Hey Dean - thanks for alerting us all to this. I'll be really interested to hear how everything plays out, especially the level of interest among your fans in taking an active role in shaping the record. Nice!

Also, the music sounds effin' great. Good work, hombre.

Go, DEAN! Yeah! Thanks for sharing. I think I need to take a look at this in a little more detail when I have time. Sounds really cool, though, and I really liked your video.

Dean Fields said
Hey guys-

@mikebaker and @damien thanks a lot for diggin my music.  Very cool.

So, my pre-release campaign:

Yeah...It was pretty rad actually.  Because of Hurricane Sandy I ended up doing a 4 day campaign to make sure i reached everyone i could.  Some folks still didnt have power even after the campaign was done. 

Basically...I had just under $2 per subscriber after all was said and done.  As far as Im concerned thats pretty good considering it wasnt even a real release.  Its just exclusive access to my new album as Im making it.

I created a membership portion of my site using wishlist member.  Leads came in via paypal purchase and routed to a customer list on aweber.  (By the way...The integration between aweber, paypal, and wishlist was a total pain in the ass.  If any of yall decide to do this give me a call.  I can probably help you out after everything i learned while banging my head against the wall.)

 I put a post up on Fbook the night before the launch that i needed 3 people to go through my sales funnel to test it out. Which as a nice little buzz.  But Thank the friggin stars!  Because there was a lot to fix.  And, it wouldve been a nightmare if it had happend to all of my list on the launch day.  So, I fixed the bugs and had it all working by the time sales started the next day. whew.

As i told John...The coolest thing about it is that I now know who will buy my stuff no matter what. And thats pretty awesome.  Now, Im just trying to keep the value up for the folks that bought in.  Because I hope to have a monthly membership site going when this album is done.

Oh...Another thing I learned the hard way.  I did a boxset promotion as an upsell and forgot to check my product on one of my previous albums.  --which I had only 25 of.  Idiot.  Luckily I had some at CDbaby from back when I used them and had them ship them to me.

Some stats that some of you other number nerds might like:

 

Day 1: 35% of total units sold.  28% of total $ (1 email and facebook invite)

Day 2: 12% of total units sold.  11% of total $ (Halloween.  nothing)

Day 3: 17% of total units sold.  13% of total $ (2nd email "(name) dont want you to miss this!", comment on facebook invite, and status updates on tw and fb)

Day 4: 35% of total units sold.  48% of total $ (3rd email "[time sensitive] offer ends tonight!", comment on fb invite, and status updates)

 

6% took me up on the upsell.  Which is low, i think as far as industry standards are concerned.  But when you consider that most people who would go for this offer probably already have my other albums. 

 

Another thing that really helped was creating a Facebook event page with all of the info.  I have tons of facebook friends that still hadnt signed up on my list.  And I finally snagged them with this offer. 

 

I pulled the offer after the 4 days and I've already got a pretty solid waiting list.

Awesome stuff Dean.

As far as setting up the membership and integrating it with an autoresponder...turns out there's a Fiverr gig for that!

http://fiverr.com/mineshdesai/create-wordpress-membership-site-or-customize-your-need-with-membership-features-if-you-are-using-wishlist-member

Just in case someone else wants to do this with a little less headaches.

Dean Fields said
wow.  that wouldve been nice to know 2 months ago.  I love it how for $40 you get "pretty cool bonuses"

Hey Dean - I wasn't holding out on you. I actually re-read this thread and saw how you mentioned it was a big pain to get Wishlist and AWeber to sync up properly and then I was on a newsletter that was talking about how you can easily outsource the process for cheap.

So for $40-$45 you can save yourself the headaches and have that guy do it instead.

But level with me Dean...would you have been willing to pay $40 before you went through all that hassle? I'm guessing most of us would only see the value AFTER having done it ourselves!

Hopefully others can learn from our experience and just outsource it. I know that's what John does and what a lot of successful business people preach - delegate the stuff outside your expertise. Less headaches for you and you can move another part of your music career that only you can do!