Since the start of the Internet boom in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the so-called exceptional entrepreneurial minds of silicon valley and the rest of the mighty US of A have been trying their darndest to create one sensational story-grabbing business after another. The very first attempt, if I am not mistaken, was to liberalize printing of the information on the Internet. As a result of that half-baked promise, we now have billions of digital pages on the mighty Internet, an absolute majority of which are languishing in obscurity with negligible to almost zero visits per day. The whole of the business of getting a higher ranking on Google and Bing has become so formulaic, commercial, and unremarkable in nature that reading the posts that reach the coveted top spots has become an infuriating affair in itself.
Having liberalized the printing world and provided a horrible blueprint to dominate the search engine rankings to the desperate or unscrupulous alike, the entrepreneurial minds of the Western Hemisphere are once again busy trying to create the next business sensation using the hackneyed phrasing that the technologists now want to liberalize some ABC or XYZ industry. My Instagram feed has been replete with advertisements from companies promoting platforms to reach music moguls or sell art while offering the participants 100% of their royalties. Although the marketing copy used to promote these platforms sounds outrageously transformative and revolutionary, however, the people behind these platforms never reveal to the people looking for such opportunities the harrowing numbers proving how insanely few manage to find success using these platforms. The flood of signups of optimistic, aspiring, exploitable pretenders and contenders provides these platforms with the numbers they need to promote their platform to more gullible people by making brash statements that tens of thousands or millions of people are already using our platform; however, they never tell the aspirants that how many have managed to find success using their platform and using what sort of dirty marketing techniques.
The latest addition to this liberalization of the ABC or XYZ market game has been two platforms, namely Artmo and Discover.surf. Although they let art aficionados and enthusiasts join their platforms for free and promise them 100% of the royalties, the colossal problem with this approach of providing the aspirants with an opportunity to create an account and some storage space to upload their works is how to reach the influential figures in that market? Billions of active pages which receive almost no traffic and the number of people who found the appeal of one-click publishing on KDP irresistible and spent months toiling in their rooms to write books only to discover that 90% of the authors publishing books on Amazon’s KDP program fail to find any audience at all raise the crucial question that does this business plan of “liberalizing the market” work for the masses, as well. Although this business model provides companies like Amazon the truly captivating and almost irresistible marketing copy that with Amazon Prime and Kindle, the buyers will get access to hundreds of thousands of eBooks, however, have they ever told their buyers that out of those hundreds of thousands of books, only 5% or so have managed to find any readership?
By superficially liberalizing the market, or eliminating the barriers to entry, these entrepreneurs manage to find what suits their needs, the number of users that they can then use to raise funds or even list their companies on the stock market. However, an ordinary user lacking marketing skills or connections becomes merely a number with nothing to show for his or her efforts as a songwriter or book writer. These entrepreneurs have been busy creating the next gold rush periods in various markets, where just a handful hit the jackpot and a vast majority not only lose their peace of mind but their precious time chasing their next big break. The majority of those who succeed on these platforms eventually resort to spectacularly dirty marketing techniques, for example, finding people on Fiverr types of platforms with no moral or ethical dilemmas willing to say whatever that dream chaser wants them to say.
As I have created accounts on both of the aforementioned platforms, namely Artmo and Discover.surf, hence, a far more ethical way of managing these platforms would be to hire curators with unblemished records in those categories, adjudicators with squeaky clean reputations, to let the decent, talented entrants with a track record of very good to excellent performances in those areas pay a percentage of their promised royalty as a vetting or curation fee. For example, as a person with a profound interest in lyrical poetry and a track record of excellent performances in language-related matters, I would gladly pay a 20–35% evaluation and promotion fee to get my work graded with the hope that it would reach the people interested in promoting the naturally talented contenders and aspirants in the field. Without an immaculate and credible curation process, these businesses with sensationalist marketing copy revolving around the phrasing, “breaking barriers,” “creating opportunity,” and “liberalizing the market” will only continue to work for those interested in generating numbers, of course, the businesses themselves, and the ones with strong connections. As a former school topper who trounced his competitors in multiple activities, I have witnessed despicable, hideous characters promoting horrible characters bereft of morals and ethical compulsion merely because they have familial ties and some of them can return the favor in the way of unearned promotions and perks.
Unless these businesses were to introduce indisputable and transparent curation and grading processes, the process would remain a game of numbers for the business operators and nauseatingly repulsive for the meritorious parties uninterested in using dirty tactics to succeed in the business world already dominated by spectacularly dirty players.
A few lines taken from the masterly commentary on the state of affairs in the entertainment world in the classic, Sunset Boulevard.
But after a year, a one room hell
A Murphy bed, a rancid smell
Wallpaper peeling at the corners
Sunset Boulevard, twisting boulevard
Secretive and rich, a little scary
Sunset Boulevard, tempting boulevard
Waiting there to swallow the unwary
Smile a rented smile, fill someone's glass
Kiss someone's wife, kiss someone's ass
We do whatever pays the wages
After the first couple to few years of hardship, most people contributing on these networks either abandon their dreams or resort to the techniques mentioned in the aforementioned few lines. Fiverr and UpWork are the most preferred platforms of people desirous of finding success on such platforms. On Fiverr, people interested in marketing their works can find spectacularly unscrupulous so-called marketers who have openly stated that just give us the copy and we will post it using multiple accounts. The route that at least some are employing to find followers, buyers, and admirers. The only legitimate solution to this problem is to hire curators with unblemished records, and ask the willing participants to pay a portion of their much publicized royalties to get their works thoroughly evaluated.
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