Selling Souvenirs the Seth Godin Way

Seth Godin recently put together a promotion for his upcoming book launch of Linchpin that involved donating to charity. I chipped in to get an early review copy before I even knew what the book was going to be about because I follow his blog just about every day, have become a fan, and bought the book virtually as a souvenir.

Seth talks a lot about this idea of giving a lot away for free in order to sell souvenirs most commonly in industries like music and book publishing, but I think the application goes further than that. Just a few examples:

Consulting services can be sold around this concept - give away ideas for everyone to take advantage of for free and companies will hopefully come looking for you to customize solutions just for them.

People can buy wine anywhere, but many choose to buy from WineLibrary.com because they want a souvenir from their experience of watching WineLibary TV (for free). Buying wine from Wine Library tells a story.

Twenty Two Fresh built a company around some cool baseball pants, but they sell "souvenir's" like hats, belts, and hoodies around baseball fashion. That logo stands for something in the baseball world because Kip and his team focus on building community first and selling second.

The Saskatchewan Roughrider's main product is selling tickets to games but they increase revenues by slapping their logo on pretty much anything they can find and sell it through The Rider Stores. All their marketing revolves around selling gear, not the game. By buying something with that Rider =//S//= on it you have a souvenir that tells a story to anyone that sees it. Why does Jim Hopson insist on lifting the television blackout for home games even if they're not quite at a sellout? To give the game away for free and monetize on the souvenirs!

So the next time you wonder why you put all that time into creating free content, just remember that people love buying souvenirs from people that give first and ask for nothing in return.