I was very amazed by a story over the past weekend that I thought it's a good idea to share with the readers here.
It's a story of how a book became a bestseller even before its release.
In case you are wondering what book it is, this is the one.
The author of this book is Gary Vaynerchuk. He's a Belarusian-American entrepreneur who is well known for his digital marketing expertise. He's extremely good in digital marketing and has built a very strong community of followers.
If you have been active in the NFT (Non-fungible token) space, you must have heard of his name as he's very vocal about NFT and has been a strong advocate on the adoption of NFT in the digital and sometimes non-digital space (I'll explain more on that later). He's also the creator of VeeFriends. You should check it out if you haven't heard of VeeFriends before.
Generally, the idea behind VeeFriends is to create a community using NFT technology. And as most digital marketers would have known, having a community is probably the strongest element to succeed in this space. And I'm very impressed by the way Gary Vaynerchuk utilises NFT technology to create this community.
The idea is simple. By owning a VeeFriends token, you are automatically part of a community which has access to VeeCon- a multi-day conference which focuses around topics such as business, entrepreneurship, innovation etc. Like what you have guessed by now, this conference is probably also attractive due to Gary Vaynerchuk. Besides the usual benefits of owning an NFT, the benefits now transcend into the non-digital space as perks such as VeeCon are thrown into the picture.
In fact, Gary Vaynerchuk is also exploring many other ways NFT can be used in the non-digital space such as opening an NFT restaurant. If you are looking at someone who's actively using NFT to replace traditional membership schemes, I don't think you can find another person who is as aggressive and well-versed as him.
A big reason why VeeFriends has also been garnering a lot of interest of late is also due to the explosive growth of the VeeFriends tokens. Some of these NFTs have actually seen +1000% price growth over the past 6 months! This surely caught the attention of many investors.
Now, back to the book.
Why is the launch of the book such a big deal? And why is it a bestseller even before its launch?
Here's why. An offer was made that for every 12 books anyone ordered between 4pm Eastern 8/27/21 and 5pm Eastern on 8/28/21, he/she will get one gift from Gary Vaynerchuk via airdrop when the book releases. That certainly sent many people into a huge buying spree.
People start to buy the books by the dozens as they are very sure that the gifts (likely NFT tokens) received will greatly exceed the costs they are putting in to buy the book. I personally know of a YouTuber who buy hundred copies of the book on that day. For those who missed out on VeeFriends, they see this as another money-making opportunity not to be missed.
For a period of time, the book is listed as number one bestseller in a number of Amazon sites. Unfortunately, this book is not listed on the Amazon website for those of us in Singapore so obviously the offer isn't exactly made available to us via the conventional means.
So why am I impressed by this story?
I think there are a few reasons why. I'm firstly honestly impressed by the way NFT is making waves in many areas right now. The year of 2021 is a big one for NFT, similar to how things are for Bitcoin etc in the year of 2017. A lot more people are paying attention to this space and very pragmatic use cases have been created using NFT technology. And it's not just the technology part that impressed me.
It's also how NFT can be combined with viral marketing to generate a very strong following like the story you have seen above. I see this as a huge game changer to digital marketing and also a huge disruption to the traditional membership space. I know that there are still many people who choose to ignore the rise of the crypto space labelling it as a scam etc. But honestly, the world is very quickly changing and adapting the use of crypto in more ways that me and you can think of.
Having said that, you still shouldn't see the NFT as a get-rich means as I'm pretty sure that a substantial drop in the prices for many NFT tokens is likely going to happen sooner than later after such a meteoric rise. Think of Bitcoin in the year of 2018.
But still, I don't think we should be blind to what the crypto-space is bringing us to. If you have been dismissing crypto as another tulip mania, maybe you should think again.
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