51–60 of 198 posts
it's time to start betraying your users by making subtle but significant changes to the terms of service in preparation for exploiting their personal info for financial gain
How is he betraying his users? You mean the free software he built and the $2,500 in expenses he is dishing out every month? The man has worked hard and built something amazing. Why can't he make money? What is wrong with that.
What about a voluntary small-fee subscription, something like $3/mo to remove ads and support the community. Works for Instapaper, and even for writers (eg., shawnblanc.net). Often, asking users you've treated well to chip in works fantastically.
All of the suggestions or what Philip had been thinking of are pretty "generic" solutions to the "problem". I spent 5 mins on the site, clicking around and my first impression of the Fandalism is the community and Fandalism's tag line is "Use Fandalism to show your work and meet other musicians". The community is most likely a mix of musicians AND music lovers. So even Fandalism's original goal of serving musicians i…
I love the idea of American Idol for guitarists/drummers/etc. I really could find the best musicians in the world. That would be fun. From a business perspective, if I wanted to make money doing that, I could imagine sponsors like guitar companies paying. Fender (maker of the famous Stratocaster guitar, for you non musicians) just filed IPO paperwork and had something like $700M in sales last year.
There's got to be a market for musicians who know how to write.
For now I'd focus 100% on improving the product. You're building a social network of sorts, which means the network effect is your big hurdle. You're in a land rush. Forget about anything other than winning that land rush right now. Build a network so populous and engaged that even if someone builds a better site (and if your growth keeps going, they will) it won't matter. If the server bill gets too high, toss in th…
The product is at a state where people like the idea of it so they sign up en masse -- but I'm not sure the site lives up to the expectation yet.
Why not go the CDBaby, Bandcamp.com or Threaded route? You have musicians, they have music, why not create a marketplace around their persona and talent? Feature them, give them exposure. Get them sales . Just take your modest cut. 400k users is an awesome sandbox, don't waste it!
Three thoughts about selling music on Fandalism: 1) The site is setup for individual musicians, not bands or acts. I'm really targeting the high school kid who sits on his bed and plays lightening-fast guitar solos. He doesn't have anything to sell. 2) If I promised that kid he'd make significant (to him) $$ selling his music, I'd probably be lying. 3) Most musicians aren't going to make money selling their music. Bu…
Prerecorded video would be perfect at first, but you could happily expand to live, streaming lessons. I'm excited already. What do you think?
You have 400,000 people who actively use your product? I imagine a bunch signed up thru TC, and the initial press, but how many people use it day to day?
Otoh Fandalism is kind of like LinkedIn in that I'm not overly concerned with user engagement -- it's more about building the database of users and content (so they can meet likeminded musicians, and one day I can launch new services that take advantage of the large database).
Or at least that's what I've been telling myself.