Selling Feelings →

Ben Thompson · Stratechery ·

More broadly, the fact remains that business is difficult – it was difficult before the Internet, and it’s difficult now – but the nature of the difficulty has changed. Distribution used to be the hardest thing, but now that distribution is free the time and money saved must instead be invested in getting even closer to customers and more finely attuned to exactly why they are spending their money on you. Any sort of software – or writing, or music, or video, or clothing, or anything else – has never been purchased for its intrinsic value but rather because of what it did for the buyer – how it made them feel (informed, happy, relaxed, etc.). Create the conditions where the need might manifest itself and then meet that need, and not only will your business succeed, it will, in all likelihood, succeed to an even greater extent than the physically-limited lowest common denominator winners from the “good old days.”