Targeting the poor vs. targeting the rich. If you want to make a million dollars, go after people who have money, this way, you need to get fewer people to buy whatever you’re selling in order to reach your goal.

It seems to me that it would be harder to get 1 million poor people to spend one dollar than to get 100 rich people to spend $10,000. Obviously you would need to be selling a product or service that they either want or need.

The trouble with getting rich targeting poor people is that you have to already have lots of money because you’ll have to be selling your product or service at a price they can afford; and because your price is so low to begin with you need to sell more of your product or service in order to have a hope of making a substantial profit. Selling more means producing more, producing more means spending more. So if you don’t have money to begin with, there’s little point in targeting the poor.

The principle might seem not to apply in cases where your product does not cost you money to produce.

People are able to start up websites with very little and sometimes no money. And by all means it is possible to get rich off of a website without spending a dime; but chances are you’re not going to be one of the lucky few who managed to get five million people to join your website and five hundred thousand to pay you $19.95 to be a member. Chances are you are like the majority of website owners today, trying to use a formula that proved successful for a small group of people, hoping to take that formula and make it work for you the same way it worked for them.

The fact is, imitations seldom do as well as originals; so you would probably be better off trying to concoct your own original formula than using a forumla already tried. While it does not guarantee you will hit it big just because your idea or product is original, you at least have a better chance of hitting it big with something people want that a popular competitor does not already have in plentiful supply.

If in doubt take a look at the majority of wealthy Internet entrepreneurs. They are largely innovators rather than imitators, the ones who built the bandwagon that thousands jump onto in the hope that some of the wealth will rub off on them. They set trends. They lead. They create their own model and leave it to the followers to copy them. Sometimes the followers get lucky, but usually they end up investing time and or money into something that does not pay off.