Hvassing.com

I have read two of Seth's paperbacks, and three of his e-books. Yesterday I read the fourth one. I'm not impressed. The book starts with explaining what he means by a funnel in terms of marketing, which is a well thought idea that works extremely well in terms of describing marketing strategies. The only drawback is that he've already written about this on his blog.

Marketing is a funnel. You put undifferentiated prospects into the top. Some of
them hop out, unimpressed with what you have to offer. Others learn about you
and your organization, hear from their peers, compare offerings, and eventually
come out the bottom, as customers.

-- «Flipping the Funnel», page 5

Unfortuantly this is where the book, in my opinion, takes a turn for the worse. From this point on the e-book turns into a advertisment for Seth's new idea -- Squidoo.com. In essence, what he is doing is exercising the same marketing strategy that he was talking about over the first three pages. It's all very well laid out, starting with a few stories on how the same principle has helped a business in a highly competitive market in Queens, New York, before introducing the idea of an online-telegraph replacing the better known jungle-telegraph.

All in all, this was not as good reading as his previous works, this e-book is what could have been an extended blog post on his site. But now he gets the attention he needs for his site, and I'm betting money on that he's monitoring the amount of traffic Squidoo.com gets. But now with a particular interest in the day after he published this book.

A half-hearted media stunt if you ask me. The idea is good, the quality of the work wasn't.

The blog post about his newly published book:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/01/flipping_the_fu.html