6 ms·

Making money twice

120 points by brm 18y ago

shafqat 18y ago
Interesting post. Not everyone can get away with repackaging though. You better be damn sure you're content is amazing before trying to serve it up over and over again. Otherwise it'll just piss people off. They get away with because the content itself is so valuable.
- jgrahamc 18y ago
  Repackaging can in itself by useful. I wrote a column about GNU Make for a long time and finally turned it into a PDF and Book via Lulu and it's very convenient for people to have all the columns (which I reedited) all in one place.
- mixmax 18y ago
  I would actually say that the content isn't spectacular. It isn't bad by any means - but not in a league of it's own either. Getting real can probably best be described as a cooked down version of common sense and business 101. 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.
  - pchristensen 18y ago
    "at least one third of the people on this site could create the same content if they put their mind to it" 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.
    - ckinnan 18y ago
      If I've learned anything on Hacker News, its not the idea that matters, its the execution.
  - cmos 18y ago
    The content is niche. And they advertise well, since this is a 'customer base' for them. If I were selling car parts, I'd have articles about cars, and post on message boards that are car focused. They are a good example of what you could do in your niche industry.
    - netcan 18y ago
      An excellent example. 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.
- iigs 18y ago
  The point behind repackaging, as mentioned in the article, is that you point it at different people. Perhaps an individual contributor reads something on the web, sees that their boss might enjoy or learn from it, and buys the PDF for the boss in order to give them something to read while on the plane. 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.
- skmurphy 18y ago
  Our experience has been that different audiences like to consume the same content in different ways: blog, print, workshop presentation, and workbook. Many complex software application development teams face the same challenge: they need to produce documentation (print & on-line), training materials (print, wiki, presentations) on-line help, application notes (print, web, presentations).
- known 18y ago
  Japanese, Koreans and Chinese economies and Microsoft are the successful examples of repackaging.
rokhayakebe 18y ago
If you have an audience it is easier to sell many products. You can repackage all your blog posts into whatever you want, but if there is not much people who come across it, you wont make much.
- run4yourlives 18y ago
  Um, you won't have an audience until you start distribution though. There was a time that 37S didn't have any audience at all, and that wasn't too long ago.
alex_c 18y ago
Hmmm... the flip side of this advice, of course, would be "don't spread yourself too thin", or "pick one thing and do it well"...
- brandnewlow 18y ago
  That's not a flip side at all. 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.
  - t0pj 18y ago
    Content is half the battle. Distribution is the other. Don't forget the third half; getting people to give a damn (i.e. marketing).
    - brandnewlow 18y ago
      well said. 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.
  - alex_c 18y ago
    >repackaging that one thing you're doing 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.
    - MaysonL 18y ago
jrockway 18y ago
FWIW, this doesn't always work. I know of a certain columnist who took some of his columns and had them made into a book (via Apress). Well, nobody bought the book and he now has several thousand of them sitting in his garage. I picked up 5 of the books when he was giving them away, meaning to give them to coworkers two jobs ago. I forgot, and now they take up a lot of space. (This was the publisher's loss, though, not his. That's the way to do things :)
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
  Vanity presses are risky that way. These days I think print-on-demand is the way to go for small runs like that.
mooneater 18y ago
Easier once you are already well known.
- notauser 18y ago
  But also less essential. 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.
- henning 18y ago
  They have been well-known, but it's because they were saying smart things even back in the dot-com bubble: amidst the insanity of Pets.com, they were the ones citing the Dutch tulip mania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania) on their homepage as part of their pitch to potential clients and the world as a whole.
cousin_it 18y ago
This must be how people transition from doing useful work to being marketing gurus etc. Yeah it pays, but it's bad for the soul :-) I recall Phillip J. Eby, once an unusually smart Python programmer, now a self-help author.
- rglullis 18y ago
  Thank you for your comment. I thought I was the only one that read this post as "more ways to keep milking money from the same suckers." 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.
  - LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
    To be fair, there is value in both editing and variety of presentation. And it can even be measured in dollars, if this article is anything to go by.
  - jacobbijani 18y ago
    Repackaging someone else's content and repackaging your own content are two extremely different things.
- alextp 18y ago
  It was kinda sad reading his blog while he made the jump. The first few self-help-ish posts were actually ok, but the rest were just annoying.
j2d2 18y ago
This is bordering on something I'd expect Donald Trump to suggest. Whether or not it can make money, it's a tactic I usually expect people like Trump or Robert Kiyosaki to promote and I start tuning out...
- whatusername 18y ago
  Really? How so? It's not that they were necessarily selling to the same people 6 times? In one sense all they were doing is "making something (in a format) people want" 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...
  - j2d2 18y ago
    Because they're telling us to pay them to teach us how to be successful just like them. Follow our easy program and you'll get rich, just like us! I'm aware we live in a capitalist society. It's fine to make money. I'm saying it won't be my money.
    - toby 18y ago
      I thought the same thing when I read this article. It's actually the exact formula described by Tim Ferris. - Establish yourself as an "expert" in some field - Sell information products about how to make money in said field - Make far more money talking about said field than you ever actually made working in it 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.
      - 18y ago
axod 18y ago
http://decknetwork.net/ http://decknetwork.net/ Jesus Christ do they have to shout quite so loud?
skmurphy 18y ago
We are doing some of those, not to as large an audience as 37signals. One thing that makes it difficult is a lack of good tools to re-purpose content across blogs, wiki, web, print, presentations, animation/video, and PDF. We do workshops where we have the content both as a presentation (slides), a workbook/handout, and in a wiki. It's a lot of extra work right now. Conceptually we develop/refine in a wiki and deliver as presentation (PPT slides), print, and wiki (slimmed down, that is then available as an on-line notebook where further work can be done). I have contact info in my profile and would welcome any suggestions for tools that make it easy to develop and re-purpose content.
- Hutzpah 18y ago
  Emacs Muse Mode. Write the thing in Muse. Than export it to whatever you like it's everything available: wiki, html, pdf, latex and so on.

