Shannon's Journal Discussion Thread, Vol. 5

[Shannon]

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

Thanks for the info.

As to Clickbank, I had my subs there for a while, until they accused me of copyright violations and kicked me off.

So... No click bank, and not sure I would do business with them if I could after that experience.

[ncbeareatingman]

"Then I have to finish UMSv2 Stage 4" ---



Cant wait to wear the hell outta this mug. its gonna have more mileage than a AMC 1978 Gremlin !! Oil change ,my ass.
Im gittin' it done John Wayne!! Ha!! and then some

[Shannon]

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.

[Bignoise]

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.

Hi, I’m a QA Engineer, software developer and I work very well with databases (from MySQL to Oracle). Please let me know if I can help. I have fixed some ‘very broken’ forum databases in the past.

[rono]

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.

Hey Shannon,

I ran across this while looking for others' experiences with Aura of Love and saw it was current. 

As it turns out, I'm a technical professional specializing in databases, data design and systems integration as well as cloud migrations.

Hearing you talk like that made me want to ask a dozen technical questions so I could dive in and help.

Rather than doing that here, I do have some time right now (kind of between big projects) and would be willing to come alongside and help you sort out your data synchronization issues.

Contact me if you are interested. You have my email and I will gladly give you my phone, though not here on the forum.

If you're looking for a hand, or even a different perspective on the issue, let me know.

Cheers!
Ron

[Shannon]

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.

[rono]

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]

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

I can throw engineers under the bus - especially software developers - because I used to be one.  : And I had to learn the hard way about user friendly interfaces instead of engineer/developer friendly interfaces, lol. 

But I just had the process explained to me and I took good notes so now the job is mine, and it's going to require all four of the last four programs be uploaded again - twice each.  So I guess I'd better get started.  Trying hard to open tomorrow!

Thanks again!

[4Kingdoms]

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[Steve_]

Hi Folks, echoing some of Shannon's comments here:
It is taking longer than anticipated to account for all the new store settings in conjunction with making the subscriptions work correctly. Shannon and I are putting some finishing touches on the settings, doing more testing, and other validation to ensure things go as smoothly as possible during the release. As he also mentioned, your accounts will need to be activated before you can login to the new store. Please be on the lookout for the activation email before logging into the new store. Cheers

[Omni3]

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.

[Shannon]

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.

Thank you.  I will be working until the store opens, most likely.  Probably going to finish uploads today and finish verification and final checks and transfers tomorrow.  Hopefully the store opens again tomorrow, but every time I think we are finished, I magically find another day's worth of work.  So here's hoping!  The next day I take off, though... I will seriously be taking off.

You can just run the ASRB2 cycles until it is done with 30 days.  The cycles cause a slight mismatch to 32 days anyway, and it's alright.  If necessary, you can run a second run through or just use Stage 4 to brush up.  Stage 4 isn't going to feel like any of the other stages, but it'll definitely brush you the heck up!

Unfortunately, subscribing to the set as a whole is not something we will be doing right now. That may change, but for the moment, we will not be doing that.

[Darwin]

Hi Shannon,

I intend to buy UMS2 when the store opens. I've done the cliche thing of having a significant long term goal, breaking it down into intermediate goals and am working toward those. It's going great - however it's pretty miserable since I bump up against my own laziness and inadequacy of skill a lot, I also have to keep telling myself to be patient otherwise I spaz out and want to give up. My mind goes in all sorts of directions trying to get out of it.

What I want to ask is, given I don't have an expectation of riches from my current path in the short-medium term (and currently this is helping me stay the course) should I hold off on UMS2 until I've actually developed the skills and the confidence in my skills; or will UMS 2 help me to stay with it and patient enough to keep on plodding; whilst allowing me to be open to things accelerating where opportunities present themselves?

I wanted to ask as well; would UMS help with self belief in my own intelligence the way other subs have done (MLS, SE were particularly helpful) and help me manage my energy so I can sustain continuous activity over a long enough time without burning out?

[Aventus45]

Will we be able to buy subs outright rather than subscribe to it or are we moving to the subscription model entirely?