A common question we hear over and over again is: “If your product is so good, why on earth would you share it?”… it is a darn good question, and is one that I even asked myself back in the day.
The vast majority of marketers shy away from this question, but not us, see our 2c below:
Dean says:
I have to hold my hands up… I publicly asked this question back in early 2007, I never received an answer, and I don’t know if there is a definitive answer, but James and I are going to do our best to share our stance on this.
So the question is this: If a product, strategy or blueprint is effective, why oh why would you share/sell it?
There are a few reasons that I am sure many of you are thinking… for example, perhaps the strategy no longer is effective, or perhaps “those who can’t, teach”?
Here are a few of the reasons I teach my best strategies in Brand Out from the Crowd.com.
ALL MY BEST IDEAS WERE STOLEN BY THE ANCIENTS
I love it when people tell me they have a unique strategy or idea… I always tell them that “all my best ideas were stolen by the ancients”… in other words, everything you can possibly think of is already out there in some form or another… our role is to package that info, do all the research, save you time and hassle, perhaps explain it in a more interesting, effective or easy to understand manner, and share our experiences with it.
What you are really paying for is the hundreds of hours of saved time you would need to find, test and master this stuff yourself.
But to assume that nobody has ever done or taught your stuff before, is quite egotistical and naive. I often have people come up to me and say stuff like: “Hey Dean, I loved your (insert strategy here), clearly you have been reading (insert popular book here)”.
99% of the time I have never read the book or product in question.
THERE ARE MORE BENEFITS TO SELLING PRODUCTS THAN THE $97
For example, selling a product or service helps position you in a market… no product or service = no perceived expertise (sub-consciously).
It also opens up doors… for example, doing JVs becomes a lot easier when you have something to sell 
You also can build a nice list from selling products,
You can build a great reputation as someone who changes lives and delivers value,
You get speaking invites, interview requests, build fans, build a community etc….
The benefits of selling GREAT information include much more than the $97 fee.
GOOD BUSINESS PEOPLE ARE NOT ONE TRICK PONIES
In my time I have taught SEO, Creative thinking, Buzz & viral marketing, blogging, social media & personal branding… .and I am 28 years old… so by sharing one of my strategies, I am hardly giving away the secret recipe to KFC.
THE ABUNDANCE MENTALITY
I am a huge believer in this… it is funny that people don’t question authors who write best selling how-to books on why on earth they would share their best strategies… especially when they can often sell millions of copies more than a marketer.
Tim Ferriss shared his “4-hour work week” strategies, and yes, there is a reason I put that in quotes… yet he didn’t destroy the pool of outsourcers at his disposal, infact, due to sharing his strategies, the world of VAs etc has boomed, he has probably never had it so good.
FREE = ZERO PERCEIVED VALUE
Another possible question would be “Why not just give it away for free instead then?”.
Fair question, but I would point to two things that have been proven over and over again in my experience.
1) You must value your own time before anyone else will.
This is a whole new blog post, but it is soooo true.
2) Free = zero perceived value.
Here is a quick example…
A couple of years back I was keen to purchase a hot $2k homestudy course… I also was given a book recommendation from a friend.
I purchased said book for $10 on Amazon, and as it turns out, a good friend of mine had heard me raving about the $2k product, and decided to surprise me by sending me a complimentary copy.
As it happens, the $2k homestudy course that I was dying to get my hands on, and the $10 book which I was vaguely interested in, arrived in the mail on the EXACT same day.
I only had a few spare hours that day, so can you guess which one I read?
Amazingly, I read the $10 book.
Now, that might seem crazy, after all, one is valued at $2k and the other at just $10, and I was MUCH keener to read the $2k one… but in my sub-conscious the values were $10 and FREE, after all, that is what I had paid for them.
I further learned this lesson when I used to go out of my way to help friends and family for free… to this day, none of them have taken a single step of action on any of the FREE advice I have given them. Why? Because they assign zero value.
Now, I am not going to try and claim that marketers charge money solely because they want you to take action, but in my experience, most top marketers value their time very highly.
IT IS NOT EITHER OR
There is no rule that says you either have to teach or do… they can live perfectly in harmony together… heck, if you can add another 30% onto your income by sharing some of your strategies, plus all the other side benefits and leverage points, why not?
