- 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 :(
I'm not sure how to only send the good ones, and that would depend on the recipient's tastes as well. Part of the idea is to try new things, so it seems unavoidable that as I go through all the varieties out there, people will not like some of them.
Some people don't like gummy candy, some really do. Some people are really into "construction kit" type candy, some hate the effort involved and so on.
Perhaps there could be a way to make the subscribers feel like they didn't lose out even if they got something they really hated, but not sure how that would work exactly.
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.
Right, the only trouble is that if I want to create a community, I have to send the same thing to everyone, otherwise there can be no common discussion about it.
If I totally abandon the community aspect though, then I could start designing the ultimate sequence of candy that maximizes retention. Not sure which is better.
Construction kits with some pre-made sets is probably a good way to go. I would be interested to see if advertising on western manga or anime sites would provide better value for money.
