Some of you may have watched Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby last summer. As you recall, one of the catchphrases from the movie, starring Will Ferrell, was “If you’re not first, you’re last.” Part of the movie was written to disprove this notion and we can see many examples of this on the Internet. It goes to show you that even if you’re not the first person to come up with a certain idea, it does not mean that you can’t make plenty of money from that idea. Do it better than the predecessor and people will notice.

Perhaps the best example of this is Google. Nearly everyone I know relies on Google for their web searches these days. Very rarely do I run into people who prefer to use other services like Yahoo!, MSN, or Ask.com. Google certainly was not the first search engine to hit the scene. I’m sure many of you remember names like Hotbot, Altavista, and Excite. By and large, the mass exodus from these services is because Google has a cleaner interface and it provides more relevant results. People like that.

The same thing can be said about social networking sites like Facebook. Again, Facebook is obviously not the first website of its kind. Many of you may be on MySpace, Friendster, Hi5, AsianAvenue, and all sorts of other services. With talk of a possible Facebook MP3 store, it’s clear that Facebook is rising in popularity and plenty of people are trying to make money from it. I need not remind you of the innumerable Facebook applications.

If you’ve got an idea or a concept that you feel can make money online, don’t let the “copycat phenomenon” deter you from giving it a shot. John Cow copied John Chow and look how far he has gone.