(08-19-2021, 02:41 PM)Omni3 Wrote:

(08-18-2021, 07:33 PM)Shannon Wrote:

(08-18-2021, 02:06 PM)Omni3 Wrote: Belated birthday greetings @Shannon  and all the best for this next phase of IML. May the subscriptions keep the wolf from the door and allow you to grow IML....


Now about that ......affiliate program......You can of course set the condition that an affiliate's commissions are withheld for a certain period, and/or choose affiliates from an 'inner circle' who are more closely associated with SubShop/Talk... like our brethren right here on the forum.

Thank you.

Affiliates would need to be much more closely monitored than just that.  But I'll bring up affiliates in the next staff meeting.  So far the last few times it has come up, there were a lot of good reasons not to have an affiliate program.  We'll see if that has changed, and if there is a way to implement it if it has.

@Shannon
There's also other ways to 'growth hack' - Viral Loops has inspiring insights in this area:
https://viral-loops.com/blog/word-of-mouth-marketing/


They have many other industry examples of growth hacking campaigns worth a look - these avoid the problems you have encountered with affiliates.

Imagine this:
You create a giveaway/prize-draw campaign to help spread the word about IML. You have a top 'prize' of a flagship program like UMS/AM/LTU/5.8G-program etc. The 2nd prize could be a 5.5G program. The 3rd place prize could be a years subscription to a program of their choice.

As any one of these programs is very valuable it will inspire participants to 'share' IML promos. Eg each social share could give an extra entry to the prize draw. The more entries a participant has the greater chance they have of winning something.

Now imagine how much more gung ho participants will be if you had 3xfirst prizes, 5x2nd prizes and 10x 3rd prizes - with a total prize fund of "X thousands" and an increased chance of winning. This will be a true viral growth program.

Similar things have happened with many everyday names you've heard of - Uber, Harry's, DropBox etc.

All possible with a service like Viral Loops.

===
Coming back to affiliate program - if you list your subs on Clickbank it may help mitigate against a lot of your concerns as Clickbank have been in the affiliate game a long time so I dare say they have a lot of measures in place to detect 'click fraud' and strange buyer patterns etc - just a thought.


===



More to talk about at your next staff meeting... Onwards and upwards - and 6Gwards

(08-19-2021, 04:36 PM)fab10 Wrote: Wow, the store migration is taking long. I feel for Shannon and Steve,  it must be very stressful.
I am still positive that it will be a big improvement once it’s done.

I assume that leaving the old store up while the migration took place was not an option?

(08-19-2021, 04:52 PM)Shannon Wrote:

(08-19-2021, 04:36 PM)fab10 Wrote: Wow, the store migration is taking long. I feel for Shannon and Steve,  it must be very stressful.
I am still positive that it will be a big improvement once it’s done.

I assume that leaving the old store up while the migration took place was not an option?

We are basically stuck in limbo right now.  I can't re-open the old store because then the databases would be out of sync again, and I can't open the new store because the databases are out of sync.

Suffice it to say we are caught in a catch-22 that the only way out of is for someone to teach us some things.  We are working with some complex and confusing stuff on the back end right now, and it may just be that our situation is so unusual that we have discovered some bug or something.

Who knows, I have been surprised a lot lately when things looked bleak.

(08-19-2021, 04:52 PM)Shannon Wrote:

(08-19-2021, 04:36 PM)fab10 Wrote: Wow, the store migration is taking long. I feel for Shannon and Steve,  it must be very stressful.
I am still positive that it will be a big improvement once it’s done.

I assume that leaving the old store up while the migration took place was not an option?

We are basically stuck in limbo right now.  I can't re-open the old store because then the databases would be out of sync again, and I can't open the new store because the databases are out of sync.

Suffice it to say we are caught in a catch-22 that the only way out of is for someone to teach us some things.  We are working with some complex and confusing stuff on the back end right now, and it may just be that our situation is so unusual that we have discovered some bug or something.

Who knows, I have been surprised a lot lately when things looked bleak.

(08-20-2021, 08:46 AM)Shannon Wrote: I greatly appreciate the offers of help, guys.  It's good to know the community cares.  I'm not sure that the issue is really something that would be worth bothering you guys with.  Basically we did the product transfer months ago when we were expecting to open the store back in April.  And all sorts of problems, delays and issues later, and have released four or five programs since then.  Now we have to add those programs to the product database.

The issue isn't so much with adding them; that's relatively straight forward.  The issue is with understanding how the service we use for hosing the download links is doing things and getting the subscriptions to work properly.  So the real issue is understanding how we need to do things to add new products.  That's being worked on as we speak by Steve and Michael.

New stuff is confusing, but man, the way some of this on the back end is set up between these two services (hosting download links when we use off-site existing storage elsewhere and the subscription services) is VERY confusing.  Obviously designed by engineers, lol.  We are working on creating a step by step how to guide for me and Ben to use for the future.  Everything else has been figured out.  So that's the "out of sync" issue, but it's not really a database issue at this point.

I'm confident we will have this figured out shortly, and then everything will be fine.  But I will keep you guys in mind should there come a day when we need help in the future.  I like the idea of community members working with us.

(08-20-2021, 09:39 AM)rono Wrote:

(08-20-2021, 08:46 AM)Shannon Wrote: I greatly appreciate the offers of help, guys.  It's good to know the community cares.  I'm not sure that the issue is really something that would be worth bothering you guys with.  Basically we did the product transfer months ago when we were expecting to open the store back in April.  And all sorts of problems, delays and issues later, and have released four or five programs since then.  Now we have to add those programs to the product database.

The issue isn't so much with adding them; that's relatively straight forward.  The issue is with understanding how the service we use for hosing the download links is doing things and getting the subscriptions to work properly.  So the real issue is understanding how we need to do things to add new products.  That's being worked on as we speak by Steve and Michael.

New stuff is confusing, but man, the way some of this on the back end is set up between these two services (hosting download links when we use off-site existing storage elsewhere and the subscription services) is VERY confusing.  Obviously designed by engineers, lol.  We are working on creating a step by step how to guide for me and Ben to use for the future.  Everything else has been figured out.  So that's the "out of sync" issue, but it's not really a database issue at this point.

I'm confident we will have this figured out shortly, and then everything will be fine.  But I will keep you guys in mind should there come a day when we need help in the future.  I like the idea of community members working with us.

Hi Shannon,

Well, except for the part of throwing engineers under the bus, I get it. Though I have known a lot of engineers that designed things and set them up the way THEY think not the way a user thinks . Modern design practices and tools have helped overcome many of these shortcomings, though. 

Any sort of migration like the one you are doing can be a pain as you learn the new procedures. Hopefully, the new ones you're dealing with won't be overly complex and you can get it down quickly.

Well, if I can pitch in, let me know. Sounds like there are others as well, so good for you! 

Cheers!
Ron

Shannon Wrote:Changes to the rules!
I have adjusted Rule #17 and added Rule #21.

Please make yourself familiar with these adjustments. This is a serious matter and we will treat it as such.

(08-21-2021, 01:47 PM)Omni3 Wrote: Hey @Shannon

Keep up the stellar work.Remember to get some good R&R tomorrow.

Just a thought... If a UMS2 stage is 32 days and I subscribe I'm likely to only do 30 days per stage, otherwise it would seem like I'm subscribing for 2 months to run 32 days.

So can there be a way to subscribe to the set as a whole to mitigate against this?

Thanks for your thoughts on this.