A couple of months ago, I got an e-mail from my website host letting me know that my old consulting website originally created using their templates in 1999 was being ported to a new platform. I let the change happen and then checked out my site. It looked awful! So, I took at look at their new collection of templates; applied one to my website; and am happy with the results. This exercise forced me to update the content on the site and to check all my hyperlinks to make sure they still worked. I also "googled" myself to see what I'd find. Most of what the search engine picked up wasn't a surprise, but I did find some old content I created that's been repurposed and repriced and that gave me a chuckle.
The Junior League of Boston's Show House 2003 magazine is for sale on Amazon by a fellow named "conraddad" featuring an article written by me entitled "30 Years of Junior League Show Houses." Now, over the course of ten years, I headed up PR and marketing for four designer show houses, a major fundraiser for the Junior League of Boston. The magazine created for these events was a high-end glossy magazine which was about 50% advertising and about 50% content. We never actually sold the magazine because we gave it away as part of the tour. The price of about $10 on them was added to help us justify the ticket price. "Conraddad" must be cleaning out his closets because he's got this, several other books, and old theatre programs for sale in his Amazon storefront. Interested? It could be yours for just $4.95 and $3.99 for shipping. Or you can come find me, as I think I've got a box of these in my basement and I'm sure we can work a deal.
Back in 1998, when I was working in product marketing for Intellution, a manufacturing software company now owned by GE Fanuc, I developed some content for using the Internet in a manufacturing environment. This content was repackaged in multiple ways. It was edited down into a brief article in the customer-facing Intellution quarterly newsletter. I reworked it for an article in Start-IT, a custom published magazine that at the time Microsoft was publishing for the manfacturing vertical market. The content was in a PowerPoint presentation form that I used for various audiences. And, our PR firm supplied it as an article I wrote entitled "The Internet: Fast, Cost Effective Methods to Improve Communications on Your Plant Floor" to the Instrument Society of America for their ISA EXPO 1998 where I was also presenting. Amazingly, this is in the ISA website priced at $8 for non-members and $5 for members. I can't imagine how relevant it is after 10 years, but someone must think it's got some value. Either that, or no one has published a paper with the ISA in a while and they are starved for content.
Old content never dies. It just gets repriced?
Especially with the Internet, long after you've forgotten that you published, your content can live on and on. Amazing to see that someone can still put a price on it. I guess as a marketer, you can always put a price on something. The challenge is to see if you can get it.
Comments