Buy My Smart Ebook? Maybe???

[Steven Wagenheim]

You're all familiar with the "Buy My Stupid Ebook" site and all the similar ones.

They're good for a laugh and yeah, maybe some of these people actually
make some Adsense money through them or with whatever monetization
they have set up.

But what do you think of gimmicks like these?

Do you think there is a real market for them if done right or do you think that
ultimately, the best way to make money on the Internet is with a straight
forward "conventional" approach?

I'm not passing judgment on either method. I'm just curious as to what
other marketers think of this "business model" in general.

Also, does it have to be one or the other or can we combine the two?

My gut tells me that walking the humorous/serious line would be difficult
to do unless you were really clever, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's a
market for a serious/silly combo. For that matter, it may have already
been done. I don't know. I haven't seen any personally.

Anyway, just curious as to what the "out of the box" marketers think about
these things.

Worthwhile or worthless?

[Tel]

My old man used to say that to succeed in business you had to have a gimmick. It can be a brand name, a face, a catchphrase whatever as long as people remember it. Another one of his favourites was "there is no such thing as bad publicity, there is only publicity", which can be seem with certain rock stars of years gone by who dis outrageous things that stuck in the minds of people, sometimes more than their music. Ozzy Osbourne and biting the head off a live at springs to mind!

So what marketing really comes down to is making sure you get your own gimmick to stick in people's minds, so that the next time you release something, people will go say, "hey, its that guy..." and you have bought yourself some free credibility and maybe some respect.

As long as you didn't go biting heads of life flying rodents!

[CDarklock]

I tend to do this sort of thing. I generally have a great deal of contempt for IM products, and I'm pretty sure my target audience does, too. Most of them aren't worth the paper they're not printed on. (See my sig.) So that comes through, and I say a few self-deprecating things as well... because honestly, sometimes I say something and it sounds like I've just channeled a 19th century snake oil salesman. Just call me Adolfo Pirelli.

In general, we're marketing to people who understand marketing and inherently distrust it. You sort of have to recognise that fact, as well as the place "snark" holds in modern culture. I think it speaks to some people and not others; the question is whether those people are your target market.

[Loren Woirhaye]

I go a little off-topic here. (for the record,
I don't sarcasm is good for selling stuff, but I
think Engagement is essential.)

Cleverness in marketing can work well, as long as it
doesn't obscure the selling message. If you look at
image advertising for fashion brands sometimes you
see work that is very clever but you can't figure out
what it's selling. The agencies who do this sort of
stuff don't track the results of such advertising
however.

As long as we can CLEAR on what it's about, what
it does, how much it costs to buy it and how to
get it easily, there is a lot of room for the kind of
innovation that gets people to notice.

In recent launches IM gurus have discovered a
new vocabulary in "pattern interrupts" - even going
so far as (har-de-har-har!) wearing false beards!

Why to a jaundiced observer such cleverness
might appear to be just plain dumb, to some of
the target market it's an involvement device -
because as marketers today we are in the business
not only of SELLING stuff, but of ENGAGING an
increasingly illiterate and ADHD-afflicted marketplace.

One way to engage is with hard-nosed credibility,
which appears to be tested and proven to work
with products like health-pills and investment advice -
the seniors targeted by much of such marketing
aren't looking for entertainment, they are looking
for SECURITY, relief from pain, ways to hold onto
what they have.

Fear-of-loss (health, sexual function, standard of
living, mobility) are markets in which cleverness
and entertainment value are not likely to work with
IM or direct mail... but in the infomercial format
many testes rules of written advertising do not
apply.

Look at the "Sham-Wow!", the "the Magic Bullet",
and Jeff Paul's "Shortcut to Internet Millions"
(where buxom models boast of their newfound wealth
acquired by following Mr. Paul's advice).

With "make money" products targeted at young people
who haven't got a great deal to lose, ENTERTAINMENT
is a big factor. Somehow it seems to function as
an inclusion device.

I think people buy from Frank Kern because he tells
a good joke and he knows how to make people feel like
they are in on it, included. He has wicked other
skills too, but as far as I can tell he's really working
this simple angle of being the "class clown". It's
an engagement device and it's working well for him.

[ExRat]

Hi Steven,

My gut tells me that walking the humorous/serious line would be difficult
to do unless you were really clever, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's a
market for a serious/silly combo. For that matter, it may have already
been done. I don't know. I haven't seen any personally.

J-mo.

Hi Loren,

I think people buy from Frank Kern because he tells
a good joke and he knows how to make people feel like
they are in on it, included. He has wicked other
skills too, but as far as I can tell he's really working
this simple angle of being the "class clown". It's
an engagement device and it's working well for him.

HE got J-mo on board and then cloned his style.

[CDawson]

I think that these people are just trying something new to see what happens.

[summerm]

hey thanks! i hadn't heard of "buy my stupid ebook". that was hilarious.

the more entertainment the better. i love gimmicks. like those car insurance commercials with that interesting female character. (but look, i don't even know what company they were for.)

so if you go gimmicky, you'll gain a lotta love, but you better remember to prioritize directing that love into a sale. like at the bottom of the buymystupidebook.com page, if the person put an actual link to a product that contains more satire... it would be tempting to buy.

[John M Kane]

If the buy my stupid ebook(or any other 'successful' parody) is grabbing eyeballs forget selling it, why not just adsense the site.

[melanied]

Dang, I thought maybe a Smart eBook was a new kind of small eBook that you could pull directly into parallel parking spaces. Too bad.

[Loren Woirhaye]

I have to admit I use the "BuyMyStupidEbook" site as
an involvement ploy in one of my websites - the
argument is sort of: "You can check out my stuff and
I'll give it to you straight, or you can go wallow in the
illusion and chase get-rich-quick-for-dummies dreams -
start here with this..." (and the link goes to the
"BuyMyStupidEbook" site).