Today, I’m going to show you behind -the-scenes to a launch I did for my last 3 launches. This is all the details, so I can see what went right and what went wrong.
You can see I can achieve lift off, but I don’t have any sustainable flight, YET.
Here is the Google Analytics graph:
LAUNCH ONE: RUNNING WITH COMICS
THE BACKGROUND: This launch was in June 14th. The site drew 202 people that month. No one knew me so I started blogging–just about everyday I would write about all the things I could think of related to comics. I would get all these ideas when I went out on my daily run. I would relate every trial, from running and correspond that with our trials in comic book creation.
THE GOOD: I set a TARGET DATE: JUNE 14: DEADLINE. People were looking forward to that date because that was the day I would find out if I would win the biggest loser competion. I had a countdown of my goals on the site. I had a countdown of my weight loss on the site. People could come with me on the journey.
THE BAD: I was getting numbers. Not relationships. I had nothing to follow up that upward curve. After the launch it was gone. As you can see by the sharp decline in July. I didn’t know where the site was going, what I wanted to do with it. So, everybody left. This was actually a prelaunch that turned into Independent’s Day.
LAUNCH TWO: INDEPENDENT’S DAY
THE BACKGROUND: I knew I didn’t want to lose everybody since July 4th was coming up I launched INDEPENDENT’S DAY, which would be the time when comic book creators could break free from the established forms of distribution and build their own base of 1000 raving fans–hence forth cutting off Diamond as the main distributer. Before the launch I held a webinar, which I invited people to and tried to sell them on the webinar. My laptop ran out of batteries in the middle of the webinar. I got back on, before the webinar ended, but I was out of time and couldn’t sell. I revamped my product and set it up as a major launch.
THE GOOD: I turned the curve around and got it back up again to 182 by giving away 3 valuable videos for free on email distribution, product development, and engaging your customer.
THE BAD: Again, I did not know what to do after this. I was out of ideas. And I was tired from the launch. During the launch, I was recording webinars late at night. The recordings wouldn’t take and I would have to restart them all over. It was a lot of sleepless nights.
SIDENOTE LAUNCH
Afterword, I did a short launch to my friends on Facebook who aren’t really into comics. I put out my own LoseW8BStrong competition and got a few people to join me on that journey. I tried launching that to a different crowd, but I think I neglected the blog during that journey and a lot of people left. (This may be that little bitty spike showing up in Augusst.) But I did build my relationship with my Facebook friends a bit. And I helped a friend of mine lose 12% of her body weight. She has diabetes. At the beginning of the program she was taking 5 insulin shots a day. At the end of the program, she was taking only 1 shot.
LAUNCH THREE: COMIC BOOK GOLD RUSH
THE BACKGROUND: I needed to launch around because I know my business is going to take off. something so I needed a date to rally behind. I picked 2-1-12 because my twitter icon is d-e-e-p and thought it would look similar. Pretty lame in hindsight. I had prepared to do a quick launch and be done by that date, but in reality, I didn’t get started until that date. Too much preparation, I think. I rallied the whole launch started as THE END and had a countdown on my site. THE END OF COMICS 2-1-12. Kind of tying into the whole “end of the world” that 2012 seems to be hyped for.
This launch is turning into the COMIC BOOK GOLD RUSH because there could not be a more fitting story for the future of comics then this one from history. I imagine I’ll launch both this campaign and the CURSE of COMICS campaign and see which one people gravitate toward. Do you think people don’t want a negative more than they want a positive? I think this is the case. When the Beat had an article on 2012 being the year of the Artistic Entrepreneur, they had like 8 comments. When they had the article, Comics are all Dying and we should all leave the industry, they had 180 comments.
THE GOOD: That article came out right at the time of the launch, so I could leverage that as momentum into the campaign. You want to rally around events as much as possible, and also current trends is helpful. I opened this launch only to the people on my email list and really haven’t blogged about it much at all. I test things with my email list to see if they will fly or not. They got a lot of valuable content and inspiration over this last week.
THE BAD. I have not kept up to date with my email list as much as I would have hoped. I hope to stay more connected with them as time goes on. That is why the top of the curves have slowly diminished over time. Also, my other traffic sources have pretty much dried up, I’ll have to tend to those this next month and put out some other ways to bring traffic, convert. February is still early, but I hope by the end of this month, (If I can keep up my current schedule of blogging everyday) is to keep this momentum on the upswing.
THE FUTURE:
I’ve got a ton of crazy launch ideas I am planning this year, but my main emphasis for the site is the comic book gold rush. It is the best way I see to make money this year. I guess we’ll see what the future holds. Next month, I would love for that graph for the end of February to be at the 300 level. I’m not sure why. Numbers don’t mean anything if you don’t have active people that will buy from you. Everybody else is just spectators. Aren’t you tired of watching other people live? Let’s get in the game and make life happen together.
I got a journal for Christmas, I’m writing in it everyday, my journey. I hope to sell it for $10,000 next Christmas. I think it will sell, if I make a million dollars or so by then. It chronicles my journey and everything I’m doing to make a million dollars this year on the internet with my entrepreneurial endeavors in comics. Wouldn’t it be crazy to make a million dollars in comics? — Well, not that crazy, I chronicle how we made four million in 5 years inside COMIC BOOK GOLD RUSH. Next step is to just go do it.