It’s day 26 of the Kickstarter for The Hawaii Project, Monday, April 27.

5 days left. $10,735 pledged, 30% funded, 137 backers. 4 days to go. <bleep!>.

Brief Commercial Interruption: The Hawaii Project brings you books and book news you’d never have found on your own, by tracking hand-selected sources of great books, uncovering things that match your favorite authors, personal interests and current events, and bringing them to you daily. 10% of our revenue goes to 3 great literacy non-profits. If this resonates, back us on Kickstarter: 

http://www.thehawaiiproject.com/kickstarter

Breaking with tradition, I’ll list my music first. Nobody does wistful guitar like Mark Knopfler of Dire Straights. Today I get a song stuck in infinite repeat, his song “Beryl”, about novelist Beryl Bainbridge, who was posthumously awarded the Booker prize for best literary novel. Getting stuck on a “bookish” song was funny, and the ironies for me in the lyrics are plentiful and painful, in a “black humor” sort of way:

Beryl was on another level
When she got a Booker medal
She was dead in her grave
After all she gave

Every time they’d overlook her
When they gave her her Booker
She was dead in her grave
After all she gave

[Chorus]
It’s all too late now….

Ahem.

Yesterday I ran some experiments posting in Facebook groups. Got a good reaction but no donations. After prodding from some folks on LinkedIn, I decided to run some Facebook ads and see how they performed. (I’d previously ran some Google ad tests – I’ll post about all of that after the Kickstarter).

For today, just the Facebook. So I put in $25, set my targeting to US only, targeting people with Books and eBooks in their interests, and let ‘er rip. Here’s the results:

reach: 2,857 ads served, 91 clicks to my Kickstarter page. That’s a CPM of $8.75(absurdly high considered on it’s own), but the 91 clicks means as CPC (cost per click) of $0.27, which is actually quite good. That’s the good news. The bad news is I get no donations from it. Of course, it’s quite a small sample size, and I ran the campaign late in the day. I’ll run the test again tomorrow at the same price point and see what I get.

I spend the rest of the day emailing authors. First, I crawl my author / blog database to find author websites, then crawl those sites for email addresses or contact forms. In a morning’s work I have about 500 author contact details. I don’t spam though, I write each one individually. I get in contact with James Patterson (who’s donated millions to schools and libraries), Anne Rice (of Interview with a Vampire fame), David Baldacci (famous thriller author), Danielle Steel (romance novelist), Veronica Roth (of Divergent fame), Hugh Howey (one of the most successful independent authors), and about 30 other authors. It’s surprising how many authors just put their email address on their websites, and are reasonably approachable. I’ve had a number of email conversations with Steven Pressfield, one of my favorite authors of all time. To me, they’re celebrities, but approachable ones. But, so far, no responses. 8(.

Tomorrow, I’m visiting the Nahant Library, they’ve expressed an interest in working together. Looking forward to it.

The end is near, but I’m going down swinging.

It’s day 25 of the Kickstarter for The Hawaii Project, Sunday, April 26.

As you recall from yesterday’s diary, one of today’s experiments is to explore Facebook as a marketing channel. In particular, I want to see if interest-based groups will react well to posts about THP mentioning topic-relevant books. Following a suggestion from Lynn, an old friend, I join a Facebook group dedicated to Rock Art in the Southwest. (I used to live in Utah and do that kind of thing, the photo above is mine). I join the group, post a few photos, and…..

Brief Commercial Interruption: If you’re reading this, you may not know what The Hawaii Project is. The Hawaii Project brings you books and book news you’d never have found on your own, by tracking hand-selected sources of great books, uncovering things that match your favorite authors, personal interests and current events, and bringing them to you daily. 10% of our revenue goes to 3 great literacy non-profits. If this resonates, back us on Kickstarter: 

http://www.thehawaiiproject.com/kickstarter

Those photos pick up 50-75 likes in a matter of minutes! More than I’ve ever gotten on a photo posted on my timeline. In minutes…. I don’t think that’s because my photos are so good, it’s because the group is large  (~5000 people) and VERY active. Emboldened, I post a recommendation for the book The Lost World of the Old One, by David Roberts, about the archaeology of the Southwest, and I mention that I discovered this book through The Hawaii Project, which is completely true, and mention the Kickstarter.

Boom.

30 “likes” on Facebook within about 5 minutes, and a continuing stream of them throughout the day. I eventually track about 40 or so visits from this to my Kickstarter page. As yet, none of them have converted to pledges that I can see, but still, 40 visits in a few hours from one post seems to validate that energized communities will react well to relevant book recommendations. While it may not work for the Kickstarter, it suggests that when the site is live this can work as a customer acquisition technique. THP finds great books on most any topic, so this strategy can scale pretty widely I think…perhaps could even be automated.

This activity also earns me a slap on the wrist from the group moderator, who says “this is real close to spam”, but he leaves the post up. And he’s right, it is “close” to spam. But the book is spot on, as judged by the quick and large set of “likes”, and nobody but him complains about the post. I’m not bothered; you need a thick skin for this startup stuff.

