Making money twice
37signals.com
37signals.com
They get away with because the content itself is so valuable.
What is amazing though is the marketing - which is what this post is all about. I'm sure that at least one third of the people on this site could create the same content if they put their mind to it. What almost nobody can do though is market it like 37signals.
I'll give you that your one third could produce the ideas, but how many could also produce the straightforward, simple, clear writing? It's harder than it looks.
They are a good example of what you could do in your niche industry.
It's interesting that for years 'industry magazines' have produced glossy dungheaps to sell ads on. They can do this because advertisers want to believe that there is a publication that reaches 70% of all HR people in the tech industry or 45% of all OH&S people in the mining industry. In some cases there is such a paper. In many there just isn't. In the latter, the ads are carried by these idiot mags.
Now there's a way. Create your own. If you can.
The conferences are probably second exposures for most people, but that's probably ok because the medium is so different -- people will get different things out of an interactive forum than a (relatively) static set of blog posts.
They already cried foul when Google did a product that was slightly similar to Campfire. Now, I'd love to see their reaction if someone decided to "repackage" one of their products on their own.
Some people read blogs - that's great - they got the info Some people only just found out about them and want the easy full back story - that's great - buy an ebook. Some people hate ebooks, but love the tactile feel of paper - buy the book Some people are more audible and need to hear it spoken to them - go to the conference..
All they did was come up with an idea once - and then present it in different and more appropriate ways to different people. How is that Trump tactics?
Note - I realise that some people will buy the content multiple times - but honestly - this is a capitalist society, and they obviously derive some benefit from it...
I'm aware we live in a capitalist society. It's fine to make money. I'm saying it won't be my money.
Nothing particularly wrong with it, maybe the advice is good and many people need someone to look up to. But the parallel with Kiyosaki is accurate.
Which is more important (for one person), 4x$25k or 4x$250k?
I would argue 4x$25k - as that is enough to go independant - miss capitalising on one revenue source and you are toast. The person with a single $250k income stream may never bother looking for the other three opportunities that are out there.
(This was the publisher's loss, though, not his. That's the way to do things :)
Jesus Christ do they have to shout quite so loud?
What they're talking about here is the "do it well." They're making an argument that doing it well involves repackaging that one thing you're doing for multiple audiences.
Content is half the battle. Distribution is the other.
Don't forget the third half; getting people to give a damn (i.e. marketing).
A comment I read somewhere about Rocketboom often comes back to me. It was something like this:
"They made a halfway decent video show....and then got it played everywhere. The everywhere was the real value."
The blog post linked about is not about making a video show, it's about the everywhere part of the equation.
I'm saying that the one thing 37signals does is making and selling productivity web apps. They've managed to find a great synergy between selling their "real" product and their marketing - which includes their blog, conferences, the "37signals way" - and they are talking about selling the byproducts of their marketing.
My point is that this isn't necessarily always a great strategy. If you're making plastic widgets, I'm not convinced you should spend effort on selling "working with plastic" e-books.