Charles Lau dot Com

We all have been seeing bestseller lists everywhere we go. There is always someone who is the top, second and third. And it happens in every industry that you can find. And if that doesn’t happen in your industry, it should happen at anytime now since you have discovered it. In the following blog post, I am going to share with you from my favorite author - Seth Godin - and his ideavirus book which has given me enough inspiration to share his virus to you all.

Common Traits Of A Bestseller
If you have heard about the rich will simply get richer, you must be pondering why it is so. First of all, they are simply becoming richer because everybody just wants to pour money on them. Just think about it. When you go to Amazon and you look for the bestselling books, you would probably buy it too since they are so hot. In other words, you are helping them to score even higher at the top of the bestseller list. And notice that the top will always have quite a distance from the second and the rest. It is very much different from being the top in your exam, sports, or anything that you have to depend on yourself. Being a top seller, it means people are simply spreading news about you that you have the best products and/or services. And if you are a top salesperson, you probably are getting used to getting easy sales from referrals because you have provided an excellent service for them to refer. Or probably you are the only salesperson selling this product.. (Which is very unlikely to happen.) and yet you have done your homework with lots of referral sales.

It is not easy to lose your sales once you have reached the top. That’s why everybody has been working really hard to reach to the top. But nevertheless, it not only drills down to your sales skills to convince anybody to buy, it also voices down to your product or service quality.

Barriers to Become A Bestseller
When you first started out, it is really very hard to sell even your first piece, let alone to become a bestseller. When you are at this stage, it is always good to show people how good your product is by lowering down the entry barrier to access your products. When people start picking up your product and found it to be good, please don’t ever try to increase the price if it is a recurring income in one way or another. Because that’s the reason why they are motivated to pick up your product in the first place. These people are probably your “best friends” of your products as you service them more often. There are two schools of taught when it comes to increasing your price to market rate:

1. You should hold the price very long enough because people are motivated because of your price.
2. You should increase your price now since you are doing a business here and not charity.

But for the sake of the big picture (which is to become a bestseller), price increment is not a good strategy. Instead, it is always good to have your products being remarked so often in the Internet that the first-timers have no choice but to spread the ideavirus for you. That’s when the price at the market rate is most recommended because this is when the demand has exceeded its value.

Some people simply go to the far extend of putting in a lot of expenses for the sake of their product exposure. That is a very good strategy but it is an expensive one. And you can almost get instant results, much faster than the natural marketing method.

Choosing Your Market
It has been recommended by Seth Godin to choose your hive properly. Choose a hive which you can dominate. Choose a hive where you are very likely to become a bestseller. Choose a hive where they are the only ones who have access to. It often makes the people outside the hive jealous and wanted to have it too. When the hive has spread the virus so wide, everybody starts giving you money as well. One area to look at could be your pricing of your product. By choosing a very high price in order to acquire a high quality product, it gives priority people instant access to enjoy your product. It also lets you make probably the same amount of money with lesser work since lesser people are buying it. The key is with the quality…

Make it easy for your customers to spread
It has always been the case where your customers are very much wanted to tell their friends about your fantastic product. But if it takes more than 1 level of work for them to spread, the ideavirus will just stop.

Imagine telling a friend about a very interesting website with a very difficult to pronounce domain name. That friend will probably forget how to spell it and forget about going to your website. That’s where yahoo has reigned through their easy-to-pronounce name.

Fill Up The Vacuum!
You may have found a new market vacuum to dominate.. But if you are not fast enough to fill it up with your product quality and product marketing, you are most likely going to be taken over by another competitor. Just think about Google who also has an easy-to-pronounce name… The reason why Google won the search engine battle is because they have perfected the system to prove themselves to be a better search engine!

Quality of Your Product
I think I have covered a lot of times about the quality of the product. However, the quality of the product is very important in the Internet. That’s because the Internet is a very transparent market. Everybody has their equal standing of giving their fair share of review about your product and service. And if your product is not as outstanding as your marketing strategy, you will lose big time when everybody gets to know how bad your product is!

Again, I wish to thank Seth Godin’s books which I have bought. Here’s my referral link to check out idea virus book yourself.