It’s day 29 of the Kickstarter for The Hawaii Project, Thursday, April 30. $11,415 pledged, 32% funded, 147 backers.

Last 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 sounds great to you, back us on Kickstarter: 

http://www.thehawaiiproject.com/kickstarter

At this point, there’s not much to do that’s not already been done, in terms of outreach for backing.

As I mentioned yesterday, I have an opportunity to do a guest post on a big startup-oriented media outlet, about my last startup, goby. I spend most of the day working up a post-mortem for goby – what worked, what didn’t, what we learned. It’s surprisingly difficult to distill 4 years of your life into 500 words. Mark Twain famously said “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” (actually, it was Pascal who said that, not Mark Twain, but Rule 17: Never Let the Facts Stand in the Way of a Good Story). This needs to be short, so it’s going to take some time.

I start a brain dump, don’t even finish the brain dump because my hands and head hurt, and I’m at 1859 words. And a lot of fun times recalled. But Damn. That’s a lot of editing to do.

The super TL/DR version: the “things to do” app space has structural problems preventing a new brand from owning it. You need a daily use case for any consumer product to take off – or a MASSIVE marketing budget. Don’t do search, do personalized, contextual recommendations. I’ve tried to bake those and other learnings into The Hawaii Project. In addition to being fodder for future press activities around The Hawaii Project, this article is a good way to step away from the day-to-day of THP and see what lessons I took away from goby, and which apply to THP.

It’s also getting to be about time to do a post mortem on this Kickstarter campaign. Figure out what worked, what didn’t work, what to take away from it, and what to bring to future activities on The Hawaii Project, which will go forward in any case.

I start to organize my thoughts on that for a bit, then call it a day.

It’s day 28 of the Kickstarter for The Hawaii Project, Wednesday, April 29.

$11,025 pledged (yay 11k+!) , 31% funded, 142 backers. 3 days to go.

So the results are in on the Facebook ad campaign I ran. here’s the results:

WEBSITE CLICKS: 161
REACH: 14,432
TOTAL SPENT: $50.00
AVG. COST PER CLICK: $0.31
NUMBER OF DONATIONS GENERATED: 0

TL/DR version: I can’t spend my way to success in the campaign, obviously.

Now, there’s some confusing info in this. Google analytics reports that only 28 clicks came from Facebook in that time frame (vs the 161 claimed by FB), and the Facebook ads also have “like” buttons on them – not sure if those count as “clicks” or not. I pick up some likes on the FB page for The Hawaii Project, but that’s not really what I’m after. And I forgot to add a tracking code to the URL as well, sigh…

The cost per click is surprisingly low to me. But that last number pretty much says it all. I don’t think paid advertising is the way to success for my kind of product. By way of contrast, this daily LinkedIn post about the Kickstarter has generated a fair number of clicks and views as well. While the total count is lower than FB, I can track a handful of contributions directly to these posts, vs 0 for FB ads.

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. Check us out on Kickstarter: 

http://www.thehawaiiproject.com/kickstarter

The pilot project at the Nahant Library is going well. I spend the rest of the day fixing up the landing page so it is more patron-friendly (it’s the header picture for this article, and get some good feedback on it. And I’ll reuse that page later for the main product so it’s not wasted effort.

(btw – HTML/CSS hackers – this article on Medium is fantastic for helping amateurs like me do good looking Text on Images, along with detailed, practical advice for better looking UIs, I used some of the techniques mentioned in the above screenshot).

I get an invite to write a post-mortem on my last startup, goby. I have a fair bit of that post in my head, and I’d love to get it out in time for a last bit of press on The Hawaii Project. But that subject is too important to me to rush, and I don’t think I have time to do it justice, and still get it published in time to help. Still, better get at it.

It’s day 27 of the Kickstarter for The Hawaii Project, Tuesday, April 28.

4 days left. $10,835 pledged, 30% funded, 140 backers. 4 days to go.

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. Check us out on Kickstarter: 

Today’s Library and networking day. Have coffee with a former colleague and friend, thinking about a career change. He has an idea for a new startup that’s eerily like my previous startup, goby. “things to do” is a tough app space. more about that someday.

Then I’m off to Nahant Public Library. It’s about an hour drive. Nahant is essentially an island, connected to the mainland by a very narrow causeway. It’s gorgeous. The sun is shining and it’s spring in Massachusetts. I’m visiting because they’ve expressed interest in what I’m doing and maybe there’s something to do together.

The library is the third oldest in the state, a gorgeous old wood and stone building, 2nd floor has lead glass panels for flooring (!), the roof is recovering from a raccoon incident, and the librarians are fun, thoughtful and encouraging. And loud! It’s “the new library”, as they say, no “shushing”. We talk about books, readers, libraries, and The Hawaii Project for an hour and half or so – really good fun.

They like the visual nature of the site, the way it’s easy to browse a mix of new and old, but interesting, books. There’s a thing in libraries called “reader advisory services”, which is basically when a patron asks for help picking out a book to read. It’s tough – even librarians can’t be familiar with everything and every taste! They think what I’m doing can help them – more interestingly, they’re likely willing to pay for it! Yay customers!

Turns out their site is built with a website generation tool that makes it easy for me to embed parts of The Hawaii Project inside their library website! I spend an hour working in one of their comfy chairs setting it up. Presto. Instant pilot project. We’ll let it run for a few weeks and if they’re liking it, we’ll settle on a subscription-based, recurring price. Not really the business model I had in mind, but, when someone offers you money, you follow the thread a bit to see where it leads!

Especially when your Kickstarter is struggling 8).

They recommend Kelly Greens for lunch. It’s a golf course clubhouse right on the water, and the end of a dead end road. I feel like I’ve wandered onto the set of The Departed or something. Irish bartender, Southie-sounding accents (if you’re from Boston you know what I mean), and an amazingly good Reuben and a cold glass of beer. If you find yourself out that way, I recommend it.

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