The New Robber Barons

Recently I was having a discussion with legendary copywriter John Carlton about some of the techniques we (@shoemoney) use to generate leads and that I was surprised had not yet been adopted by a lot of the product launch community. He looked at me kind of funny and was like, "You realize their is no correct way to do a product launch yet. The book is still being written". Then he went on to give me a huge history lesson about how every time there has been a new medium for information to get out there has always been people who used that market their products. These new communication items only come a long every couple decades or in some cases hundreds of years. Things like the invention of the ship, the railroad, the newspaper, the radio, the television, and now the internet. Being the student of marketing that I am I thought I would look some of this up. Each new form of communication brought with it marketers who learned how to master that new technology to sell their products and make a ton of money. These people were called the Robber Barons. Wikipedia defines a Robber Baron as:

Robber Baron is a pejorative term revived in the 19th century United States for businessmen and bankers who dominated respective industries and amassed huge personal fortunes, typically by anti-competitive or unfair business practices. The term may now relate to any businessman or banker who used questionable business practices to become powerful or wealthy.

Also each time the government stepped in to stop these guys from amassing too much wealth... imposing taxes and breaking up companies. I have actually asked John if he would be willing to do a guest post on the subject because its pretty fascinating... But anyway the whole point is that to be right now we are going through the same thing. And its amazing. Take me for example... In July of 2005 I was on unemployment, several tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt and boom.... One day I get a call from Google asking me to run a big fat AdSense square on my website and a couple months later: And you know the rest of the story.... Right now is such an amazing time for anyone, anywhere, of any skill level or social class to make a fortune on the internet. But its not always going to be this easy. Government intervention and regulation IS coming. Many states have already passed taxes for online revenue and new FTC guidelines are in place (the first time in many decades this has happened). Some day books will be written about how lucrative this time was. Probably comparing it to the gold rush, oil rush, etc... I hope someday you are telling your kids how you took action and got a piece of one of the most lucrative times to make money the world has ever seen. Not just telling them how you watched others do it.