The Manifesto Trainwreck: 10 Things I Should Have Done Differently

Once upon a time, IttyBiz started a holiday charity campaign called Taking Back The Season. Hard core readers will remember that I promised to donate all of my Amazon Associate earnings to charity. I promised that when the earnings checks came out, I’d report. Prepare to be amazed.

First, some background.

When Entrepreneurship: What To Do When You’re Scared Shitless made the front page of Digg (check this out for details on how it happened), my Amazon earnings for that day skyrocketed. One drunken conversation with my husband led to another, and I figured I could capitalize on that traffic and those earnings and make some money for charity. I also figured I could get some serious traffic and web press.

I planned to feature a new item each day, the manufacturer of which would already be donating a portion of their proceeds to charity. I created a separate landing page for bookmarking, where people could go and buy anything they liked, knowing a portion of the purchase price would still go to good cause.

What happened?

Over the course of the month, I made the grand total of $32.09 from 39 orders. Basically, what happened was sweet piss all.

What would I have done differently?

Write a press release

We all have our little home business skills, and one of mine is writing press releases. Why in the hell I didn’t write one for this, I have no idea. Perhaps I was drunk. Next time, I would have whored myself out to the press until they hauled me away in handcuffs for harassment.

Start Pre-Digg.

If I hadn’t made the front page I never would have thought to do this in the first place, but had I been an omniscient being, I would have done this prior to making it on Digg. I don’t remember how many Diggs the piece got, but it was over 40. Unfortunately, those 40 were probably the same 40 who started Digging the scared shitless piece, which doesn’t do much for Digg’s diversity requirements. It would have been better for the campaign to have done this first.

(I also realize it would have been worse for the blog, because the visitors who came from Digg would have been unlikely to convert into regular readers.)

Communicate urgency

While nobody knows the exact algorithm for Digg, a large number of Diggs in a small amount of time tends to work in your favor. I would have tried to create more urgency in my communications. I focused on telling people they had all season to shop, and while that was true and valid, it didn’t help me get the social media exposure I would have received if the Diggs had taken place more quickly.

Utilize a larger subscriber base.

IttyBiz was only a little more than a month old at the time, and my subscriber base was only hovering around 500. I had recently participated in Blog Action Day with Cyan of Freelance Switch, and had communicated with her via email. I should have leveraged those communications into a topical guest post (How freelancers can save the world?) and maybe mentioned the manifesto in my byline. Their subscriber base at the time was light years larger than my own, and I could have benefited from some of that traffic and interest.

Create a larger sense of anticipation.

I considered announcing that something would be coming up and decided against it. I thought that by the time the actual campaign rolled around, people would have been bored by it. In hindsight, that was really dumb. I should have let people know something was coming up, and stressed the importance of swift action on the social media front ahead of time.

Comment like a son of a bitch.

I should have been out there on every damn blog in the universe, getting new readers to the site. I didn’t realize the huge impact that could make at the time, and that would have been an ideal opportunity to increase the blog’s readership and get new asses in the seats. (I probably would have targeted the smallest blogs I could find — the ones who are so stunned by a new commentator that they just had to come and check out my blog.)

Start earlier.

While it would not have been possible to start any sooner than I did (considering I thought of the idea and executed it about 5 days later, on November 26th), if I was to do it again, I would have started about three weeks sooner. Serious shoppers had already done a lot of their buying before the whole thing ramped up.

Keep going.

About half way through the project, I got very disappointed by the results so far. At the same time, I was getting more seriously involved in a very major gig, and it wasn’t worth the effort to me to continue promoting. Had I actually followed through, I could have done better. I may have done only proportionally better, simply doubling my amount, or it could have had a snowball effect. We’ll never know.

Incorporate an email signature.

I would have put something in every one of my outgoing communications, urging recipients to get involved. Every single one. Even the hydro company would have been aware of my efforts.

Utilize offline media.

I’m unsure if this would have made a difference as the charity I was supporting was an American one and in the time frame I had available it would have only really been feasible to use local media outlets. But it sure as hell wouldn’t have hurt.

Maybe I’ll do it again next year. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll convert to a religion that does not suggest spending eight months’ worth of disposable income in a three-week period.

Click here to subscribe to IttyBiz. I’ll work hard to keep screwing up so you can learn from my mistakes.

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By Naomi Dunford - 12 Comments