1. Get a large mug and fill it with water
2. Pour the water from the mug into a small saucepan and bring to a near-boil
3. Remove the saucepan from heat and drop in a tea bag (I like Sleepytime)
4. Put a tbs or so of good (I like raw) honey into your mug
5. Pour a shot (or two) of whiskey into the mug (I like Ryan & Wood Straight Rye)
6. Squeeze a half a lemon into the mug
7. (Optional) Put a few cloves or a cinnamon stick into the mug
8. After the tea has steeped for about 5 minutes remove the tea bag and pour the tea into the mug
9. Stir until the honey dissolves
10. Drink

Have needed to re-charge.

Lots of change.

The old inspirations… not so inspiring.

The old ideas… not so inspiring.

The old voices… not so inspiring.

I’ve been trying to really listen.

Talk less.

To whom do you listen?

I’ve been somewhat obsessed with trying to devise ways in which to encourage, facilitate and reward existent constituents when they spread the word (evangelize), and, in so doing, encourage their friends to try a product/service/etc.

To this end, a bit ago I wrote a piece entitled, “Buy One, Give One Free: What Artists can learn from Social Entrepreneurship,” that, much to my delight, was actually put into motion by Ty White.

However, with the NYT and others propelling us (I believe) inexorably towards a pay-wall economy (and with variants on this theme – freemium, subscription, etc. – becoming the norm), it seems, now more than ever, that we need to get darn serious about the facilitation of conversion so that power users (i.e. those who pay for access) can be more effective in bringing in new blood (i.e. their friends).

No firm can cross the chasm from early adopter to early majority unless the burden of acquiring new customers shifts from the firm itself to the firm’s existent constituents.

While some will, for the LOVE of the firm/individual/artist/etc., share their passion (because we as humans are predisposed to share), critical mass will only occur once this innate passion/will-to-share is matched with the appropriate incentive(s) and systems.

I believe that the emergent models, with respect to monetization of content online (i.e. paywalls), actually may be well-positioned to offer just such rewards.

The idea hit me as I viewed the NYT’s “most emailed” widget on their page. In colse proximity to the “most emailed” widget is their array of social media icons. See below:

Illustration 1: The NYT’s commitment to Social Sharing

Clearly the NYT is all over social sharing. They’re also, for obvious reasons, pretty blatant in their highlighting of the new digital subscription/paywall model (they stick it under their masthead):

Illustration 2: The NYT’s commitment to the Paywall

So, given these two things, my brain does what it does and starts looking for connections.

The NYT sees value in both sharing (illustration 1) and their paywall model (illustration 2). Leveraging the two would seem an obvious move; not just for the NYT, but for any firm that is hoping to attract and retain paying customers (i.e. any firm).

To do this, the NYT could, for example, reward those who share frequently with a lower price for access to material behind their paywall.

Personally, I (as anyone who follows me on Twitter knows) share quite a bit. I also read the NYT with some frequency, and thus share articles from the NYT. Just yesterday, I tweeted out a NYT article about the upcoming Norm McDonald sports show:

I didn’t do this because I want a reward; I did it for the same reason I imagine most people share links (etc.) on Twitter: because we’re hard-wired to share, and because we believe that those who follow us on Twitter will find the things that we tweet about of some marginal interest (or else they wouldn’t follow us).

That said, I sure would have been delighted if — by tweeting out NYT’s content, and thus (in theory) sending some traffic, and potentially some new subscribers the NYT’s way — I had been rewarded for my behavior; e.g., been provided with some discount/reward with respect to the NYT’s paywall.

They could, for instance, give those who share content a free month, or extend the current subscription, based on the number of articles shared, etc.

Would some people game the system and share indiscriminately just to reap the rewards? Sure. But people attempt to game every system.

In my opinion, the benefits associated with encouraging existent users to share their interests in order to compel non-users to convert to paying customers by rewarding current users, far outweighs the potential downside associated with some outlier gaming the system.

This isn’t a completely novel idea. Amazon.com (and others), for instance, make it relatively easy for anyone who wants to tweet out links to products that, when purchased by someone who follows the tweeted link, results in the person who tweeted the link getting some affiliate commission.

Still, I’m not seeing enough people/firms making the obvious link between utilizing their now-omnipresent social tools and increasing customer acquisition/retention by rewarding those who share; e.g., paywall/membership discounts/benefits.

Certainly, there will need to be some tech wrangling done to make this all trackable/reward-able, but that’s where geniuses like Ty come in.

All I know is that from the content creator side, and as someone who is consistently working on getting more people to engage/subscribe, I love it when people utilize the social tools to drive people to the sites I work on, and I want to reward them for doing so.

Remember, until you are able to shift the burden of customer acquisition from yourself to your fans/constituents, you simply will not grow in any material way.

When this country was being settled those who were looking to develop an area of land realized something very important: they didn’t have to build a damn thing. Rather, all they had to do was survey the land, divide it up, and start selling it to the pioneers.

The land represented promise and possibility for these pioneers, and, in fact, many of them developed miraculous things upon this previously barren plot of possibility.

All along the way, of course, those who provided access to this possibility got rich.

We still see this. What is it, for instance, that GoDaddy is selling if not land for hopeful internet pioneers? GoDaddy provides the “surveying,” and then – via the “grant” of a URL – provides the “land” upon which entrepreneurs of all stripes attempt to develop something.

Why do music stores have mirrors? Aspiring musisicians want to see what they look like as a version of the possibility of their imagined self (holding a guitar, for instance). For many (most?) customers, music stores aren’t selling an instrument, they’re selling the possibility that the musician might arrive at their purpose and make meaning.

When we sat around a dining room table and cooked up what became TuneCore it became very clear that we weren’t really selling access to iTunes (though, in my very biased opinion TuneCore does do that better and in a more moral fashion than anyone else).

No, what we were selling was a tool to allow music pioneers to claim their plot of land on this new digital frontier (i.e. iTunes, etc.). This access did and still does represent possibility for these pioneers; TuneCore in this manner helps them achieve their purpose/meaning.

All businesses/artists/etc. must get out of the tool selling business and into the purpose/meaning selling business.

When someone views your photos at your exhibition, it won’t be the paper or the framing that makes them buy it, it will be because the image resonates on a personal level and represents meaning to the viewer.^[*]

The purchaser will then explain to those who view the photo hanging in their house why this particular image “spoke” to them. (This is pretty much the definition of a social object, by the way.)

The thing is that most people keep thinking that they’re selling the tool and forget what they’re really selling is the access to meaning or purpose that the tool will help the customer attain.

Convince a customer that your tool — be it a service like TuneCore or a song or a film or a dietary supplement or a restaurant or a laundromat or a piece of code or a laptop or a Moleskine – will help them realize their internal aspirations more quickly and you’ll have unlimited customers.

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