Relics simply make money.
Before the Reformation, the Catholic church used relics to make gobs of money.
But some of these relics were unbelievably weird.
Forgive the unholiness of this selection, but it is history:
The Holy Prepuce (Jesus’ foreskin). Really?
Vials of the Virgin Mary’s Milk. Ewww.
The Holy Breath (breath Jesus exhaled while praying).
And there is a whole other sleuth of mummified body parts of saints I don’t know.
Maybe the weirdness is what made them profitable.
We laugh about these now, but if I were a peasant with an uncurable disease, ruled by a merciless noble, and trusted in the Catholic church, you would probably find me on a relic pilgrimage to shake someone’s severed hand.
As a matter of fact, my wife and I changed our whole tour through Europe to visit a relic in Torino Italy.
Not for its magical properties, but due to fascination.
I had read a book about the Shroud of Turin and believed (and still do) it is quite probably the actual linen that was wrapped around Jesus after his crucifixion.
I’ll spare you my attempt to explain the evidence for that case, but it is worth a youtube search.
Anyways, the shroud was not on display when we got there, which was a little disappointing. It’s only shown every 10-25 years.
But while meandering through Turin, we happened upon a rinky-dink Shroud of Turin museum.
Guess who gladly paid the 8 Euros each to walk through this ghetto of a museum.
I can barely call it a museum.
We watched some anciently produced amateur intro film, walked through ugly rooms with tangentially related artifacts, and looked at a life-sized bootleg version of the shroud.
What does this have to do with marketing?
You don’t have to be great at selling, if you have a fascinating freebie offer.
Your landing page just needs say:
“Hey, sign up and you will have a unique and reliably answer to that mysterious problem.”
Or
“Hey, sign up and I will send you a holy severed body part of an unknown saint that will gross you out.”
Unfortunately, most authors just have:
“Sign up for my newsletters to get updates.”
No one wants your updates but your mom.
When you hire me to create your education email course, I create for you a landing page for the course that makes signing up a fascinating “no brainer.” (Or maybe it does included the brain of a cool saint. I’ll think about it.) But because your book is already relic-level fascinating, such a high-conveting signup page is easy to do.
Here is the link
https://blairjohnlee.substack.com/p/done-for-you-email-course
Blair
P.S. Apologies, for the gross topic. I am pretty sure Jesus was cringing during that part of Christian history. But the Bible has gross stuff, too, right? I know I am right.