🪄 Steal Old Ideas

Hey,

The Spells Master is back!

Welcome to the 43rd issue.

Today's topics:

1. Steal Old Ideas

2. A tool to Create Weird Internet Pages

3. One recommended video on The Best SALES TRAINING On The Internet

Steal Old Ideas

When you are out of ideas, steal old ideas.

The human brain hasn't gotten any smarter. We are as smart as our ancestors.

If anything, we are more dumber than them because they didn't have unlimited entertainment where the world's best minds are working to get you to consume more stuff.

Swear Words in Taylor Swift Albums on /r/TaylorSwift Subreddit

Around 2 years ago, a Swiftie (it means a Taylor Swift fan for those out of the loop) posted the following on /r/TaylorSwift Subreddit.

It got 693 upvotes and 71 comments.

Swear Words in Taylor Swift Albums on /r/DataIsBeautiful Subreddit

An internet marketer Steph Smith posted the same idea with updated data on /r/DataIsBeautiful Subreddit.

This one got 20,176 upvotes and 1331 comments.

Now, Steph Smith may or may not have seen this post because ideas aren't special. 2 or more people can independently think of the same idea. This is how innovation works.

For more context on how 2 or more people on other sides of the world can get the same idea, read the book How Innovation Works by Matt Ridley. It explains this concept in a much better way than I ever could.

But let's assume for the sake of this post, she stumbled upon this and stole the idea.

Now the very best thing an internet marketer like Steph Smith can do is post it on a relevant subreddit.

She chose /r/DataIsBeautiful because its huge with 20.8 million members and is ranked #32 of all subreddits.

Now if you post it at the right time, it will explode which it did.

She also made the graph much more readable.

And since she's smart enough, she added her watermark which frankly could've been better if she used her website name instead of Reddit username.

But she also wrote a comment promoting her paid product Internet Pipes.

It may have gotten some sales but the best part is her Reddit post now sits on Top Post of the Month on /r/DataIsBeautiful so Redditors who lurk once in a while (the extremely successful ones who are short on time) will find her posts and some may find her comment that might lead to the purchase of her product.

In short, steal an old idea because humans haven't changed so the old ideas work. This one isn't more than 2 years old.

So steal old ideas and read old books.

Hat Tip to Austin Kleon for the image.

A tool to Create Weird Internet Pages

MMM Page is how you create Weird Internet Pages like you did on MySpace.

It lets you be extremely creative and weird. Definitely stands out.

Kids would love this. Its the MS Paint for Websites.

One recommended video on The Best SALES TRAINING On The Internet

This video is the best sales training on the internet.

It doesn't matter if you are in sales because you are always selling something.

When you get a job, you have to interview to sell yourself.

When you go on a date, you have to sell yourself.

Everything is sales.

And this one teaches some of the best framing techniques you will ever see.

Once you learn framing, you can get yourself to do anything.

An example of framing:

"How many people do you need to see, before it's more unreasonable not to believe than to believe? Is it 10? Is it 50? Well, here's a 1000, Tell me when to stop?"

Once you learn to use framing on others, you can use it on yourself to get yourself motivated to do stuff.

Tweet of the day

This is yet another example of framing.

Palmer is poaching employees by telling them about the mission rather than money.

Because once you have enough money, more money doesn't change your life drastically. But a better mission does.

Yet another framework on poaching employees from your competitors that are not in Big Tech.

Rabbit Holes

1. Steal old stuff - "A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest." ~ T.S. Eliot If you liked this post, you must read this one. Its very short. Fun fact: I stumbled upon this while writing this one. I searched Google for "steal old ideas" and this popped up. Make sure to read the book Steal Like An Artist too by Austin Kleon. Its a fun short read.

2. How do I find app ideas?- This covers how to find ideas for Mobile Apps. Genuinely an underrated read.

3. Naval Ravikant: 15 Timeless Thoughts - Naval Ravikant has read so many books. He has taken the best ideas from others plus his own ideas and gave it all away in his Joe Rogan episode which is a must-watch. This post covers them in a written format. "Most of modern life, all our diseases, are diseases of abundance, not diseases of scarcity." ~ Naval Ravikant

Startup of the day

Tolstoy is a brilliant take on video.

The tagline reads "We set the standard for shoppable videos"

I firmly believe you can take a simple idea, and go all in on design, copy, positioning and make it wonderfully work.

Social Media is moving towards videos now so this is the right timing for a product like this to explode.

Here's how I'd grow this:

1. Find all top stores on Shopify through Reverse IP search of Shopify's IP and get them to add it. Humans are memetic creatures. If someone big does something, we tend to follow. If all top Shopify stores use the product, others will follow suit. Heck, you can give the big traffic sites a discount or even make it free. Hosting is cheap but powered by links will get them many more customers.

2. Go all in on Video Platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube. You can help smaller brands using Tolstoy by reposting their videos. This works beautifully. When Naval started retweeting Jack Butcher, everyone started creating content for Naval because it reached his 500k-1m audience. And it created an army of content creators creating content for Naval himself.

Until next time,

Your Spells Master!

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More Startup Spells 🪄

1. First to Channel (LINK)

2. Monster Hammering Links (LINK)

3. Exposed: How SEOs stole millions from Reddit (LINK)

Disclosure: Everything said in this post is for educational purposes only. Please follow the law. By reading this post, you accept full responsibility for your actions.