I’m not sure how many people have borrowed the concept from the legendary ad copy written by John Caples: “They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I started to play!–“, but it’s a big number.
The reason is that it was very effective copy. Caples was a master and his work has been emulated countless times, because people tend to mimic the best.
That leads me to a book I recently read, The Big Moo, written by The Group of 33 and edited by Seth Godin.
This book is something of a sequel to Godin’s Purple Cow, an engaging book that taught of the importance of being remarkable in business.
The Big Moo, rather than being authored by Seth Godin, is an anthology of short business stories by 33 business visionaries. In following the theme of Purple Cow, this is all about being remarkable.
Authors for The Big Moo include Malcolm Gladwell, Tom Peters, Guy Kawasaki, Mark Cuban, and Godin. One hitch here – none of the chapters identifies which person authored it.
You might be able to guess who wrote a given passage – I didn’t get hung up on that – rather I read through every page and pretty much found each one to be valuable.
On a side note, all of the writers contributed their words for free. 100 percent of their royalties are going to:
- The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
- The Acumen Fund
- Room to Read
You can read about the charities and see updated records of the fundraising from this book at TheBigMoo.com.
Why Should an Affiliate Marketer Read The Big Moo?
Like any business related book, there are ideas you can adapt and apply to your business. I dog-eared 7 or 8 chapters in the book, so I can go back and take action on what I’d read.
One example is a chapter titled “Making the Wrong Decisions, Slowly.” This story lasted just a page, but it conveyed an important message about the rise and fall of Tivo and how they “took it slowly and carefully, focusing on not making a mistake.”
The chapter advises us to “Fail fast and cheap. Fail often. Fail in a way that doesn’t kill you.”
The tip moved me to take action on the looooong list of park domains I’ve got in my stable. They had become a virtual graveyard of once promising ideas.
So I dedicated a day to building some of them up with unique value propositions, put up relevant affiliate ads, bought some PPC traffic, and I’ve added some new streams of income.
Could I have done this without The Big Moo? Of course, but I hadn’t done it until now. That’s the point.