EARLY ADOPTERS

I was just reading about a book that has been out for several years by Geoffrey Moore called Crossing the Chasm. His premise is that there is a group of people who love to be on the bleeding edge of technological developments (they buy the iPhone on the first day; they join Second Life or MySpace early on before more people have heard of these places). These are the “early adopters.”

But for some new technological innovation to succeed, it must cross the chasm between the early adopters and the “early majority.” The early majority then brings in the “late majority” (this is when your grandparents get email and digital cameras and start to use them regularly).

CROSSING THE CHASM FOR PASSIVE AND RESIDUAL INCOME

I think we are at this point in Internet marketing and passive and residual income through the Web. When I first had a website over a decade ago, this stuff was hard to set up (no autoresponder services for the masses; hard to create websites and shopping carts; and so on). And there were not that many people on the Web or who willing to shop through the Internet.

With computers becoming so much easier to use; with more and more people getting broadband and getting on the Internet; with easy-to-use tools and platforms like Ebay, Amazon.com, 1ShoppingCart, e-junkie, Constant Contact, Aweber, Wordpress, RapidWeaver, Second Life, Facebook, and others, we are about to cross the chasm in two senses:

1. More and more non-techies will be comfortable using the web, shopping on it, downloading digital products, etc.
2. More and more of us will be able to afford to and learn to set up automated marketing and sales systems using these easy tools and affordable services.

You will be at an advantage is you are on the leading edge (bleeding edge hurts), with all your systems in place as the vast majority begin to cross the chasm. Be ready when that cash starts pouring down the chute so you can catch some of it.