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2008...

dave u

By dave u,
in FF - Football Forum

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ticklemeclemo Community Regular

ticklemeclemo

Posted
Posted
Dave, I'm genuinely sorry to hear about all this, both for selfish reasons and for the fact that you and your family are struggling a bit. You're absolutely right to be seeing this as crunch time - what man would be worthy of the name if he didn't provide for his family? However, are you seeing the wood for the trees? As has been pointed out on here already, you have a very strong brand with a very loyal core audience and the potential to expand in a big way. There are millions of Reds worldwide and I'll wager at least 50% of them are English speaking. See the potential.

 

That said, if you want to make any business opportunity succeed, you have to graft. Please don't take this the wrong way mate as I know you do put hard work into a new issue, but how hard are you grafting on your business the rest of the time? If you owned a corner shop you'd be working six or seven days a week for at least 12 hours a day until you could afford to employ others to run it for you. Are you putting the same in to your business? I know that, like everyone else, you'll want to spend time with your family. However, working from home and setting your own hours gives you incredible flexibility that you wouldn't have if you got a regular job. That is a good thing.

 

Another point is this: you are always telling us that you know nothing about the IT side of things. Fair enough if this is just your hobby. However, if you really do want to make this pay, it seems obvious to everyone (yourself included, as you made the point earlier) that the real potential lies with the website. Is it really acceptable to rely on favours for running such a fundamental part of your livelihood? I really think you need to get yourself skilled-up on the IT side of things as quickly as possible. I'm not saying shell out on courses, mind; just continue to use the expertise on here - but learn from it.

 

Other thoughts: you've got great contacts, so use them. Talk to Chris Bascombe about getting more freelance work. If Chris can't throw some your way, he could certainly talk to some other people who possibly could. Also, what about Carra? If ever there was a Liverpool player who understood the fans, it's him. Would he be prepared to sponsor you? Maybe he'd do it anonymously. Or maybe he'd be happy to let you use his name. You absolutely must talk to Ste Kelly about tapping into the audience he is about to let go, too. If you don't, someone else will. In many ways you are his natural successor as you're both fellas of huge integrity who are passionate about Liverpool. Get him to write for you every issue and get him to plug TLW in a massive way in his final issues. Ask him to tell his readers that he's moving to here.

 

You might well feel uneasy about potentially changing the nature of your relationship with these people, but the fact is that it's make or break time. If you don't act decisively and radically now, as you've already said yourself, it's all over anyway.

 

So the question is this: just how badly do you want to keep your passion as your job? Also, how badly do you want to remain self-employed? Those are crucial questions that lie at the heart of all this mate - and only you know the answer. Talk to your missus and ask her if she's prepared to give you another two years to really, really go for it and see if you can turn this into something big. In many ways, you'd be mad not to. I say again, you've got a massive potential audience that would be exceptionally loyal for a brand that is already highly credible and very strong amongst its existing customer base. Most entrepreneurs would kill for the chance to be in your shoes. Would you, though?

 

Top post Paul

Also, there are some very good international websites, that maybe you could contact and cross promote each others wares.

There's a good one in australia, that the bloke also runs a couple of fan clubs in melbourne and adelaide, don't know whether it would help to contact these people or not, but i assume there would be some in the states, europe, australia, etc... they might be keen as they would gain some credibility from a liverpool based fanzine

Otherwise if all else fails have you thought about contacting DIC. Apparently theyre dead keen to invest in Liverpool :thumbup:

 

In all seriousness best of luck, have loved the mag since finding it in Lime street years ago, and you always seemed a decent bloke whenever i met you

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robslappa Mentor

robslappa

Posted
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Just a couple of ideas, so sorry if I'm repeating what others have said.

 

I'm not so sure that a pdf version is a good idea as an email could be forwarded on meaning potential customers don't buy it.

 

One thing I enjoy about the fanzine is that there's plenty of reading in it, but this could also be working against it. There's possibly enough articles and commentary in each issue to produce two issues rather than one. One way of doing this would be increasing the font size so one page becomes two for example (it would certainly help us older bastards to read it as well). I've often thought that the format looks squashed.

 

By doing this you could, you could have twice as many publications from the same amount of articles.

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Thants Grand Master

Thants

Posted
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Hi Dave, I hope I don't speak out on line here but I'm not a fan of the range of merchandise you offer. Just my opinion and taste, obviously. But there are brilliant more subtle captions and photoshopped original ideas on here that would even interest me (and I dont buy reds stuff).

I don't know what your profit margins are on these goods or the image rights but it's an idea. I'm sure the photoshoppers would approve royalty free.

 

As for the Amazon affiliates scheme it may bring some extra cash but it wont bring a lot. The good thing is you dont have to do much work. Just join with the website address and add a search box for random purchases (see iseetigers.com) on a page, or everytime Liverpool releases a dvd or suchlike add a direct link to the product and you'll receive 5%. It's all free.