120 points by brm 18y ago

Interesting post. Not everyone can get away with repackaging though. You better be damn sure you're content is amazing before trying to serve it up over and over again. Otherwise it'll just piss people off. They get away with because the content itself is so valuable.

jgrahamc 18y ago
Repackaging can in itself by useful. I wrote a column about GNU Make for a long time and finally turned it into a PDF and Book via Lulu and it's very convenient for people to have all the columns (which I reedited) all in one place.
mixmax 18y ago
I would actually say that the content isn't spectacular. It isn't bad by any means - but not in a league of it's own either. Getting real can probably best be described as a cooked down version of common sense and business 101. 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.
- pchristensen 18y ago
  "at least one third of the people on this site could create the same content if they put their mind to it" 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.
  - ckinnan 18y ago
    If I've learned anything on Hacker News, its not the idea that matters, its the execution.
- cmos 18y ago
  The content is niche. And they advertise well, since this is a 'customer base' for them. If I were selling car parts, I'd have articles about cars, and post on message boards that are car focused. They are a good example of what you could do in your niche industry.
  - netcan 18y ago
    An excellent example. 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.
iigs 18y ago
The point behind repackaging, as mentioned in the article, is that you point it at different people. Perhaps an individual contributor reads something on the web, sees that their boss might enjoy or learn from it, and buys the PDF for the boss in order to give them something to read while on the plane. 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.
skmurphy 18y ago
Our experience has been that different audiences like to consume the same content in different ways: blog, print, workshop presentation, and workbook. Many complex software application development teams face the same challenge: they need to produce documentation (print & on-line), training materials (print, wiki, presentations) on-line help, application notes (print, web, presentations).
known 18y ago
Japanese, Koreans and Chinese economies and Microsoft are the successful examples of repackaging.

rokhayakebe 18y ago

If you have an audience it is easier to sell many products. You can repackage all your blog posts into whatever you want, but if there is not much people who come across it, you wont make much.

