The Auxiliary Magazine Subscriptions Launch
Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2014 5:46 pm
I'm on the team of Auxiliary Magazine, and this is our campaign to re-launch Auxiliary with a new subscription model. We have traditionally released free digital editions, and print-on-demand hard copies you could order off the site. We hope to take it to the next level by revamping the website, ordering three print runs in advance to generate lots of hard copies, and moving the digital edition to a subscription model.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jenniferlink/auxiliary-magazine-subscriptions-launch
We started by getting a team of ninjas to know about the campaign in advance, know what the perks are, and know the exact launch time so that within the first hour they could log in and boost us. Thus our campaign spent just about no time at all around the zero dollar mark, and cruised to about $1100 in the first day.
And then things began to slow by the 48th hour, and we've been trying to gain momentum. There are 26 days to go, but our goal is a lofty one, certainly more than my individual annual income. We have emailed press releases, tried to motivate our contributors, and had plenty of retweets and shares, and things have increased to $1273 by today with 40 backers.
One thing I did was to set up a Thunderclap in the hopes of leveraging Twitter to the full. It would be awesome if we could round up more people for that, as we have 18 sign-ups so far and were hoping for 250. I paid for the privilege of being able to lower this particular goal to 100 and still have it happen, in which case we're almost 20% there instead of 7%, but why not aim high to start?
https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/13127-auxiliary-magazine-kickstarter
I then did a bit of testing with Fiverr.com because I wanted to know how effective freelance mass tweeters could be in bringing actual contributions. My personal self-pub goal for the September campaign is less than a third of what this campaign wants to raise, so if it boosted things even a little bit I thought it would help. So far, with over 19 Fiverr contracts paid, and multiple tweets to thousands of accounts, our campaign may have gained $10 total and three to five people on the Thunderclap, making me wish I had put the equivalent value into my campaign as a donation instead. While the campaign's still going, Twitter gives me the impression of a "people will see it and react to it fast or it'll get lost in their feeds". The Thunderclap may bear more fruit than these Fiverr contracts (they all work as advertised, they tweet, they share, they can prove it, and they can't make people contribute), and I'll consider it all lessons learned for my personal campaign later this year.
I have sent personal messages and appeals in private on Facebook and DMs on Twitter, as both involve huge feeds where anything not direct can get lost. This has rounded up help. I've found local DJs who run popular nights and are willing to print out flyers and hand them out for me; since Auxiliary covers fashion and music, they're all DJs whose music of choice pertains to what Auxiliary does. The results of that have yet to be seen; I have DJs who even are competitors of each other, handing out flyers to this same campaign. I also have one Steampunk seller who promises to share and raise us funds with a campaign-within-a-campaign, an idea I already had for my personal KS later.
Our video is six minutes long. We aimed for three. I've talked to the others and we're standing behind our six minute video, because it's a great quality video and we want to show you everything in it, and to give our contributors a voice and the visibility they deserve.
I admit to querying and seeing if Lady Gaga approves of our campaign and would retweet. It's the longest shot of the bunch, but our mutual interest is the late Alexander McQueen, fashion designer who really boosted Gaga's image and personal aesthetic. We have coverage of some past McQueen runway shows, and I was hoping the fashion and music would hold appeal. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm willing to try anything harmless for this campaign.
I like that I delivered my lines well in our video on few takes. I'm a chronic lifelong stutterer, but for some reason I felt so excited and happy that day that I think I actually had an easier time than Jenny or Tasha, who look much better and have put far more time and effort and investment into this project. They still did great, and frankly had more lines to worry about, which makes it more challenging.
Thank you for providing me a place to share this, and any help sharing/backing the Auxiliary Magazine Subscriptions Launch would be so cool!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jenniferlink/auxiliary-magazine-subscriptions-launch
We started by getting a team of ninjas to know about the campaign in advance, know what the perks are, and know the exact launch time so that within the first hour they could log in and boost us. Thus our campaign spent just about no time at all around the zero dollar mark, and cruised to about $1100 in the first day.
And then things began to slow by the 48th hour, and we've been trying to gain momentum. There are 26 days to go, but our goal is a lofty one, certainly more than my individual annual income. We have emailed press releases, tried to motivate our contributors, and had plenty of retweets and shares, and things have increased to $1273 by today with 40 backers.
One thing I did was to set up a Thunderclap in the hopes of leveraging Twitter to the full. It would be awesome if we could round up more people for that, as we have 18 sign-ups so far and were hoping for 250. I paid for the privilege of being able to lower this particular goal to 100 and still have it happen, in which case we're almost 20% there instead of 7%, but why not aim high to start?
https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/13127-auxiliary-magazine-kickstarter
I then did a bit of testing with Fiverr.com because I wanted to know how effective freelance mass tweeters could be in bringing actual contributions. My personal self-pub goal for the September campaign is less than a third of what this campaign wants to raise, so if it boosted things even a little bit I thought it would help. So far, with over 19 Fiverr contracts paid, and multiple tweets to thousands of accounts, our campaign may have gained $10 total and three to five people on the Thunderclap, making me wish I had put the equivalent value into my campaign as a donation instead. While the campaign's still going, Twitter gives me the impression of a "people will see it and react to it fast or it'll get lost in their feeds". The Thunderclap may bear more fruit than these Fiverr contracts (they all work as advertised, they tweet, they share, they can prove it, and they can't make people contribute), and I'll consider it all lessons learned for my personal campaign later this year.
I have sent personal messages and appeals in private on Facebook and DMs on Twitter, as both involve huge feeds where anything not direct can get lost. This has rounded up help. I've found local DJs who run popular nights and are willing to print out flyers and hand them out for me; since Auxiliary covers fashion and music, they're all DJs whose music of choice pertains to what Auxiliary does. The results of that have yet to be seen; I have DJs who even are competitors of each other, handing out flyers to this same campaign. I also have one Steampunk seller who promises to share and raise us funds with a campaign-within-a-campaign, an idea I already had for my personal KS later.
Our video is six minutes long. We aimed for three. I've talked to the others and we're standing behind our six minute video, because it's a great quality video and we want to show you everything in it, and to give our contributors a voice and the visibility they deserve.
I admit to querying and seeing if Lady Gaga approves of our campaign and would retweet. It's the longest shot of the bunch, but our mutual interest is the late Alexander McQueen, fashion designer who really boosted Gaga's image and personal aesthetic. We have coverage of some past McQueen runway shows, and I was hoping the fashion and music would hold appeal. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm willing to try anything harmless for this campaign.
I like that I delivered my lines well in our video on few takes. I'm a chronic lifelong stutterer, but for some reason I felt so excited and happy that day that I think I actually had an easier time than Jenny or Tasha, who look much better and have put far more time and effort and investment into this project. They still did great, and frankly had more lines to worry about, which makes it more challenging.
Thank you for providing me a place to share this, and any help sharing/backing the Auxiliary Magazine Subscriptions Launch would be so cool!