A couple weeks ago, I decided to discontinue my Bite-sized Scrapbooking email subscription service* -- it will end after 52 weeks of layouts (January 27, 2012), and the service is now free. There were several factors in my decision, but the bottom line is this: It requires a lot of time and I'm short on time. For more explanation (much more!), read on.
(1) Running and promoting BSS was/is very time consuming -- much more than I anticipated when I was developing the service. For one thing, I offer quite a bit more content each week than I had originally planned. From lining up layouts to preparing weekly content to promoting and advertising the service, plus customer service and other administrative tasks, I work on BSS several hours per week. I have spent many an evening and weekend day in front of the computer working on these things -- when I really needed to be doing other things. With a full-time job, three active children, and a home that needs constant attention due to a high level of daily activity (my husband provides child and dog care in our home), I simply cannot keep up. Not even close. And it shows.
(2) I started a new job six weeks ago which is much more satisfying to me than the job I had when I was developing BSS. I love my new job, but it also wears me out. When I'm at my office, I'm completely consumed; I can't even manage to write a personal (or BSS) to-do list on my lunch break. And when I get home from work, it's tough to do even more "thinking" work because I'm mentally exhausted (same reason it took me so long to write this post!). This change is not a bad thing! I am so much happier at my job these days.
(3) It was challenging to find inspiration layouts and it seemed increasingly difficult each time I searched for them. I was not looking forward to finding layouts for February and beyond (thankfully, I have all of the remaining layouts lined up, so I don't have to do this again). I have specific parameters for the layouts I choose, and they're just not very easy to find online -- and many that do fit my parameters were based on someone else's sketch (which typically doesn't work for my business model, but there were a few exceptions), or the copyright is owned by large entities such as CK or Two Peas. I would often look at hundreds of layouts before finding one to pursue.
(4) Despite spending quite a bit of time and money on advertising and promotional activities, I saw very little net subscriber growth (I had 24 subscribers after the first week; eight months later, I had 36). This part of the business was my least favourite part, and I knew it would be a never-ending task. I would always have to be working to gain new subscribers, and I wasn't sure BSS would ever grow large enough to make up for the time I was spending on it -- and, more importantly, all of the things I was trading for it. Honestly, it would have taken a significantly larger number of paying subscribers to keep me going. I would have had to earn enough to hire weekly housekeeping help, and then some.
(5) Except for a few pages I finished this summer, I could not find time to scrapbook and I really wondered if I'd ever have time again. Oh, the irony! It brings to mind the old cliches of the shoemaker's children having no shoes and the carpenter's house needing repair. And it certainly wasn't for lack of desire to scrapbook. Very much the opposite! But I could not squeeze it in on top of my BSS work. It's frustrating. There are so many pages and projects I want to do. There are other things I enjoy doing that I haven't been able to do, either. For example, I've barely looked at my Google Reader or Pinterest for months. It may seem trivial, but I equate the loss of those pastimes with a loss of down time.
I'm glad that for the next 16 weeks I will only be producing the weekly content -- which is my favourite part of the business -- and I won't have to do any advertising or searching for future layouts. This will free up some time and feel less daunting as my family gets into the full swing of fall and winter activities.
When I decided to end the email service, I also decided to make it free for everyone. It may seem like an odd thing to do. Not only did I forfeit future income from the service, I gave refunds to all six-month subscribers for the time left on their subscriptions. Why would I do that?
Basically, since I knew the service would end at a certain time -- and it's the same amount of work for me on a weekly basis whether I have 30 subscribers or 300 -- I thought, why not open it up? I had always hoped a couple hundred people would sign up, and I wanted to see what that would be like. The more, the merrier! I also thought that giving the service for free might lead to more sales of my BSS Bundle #1. I would only find out if I tried it.
Pricing was always an area of uncertainty. At $5 a month, I don't believe BSS was over priced and I know the service was valuable to many of my subscribers, but I also know that free scrapbooking ideas and inspiration are widely available. Plus, there are a great many ways to spend money in this hobby. Many of us have to choose carefully. At the same time, I always thought that charging for the service was not only right for me, but for subscribers. Many people tend to be more committed to classes or memberships they pay for (I know I am) and I really wanted people to take action on the email messages they received from me. Getting layouts done is the whole point! But it was very challenging to reach those who would be interested in this type of service and convince them to pay for it. I am very grateful for those who did choose to spend their hard-earned money on BSS!
In many ways, BSS has been a big experiment all along. I didn't know of any other service like it and I didn't know anything about running an online business. I've learned so much over the past year, I couldn't even begin to explain it. I'm very happy to have learned all that I have, and now I'm truly delighted to offer the service for free until it ends.
It has been incredibly fun to see hundreds of people sign up for the email service! As of this moment, there are 492 on the mailing list. Wow! The vast majority of new sign-ups are the result of Stacy Julian mentioning BSS on her blog. How exciting is that?! Many thanks to my friend, Tracy (LOM coach), for bringing it to Stacy's attention. Also, I found it very interesting that within a week of making the service free, much of the income I had given up came back to me in other ways -- I won a 50-50 cash prize at Crop & Create last weekend and have sold a few more bundles. It makes me think of the quote:
"Life is like a boomerang; what you give, you get back." Acad
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*To clarify, BSS isn't going away entirely; just the email subscription service. I still have BSS Bundle #1 for sale and will have Bundle #2 for sale after the service ends. Also, I wonder if I could reinvent the service in some way that would allow me to do scrapbooking for myself as well as deliver bite-sized prompts. I'll be thinking about this over the next few months. I don't know if it's possible, but we'll see!
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