It seems to only work about 50% of the time, which is wierd but it's free and fairly hassle free. Also it's UK purchases only.

http://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/gp/associates/join/main.html

 

As for 2008, I hope you find a way as a proper job sucks (unless you find a good one). And thanks for 2005-2007.

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Boyspen Contributor

Boyspen

Posted
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is make or break for TLW.

 

 

I either need to sell more fanzines, make money from the site, get more freelance work, or pack it all in and get a 'proper' job. I don't know how to do the first three, and I don't want to do the fourth, but I think I'm going to have to.

 

Sorry to be putting all my troubles on you in the festive season and all that, but I need ideas, or Steve Kelly won't be the only Liverpool Fanzine editor hanging up his keyboard this season.

 

Personally Dave, I would do a Steve Kelly and go out at the top. You have done well to keep the sales going as long (and as high)as you have. Liverpool Fans have been lucky to be able to choose from three class fanzines(and many fans buy all three) but the web has made it more difficult for the printed version to survive in a manner which can give you and your family some security. You've done a great job in keeping the traditions of the club alive through your fanzine.

 

Steve

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greenoak Community Regular

greenoak

Posted
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To me you need to explote the worldwide fanbase. Surely the NEW liverpool fan in China or japan or Poland will pay for a CHEAP pdf version of the mag. This also has the massive advantage of speed

 

Yes they pass it around but if you can 1 £20 subscription then its an extra £20.

 

The problem with adverts is that i bet 99.9% of user bookmark the forums, and we dont leave the forums to check out the fanzine side of the site. I would also bet that a very large % of web visitors dont even know about the monthly subscription and POSTAL service.

 

However Dave you do need to push you fanzine forward on the forum. You need to make a sticky post at the top of the forum or better still a banner for the latest issue, if that is what you need to achieve to say in business is more sales of the fanzine then use you fantastic ASSET OF THE FORUMS to advertise it properly.

 

I am sure you can get far more subsribers for the fanzine if you push it harder on the site. Have a FREE PDF sample for download ( an older copy ). Check you web hosting as downloads can add up to a lot of bandwidth, but if you have capicity in your hosting plan then this is free. You have to show is what we are missing.

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fin-bat Enthusiast

fin-bat

Posted
Posted
I am sure you can get far more subsribers for the fanzine if you push it harder on the site. Have a FREE PDF sample for download ( an older copy ). Check you web hosting as downloads can add up to a lot of bandwidth, but if you have capicity in your hosting plan then this is free. You have to show is what we are missing.

 

Yep, put one available for free so that us foreigners could check how it looks like. Also, I think the front page (of liverpoolway.co.uk) needs some fine tuning. Now the news section is taking most of the space there, but I think you could shrink it down a bit and use that space to advertise You´ve been Dirked t-shirts for example. That would give it a more appealling visual outlook and you could straight away tell that there is something for sale, which is not the case now... yep, yep :ermm:

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dave u Grand Master

dave u

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Couldn't you get on of the geeks to do a splash page of the sort on LFC.tv so that the first thing you see when you put the URL in is an advert for the mag and a link to subscribe/buy.

 

I had one of those, not sure what happened to it. I'll ask Will Robbo later.

 

There's so much stuff on this thread that it's impossible for me to respond to all of it at the moment, but I'm made up with the response and there are loads of good ideas. Also thanks to those who've pm'd me about stuff, I'll reply to all them when I get the chance.

 

Just wanted to put something on here to thank you all for the input, and to ask for you to keep the ideas coming.

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captainharris Mentor

captainharris

Posted
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There's plenty of free advertising to be had on networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. It's easy enough to create a 'TLW' group everyone on here could join and it could be easily passed on. The page could include sample articles, captions, match reports and links to the merchandise and subscription pages.

 

Just a thought like. It's free, simple and has the potential to be joined by hundreds/thousands of worldwide reds fans.

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Dirk Grand Master

Dirk

Posted
Posted
There's plenty of free advertising to be had on networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. It's easy enough to create a 'TLW' group everyone on here could join and it could be easily passed on. The page could include sample articles, captions, match reports and links to the merchandise and subscription pages.

 

Just a thought like. It's free, simple and has the potential to be joined by hundreds/thousands of worldwide reds fans.

 

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5351572567

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dave u Grand Master

dave u

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There's plenty of free advertising to be had on networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. It's easy enough to create a 'TLW' group everyone on here could join and it could be easily passed on. The page could include sample articles, captions, match reports and links to the merchandise and subscription pages.

 

Just a thought like. It's free, simple and has the potential to be joined by hundreds/thousands of worldwide reds fans.

 

That's a good idea, but I wouldn't have the time to do it myself and keep it updated. I'd contribute obviously, but it'd be much better if there was a little team who had access to the login and could update it with captions, and various content etc

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