Yesterday was a milestone in the Kickstarter too; I end the day by breaking $10k in pledges!

5 days left. $10,005 pledged, 28% funded, 131 backers.

LinkedIn is starting to pick up as a source of pledges, a few folks who’ve been reading this diary have contributed. THANK YOU. I need some big donors to get over the edge. Gonna go harass a bunch of rich authors. Wish me luck.

Music: Sunday is Jazz day at my house. Today it’s Industrial Zen by guitar wizard John McLaughlin

It’s day 24 of the Kickstarter for The Hawaii Project, Saturday, April 25.

OK, in yesterday’s post, I’d pretty much given up on the Kickstarter’s chance of success. But. I got a well-needed kick in the pants from some old friends, not to give up. That led me to re-read some things I’d written to myself a few years back, especially lessons learned from reading Gates of Fire, about the Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae. (you can read that here: https://www.viking2917.com/leadership-lessons-from-the-ancient-greeks/). Takeaway: back in the arena. 5 more days. Going down swinging.

Brief Commercial Interruption: If you’re reading this, you may not know what The Hawaii Project is. The Hawaii Project brings you books and book news you’d never have found on your own, by tracking hand-selected sources of great books, uncovering things that match your favorite authors, personal interests and current events, and bringing them to you daily. 10% of our revenue goes to 3 great literacy non-profits. If this resonates, back us on Kickstarter: 

http://www.thehawaiiproject.com/kickstarter

The project is going forward in any case – perhaps more slowly than if funded – so, I’m going to spend the last week driving the Kickstarter but with a focus on learning things I can take into the next phase, either way. My two targets: Facebook and Authors.

I’m going to explore more fully whether Facebook is an effective marketing channel, whether that’s via Facebook groups or ads or something else, and I’m going to get in touch with authors, who are natural sponsors of The Hawaii Project as they have books that need to reach readers, and I have a prototype of an Author page where people can follow their favorite authors, that needs cleaning up and sharing around (if you’re an author looking to connect with readers, please get in touch!). I spend a few hours dusting off that page and getting it running again so I can share it around.

I take the evening off and go see Ex Machina, a movie about how search engines might become the basis of AI. Intriguing premise, actually pretty plausible. The movie is stylish but slow. B+. But it’s a good few hours not thinking about Kickstarter (Rule 12: One hour a day, one day a week, don’t think about work. – I’m not going a great job of following this rule…).

Thanks for following along.

It’s day 23 of the Kickstarter for The Hawaii Project, Friday, April 24.

OK. I have 1 week left. $8,615 pledged, 24% funded, 119 backers.

My average donation so far is $72. I have 115 backers. To hit my goal, I need 370 more backers at my average donation. That’s 45 donors a day @$72. I’m getting about 1 a day on average. Game over, thanks for playing 8).

Here’s the questions I’m asking myself: do I just give up and stop trying to manufacture pledges? Or do I go down swinging? I HATE sending out more begging letters to friends and family, but that’s where most of the donations are coming from. And it’s likely wasted effort – if I double the number of friends & family donations, it doesn’t get anywhere near the goal. Do I go after some big ticket donations, try to get a James Patterson or Neil Gaiman to get excited and cough up a really big donation? That seems equally unlikely.

For that matter, do I really care if I make the goal? My primary objective with the Kickstarter wasn’t really to raise funds – it was to have an event to talk about and effectively use as a product launch. Raising funds was a secondary objective. I’ve been successful at getting a reasonable amount of press (Bost Inno, the Boston Globe’s Tech Site, Hawaii Public Radio, PJ Media and Xconomy), and setting up other press for the eventual “real” public launch of the product. But, it would be ideal not to have to explain away why the Kickstarter failed.

Let’s do a quick analysis of the effectiveness of the channels I’ve tried. [Before I do this, friends & family, please don’t feel like this is a transactional relationship or you’re just a number or I’m judging you by whether you contributed. I truly appreciate each individual I’ve been in contact throughout this process! This is just how the sausage gets made 8)].

For the non-initiated, “conversion rate” means the % of people I invited to contribute that actually did so (mostly through email or social media). My joking label for this is “Spam” – any mail I sent “en masse” to a group of people, I call spam.

• Friends & Family ( a few hundred people) – Pledged $2340 at a ~17% conversion rate (note: most of these mails were hand sent)
• Endeca spam (a few hundred people) – Pledged $885 at a ~6% conversion rate.
• goby spam (about a thousand people I crossed paths with, when I was at goby) – pledged $1025 @1.5% conversion
• Acquaintance Spam (~800 people I am acquainted with from various life activities) – pledged $280 @ 1% conversion
• Beta testers (~150 people in my beta test) – pledged $1785 @ 8.5% conversion
• Librarian spam (I emailed every library in Massachusetts!) – pledged $0, no conversions, but about 2% of them converted to beta testers
• Literary Agent spams (I crawled the web for about a thousand literary agents’ email addresses, and mailed them either personally or through a bulk email) – pledged $210 @ .15% conversion rate – not a lot of money but I made some great friends and got some deep insights, so well worth it.
• Press: I’ve been reasonably successful with press, 4 or 5 high quality articles in high quality outlets. It’s generated roughly ~$750 or so, so far as I can tell. It’s valuable coverage, but more of it isn’t likely to move my $ in the near term.

