I wonder how I can make some money off my friends?
I wonder how I can turn my blog into a profit center?
I wonder if I can get some of the kids at the playground to make me some money?
Americans love to monetize stuff. Why bother doing something if you’re not going to make a profit at it?
Tom Asacker has a noteworthy riff (which I want to disagree with–at least a little) about the "how much is my blog worth" button that’s traveling around (I stole this one from him, and he got it from Evelyn). I have no idea how much my blog is worth. I also don’t try to monetize my blog–that would ruin it. It would ruin it because most of my readers would leave, and it would ruin it because then I’d try to outdo myself and monetize it more and more and more.
Evelyn Rodriguez and other popular bloggers certainly agree with me. The George Washington icon is a joke–a reminder that the goal is not to turn around and sell our blogs to the highest bidder, but instead to enjoy the process of having people we respect hear what we have to say.
Do the people you work with assume that something has to turn a profit to be good?
It’s absurd to imagine someone trying very hard to monetize their desire to scuba dive once a week or write poetry or hang out with friends. People like to talk about their favorite sports teams or tech gadgets, but why do we have to be in such a hurry to turn that into a profit? And why is "just a hobby" a pejorative remark?
Isn’t the point of all the difficult work we do to earn the right to do things we enjoy?
One blog I used to read is now filled with nothing but aggressive links to buy more books and read more glowing reviews of the work of the blogger. How sad that the quest for cashing out turned something great into something to be avoided.
Is the web (or the blogosphere) off limits to making a profit? No way! It’s one of the greatest money-makin/marketing mechanisms ever. But the irony is that those that have set out to quickly turn a profit have almost always failed.
Saul Hansell’s piece on Google on Sunday buried the lead. The real revolution at Google is the way they sell their ads–something that both Sergey and Larry were against when it was first conceived. Not only wasn’t it their idea, but Eric tried to kill the innovation that completely overhauled the web. Google works for two reasons. First, because it’s great to use. And then, second (the "then" being important here) because they invented a brand new way to turn attention into revenue… a method that rewards the intelligence of the user without penalizing her.
Maybe Google should put up a statue in honor of Salar Kamangar, the guy who figured it out.
So…
–yes, you have a brand, even if you don’t intend to monetize it.
–no, you don’t have to have a plan or an ulterior motive if you want to share your ideas. Just share them. It’s good practice and good for all of us.
–maybe you will, one day, figure out how to achieve the much-heralded monetization. But if that’s your primary goal, the compromises you make along the way will likely cause your efforts to backfire.
November 2, 2005
You could gloss over Ron’s checklist (Create Advocates) or you could think hard about what you haven’t done. The key is to look at this list from the other person’s point of view, not yours.
James Shewmaker points us to the always-worth-reading: Brand Autopsy.
The major reason why word-of-mouth hasn’t taken off is not because marketers lack the metrics to measure it. It’s because most products, services, and businesses simply aren’t worth talking about. Marketers should worry less about the metrics of “WOMUnits” and more about the message of the word-of-mouth activity. The more compelling and interesting the “WOMUnit,” the more people will talk about it.
November 1, 2005
Long live selling.
There are very few books that actually think about what it means to sell something. Marc Miller delivers one: Selling Is Dead.
…should you?
Wal-Mart is hiring top political consultants with track records from the Reagan and Clinton campaigns to coordinate a multimillion effort to discredit a new film about the company. Wal-Mart is entitled to be as anti-union as they like, of course, and entitled to work hard to get the word out about their point of view, but it’s surprising (at least to me) to see who is willing to help them combat those that would critize them.
Strange bedfellows, it seems.
Politicians (and especially political consultants) are a special breed. One day they crow about how something is essential ("give em an up or down vote!") and the very next day they take the other side.
But are they really a special breed?
Have you ever worked on a product or service you didn’t believe in? Marketed something with side effects (okay, there are no side effects, just effects) that you weren’t proud of? (To be fair, there are Kerry and Dean alum working just as hard on the other side…)
For a really long time, the discourse in the public space was assumed to be genuine. We assumed that if someone took a position, they actually believed it. (Of course, that was never true, but we liked to believe that it was). Today, as money further corrupts just about all of the systems we used to assume were pristine, it’s getting harder to make that assumption with any validity.
Where do you draw the line? How much money does it take to change your mind? What happens when we expose the data and label opinions or efforts as purchased?
The ideas that are being spread most often today aren’t ideas at all. They’re opinions. And we learned a long time ago that everyone is entitled to his opinion. But what if it’s not his opinion? What if the opinion belongs to someone else?
Welcome to the age of appropriate cynicism.
