The first American magazine to ever reach a circulation of one million subscribers was called Comfort. Comfort was started by William H. Gannett, in 1888, in Augusta, Maine, the birthplace of direct response advertising.
Gannett did not have any experience with magazine publishing when he started Comfort. Instead, his business was selling Oxien, a patent “nerve tonic.”
Much like other patent medicine pitchmen, Gannett had a natural knack for marketing. So he decided to start a women’s magazine, filled with advice columns, recipes, fashion tips, songs, poems, romantic fiction, and of course advertising. Because his real goal, at least at the beginning, was selling more Oxien.
That’s a possible business idea for you also.
If you’ve got a product or a service, and you want to sell more of it, then stop selling.
Instead, start publishing.
You can start a magazine. Like Gannett did.
Or you can create a reality TV show. Like the UFC did with The Ultimate Fighter.
Or you can start a podcast. Like a million businesses and marketers do.
“Gotcha!” you might say. “There’s nothing new with what you’re saying here. It’s the same damn thing as everybody else is saying, and that’s to start a podcast or a daily email newsletter.”
And there’s definitely overlap with that.
But what I’m suggesting is for you to take an extra step away from your current offers… to put still more focus on entertainment… and to make your publishing venture capable of standing alone.
The result can be massive growth for your core business. Maybe even a new business that makes more money than the business you started with. And who knows, one day… when all the other patent medicine pitchmen are forgotten… you may be remembered as a publishing magnate.
And now, in other news:
I still have some back issues of the free bullets mini-course I ran in January.
This course collected some of the best lessons I figured out by looking at the source material that A-list copywriters used to write their bullets… and then looking at the bullets themselves.
I eventually took this free email course, expanded it significantly, made it interactive, and turned it into my Copy Riddles training.
​​​​But you can now get your hands on your own copy of the original free course. You’ll first have to sign up for my email newsletter by this Wednesday. Once you do that, then watch out for the next email in my newsletter, and just click the link at the end of it.