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Growing up I used to love playing games. Every kid likes playing games, but I was one
of those gaming junkies that everyone makes fun of in school. I played in tournaments, played online
until four in the morning, and even joined a guild once. From Atari and Dungeons and Dragons to Magic:
The Gathering and Starcraft I was addicted and I loved it.
And then something happened.
I woke up one day and realized that I was sick of being broke. I was sick of spending more time with my
computer than I was with the opposite sex.
I was sick of watching whole days of my life go by for nothing. So I quit playing everything…or at least
that’s what I thought.
Ten years later I’ve come full circle. I went out into the world and grabbed life by
the horns. I’ve thrown some amazing
parties. I’ve been with some amazing
girls. I’ve jumped out of perfectly good
airplanes and fought in a war. I’ve
traveled, snowboarded, and even made some money. While I’m not financially free yet, I can
definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel.
And after all this every once in a while I’ll still run into
one of those gaming junkies. I was
talking to one the other day and he was sharing “war stories” of 53 hour long gaming
sessions during which he drank a jolt and caffeine pill cocktail to stay
awake. I was thinking to myself, boy am
I glad that I got out when I did.
Eight hours later I was sitting at my computer working on a
new website I was developing. I was in the
process of increasing the keyword density on one of my pages when I looked over
at the clock. It was 2:17 am, and that’s when it hit me. I had never really quit playing the games, I
just found a different one to play.
Parallels started flashing before my eyes. They have characters. We have websites. They have character levels. We have search engine ranking. They measure success in experience points and
kill ratios. We measure success in
traffic and conversion rates. They have
spells and weapons. We have PPC
advertising and link exchanges.
The hottest online game in the world isn’t World of
Warcraft, its internet marketing. Search
for “online business” on google and you get 1,290,000,000 results. Search for “world of warcraft” and you only get
20,600,000. That’s over 1.2 billion more
sites. BILLION!!!
It’s the ultimate revenge for every gaming nerd that spent
their lunch time designing their next character. Channel that creativity into building the
character of your site and you’ll be getting more than props from your
buddies. You’ll be getting rewarded in
cold hard cash.
Of course anyone that has tried to build an online business
knows it’s not that simple, but anyone that has watched the diligence of a true
gamer knows that they have what it takes.
The problem is people see online business as a business not a game. Their ROI calculations don’t include a fun
variable. For most people their online
business is work, and work is stress.
So how do you change that?
Easy. You change the rules. Businesses don’t have tournaments. Games do.
So why not have an internet marketing championship tournament. You’ve probably seen online marketing
contests before, but these need to be taken to the next level. They need qualifier rounds, semi finals, and
the championship round with escalating difficulty at each level. They need better quality measures than just hits or
unique visitors. Most importantly they
need a big ass prize. Something that
will bring the competition out of the woodwork.
I’m working on it. Stay
tuned.
............. There’s nobody listening right now is there?
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