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Ask HN: Advice needed for spare time project

3 pointsibrow8 comments

Hi all,

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

We have a couple of great writers for the blog and reviews who are both immersed into the world of DIY music, and whom we pay a nominal amount to per month.

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

General musing out loud:

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).

You don't say how much it costs you; my impression is that the time is more than the cash amount. Have you tried asking your users what they want, or telling your users what you want? I'm thinking of '8500 artists. 1200 upcoming shows. Could someone please buy us a drink?' A subscription model would be ideal but I'm not sure how you do that - although i do think that charging two quid for promotion sends the message that your service lacks value, and that you would have got many more signups if you had demanded twenty. If you can't see a subscription model, cost out an upgrade and some merch and then do a kickstarter to raise the funds.

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.

Thanks for your reply.

It costs us roughly £400 per month, including blog posts, server costs and we have an odesk hire who does about 10-15 hours per week researching and entering in shows.

I see what you mean about the £2 as lacking in value, it's all about perception.

Sadly outside the US so I don't think we can do kickstarter (don't know if there are any EU equivalents).

If we had money to burn we'd most likely revamp the site, focusing on mobile (more and more people are accessing us with Android/iPhone ad we both feel this is the way to go). We'd also like to do events for unsigned bands.

If money was truly no object, then yes, full page ads would be pretty cool, but I have no idea how we'd get roi on this.

One thing we've thought about (in conjunction with the localisation of a mobile site) would be very localised targeted advertising. But we're not marketing/ad people and have no idea even where to begin with this.

Is it even possible to get a sales person for commission only to do something like this?

I hesitate to give specific advice from so far away, but my experience of music promoters is that they are some of the most entrepreneurial people out there (to the point that they will exploit you if allowed, of course). Offhand, I would look for ways to get income from the venues, whose economics are simple: book bands with fans, sell booze to fans, profit. They're much more likely to spend, and to understand their own economics than bands themselves. Start your research by calling around local and regional papers as if you had a pub or something and wanted to take out your own advertising - get the rate card of old-media publications and try to guess how much it costs a venue owner to bring the public inside the door and spending money. Or again, simply ask them.

The more I think about it, the more I think venues are your revenue stream. Bands come and go, whereas stages tend to stay in one place :-)

This is great, and probably the way to go. We do have a number of venues who update their listings on a weekly basis, so we must be doing something right by them.

So it's sort of a three link chain:

1. help the fans to find bands they like (and help the band to promote themselves to a wider audience) 2. help venues find bands with the most fans 3. connect these bands with the venues so the bands play in front of large audience and the venue sells more beer.

Point 3 is where we get the revenue stream.

This is good stuff, and helping me see things a bit differently. Thanks

Don't forget to close the circle - make sure the (local) fans know what's on at the venues, even if it's unfamiliar to them. Remember being young and single, and going out for the sake of going out. The exploratory and habitual aspects of cultural behavior are at least as important as the directed ones - but I'll stop here lest I start to sound like a marketing course :-)

Lots of luck, and congratulations on the baby!

Great site by the way. It seems like you have a lot of data already up there. Is there a way you can leverage it to make it more valuable? Your target audience is really 2 bases: fans and bands. For the fans: maybe track which band or what venue gets the most clicks? For the bands: maybe provide a resource on how to tour for bands... like a google maps plot of previous tours of other bands... which venues treat bands the best (sort of like yelp)?

Thanks for the compliments.

Along with @anigbrowl in the comment above there are really three main types of audience: bands, fans and venues/promoters.

One of the possibilities is to charge for stats, how many visits, where are they coming from etc. But I think this is only possible with a larger visitor base (i.e. more unique visitors/hits).

I really like your idea for resources for touring, this could be a good thing to go for, especially as it is all about helping the artists (which is primarily what the blog focuses on). The yelp idea is great as well, and fits in nicely.

But again it's how to make a return on these resource, is advertising the only way?

Edit: after going through anigbrowl's comment above and thinking some more, these resources will be a great way to help promote a band and build up a fan base. Then hopefully we have some value here to the venues by helping them find bands that will bring in the public. This is good stuff. Thanks

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