Stitches & Picks S1:Ep 11 - Beginning Guitar Online Launch Story

Watch the YouTube video version above or listen to the podcast below!

Episode 11 - Beginning Guitar Online Launch Story Video and Podcast Transcript

[This transcript has been lightly edited to ensure readability]

Dave Dougherty: Hey, there. Welcome to Stitches & Picks. A little bit of a different episode here, a solo show with Dave. So any of you who prefer Kristin, feel free to wait until next week. Now, I figured I would jump on quickly and talk about the BGO launch mishaps that have been referenced a number of times in previous episodes. 

This way, figured I would share the story, and walk through what a typical launch package looks like if you are looking to launch your own website, e-commerce store, or whatever it is. And then what not to do, which is exactly what I did. So I guess we'll start from the beginning with Beginning Guitar Online. 

It started back in 2014, 2015, I think, somewhere in there. I was working for a marketing agency in Minneapolis at the time, and I was at home kind of looking around renewing some of the domains that I purchased, you know, for myself in GoDaddy at the time I was using at the time. 

And just went, "You know what, I'm going to look at my guitar sites." You know, because I had previously been a guitar teacher, full-time guitar teacher, and I had always had students come in who had started online. They would always have massive gaps in their playing or there would be just some ingrained bad habits because naturally with the stuff that you find online for free, a lot of it is, you know, how to play this super flashy stuff, or how to play a particular song that you want to learn and that you really enjoy. 

And that's all great stuff but as a teacher and as somebody who's trying to set them up for success down the road to be able to accomplish their goals, you'd be like, okay, online is missing something, right? So I was thinking back on, you know, my teaching experiences and just kind of putzing around with, you know, the domain registration stuff, which I'm sure if anybody's looked at potentially launching something online, you've played around with those tools. 

And, you know, as an SEO, the old school way of doing things, would you buy the domain with all the keywords in it? And, you know, that isn't so much a thing anymore, but, you know, it's one method of getting a domain. So I just typed in "Beginning Guitar Online" and lo and behold, it was available. 

And whoa, no way. I don't even know if I'm going to do anything with this domain, but I'm going to buy it because it's only like 20 bucks a year, you know, to hold onto a domain. So yeah, I just went ahead and bought it, and then I started thinking, "Okay, you know, what can I do with this?" 

So after I bought the domain, I started thinking to myself, "All right, you know, what can I do with this domain?" 

Because the way that I started on guitar, there was the guitar magazines that you could get at the library or, you know, subscribe to, there were the websites, but they weren't really good because at the time, you know, the video and the... At the time, you know, the video or the imagery, it took forever to load or was very pixelated. 

So it was hard to read. You know, it was just a bad user experience. So, I figured I would start looking around. I did the competitive research, which I'd highly recommend anybody, you know, does with any of their idea is just to find out what's already been done, what's working for people, what's not. 

And as I researched what was out there, it became clear to me that there was the traditional magazines that really were focused on just getting subscriptions and selling advertising. And at the time really focused on the print versions of their products. Then you had other lesson sites like TrueFire or JamPlay, where they already had a lot of great content. 

It was, you know, really professionally shot. They even have some lessons with some top, you know, touring acts that would really make you want to buy the lessons, but the pricing to get access to those lessons is pretty high. 

You know, so it's like 40 bucks a month. And I was just thinking to myself, "Okay, if I'm a beginning guitar player, I don't know enough to evaluate whether or not the lessons behind the signing are worth $40 a month because that seems pretty steep." 

Now that seems pretty steep for an online subscription, but really honestly, if you're going to go to a guitar teacher in any of the guitar stores, you can expect to pay a dollar a minute for your lessons. So, 30-minute lessons, 30 bucks, because the guitar teacher doesn't pocket all of that, a lot of that goes to, you know, the guitar teacher renting space from whatever music store they're at. 

So they're getting a percentage of whatever it is you end up paying, you know, in store. So, you know, a dollar a minute versus, you know, a lesson a month, but again, with anything online, I mean, you've experienced this with apps too, you pay for it and then you kind of forget it because it just sits there, right? 

So you had the subscription pieces, the gated content, you had the magazines, and then the third one that you had were just random YouTubers that it was really hard to tell whether or not you should listen to any of these people, right? You know, do they have credibility? 

Are they just somebody who is just a week ahead of me, you know, in terms of playing, but they're recording themselves and, you know, putting the lessons online? It's really hard to evaluate, if you're a beginner, where the value is and what should I do, not to mention different learning styles, right? 

One of the main reasons I wanted to start the guitar study online was a recognition that there were different learning styles for different players, as well as there was a frustration with being a teacher where summer months or towards the end of the year with high school, junior high, calendar, all of a sudden, the kids would get really busy. 

