“Being able to sell with words alone, regardless of where you’re physically located, is the most powerful skill you can have.”
– The 5 P Approach to Copy that Crushes It
How the worst pizza in the universe made one man rich
There’s a million dollars worth of free books that I am going to share with you at the end of this post. But first you’ll have to sit through a story. A story about pizza. Terrible pizza. Pizza so bad that the Simpsons used to make fun of it. You’ve all eaten it. Birthday parties for weird neighborhood kids you didn’t like. Office Christmas parties. This pizza is served everywhere that you wouldn’t want to be.
Domino’s Pizza started in the 1960’s. There was just one location to begin with. Competition was fierce. It’s hard to make it in the restaurant industry. Especially when your food is average at best. It’s unsurprising then that Domino’s was on the verge of bankruptcy. Poor sales and internal disputes had brought the company to its knees.
The company didn’t have much hope. Pizza isn’t exactly uranium. There are dozens of places to buy it from.
Things looked grim until a single sentence made everything change. In less than 10 words Domino’s was able to change its fate and become a major international pizza franchise. There aren’t too many countries where you can’t buy one of their pizzas.
The phrase that changed their fate was stupidly simple. It’s something we’d take for granted now. But at the time it was revolutionary:
“30 minutes or less… or it’s free.”
Domino’s couldn’t claim to be the best pizza. They could never say they were the cheapest. But they could be the company that delivered in 30 minutes or less. It was enough to reverse their inevitable demise and make them successful.
Even an average product can be turned into a hot seller. There are plenty of books, video games, and movies that aren’t that great but have a loyal fan base. They were able to find a niche and capitalize off of it.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the free books. This story was something I actually read about in one of them. In exchange for subscribing to their newsletter Copyblogger is giving away 15 books. Actual books, not those weak 10 page titles that most sites throw out there. If you sit down and read these ones, don’t worry they’re easy and kind of fun, you’ll know more about sales than 90% of the population. You could probably even launch a successful affiliate blog with just this knowledge.
These books are great and I’m not getting a penny for recommending them. They’re completely free with no strings attached. If you’re even mildly interested in making money online I’d suggest checking them out.