Seth Godin: The Wealth of Free (Semi-Animated)

Every idea has to begin some­where. And, back in 2000, Seth Godin start­ed exper­i­ment­ing with a fair­ly rad­i­cal pub­lish­ing mod­el. Inspired by Mal­colm Glad­well, Godin wrote Unleash­ing the Ideav­irus, which essen­tial­ly argued that free ideas spread quick­er than ideas that cost mon­ey. And it’s the ideas that spread the quick­est that win. So what was the log­i­cal next step? Mak­ing the book avail­able for free (get the ebook here) and see­ing what hap­pened.

The video above tells you the rest of the sto­ry. What it does­n’t tell you is that Godin has since writ­ten a steady stream of best­sellers (find free ecopies here), while author­ing the most wide­ly-read mar­ket­ing blog and found­ing Squidoo. The art­work accom­pa­ny­ing God­in’s talk was cre­at­ed by Stu­art Lang­field.

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