So they would start missing a lot of lessons. And, you know, if those aren't prioritized, you know, how are you supposed to have any progress with that? So, you know, July 4th, forget that week. Nobody's going to be going on. August, almost everybody's out on vacation. So forget it, you know, your kid's not going to learn much. Then you have all the other holidays plus school starting plus homework plus, plus, yadda, yadda, yadda. 

So it would've been really nice to be able to say, "All right, hey, you know what, if you're going to miss this week, you're going to go up to your cabin, you're going to go on a trip. Go to YouTube, go to my website, learn this particular lesson and then come back to me, right? That way you're not missing a week. You're still making progress on the instrument. And then, you know, next week when you come in, you can get real-time feedback, you know, from me as the teacher." 

And then additionally, and I think I mentioned this in one of the previous episodes, I had a student who, you know, I'd put the sheets down in front and I realized he wasn't looking at any of them. And, you know, I asked him, I was like, you know, "Are you using the sheets? I see that you're watching me play a lot more." 

And, you know, he was kind enough to tell me that he was dyslexic. So it was really hard for him to look at the stuff on the page. And, you know, at the time, I'm like, "Man, you should have told me like right away. I would've adapted. I would've, you know, let you record stuff on your phone like as I play." And so that's what we ended up doing. 

He would, you know, record my fingers as I played through the examples. And again, it would be really nice just to have, you know, record it once and then be able to shoot it off to the student as things are coming. If he misses a week, "Here, try this video, go ahead and do it and let's keep the progress going." So, those were the main reasons for wanting to start it and going. 

But again, I found the domain back in like 2014, 2015. Between 2015 and 2020, I was researching...2015 to 2019, we'll go 2019, I was researching the environment, playing around with the idea, trying to figure out, okay, how do you actually record this stuff? 

What would the content process look like? All those kind of pre-launch ideas. And then the pandemic hit. And I think like most people, there was kind of a wake-up call of, "Okay, you know what, I got to do something with the ideas that I feel compelled to do instead of just letting them sit and collect dust." 

So I called up my friend, Chris, who's an amazing guitar teacher. He was actually my guitar teacher for like 2 weeks when I was 16, I think. And yeah, he's an amazing classical finger-style guitar player. And I took two weeks with him and realized that that's just not a style that I wanted to specialize in, but we ended up hanging out and becoming good friends. 

And, you know, years later when the pandemic hit, I called him and said, you know, "I've been meaning to talk to you about this idea I've had. Why don't we do it? Let's just do it." And luckily he said, yes. And so we took the, you know, 2020 pandemic year to figure out, "Okay, how are we going to do it? What are we going to launch with? What do we want to record?" 

And then we launched in 2021. And it's been a fun ride since then. The lesson from the launch though, is you have your typical launch strategy, right? So, what is a typical launch strategy? 

Well, if you're going to launch a new product, a new platform, like a website, like, you know, a YouTube channel or anything like that, you're going to have the main content itself, so in our case, the guitar videos, you're going to have your website where people can check you out, get in touch with you, any of that kind of stuff. 

And then you have all your promotional assets, social media things, advertising, you know, PR, press releases, if that's a route you choose to do. I chose not to do it with BGO. And in terms of your main content, you don't just want the one video and then say, "Okay, I'm going to do one video and then do one video a week," and then all of a sudden find yourself in this, you know, crazy kind of rat race to keep up the content. 

Because if you're like me and you have the day job, you have a family, you have everything else, that's a lot of work to get one video going and launch it every week. Get all the social media posts going, get the transcription up on the blog, any of that, depending on what your strategy is. It's a lot of work for each episode. 

So with the launch package, I had set it up where I would have five videos set and ready to go. I would do like maybe three on launch day, or, you know, maybe spread three out across the first week as sort of, "Yay, we launched. Check it out." 

And so there would be some instant value as soon as people saw the YouTube channel, the website, you know, whatever else. And then after those three videos, each week I would have a video slotted for the coming weeks to give me some time to get the transcripts done for each of the videos, each of the video shooting and editing so that I could be ahead of the game and I wouldn't have to be stressed out about, "Oh, man, it's Tuesday and I don't have a video for, you know, Thursday," because Thursday is our launch day for new episodes at the time of this recording. 

It might change, you know, experiment, play around. So instead of following the strategy, like I know I should have, I decided to just launch with everything I had. And, you know, it was one of those things where like my finger was hovering over the mouse button and I knew I shouldn't hit it, but I did anyway. 

And that is the mistake. If you have your strategy, stick with it, don't make any last-minute changes to it. There is a reason you put the planning, you know, ahead of time into it. Even if you're doing a soft launch, there is planning there, you know, there is a reason you took the time to get everything done. 

So with this mistake, what are the knock-on effects? Well, everything I said that I was trying to prevent by having content there ahead of time happened. So I launched with everything and it felt great because now I have this new thing, it's out there. 

