In order to make money online it’s wise to know the storied history and roots of online marketing in general. As you’ll realise while reading this article Richard Garriott can truly be crowned the Godfather of online marketing because his work essentially created an army of online marketers and people looking to make money online using non blogging methods. If you’ve never heard of Richard Garriott I’m sure you will soon, he’s scheduled to take a trip to space with Nasa in Oct 2008.

Actually if you haven’t heard of Richard Garriott before, and you’re interested in online marketing, it’s likely because most of the established and currently popular “teachers” in this field have never spoken of him before. A quick “site command” check of problogger.net, shoemoney.com, johnchow.com etc on Google shows they’ve never mentioned him. Since that’s the case, and since Richard Garriott is my idol, I’m thankful to have the honor and priviledge of introducing you to his work.

Who Is Richard Garriott?
For a textbook detailing of his impressive list of achievements visit wikipedia, i’m not going to re-write all the basics. There you’ll find everything you want to know about his work, his exciting parties, his mansion complete with built in dungeons… All that good stuff. This article is to introduce you to what you won’t find on wikipedia because it’s my personal story.

How did Richard Garriott’s work launch me into marketing and the internet?
In the later part of 1998 I was working the night shift at a dream job for a company called JDS Fitel (now known as JDSUniphase). My work involved taking prototype photonics equipment and wavelength division multiplexers (WDMs) through their paces for product engineers, providing daily feedback, setting up lasers, computerized test stations and equipment for testing etc. It was cutting edge stuff, photonics wasn’t yet taught in school. I refused to leave the night shift for day or evening because nights gave me complete freedom to fully use my 2 million dollar toolbench without interuptions normal to busy day shifts. I often worked 6 nights a week but my night off was a bit awkward, I was wide awake with nothing to do at 4am on most nights off.

While at a book store looking for my next novel I happened upon a copy of Richard Garriotts newly released “Ultima Online” game and having been a fan of the earlier Ultima series of games dating back to Ultima III for my old apple II computer, I bought it on the spot. I entered the soon to be wildly successful virtual world Richard Garriott created and was quickly introduced to online marketing while it was in its infancy.

To make a long story short, and since my “play” time was limited to one night per week, I’ll just say that I found myself playing a treasure hunter character which was self sufficient in almost any situation. I was able to travel into the deepest corners of the game in fairly short order and I was gathering “runes” to the most exciting places I found. I didn’t know it at the time but those runes would turn out to be what launched my first official online venture.

eBay was also in its infancy and not long after the launch of Ultima Online you could find virtual items from the game being sold for real money. At first a handful of merchants gave it a shot but as the grame grew in popularity, so did the number of auctions. I personaly couldn’t stand the selling of gold or items from the game because I felt they ruined the experience for new gamers but at the same time I felt that runes, and later runebooks, actually enhanced the experience for new players by alowing them to travel to places they otherwise couldn’t - I focused on runebooks.

I opened up shop in game with a rune “library” called ValHalla which was located north of Minoc on the Atlantic shard and I was the first to list lockpicking runebook sets on eBay. They were easily reproduced by my fully experienced character and they sold quickly for 39.95 per set of four books, complete with a reference guide on my first website. I also received dozens of requests to build entire libraries for players, some offering as much as 800.00 per library which took me about three hours. I ended up paying the tax man a nice sum that year and became hooked on websites and the internet in general. My “real” job however kept me busy and when the delivery demands of my little enterprise began taking too much of my time I sold the business so to speak.

How does this make Richard the godfather of online marketing?
Richard Garriott created the first successful virtual world and with it came the first virtual marketplace and virtual economy. An army of marketers and online entrepreneurs got their feet wet with Ultima Online, many of which continue to be leaders at what they do today. A closer look at some of those people will give you a better idea of the impact Richard Garriotts creations had on the internet. Here are just a few of them…

Julian Dibble - author
Before there was Shoemoney to learn from, there was Playmoney.
In December of 2002 Julian published this eye opening article in “Wired” magazine that described the worlds 79th wealthiest nation, you guessed it, Ultima Online. The fact that the economy within an online video game could outrank actual nations was tough to swallow for some. Julian went on to detail a must read experiment he performed under his nickname of “playmoney” on his personal blog, the experiment got so much attention that it was later published into this book. For just a few dollars you can read all about how countless numbers of people, myself included, can trace our start in online marketing back to Richard Garriott. Serious about online marketing? Buy it!

eBay - the marketplace
eBay was launched in 1995, it received venture capital in 1998 and by 1999 Ultima Online sales made up a respectable percentage of the number of auctions on eBay. Virtual goods was big money when eBay needed it most. The partnership between the virtual world and virtual marketplace cemented the futures of a vast number of internet entrepreneurs.

Bob Kiblinger - UOTreasures.com
Bob was one of the first to realise the business potential of virtual worlds and he was quick to capitalise on it in a big way. Bob, one of the patent holders on the air freshener “febreeze” even quit his job as a chemist with Procter & Gamble Co because his virtual pursuits earned him a handsome six figure salary and he saw potential to increase it much further. Bob has earned class A recognition for his efforts from the likes of Forbes magazine and this 2005 Washington Post article to name just two of the dozens of top tier news sources that have written about him. Bob’s efforts continue to make him rich today and he’s even running his own affiliate program.

Brock Pierce - IGE.com
Does the name sound familiar? Yes, he’s the “Mighty Ducks” disney movie star and he launched IGE.com, a website that continues to trade in virtual currencies.

Markee Dragon, uo.stratics.com and literaly hundreds of other internet entities are pulling in six figure incomes or higher and all of it traceable back to Richard Garriotts creations. If you find John Chow making 30,000 a month by blogging impressive, how about 200,000 a month dealing with online video games? Richard is my idol for the reasons you can read about on wikipedia, not because of the thriving internet opportunities he helped launch. I would drop all of my work and business holdings to take even the lowest of entry level positions for a year if it meant working in tandem with Richard, he’s led his life in a manner that has had that profound of an impact on me.

Just make sure and wave to us from space Richard - Fare thee well!

Auditors like a company’s books to conform to GAAP. What is it?
(what’s this trivia contest about? What can I win?)

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