For comparison, I have friends who run marathons or do bike races for charity. They report that ~40-50% of their “list” converts into a charity donation. So my numbers don’t feel that off, considering I’m not a charity, I’m asking for donations to a for-profit enterprise.

So. The top three out of that, based on volume + conversion rate: Friends, Beta Testers, and Endeca folks. So I guess the data’s telling me to hit them up again. Sorry guys. Inbound tin cup headed your way one last time. Spending more time on press or libraries or agents seems contra-indicated at present, as the short-term ROI at least doesn’t look worth it. I am intrigued by the Librarian community as a longer term customer acquisition channel, and have a visit to a few set up in the near future.

It won’t take too long to update my big 3 with an email, and I should do it anyway – but I’m left with the calculation that even if I double my contributions from those sources, I barely crack $10k out of $35k. It’s not going to get me there.

Today’s music: The Crystal Method’s soundtrack for the movie London. Half EDM, Half Soundtrack. Perfect working music.

PS. I send the mail to friends, family and beta testers. There’s a fair contingent of folks who got distracted and hadn’t backed yet, and do so now. That raises another $1,000, for which I am very grateful! But the hill to climb still feels too high…..

So: After sleeping on it, I’m going to let nature take it’s course, and mostly go back to work on product. It doesn’t look like making the goal is in the cards right now, unless events outside my control kick in. I’d rather invest my time now in making the product better, clarifying the market differentiation, and getting it actually finished and on the market.  I don’t look at this as “giving up”, I look at it as a rational investment of my time given the current situation.

Those of you who pledged, THANK YOU. Rest assured the project will move forward, just without some of the things the $ would fund.

It’s day 22 of the Kickstarter for The Hawaii Project, Thursday, April 23.

OK. I have 8 days left. $8,615 pledged, 24% funded, 119 backers.

The last major piece of press coverage I was hoping for has landed. Yay! We’re covered in Beta Boston, the Boston Globe’s tech-focused website. I’d targeted The Globe/Beta Boston as one of my original desired media outlets for coverage. Ironically, the coverage doesn’t come from journalists there I know and pitched, it comes from a freelancer who found me on her own and thought it would be good to cover. The world is funny sometimes. Today is World Book Day (http://worldbookday.com/), so it seems appropriate!

Duh. I forgot to ask the journalist to use my special link for the Kickstarter,http://www.thehawaiiproject.com/kickstarter. So all the traffic is routed direct to Kickstarter, where I have no way to track how many hits I got. I realize this about 4 hours later and ask them to update the link, which they graciously do, but I think I missed most of the immediate hits. Still, I’ll get long term SEO value from the link to my site instead of Kickstarter. (Side note: The Hawaii Project has never been on the first page of Google results for “The Hawaii Project” searches. I notice today it’s on the first page now – no doubt a result of all the backlinks I have been getting from press. I am now outranking the Hawaii Meth Project, thank goodness….although btw that seems like a great organization fighting meth use in Hawaii.)

Based on my google analytics tracking, looks like I got about 10 hits to the Kickstarter page *after* they changed the link. No way to tell what happened before. Mistake on my part….However, I see the outcome. I’ve gotten 4 pledges totaling $270. Not the “geyser” of donations I was hoping for 8). But every little bit…..

Side note: I get one comment on the article from a reader – the first comment I’ve gotten on any of the articles on The Hawaii Project. It’s slightly snarky and suggests Goodreads already does all the things I do. Hard to see how they’d know that as they’ve not used the product…but: Rule 29: Be (civil) In The Arena). (I have a set of work rules, somewhat analogous to Gibb’s Rules. I’ll publish them someday). In the meantime, Rule 29 is Be (civil) In The Arena. The Arena is The Internet. Be In The Arena. Put up a comment on any article written about you, even if it’s just a thank you, and even (especially!) if the article is critical of you. Respond to every single person who takes the time to comment on your work, even if you don’t agree with them. And be respectful. So, I respectfully respond to her criticisms, I think we end up agreeing to disagree. Which is fine. The dialog is there for anyone coming to the article later, and hopefully I build a reputation as being thoughtful, responsive and “not a jerk”. I may not win her over, but I may win over someone coming to the article later.

I spend the rest of the day analyzing where I stand on the Kickstarter, and paths forward. I’ll publish that tomorrow, on Friday.

Today’s music: Philip Glass piano music. Contemplative, non-interruptive, thought-inducing.