For awhile friends kept telling me I should start a Pateron type thing. After all, it seems like just about everyone has one now or a channel or some such thing. I didn't want to until I felt I had something of value. At the same time I was getting sick of social media and just wanted to have a space where true "fans" can follow me. I didn't want to depend on it. After all, I have tons of followers on FB but they aren't really customers or fans and when you're someplace where a person could get 1000 notifications when they log in, you start vying for their attention in a world with limited attention spans to begin with!
I decided I could do blogs I don't post elsewhere and some exclusive items or early bird offers and so here we are. But one thing that seems to have trailed off are "interactions". I've looked back over the last few posts and I'm not getting any interactions whether a like or comment. Now I'm not the type of person who needs constant adulation to sleep at night. My bigger concern is "are you even SEEING this post? Are you getting notifications when I add posts? Are you visiting this site if you do?
I've been having a big problem over the last few years. It seems quite a lot of my emails are going to customer's spam folders. Even when they email me first! I contacted my web hosting company to see if they knew what was going on. Their response was over my head in the technical department but supposedly they fixed something that could cause issues. I didn't really see a change. Upon more research, I was thrown down a rather annoying rabbit hole of more technical gobbily gook that cost me an entire day and supposedly THAT should've solved the issue or improved it. Who knows? Seems to still be a plague upon me.
To bring these two issues together, I launched the campaign to fund the Fortress System which I thought would do really well, but its almost dead. Yes it funded because I set my goal really really low, but where's all the backers? Are people just sick of crowdfunding? Maybe given that now billion dollar companies feel the need to do it which has possibly turned a lot of people off. To get around the problems with my email getting sent to spam, I used a mass email service to send out bulk to previous customers who bought diorama items before.
According to the analytics, the email has been sent to a couple hundred people but only about 62% even opened the email (going to spam? who knows? it doesn't specify) Then only about 21% clicked the link to the campaign. So not a lot of traffic. Then I posted to a major collecting site as well as posting on anywhere from 10-20 Facebook collector groups, not including Hole in the Ground's FB page, and of course here. Despite perhaps thousands of eyes on the posts, I've only gotten ONE backer that came from Facebook. Most came directly from my website. The campaign page has over 300 visitors at this point. Only 10 backers and some are multiple tiers from the same backers.
Recently a friend of mine and I ran a campaign for a comic project. Didn't even fund 50% while seeing some other creators doing 5 digits or more. Again, we weren't able to even get many eyes on the project. I can't help but feel a little defeated and I have no f-ing clue what I'm doing wrong. Is it the economy? Well, I'm sure it plays a part. However, I see many many who are doing just fine with their Patreons, their channels, and all of that. I have a collecting podcast that doesn't seem to gain followers, and the other I do with my friend with the comic isn't gaining either.
I feel like there's not a lot I can get right and nothing I try seems to work. I'm not an advertising guy. Never been the best self promoter and wish I could have someone else do it. For free. LOL Hey, remember the economy? Yeah, I'm hurting too. What's really frustrating is I can't even find out the "why?". Say I sent out a survey. First, do the recipients even get the email? Second, do they even open it? Third, do they even answer it? I need data.
If you've read all of that, I thank you for taking the time to read. And please, let me know you did! LOL