Undoubtedly like you, we are afraid about the amount of advertisement that reach us daily and dismayed to see renowned media covering themselves with, while trying to get back profitability they miss more and more. However, we need to reach our public and the siren calls of digital marketing are very appealing.
Facing that dilemma we do many small scale experiments whose results are compiled in the Frequently Asked Questions. No need to let everybody make the same errors, especially in current context where faked opportunities are as common as fake news. It seems important to share experience.
Moreover we adopted innovative communication strategy to get rid of tracking technologies, which are too easy to diverse, and to insert our activity in economic fabric as positively as possible. Thus we cut half our advertisement budget. With the first half, we still experiment with online advertisement systems as we discover them. After all maybe some of them will give result. And anyway it will give us material for the FAQ.
The half budget we saved go direct to content creators as it should (in our opinion) in a perfect world with perfect cookies and perfect tracking systems. According to our experiments it’s way more efficient than what currently exist, and it don’t imply to catch content creator public for few cents reward.
So, to those video makers, developer, bloggers, musicians, humorist… Who make us come back every day on the web and often put advertisement on their creation to get few reward, we give them 7% our sales figures (via Tipeee or Patreon when possible) without asking any counterpart. Those who would like to give counterpart are welcome and can register our affiliation program: contact@ gataris.fr. They will get relevant part of our budget first half and login/password on our website to follow their link activity.
We particularly appreciate Science4all, Scilabus, Dr Nozman, Le labo d’Heliox, Micmath, Mr Japanization, Science étonnante, Haroun, ZenJu… but we happily follow our client instruction if they did not come from affiliation link.
Frequently asked questions
Why 7%?
According to our study it’s half the budget commonly allocated for a new material product launch on Internet and it’s 2 point more than creation part in economic activity. So there is an improvement for both sides of the shortcut we propose.
I don’t want to pay 7% more!
We understand what you state. On the other hand, we propose to pay roughly 3% up to 8% less compared to classical launch. The average expense for a material product at launching time on internet is often around 10% - 15% of selling price. Moreover there is way for you to choose who will receive the 7% we give each time we do a sale...
And it work?
Yes of course. Otherwise you would not be reading that… Ask around you. You will see that peoples are easy to agree with that scheme.
So why do you still advertise?
Sincerely, we would like to get rid of advertisement. But we did not reach the critical amount of sold product which makes the sales self-perpetuating. For instance.
What did you try?
Within 20 years we tried significant amount of business models: Classical edition (we create, they do), independent wholesale distribution, distributors (6 different from inexperienced beginner to seasoned chain of store owner), direct sales on fair and markets, e-commerce. Since e-commerce started soon in that history we had opportunity to observe how it interact with other business models.
Currently we focus on direct sales of exclusive products we manufacture by ourselves. We are still not absolutely sure it’s a good idea but success chances seem significant.
During those 20 years we also tried many communication channels: contest, press, flyers, posters, inserts, banners, ad-words, boosted/sponsored publication. Talk on forums, groups, commentaries.
What did you learn?
You mean what did we conclude? Because given our position, it’s difficult to separate knowledge and opinion.
Ok so what did you conclude?
Ok so currently our conclusions look like:
- Editors and distributors are mostly an interpersonal and chance matter. It worth the try but it not rewards the work. Failure or success with does not mean anything more than failure or success. However in case of success with a distributor there is a side effect if you are producer: You will have to be as good as fast and as cheap as China. Need to think about it…
- Independent distribution is workable. Need to love business more than main activity. Agree to leave home and family for long periods, but it’s workable. Or at least it was workable 10 years ago.
- Markets are cheap places for those who wakeup soon in the morning and live near big towns.
- Fairs are sometimes very net sometime very terrible. Need to try. It’s often a good place to tune products. But need to be careful. Sometime your neighbor is paid by the fair to do exactly what you’ve paid thousands euro to do.
- Posters are mandatory. Other printed materials are discuss cases. Not only because of pollution they generate.
- Online advertisement seems to work well as long as you distribute your product. It helps much to make the sale to the shop. But if you stop distribution as we did you may discover than one box of your product somewhere on a table (or in a showcase) is way more efficient than hundreds euros online ads for your e-shop sales.