Drew Littlejohns

Hi Paul,

I'm an internet marketing guy. and typically when people hear of my affinaty to permaculture they are generally shocked as I spend most of my time online not building kick ass RMHs.... (sad I know).

Anyhoo the biggest thing we generally look at when we decide to pick up a new product is not the comission but rather the search volume via different marketplaces. So that being said If you gave a breakdown of the 1000 units that you sold that would be the best help as it would point to the viability of picking up the product(s).

If you could break that down into bitesize chuncks that would help, a quick note is that your "gut feeling" numbers are probably fine. so 50% from amazon? 40% from daily-ish email subscribers? and 10% from conference / youtube? That's the general Idea here. Also there are some folks who are AMAZON SEO's who can make your list be really high in amazon so you could create content to match the terms that have a high search volume rather than create an obsecure video that maybe applies to the few well educated permaculture folks. After all something as simple as a lawn care article has stopped how many train loads of gick being distributed.

So long story short:
1. give some metrics about where the sales came from
2. create a product that has permaculture benefits but has a high search volume

All the best,
Drew

paul wheaton wrote:Drew,

You might want to take this up in this thread: https://permies.com/t/32640/tnk/Money-raising-schemes
I think you might be describing "patreon" in that thread.

Paul, I am in a way describing that but the better option in my experience for ease of use is paypal's recurring billing platform
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_payflow-recurring-billing-faq-outside

I've used it many times and have had a lot of success with it. My point is mostly that it would be worth the hour or two to set it up and send it out in an email and talk about it in a podcast because the ROI is so high.
If you get 10 folks to sign up with the time you invest you'd probably get about 10-15 people to sign up which is about 4k. In response to the "permies swag" it would just be easier, and people would appreciate it, to just give some of the merch away with the membership. IMHO its a win-win option that helps you plan for future projects financially. Any further discussion I will move over to the "patreon" thread.

-Lowly Peon

Cj Verde wrote:I think this is probably a software issue so Paul and/or the people at java ranch probably can cover it! I'm assuming...

Awesome. I'm new here and don't really know all of the resources everyone has.
-Lowly Peon

Cj Verde wrote:

Drew Littlejohns wrote:
I'll tell you what if you create the option for me to give monthly I will. So that's a guaranteed $360 to pay some guy to figure it out.

I was going to wait till after the kickstarter to bring this up but...
... have you considered "gold memberships" to the forum? I mean a simple thing some forums do is ask a small donation/membership fee to enable users to have avatars. A higher level of support gets you a gold star - or maybe in this case a gold apple.

This could really help with cash flow.

Wow, Ok CJ. Thanks for the Love Miles!

Paul, you now have $720 of capital (assuming CJ is in). Would you like for me to help you figure out a way to implement this strategy. I'm a professional non-profit guy so I'm sure that I could write it out and your staff could follow the directions. It would probably save you a few hours, time I'm more than willing to spend.
-Lowly Peon

Hello everyone I'm so excited to get to know you. I love this place.

Hi Guys, Fist time commenting so be gentle...

Paul, It may be worth sending out an email asking people to become "monthly subscribers" this would include a 12 month pledge of say $30 a month. I know that's a fair amount for some people but to those of use who give regularly to causes its something I'd be quite comfortable doing.

By this point I think that people, myself included, trust your judgement and the fact that if we are "nice" to you, you'll be "nice" to us. This being said maybe send out one email and ask 15 people to become subscribers. Don't use kickstarter but a different platform. I wish I could offer you one but all the ones I know are for non profits. Although that might work.

I'll tell you what if you create the option for me to give monthly I will. So that's a guaranteed $360 to pay some guy to figure it out.
Sincerely,

Lowly peon in the ranks of paul's deviant army.