Derek Sivers on the Co-Op Business Model

Another incredible post by Sivers. It's about doing little favors for the world, your ecosystem and your friends. So many great examples in the post. Here's my favorite:

"In 1997, I got a credit card merchant account to sell my own CD at live shows. It cost $1000 in set-up fees and took three months of red-tape paperwork. Then I built a little online shopping cart, which also took months of work, just to sell my own CD. Musician friends asked if they could use mine instead of having to go through all of that work, so I said OK. At first, I did this for free, as a favor, until it was taking up all of my time. Because it took me 45 minutes of work to digitize, stock, set up a new album in my system, I charged $35 per new album. Because it took 10 minutes of work to pick, pack, and ship a purchased CD, I charged $4 per CD sold. Over the next 12 years, this made me about $20 million."