Passion + community + teaching = success & profit
Kathy has had a great run of posts on building passion, marketing through teaching, and inspiring passion. Her latest entry talks about how teaching is the number one way to create passionate users (and by extension, profit):
...people who want to learn more are more likely to want more of your tools, services, community, and "tribe/pride items" around whatever it is they're learning...
You can see this effect around many of the popular “brands” rapidly gaining mindshare in the Java open source area. Look at Spring and all the training efforts going on, both by Interface 21 and independants like Bruce Tate, not to mention all the books. Look at JBoss/Hibernate and you see a similiar thing. And of course, Ruby on Rails is another perfect example. The outpouring of articles and books around that community has been amazing.
In my own life I see many examples - when I was big into bodybuilding and fitness, I was a follower of Avant Labs and Lyle McDonald, two very well known and respected figures in the internet fitness commuity. Both are well known their hardcore educational resources, whether it be through Avant’s magazine and message board or Lyle’s books. As I learned and became more dedicated, I bought Avant’s supplements or Lyle’s books and kept coming back.
So if you want to promote something - get good at it, get passionate, and then start teaching it and getting others passionate. The community will follow.