run4yourlives 18y ago
Um, you won't have an audience until you start distribution though. There was a time that 37S didn't have any audience at all, and that wasn't too long ago.

alex_c 18y ago

Hmmm... the flip side of this advice, of course, would be "don't spread yourself too thin", or "pick one thing and do it well"...

brandnewlow 18y ago
That's not a flip side at all. 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.
- t0pj 18y ago
  Content is half the battle. Distribution is the other. Don't forget the third half; getting people to give a damn (i.e. marketing).
  - brandnewlow 18y ago
    well said. 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.
- alex_c 18y ago
  >repackaging that one thing you're doing 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.
  - MaysonL 18y ago

jrockway 18y ago

FWIW, this doesn't always work. I know of a certain columnist who took some of his columns and had them made into a book (via Apress). Well, nobody bought the book and he now has several thousand of them sitting in his garage. I picked up 5 of the books when he was giving them away, meaning to give them to coworkers two jobs ago. I forgot, and now they take up a lot of space. (This was the publisher's loss, though, not his. That's the way to do things :)

LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
Vanity presses are risky that way. These days I think print-on-demand is the way to go for small runs like that.

mooneater 18y ago

Easier once you are already well known.

notauser 18y ago
But also less essential. 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.
henning 18y ago
They have been well-known, but it's because they were saying smart things even back in the dot-com bubble: amidst the insanity of Pets.com, they were the ones citing the Dutch tulip mania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania) on their homepage as part of their pitch to potential clients and the world as a whole.

cousin_it 18y ago

This must be how people transition from doing useful work to being marketing gurus etc. Yeah it pays, but it's bad for the soul :-) I recall Phillip J. Eby, once an unusually smart Python programmer, now a self-help author.

rglullis 18y ago
Thank you for your comment. I thought I was the only one that read this post as "more ways to keep milking money from the same suckers." 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.
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
  To be fair, there is value in both editing and variety of presentation. And it can even be measured in dollars, if this article is anything to go by.
- jacobbijani 18y ago
  Repackaging someone else's content and repackaging your own content are two extremely different things.
alextp 18y ago
It was kinda sad reading his blog while he made the jump. The first few self-help-ish posts were actually ok, but the rest were just annoying.

j2d2 18y ago

This is bordering on something I'd expect Donald Trump to suggest. Whether or not it can make money, it's a tactic I usually expect people like Trump or Robert Kiyosaki to promote and I start tuning out...

whatusername 18y ago
Really? How so? It's not that they were necessarily selling to the same people 6 times? In one sense all they were doing is "making something (in a format) people want" 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...
- j2d2 18y ago
  Because they're telling us to pay them to teach us how to be successful just like them. Follow our easy program and you'll get rich, just like us! I'm aware we live in a capitalist society. It's fine to make money. I'm saying it won't be my money.
  - toby 18y ago
    I thought the same thing when I read this article. It's actually the exact formula described by Tim Ferris. - Establish yourself as an "expert" in some field - Sell information products about how to make money in said field - Make far more money talking about said field than you ever actually made working in it 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.
    - 18y ago

axod 18y ago

http://decknetwork.net/ http://decknetwork.net/ Jesus Christ do they have to shout quite so loud?

skmurphy 18y ago

We are doing some of those, not to as large an audience as 37signals. One thing that makes it difficult is a lack of good tools to re-purpose content across blogs, wiki, web, print, presentations, animation/video, and PDF. We do workshops where we have the content both as a presentation (slides), a workbook/handout, and in a wiki. It's a lot of extra work right now. Conceptually we develop/refine in a wiki and deliver as presentation (PPT slides), print, and wiki (slimmed down, that is then available as an on-line notebook where further work can be done). I have contact info in my profile and would welcome any suggestions for tools that make it easy to develop and re-purpose content.

Hutzpah 18y ago
Emacs Muse Mode. Write the thing in Muse. Than export it to whatever you like it's everything available: wiki, html, pdf, latex and so on.