By Ctein
It's a few days past my birthday (74th (octal) if anyone cares), the autumnal equinox is just went by, and it's been almost 6 months since I started the "1000 true fans" experiment. Getting it up and running proved educational.
Now, before anyone gets their knickers in a twist again (a few did, last time), well, as I've said before, every column of mine isn't for everybody. Skip this and read the next article. Some of our readers are interested in this subject (we've heard from them), and other artists might want to try it for themselves—if not now, someday. I'm writing about it periodically as I develop useful information about doing it.
Now then. While I'm nowhere near supporting myself off of the donations of patrons, they are providing about a third of what I need to live on each month. That's amazingly good for this early in the project (though I still haven't figured out how to expand those numbers). It could have gone better had I understood three things ahead of time:
1. This is an impulse purchase.
People don't make modest donations or purchases after deep and careful deliberation. This is why charities make such a concerted effort to sign you up on the spot and not give you a form or phone number to respond to later. If they don't get you now, there's a good chance they won't ever.
Asking people before the launch if they'd be interested proved a mistake. Something like 120 people said they'd sign up. Only 60% signed up two weeks later. I should've dived right in and if I didn't get enough subscribers just refunded the other peoples' money.
2. People don't like billing.
Just over one third of the people who signed up wanted to pay the entire sum up front. Mind you, the low monthly fee was the "gateway drug." Many of the people who preferred to pay $108 in a lump sum instead of being billed under $9.50 a month would not have signed up if I had asked directly for $108. That low, low, rate created the impulse.
This has huge ramifications for running a project like this. The reason I went the donation/pick-your-prints-at-the-end route because I didn't think I'd have the net positive cash flow to do it any other way. Had I known better, I could have set it up as upfront-purchase/pay-in-installments and sent people art immediately. That would've avoided having to tiptoe through the PayPal minefield, and pushing some people's buttons about "donating" money.
When renewals come up next year, I'm going to change the system. People will get a print with their first payment. That'll be a different experiment; I know there are a few people who like the idea of gambling on what I might produce in the way of new art. We'll see if they outnumber the ones who are reticent to pay for an unknown pig in a future poke.
3. People will pay you more money.
A standard charitable approach is to have tiers of membership. The top tier is a decoy. When you get the letter that asks for $100, $200, $500, $1,000 or $10,000, the solicitor doesn't really expect anyone is going to give $10,000 that way. $10,000, though, sets a subconscious price level in the reader's head. A certain percentage of contributors will donate $500 or $1000, because it looks like a bargain in comparison. Without that $10,000 decoy hardly anyone would contribute $1,000; the "bargain" level would drop another notch.
I set up $9.50, $16, and $25 a month tiers. There are worthwhile benefits for signing up at the higher levels, but I created the highest tier mostly to subconsciously encourage people to sign up at the $16 level. Indeed, 20% of the sign-ups were at the $16 level, but 10% of them were at the $25 a month level!
Maybe I should create a $100 a month level? Hmmm....
Okay, that's it for this progress report. At the end of the calendar year, I'll tell you what I've learned about "taking care of 1000 true fans" and as the first year wraps up next spring, I'll talk to you about "retaining 1000 true fans."
Ctein
Ed. Note: Ctein (which by the way is pronounced "kuh-TINE," as I don't think I've mentioned recently) didn't include this, but I will: If you'd like to participate in collect-a-Ctein, here's how. I did, personally. —Mike
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