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I originally wrote and posted this on Joel Comm’s AdsenseChat a few years ago. The information is still relevant, in fact even more relevant today than it was back then, as more people flock to the internet and view it as an opportunity not unlike the Gold Rush era of the 1800’s.

Photo by Michal Mogmil

It’ll work once, but chances are it won’t work twice.

You may be able to apply the same principles to your own idea, but don’t expect success if you’re trying to clone it.

Lets say you’ve got a great idea for a website. Original, unique… never been done before. I have a lot of those ideas, and usually they don’t get further than writing down the idea in a text document, and a quick SWOT analysis.

More often than not I have more ideas then I have time for, but also lacking a few vital ingredients: resources (the necessary skills to pull it off, I’m not a php coder with mySQL knowledge) or money (paying someone to do that bit). Or in the very least invest in a bit of promotion outside of the 101 things I can do that will provide the tipping point.

Sometimes we have these ideas independantly of any outside influence or expsoure and we find out that someone has already done it and either found success, or failed miserably.

Other times we think we’ve found these ideas but they are in fact ‘borrowed’ from elsewhere. Which is the whole “lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place” that I’m talking about.

Lets take for example the Million Dollar Homepage. Remember that?

Brilliant idea. Wonderfully executed. Made the guy a million dollars. I found the site when he was only $7,000 from the start of his venture. I even bought a $100 worth of pixels.

If you were aware of the site while it was powering on to it’s million dollar goal you may remember that it ‘inspired’ a LOT of other copycat sites. They sprung up like weeds.

None were as successful as the original.

At the time I showed the site to a friend of mine and he could see how well MDHP was going and he said “We can do that! We can make an Australian one!”.

I knocked that idea on the head before he got too carried away.

Not too long after Joel Comm had an idea, and it was inspired by the MDHP. It was called www.500words.com

He was selling off words. Keywords. Rather than pixels.

He didn’t make a million dollars, but the amount of money he made and in the time he did it, was phenomenal.

Again, others tried the same formula. And failed.

Now the interesting twist to these two examples is that both entrepreneurs tried to use the same idea twice, and fell short of the mark.

Alex of MDHP launched www.pixelotto.com and had it been successful, he and some lucky subscriber would have made one million dollars each. In the end he made about $153,000 from the venture. Now that’s not bad really. I wouldn’t complain about earning that or winning that.

Joel launched www.499sites.com and probably sold about 20% of the 499 links.

No doubt the money made isn’t something to sneeze at. And if it were offered to me tomorrow you’d hear no complaints.

But the purpose of what I’m saying is… lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place.

Both parties who did so spectacularly well with their ideas in the first place, weren’t able to reproduce the magic the second time. And if they can’t do it, what hope would any of us have?

Don’t follow the leader. Don’t copy another persons groundbreaking idea because you’re hoping it’ll work for you.

By all means study it. Look at the mechanics of it. Study the formula that is fueling it. Find the source and see if it can be reinterpreted.

It reminds me of an interview with Phil Collen, the guitarist for Def Leppard who was talking about a Police song, it may have been “Sending Out an SOS” and he played it on a guitar while the camera rolled. He said how he loved the riff but he couldn’t just take it as is, so he inverted it. He played it a different feel and you could clearly hear the distinct Def Leppard tune. It was remarkable. Side by side you could see how he was inspired. But separately they were both unique. And both songs were chart topping successes.

The same with Joel’s 500words. He had a track record of success on his own before the million dollar homepage was even dreamed up, but when he saw it, he saw a different way of doing it. And he did. And he probably set a record for Virtual Real Estate sales.

But trying to pull off the same trick twice… well you’ve read my opinion on that.