
Coming soon: 37signals University - _pius
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1664-coming-soon-37signals-university
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andreyf
Looks like they're looking to make money _five_ times off the same material.
Good for them :) I'm referring to:

 _"Repackaging allows you to earn money multiple times on the same content.
It’s a great way to grow your revenues without significant marginal cost.

Money One: A lot of our ideas originate on this blog. We post articles which
generate traffic. We make money off the traffic by running Deck ads in the
sidebar. We make a few thousand a month off The Deck ads.

Money Two: We bundled up the best blog posts about our software development
philosophy and turned it into a PDF book called Getting Real. We sell the PDF
for $19. We’ve made a few hundred thousand dollars from the PDF.

Money Three: We take the Getting Real PDF and turn it into a paperback at
Lulu.com. We sell the paperback for $25 and we make a few thousand a month on
royalties. The paperback is currently ranked the 4th best seller on Lulu.

Money Four: We took the content from Getting Real and produced a Getting Real
conference series. We held a few conferences a year and made about $50K per
conference. We’ve produced about 5 of these conferences."_

from: <http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1256-making-money-twice>

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josefresco
Great comment, thanks for this as it really exposes the real motives for 37
Signals (which isn't a bad one btw)

I love how when 37 does this they are considered innovative or clever, but if
some marketing/blog guru did the same thing they'd be run out of town for
being exploitative or slimy (re packaging 'free content' for profit).

Hey I'm all for making more money but what I'm not for is a free pass for some
while others get roasted for being 'marketing/affiliate promoting scum".

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jrockway
This reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Krusty opens a clown college
after running out of other ways to make money off his name.

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unalone
You really think they need the money? They're a small company that made a
million dollars off their last book sales alone, and they have another
contract right now. They're legendary in the computer world and they said they
weren't at all damaged by the recession. Don't you think there's a chance that
they just really, really, really like what they're doing?

~~~
axod
They certainly seem to need constant self promotion.

I'm at a loss to know what they could say in a 'university' that they haven't
said already.

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adamhowell
It's called marketing.

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axod
Marketing is a lot better when it just 'happens' though.

Google wasn't marketed, they didn't start selling books about the right way to
make a business, they just made something good and watched as people started
using it.

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adamhowell
Back in the day Larry and Sergey accepted every interview they were approached
for and hammed it up all over campus posing for photos standing on balls and
playing with toys in order to keep that "wacky geniuses" thing going and get
on all the magazine covers.

Once they found a business model and could hire enough programmers to
basically churn out a new feature/project every week, they had built-in
marketing and enough brand to self-sustain itself.

Are 37signals already to that point? I don't know, maybe, but faulting a 10(?)
person, self-sustaining, Chicago company for keeping their name out there by
comparing them to a grow-as-fast-as-possible, well-funded, Valley startup-
gone-gangbusters that's been the feather in the web's crown for the past 10
years is a little unfair.

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yters
"University" means a place to learn universally applicable knowledge,
something which a trade is not.

~~~
Silhouette
Yes. I, too, really wish that places would stop calling themselves or their
training programmes "university" inappropriately. A university is a centre of
research, a place for deep and distinguished study. It is not a place for
cheap training courses in pretty wrapping, and it is insulting to those who
spend several years of their lives dedicated to learning at a real university
to pretend that a few videos from a small commercial group is even on the same
scale.

And anyone who presumes to teach others had better learn to write better than
the first paragraph of that blog post first.

~~~
davidw
Yeah, University isn't the right term for this, or this:

[http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/careers/hamburger_universi...](http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/careers/hamburger_university.html)

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ssharp
I eagerly await the 2010 blog post by 37Signals telling everyone how dead
simple it is to make money by starting a "university".

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mvp
You may not like their style, but I bet they have the following they do
because of a particular style of operation. If they were any different, I am
pretty sure none of us would have known them as well as we all seem to do.

As a company, they or any other profitable company for that matter would try
to maximize the profits. As long as the company doesn't get into illegal or
shady activities, as capitalists (I assume most of you are), one should be o.k
with it.

