The Famous - Post-Punk Americana from San Francisco » Uncategorized

The John J. Miller Effect

admin — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 07:42:41 +0000

On Saturday March 27th, I opened up my email to see a flood of orders for Come Home To Me pouring into my inbox. Way more than we usually get on an average day. My first thought was that Bandcamp, the site where we sell our MP3 downloads, had been hacked and was sending out spam emails disguised to look like real orders. But when I logged into Bandcamp and Paypal, I saw that the orders were for real. The question was – where were they coming from?

With a little help from Bandcamp’s excellent analytics tools, I discovered that the source of all the traffic was coming from a blog called The Corner at http://corner.nationalreview.com. So I hopped over there, did a search for “The Famous” and discovered a post by a Mr. John J. Miller that read “This album is really good. That is all” with a link download our album from our Bandcamp page.

Aha! So that is the link that was responsible for all the traffic — 2754 hits to be precise.

Now for the interesting part. We sold 32 downloads of Come Home To Me as a result of that traffic. We set a minimum price of $5 for the download, but we give the customer the option to pay more if they like. To my surprise, people actually did! As I expected, most people paid $5, but a significant number paid more with almost a quarter of them paying close to double. Here’s the breakdown:

20 at $5
5 at $10
3 at $9
1 at $8.42
1 at $7.50
1 at $7.00
1 at $6

for an average purchase price of $7.56 or a weighted average of $6.42 which is more than we make from iTunes.

Besides downloads, we also sell a CD / T-Shirt / Sticker bundle for $20. We sold 4 of those that day without breaking a sweat.

From this we can arrive at a conversion rate of 36 / 2754 or 1.3% which I believe is in line with the e-commerce industry average.

We offer a free download in exchange for signing up for our email list, and as a result of that, got 117 new signups to our email list.

So yeah, I guess you could say it was a good day for The Famous.

John J. Miller, wherever you are, THANK YOU!!!

Can we send you a t-shirt to show our appreciation?

Anyhow, this whole episode made me realize that one well placed blog post is worth far more than Facebook ads, banner ads, or Google ads. Not only do they cost money to run, but our conversion rate on them has been far lower than what we got through the blog link even though those ads were more targeted.

So if anyone else would be so kind as to post a similar link on any high-traffic blog that you read, that would be awesome!

-Vic-

Saturday Night in the City

laurence — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:43:35 +0000

Saturday night we’re back at one of our favorite San Francisco venues, The Café Du Nord, to support ‘Elliot Randall and The Deadmen’ at their CD release show.

KFOG 104.5-FM radio’s “Local Scene” crew will be at the show shooting a video segment for an upcoming feature on The Famous. So let them hear you.

Saturday, March 6th at Café Du Nord
2170 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94114
http://www.cafedunord.com/

It’s a full night of country-fried rock with Cyndi Harvell opening the show, The Famous in the middle around 10 p.m., before Elliot and band bring it home.

Tell some folks and make sure to join us for this big night.

Join us this coming Saturday, March 6th at the Café Du Nord.

Show: 9:00pm
Doors: 8:00pm
Door: $12.00
Ages: 21+

Also, if you want to get tickets ahead of the show… visit the Café Du Nord’s TicketWeb page:

http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=1177305

‘Come Home to Me’ the Video

laurence — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:20:50 +0000

From the banks of a torrent river in Sonoma to a hillside cemetery hidden deep in the Northern California woods, ‘Come Home to Me,’ the title track on our new album is coming to life in a soon to be released video.

The fifth member of The Famous, our friend, the multi-talented Barton Bishoff, is directing the video. You can hear Bart’s guitar work in the solo on ‘Cold Tonight’ and soon more of his amazing film work with what’s becoming an epic video shot in multiple locations.

We’ll have a preview clip for you to check out at our Famous tableside country store on Saturday, March 6^th at the Café Du Nord in San Francisco.

More to come on that show and this video in the works.

Damnation. Salvation. Redemption.

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:29:12 +0000

Not just the story you’ll tell your grandkids about your life… but also great beers to enjoy with your current day loved ones, the day before Valentine’s Day, at the Russian River Brewing Company.

The Famous loves our home away from home in Santa Rosa… and on Saturday, Feb. 13th, return for a free show at the home of Pliny the Elder, the legendary RRBC at 725 4th Street.

Show starts at 9 p.m., join us for many hours of music, good folks and great beers.

Saturday, Feb. 13th

The Famous at the Russian River Brewing Company

725 4th Street, Santa Rosa, CA

FREE!

A Big Damn Show to Kickoff the New Year

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 07:10:54 +0000

We’re kicking off the New Year with what promises to be a righteous show of biblical proportions at the Bottom Of The Hill opening for Reverend Peytons Big Damn Band and Soda and his Pawnshop 3. And it’s bassist extraordinaire GD’s birthday — come on out and celebrate with us!