Name: Perennial Seller
Rating: 4.1 (38 reviews)
Author: Ryan Holiday

What’s in it for me? Create something that will outlive you.

We’d all like to have our little place in history, wouldn’t we? Even if you’re not the next Steve Jobs, you probably still wish to leave some kind of lasting legacy. And you probably hope to do this by creating something. Of course, this creation shouldn’t have but a brief existence; it should be eternal. The book you’ve written, the app you’ve developed, the work of art you’ve created – whatever you’ve produced, you definitely want it to last.

But in a world that is all about being new and fresh, how do you create a product that is more than a flash in the pan? In other words, how do you make a perennial seller?

These blinks will teach you how. You’ll learn how to take all the steps, from the moment you have that first creative idea right through to what it takes to continue to survive – and even thrive! – in an industry that’s predicated on newness.

You’ll also learn

what blasting music out of a car’s loudspeakers has to do with perfecting your product;
how YouTube can help you with perennial success; and
what connects Iron Maiden with an insurance mailing list.

Creating a perennial seller requires hard graft, and great ideas alone will get you nowhere.

You know that old maxim about product success being 20 percent creativity, 80 percent marketing? Well, you can safely ignore it, because it’s pure bushwa.

If you want to develop a perennial seller – a product that always sells, year in and year out – you’re going to need to put a lot of work into the creative process. Marketing is not a magic wand. To be successful, your creation will have to be a world-beater from the get-go. And there’s no escaping the hard work that creation entails.

No company knows this better than Microsoft. It’s forced some real stinkers on the market, hoping that marketing would make up for product shortcomings. Just think of its failed MP3 player, Zune, or its dismal search engine, Bing.

In contrast, Microsoft Office has only gotten better over the years, and is now a classic 25-year perennial seller, thanks to its sound software design.

But, of course, if you're going to market a product you'll need to develop one in the first place. Just having lightbulb moments will get you nowhere.

To drive this point home, consider how many aspiring writers you’ve met who haven’t actually published a thing. You know the type; he talked your ear off at this or that party, claiming he would soon produce a masterpiece, though he hadn’t written anything yet. It’s one thing to have an idea for a film’s plot, or a concept for a start-up, but it's quite another to actually get going.

Ideas alone are worth nothing. Take the writer and comedian Sarah Silverman’s advice. You needn’t wait for someone’s approval to get going: just write!

So exactly how do you turn an idea into something real? Just what kind of hard work is needed? Let’s turn to that now.

Motivation, and a readiness to make sacrifices, are crucial to creative success.

There are loads of people who say they’d like to play professional football. Why do they want to do this? Many believe that “it would be fun.” But that kind of flabby rationale really isn’t enough to fuel success. It's not concrete, and it's not going to lead to the kind of motivation that produces actual results.

The same holds true with creative work. A strong sense of purpose is the surest way to success.

To be a successful artist, become your own CEO and track down an ace editor.

Somewhat paradoxically, there’s more to being creative than creativity alone. Novelists don’t get published by simply jotting down a masterpiece and mailing it off to some grateful publisher.

It’s not that simple.

Testing your product to perfection is essential.

You might think that if your product is close to being finished, you can relax a little more. Well, banish the thought. As you near the finish line, you should get more obsessive still by testing and improving your creation.

In fact, for your work to be successful, you'll have to test and rework it over and over.

Marketing your creation is your job alone, and there is one essential rule to remember.

It’s easy to feel swamped by the amount of culture and art out there. As a creative person, you may feel intimidated and daunted. How exactly are you supposed to make yourself stand out from the crowd?

The answer is marketing. But remember: this requires hard work and independent effort. You can’t rely on others to do the work for you.

There is no one right way to do marketing, though word of mouth should always play a role.

If the bad news about marketing is that you always have to start from a position of audience ignorance, then the good news is that there are plenty of strategies to spread the word.

In fact, sometimes the most creative approaches are the most successful. There are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to marketing, as author Steven Pressfield well knows.

A platform is great for holding people’s attention, and it will also ensure creative independence.

Once you’ve put your product out, the temptation is to feel that you’ll be forever defined by this one achievement.

But if you want continued success you’ll have to develop your presence in the public eye, independent of any one single creation.

Creating a mailing list is critical for survival and you can even start before finishing your first product.

Imagine that one day, on a whim, the media and the industry lose interest in your work and decide to blackball you.

Until recently, you couldn’t really have done much to combat such a turn of events. But now you can.

Perennial Seller summary