"I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV".
a million dollars there, pretty soon, it all adds up.
In 1997, Lisa Gansky (at GNN) and I (at Yoyodyne) put together the first million dollar giveaway on the Net. If I remember right, the hard work our teams put into it led to a annuity (probably still paying off) for a forklift operator who really needed the money.
That was eight years ago. It was a breakthrough gimmick because until then, the biggest prize ever given online was perhaps $50,000.
Over the last few weeks, the mail I have been getting the most often is about million dollar websites, RSS feeds and other advertising gimmicks that revolve around selling little bits of data to advertisers as a way of gaming the games of attention and search engines and traffic.
It seems like a million dollars is still a lot of money.
The problem with the Pet Rock is that you could only do it once. Sure, it sold a bazillion rocks, but what good did that do everyone else? It’s really easy to waste a lot of time chasing gimmicks, always arriving just a little too late to be the guy who breaks through.
The first million-dollar website, apparently, did awfully well. But who would be interested in the second one?
I think you can predict approximately where the next Purple Cow is going to be, but it’s more about trends (or anti-trends) than it is about topping that last guy’s gimmick.
Sunday morning and I’m watching an eleven-year old make a stop-motion animated movie.
He’s using tools that would have cost $100,000 or more a decade ago. And today, of course, they’re supercheap.
You can typeset using the finest graphic design tools ever made–for fifty cents a minute at Kinko’s, or at home with a $500 Mac Mini.
You can post your resume in more places and reach more people than any outsourcing firm ever could
And my friends at eyebeam just got a fancy 3D printer that allows them "output" just about any small three dimensional object they can imagine.
If you want to write a book, go ahead. You can write it and typeset at home, and get it professionally printed with no problem. And Amazon will sell it, right next store to Stephen King’s latest.
If you want to design a car or create a perfume or access a law library, same deal.
And if you want a blog, you can have the very same tools that the most popular bloggers have… for free.
The tools keep getting better and better.
Which means that the first barrier to entry–access to professional tools–is gone.
So there’s more, but is there better?
I think we gave a Disney movie, circa 1954, the benefit of the doubt. It was the movie in the theatre. It was the only one to choose from. It was a big deal. It didn’t matter if it was the best movie Walt ever made, because it was the only one right now.
The bar’s a lot higher, because access to tools is a lot easier.
October 30, 2005
(marketing makes it critic proof).
The New York Times roasted the Odd Couple today. They hated it.
The Odd Couple booked $21 million in advance tickets. A record. The whole run is sold out.
The review, then, doesn’t matter.
But of course it does. It does for the two reasons that it sold so many tickets.
1. American Express offered advance seats to Gold Card members. This
permission asset is hugely profitable. American Express has permission
to market to this group, a group that responds to Broadway show offers
in a big way. Not only does that help sell tickets, but it makes it
more likely that members will keep paying money for their Gold Card.
2. Nathan and Matthew have a brilliant reputation. A brand, even. As
a result, when the offer showed up (TV show! Jack Klugman! The guys
from the producers! Neil Simon! Advance tickets!) the offer was
irresistible. We’re talking $1000 scalpers on eBay.
So, there’s zero short term economic impact from a bad review.
But if it’s a bad play, all sorts of brands get tarnished. The
permission asset decreases in value. The names aren’t worth as much.
The lesson is that the new marketing makes it a lot easier to make
products for your customers (instead of having to run around finding
customers for your products.) The obligation that comes with that,
though, is to make something really and truly great. You no longer have
to dumb stuff down to create average stuff for average people. You can
make something truly great. So do it.
October 28, 2005
My first reaction to Delta to Eliminate Discount Carrier Song was, "of course it failed." It failed because they didn’t burn their bridges, didn’t really commit, didn’t do anything but a pale imitation of Jet Blue.
But then I realized that Song wasn’t a failure on at least one level… it allowed a stodgy brown company to move fairly quickly and to discover the power of story telling. Everything from the organic food to the paint job was about telling passengers a different story. Song had trouble keeping that promise, but at least they tried.
So maybe Delta learned a lesson about flexibility and speed and risk. Failure is rarely fatal.
The Big Moo broke into the top 100 on Amazon yesterday.
Since every copy sold there (or at any bookstore) buys part of a school and part of a cure for diabetes and part of a round of financing for a third world entrepreneur, we need to say thank you.
Because I involved so many of my friends and colleagues (and heroes), this project has been a huge risk for me. Every single person in publishing said an anthology on this topic couldn’t sell. If it weren’t for my blog readers, they would have been right.
Thanks for buying a thousand copies. Or 100. Or one. Amazon.com: Books: The Big Moo : Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable.
October 27, 2005