Like I said at the start, this was a question I used to ask in early 2007, as the title suggests, it is educated skepticism, and is a good question to ask, hopefully this post will help clear it up a little
Over to you Schramko…
James says:
I’ll start by sharing a true situation:
One of my readers recently sent me an email reply to my blog post about a new Local Business Video Marketing technique.
Here was his email:
“Then why aren’t you doing it? Aside from that — if there are competitive factors, why would I get into something that would have a consistent uptrend of Direct Competitors due to you selling your product to them, as you did with me?If your buyers are doing so unbelievably well, why on earth wouldn’t you keep it a secret — and then do it yourself? Curious.”
Here are some of the answers I gave my reader:
1) Then why aren’t you doing it?
Answer - I do do it. I think I made that pretty clear in my post. I have generated a very good income from this. My team in the Philippines are training on these videos right now and developing sales channels in the USA and my team in India (seopartner) fulfill the backend services.
2 & 3) why would I get into something that would have a consistent uptrend of Direct Competitors due to you selling your product to them. If your buyers are doing so unbelievably well, why on earth wouldn’t you keep it a secret — and then do it yourself? Curious.
Answer - Because the demand for SEO and Internet Marketing is way bigger and growing much faster than the supply of people who can supply the services. Also the proportion of IM’ers who own this product will be minuscule thus giving them an advantage. Lets add it up, millions of small businesses – and perhaps 1000 ever marketers using this idea? No brainer.
More factors: Kevin is a student of mine and his success is my success. The better he goes with this product the more my teaching results in success.
His product launch does a few things:
1) Kevin built a product that is so good my own team can use to grow my SEO business
2) My clients get awesome information for about 1900% less than ordinary launches
3) I get traffic to my blog and add people to my list for related sales by posting a HOT solution to a big topic in the IM space
4) People are joining my mastermind and buying my SEO services because I teach them how to use them
5) Kevin is a really nice guy and delivers ten times value – I want him to succeed as a market leader
6) The smart people who buy this will have improved lives
7) The clients who receive these videos will have improved businesses
The clients of those businesses will be able to find them easier.
I hope this helps
To which my reader replied:
Hi James,
Combine Old with new for profit
Lizard Brain
The Autopilot seduction
will achieve without leveraging (or having the ability
to leverage) the thing they are selling themselves”
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I often thought about that myself, if the system or products they’re selling is so good, why not just keep it for themselves?? The scary realisation i’ve come to is firstly well over 97% of the people who buy the product will not use it, fact.
Secondly out of the 3% (roughly) who do use it, will have mediocre results, as most of the products / systems out there are rehashed BS, making it worse as the initial product / service they’ve repackaged was also crap!
Its very few and far between to find genuinely good products / services out there, and if i have learnt one thing in IM, is that true success and proven systems come from doing the basics, none of that glitsy shiny repackaged rubbish.
I used to get asked this question quite a bit, especially when selling to the IM crowd.
And I’ve probably given all the answers you guys listed. (They are all totally valid.) The other big one for me is security. I’d rather have 2 incomes streams than 1. I’d rather spread my risk over multiple products, services, sales channels and markets, and not rely on a single golden goose.
Plus, teaching is fun and rewarding
GREAT POST james! i love how u say “value yourself first” thankyou! i have to agree i have the same feelinsg about free and paid…. and i LIKE supporting biz, speshly small biz, if the product is good.
Excellent points well made gentlemen!!
The folks selling “push-button, magic, auto-pilot, mega-rich systems” always amuse me. Clearly if the system *was* that good, they would sit at home just pushing the button and generating mega-riches all for themselves, or employ an army of cheap $/hr wage-slaves to sit there pushing the button for them. They certainly wouldn’t be out there flogging it at $3997 a pop creating competitors for themselves.
Ah, but good old Lizard Brain wants to believe the hype…
And yes – there ARE ways of BUYING passive income. In fact, it’s a brand new, totally original system I dreamed up myself – but those pesky ancients stole it from me and named it “INVESTING”.
As you say, *most* business models – online AND offline – require effort to setup and run.
I can teach people internet marketing skills – and I LOVE teaching – but I can’t sit in front of the computer for them for hours practicing and honing those skills to the point where they ARE generating income from what they’ve learned. Those that put in the effort will reap the rewards though!
Love your work guys
Steve