Why A Slow Launch Can Be Better Than A Huge Launch

Why A Slow Launch Can Be Better Than A Huge Launch

Hello, greetings and welcome! I’m now back with a long overdue newsletter. I’m aware that today is Thanksgiving for all of the USA readers, so happy thanksgiving, have a great time.

In this newsletter I will be talking you through why a slow launch can be better than a huge launch. This fits in nicely with a small launch that I have been doing since May of this year.

You will probably already know about a hosting company I run with a business partner – D9 Hosting. We launched back in May of this year and we have been attracting new customers at a steady rate ever since. The launch wasn’t one of my usual launches, you’ll know that when I launch a new product I usually do at least 6 weeks of “Build Up” before the big event!

I’ll be honest, I do the big build up because it gets a lot more sales than if I were to just send out a single mailing announcing the release of a new product, but that’s for another article.

The D9 Hosting launch was different, it was so different that you probably didn’t even realize that it was going on 🙂

Instead of creating the big fan-fare, we quietly put the website on-line and made a post on a forum. If memory serves me correctly, I don’t even think I sent out a single email to my list announcing this. From the single forum post, we started to see a trickle of customers rolling in, not every day, but it was enough to make a profit.

These customers were our “Guinea pigs”, without knowing it they were helping us test the server, test our support desk, our billing script and everything else that goes with it. When a problem was found (and let’s face it, with Hosting there are a lot of things that could go wrong) we quietly went about fixing the problem, as we only had a few customers, the disruption was minimal.

Can you imagine if we had done a massive launch, gained thousands of customers, then found out that something in our billing script wasn’t working, it would have caused major headaches for us, and the customers, and our reputation would be in tatters.

The quiet launch had no such problems. After a few weeks we slowly started to expand, we started to advertise D9 Hosting in some eBooks, other forums and here, on this blog. Again, this generated more new customers, not a huge number by any means but it helped us test the systems with a larger number of clients.

There were problems, but like before, as we didn’t have thousands of customers from the start, there was no disruption and we were able to fix the problems without any fuss at all.

This slow growth continued for the next few months, until the time we had been waiting for arrived. Our steady growth had out-grown our server! We were running out of room for clients, a server that was costing us under $100 per month to run was no longer sufficient for us – so we purchased a shiny new server….called “Bullseye”!

Bullseye costs well over $200 per month to run and maintain, but this isn’t a problem, why isn’t this a problem?

Because of our slow launch!

The slow launch worked just as we had planned. Our business plan was not to generate thousands of new customers on day 1, but to get a small, steady flow of new clients each week. This would then generate enough revenue to cover the growth costs, including the new server, and if needed any support staff.

This wouldn’t have been possible if we had gone for a huge launch, we would have got a lot of customers for the first week or two, but what then? Sure, we would have the satisfaction of having a lot of clients, but what if something went wrong with the server or the billing script, we could easily have lost a lot of them.

I think I’ve made the point that sometimes a slow launch can be beneficial, and this doesn’t just apply to hosting. You can apply the argument to any product that you are creating or promoting, you need to carefully think which sort of launch is for you.

But what next for D9?

Glad you asked!

Our slow launch has steadily grown into an express train and we are now fully prepared for any future expansions and we are confident that we can handle a large increase in clients, whilst still being able to provide the top notch service that current customers enjoy.

You will see our D9 Hosting expansion plan start to take full effect next week when we will be launching a brand new website, with brand new hosting features! These include (and of course will be available to all new clients!) full DNS control over domains, ID protect for domains (The UK government might lose your data, but I can assure you D9 Hosting wont!), a centralised support, domain, order and details system, loads of hosting discounts and much much more!

Existing clients will be the first to receive notification of the changes, and I will be sending out a mailing to you guys in due course, if you fancy giving D9 Hosting a try, we offer a free site transfer service – so gives us a try, you won’t be disappointed!

Thanks for reading, and as always do leave me any comments or questions.

Cheers!
Dan

Receive Free Email Updates When A New Entry Is Posted. Join Them!

Comments

Comments are closed.