This is fantastic. We've got all these episodes. People are responding to them. Yay. Except you forget about the mental energy you have to expand in the preparation in launching, not to mention the emotional energy and excitement for, "You know what, I did the thing. I said I was going to do it. It's launching. What's the reception going to be?" 

And then it launches. And it's nice to have that extra content there not just so you can relax a little bit and not feel pressured to release all this new content, but also to take a breath after launching, right? Just to be excited that you did something and that you're one of the few people that had the idea, you went through the process, and you actually launched it, right? 

And to be honest, it took me six months of content creation to dig myself out of that feeling of, "Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh my God, I have to shoot something, and get it released, and edit, and bounce, and whatever else," right? Because some of the things that Chris and I have talked about in previous episodes about how, you know, a lot of the things that you don't think about when you're launching a new channel or new whatever file storage, the amount of time it takes for videos to bounce or render when you're editing and you're putting all the branding, and you're putting on...and you're changing, you know, color balance and audio levels and all these things, all of that takes time and you forget about that. 

So, getting it to a point where your video is done and rendered, and can bounce while you then go sleep and then come back to be able to upload it, which then also if you're dealing with 4K videos, like with "Stitches & Picks," you're dealing with 4K videos for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour. 

I mean, that takes most of the day to upload and process the standard definition version, process the high definition version, process the 4K version, and then be able to have the link to share and, you know, put into other places. So, the goals that we had when we launched were to hit an average of 100 people a month and that's through the videos or the website or whatever else. 

And we had it that, you know, what seems as low because we knew that we weren't going to be doing any advertising, right? We're going to bootstrap this thing. And we're going to just see what happens with the reception because, as I said, when I researched the environment of being able to look at subscriptions versus YouTubers versus magazines, the one thing all of them had in common was that they weren't familiar with search engine marketing. 

That was one way where I could take all of the best practices that they're doing, add my expertise of SEO on there and content development from that, and then kind of, you know, wedge myself in between. And I'm happy to report, you know, nine months later, we had already surpassed the amount of people we wanted to reach in that first year totally organic. 

And it's continued to go up. Now, that six months of just grinding and grinding and grinding and grinding to dig myself out of that content hole to not have that extra leeway really put a damper on, you know, feeling good about launching the thing, feeling good about being able to get the next year of it there because the long-term goals, we have to have a certain amount of content to be able to do other things that we want to do with the site. 

Yeah. So, anyway, just thinking real-time all the knock-on effects and all the things. I could ramble and ramble and ramble, but I'm not going to. So I think I'll stop it here, but, you know, again, learn from my mistake with this. If you have a plan, if you take the time, do not change it in the eleventh hour. 

The things I hope you can take away from this are when you come up with the idea, do some research on potential domain names, buy them if you are able to, or as soon as you figured out your brand name, look to see if it's out there, whittle down your options with what websites are available. 

Take some time to research what other companies are out there. Some great tools are out there to do this with. You can do it with Semrush, SimilarWeb, Moz, Ahrefs. I would use SimilarWeb, Ahrefs, Semrush first on those to research your audience and where they are doing Facebook Ads just to see, LinkedIn ads, depending on your target audience. 

YouTube data would be another good one with YouTube ads. Also a fantastic tool SparkToro, would be another great one to go check out. All of those tools are free or have a reasonable price where if, you know, you buy it for a month, you do the research you need and then, you know, be done with it. 

Research the environment to figure out your best plan of attack, you know, your unique spin on the idea because just because there are a lot of competitors, just because there are a lot of people out there doing it, doesn't mean you shouldn't lend your voice to it if you have something to say about those topics and, you know, some value you can add to those conversations. 

Also, you know, come up with your launch package, have the content available, have extra content available. You know, if you really wanted to be careful with this and cautious with your launch, have your initial launch content with ads and social assets and the website and your videos, depending on whatever your, you know, website or online strategy is, what your business is. 

Have your launch content there. Have the next weeks or months, try to go for four weeks or six weeks' worth of content available to just launch automatically where you have everything set up and, you know, all the post scheduled, all that so that you have a little bit of a buffer, right? 

And then, you know, again, don't change it when you get to the eleventh hour before you launch your actual package. Create the strategy, stick to it, and have an awesome time knowing that you're one of the few percentage of people that came up with the idea, did the research, and launched it. 

It is an exciting thing to do. It's rewarding personally, emotionally, mentally to get that done. And make sure you take some time to acknowledge that, right? 

Don't just go to the next thing, next thing, next thing. There's plenty of time for that. Take some time, acknowledge the accomplishment, and go forward. So, hope you've enjoyed this. Little bit of a different format. Let us know if you've liked this. Like, subscribe, comment below if you're Apple Podcast, Stitcher, you know, Google Podcast, wherever you listen to the podcast. 

Give us a review, write any comments, let us know. If you'd like more solo shows, hit us up on social, let us know. We're happy to do that. And with that, we will see you next week with the next episode "Stitches & Picks." And hope you're well. Take care.