight" means at least a few months of daily research, continuous learning, some form of mild obsession with the business and a bull headed determination to succeed.
Website Promotion 
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