When the movie Saving Private Ryan hit the theatres many years back, it became an instant box office hit. The show depicts how real and cruel are physical wars between nations. The soldiers killed each other mercilessly, which resulted in a sea of blood.

In the business world today, the same description is being mirrored. When you cannot set yourself apart from the competition, you end up fighting them head-on in a messy and bloody red sea. In the same sense, there are no mercies.

Blue Ocean Strategy is a business book written by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne based on a study of 150 strategic moves spanning more than a hundred years and thirty industries. The authors argued that tomorrow’s leading companies will succeed not by battling competitors, but by creating Blue Oceans of uncontested market space ripe for growth.

Blue Ocean Strategy outlines a systematic approach to turning the competition irrelevant. It highlights six principles that every company can use to successfully devise and execute these strategies. The six principles present how to rebuild market boundaries, focus on the big picture, go beyond current demand, get the steps right, overcome obstructions, and build action plans into strategy.

The scenario is probably the same for any business. I recall purchasing a Garmin Navigation device from Circuit City about two years back. A few months later, the company filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter Eleven of the United States Bankruptcy Code. It came as a rude shock to me, because Circuit City was once hailed as one of the most successful retailers in the country. Many experts provided their fair share of opinions for the troubled company. It appears that Circuit City turned out to be one of the victims of the red sea battles.

I am looking at the Internet Marketing space right now with the same lens. It was probably a lot easier to make quick money from the internet 10 years ago. I recently finished a book by Darren Rowse, one of the most successful bloggers in the industries with over 3 million visitors on his blog per month. Darren started his first blog in the year 2002 but wasn’t thinking of monetizing it then. Darren admitted in his Problogger book that he started out at a time when blogging was a lot less competitive than it is now. And I agree.

When I started Internet Marketing, there were many so-called Gurus who tried to show me the rope, with a hefty fee of course. I soon found out that these Gurus were making more money running Internet Marketing Courses than what they could generate online.

I was glad I persisted. Adam Short’s Niche Profit Classroom program is probably one of the best legitimate Internet Marketing courses that I have committed and benefitted from. Come to think of it, the Niche Profit Classroom is actually adopting the Blue Ocean approach. It teaches about locating a space where most people ignore, because most people wanted to just window shop in a big mall, but those who visited smaller stores are in fact a more targeted pool of buyers.

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