111–120 of 186 posts
Out of curiosity, what did you do wrong originally that was against Amazon's terms?
We were a middle-man to the artists. We had it setup so when a fan bought their music all of the money went directly to us, and then we paid out the artist. That is where we went wrong. You need to use "recipient tokens" so the money is split by Amazon. This way the money goes directly to the artist and we get sent a cut directly from amazon.
seems like it shoulda really taken off for independent artists.
Mmm, if you look at the site it's really not that surprising it didn't take off. http://zillionears.com/ Landing on that site and seeing the big 'Create Sale' button is pretty confusing. I don't think 'oh this is a site for musicians to sell their music directly to fans'. It also claims I can use 'social sales' but is that a meaningful term? I've never heard it before and it sounds pretty buzzwordy. edit: Just watche…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That and the landing page video — it was both cheesy, and patronizing to both musicians and their fans. And after watching it I still don't understand the "decrease price by a dollar" pricing scheme.
All of these things I DO agree with. And yes, we are young. We might not use the word "shit" on our homepage next time. But Hell, I used the word "fuck" on the title of this article, and it sure turned alot of heads.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That and the landing page video — it was both cheesy, and patronizing to both musicians and their fans. And after watching it I still don't understand the "decrease price by a dollar" pricing scheme.
All of these things I DO agree with. And yes, we are young. We might not use the word "shit" on our homepage next time. But Hell, I used the word "fuck" on the title of this article, and it sure turned alot of heads.
If there's a common thread between endless startup failure stories, then it is "we talked to a bunch of people who said they'd spend money on this" and when push came to shove said people didn't actually spend money. We're not failing, but even from a (modestly) successful startup perspective, the vast gulf between "people who like to talk to you as if they will spend real money" and "people who will actually spend m…
What you should be trying to find out is:
1. if they currently spend their money somewhere else to solve their problem
2. if your product is so much better at solving the problem, that they will want to switch.Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think part of the difficulty of knowing when (or when not) to quit is that opportunity lurks even inside failure. My first startup attempt was a coaching marketplace and community for poker players. My co-founder and I were both successful professional poker players and coaches at the time, but we were young (20ish) and all but clueless about technology. I still think the market opportunity was there, but we hired…
Cool to hear! I've just built a simple HTML5 web based poker HUD. I'd love to pick your brain what you think I should do with it!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mmm, if you look at the site it's really not that surprising it didn't take off. http://zillionears.com/ Landing on that site and seeing the big 'Create Sale' button is pretty confusing. I don't think 'oh this is a site for musicians to sell their music directly to fans'. It also claims I can use 'social sales' but is that a meaningful term? I've never heard it before and it sounds pretty buzzwordy. edit: Just watche…
Maybe I didn't have my morning coffee yet, but the video seemed to be too disrespectful of musicians.
I see this happen more and more that we talk to our potential customers about the idea we've been brewing and they say 'heck yeah I would totally use it', later only to find no interest in it. One thing I learned is, most of our ideas are pretty cool and most likely all the potential customers would agree when you try to validate but very few would actually hop on to try it. May be the implementation wasn't right, or…
If you have no product and are not asking for a sale, saying 'yes' has not cost to the person. Saying 'no' makes them a grouch, and they would have to justify why they said no. So lots of people say 'yes' even though they don't really mean it.
That's why the only data worth talking about is sales and adoption, and why minimum viable product is the way to go.
My feeling is that you conceived the startup guided mainly by your desires than the one of the artists, visitors and clients. Unfortunately your desires where not attractive for them.
Mistake n° 1 is the domain name which is the first message you give about your business and service.