by ibrow on 3/8/12, 9:45 PM with 8 comments
What do we do?
My girlfriend loves music and I love coding so we joined forces a couple of years ago and produced LiveUnsigned.com - an international listings site and blog for unsigned and micro-label artists.
We've always gone for the slow burn, building up visitors using the blog and the long tail. Whilst we never saw it as a huge money maker we did see it as eventually paying its way.
We've built it up over evenings and weekend (and the occasional ODesk hire) to where it is today:
- average 400 unique visitors a day
- average 30,000 page views per month
- split roughly 50-50 between blog and listings
- over 2000 twitter followers
- over 8500 artist profiles
- over 3000 venues in 42 countries
- 1200 upcoming shows
The issue here is that we have an increasingly limited amount of spare time. We've just had a baby girl (8 months old) so both time and money is a lot tighter than it was. And we're getting married later this year, which is also putting a further burden on time and money.
We have tried a number of things to bring cash in, adwords only bought in about £5 in the two months we tried it. We offered a "feature show" where you can pay £2 to promote your show, even a donate button. Nothing has really worked.
So what do we do? We have a site that we both love and we feel has great potential, but is taking up both our increasingly sparse time and money with no obvious gain.
We both feel like we need honest advice from someone completely detached. Whether the advice is to try doing X, Y or Z, or to scrap the listings and focus on the blog, or even just to stop completely.
What started out as a fun thing to do together is increasingly becoming a source of headache and tension.
Any advice much appreciated.
(note: I'll try and stay up and respond to any questions if they come along, but it's getting late and my daughter wakes up early!)
Edit: spelling
by polyfractal on 3/9/12, 3:17 PM
How about making a "premium" membership for venues? Venues pay a monthly fee ($37/month, whatever) and gain some special advantages. Perhaps they show higher in listings, or get bolded. Or maybe a weekly email of bands which are going to be in the area, as well as any statistics you have about them.
Alternatively, segment out the venues which are updating on a regular basis. Take a portion of that segment and start charging them in some capacity - a flat fee each time they update shows, etc Or make them purchase "credits" in bulk which are then spent on each update.
I think the monthly model is better, since people naturally like the "unlimited updates" that come with a monthly membership, whereas "credits" tend to promote hoarding and may reduce updates.
Another option is customized newsletters via email. I'm thinking a personalized email which shows upcoming live shows in my area. If one of those landed in my inbox weekly I'd probably read it and check out the bands. Once you build a steady open-rate you could start selling that resource to venues (either through advertising or statistics).
by anigbrowl on 3/8/12, 10:05 PM
What sort of values could you ad if you had money to burn? How about a full page ad in NME or Q every month promoting 3 new bands? Or a hookup with a radio station? Have you tried getting sponsorship from music instrument manufacturers/dealers? Musicians are always craving new gear, it's an addiction in the same way that music fans are always craving new tunes.
by khand01 on 3/8/12, 11:02 PM