Quote:
Originally Posted by Shap
There are a number of reasons our industry isn't doing great. Here, in my opinion, is one of the bigger ones....
The barrier to entry has always been very low. That coupled with the nature of our business has allowed a number of unqualified people get into the industry. People that shouldn't be in business in the first place. They were able to make good money because it was easy to make money. Now that times are tough they are completely screwed. They never truly understood why they were successful or how to be successful. They are trying to re-create the past with no success and don't know where to turn. The old tricks aren't working and they've blown all the money they had and are now screwed.
Now more than ever it's easy to see who the real entrepreneurs and who got lucky.
What do you think?
|
I think that was true, or more of the case 5+ years ago. The gravy train years were really the 90's from what I hear. I didn't start to 99, but I hear people all the time that say back in 96' 97' 98' etc if you throw out a couple pages in the SE you would get tons of sales. There was also less competition. The competition increased a lot in 99/00/01 etc. People had to start "working" to make money.
A lot of the dumb money people crashed in burned by the early 2000's. Everyone else who was left had to work harder and smarter to continue to make good money and stay ahead of their competition. Some people who had made dumb money early and couldn't cut the hard work resorted to shady shit like spyware, stealing content, and banging cards. Other people got on the cross sale craze to help try to make them more money. This all happened around the 2003 - 2008 time frame.
In the last couple years to current, what has really kicked everyone in the ass is the economy, but more so the credit crunch. I don't care what you sell if it takes visa there is a LOT less potential customers today then there was 2+ years ago. When the credit card companies started taking everyone's available balances away, and more and more people were losing their jobs and living on (and maxing out) their credit cards, we lost tons of potential customers.
Throw on top of that how tube sites / stolen content have hurt picture and video membership sites you can see the challenges today are a lot harder then even 2 -3 years ago.
There is still money to be made, it's just gets harder and harder to do it everyday. The people who made easy money way back, that then turned to shady stuff, banging cards, or living off of cross sales, their days are numbered unless they come up with another way to ride the wave a little longer.
So to reply to your post, the "dumb money" people have long been gone. What we are getting rid of now is the shady people, and everyone else who failed to work EVEN harder to keep it going / innovated to stay ahead of the competition.