I listened to an interview with a professional book buyer. She works at a bookstore and her job is to choose which books for the store to stock. She gets catalogues of all the new books from the publishers. Thousands of new books a year. Her job is to evaluate each book and seeing whether it makes sense to buy for her bookstore. Here's what she said she looks at: - Format - Price - Name + cover - Does it have a built-in audience? - Affinity (local connection etc.) - How the author and publishing company are promoting or planning to promote - Dimensions and page count (will it fit on the shelf) - Size of print run (gives her confidence this could be a big seller) - Is it returnable or not? (risk reversal if the books don't sell) - Comparable titles and sales - Specific customers she knows who might almost certainly buy this I thought this was interesting. It's a list I'm planning to look at the next time I create an offer or a promotion. A lot of this maps directly to the work of selling info products offers online, whether in book format or in other formats. It's how my customers evaluate my stuff. I also thought it was funny. I mean, there's one really conspicuous thing that's entirely missing from the list above. Any guesses what it might be?

Good news, everybody: Vinnie Vincent, formerly a guitarist for Kiss from 1982 to 1984, has just released a new album, Guitarmaggedon. Guitarmaggedon retails for $2M. Yes, two million dollars. $2,000,000, for a single copy. I haven't heard the album yet – you have to pay for that, and I don't have $2M in cash right now — but I know it features bangers like: - "Heavy Metal Poontang" - "Rocks On Fire" - "Ride The Serpent" - "Cockteazer" If you're not a big VV fan, you might wonder who or what would possibly pay $2M for a 10-track album by a washed-up, second-rate, 73-year-old rock star. I don't know. I also don't know if Vinnie will be able to sell even a single copy of this album. But he does have something working in his favor. For $2M, Vinnie is not just selling a single digital copy of Guitarmageddon... ... he's also selling the licensing rights. In other words... pay Vinnie $2M today, and you could be slinging Heavy Metal Poontang for the rest of your life, and keeping ALL THE MONEY. I bring this up because I have lately been thinking about the value of tying in an offer to money — whether it ties naturally to money or not — in order to make it feel like your prospect is effectively buying "money at a discount." This morning, I came up with 10 ideas for tying an offer into money [update: 11]. "Licensing" was #3 on my list. I would like to share my complete list with you... but I also want to hear if you have ideas I didn't come up with. So I propose a nice little round of Sunday-morning Marketing Battleship. Here's how that works: Tell me your idea for tying an offer into money. If I have that same idea on my list, I'll tell you so. If your idea is not on my list, you get a hit, and I'll share an item on my list that I haven't shared yet. You win when I'm completely sunk and out of ideas. Are you game? Then fire away below and tell me your idea, or two or three, for tying in an offer to money, and making your offer feel like "money at a discount."

Hidden deep in a comment on another thread, @Maliha M reports on a potential partner who stopped responding. (Full details of the interaction below.) How would you follow up to get the guy talking again? Think a bit and write your best take in the comments below. Maybe we can help Maliha come up with a strategy she can test out and report on. But even sooner than that... A moment spent thinking now will pay you back if you ever want to find a list swap partner... an affiliate partner... somebody to sponsor your newsletter... somebody whose newsletter you can sponsor... a reader who can pay you $1k for an offer you're making etc. People drop off. At all points. For all kinds of reasons. Following up with them is a fundamental habit and skill. Here are the details of the interaction Maliha has had so far: ----- I left this message in a group recently: "Would anyone like to "sponsor" my newsletter, but instead of paying me with money, you hop on a Zoom call with me, and teach one thing to my audience in a quick 15-20 minute presentation? I will share this video in my tiny community... but I'll share your link (newsletter, lead magnet, or whatever you want) as a classified ad in my newsletter. What you teach must be relevant to my readers, of course. (Marketers, bloggers, newsletter writers, copywriters, and creators in general.) Let me know if anyone is curious!" ----- To which, and to my astonishing surprise, my favorite humor writer chimed in (didn't even know he was in that group!!!), and said: "I'm interested! I've been working on some ideas around “How to be funny” for exactly this kind of thing." ----- I took it to DM and gave him some details of what I expect, to which he wrote... a week+ later: "Hey Maliha, sorry for the delay on this. Sounds fun! I'd be happy to talk about easy ways/strategies to incorporate humor. Let me know what you're thinking as far as schedule etc." ----- To which I wrote back: "Don't worry about it. As for schedule, I'm pretty flexible. Just give me a couple of days and times when you're free and I'll make it work."

I've been going through a presentation by Jeff Walker of Product Launch Formula fame. Here's a bit that particularly stuck with me. Says Jeff: === When I'm looking to run a launch I'm as much interested in what strategic benefit does it have to me in addition to any money I could make. I'm a big believer in thinking long term. That's one of my competitive advantages, that I always think very long term. === Sounds really good, except.. ... what does "strategic benefit" really mean? And how do you think long-term? I'm not just farming for engagement here. I'm genuinely asking, because my time horizon is like 3 days. To help me with that, I just sat down and made a list of "10 kinds of strategic benefits of a launch." I wanna hear yours as well, because I'm sure I'm missing some. If you're game, we can play the usual "Battleship" format. If you name a strategic benefit that's on my list, I'll confirm it. If you name one I don't have, I'll give you one I have that hasn't been named yet. The game goes on until I'm sunk. Your turn.

What would you do differently? A dude who had signed up to my email list a few months ago, and who has never really interacted with me directly except for buying something from me once, replied to my broadcast email yesterday. (My email yesterday was a handraiser for an auction I'm considering running.) The dude's reply basically went like this: 1. He opened by saying he doesn't want to bother me but he feels I might be able to help 2. He then laid out his situation (not really unique, basically he has a website that gets no visitors or users) 3. He then asked politely if I can offer him some tips I looked over this email for a bit... clicked through to the site for a second... and then simply closed it all down, without responding. Any guesses as to why? And no, it's not (just) because I'm a dick. Instead, it is because I am petty. Specifically, there were two "rubs me the wrong way" things about this guy's message that made me predisposed to not helping him, even before I clicked through to his website. I realize it might be hard to gauge based on the bare bones outline of the guy's email I've shared up above, but I don't want to include the original message, because the guy was being nice and polite, and somehow it doesn't feel cool. Still, I think this is a opportunity to discover something new and important, if you're ever looking to start a relationship online with somebody you don't know, maybe by reaching out to them over email. What did this dude do wrong (2 things)... and what could he have done differently? If you like, guess away in the comments below. (I promise you, it's there in the outline of his message. But if you want to ask clarifying questions, I'm game.)