5 Days on IndieGoGo - What we've learned

Well we’re now five days into our IndieGoGo campaign – The Adva Mobile Campaign to provide Artists a better use experience – so we thought we’d share what we’ve learned so far about online fundraising!


1. Just because it’s online doesn’t mean that it’s easy

The success that some have found on the Internet often convinces many of us that achieving success online is easy, that all it takes is a halfhearted post into cyberspace and within 24 hours the post makes front page news. Well, after weeks of planning and preparation, and consecutive full time days working at this, I’m willing to go out on a limb to suggest that this is not the case!

2. Never underestimate the generosity of friends and family

We I have been blown away with the support we’ve received from our family and friends. We believe very strongly in our cause and project and are are grateful that others believe in it too.

3. Sharing is caring

One of the more difficult aspects of online fundraising is reaching people outside of your friends and family network. Pleading your case to strangers isn't effective. Conversely, when someone that supports your cause shares your project it speaks volumes about both the relevance of your project and that person’s belief in you to deliver.

4. Be thankful

We want to thank everyone who has gone out of their way so far to back and share our project. Your support means more than you could ever imagine. We’re early into our campaign and recognize there is still a lot of hard work ahead of us. However, we’re looking forward to the challenge, and to working even harder over the next 30 days to reach our fundraising goal. We’ll keep you updated in the weeks to come. Thank you so much!

We Need Your Help - Adva Mobile Goes Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is a new financing tool and works exactly opposite from traditional venture financing. Instead of a few individuals each providing a large amount of capital, crowdfunding creates a community of many individuals providing small amounts of capital -- typically less than $100. Websites that help organize Crowdfunding campaigns are common today, and many are having terrific success raising money for a variety of projects -- everything from art, film projects, technology such as Adva Mobile, causes, businesses, photography -- anything that a community can help fund to get something done. Adva Mobile is working with a popular Crowdfunding management site called IndieGoGo that manages Crowdfunding campaigns for all types of projects.


Since we launched in early 2009, we've grown to over 1,400 bands that recognize the value of the service we are providing. It's going great, however these bands and new partner prospects are telling us that our Mobile Web designs and Portal user interface, while delivering compelling capabilities, are not modern and cool and is, in fact, lame and old. We need to fix this, and are going to raise the money to get you Artists new mobile designs that are sleek and modern (even for free users of our service) and a better user interface to manage mobile fans, assets and campaigns.

There are more details about our campaign on our IndieGoGo page at http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Adva-Mobile-Campaign but we are going to raise $6500 through many small donations from friends, business interests, and Artists such as yourselves to redesign the user interface of our Artist Portal and new mobile web templates for your sites. For Artists, there are terrific rewards should you contribute, including big discounts on our premium services. I hope you have the time to look at our program and contribute to our success. Every contribution helps. Thank You.

Conversations with John Taglieri

John Taglieri has created a profitable livelihood with his music, playing 200 shows a year and getting ready to record his tenth studio album. He's local, so we had a chance to sit down over lunch and talk about making music, making money, and the role mobile can play in his career.

Tag loves making music, but he truly is a performer. He's making a very good living, and it's 95% from live shows and 5% from music sales. He thinks that, of all the Artists out there making music, only about 6 percent are able to make a living at it, so he's in rare company. He was able to create this lifestyle for himself because he was willing to do whatever his agent asked him to do, Play a show in Georgia on Friday night and Syracuse on Saturday night - he'd do it. His fans - we'll get to that - know that they are going to have a good time when they go to his shows.

Tag knows his fans. He likes Reverbnation for the fan details he gets from them, and he's active on Facebook. He believes he has 1,500 - 2,000 "True Fans" - fans that show up when he's in town, buy his tickets, music and merch. He's also a big fan of download cards - he goes through about 5,000 cards every 6 months. And they work for him - last year, he gave out about 11,000 cards and got 4,400 hits. We're going to promote his mobile site on the next run of download cards.

Tag runs his operation like a business. Each year, he starts with a plan. In 2012, he'll be in the studio in January recording his tenth CD, and release it in March. From April through August, he'll promote the new material with a well thought out plan to offer the CDS, singles, and various packages of current and past music, including "best of" and full catalog products. One product will be a 50 track compilation. He'll tour on his own - acoustic shows, with the Joe Bachman band, and with his band. It's all planned out.

We talked a lot about mobile. He thinks mobile is the future, and he's always looking ahead. He knows that it's better to get into mobile now, at the front, so he's "there" when his fans want to connect with him on mobile. We talked about how to get fans to connect with him on mobile and he thinks the Artist has to tell his his fans how to connect with him on mobile and guide them to use new technology. "It's like American Idol - they told viewers to vote, how to vote, this is how it's done. Now, 80 million people vote on American Idol." If you run it like a business, it looks like the science of selling. It takes 10 touches to make a sale, so you have to keep at it. Give your fans a good product (music) and good customer service and you'll make the sale.

