B.L. Ochman has a good piece on Seth Godin which is worth a read with a few interesting observations about the way Seth goes about his business:
‘Pointer: The More You Give Away, the More You Sell
“This is the ironic part,” he says. “The less I try to make money, the more I give away, the less I try to sell, the better I do.” He has no business plans for the blogs, doesn’t know how many readers he has or how many subscribe to his RSS feeds. He reads trackbacks on his blogs “because it helps me evolve ideas to the next level.”“What I’m really trying to do is almost through trial and error discover ideas that want to spread and offer those ideas packaged in ways people will want to buy them. This varies from free idea that is one paragraph long to ideas that cost money because I have to get on a plane and deliver them.” Currently, he says, he’s debating whether or not he should just write e-books and not bother selling printed books any more.’
I love this concept – it taps right into some of my own recent thinking on the way profitable blogging often comes out of those times when you give something away. I guess this is what sparked my building blogging relationships series.
I believe the secret here in love and business is in not giving half-measures.
Can’t say it enough- want to be successful? Love what you do…do what you love.
Seth is one of the great characters in the blog world. Notionally, he’s an old-fashioned marketer, though you wouldn’t know it by the title of his latest book : “All Marketers are Liars” ~ there’s heavy irony in there. He also set up the manifesto site : ChangeThis, which allows anyone to bid for the right to publish a free PDF manifesto from the site. It’s been down a bit lately, but I believe it’s set for relaunch this summer. He’s worth following over at sethgodin.typepad.com.
It would be wonderful to live in a world where doing little or nothing resulted in an outcome, but for the rest of us its very rarely a reality in which we can subscribed. There is some umbradge to the old saying of you’ve got to spend money to make money, or in Seth’s case he is losing money by giving away things to ultimately make more money.