As a marketing consultant I personally created a couple of websites that gained a lot of traction (in their niches) for a big corporation. When I handed over the keys to the employees of said company, they stopped working on it after just of couple of weeks. They simply couldn't be bothered.
I was still hosting the websites. A year later they told me to pull the plug. I asked if I could take over the websites instead and continue to run the websites on my own. They were okay with that.
So they paid me handsomely for those websites and now they don't have any problem with me competing with their main site for some very attractive keywords. They also don't have a problem with me earning affiliate money through their own program, as well as their competitors.
Big corporations are just weird man. Online marketing is such an afterthought for many of them. And their employees simply don't care.
Exactly this i've tried myself, seen stuff of very obvious value thrashed because it didn't fit someones career-path, and seen million dollar projects just going in circles with no one knowing what they are doing but too proud to admit failure - very often there's a few people who see things very clearly in each company, but most people are just playing games.
In the smaller co-owned startups people have so many roles and have to be so absolutely tapped in everyone are talented, but the bigger the company, the more people are either just chillin' or working their life away on projects that are going nowhere, and there's seemingly little relation between skill, wages and position.
Sounds like a know it all - i know - but i'm seriously turned off after working at larger corps, to me it seems like mirror of an unjust society, which i think america and the west is to an increasingly absurd degree.