It was a treat to talk to a music pro who understands the hard work neccessary to make a career out of music, a forward thinker who sees that new mobile technology can help him grow fan loyalty and grow his sales. We'll be working with Tag throughout 2012 to create mobile marketing campaigns that complement his marketing activities. All part of the plan. You can check out his mobile site on your phone at www.adva.us/tag, and by texting gettag to 88704 on your phone.

Are Text Messages Part of Your Music Marketing?

Some artists and music marketers shy away from mobile text messaging to engage fans because, done improperly, it can be intrusive and not as cost effective as virtually free email and social media. But they are making a big mistake, particularly if a portion of the audience is under 35. The average 25 to 34 year old texts 20+ times every day and 18 to 34 year olds text a whopping 55 times daily, according to a Pew Study. THE CHART:

This blog originally showed up in Bruce Houghton's Hypebot. 

From the comments on the blog, there's a lot of confusion about text messages. There's a big concern about spam. The carriers are very strict about this ... you can only send texts after the fan has opted in, so they are telling you they want to get texts from fans.

Adva Mobile Partners with The Orchard

The Orchard, a full service marketing and distribution company, has launched the Marketplace, a new service for its clients to access great third-party apps, including Adva Mobile. We're excited to be part of the Orchard Marketplace alongside other great companies building products that help it's clients connect with fans.

The Orchard launch is a global event, begun Monday in San Francisco, Tuesday in Los Angeles and continuing next week in New York, Nashville, Paris, London, Hamburg, Madrid and Barcelona. Adva Mobile will join the New York launch event on the 20th.

The Adva Mobile / Orchard partnership helps Adva Mobile expose our mobile marketing plaform to over 20,000 labels and distribution partners worldwide, companies very interested in taking advantage of the latest mobile technologies to help their artists acquire, engage and sell to their fans. We'll continue to improve the Orchard integration with new features and capabilities.

You can read the Orchard Marketplace Launch Press Release here.

Adva Mobile Reviewed in Let's Talk Digital

The on-demand segment for Mr. Shadeeds broadcast introducing the benefits of Adva Mobile on Let’s Talk Digital is now available for your viewing pleasure.


Adva Mobile enables an all-in-one mobile solution that enables direct-to-fan promotions, exclusive content giveaways, mobile pages and more.In this segment of Let's Talk Digital, Shadeed Eleazer discusses new direct-to-fan mobile platform, Adva Mobile, and its impact on the entertainment industry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqEpPFv1rNg&feature=youtu.be
 
GO DIGITAL OR GO HOME, The Online Home of Shadeed Eleazer, is at http://www.mrshadeed.com/

Hypebot Article About Adva Mobile Get's It Right

There was a nice article on Hypebot last Friday (8/5/11) and Clyde Smith from Flux Research, who reviewed the site and interviewed me, got it right. Here's his post, and you can get to the Hypebot Article at http://bit.ly/advahypebot where there are some spirited comments!



Adva Mobile Offers Free Mobile Websites Designed for Musicians

Adva Mobile focuses on mobile websites for musicians. The basic service is free and the sites are dubbed "Mobile Fan Clubs" though you don't have to think of them as fan clubs per se. However, they are designed to build mobile contact lists, meet the needs of fans on as wide a variety of phones as possible and to monetize that activity.

I recently spoke with Adva Mobile's CEO Jack Kelly who shared their perspective on a number of aspects of musicians' mobile needs as well as future development plans for the service.

Currently Adva Mobile offers tiered pricing with a basic free account that allows you to evaluate the service for yourself. When you join, you can provide your MySpace account info and they'll automatically fill in some of the sections of the site to help you get started. They're currently working on a similar integration with The Orchard and they also offer tour updates from Artist Data and Jambase.

The sections of the sites are organized by templates with such features as gig schedules and ticket sales as well as a merch store. Sales are conducted via PayPal and artists provide their own fulfillment though digital downloads can be managed in conjunction with Bandcamp. However, they intend to develop their own digital fulfillment service.

Adva Mobile encourages artists to get fans to register via SMS which allows them to collect contact information for future text messages with band news. Some musicians are doing things like telling audiences in concert that the song they just played is available free if they send a text message to join the club. Kelly says they've gotten up to a 20% response during concerts for that call to action.

They do discourage overuse of text messaging but point out that such registration allows for building a contact list whereas downloads of native apps don't provide that information just as QR codes don't provide analytics. However, they will create native apps for bands that feel they're necessary which are then updated when you update your mobile site.

We covered more than I can jam into this post but I think it's a solid service that, according to Kelly, currently has around 1280 bands on board. He also points out that smartphones are still in the minority of mobile phones and that mobile websites such as Adva Mobile provides can reach a much broader range of fans including those with the simplest of mobile web access.

If you're in need of a basic mobile site for your band, I would definitely recommend checking out Adva Mobile's services. Even if you have native apps in the works, it's ideal to also have a mobile website to reach as many fans as possible.

Hypebot contributor Clyde Smith is a freelance writer and blogger. Flux Research is his business writing hub and All World Dance: World Dance News is his primary web project. To suggest websites and related topics for review, please contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.