Well, that was a flop…

Not everything always goes to plan. But that’s okay. We live and learn.

This week I tried to launch a new subscription service where members of my Facebook book club could subscribe and pay $5/month to be invited to take part in reading challenges.

I advertised the challenge to the group (that’s 250 highly targeted potential customers) and contacted my email list (which is now over 17,000 subscribers). The sign-up numbers were pretty small and so I decided to no longer pursue the idea. I now intend to run the reading challenges in the Facebook group for free instead.

Clearly, I missed the mark in terms of identifying what people are willing to pay for. I think organising reading challenges is a cool idea but doesn't tick the box of being something people are willing to pay for; it doesn’t solve a problem or satisfy a burning desire (lesson learned).

I was a little disappointed by this result. But there’s no point dwelling on the failure. One thing I’ve come to learn as I grow this internet business is that you’re not always going to be able to please people the way you expect. I’ve had some great successes in the past as well as some flops (like this).

Instead of dwelling on this failure or trying to make the idea work I’ve already decided what to focus on next. My ebook, Guidelines, continues to sell well and so I’m going to expand on this and plan how to make the product better. Perhaps write a second edition or record some videos of my most popular book summaries. What do you think?

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