Send two different kinds of envelopes to people, and keep track of who got what. Then, send a survey to these people to have them rate the candy's they received. After a few months, you should start to have a general idea on what types of candies are liked more and what types are liked less. Even though you'll never have a taste-consensus, you can get a general idea, and modify what kinds of candy you send and the amounts of the kinds of candies you do send.
Or, another way would be to send all the same candy to everyone and send out a survey. Then the next two weeks send another set of candy and run another survey.
Whatever you do / don't do, getting stats and info is really nice.
You can't, unfortunately, please everyone :( so might as well please a group of people _a lot_ and get a group of really evangelical fans, I think.
- Writing about Japanese candy.
- Making videos about Japanese candy.
- etc.
Doing this will attract people interested in Japanese candy, and will pull in potential and real subscribers. Over the long term I think this could be good. I also think the topic of "Japanese Candy" is big enough for you to write/video about it once or twice a week.
As for the service itself - I think it lends well to word of mouth, or at least it could. People get their candy and share it with others, and those others ask where you got their candy. I was a subscriber for probably 4-5 months, and at least two of my friends signed up because of my word of mouth.
Thing is, all three of us have unsubscribed - and for all three of us, it actually came down to the quality of the candy (or perhaps, it came down to our tastes in candy). I know originally (and maybe still) your thing was about sending people Japanese candy they can't get outside of Japan too easily. That's good and all, but in the end, after a while we all realized the candy itself in terms of quality / taste was hit or miss... and with subscription, you can't have too many misses before someone unsubscribes. I'd say I personally enjoyed the candy I got half the time, so I just unsubscribed because it wasn't worth it.
I think finding candy that people will like rather than candy people find different or original is much more important. I think that's the difference between gaining more subscribers naturally through word of mouth and losing subscribers.
At least, that's my opinion on it. I do hope you start revving sales up again, though. I loved the candy when I loved the candy, and I think it's a good idea, but between myself and friends we unsubscribed because we didn't always love the candy :(
actually seems to be going up and down over and over for me now... Getting 500 Internal Server Errors, messages on Maintenance, and the actual blog post depending on when I refresh.
I'm glad books aren't priced like that - I would not be able to afford half the books I read :(
I think there's also a lot to be said in regards to how much value a reader has, too. As in, if there are more readers, will it make me, the author, more "rich" in other ways too (popularity, Twitter followers, etc.) so that when the next ebook comes along I already have thousands of people interested in buying my book that didn't exist before. A low price tag increases readers, which I think have huge individual values in themselves.
Now, if the book is extremely niche ... almost ridiculously so ... then a $3000 book probably would be okay, but in general I think this isn't going to happen too often.
$100 is way too high, I think. Two sides of the coin:
-
Sell it for $100:
1) X number of people will buy it, but it probably won't be that many.
-
Sell it for $0.99:
1) Many people will buy it
2) Many people will know your name & become interested in your work and future work
3) You'll gather a much bigger following, transfer this to Twitter, Facebook, etc.
4) When your next ebook comes out, all the people who liked this one will buy the next one in addition to new people, meaning second e-book sales will be much higher (if this one is successful)
5) Lots of sales = possibility of speaking engagements, further validating you in your field.
6) You might make less money (I'm guessing you'd make more this way), but you make so much more in other benefits.
The benefits for not selling at $99 just seem too high to me. I'd rather have 10,000 people read my book at $0.99 than 100 people read my book at $99. I'd even rather 5,000 people read it at $0.99 (making half the money), because that means you have 5,000 more people interested in what you do for your next ebook.
Not that Yolk is showing up high in search results or anything, but Basecamp, Campfire, Highrise, Dropbox, etc., all have (or didn't have) premium domains and are doing fine.